someone there are two African warders, and a District Commissioner and a doctor and the Superintendent and a priest. The Roman Catholics are always there. There is a hole in the corner of the cell where they hang the man up and then they let him drop and they all run away. I heard their feet clattering as they all ran away down the passage because they didn’t want to stay. But I was next door listening. Half an hour later they came back to make sure he was dead. When you hear a man being hanged—it’s not something I can tell. I kept thinking, that is a man’s life ending, that is a life ending. I could never sleep in that place.
‘I did not serve my full sentence in spite of their threats.
‘For political people like me it’s bad enough, but what about those who are there always? I keep thinking about the people I saw in prison. There was a man there who got in when he was a young boy and he may be there all his life. He was an animal after all that time. And I saw an old man let out after many years, and he didn’t know what to do or where to go. They let the relatives come, but relatives forget you if you are in so long. The old man stood outside the gate frightened of everything he saw. I often think of him. And the women—that’s even worse, how the women get when they are a long time in prison. And the prison is so crowded, so many people in a cell. Terrible things happen. I am embarrassed to tell you because you are a woman.
‘But what is worse than anything, what hurts most is that even in prison there is colour discrimination. Even there. The white prisoners are in one place with good food, and they aren’t treated roughly. When I found that even in prison we were treated according to colour then I really understood injustice.’
The other matter we discussed was how the Portuguese administrator just over the border takes money from Southern Rhodesian farmers to press-gang Africans for work on the farms.
Before I left Umtali I was finally instructed thus:
‘I would have no time for any journalist who did not make a point of the two following facts: (1) The system consists ofvicious circles: for instance, that the Africans are poor, and therefore their education is poor, and therefore they are poor. (2) Those countries in Africa which are most poor are those without a white administration: Bechuanaland, for instance, is miserably poor. In this country every man, woman and child (white) is taxed £10 a year for African education. For God’s sake don’t tell them so, or they’ll go up in smoke. Of course you can say that it is the labour of the Africans that provides the money and that sort of thing, but suppose the white population of this country doubled, it would double the number of people who have to pay £10 a year.’
I transcribe this direct from my notes, without altering a word of it, because the man who said it is known as a Socialist, and it is an example of how a colour-bar society pressures economic thinking into strange, strange shapes.
4
Back in Salisbury again. A gathering of people, members of the new interracial society, who are very advanced because they invite Africans and Indians and coloured people to their homes.
One interracialist was very angry because the Government is importing Greeks and Italians, ‘wops and dagoes, the scum of the earth,’ into the country, instead of advancing the Africans, the people of the land.
‘I don’t mind being considered the equal of an educated African, but I object to any dregs from Europe being my equal simply because they have white skins.’
This is an interesting and typical example of the phenomenon of Displacement. In a country where people are always conscious of other people’s colour or kind, hatred and prejudice are never restricted to coloured people only: you may be sure that a person has passionate views about the dirty Japanese asagainst the decent Chinese, or vice versa, or the fine, clean Northern European peoples
‘I did not serve my full sentence in spite of their threats.
‘For political people like me it’s bad enough, but what about those who are there always? I keep thinking about the people I saw in prison. There was a man there who got in when he was a young boy and he may be there all his life. He was an animal after all that time. And I saw an old man let out after many years, and he didn’t know what to do or where to go. They let the relatives come, but relatives forget you if you are in so long. The old man stood outside the gate frightened of everything he saw. I often think of him. And the women—that’s even worse, how the women get when they are a long time in prison. And the prison is so crowded, so many people in a cell. Terrible things happen. I am embarrassed to tell you because you are a woman.
‘But what is worse than anything, what hurts most is that even in prison there is colour discrimination. Even there. The white prisoners are in one place with good food, and they aren’t treated roughly. When I found that even in prison we were treated according to colour then I really understood injustice.’
The other matter we discussed was how the Portuguese administrator just over the border takes money from Southern Rhodesian farmers to press-gang Africans for work on the farms.
Before I left Umtali I was finally instructed thus:
‘I would have no time for any journalist who did not make a point of the two following facts: (1) The system consists ofvicious circles: for instance, that the Africans are poor, and therefore their education is poor, and therefore they are poor. (2) Those countries in Africa which are most poor are those without a white administration: Bechuanaland, for instance, is miserably poor. In this country every man, woman and child (white) is taxed £10 a year for African education. For God’s sake don’t tell them so, or they’ll go up in smoke. Of course you can say that it is the labour of the Africans that provides the money and that sort of thing, but suppose the white population of this country doubled, it would double the number of people who have to pay £10 a year.’
I transcribe this direct from my notes, without altering a word of it, because the man who said it is known as a Socialist, and it is an example of how a colour-bar society pressures economic thinking into strange, strange shapes.
4
Back in Salisbury again. A gathering of people, members of the new interracial society, who are very advanced because they invite Africans and Indians and coloured people to their homes.
One interracialist was very angry because the Government is importing Greeks and Italians, ‘wops and dagoes, the scum of the earth,’ into the country, instead of advancing the Africans, the people of the land.
‘I don’t mind being considered the equal of an educated African, but I object to any dregs from Europe being my equal simply because they have white skins.’
This is an interesting and typical example of the phenomenon of Displacement. In a country where people are always conscious of other people’s colour or kind, hatred and prejudice are never restricted to coloured people only: you may be sure that a person has passionate views about the dirty Japanese asagainst the decent Chinese, or vice versa, or the fine, clean Northern European peoples
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