For two weeks I had been meeting Partners, Useful Rebels, Interracialists and supporters of the new anti-colour-bar society, Capricorn. I had attended a Capricorn meeting addressed by Colonel Stirling and Laurens van der Post and seen something that would have been impossible eight years ago: a white audience applauding a black man. In 1943 a few members of the Labour Party held a meeting in a Native Township where such matters as the Passes Act and the Destocking Act were discussed. This meeting caused such a furore among the citizenry, such a flood of newspaper leaders, angry letters signed ‘Pro Patria’ and anonymous letters that ultimately it led to the breaking up of the Labour Party. A decade ago the Labour Party split on the issue of whether there should be an African Branch of the party. Now, in 1956, I heard five hundred applauding speeches about racial harmony; and all the political parties court African membership. Day and night I had been besieged by people who wished me to report that Partnership was an honest policy—people who believed, or rather wished to believe, that it is.

I never did believe it to be true that one has to live in a country to understand what is happening in it. I believe it even less now. One cannot be brought up the daughter of a white settler with impunity; and it is hard to withstand the persuasions of old friends whom one not only likes but respects.

In short, I was on the verge of succumbing to the blandishments of what must be the most effective public relations officers in the world, both official and self-appointed, when I met an old African friend to whom I confessed my state of mind.

He listened with the sardonic good humour with which Africans meet the involuted defences and rationalizations of their white allies, and told me to go off and have another look at the Land Apportionment Act.

He also said that having worked in the Union as well as in Southern Rhodesia he infinitely preferred the Union; and so did most of the Africans he knew who had the opportunity to compare them. ‘Apartheid’, he said, was an honest word, exactly describing the segregation patterns of the Union and also of Southern Rhodesia. ‘Partnership’ was a typical bit of British hypocrisy. There was nothing he disliked more, he said, than the British liberal, having his cake and eating it; give him the Nationalists every time—they said what they thought and meant. They were honest opponents.

This upset me. I had not suspected that the ghost of a perverted patriotism still lurked among the meshes of the stern pattern of my Socialism; I did not like to think of British Africa being worse than Nationalist South Africa.

But I exorcized the ghost, and set myself to ask all the Africans I met, who knew South Africa, which they preferred. They all said that within the segregation patterns, which were identical, there were much better amenities for Africans in the south: they could shop, for instance, being served on equal terms with the whites. The colour bar was much less rigid. There were hotels and restaurants on a civilized level—only a few, but better than nothing, and there was nothing in Southern Rhodesia.

So I restored myself by a couple of evenings with the Land Apportionment and other Acts.

Briefly, then: Southern Rhodesia has modelled itself on the Union: a law passed down south is always passed within a year or so in Southern Rhodesia, under a different name. The Land Apportionment Act is the basis of Southern Rhodesia policy, as the Group Areas Act is in the Union. In both countries land is parcelled out into areas called Native and European. In Southern Rhodesia only 46 per cent of the land still remains to the Africans. (Whereas in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland about 5 per cent has been taken from them.) Since Partnership, this basic segregation has been hardened, not relaxed. Thousands of Africans have been forcibly moved off ‘European’ land, where they had been living for generations, into Reserves.

Here I quote from that revealing document, the Report on Native Affairs, 1954, signed Mr J. E. S. Turton, Chief Native Commissioner, Secretary of Native Affairs, and Director of Native Development.

This note of self-congratulation, almost self-commiseration, is typical of Government publications during this era. I suspect that at the bottom of their hearts the officials are sorry for themselves because the Africans are not grateful for being moved off their land with such tact and consideration.

Another interesting piece from the same Report: ‘October 1954 saw the completion of the first year of Federation, and the Native population for the most part have accepted the metamorphosis with complete indifference. There have been the usual vociferous few who have made the occasion one of maligning the motives of the Europeans, but this was only to have been expected from malcontents who in the aggregate live, not by an honest day’s work, but on what they can squeeze from a simple and credulous Native population who generally see, too late, hard-earned money passing into the pockets of thieves and rogues who filch it from them on the pretext of “taking legal advice or other suitable steps to safeguard the interests of the Natives”. Never once has a society or organization of this type published a statement detailing the manner in which donated funds have been spent, and experience has been that they shun any publicity on this aspect of their affairs.’ Officials always complain about the venality of African leaders; sometimes they are venal or careless. But this is not a weakness confined to Africans.

Conditions in the cities of Central Africa exactly mirror those in the Union. Around the ‘white’ centres are African townships and squatters’ camps. These are completely segregated. Africans may not use restaurants, hotels, or bars in the white areas. They have special counters in post offices, banks and public buildings. An African leaving his Reserve must carry a variety of passes—his registration certificate in any case, which is a sort of certificate of identity; then his certificate of residence, of work, and—if he is employed as a servant—he must have a ‘pass’ to go visiting. Thousands of Africans are fined or imprisoned every year for not being in possession of one of these passes.

A few privileged Africans carry a pass exempting them from carrying passes. One of these told me a story of how he had been picked up by the police, since he had left his pass at home, and was taken to the police station where the official said: ‘What! They’ve picked you up? They don’t know yet you’re an old Rhodesian? Off you go.’

It is always a question of grace and favour, the disposition of a particular official. Thus, Salisbury is repressive in the matter of pass offences; whereas in Bulawayo, under the liberal Dr Ashton, things are much better.

