had their hands tied behind their backs with wire. To feed them the police emptied buckets of mealie porridge on to the ground inside the prison gates, and the prisoners had to go down on their hands and knees with their hands still tied and eat it off the earth like dogs with their mouths. They are savages, these Portuguese. Can you believe anybody would treat human beings like that? You’d think that after living next to us, next to British territory for so long, they’d have learned to behave decently. After all, I think we treat our natives nicely.’
I transcribe here a conversation I had later with Dixon Konkola, President of the African TUC of Northern Rhodesia, President of the African Railway Workers’ Union of the Federation. Dixon was describing what he had experienced in prison when he was arrested during the campaign against Federation. While he talked, I made notes: the result was published in the Tribune , to which thanks are due for permission to reprint this.
‘What were you charged with?’
‘They arrested me so as to get me out of the way during the campaign.’
‘Yes, but what was the reason?’
‘Because I was telling my people the truth about Federation.’
‘Yes, but they must have made a charge?’
‘They call it breaking the peace. Yes, I believe that time it was inciting to breaking the peace. They arrested me and took me to the train at night. They wanted me out of Broken Hill away from the people who knew me. They put me on carefully so no one would know. I was handcuffed. I was put on to thetop bunk and I lay there for seven hours of the journey with my hands hitched up to the rope that goes across the top of the compartment. It was cold because it was winter and I only had shorts on. In the early morning a white woman came down the passage and saw me up there and she was sorry for me and wanted to give me some tea, but was told that it was not permitted to give tea to prisoners.
‘I was in the general prison doing tailoring. It was not hard work, but for the men doing work outside it was very hard. But I would not eat because they gave us nothing but hard lumps of cold porridge and black beans. So they put me into the punishment cell. I was alone. I had one blanket and only shorts on. Sometimes they threw buckets of cold water on to the floor where I was because I was being punished. I was there some days, then I went back to the general prison. After a few days there were protests among the prisoners about the food, and I was told, “We know who is making the trouble. You are a trouble-maker. If you don’t stop you won’t ever leave here alive.”
‘I said: “If I die here my people will know who killed me, they will say you killed me.” Then the District Commissioner came to see me. He is the official charged to watch prisons; but he is also a judge in his own courts. He asked what I was complaining about. I said we worked from six until one, and then the food was lumps of cold porridge and black vegetables, and then from two until six or seven, and more cold porridge and sometimes that thick prison cocoa. I said we had only one blanket and we were crowded in our cells. I went on protesting so they put me in solitary confinement. I was two weeks in the general prison and about four months in solitary. I had nothing to do and I asked for something to read and they gave me the Bible. I read that and said it was not enough, and they gave me a book by a priest who was in Russia during the Revolution describing all the horrors he had seen. But the worst was that my cell was next to the cell where they hang people. They hanged six people while I was there. Usually they take all the prisoners away from that part of the prison when they hang someone, but they left me there to frighten me.
‘The first time I was awake all night, it was so terrible. Thatman came in singing, he was singing hymns right until the moment that he dropped. He had a big sad voice. When they hang
I transcribe here a conversation I had later with Dixon Konkola, President of the African TUC of Northern Rhodesia, President of the African Railway Workers’ Union of the Federation. Dixon was describing what he had experienced in prison when he was arrested during the campaign against Federation. While he talked, I made notes: the result was published in the Tribune , to which thanks are due for permission to reprint this.
‘What were you charged with?’
‘They arrested me so as to get me out of the way during the campaign.’
‘Yes, but what was the reason?’
‘Because I was telling my people the truth about Federation.’
‘Yes, but they must have made a charge?’
‘They call it breaking the peace. Yes, I believe that time it was inciting to breaking the peace. They arrested me and took me to the train at night. They wanted me out of Broken Hill away from the people who knew me. They put me on carefully so no one would know. I was handcuffed. I was put on to thetop bunk and I lay there for seven hours of the journey with my hands hitched up to the rope that goes across the top of the compartment. It was cold because it was winter and I only had shorts on. In the early morning a white woman came down the passage and saw me up there and she was sorry for me and wanted to give me some tea, but was told that it was not permitted to give tea to prisoners.
‘I was in the general prison doing tailoring. It was not hard work, but for the men doing work outside it was very hard. But I would not eat because they gave us nothing but hard lumps of cold porridge and black beans. So they put me into the punishment cell. I was alone. I had one blanket and only shorts on. Sometimes they threw buckets of cold water on to the floor where I was because I was being punished. I was there some days, then I went back to the general prison. After a few days there were protests among the prisoners about the food, and I was told, “We know who is making the trouble. You are a trouble-maker. If you don’t stop you won’t ever leave here alive.”
‘I said: “If I die here my people will know who killed me, they will say you killed me.” Then the District Commissioner came to see me. He is the official charged to watch prisons; but he is also a judge in his own courts. He asked what I was complaining about. I said we worked from six until one, and then the food was lumps of cold porridge and black vegetables, and then from two until six or seven, and more cold porridge and sometimes that thick prison cocoa. I said we had only one blanket and we were crowded in our cells. I went on protesting so they put me in solitary confinement. I was two weeks in the general prison and about four months in solitary. I had nothing to do and I asked for something to read and they gave me the Bible. I read that and said it was not enough, and they gave me a book by a priest who was in Russia during the Revolution describing all the horrors he had seen. But the worst was that my cell was next to the cell where they hang people. They hanged six people while I was there. Usually they take all the prisoners away from that part of the prison when they hang someone, but they left me there to frighten me.
‘The first time I was awake all night, it was so terrible. Thatman came in singing, he was singing hymns right until the moment that he dropped. He had a big sad voice. When they hang
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