ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with Harare, one of the five African townships on the outskirts of Salisbury. It has a population of well over 50,000. Under the Land Apportionment Act of 1930, Harare, like the four other townships, is an African residential area—that is, no European can reside in the township. Likewise no African can reside in Salisbury proper, which is reserved exclusively for Europeans. The chapter shows how African elite in Harare is becoming distinguished from the ordinary people of the community. Once Africans were drawn into the western economy the social system in which they were absorbed offered them an opportunity for higher standards of living as an incentive in the competition for prestige and rank. Africans residing in Harare are becoming more and more education-conscious, and they are struggling to increase the educational attainments of their children and themselves. The most important distinction between the elite and the non-elite is education.