Africans were amused in Salisbury when I was there because Colonel Hartley, the Superintendent, had been complaining that Africans were not to be trusted with money, and therefore he could not allow them to act as gatekeepers for the location football matches. The European gatekeepers he appointed having mislaid a sum of money, Colonel Hartley exclaimed from the depths of his paternal heart: ‘How can our people be so irresponsible as to act so, setting such a bad example to these backward natives?’

I quote here a letter to the African Weekly which explains how Africans feel about the curfew regulations:

Conversation overheard on a bus:

 

WHITE CHILD (aged about 12): Is your dad going to let you go to the Kaffir college?

WHITE CHILD (about 15): Nah, I’m going down to the Cape.

LADY (from back seat, leaning forward): My dear children, there have been Africans at the Cape Town University for years.

WHITE CHILD: Nah, the Nats have kicked all the Kaffirs out.

 

The Land Apportionment Act has been amended to allow Africans and other people of colour to reside at the University, which is on ‘white’ land.

It has also been amended to allow representatives of the Indian Government to live in white areas—provided it is understood that the local Indian community does not do so.

As soon as I arrived I was canvassed for support against an Indian couple, official representatives, who had insisted that their child had the right to go to the local white Government school. One man, a journalist, said sourly: ‘Yes, and as soon as they had their way, and made a fuss, then what? They haven’t even sent their kid to the school. They just wanted to fight on principle so as to make us look silly.’

Later, meeting representatives of the local Indian community, I was told that the parents of this child had had so many anonymous threatening letters that they had not dared send her, for fear of what she might be made to suffer.

The Indians of the three federated territories suffer all the hardships that the Africans do, with minor differences—for instance, they may drink ‘European’ liquor.

I was told they had petitioned Lord Malvern and Mr Garfield Todd for a revision of the colour bars on the grounds that their treatment was inconsistent with Partnership. They got no satisfaction. Easy to see why not: administration, terrified above all of the white voters, would not consider the satisfaction of the comparatively small Indian communities worth losing their seats.

The Indians here, as in the Union, have always been the sore spot of the colour bar. One cannot say of Indians, who have a much older history of civilization than Europeans, that they are barbarous and backward, yet they are treated just as badly, sometimes worse, than the Africans. The excesses of the colour bar are always due to a bad conscience; and it is the Indians who excite particular venom in the white people.

Mrs S., the wife of one of the Indian Government representatives, being advanced in pregnancy and feeling tired, attempted to use the lift in one of the big stores. She was pushed out and made to use the stairs.

A charming and cultivated girl, used to intelligent society in New Delhi, after two years’ residence in Southern Rhodesia, she showed signs of strain. Mr S., however, on the evening I was at their house, told anecdotes about the colour bar with zest.

‘Imagine, what people!’ he said. ‘I want a hair-cut. I am told I can only have a hair-cut if I come in after hours through the back door so that no one can see me. So I do, and then I’m charged extra. Fascinating! Extraordinary! Wonderful!’ And with savage joy he darted off on another expedition to collect evidence of white imbecility.

 

A trip to a Native Reserve. The office is the same as that which during the war was the Aliens’ Office. I know it well, because during the war I was technically an enemy alien by marriage. I was supposed to report once a week, my fingerprints were taken, and I was not allowed to move without permission beyond 50 miles around Salisbury. My husband was a refugee from Hitler, and passionately anti-Nazi; but this made no difference to officialdom.

This was a very interesting experience: first, becoming an enemy alien because of my signature on a bit of paper; then being policed and restricted in my own town; and then ceasing to be an enemy alien because of another bit of paper. The labels stuck on me in this case were so arbitrary, bizarre and incongruous that I could never quite believe that the thing was happening at all. Now, of course, the law has been changed.

But it was certainly a useful apprenticeship to living in the world today.

The official of the Native Department enthusiastically explained to me the provisions of the Native Land Husbandry Act. Its aim is to break the tribal system, under which land is communally owned and distributed through the Chiefs. Land is now being given on the Reserves in plots of one, two, three, four acres to Africans, provided they have given evidence that they are willing to learn husbandry. And, in the words of my guide: ‘They have to be good types, you know; we don’t like troublemakers.’ This policy is quite different from what is happening in South Africa, where Strydom intends Africans to remain based on the Reserves, going into town to work in the industries. Under the Husbandry Act, which is regarded as the key to the new policy, Africans who cannot support themselves on these plots are expected to leave the Reserves and go into town to work. This is deliberately creating an industrial proletariat. The land is expected to be allocated by 1961. As there is a shortage of surveyors, a scheme is worked out by which the land is photographed from the air; it is said boundaries can be judged by these photographs to within a foot either way.

Within the framework of segregation this is a far-sighted policy. For one thing, since the plots can be left to only one heir, it will prevent the infinite subdivision of land among children which has taken place on poor white farms in the Union, leading to dust-bowl conditions. And they can be bought and sold, which means, inevitably, that the efficient will acquire larger plots, and the inefficient must leave the land for the towns. This policy will save the soil. There are too many Africans for the amount of land left. They cannot all be supported on it, even with the policy known as ‘destocking’ which has caused more bitterness among Africans than any other.

Cattle traditionally play an important part in the rites of tribal life. For years the Government has been forcing the people to sell the beasts which cannot be supported on the land available.

The Africans hate the Land Husbandry Act. It is a blow at their traditions, and will divorce them from their soil. Ninety per cent are still tribal people, who think of themselves as village folk who make trips into town to earn some money, from whence they can return to their own people, their own way of living.

Progressive Africans told me that they could see it was inevitable that their people must become either village or townspeople; what they objected to was the fact that this policy consolidates segregation: ‘If they gave us back some of our land, they wouldn’t have to force so many of us off. Nor would they have to make us kill so many of our cattle.’

