NF (1957) Going Home

by Doris Lessing

  Back in the hotel, Eileen is still awake, mournful in the dark behind a cigarette. She has not told me the whole truth, she says. She came up to the Copper Belt really not for the money, but because last year she had been going out with a man, but he suddenly dropped her and came north to copper. So she had come, too, not to get him back, but simply to confront him, and say to him: ‘But why, Johnnie? Just tell me why?’ That evening, luckily, she was sitting on the hotel verandah with her new friend, when who should come and sit at the next table with a group of men but Johnnie? ‘I nodded to him and said, “Is that you, Johnnie? Well, I didn’t know you were up here.” And after dinner he came up to me and said: “How about a drive?” And I said, “Thank you, but I’m tired this evening. Another time, Johnnie.” So I hope tomorrow my new one will ask me so that I can say I am engaged. Not that I want him back, don’t think that, but when he says, “Why are you always tired or engaged?” I just want to say to him, “Johnnie, it stands to reason I am tired for a man who took me out for a year and then went away not even saying me why…” And then he will say to me, “Hell, man, give me a chance.” And I will say to him, “Johnnie, you had your chance, and you threw it away. Now let us be friends.”’

  A silence. I put out the lights and get into bed.

  Eileen lights another cigarette. ‘If my Mom knew I was smoking,’ she says, with the most dignified melancholy in her heavy voice, ‘if she knew, she would say the Copper Belt is ruining me.’

  ‘You should leave it,’ I say.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘but first I must tell Johnnie I am too good for him.’

  A visit to a scheme for recovering young hooligans from a future of crime. The mines do not employ children under 18. Gangs of boys who could not get into school were roaming the townships making mischief. The company supplied a piece of land, and employed an enthusiastic man who teaches these boys agriculture and carpentry and arranges extra classes for them.

  Admirable. As usual one feels it would be churlish to say, well, if there were enough schools there would be no need for all this philanthropy.

  There is nothing more moving, or more exasperating in the Federation than these devoted, enthusiastic people who sweat their lives out on pittances and idealism to save the Africans from the worst effects of a savage exploitation. Just as the motives behind Federation have perverted all the good things one believes most in, have made suspect the phrases of goodwill, so that one can scarcely talk about interracialism, or equality, or advance, since these words have been poisoned by dishonesty; so, too, the honest idealism of people who are sickened by the condition of the Africans and who spend their lives trying to help them is made cheap by the cynicism that makes use of these emotions. Let’s have the figures again: Profits annually: £50,000,000. More than half to overseas shareholders. And a £5,000,000 African wage bill. Yet not one of these mine officials talks as if the copper mines were anything else but a philanthropic device for improving the lot of the Africans.

  On the Rhokana mine one of the show-pieces is a building where an enthusiastic man teaches the Africans to make bricks, literally, out of straw. It seems that the management some time back had the idea of providing a place where the employees could learn carpentry. But the man they chose to run it had ideas more far-reaching than this. He said that the Africans must make use of their ingenuity to provide for themselves out of what materials lie to hand. Thus, any man or woman who comes to the building asking if he can make a bed, or a cupboard, is taught not only how to do this, but how to use bits of packing case, wood thrown away by the mine, or discarded furniture from the white man’s house. In that building ingenuity has become a passion. Sandals are fashioned out of tyres; baskets and brooms and brushes out of wild grasses; jugs and plates from copper waste; furniture from almost anything one can think of; clothes out of trade rejects; and tools out of scraps of waste mine machinery.

  It is one of the most interesting places on the Copper Belt. Its manager devotes his life to it.

  And why should the African workers on this fabulously rich mine have to spend their time learning to make the necessities for their living out of the waste from white civilization?

  But one asks this question afterwards, not at the time, because of one’s deep respect for the man whose motives are goodness of heart and compassion for suffering.

  In the newspaper it says that the Rhodesian Selection Trust is making a gift of £3,000,000 for African development. Everyone, it seems, is deeply moved by this generosity.

  An interview with a Welfare Officer at which I am told that all the children are now going to school. I am naturally very impressed by this. Afterwards discover from the figures of the Minister of Education that either this welfare official is badly misinformed or that he is deliberately lying. Forty-six per cent of the African children in towns get some sort of an education; fifty-eight per cent in the rural areas.

  A trip down one of the mineshafts. I have been down goldmines before, but since I know nothing about the techniques of mining, I regarded this rather as a joy-ride than a contribution to information. Besides, it was the mineshaft the Queen Mother was taken down, presumably the one reserved for visitors.

  My guide said that an American journalist he had taken down wrote an article about the enslaved workers who were chained to their jobs underground. ‘So ignorant he didn’t even know a safety-chain when he saw one.’ I said I would make a point of not falling into the same error.

  Whereupon he said: ‘I spend half my time taking journalists around, and none of you ever has a good word to say for us. So I suppose you won’t either.’

  ‘Well, not many,’ I said.

  ‘Oh well,’ he said, with a sort of stolid intention to endure the whips and arrows of unfair criticism, ‘we all do our best, you know; we all do our best.’

