NF (1957) Going Home (29 page)

Having arrived at Salisbury, I was told I had been misinformed about the plane to Nyasaland. There was no plane until Tuesday. My plane to London left on Thursday. Since all the planes are heavily booked I could not afford to miss it. I worked out a rather precarious plan to rush up to Nyasaland for one day, try and see Chief Gomani, who is in considerable trouble with the Government, and then rush back again, taking a chance on getting into a plane at Blantyre. But in the end I decided not to.

It was a big disappointment to me, giving up Nyasaland. I have never been there. Everyone who has speaks of it as the most beautiful country. The Africans I have known from Nyasaland are a fine lot: alert, independent, subtle, proud. And the white people (there are only six thousand of them) are less colour-ridden than anywhere in the Federation.

But it is not like Northern Rhodesia, which has its Copper Belt towns strung out close together, easy to reach. Nyasaland is a long, narrow, mountainous, lake-divided country, with bad roads and widely-scattered towns. Useless to go there for a couple of days.

Being in a paranoiac state of mind just then, I was convinced that all the wrong information that had been given me about the planes was deliberate, part of a plot to prevent me from going there. But now, having recovered, I don’t think so. It was due to the natural inefficiency of the place.

And so I left, to return to London, where people ask: ‘Well, what is the future of the Federation?’

I don’t know.

There are two vital questions to which no one knows the answer. One is, will there be a slump in America? If so, and the price of copper is seriously affected, the very precarious financial structure of Federation can crumble into chaos.

The second is, will the Labour Party get back into power in Britain? If it does, and its Left Wing is strong enough to force a more liberal policy, it is possible African bitterness may be softened. I have heard it suggested that the white settlers, afraid of the Labour Party getting back, may stage some sort of
coup d’état
, taking complete independence by force or trickery. I don’t think so. I hope not. I hope they have more sense, for I
am convinced that if they do the whole place will go up in flames like Kenya.

But the real question, the big imponderable, is this: Just how much are the Africans prepared to take?

It has been said that the epitaph of the white man in Africa will be: He allowed his intelligence and his conscience to become blunted by colour prejudice, and did not realize it until too late.

I am certain only of one thing: that if the Federation does not advance very fast, and with real sincerity of motive, towards complete racial partnership, it must retreat rapidly towards what is happening in the Union of South Africa. There is very little difference even now.

I don’t feel very optimistic. I don’t see how the next decade can be anything else than stormy, bitter and unprofitable.

L
ONDON
,

August
26, 1956

N
OTE
I—Fifty-six officials of the African Mineworkers’ Union having been kept in prison for several weeks, the Chief Justice of Northern Rhodesia ruled that their arrest and detention had been illegal. Whereupon the Legislative Council of Northern Rhodesia—the white settlers’ Parliament—passed a law banning fifty-three of them from returning to the Copper Belt. Thus the effective leadership of this union has been removed. This law had to be approved and signed by a British-appointed Governor, one of whose tasks it is to watch over African interests.

The most effective and the biggest African trade union in Central Africa has therefore been deliberately crippled—for the time being at least—by the white administration acting hand in hand with the mining interests and backed up by a British-appointed Governor.

When, in the Union of South Africa, Strydom and his gang smash opposition organizations, they at least attempt to draw a cloak of legality over the performance. But to the honour of South Africa there is still a liberal voice which has not yet let itself be silenced. In Central Africa there are no white people prepared to protest openly against the contempt for democracy and decency shown by their Government; although I know there are some who are ashamed of what is being done, even if they don’t say so. There is no white opposition; only black opposition—and the Africans have no effective vote.

N
OTE
II—A few days ago I had a letter from a relative in Southern Rhodesia saying she had met and talked with Lord Malvern at a party. He said: ‘We prohibited this woman for her own good; and in any case, what she doesn’t realize is that she was made a prohibited immigrant years ago, and we only let her in this time by accident.’

This cheers me up: the existence of this sort of Alice-in-Wonderland inefficiency seems to me the one way in which Central Africa is superior to the Union.