From the point of view of maintaining white supremacy it is a brilliant policy: creating a class of small peasant farmers who are traditionally conservative. To quote again from the Report on Native Affairs, 1954, in a succinct paragraph called ‘Political Situation’: ‘Rapid implementation of Government policy by application of the Native Land Husbandry Act, right throughout all the Native reserves and areas, is vital to establish and ensure a contented and progressive Native peasant, who, having been divorced from the present communal system of land tenure will, with his individual allocation of land, become aware of a new pride of ownership and aware of a new incentive to adopt better husbandry methods for his own progress. Inevitably he will disregard the political sirens of the industrial areas, who themselves are making no headway with their self-aggrandizement schemes.’

I was taken to the Chinamora Reserve, near Salisbury. We knew the moment the Reserve began, because the road abruptly turned into a sandy, rutted track. As an African said to me: ‘No vote, no roads.’

The official was enthusiastic about the Act as it had affected this Reserve. Three years ago, he said, there was not a blade of grass on the place; now the grass was growing up again and erosion had been arrested. There were small dams here and there, and evidence of contour ridging. The villages were of the familiar mud huts, each with its tin-roofed little store and its church.

This is not a typical Reserve because it is so near Salisbury. Most of the men go into Salisbury to work; the women do the farming. The official said that a class of prosperous small farmer was already emerging, growing vegetables or flowers for sale in Salisbury. They might earn £50 or £60 a month. They were beginning to build European-type houses—brick houses with two or three rooms. Some had proper furniture and ate European-type food.

This official, a pleasant young man obviously very enthusiastic about his work, said: ‘It will take three thousand years for them to get civilized.’ And then: ‘We must create a middleclass with some property.’

Next day I visited a Native Purchase Area. On these, Africans may buy plots of 50 to 200 acres. It is intended that these areas, at present for what the Native Commissioner called ‘the upperclass of Native who thinks himself every bit as good as we are,’ will ultimately merge with the Reserves, when the small peasants there have consolidated themselves and weeded out the weaker, and enlarged their units of land.

I saw several houses on the Purchase Area. They were like a poor white man’s house, brick-walled, with a corrugated-iron roof, and a minimum of furniture.

In each house was the basic family and many sons, daughters and cousins of allied families. The clan pattern is breaking up very slowly into the individual family pattern.

The first house we entered was owned by a friendly fat lady, curtsying at every second step, ‘Yes, Madam; no, Madam’ obviously well used to showing off her home to visitors. She had a little orchard of citrus trees, a run of fowls, and was very house-proud.

In the next house was an old man, who said deprecatingly: ‘We are very poor people here.’ Whereupon the Native Commissioner said sharply: ‘But you are much better off than you were.’ ‘But we are very poor people,’ he insisted.

He told me he had paid £10 a year to send his son to Domboshawa Mission to be taught the trade of building, and in return his son had built him his house for nothing. ‘My son is very good to me, very good to me,’ he insisted, and showed me the photograph of his son and his new daughter-in-law who would come to live in another little house next to his, to help him with his farming.

He earned £100 gross in a good year, £80 in a bad year; grew maize, rapoka, nuts, rice. He sold his rice and maize to the neighbouring European farmers for food for their labourers.

Another homestead was half-way between the African pattern and the European. It was a scattering of half a dozen brick huts, thatched, allocated among the twelve people who lived on this farm. They grew Turkish tobacco, munga, maize. The sons were employed in town. One son ran a lorry service, and helped his parents with the proceeds.

At the back of these houses young women were pounding grain in old-fashioned mortars, or spreading grain on racks to dry.

On one plot, under a light thatched roof open at the sides, about a dozen young women were sorting tobacco. They were hired from a neighbouring Reserve at 1s. a day. Work was going on with much laughter and enjoyment, until we appeared. They obviously resented us.

Employment of Africans by Africans is new. On the Reserve I saw a work-party in progress, which is a traditional way of getting a rush of work done quickly: the host family brews beer and cooks something specially good to eat, and invites friends and relations to do the job. But wages are ousting the work-party.

On another homestead the farmer, who was single and more prosperous than the others, said that he had employed two men but they had left him. ‘They didn’t like working for another African,’ he said. ‘Although I paid them as well as a European farmer, one £2 a month and one £4 a month; and they ate the same food as I did.’

He said he ate mealie porridge, with vegetables he grew, and a fowl for special occasions.

Points made by the Native Commissioner: That all these people had savings-bank accounts. That none had beasts up to the amounts allocated—in this area they are allowed forty-nine beasts each. That all the children went to school up to Standard III—that is, five years’ schooling. That the women owned sewing machines.

Both Purchase Areas and Reserves are always under the eye of the Native Commissioner; nothing can be done without his advice and permission. Under the Native Commissioners work the agricultural demonstrators, especially trained Africans who are the backbone of the Husbandry Act, and whose task it is to exhort and advise and demonstrate proper methods of farming.

