A soil conservation safari: Hugh Bennett's 1944 visit to South Africa

Environment and History

Volumn 11, Issue 1, 2005, Pages 35-54

  Dodson, Belinda ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO   (Canada)

Author keywords

Hugh Bennett; Racial segregation; Soil conservation; Soil Conservation Act; South Africa

Indexed keywords

ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY; RACISM; SOCIAL SEGREGATION; SOIL CONSERVATION; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

AFRICA; EASTERN HEMISPHERE; SOUTH AFRICA; SOUTHERN AFRICA; SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA; WORLD;

EID: 14844288041     PISSN: 09673407     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.3197/0967340053306176     Document Type: Review

References (95)

1. In addition to copious coverage in newspapers and agricultural magazines, there were also numerous pamphlets and booklets aimed at public education about soil conservation e.g. Sam de Kock, 'Bewaar ons Bodem', Kennis vir Almal 33 (1945);
2. J.C. Fick, The Abuse of the Soil, Veld and Water Resources of South Africa (South African Interests Group, 1944);
3. Captain E.E. Harris, African Education: Save the Land (Union Defence Force, 1944);
4. Melanchthon (nom-de-plume of Patrick Duncan), The Enemy (1943);
5. N.H. Porritt, How to Save our Soil (Cape Town: Longmans, Green and Co., 1948);
6. C.A. Smith, 'The Soil Declares War on Man', South African Affairs Pamphlets no. 3, (1944);
7. C.J.J. Van Rensburg and E.M. Palmer, New World to Win (1946).
8. This 1940s soil conservation movement formed a crescendo within the wider emergence of conservationism in South Africa's farming areas, described by William Beinart in The Rise of Conservation in South Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
9. Wellington Brink, Big Hugh: The Father of Soil Conservation (New York: Macmillan, 1951).
10. The paper draws primarily upon South African sources, both primary and secondary. Much of it is based on the records of the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Native Affairs in the South African national archives. The former department was responsible for soil conservation in white-owned farming areas, while the latter was responsible for soil conservation on what were known at the time as 'native reserves', later as 'homelands'or'bantustans'. Contemporary secondary sources consulted include the South African press as well as pamphlets and magazines like Veld Trust News, official organ of the popular conservation organisation known as the National Veld Trust. Bennett wrote a report on his visit to the country, published as Soil Erosion and Land Use in the Union of South Africa (Pretoria: Department of Agriculture and Forestry, 1945), and the paper devotes attention both to the report itself and to its reception. Other secondary sources consulted include Wellington Brink's Big Hugh: The Father of Soil Conservation (New York: Macmillan, 1951);
11. D. Harper Simms's The Soil Conservation Service (New York and Washington: Praeger, 1970);
12. Donald Worster's Dust Bowl: The Southern Plains in the 1930s (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979);
13. and Charles M. Hardin's The Politics of Agriculture: Soil Conservation and the Struggle for Power in Rural America (Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press, 1952).
14. G. V. Jacks and R.O. Whyte, The Rape of the Earth: A World Survey of Soil Erosion (London: Faber & Faber, 1939). Interestingly, the book was published in the United States under the less controversial tide Vanishing Lands. This quotation is from the American edition (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1939), 278.
15. G. V. Jacks and R. O. Whyte, Vanishing Lands, 280.
16. Bennett's speeches and writings are full of biblical reference and resonance, and he is often described as a crusader, evangelist, missionary or even apostle.
17. My main sources for this section are Wellington Brink, Big Hugh; Harper Simms, The Soil Conservation Service;
18. and Donald Worster, Dust Bowl. The earlier two works are both highly hagiographic, and it is sometimes difficult to disentangle legend from fact.
19. William Beinart and Peter Coates, Environment and History: The Taming of Nature in the USA and South Africa (London: Routledge, 1995).
20. Harper Simms, The Soil Conservation Service, 15-16.
21. Information in this paragraph is from Harper Simms, The Soil Conservation Service.
22. M. Hardin, The Politics of Agriculture, 97.
