BABY FOOD | LETTER FROM

Simon and Jane Fisher, former members of Britain’s Third World First group, write from Rhodesia where they have now been teaching for two years at St. David’s Mission in Umtali. The Mission, which has a hospital, a school, and a church, grew up in a densely populated African area. But now the area has been declared "white" and the people it was meant to serve have had to move away.

The implementation of a land policy based on race has been taking place gradually and quietly in Rhodesia; exceptional cases such as that of the Tangwena people who are hiding in the mountains near here attract some attention in the press but most white Rhodesians seem to hear little of what is going on and do not seek to find out. Their standard of living is high, the climate is good and where, they ask, are the outward signs of the apartheid their critics talk about? ‘The African’ is normally cheerful and friendly and only becomes discontented when stirred up by communist infiltrators. Certainly, their own servant never expressed anything but complete satisfaction with the present set-up. What then, is everyone complaining about?

Sceptical as we were when we first arrived in Rhodesia almost two years ago to teach in the Mission school, there appeared to be more to be said in Rhodesia’s favour than our previous impersonal, statistical picture had allowed. Socially, the country seemed to be a rather quaint relic of the colonial era with African waiters in white gym shoes and red fez padding obediently to and fro on the verandahs of colonial style hotels at the bidding of the European "baas" who persists in referring to them as "boys" (though they are probably married with several children). But racial barriers are not evident to anything like the same extent as in South Africa. There are very few "Europeans Only" signs to be seen; there are no separate transport or shopping facilities; Africans can stay in two of Salisbury’s most exclusive hotels and send their children to multiracial schools. There is no official job reservation policy and the network of primary and secondary schools compares favourably with that in other African countries. Housing in the townships looks drab and monotonous but again compares favourably with the settlements surrounding other African capitals. The national papers seem very parochial in outlook but Ministerial wrath is frequently provoked by their criticism of the Government.

This, of course, is a reassuring picture of Rhodesia which pleases her white citizens. They tend to become very annoyed with any outsider who expresses a critical opinion of the situation after what they consider to be a brief visit. But our two year stay has been long enough to meet people whose experiences and attitudes convey a different perspective. It has been long enough to meet a school-girl whose father has been in detention as long as she can remember; a fully qualified Indian secretary who cannot get a job, although white secretaries are in constant demand; a teacher whom the Government refuses to employ because of his views; a bus-driver with a good ‘0’ level certificate who can find no other openings, and a student who has been offered a place to do ‘A’ levels but who must start work straight away as her father is paid very little and she must help finance the education of younger brothers and sisters.

It makes no difference to these people that there are fewer "Europeans Only" signs in their country than in South Africa. They know that the innocent "Right of Admission Reserved" notice which hangs unobtrusively over the door of nearly every hotel and cafe means the same thing, as we soon discovered. It means nothing to them that there are multi-racial hotels in Salisbury because they could never afford to go there, just as they could never afford the fees to send their children to a multi-racial school.

Legislation has recently been passed enforcing segregation in public swimming baths but this is only giving legal recognition to a situation which already existed. In other spheres of life too, segregation is an accepted fact though it is not legally enforced. When we first arrived in Rhodesia, the final stage of our journey had to be completed on Rhodesia Railways. We asked for the cheapest available tickets to our destination and were sold 2nd class ones. It was only later during the journey that we realised that there are in fact four classes, the first and second being occupied by Europeans and the third and fourth by Africans. A persistent European can acquire a third or fourth class ticket, just as a persistent African can travel first or second class, but a combination of unofficial policy and public acquiescence mean that the separate facilities provided for 1st and 2nd, and 3rd and 4th class passengers become in fact separate facilities for Europeans and Africans. On a visit to the multi-racial University of Rhodesia, we found that Africans, Europeans and Asians each sit in their own separate corners of the students’ dining room and a group of students has recently been conducting a campaign (enthusiastically supported by certain Rhodesian Front MP’s) for segregation of halls of residence. The atmosphere of the country makes it all too easy to submit to barriers which are not officially imposed or enforced and to accept racial tension as inevitable.