When we had finished seeing the homesteads, the Native Commissioner and I had a sandwich lunch under a tree near the Women’s Centre, whose foundation-stone had been laid, but which was not finished for lack of funds. The two Africans who were with us, the demonstrator and the interpreter, wandered off tactfully to find their own lunch. As usual I felt bad about this; and as usual could say nothing—it was not as if I were an ignorant visitor who did not know it was impossible for them to sit and eat with us. And I felt bad, too, about this official, who was kindly and helpful; just as I felt embarrassed the day before by the other Native Department official, who was so pleased because the grass had grown up over the eroded land. For so deeply ingrained in these white people are the ideas of segregation—that it is right and proper for a white farm to be thousands of acres, and a black plot one acre, or, for a few, a couple of hundred, that any discussions taking place can only be on this accepted basis. Therefore we sat under the tree and talked about the role women were playing in these Purchase Areas. It seemed that in this case it was the men who had pushed the women into starting a Women’s Association—because it made their wives more house-proud, better cooks and better mothers.

I wished very much I could have had the chance to be alone with the two Africans for an hour without the Native Commissioner; not, I must emphasize, that he was concealing anything from me.

Before we went in search of the two Africans, he said that Mr Todd was a wonderful Prime Minister, and that if only they were given time to create a middle class…

Going back in the car, passing a clutch of straggling poverty-stricken huts, I asked the interpreter how many of these farms had good houses, such as we had seen; and he said eagerly, as if he had been waiting for me to ask it: ‘Only eleven, Madam.’ And the Native Commissioner said quickly: ‘We have seen the better houses, of course.’ As if he were saying: ‘If you were me, wouldn’t you have shown the better houses?’—Well, of course I would.

I asked the interpreter if there was a library. He said there was not. No, the people did not read newspapers. He added that there was no electricity in the whole area, no telephone, no laid-on water. He said that to reach Salisbury, the people had to walk a minimum of seven miles to the bus-stop; the bus made the journey on the main road, once a day, in and out of town.

There are now 5,000 of these better farms in the Colony. One eighth of the land available for purchase has been allocated. There will be 40,000 farms; but the Purchase Areas will not be settled as quickly as the Reserves, because they are being surveyed properly.

‘And why can’t they be photographed, like the plots on the Reserves?’

‘Because if people buy a bit of land, they have the right to be fussy about their boundaries; and because the Reserves are more urgent—we’ve got to save that soil before it blows away.’

There is a waiting list of tens of thousands for these farms. To own one is the summit of ambition of most Africans.

 

A conversation which illustrates the Native Land Husbandry Act from the grass roots:

A friend and I had made a trip into Marandellas to buy stores. It is a pretty little village. The sun glistened off the leaves, the wall of the post office glared white.

An old African, passing the parked car, stopped and said:

‘Morning, baas.’

‘Ah, that you, Thomas? And how are you?’ He settled down for a talk, one foot on the running board, while the African stood on the pavement, hat in hand.

‘Ah, baas, things are very bad.’

‘Ah? And how’s that?’ (This talk is in kitchen Kaffir.)

‘Baas, baas, the Government is shupa-ing me meninge.’ (‘The Government is pushing me around.’)

‘Yes? And what is the Government doing to you, Thomas?’

‘Baas, I have just come from my kraal. The Government says I must put my cattle into a house in the winter and feed them.’

‘Well, Thomas, and what is wrong with that?’

‘But baas, there is only my wife when I’ve gone to work. And how can a woman all by herself put the cattle into a house and get all the food they need all through the winter? Why can’t the cattle graze as they have always grazed?’

‘Thomas, you do not understand this business.’

‘No, baas, I do not understand. Explain it to me, baas.’

‘Your soil on the Reserve is no good.’

‘Ah, baas, that is so. Very bad land on the Reserve, not good land like you have, baas.’

‘Yes, but the land is bad land because there are too many cattle on it.’

‘Ah, baas! And how can there be too many cattle when the Government has made me sell my cattle so now I have only three cattle?’

‘But, Thomas, the Government has made you sell your cattle so that there won’t be too many cattle on your land.’

‘Then why cannot they graze as they always did?’

‘Thomas, it is like this.’ And my friend takes his foot off the running board, stands up, and raises his finger in admonition. ‘And now listen well, Thomas, for now I will explain the Government to you.’

‘Thank you, baas. I am listening well.’

‘When you let your cattle run all over the veld in winter looking for grass they cut the land into dust, and the cattle and the grass both get thin and no good.’

‘Yes, baas?’

‘Now you put your cattle into a house, you cut grass for them and you carry the grass to the cattle, and they do not make the soil into dust.’

‘But baas, the soil is no good, not like your soil.’

‘It is because you do not shut up your cattle.’

‘But baas, the Mkiwa do not shut up the cattle, they let the cattle run.’ (Mkiwa—the white men.)

‘The farmers that are good farmers, they shut up their cattle and feed them in the winter when the grass is no good.’

‘But if the Mkiwa do not wish to be good farmers, then they can let their cattle run, because they have plenty of land.’

‘But, Thomas, you are not using your head.’

‘Yes, baas, I am using my head well.’

‘Now, Thomas, you must do what the Government says.’

‘Yes, baas, that I understand. But the Government is shupaing me. For how can my wife, who is a woman by herself, do all the work?’

‘Then you must leave your work for Mkiwa and help your wife, otherwise the Government will say you are not a good farmer and take your land.’

‘Ah, baas. And how can that be?’

‘Because now the Government says all the natives must farm well.’

‘But how can I and my wife and my small children eat if I do not earn money from Mkiwa?’

‘The Government says this, Thomas—now listen well. It is a new law.’

‘I am listening well, baas.’

And now my friend stands on one foot in the dust of the road and says: ‘Now, Thomas, this one foot of mine, it is in the Reserve.’

‘Yes, baas?’

And he plants down his other foot and says: ‘Now this other foot of mine, it is in Mkiwa.’

‘Yes, baas?’