23. The publication of his 1939 book Soil Conservation did much to enhance and expand his reputation, especially internationally.
24. Copies of these speeches were provided to me by the United States Department of Agriculture.
25. Address by H.H. Bennett at Wisconsin Farm and Home Week, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 31 January 1940.
26. Address by H.H. Bennett to the Royal Canadian Institute, Toronto, Canada, 7 November 1942.
27. Pretoria, Central Archives Depot (CAD), Department of Agriculture (Landbou), LDB 3246 R4250/11, file 'Division of Soil and Veld Conservation, Dr Hugh Bennett: Proposed Visit to South Africa', Legation of the United States of America, Cape Town to the Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 27 January 1944.
28. LDB 3246 R4250/11, P.R. Viljoen (Secretary for Agriculture) to Secretary for External Affairs, 1 February 1944.
29. CAD, Treasury (Tesourie), TES F20/655, file 'Entertainment. Dr Bennett. Chief, Soil Conservation Service, United States Department of Agriculture',Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry to Secretary for Finance, 2 March 1944.
30. Wellington Brink, Big Hugh, 137.
31. Officials in both departments, needless to say, were themselves white.
32. LDB 3246 R4250/11, file 'Division of Soil and Veld Conservation, Dr Hugh Bennett: Proposed Visit to South Africa'.
33. CAD, Department of Native Affairs (Naturellesake), NTS 9538 138/400/110, file 'Soil Erosion Works. Visit of Dr Bennett, American Soil Erosion Expert', Secretary for Native Affairs to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 19 February 1944.
34. LDB 3246 R4250/11, marginal note on letter from Secretary for Native Affairs to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 19 February 1944.
35. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry to Secretary for Native Affairs, 23 February 1944.
36. Eventually, in the 1960s, these territories were granted full independence by the British government as Lesotho, Botswana and Swaziland. On the political history of the High Commission Territories see Ronald Hyam, The Failure of South African Expansion, 1908-1948 (London: Macmillan, 1972).
37. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry to Mr Priestman, Administrative Secretary to the High Commissioner, 6 March 1944;
38. and NTS 9538 138/400/110, J.C. Ross, Chief of the Division of Soil and Veld Conservation, to R.W. Thornton, Agricultural Department, Maseru, Basutoland, 30 March 1944.
39. Many agriculture officials in Basutoland were South African nationals ('Anti-Erosion Steps in Basutoland', Star, 31 August 1944). R.W Thornton, Director of Agriculture in Basutoland, had been a senior official in both the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Native Affairs in South Africa prior to his appointment in Basutoland.
40. See Thackwray Driver, 'Anti-Erosion Policies in the Mountain Areas of Lesotho: The South African Connection', Environment and History 5 (1999): 1-25.
41. NTS 9538 138/400/110, J.C. Ross, Chief of the Division of Soil and Veld Conservation to R.W. Thornton, Agricultural Department, Maseru, Basutoland, 30 March 1944.
42. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Ross to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 30 March 1944.
43. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Secretary for Native Affairs to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 17 April 1944.
44. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry to Secretary for Native Affairs, 24 April 1944.
45. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Legation of the United States of America to Secretary for External Affairs, 22 May 1944.
46. The journey was not without incident. As Brink wrote in Big Hugh (138): 'The great RAF hydroplane to which he had transferred from an ATC bomber at Accra made a forced landing on the Congo River and was eight days being repaired - long enough for Big Hugh to get well acquainted with equatorial Africa and its mosquitoes and tsetse flies. He wasn't any happier for this episode.'
47. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry to Deputy Director of Information, 1 July 1944.
48. For an analysis of this phenomenon and its associated professional biases see Robert Chambers, Rural Development: Putting the Last First (London: Longman, 1982).
49. LDB 3246 R4250/11, Ross to Secretary for Agriculture and Forestry, 17 July 1944.
50. Asample: 'Planning to Save the Soil', Natal Mercury, 11 August 1944;
