African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [211]
‘The Povos are angry. Oh, you can believe me, they are angry! If the Government held an election now there would not be one vote for Mugabe. All over the country they are saying, Why did we fight that war? What for? We might just as well have kept Smith…Yes, there’s going to be a storm all right, but it won’t be a rain storm.’
“Mugabe is trying to distract the attention of the Povos by saying the white farmers are hoarding grain, but they aren’t. The Povos are better fed on the white farms than they are in the Communal Areas. They try to get on to the white farms.’
‘If Mugabe resigns, who are we going to get instead?’
‘Who cares whether this is just a little temporary blip on the weather graph? Or a permanent major shift in the climate? The farmers don’t care, hungry people don’t care. All people care about is, Are the rains going to come in November?’
A LITTLE MORE HISTORY
Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing colony in 1924, though both Defence and Native Policy remained subject to British supervision. The British never, not once, protested against Southern Rhodesian Native Policy, which was always modelled on the repressive policies of South Africa. When the proposed Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland failed, because of the opposition of the blacks, Northern Rhodesia got its independence and became Zambia in 1963. Southern Rhodesia demanded independence at the same time but was refused, unless the whites promised to grant black majority rule within a reasonable period. The whites rejected this and Britain applied sanctions. Ian Smith, on behalf of the whites of Southern Rhodesia proclaimed themselves independent of Britain, in a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, known as UDI. Minor acts of sabotage; riots, protests, had been going on in Southern Rhodesia for years, but the UDI in 1965 can be regarded as the beginning of the War of Independence, as the various parties and then armies formed and took to the bush. The main parties were ZANU, Zimbabwe African National Union, under Robert Mugabe, and ZAPU, Zimbabwe African People’s Union, under Joshua Nkomo, who had spent over ten years in a detention camp, in a remote and desolate place, without amenities. ‘Like the dark side of the moon,’ he described it. These armies and other lesser armies sometimes collaborated with each other, and sometimes did not during the guerilla war against the government forces, a confused scene not made any clearer by the numbers of black soldiers fighting for the government–a majority of the government forces were black. When it was at last acknowledged by the whites that they could not win this war, Britain negotiated peace terms which included an election in which all the blacks voted, and for the first time. They voted for Robert Mugabe and ZANU, and Mugabe became Prime Minister. Joshua Nkomo was offered the job of President but refused. Then began a time when he was regarded as an enemy of Mugabe and the government. It was easier to see the disagreement like this because Robert Mugabe represented the Shona and Joshua Nkomo the Matabele. The Shona, or Moshona, are the indigenous people of the area. The Matabele were an offshoot from the Zulu nation in South Africa, for they left, trekking north to escape from the tyrannical and militaristic Zulu kings. They set up in what is now the south-west of Zimbabwe a militaristic and tyrannical regime with Bulawayo as their city. Bulawayo means The Place of Killing, and at the time when Lobengula the king was tricked out of his land by the whites it deserved its name. Historians disagree over the extent of the Mata-bele harassment of the Mashona, who were never a warlike people.
PORTUGUESE EAST AFRICA, AND THEN
MOZAMBIQUE
While in Southern Rhodesia the black guerilla armies fought in the bush, in Portuguese East Africa the blacks fought against the Portuguese. They won, years before