‘Now the Government says the natives must either be Reserve or they must be Mkiwa,’ and he lifts up his feet alternately, and with vigour, so that puffs of glistening pinkish dust go off into the hot sunlight. ‘Either one thing or the other. But not both Mkiwa and the Reserve.’

Thomas says nothing. Then: ‘That is not a good law.’

‘Yes, Thomas, it is a good law, because now you must either be a good farmer, on your land, or you must work for Mkiwa. But if you work for Mkiwa and just go home at week-ends, then you will be a bad farmer and the Government will take your land.’

‘Ah, baas!’

‘Yes, Thomas, it is so. That is the new law. It is the Native Land Husbandry Act.’

‘Thank you for explaining it to me, baas.’

The two men stood facing each other for a while. I see that there is something more to be said. After a pause, however, Thomas says: ‘May things go well with you, baas.’ And moves off.

My friend stands looking after him.

‘That’s the only boy,’ he said, ‘that I’ve ever known who can cut a hedge straight. But I sacked him for smoking dagga.^* I wish I could get him to come back.’ A pause while Thomas, a straight, thin old man, retreats along the pavement. ‘I suppose he can cut a hedge straight because he was in the army for so long during the war.’ A pause. Thomas is walking very slowly. My friend calls: ‘Thomas!’ Thomas turns. He comes back again. ‘Baas?’

‘Thomas, you are the only boy I have ever known who can cut a hedge straight.’

‘That is so, baas.’

‘My hedges need cutting.’

Thomas says with dignity: ‘I will come to you on Sunday afternoon and cut your hedges.’

My friend hesitates. ‘I can do with a good boy, Thomas.’

Thomas says: ‘Ah, baas, but now that the Government is shupaing me, I must be with my wife in the kraal. But because you ask me I will come and cut your hedges next Sunday afternoon.’

And with this he departs.

Going back in the car my friend says, half-admiringly, half-annoyed: ‘Damn the old bastard. It’s all very well, but did you hear that? Mkiwa, Mkiwa—the white man. It used to be Mlungu, which is a term of respect, but now it is just “white man”. All the same, I don’t see how we could have him back really, even though he can cut a hedge. He can do all kinds of work, lay bricks, do metalwork and carpentry. He used to live in the compound with his wife. Then she had a still-born baby, and we had to find her another hut because she said her baby had died of witchcraft. Another baby died, and now she said she could not live on the compound at all, because the evil eye was on her. So she went back to her kraal. So Thomas took to going home every week-end. It’s 50 miles. Then he took to coming back at lunch-time on Mondays, and I didn’t say anything. Then he came back drunk. Then he started smoking dagga. I gave him fair warning. I said to him if he didn’t stop smoking dagga, I’d sack him. But he started coming back Tuesdays or even Wednesdays, drunk or sodden with dagga. So I sacked him. But for all that, he can cut a hedge. He can really work, that boy. Perhaps, if I don’t push him, I can talk him into coming back when he pitches up on Sunday.’

 

My friend and I have many discussions about the colour bar.

‘The trouble with you,’ he says, ‘is that you’re out of touch with our problems. You don’t understand our problems.’

‘But I was brought up in the same way as you.’

‘But you’ve been out of the country for six years and you’ve lost touch.’

‘But all my childhood these feudal baas-and-boy conversations went on; and I come back, and they are still going on.’

‘The boys I work with, they are the real natives, not those agitators you mix with.’

‘After all that’s happened,’ I said in despair, ‘you can talk about agitators! Any minute you’ll have another Kenya on your hands, and all you farmers will be heroically defending your isolated homesteads and, I may add, feeling very sorry for yourselves.’

‘I do not see,’ said he, after thought, ‘that there is anything heroic about doing your duty. And besides, it won’t happen here.’

‘Partnership will save you from it?’

‘Partnership? Oh, old Todd’s racket. Well, he’s sincere enough I expect, but the boys I work with would not know how to spell Partnership. I wish you’d understand, they’re primitive people.’

At this point a message arrived that one of the men wanted him in the workshop, so together we went to the workshop.

‘Baas,’ says a young man, ‘when you have time I wish to speak to you.’ This is not an old and dignified man like Thomas of yesterday, but a young man with a keen, sharp, intelligent face.

‘Speak.’ My friend settles down on the table, one foot propped on a chair, while the other faces him. It is a palaver.

‘It is a question of that old car you are selling.’

‘Yes?’

‘If you lent me £100 I could buy it.’

‘Why do you want to buy it?’

‘So that I can use it to take my vegetables in to the market.’

‘You earn £6 a month, and when will you pay the £100 back?’

‘From the money I earn from selling my vegetables.’

A silence. ‘And now listen well, for you are being very foolish.’

‘And how is that?’

‘That car is nearly dead. That is why I am selling it.’

‘I can mend that car.’

‘No, you cannot mend a car that is nearly dead.’

‘But, why do you not wish to sell me that car? Who, then, will you sell it to?’

‘I shall sell it to a white man who has the money to mend it.’

‘But if you lent me the £100 I should have the money.’

‘Now, listen, if I were your enemy, if I wanted to kill you, then I would sell that car to you for £100. For inside one year, the car would be dead and you would owe not £100 but £200, £100 to me and £100 to the garage for repairs. And you would have nothing.’

‘But I would have the money I had earned from the vegetables.’

‘When I go into Salisbury, all along the roadside there are dead cars lying, the dead cars that foolish natives have bought from bad white men who know the cars are nearly dead. And the Nkoos Pezulu’ (The Chief Above—God) ‘only knows what happens to these foolish natives.’