  An evening with a man not employed by the company. He told me that because of the enormously high price of copper, still unnaturally high although it has recently dropped a little, the copper bonus raises European wages to more than twice what is normal. Shop-keepers raise their prices to suit; but Government employees and independent men are left behind and comparatively badly off. A mine employee (white) pays £3 a month rent, and can earn as much as £200 a month. He says: ‘Most people have nothing to spend their money on but drink or saving for the next holiday or buying new cars.’

  It seems there is considerable ill will between the mine people and the others.

  A trade-union official spent most of his time during our interview slanging my friend Simon Zukas, whom he referred to as a stateless Lithuanian agitator. Simon has lived in Northern Rhodesia nearly all his life, but due to the intricacies of the citizenship laws is not technically a citizen. Therefore he was deported, after helping to organize the Congress. I was not surprised that every time I mentioned his name, which I did as often as possible to see the reaction, people became abusive, but I must say I was surprised at the level of abuse. Nothing short of hanging, it seems, is good enough for Simon. Incidentally the man who called him stateless was an immigrant into Rhodesia of three years’ standing, and became positively hysterical at Simon’s inability to understand local problems.

  Whenever I mentioned Simon, people were at great pains to say how badly Congress had treated him; so insistent were they that I became suspicious, scenting another version of ‘Africans are so ungrateful’. Having been told a dozen times that Congress had been so mean as only to raise £4 for Simon’s defence, when he was deported for helping them, I made a point of seeking out the man who had been treasurer at that time.

  I found him very bitter over this rumour. ‘Congress raised £1,000 for Simon, and spent £661 of that sum in ways that seemed useful, mostly on appeal expenses. It was a complicated trial, and it wasn’t easy all the time to see what was the right thing to do. For one thing Simon was being held at Livingstone, which is a long way from Lusaka. Mr Nkumbula was there anyway for the trial. What did people expect us to do? Send the entire Committ
ee to Livingstone? No, these rumours were deliberately spread around so that other white men who might help us would think we treated Simon badly.’

  I spoke to several Congress people about this business, and they all spoke angrily about this malicious attempt to smear them over their treatment of Simon.

  ‘People are always ready to believe bad things of us Africans. Even progressive people believe that business of us raising £4 for Simon. The rumour started because the Luansha branch of the General Workers’ Union raised £4. The Press seized on that figure and did not mention the real figure at all.’

  Time was running out fast. I telephoned from Kitwe for information as to when I could catch a plane across to Nyasaland. I was informed that no planes went from Northern Rhodesia to Nyasaland and I must go back to Salisbury and then up to Nyasaland. Therefore I left Kitwe sooner than I wanted to and went to Lusaka. No sooner had I descended in Lusaka airport than I found a plane had just left to Nyasaland. No, they simply could not understand how I had been given such a nonsensical piece of information. Planes went regularly from Lusaka across to Blantyre. But now I would have to go to Salisbury to reach Nyasaland since it would be several days before the next plane left Lusaka.

  An interview with Mr Nkumbula and Mr Kaundu, President and Secretary of Congress. Their views on Federation, Partnership and so on can be taken as read, for what is remarkable about this vast area covered by Federation is the unanimity of African opinion all over it. I was particularly concerned to find out the state of affairs in the Kariba Valley, and what was happening to the people being moved.

  Mr Nkumbula had just returned from a trip to that point which is the nearest to the area he is allowed to go. He had come back at six that morning after travelling all night, and was aroused from his bed again at nine to see me. He was extremely tired, and very bitter over the treatment of Congress.

  He told me that the villagers of the valley were angry and miserable; that Chiefs supporting Congress were being threatened or deposed; that young men talking Congress language were suffering all kinds of ill-treatment from the District Commissioners.

  These people are being moved from rich, well-watered land to high, poor, undeveloped land, and their resentment is both on this count and because their attachment to their soil is religious and ritualistic. They are not prepared to believe that schemes like Kariba will benefit them at all, either immediately or in the future.

  Interview with an opponent of Sir Roy Welensky. He says: ‘Roy is a typical white trade unionist. Now he makes himself sound like an old-fashioned liberal in public, but the leopard hasn’t changed his spots. Consider what he’s doing with the railways, now he’s minister. Our railways must be the most inefficient in the world. Why? Shortage of labour. In the meantime hundreds of Africans hang about, quite able to do the work, but unable to because of the colour bar. Welensky brings in unskilled Italians and Greeks on the grounds that “they will learn quicker” than the Africans. Why? Do you have to ask? Read his speech to his white trade-union electors at Broken Hill, which is his constituency. When he’s talking to his constituents he is all in favour of the industrial colour bar and white supremacy. He loathes the Africans. He doesn’t dare to say so now, of course. But he does. The only place he can afford to say it is in the pub with his trade-union buddies.’

  I asked what sort of Prime Minister Roy Welensky would make.

  ‘What difference does it make? Garfield Todd is a decent type who really likes the Africans as people. But he has to toe the white line or he’d lose his job. Roy Welensky will do the same thing from conviction—that’s the only difference. Whether Garfield Todd or Welensky becomes Federal Prime Minister, they’ll have to do exactly the same thing in the end.’