N
OTE
III—In this book I have made various statements about the possibility of Communism becoming democratic. Since writing it, the Soviet intervention in Hungary has occurred. It is hard to make adequate political assessments on notes added hastily to galley proofs as a book goes to press. But it seems to me that during the last three years the great words liberty, freedom and truth have again become banners for men to fight under—in all the countries of the world. It seems to me wrong that so many people should be saddened and discouraged by this sudden violent crisis we are all living through: it is a crisis in the battle of truth against lies, of honesty against corruption, of respect for the goodness of people against cynicism.

January
6, 1957

Always salutary to read over something written years ago. Particularly something written in emotion—that was 1956, a climactic year for everybody. I was far too heated by the end of that trip; but being chased around by the CID and then forbidden entry to the country you were bred in, does arouse emotions the reasonable mind finds an impediment. Hundreds of people are now Prohibited Immigrants into the southern part of Africa: anyone who has been critical, is critical, or even might be critical. Of course: dictatorships can’t stand critics. And the attitude of mind which says ‘of course’ ‘if you do this that will follow’ is much more useful to judgement than indignation. The trouble is, to understand a place like Rhodesia, like the Republic, it is no good looking coolly from outside. You have to experience the paranoia, the adolescent sentimentality, the neurosis. Experience—then a retreat into a cool look from outside. Most politicians and journalists do their judging from outside only. And most of the people on the spot are lost in a violent emotionalism.

Federation has dissolved: it was unworkable, as certain people foresaw. But it would not have been agreed to by this country (the Labour Party) if the politicians concerned had understood the force of the Northern Rhodesian and Nyasaland Africans’ feeling of betrayal. They had made an agreement with Queen Victoria, as free men, that they would continue as free men. Admittedly the administrations of the Colonial Office were not exactly what had been envisaged by them when their spokesmen treated with the Great White Queen, but to force them into Federation against their will was the final confirmation of cynical betrayal and the breaking of a solemn promise. No modern politician thinks in terms of promises, betrayals—
in terms of honour. Federation outraged a sense of honour not admitted as anything but a quaint—and, at best, touching—anachronism. But it was this force which broke up Federation. The nationalist movements of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland (now Zambia and Malawi) were fed, fuelled, powered by this feeling of having been betrayed, sold out.

No one can remember now what ‘Partnership’ was. It was the product of a sense of panic in Rhodesia because of what was happening in the Republic, which coldly and honestly told the world what its regime was—a machine to maintain white supremacy. Rhodesia’s regime was similar, but that country has never been able to see the truth about its own nature. The Rhodesians at that time liked to think of themselves as ‘British’, meaning good, kind, decent, civilized, and not ‘Afrikaans’, which meant crude, backward, bad. But they are quite prepared to consider the Afrikaners as brothers now that the heat is on, just as the British in South Africa voted for the Afrikaners when their position as whites was threatened.

One could afford to be amused by ‘Partnership’ now as then, if it were not that so many people were taken in by it, and if the way of thinking that made it possible to be taken in by it were not as strong as ever in this country. When I came out of Rhodesia on this trip I tried to sell articles to newspapers about the unreality of Federation and of Partnership. But only the
Statesman
and
Tribune
were interested—all the others, including pillars of liberalism now full of moral indignation about the regimes in the Republic and Rhodesia, were enthusiastically selling Federation and Partnership. One was wrong-headed, if not worse, to cast doubt on these concepts. I am still angry about this. But the anger goes back much further than the ’fifties. When I first became interested in politics, in 1939, I was introduced, by the Left, to a knowledge of the monstrous nature of the regime in South Africa. That was under Smuts, the great statesman who laid the basis of ‘baaskaap’, so well and firmly that it has served ever since. And Rhodesia was never anything but the modern version of a slave state.

Who was saying so, apart from a handful of Communists, cranks and Socialists? No one. Why not? I’ll tell you, it was
because no one was interested except those who wanted to maintain the status quo.

This raises that most extraordinary and paradoxical fact which nearly caused me to call this piece ‘The Irrational in Politics’.

There have been two powerful emotions simmering in Rhodesia ever since 1924—a white emotion and an African emotion. In 1924, Southern Rhodesia was given self-government: she became a ‘self-governing colony’, but with two entrenched clauses in the Constitution. One clause was to do with defence, and of no interest in this context. The other was that the white people of Rhodesia were being given self-government on condition that no legislation discriminated unfavourably between white and black.