‘Baas, the Nkoos Pezulu may not know, but I know.’

‘How is it, then?’

‘They have made money out of the cars before they die and so they can buy another car.’

‘Sometimes they have made money and sometimes not. If not, then they owe the money.’ A long silence. ‘You would owe me the money if the car dies. And is that good?’ The young man looks straight at my friend and waits. ‘But now this is very serious, a very bad thing that I should hear you talk like this. You talk like these bad and foolish white men who have no sense.’

‘But how can such a thing be, baas?’

‘Do you know what goes on at the station? The butcher, the store, the garage—they tell me they are owed thousands of pounds. All the tobacco farmers owe them thousands of pounds. That is credit. That is what you are asking me for. It is a bad thing. And the Nkoos Pezulu only knows what will come of it.’

‘Baas, I do not see that the Nkoos Pezulu is involved in this matter. The storekeepers know that the farmers will get money from the bank on the very day that the tobacco is sold. And that it why they get credit.’

‘This credit is a very dangerous thing. It is money that is not there.’

‘Yes, the money is there. It is still growing in the earth, where the tobacco is. Where my vegetables are.’

‘You do not understand this question of credit and money.’

‘It seems to me that I understand it well.’

‘But if there is a slump, what will happen to the farmers?’

‘Then they may sell some of their land, for they have so much, or the Land Bank will give them credit.’

‘But I am not the Land Bank. I am a man, only.’

‘But now I grow my lettuce, I grow my tomatoes. And because I have no lorry I cannot take them into the village to sell them, and so they go bad.’

‘So now I will explain to you where you do wrong. It is because you grow vegetables like lettuces and tomatoes. You must grow potatoes or onions that do not go bad in a few days. Then you must put the potatoes in a hut and keep them and sell them a little bit by little bit.’

‘But the Mkiwa do not pay so much money for potatoes as they do for the vegetables like lettuces and tomatoes. On my small bit of earth—no, that is not for potatoes. Potatoes are for big farmers, with plenty of land. I would make no profit.’

‘But I cannot lend you the money.’

‘Then, baas, there is nothing further I want to say.’

“Morning, James.’

“Morning, baas, go well.’

We went back to the house.

‘That boy has a hard life. The trouble with him is that he is always wanting to make some more money. Of course, we cannot blame them for wanting to make money when we are all so money-minded.’

‘No,’ I said.

‘He is a very good worker. He can do all kinds of work. He came to me and said he wanted some more money. He earned £6 a month. I said I knew he deserved to earn more, but I could not pay more. I have a certain amount set aside for wages and that’s that. But I said if he liked I would give him a couple of acres of soil and he could grow vegetables and make up the extra.’

‘But surely that is against the Land Apportionment Act?’

‘What? Oh, don’t be silly. And besides, the Native Commissioner knows all about it and about this native. He is a native with a record. When he came to me he told me, fair and square, that he had been in prison for forging a cheque. I talked it over with him, and it was perfectly obvious he had had no idea what a cheque was. He thought it was a kind of magic device by which white men get money for nothing out of banks. Or at least, I hope so. But I took him on, and the next thing was old Smith from across the river came to say, did I know that I had a man with a prison record working for me? I said to Smith, I thought that was a dirty trick; and in our law once a man has served time, he has paid for his wrong-doing. Old Smith was upset. He meant it for the best. The next thing was, James started smoking dagga and the Lord knows what. But I talked it over with him, and found that once he was a Christian, because he was at a mission school once for a couple of years before his father’s money ran out and he had to stop his education. I got him back to going to church, and he took an oath not to drug any more. Or drink. But it didn’t last long. He could hardly stand up on a Monday morning sometimes. So I got him in front of the padre to swear a solemn oath on the Bible to give it up, and he was forgiven on condition he gave the names of his drug-ring to the Native Commissioner. So at the moment he’s in the clear. But probably not for long, because he’s heavily in debt.’

‘You could pay him another couple of pounds a month?’

‘I can’t. I’m only the manager here. I have a certain sum given me for wages. Besides, he’s lucky to find anyone who’ll take him on. Though he’s a good worker and he really works. Not like most. The trouble with these natives is they are too backward to understand the simplest things in modern life. Only yesterday I had to talk to a new lot I took on last month. There they were, loafing around. I had them up and I said to them: ‘Now look. I will explain to you this business of a contract. When I take you on, I say I will pay you £2 a month. I pay you £2 a month in return for your labour. Do you understand?”’

‘And do they?’

‘They say, Ah, ah, ah, baas!—as if I were cheating them. I say to them, very well then, go. But if you stay, you work. £2 a month for your work. That’s a contract. And please…’ And with this he turned to me, ‘please do not tell me that £2 a month is not enough. They have good brick huts. I give each of them a plot of land for their wives, because they like to have their women kept out of mischief. I give them proper rations. And I pay a teacher for their kids. All the kids on this place go to school, and they go to school properly all day, Government inspected, not this hole and corner business that goes on on the big farms. What do you want me to do? Well, go on, tell me. I know it all stinks. I know it. It’s all a bloody mess. But is it my fault that the poor damned savages aren’t £10-a-week skilled workers with semi-detached houses, filling in their football coupons, all nice and tidy like Britain? Well, is it?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘it isn’t. But tell me, what do you think is going to come out of all this?’

‘I’m coming more and more to the conclusion that unless the Almighty steps in and takes a hand there isn’t any solution to anything. The whites are as bad as the blacks. It is a case of the blind leading the blind.’

