African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [191]
White farmers are villains–and that’s the end of it. It is true that some are not the most endearing people in the world. But what of the others, who are trying hard? Too bad about them. I think of Alan Paton’s ‘I am afraid that when they turn to loving, we will have turned to hating.’ The word ‘loving’ is not one I would choose. But I remember arguing with a black friend of mine who wanted to preserve a picture of white farmers as cruel savages: he retreated back and back until he cried out, ‘But they don’t love their homes as we do.’ But if there is one thing that has distinguished the whites, right from the beginning, it is love for the country. I said this…he could not bear it. I think of Proust’s duchess (I think it was) who, when faced with some unpalatable truth, cried out, ‘Then at least don’t tell me about it!’ There is a point in political feelings when some invisible balance turns and thereafter people don’t want to be told about it. Basta. Enough.
The blacks talk about the whites as if there is, and always has been, a layer of people who remain the same, clinging on to privileges no matter what. Yes, some left to Take the Gap, but those who remain are those who have always been here…but in fact there has never been a homogenous, stable, white minority. Since the Occupation in 1890, 600,000 whites have passed through the country. At the height of White Supremacy, under Smith, the figure was 250,000. In my time, then, there were 100,000 or 150,000 whites. Only a few, some farmers, civil servants, politicians, businessmen, were permanent. The rest came, and then went. They left because they hated being part of the white oppression, or because they were bankrupt. Few blacks even now would be prepared to see any white as poor: in the past the gap was too great; all whites were rich. In the 1930s, when young men came out from Britain because of unemployment and the Slump, to take any kind of job they could get in Rhodesia, and often failed, and went Home again–that is, if they could get relatives to send them their fares–returning to unemployment, drink, every kind of demoralization, they were seen by the blacks as rich.
A Catholic lay-worker told me she had been given a trip to Ireland, and had been astonished to see poor people, ‘people as poor as we are’, giving money for missions and church work. ‘Where did you think the money came from, then?’ ‘Oh,’ she said gaily, ‘I thought everyone white was rich. I felt really ashamed when I saw those poor people counting out their coins to give to us.’
A SAD, TRUE STORY
A black girl, clever, ambitious, with parents proud of her, passes exam after exam, and gets a scholarship that takes her to the United States, to university. No sooner does she reach there, than in every mail there are letters, not only from her family, and her clan, but from her village and even nearby villages, demanding money, clothes, goods of every kind. Also, books. She has set up a library in her village, and donated a great many books, sending some from the States. This has been an expensive business: the United States postage is not cheap, and the Zimbabwe Customs charges on every parcel according to whim. She appeals to various foundations for books, because her stipend does not allow much for extras. Still the requests come. She does her best to meet them. She lives more frugally than most students, eats little, dresses poorly, because of what she has to send home. Driven to desperation, she puts an appeal in a local newspaper, for donations of clothes, and money for her village. A representative of Zimbabwe in Washington warns her that she is blackening the name of Zimbabwe, and if she does it again, she will lose her scholarship.
Her straitened lifestyle makes it hard for her to have the usual student social life. She is lonely. At home she has been close to a sister. With difficulty she saves up money to pay this girl’s air