  The numbers of the police have been multiplied by seven since Federation. When asked why, the Administration said: ‘The white population has doubled.’

  An interview with an African MP who told me, half-humorous, half-sad, about a long struggle he had just finished in his local council to get the Africans to accept a Government grant to improve their land. He said: ‘We need that money badly. We need to learn better farming methods. As an example of this, in our area there are a lot of Southern Rhodesians farming, and in a couple of seasons they outstrip our people and leave them behind because they’ve learned modern husbandry in Southern Rhodesia. But our people say: “If we accept the Government money and improve our land, the white people will take it from us.” So they prefer to remain poor. This Federation was a terrible thing, a terrible thing. And simply because I tried to persuade them to accept this money, they said I was a Government stooge. But I am not a Government stooge. All I want is the best for my people.’

  I wanted to visit the radio station in Lusaka, which people say is enterprising and efficient. It is listened to by Africans all over the Federation. It broadcasts in various African languages and has programmes of traditional music. But I rang up Central African Airways, was told an aeroplane was leaving early on Monday morning from Salisbury for Nyasaland, and so I could not stay. I took a plane to Southern Rhodesia, leaving Northern Rhodesia, without much regret, behind me.

  Having arrived at Salisbury, I was told I had been misinformed about the plane to Nyasaland. There was no plane until Tuesday. My plane to London left on Thursday. Since all the planes are heavily booked I could not afford to miss it. I worked out a rather precarious plan to rush up to Nyasaland for one day, try and see Chief Gomani, who is in considerable trouble with the Government, and then rush back again, taking a chance on getting into a plane at Blantyre. But in the end I decided not to.

  It was a big disappointment to me, giving up Nyasaland. I have never been there. Everyone who has speaks of it as the most beautiful country. The Africans I have known from Nyasaland are a fine lot: alert, independent, subtle, proud. And the white people (there are only six thousand of them) are less colour-ridden than anywhere in the Federation.

  But it is not like Northern Rhodesia, which has its Copper Belt towns strung out close together, easy to reach. Nyasaland is a long, narrow, mountainous, lake-divided country, with bad roads and widely-scattered towns. Useless to go there for a couple of days.

  Being in a paranoiac state of mind just then, I was convinced that all the wrong information that had been given me about the planes was deliberate, part of a plot to prevent me from going there. But now, having recovered, I don’t think so. It was due to the natural inefficiency of the place.

  And so I left, to return to London, where people ask: ‘Well, what is the future of the Federation?’

  I don’t know.

  There are two vital questions to which no one knows the answer. One is, will there be a slump in America? If so, and the price of copper is seriously affected, the very precarious financial structure of Federation can crumble into chaos.

  The second is, will the Labour Party get back into power in Britain? If it does, and its Left Wing is strong enough to force a more liberal policy, it is possible African bitterness may be softened. I have heard it suggested that the white settlers, afraid of the Labour Party getting back, may stage some sort of coup d’état, taking complete independence by force or trickery. I don’t think so. I hope not. I hope they have more sense, for I am convinced that if they do the whole place will go up in flames like Kenya.

  But the real question, the big imponderable, is this: Just how much are the Africans prepared to take?

  It has been said that the epitaph of the white man in Africa will be: He allowed his intelligence and his conscience to become blunted by colour prejudice, and did not realize it until too late.

  I am certain only of one thing: that if the Federation does not advance very fast, and with real sincerity of motive, towards complete racial partnership, it must retreat rapidly towards what is happening in the Union of South Africa. There is very little difference even now.

  I don’t feel very optimistic. I don’t see how the next decade can be anything else than stormy, bitter and unprofitab
le.

  LONDON,

  August 26, 1956

  While I was writing the above, I had a letter from the Immigration Officer of the High Commissioner’s Office in London, saying that he wished to see me.

  Being familiar with the devious ways of Partnership I wrote asking that he should put what he had to say in writing. But he wrote back saying no, the information he had to give would be better conveyed verbally; it concerned his Government’s decision about my future visits to the Federation.

  I know of various people who have been allowed into the Federation on condition they took no part in politics, and I decided that I was likely to be such a case; also, I understood very well that the Federation was trying to prevent me from returning without having to suffer the moral inconvenience of putting it plainly.

  I therefore arranged for a solicitor to go with me.

  On arrival at Rhodesia House, and having given in my name and that of my solicitor, I was requested to go first and by myself. But I ignored this and took my solicitor up with me.

  The official began by saying that he had been asked to tell me that if I wished to make any further trips to the Federation, I should first please make an application to him.

  At which I pointed out that as a British citizen I had a right to enter as I liked, unless special provisions had been made against it. To which he returned: was I planning any further trips shortly? I said that that probably depended on what he had to tell me.

  And now he exclaimed, with that engaging naïveté which makes contact with Partnership so rewarding: ‘You’ve forced my hand! Actually even if you did make application, you would not be allowed in.’

  I asked if I had been declared a Prohibited Immigrant.

  He said that I had, by Declaration in Council of the Governor-General.