African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [193]
If I said, Never Harare, I happen to have with me the title deeds of a farm even better than this one, and here they are, he would find nothing impossible. The whites are all rich, and sometimes they are kind-hearted. They may impulsively bestow a farm on some young friend, if in a good mood.
On my visit in 1956 I read novels by black writers–in those days all men–and every novel had in it a scene where the hero was invited by a white employer to come into the house. ‘Lie down on this nice bed, eat this nice food, and here are some nice clothes.’ Thereafter the hero lived like Oliver Twist, a favoured protege, to become, at last–though this process was not described–rich and powerful. One minute a poor boy living rough, the next the favoured son or godson of a white benefactor who is rich.
Before Never Harare walked away into the trees I asked him if he ever thought about the fighters who were killed in the Bush War. I did not say, they died that you might be free–but that was in my mind. He smiled–polite, nervous. He did not know why I asked this, but, to please me, said he liked to think of them. Then: ‘I did not know any Comrades. I was at school.’
THE FIGHTERS
Two veterans of the Bush War are talking in the sardonic but wistful way of their kind.
‘General So-and-so said the other day…’
‘General? General? There are Generals and Generals.’
‘I mean a real General, from our War.’
‘I see, you mean a General.’
‘The General said, why don’t the young respect us? I said, It is because they don’t know you. There’s a generation who cannot remember our War. He said to me, But we won Zimbabwe for them. I said, But we Boys in the Bush are history now. He said, But what were we fighting for? I said, Yes, I often wonder myself.’
‘Virtue has to be its own reward,’ said the second veteran.
‘Ah, I see. I hadn’t thought of that. When I see the General next I’ll tell him, General, I shall say, virtue is its own reward. He’ll say, Shit to that, I want to be in the history books with full honours. I’ll say, We might be in the history books, but are these kids going to read them?’
A priest who ran a mission far from Salisbury all through the Bush War says, ‘The boys used to drop in when the Security Forces were looking the other way. They wanted an evening of being ordinary. We had a meal, they drank, they danced–had a bit of a party. They taught me how to jive–want to see me? They were very young men, boys some of them, sixteen, seventeen.’
Another man who saw the Freedom Fighters often, playing box and cox with them and the government troops said: ‘The War didn’t end because of the bravery of the Boys in the Bush. They were demoralized, drinking themselves silly every night because their lives were so hard. The War ended for economic reasons–sanctions, and because everyone was fed up with it.’
A former Freedom Fighter says, ‘They made use of us. We fought for them. We listened to what they said and we believed them. Suddenly no one believes it any longer.’
A book called White Man, Black War by a white combatant is just out. It is like the books by American soldiers in Vietnam, full of horror at what they were part of. The author was wholeheartedly for the whites, but he has had a conversion. What he admired he now hates, all evil was on the white side, all the blacks blameless. This is not an uncommon psychological switch, but what is interesting is his castigation of the whites now, presented as–every one of them–arrogant, racist, ill-wishing the blacks. I know that many such must exist, but on this trip I haven’t met any. Whites who were like this, have become good citizens. Considering that only six years have done it, what changes can another six or ten achieve?
The Freedom Fighters in the War of Liberation were advised by the ngangas, who told them how to conduct their campaigns. Is this fact in the history books? It is in the books written by serious historians. What is taught as history to that boy or girl in the secondary modern school?