 

About two years ago I was visited in London by an old friend from Salisbury, who told me it was time I came back home to see how things had changed, how out of date and unfair my books were since Partnership and Federation. ‘Natives are doing very well now,’ he said. ‘In towns they have to be paid £4 a month, and the employers have to pay for the accommodation. Everything is being done for the natives and nothing for the Europeans. And they aren’t grateful.’

I felt bad about this. The reason that I felt bad was that this man had had the advantage of four years’ solid Socialist education in our Left Club; and it was hard to admit that this wasn’t enough to insulate him against becoming so rich. For his story is a familiar one: a refugee, he arrived on the shores of Africa before the last war with not much more than the clothes he stood up in. Now he owns shops, farms and enterprises of one sort or another in large quantities.

In Salisbury he at once demanded that I should go out to his place, or one of his places, to see how well the natives were being treated these days. I was naturally anxious to do so.

On a fine afternoon, then, we drove out to the grading-sheds, 30 miles through the beautiful green countryside of an African autumn, for the grass still stood high and green, undimmed by the dry season, and the skies were high and fresh. There are two Africas, and I do not know which I love the best: the green, lush, bright country when the sap is running and the earth is wet; or the dry, brown-gold wastes of the drought, when the sky closes down, hazy and smoke-dimmed, and the sun is copper-coloured and distorted. Hard to imagine, on an afternoon in April that in two months, this expanse of green and soft-coloured earth will have been beaten by the sun into the colours of metal; and how every lungful of breath will taste of veld-fires.

All the way out we talked about Partnership and gratitude and how unjust journalists are to Federation.

The grading-shed was familiar to me, a great, high barracks of a place, sultry and rancorous, with the strong breath of tobacco.

It was five in the afternoon: the men had left their work, but the women and the children were just finishing theirs of tying the tobacco into bundles.

They sat in two lines on the brick floor. The women sat on one side, some with their babies tied on their backs, some with small children playing beside them. On the other side were the children, aged from six years to about twelve years, boys and girls.

My host said that as this enterprise was some distance from town, too far for these workers to travel in and out, they lived here in a compound he had built for them. There were about 160 men, some with their wives and children. The men earned £2 10s. a month, which with overtime came to about £3 10s. a month. The women earned from 15s. to £2 a month. The children earned 15s. to £1 a month.

They worked from six in the morning until twelve; and from one until four or five.

‘And I am not unreasonable,’ he said, ‘for I let the women go off at eleven to cook the porridge for their men and the children.’

The air, in spite of the ventilators, was oppressive, and I could not have borne it for long; but my host said one gets used to it. The women and children were coughing all the time.

‘And in addition to this, I give them rations and accommodation.’

‘And what rations do you give them?’

‘The rations laid down by the Government.’

I quote, then, from a handbook printed by the Government designed to attract settlers to the Federation, and it is called: A New Life in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland.

This is from the section on how one should feed one’s servants:

As these workers were not domestic servants, slices of bread and jam and tea or coffee remaining from the table would not be available; and what they actually lived on, it seemed, was mostly mealie-meal.

Then we took a walk around the accommodation.

There were three of us, my host, one of his farm managers and myself. On a couple of acres of soil were crowded a hundred or so tiny mud huts, roughly thatched. The floor was of damp earth, with blankets lying directly on it, cooking pots stacked up beside them, bits of clothing hanging from nails. In one hut there was a bed made of strips of cowhide laced on unbarked tree-trunks stuck direct in the mud floor and a very small deal table but no chairs. My host said: ‘Look, you see they are doing themselves well.’ Among and around the huts were planted mealies; and chickens wandered in and out of the hut doors. The huts were very small and so low that a full-grown person could not stand upright in them.

A broken-down motor car was settling into its parts among the mealies. ‘You see—they are getting rich—they have motor cars these days.’

I have seen many bad compounds, but never one as bad as this; and when my host said: ‘They are picturesque, aren’t they?’ I said I didn’t think they were picturesque.

Whereupon he said that this was the first time he had actually taken a look at this compound; and if one had farm managers one expected them to take the responsibility; one had to see to everything oneself these days, or nothing was done. But perhaps some brick huts would be built here—yes, it was time there were some brick huts.

The farm manager looked a little quizzical at this, but said nothing.

In front of the compound, between it and the grading-shed, were a big water-tank and a water-tap, which was the sole supply for all these people; and the women and the children were standing in the mud puddles around the tap waiting for their turn to draw water.

The whole place smelt bad and wet; it smelt of heavy, damp vegetation, of chicken droppings, of souring porridge. There were no latrines or showers in the compound.

I asked the boss-boy privately if there was any one thing that the people of the compound wanted more than another, and he replied with simplicity: ‘Higher wages.’ So I said, ‘Yes, but apart from that?’ He said: ‘We want the doctor to come, because our children cough all the time.’

In the meantime my host was urging me to go and see how the children were being educated. For he was paying a teacher £6 a month so that the children could be taught.

In a corner of the grading-shed was the class. About twenty children sat on the floor among piled bales of tobacco. They were of all ages, girls and boys, in their ragged pants and shirts, their ragged dresses—barefoot, of course. They were the children we had already seen working. The teacher, a cheerful and enthusiastic pedagogue, was repeating the syllables of the Shona language again and again, while the children chanted them after him. He wrote the syllables on the blackboard, which was the top of a packing-case, with a bit of chalk. The children had pebbles for the purposes of counting, and bits of torn schoolbooks lay about. They had to pay for their own books.