A large hotel, quite near us, booked a well-known Congolese artist to exhibit his work on the hotel premises but informed the artist shortly before the weekend of the exhibition that it would not be possible to accommodate him in the hotel, though he would be required to be there every day to talk to guests about his work. Since no-one in the surrounding European area would offer to put him up, he eventually stayed with us and travelled 12 miles every day over gravel roads to wander through the hotel corridors, explaining his work to people who would not stay under the same roof as him and were even reluctant to eat in the same dining-room. Very few white Rhodesians would stop to consider the feelings of an African who is treated in this way. The European woman who once walked into a room where I was working with about 20 African women and asked me "Are you alone here?" is sadly typical.

A friend of ours who is working for her ‘A’ levels by correspondence and at the same time earning her living as a clerk, maintains that the educational system is one of the worst features of the present set-up. It’s no use pointing out that the standard of African education here surpasses that in some independent countries. Her yardstick of comparison is not the educational system in other countries but the facilities and opportunities which she sees made available to her European contemporaries here, but not to her. The Rhodesian Front Government prides itself on the fact that it spends equal amounts on European and African education:- this means about £100 per European child as compared to £10 per African child. European education is compulsory and almost free, whereas only Africans who have both brains and money to pay fees can survive beyond primary school.

The most recent report of the Secretary for African Education (for the year 1971) reveals that 1,941 out of 2,477 African candidates for school certificate that year obtained First or Second division passes. Yet only 226 places in schools doing ‘A’ levels were available, ‘0’ levels by themselves are a qualification for very few jobs and adequate avenues for further training are simply not open to Africans.

The girls we teach are confronted with two real possibilities for training: nursing or teaching, and opportunities in even these fields are becoming more and more scarce. Those who can find nothing to do return to their homes in the Tribal Trust Lands where they are expected to conform to the traditional pattern of village life, working in the fields and fetching wood and water as Shona women have done for centuries. A similar situation exists in many African countries, but frustration is seriously sharpened in Rhodesia’s comparatively industrialised society when African school-leavers see that opportunities theoretically open to all, are in fact denied to them if they try to apply.

The resources of the African Education Department are now being directed towards the expansion of Junior Secondary Schools post primary institutions which concentrate on teaching practical skills such as carpentry, metal-work and domestic science - and pressure is being exerted to make academically-orientated secondary schools also adopt a more practical approach. This type of education may well make it easier for school-leavers to find jobs and be better suited to the needs of a developing country. It is also politically very convenient for the regime to develop an education system which produces a minimum of academically qualified Africans and a maximum of semiskilled artisans.

It’s well known in Rhodesia that a clearer idea of what is going on inside the country can be obtained from the BBC and from overseas publications, than from the local press and news service. The apparent independence of the press - a target for continuous vicious sniping from the regime - is not totally illusory but its effectiveness is restricted by its limited sources of information, and by certain regulations. For example, no publication can mention anyone in detention by name - a very effective method of helping the public to forget who is shut away and why - which leads to a farcical situation in which the press can only refer to, for example, Garfield Todd, ex-Prime Minister of the country, as "a certain European man who has been detained for a year on his farm near Shabani". "MOTO", a weekly paper read mainly by Africans, which is vociferous in its criticism of the Government, suffers frequent harassment and attempts to discredit it. The ex-editor, a Roman Catholic priest, was recently had up on a charge of possessing a copy of Mao’s thoughts and several obscene pictures. Books, magazines, films etc., are all reviewed by the censorship board which regularly deprives us of access to a wide variety of literature, ranging from "Playboy" to a recently published history of Rhodesia written by a Shona from the point of view of his own people.

The author of this history, Lawrence Vambe, describes the white population of Rhodesia as "a concentration of irrationalities". The thoughts and aspirations of the Shona and Ndebele people are just as much a source of mystery, and consequently fear, to most of Rhodesia’s Europeans. The tragedy of a situation in which each new piece of Government legislation drives a deeper wedge between racial groups whose contact with each other is already minimal, and further erodes what remains of African goodwill, is very obvious. The only hopeful factor is that the ANC the one movement inside Rhodesia which can really claim to have African support - still adheres to a policy of nonviolence and considers peaceful change to be possible.