The whites having achieved control, they proceeded forthwith to set up a state in every respect identical to the Union of South Africa. It was a political commonplace among those prepared to look at facts rather than submit to self-deluding phrases that any law passed in Rhodesia would have come off the Statute Book of South Africa, modified to local conditions and given another name. The basis of white domination in Southern Rhodesia was the Land Apportionment Act, which took away land from the Africans and gave it to the Europeans, and laid down where and under what conditions Africans were to live in ‘white’ areas. The Land Apportionment Act is not so much a piece of legislation as an octopus. There is no single document you can refer to. It has been growing, spreading, burgeoning for forty years; and if you made a trip to the Government Stationery Office in Salisbury to buy this Act, you’d need a cart to carry it away. The most nastily repressive bits of law are likely to read something like: ‘Subclause (f) of Clause A2(g) of paragraph 6 of the Land Apportionment Act as amended by clause 7 of the Amendment of 1945 will read “not” on line 5 instead of “will be”.’ You think I’m joking? Not at all. A temple full of lawyers would be needed to make sense of that Act—and no accident either, I assure you.

There was no law passed in Southern Rhodesia that did not, directly or indirectly, discriminate between white and black, thereby making ‘self-government’ invalid by definition. And
meanwhile, was Whitehall protesting? Not at all. Never. Not at any point a cheep out of our British Parliament. It is possible that some governor exerted influence in the time-honoured way by saying to some prime minister: ‘I say, old chap, don’t you think that…’ Possible, but the results were not shown in legislation.

Meanwhile, and this is the point, the whites simmered perpetually about interference from Whitehall preventing them from civilizing the blacks as only they, the local whites, understood they should be civilized. I was brought up on this extraordinary emotion. Year after year, season after season, decade after decade, those white farmers sat round on their verandahs, talking bitterly about interference from Whitehall. The only tangible bit of interference was that a white farmer was not allowed to flog an erring labourer or servant himself (he did, of course) but should take him into the police-station to be flogged or imprisoned by a white policeman. That was all. But still the whites talked about ‘the old country’, stood to attention when ‘the King’ was played and complained about the politicians in Whitehall. Regardless of party. It was not so long ago that I had a letter from a white man in Rhodesia which contained the words: ‘If you think that Reds like you and McLeod are going to ride rough-shod over our rights…’

Meanwhile the Acts of Parliament were passed, the Land Apportionment Act proliferated and in every way Southern Rhodesia became like the Union of South Africa, which place the whites of Southern Rhodesia despised because it wasn’t British. To understand the background of this particular bit of emotionalism, it is necessary to remember that Rhodesia came into existence as a flight away from South Africa, as a British colony, conquered by and for the British.

And the Africans? Well, the Africans were sitting around complaining that they had been betrayed and sold out, and why wasn’t Whitehall protecting them as promised. So there were the whites, on their town and farm verandahs, complaining about interference from Fabians and Reds, and the blacks complaining that there wasn’t any.

When I became involved in African politics—not much of them before the nationalist movements developed—one sat
hour after hour in smoky little rooms listening to black men who possess, until it turns sour, an innocent faith in honour and decency which is truly appalling, because of the bitter harvest it must grow, while they said: ‘When our friends and brothers in England learn how we are being treated they will see justice done.’

Ridiculous. Absurd. Painful—because, of course, no one in Britain cared a damn.

No one. It was in the ’fifties that I was attending, in the basement of the House of Commons, a meeting of one of those ginger-group organizations dedicated to aiding the colonies. When Southern Rhodesia was reached on a long agenda which included at least two dozen embattled colonies and expossessions, the chairman noted certain unsatisfactory conditions—and went on. On an enquiry why, it transpired that these people, members of that tiny minority in Britain who cared at all about Britain’s responsibilities abroad, did not know about that entrenched clause in the Constitution of 1924, and that at any time since 1924 what was going on in Southern Rhodesia could have been challenged legally and effectively, from Britain.

