WHEN THE ‘NATIVES’ BECAME AFRICANS

By Bill Saidi
BY the time I became a reporter on THE AFRICAN DAILY NEWS in Salisbury in 1957, we people were no longer addressed as ‘natives’ – we had become Africans. So, when I was assigned to the Market Square beat, I didn’t endure the humiliation of interviewing the director of ‘native administration’.
During my tenure in that assignment, there were two directors, Colonel George Hartley and Mr Briggs, his former deputy. Hartley was the portrait of the white Rhodesian soldier-administrator. His contempt for me would ooze, literally, as he sat in his chair, giving me information which I sought. He had the clean-cut, ramrod stiff presence of the military careerist. I was young, but not overly overawed by this man, tall, upright, with a moustache to match. There was never any casual repartee between us: it was always business - first and last. The man did not smile or laugh - neither did I.
I just got my story and got out of there.
Mr Briggs was something else entirely. When we first met, after he had taken over from Col Hartley – who had gone to bigger things, I think – we laughed.. I can’t remember the seed of this unusual eruption of joy between a white administrator and an African journalist, perhaps 20 years his junior. It was so refreshing to sit before Mr Briggs and hear him laugh at something I had said or asked.
I was under no illusions. I doubted that the atmosphere would be so official if we met elsewhere – such as in the middle of First Street. Would he stop me and chat away about trivia, risking the ire of his fellow whites, in a huddle with a black man in the middle of the day in a street in Salisbury? I doubted that.
I was always assailed by this utter wonder at the amazing capacity among the white Rhodesians to be so different in their attitude or treatment of Africans. I could never conceive of circumstances in which Mr Briggs would ever refer to me as “this monkey”. I had no occasion to observe him at a meeting with Charles Mzingeli, the one-time undisputed and outspoken leader of the African community of Harare township.
I doubted that Mr Briggs would address him dismissively as “Charles” or “Charlie”; He would stick to “Mr Mzingeli”. Col Hartley would be something else, of course. Long afterwards, he became a minister in the government formed by the Rhodesian Front after 1962. I sighed with relief – that was where he belonged. Like the rest of them, he deserved the fate that awaited him..
Fortunately for me, I grew up knowing the whites were not all the same – brutish, foul-mounted, racist and entirely convinced that the “natives” belonged with the baboons and monkeys in the trees. The first white person I ever saw was Mr Stodart, the superintendent of Harare township. I remember him striding along the township’s dusty streets, dressed in white shirt and white shorts and white stockings. He always smoked a cigarette in a long holder, one hand in his pocket. His demeanour was of an emperor surveying his realm. Around this time, there was the boys’ club at the Recreation Hall – later Mai Musodzi hall. There, we met Mr Davies, who was in charge. He was as different from Mr Stodart as anyone could be. His attitude was one of helpfulness. As far as I can recall, he never spoke a rude word to any of us at the club. We reciprocated his generosity – never deliberately disobeying him or being sassy, as some of us could be when offended by these people..
Before I was invited into journalism, |I worked for a transport company in the industrial areas of Salisbury. I was a clerk and the woman under whom I worked was an extraordinary person – for a European in those days of darkness, when you didn’t expect any regard of you from them. But we got on swimmingly. She treated me almost like a son. She was tall, a little thin and a chain-smoker. I worked right next to her. We spoke of everything, as equals. My English could be pompous, for I was under the mistaken impression that if you used jawbreakers your stock rose among the Europeans. On the other hand, it probably impressed them – in a positive way.
One day, out of the blue, she handed me the keys to her car and asked me to remove it from one point to another. Without thinking about it, I accepted the keys with alacrity and headed for the car without a word to her. It was only when I was alone in the driver’s seat that it hit me in the head like a pile driver: I’d never driven a car in my life.- this was like the moment of my destiny. Was a man or a mouse?
But I knew enough to recognise where you inserted the ignition key and what you did once it was in. I switched it on and heard the positive response of the engine. It was a small car, a Morris Minor, What next? I wondered. I knew enough to recogmise the gear shift, which I pushed, The car jerked forward as if propelled by a great force of Nature. It only stopped when it hit a bed of flowers. I sat there sweating, my heart pounding. Nervously, I climbed out. Neither of us said a word as I returned to my desk. I apologised and she nodded with understanding.