There was a single yellowish electric-light bulb glowing down from the rafters of the shed.

It was a very cheerful class; both teacher and scholars were proud to have visitors, and the little hands were shooting up in answer to every question: ‘Yes, teacher,’ ‘Me, teacher,’ ‘Please, teacher.’

It seems that these children go to class every afternoon at four or five o’clock after their day’s work for a couple of hours’ education; but my host said it was a pity I could not see them at week-ends, when they are at their best, for they do marching and games under the teacher.

‘And so,’ he said, ‘you must not say that nothing is being done for the children, because all the tobacco farmers have schools on their farms now.’

I tried to get the figures later from one of the publicity men for child labour, but was unable to do so. It appears there are no figures. Child labour is extensively used on the farms; and in the towns children work as house servants. But it is expected that within five years all the children in the towns will get some sort of education.

I also asked the publicity man if there was any sort of control of these private compounds; he said there was regular inspection, and the conditions were ‘pretty good’ these days.

When I paid a visit to my own district, Lomagundi, some weeks after this, I was on another tobacco farm, and asked how many children were employed. My hostess did not know; she thought sixty or seventy children. ‘But these days all the tobacco farmers provide schools. You can’t get the children to come and work at all unless you pay a teacher for them. And you have to pay at least £6 a month for a teacher. On some farms the children don’t work in the afternoons at all. They work in the mornings and go to school in the afternoons.’

We were driving through the compound as we talked; it was of brick huts, but a squalid, broken-down place, and everywhere were ragged, barefoot children with the pot-bellies of malnutrition.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘They look happy enough, don’t they?’

My host of the grading-shed was also convinced of the happiness of his natives; but he did say that they were an unsatisfactory lot, very unstable, because they went off at the end of the season back to their kraals, and they never came back, although he offered a £2 bonus to any who would. He always had to recruit his natives afresh every season.

After the visit to the class, we went off to have supper in the farm manager’s house. It all made me feel as if nothing had changed and nothing ever could: the big, bare brick room, with the stars shining more brilliantly through the window than the light inside the room; the soft, hot air coming in; and the talk, which was, of course, about the colour problem.

But we had to hurry the meal, because there was to be a film show for the natives, and they didn’t like it to be late, since they had to get up at five in the morning.

At eight o’clock, then, we were back in the big grading-shed. We, the white people, sat on chairs beside the projector, and the women and the children sat forward, on the floor under the screen which had been erected; and the men stood on either side, leaning on tobacco bales or against the tobacco racks.

The farm managers were whooping up an atmosphere, shouting ‘Su-pair!’ For we were to show films of Superman, which it seems are popular with the Africans.

The lights went down; and the film began. It was about some wicked men in a skyscraper office in America somewhere, plotting against Superman. The villain appeared to be some sort of Beetle; but as Superman himself was, in his human guise, an undercover man inside the Beetle gang, the whole thing was very confusing to me; and the only person whose role was quite unambiguous was the beautiful blonde’s. There was a big fight at the top of the skyscraper, where Superman was throttling people and banging them like limp sacks against the walls; and at this point the audience was growling and roaring with excitement. The only points in the film where this audience showed unmistakable appreciation were when Superman was beating up someone.

There was a ramp from the top of the skyscraper to the street; and the blonde, who had passed out from stress and strain at the wheel of an immense car, was whizzing around and down this ramp, while Superman fled down the sky after her. He caught her at the bottom just before the car crashed into a wall, and then the lights went up.

The two white managers got up from their chairs and began clowning and throwing themselves around, shouting ‘Su-pair! Su-pair!’ while a few of the Africans laughed and played up, shouting back ‘Su-pair!’ Most looked embarrassed and sullen, however. All the time the reel was being wound back, the two white men were diving head first over bales, staggering around shaking their hands together over their heads, or, pointing their joined hands upwards, made as if to fly off upwards, like Superman.

To cries of ‘Su-pair!’ the lights went out; and we were now in the bowels of a mountain, where Superman was plotting against the Beetle for some good and noble end, but what this end would be was never made clear. At the end of this reel, the Beetle had thrown a switch which dissolved the mountain into lava; and Superman was wading waist-deep through red-hot lava thousands of feet under the mountain.

For five minutes or so the white managers clowned and postured, shouting ‘Su-pair!’ while my host explained he had these film shows every fortnight; it was expensive, of course, but he liked to do something for his workers.

The next instalment began without explaining how Superman had got out of the red-hot lava; but he was now rushing around some place like Texas with the blonde on a horse, while the two managers now in a perfect frenzy, were shouting ‘Su-pair!’ at every bound of the horse, and capered and pranced over the bales in the dim light, while about three hundred Africans watched the screen in silence.

After Superman, a film was shown about skiing in Switzerland. Skiers whizzed down the snowy slopes one after another, and I heard an African mutter just behind me, half in admiration, half in disgust: ‘Those Mlungu! Look at them!’ (‘Those white men! Look at them!’)

Now the film show was over, and time for the people to go back to their damp and filthy huts for the night.

They piled in silence out of the doors of the grading-shed, while the indefatigable managers yelled ‘Su-pair!’ and made a few last dives and capers among the bales.

My host asked the boss-boy if he had understood what the last film was about, for snow never falls in this part of Africa; and he replied with extreme politeness: ‘It shows how the white men slide on sticks over ice.’

We then drove back the thirty miles to Salisbury, extremely fast. Twice something dark swooped from the stars down towards the windscreen, there was a soft squashy bump, and an owl fell in a struggling mass of feathers on the roadside.