It was not until the ’fifties that any section of British opinion took an interest in Rhodesia, let alone any action. And by that time action could not have been effective.

There is a right time to do things. If an action is not taken at the right time, it doesn’t work. That is why this UDI business seemed so unreal. It was unreal.

From the Rhodesian side, it was nothing more than a confirmation of something already existing. For Britain suddenly to take moral stands on issues that she had ignored totally for decades was unreal, absurd. She had allowed Federation—against the wishes of the Africans; blessed Partnership; imprisoned and harried the Africans now governing Zambia. Why, suddenly, in the ’sixties, be shocked and outraged by a society she had always condoned? Why the language of moral indignation about legislation she had had the right to veto but had never protested about—or, for that matter, had noticed. Whose responsibility was the slave state of Rhodesia? Why, Britain’s—no one else’s.

UDI was final crystallization of the ‘we won’t have interference from Britain’ attitude. All through my childhood I heard them joking: ‘What are they going to do then—send gunboats on to the Zambezi?’ Quite so. At last, at long last—and how very satisfying to these naughty children—a real interference, a real threat, even though a muted one, from those Fabians and Reds in Britain. How satisfying—even if so late. It was during the UDI crisis I got a letter from a friend saying: ‘We are not prepared to be pushed around by Britain.’ The point is, he was speaking out of a 40-year-old myth.

I tell you, if Wilson had landed troops in Rhodesia, the entire white population would have picked up its rifles and revolvers and taken to the hills—delighted. Absolutely thrilled. I think Wilson was right not to land troops. I would be surprised if he took the decision for the right reasons, but I’ve a feeling that that nation of nose-thumbing schoolboys would have had the time of their lives. ‘I will pick up my rifle and defend my rights to the last drop of my blood.’ Quote from a very typical white citizen. How they do all long to have an excuse to pick up their rifles: at long last their paranoia justified, and their sentimental heroics given a cause—and all in a mood of roaring adolescent enjoyment.

During the crisis the stickers on the cars read: ‘Good Old Smithie!’ ‘Up with Smithie!’ ‘And the Same to you, Wilson!’ When they holiday in the Union, Rhodesian cars read: ‘Thanks to our Pals—from Rhodesia!’ ‘Thanks to the Nats!’ And so on. Whitehall—when it has been in a responsible mood—has always made the mistake of treating these children seriously. And in the meantime they control a country half the size of Spain and in a key position for the entire continent.

As for sanctions, they were bound to be ineffective, since white Rhodesia could count on aid, open and hidden, from the Republic and from the Portuguese territories. If sanctions prove uncomfortable enough to force concessions, then we can expect some face-saving formula to be agreed to by Britain which will give the appearance of an agreement by the whites to advance the Africans. The whites will hold their power; the Africans will stay exactly as they are. Meanwhile, in the background, that handful of dedicated heroes, black and white,
will continue to work, trying to improve conditions, trying to let in a little agitators. For how long? For a very long time, I believe. What is to change things?

I think that, in politics, people do not consider geography enough. The realities tend to be rooted in geography. Rhodesia is now one with the Republic in everything but name, and the southern part of the African continent is isolated. On either side, thousands of leagues of sea; just below, the Antarctic. Embedded between the two white-dominated countries, Bechuanaland (now Botswana), a bitterly poor country concerned only not to let itself be swallowed up by its very powerful neighbours. Then, north, across the Zambezi, Zambia, with problems enough of her own and certainly in no position, as romantics seem to expect, to fight a liberating war. And Malawi, which has turned out to be a black dictatorship, with all its opposition in exile, is fighting some solitary battle for its own interests. Africa, now that the white men have left most of it, has become like any other continent in the world, a mass of nations, each one of which has its own interests, its own form of nationalism. And every one of these countries is very poor. It is not likely that these nations, even if they were able to agree among themselves to do it, could launch a successful war to ‘liberate their brothers down South’ as some people seem to believe they will. Brotherhood and entrenched national interests, as recent history has abundantly shown, don’t march together. The Republic and Rhodesia—and they would be aided by the Portuguese colonies—have highly equipped modern armies, highly efficient secret police and sections of their black populations corrupted into spies and informers. And besides—look at the map.