I am always struck when I read of the men who went to Africa as
administrators how, living and working in a strange land, they met the
unexpected with such steady nerves. This applies no less to those who went out at the end of the span of seventy or so years of British administration
than it did at the beginning.
In Dick Eberlie's charming book (District Officer in Tanganyika) he describes
how, whilst on a particularly wet and uncomfortable working safari early in his
first posting in Tanganyika, he became aware that he had become blind in
one eye. Although greatly distressed, he completed his safari and when he
got back to the boma, he played a game of squash and buried himself in his
work. No headless chicken he.
In Northern Rhodesia/Zambia, one of the first duties of the District Assistant,
Jonathan Leach, was to warn the Senior Prison Warder that a certain
prisoner was to be brought to the boma early the following morning for
transportation to Provincial Headquarters. In the dusk he walked through the
mango-tree grove to the gaol to pass on the message. "Warder!" I called in
my best military/colonial voice. Not a sound. Met with an eerie silence his
now perhaps less military voice rose in crescendo until a ghostlike figure
emerged in the evening gloom. The apparition timidly explained that he was
the senior prisoner. He had the keys on his person whilst the warders had
gone visiting. With the aplomb of a veteran Leach transmitted the District
Commissioner's orders to the senior prisoner, who proved worthy of his high
office, and the dangerous felon appeared at the boma the next morning,
manacled, escorted and on time. (From the Cam to the Zambezi.)
On a more sombre note, Mick Bond (From Northern Rhodesia to Zambia)
recounts how he and his colleagues were faced with the completely
unfamiliar religious Lenshina movement, or Lumpa, that had boiled up in
north-eastern Zambia in 1964/65. As with similar agitations in Africa, it
involved many unnecessary deaths and tore villages and clans apart. While
the new Government exacerbated the tragedy with politics (again, a novel
situation for DOs and their superiors) the administrative officers worked
tirelessly to carry out the orders they were given to move the Lumpa people
back to their original villages, while ensuring that they acted with humanity.
Dr Kenneth Kaunda, the then Prime Minister, must not be forgotten when, at
the eleventh hour after listening to the hotheads in his fledgling Government,
he ruled that the Lumpas were to be forgiven and accepted back into their
villages... The security and administrative officers sighed with relief. (From
Northern Rhodesia to Zambia.)
The wives also met the unexpected with courage and resourcefulness and
made their contribution. Their duties and interests were many and varied.
They welcomed endless visitors; they helped with the local women's self-help
or craft groups; they kept up the spirits of the bachelors far from home by teaching them the rumba or they went on safari with their husbands to help
collate the electoral lists. I am glad that Tony Schur, who edited the
collection of accounts in From the Cam to the Zambezi, did not forget the
women and included accounts from three of these invincible volunteer
members of the administration.
Two of the books under review cover Zambian pre-internal self-government
and the transition to independence. The third is about Tanganyika just
before independence. It is interesting to detect the difference in atmosphere
between those two countries. Although it is difficult to put a finger on it, it
seemed to me that throughout the Zambian accounts there runs a certain
uneasiness. This is surely partly caused by the high tension of the Unilateral
Declaration of Independence in Southern Rhodesia, war in Angola and
turmoil in the Congo bringing waves of refugees. These crises across the
borders probably also exacerbated the tribal and party strains that were
building up during Zambian Internal Self-Government. The new DOs and
cadets in Zambia appear to have been under greater pressure than many of
their colleagues in Tanganyika; working in what appeared to be an
atmosphere of disquiet.
In Tanganyika Dick Eberlie records that the population's concerns were more
often with roads, cattle and marauding hippo wrecking their shambas but he
also comments that "arranging [local] elections was worthwhile and
sometimes amusing work" That does not sound too tense. The UN
Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, who visited Tanganyika in January
1960 was impressed by the contrast with Ruanda Urundi where he had found
violence and revolution in the air. Yes, the Tanganyika administrative
officers had the usual time-consuming workload checking on the village
markets and schools, getting medicines to the dispensaries, dealing with the
destitute, building bridges, arranging voter registrations or struggling with the
legal complexities involved in such crimes as the alleged theft of a duck by a
small boy - and worse too, of course. Despite their many duties, there
appeared to be more opportunity in Tanganyika to play tennis, to party, to
fish in the hills, or racing sailing dinghies off Dar es Salaam of an evening.
What happened next? Dick Eberlie leaves us wondering. His story ends
when he flies back to England to enjoy his end of tour leave in 1960. But I
have learned that he is busy writing two further books, one about his later
service in Tanganyika and the other about his subsequent assignment in
Aden as Private Secretary to the governing High Commissioner Sir Richard
Turnbull.
Because the other two books dip into the early years of independence we
have an idea what happened to some of the British officers who served
Zambia in the years of transition and even later, but it is distressing to read
Valentine Musakanya's story (From the Cam to the Zambezi). It began with
such hopefulness following his parents' great sacrifice to ensure that
Valentine was well-educated. He was much liked by his fellow cadets who
attended the Overseas Course in Cambridge and he joined the civil service
in Northern Rhodesia which included working as a District Officer. At Internal
Self-Government he was asked to help establish the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. In the 1980s there followed a period when he was shamefully
treated. Arrested, tortured and sentenced to death, he was eventually
acquitted in 1985 but his health was broken and he died at 62. How did he
keep his head when all about them were losing theirs? He wrote "I have
found out that although I love Zambia so much, I perhaps love a truthful
approach more, because only the latter will make her truly free." I hope
Zambia will not forget him and will honour him and that sentiment.
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