Lionel Cripps

The Hon Lionel Cripps CMG (11 October 1863 - 3 February 1950) was the first Speaker of the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Assembly.

Born in Simla, India, the son of a General in the Bengal Staff Corps and his wife ["Mr. Lionel Cripps A Rhodesian Pioneer", p. 8, "The Times", 4 February 1950] and educated in England, Cripps moved to South Africa in 1879, where he took up farming. In 1890, Cripps served as a trooper in the Pioneer Column that occupied Mashonaland before prospecting in the Mazowe district and eventually settling near Mutare to farm tobacco, and in so doing became the first farmer in Rhodesia to raise tobacco as a commercial crop [Rubert, S. (1998) "A Most Promising Weed: A History of Tobacco Farming & Labor in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1890-1945", p. 2, Ohio University Press, Ohio. ISBN 0896802035] . There he represented farmers in the region as head of a "vigilance committee", raising their grievances with Cecil Rhodes and demanding political rights within RhodesiaSelby, A. (2006) "Commercial Farmers And The State: Interest Group Politics And Land Reform In Zimbabwe", Doctoral Thesis, University of Oxford, Oxford.] .

On 6 April 1893 he married Mary Lovemore in Cape Town. Together they had three sons and two daughters.

In 1903, Cripps helped established and led the influential Rhodesian Agricultural Union (RAU), a body representing settler farmers. He attempted to parlay his stature in the community into a political career, unsuccessfully contesting Eastern Constituency in the 1911 Southern Rhodesian Legislative Council election before his election to the Southern Rhodesian Legislative Council in 1914. Re-elected in 1920 [Willson, F. (1963) "Source Book of Parliamentary Elections and Referenda in Southern Rhodesia 1898-1962", Department of Government, University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Salisbury] Cripps was elected the inaugural speaker of the Legislative Assembly in 1923 [Kent Rasmussen, R. & Rubert, S. (1990) "Historical Dictionary of Zimbabwe", Second Edition, The Scarecrow Press Inc., New Jersey. ISBN 0810834715] .

Upon his retirement from politics in 1935, Cripps helped establish the National Archives and served as a member of the Historical Monuments Commission and developed a passion for Rock art, making copies of all known rock art in Rhodesia. [Cooke, CK (1965) "Evidence of Human Migrations from the Rock Art of Southern Rhodesia", "Africa: Journal of the International African Institute", Vol. 35, No. 3. p. 263] . Many of his reproductions of rock paintings and drawings are archived at the University of Zimbabwe's Archaeological Unit and an academic study of his work, entitled "Immortalising the Past - Reproductions of Zimbabwean Rock Art by Lionel Cripps", was released in 2007 [Tera, R. (2007) "Zimbabwe: Book Breaks New Ground", "The Herald" (Harare) 18 July 2007] .

Cripps died in Umtali, Rhodesia.

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