Our relationship, amazingly, resumed as if nothing untoward had happened. We neither of us spoke of the incident. When I had to leave for “greener pastures”, we parted on the friendliest of terms. Since then, I have maintained this open attitude towards people of other races: it’s unwise to lump them into one basket.
So, when I entered journalism and discovered I would be in the thick of a potential racial cauldron, I prepared myself not to panic. Of course, I wasn’t naive enough to believe everything and everyone would turn out with the tranquility of a calm sea. There could be stormy times ahead.
In 1957, which his the year in which I started work as a journalist, Lord Home, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary, visited Salisbury. Federation was four years old. It was already in crisis, largely because the Africans of the three member-countries – Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland – had opposed it from the beginning. Even now, there were rumblings of dissatisfaction with the federal idea in all three countries. I knew this too, from listening to the news on the radio and from reading the newspapers, including The Rhodesia Herald. That unashamedly pro-European daily could hardly disguise the contempt with which most Africans held the federal concept. Its “partnership” slogan had already been pooh-poohed as a fraud. It was considered so largely because the racist whites of Southern Rhodesia seemed to hold sway in its every thrust.
Even before I became a journalist, I knew of Godfrey Huggins. He was not a good European, all the adults I met in my youth said. He was the first prime minister of the federation.
In the newsroom of The African Daily News, which accommodated all the other reporters, we received many visitors. Most of them were Africans. There were a few European visitors. They were mostly sports people. Frankly, I cannot remember any Europeans being regular visitors to the newsroom,. Certainly, I never had the honour of such a politician asking to see me in the newsroom.
Most of the regular visitors were African politicians. I refer to Africans because, at the time, there were Europeans and Africans – not blacks and whites. The distinction was so stark that there was no regular interaction between the races, For a time, I believed that we were the official newspaper of the nationalist movement. I had been present at the inaugural meeting of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress. Before that meeting I had become acquainted with the key players in that party. Now, many of them were regular visitors to the newsroom of The African Daily News. Quite often, it was not because they had news for us. They came just to chat, to keep in touch, to sound us out on what was going on – everywhere. .
If they were going out of Salisbury on some mission, they called at the offices beforehand. They actually asked if a reporter could accompany them – and the paper obliged. George Nyandoro and I went together to a rural area where he was to address a meeting on the Land Husbandry Act. I think we established a very firm rapport during our visit to this area. Unfortunately, the meeting that had been arranged did not take place – after all. The district commissioner, formerly called the native commissioner, would not allow it. I believe my story highlighted the cancellation of the meeting as another example of how the Europeans would not allow the Africans to go everywhere in their own country – without the permission of the Europeans. This provided fertile grounds for defying them. The effect on me, as a reporter on the newspaper, was to fire my own enthusiasm of highlighting the iniquities of the European rulers.
In general, it sharpened my senses to the unfairness of the entire colonial system. It drove me, quite often, to the point of being hopelessly uncritical of the nationalists. What wrong could they commit when so many wrongs were being committed against them on a huge scale?
To a large extent, this would influence all of us, as journalists, when the time came to report objectively on the performance of the former nationalists when they took over the country as part of the government. What was even more tragic was that the members of the new government began to treat us as they had treated us during the struggle – part of their team.
When, for instance, I became acting editor of The Herald – according to a roster which he chief executive. Elias Rusike, had drawn up, the paper was publicly rebuked by the minister of information for being critical of the government, in an editorial. I was then the group features and supplements editor of Zimpapers. But whenever one of the editors went on leave, I would be acting editor for that period.
As result, I did stints as acting editor of The Herald, The Sunday Mail and The Manica Post. I have always suspected that the abolition of my post had its seeds in this arrangement. An inquiry was ordered into the work of my department. Rusike himself ordered the inquiry on the instigation – I bet - of the editors. It was recommended that the department be wound up. Fortunately, I was not declared redundant, which I still suspect, most of the editors had hoped would be eventual outcome.
This was just one of the reasons my time at Zimpapers was so replete with turbulence and tension, for the ten years I worked there.