The British Empire Library


Dry Between Your Toes: Autobiography Of A Chief Education Officer In The Department Of African Education, Southern Rhodesia

by Geoffrey T Harris


Courtesy of OSPA


Barry Lennox (Southern Rhodesia Public Service 1953-80)
It was a coincidence that soon after I finished reading this book I was speaking to a Zimbabwe African working for National Rail at Ebbsfleet International Station. In reply to my question as to why he had left Zimbabwe he stated it was due to the complete collapse of the education system. Without any prompting from me he went on to say that under a white government it had been the best in Africa.

Reading Geoffrey Harris’s book it is easy to understand why this was so. The system of school inspections undertaken by inspectors stationed in each provincial education office ensured a high and equable standard in schools right across the country. Whether they were government, local council, mission, farm or mine schools they were subject to the same scrutiny and support.

Geoffrey traces his career from teacher through the ranks to the top post of Chief Education Officer, African Education. On the way he gives accounts of the work of school inspectors way out in the bush and includes some interesting anecdotes while doing so. One concerns a close friend of mine who was my stand-in father in law at my wedding and gave my wife away. I had not known that when he was DC Kariba he had rolled his official Land Rover, with Geolfrey as passenger, in full sight of a lioness and her three cubs.

While the book has rather more personal content than official, it does set out in full the speech by Ian Smith on the Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965. It also includes some of the propaganda produced at the time and later during the period following UDI. There are some points in the book with which I take issue, but overall it is an easy to read account of the life of a person who is shown very little respect in this country today, but in the country where he gave so much of his life and expertise there is a dawning realisation that life in the colonial era wasn’t so bad after all. At least you could rely on the education system.

British Empire Book
Author
Geoffrey T Harris
Published
2009
Pages
180
Publisher
The author
Availability
Abebooks
Ridgeway,
Ryall Road,
Holly Green,
Upton-upon-Severn,
Worcestershire,
WR8 0PG


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