51. 'Both Townsfolk and Farmers Fully Aware of Soil Erosion Menace', Natal Witness, 12 August 1944;
52. 'Dr H. H. Bennett's Union Tour Curtailed', Star, 16 August 1944;
53. 'Soil Erosion in Eastern Transvaal', Star, 19 August 1944;
54. 'The Native Reserves', Sunday Times 20 August 1944.
55. LDB 3246 R4250/11, telegrams from Ross to Viljoen.
56. LDB 3246 R4250/11, telegram from Ross to Viljoen, 16 September 1944.
57. Anti-Erosion Steps in Basutoland', Star, 31 August 1944.
58. NTS 9538 138/400/110, memorandum from H.R. Roberts to the Secretary for Native Affairs, 15 August 1944.
59. LDB 3246 R4250/11, telegram from Ross to Viljoen, 16 September 1944.
60. NTS 9538 138/400/110, telegram from Govt Umtata to Roberts c/o Natives Pretoria, 26 August 1944. It is not made clear whether the perceived 'propaganda value'was simply in terms of convincing native leaders to practise soil conservation or in terms of convincing critics that the South African government had the natives' interests at heart.
61. NTS 9538 138/400/110, letter from Chief Magistrate of the Transkeian Territories to H.R. Roberts, 28 August 1944.
62. NTS 9538 138/400/110, note from Secretary for Native Affairs to Chief Native Commissioner, Umtata, 8 September 1944.
63. Planning to Save the Soil', Natal Mercury, 11 August 1944.
64. 'Both Townsfolk and Farmers Fully Aware of Erosion Menace', Natal Witness, 12 August 1944.
65. 'Soil Erosion in Eastern Transvaal: Damage to Veld by Natives', Star 19 August 1944.
66. NTS 9538 138/400/110, Roberts's annotation to the Star article of 19 August 1944, dated 22 August.
67. 'The Native Reserves', Sunday Times, 20 August 1944.
68. 'Enough Land in Reserves? American Soil Expert Criticised', Guardian 24 August 1944.
69. 'A Nation Imperilled: Dr. H.H. Bennett Views South Africa', Veld Trust News, October 1944, 5.
70. 'A Nation Imperilled: Dr. H.H. Bennett Views South Africa', Veld Trust News, October 1944, 3.
71. 'Dr. H. H. Bennett's Tour. III. - The Native Areas', Daily Representative, 28 September 1944.
72. H.H. Bennett, Soil Erosion and Land Use in the Union of South Africa (Pretoria, 1945).
73. Translation: 'South Africa Heads for Danger'.
74. The Huisgenoot article of 3 November is the best example.
75. LDB 3246 R4250/11, file 'Division of Soil and Veld Conservation, Dr Hugh Bennett: Proposed Visit to South Africa'.
76. Various Veld Trust News editorials and letters, 1944-1946.
77. CAD, LDB 3228 R4250, Ross to the Secretary of the Social and Economic Planning Council, 19 February 1945.
78. CAD, LDB 3253 R4250/21, D.L. Smit, Secretary for Native Affairs, 'A New Era of Reclamation', 9 December 1944.
79. J.G.N. Strauss, foreword to Bennett, Soil Erosion and Land Use in the Union of South Africa.
80. These included Nyasaland, Australia and Burma, and the High Commissioner in Cape Town requested no less than 47 copies for despatch to the High Commission Territories, the Colonial Office, the Dominions Office and other interested departments in London (LDB 3246 R4250/11, various letters to the Department of Agriculture).
81. 'Warning to South Africa', The Forum, 21 April 1945.
82. Daily News, cited in The Forum, 21 April 1945.
83. Die Transvaler, cited in The Forum, 21 April 1945.
84. Editorial cartoon by Ivanoff in Die Vaderland, reprinted in The Forum, 21 April 1945.
85. One of the things occupying Smuts, apart of course from World War Two, was the founding of the United Nations - hardly insignificant international affairs!
86. See D. O'Meara, Forty Lost Years: The Apartheid State and the Politics of the National Party, 1948-1994 (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1996).
87. H.H. Bennett, Soil Erosion and Land Use in the Union of South Africa
88. LDB 3228 R4250, Ross to the Secretary of the Social and Economic Planning Council, 19 February 1945.
89. LDB 3253 R4250/21, file 'Draft Soil Conservation Bill, 1945'.
90. See William Beinart and Peter Coates, Environment and History;
91. P. Delius and S. Schirmer, 'Soil Conservation in a Racially Ordered Society: South Africa 1930-1970', Journal of Southern African Studies 26 (2000): 719-42;
92. M.A. Rabie,'Soil', chapter 8 in R.F. Fuggle and M.A. Rabie (eds.), Environmental Management in South Africa (Cape Town: Juta, 1992).
93. LDB 3253 R4250/21, Secretary for Native Affairs to Secretary for Agriculture, 26 March 1946 (and ensuing corrspondence).
94. W. Beinart, Twentieth-Century South Africa (Oxford, 1994).
95. D. O'Meara, Forty Lost Years.