Going Home - Doris May Lessing [119]
During the crisis the stickers on the cars read: ‘Good Old Smithie!’ ‘Up with Smithie!’ ‘And the Same to you, Wilson!’ When they holiday in the Union, Rhodesian cars read: ‘Thanks to our Pals—from Rhodesia!’ ‘Thanks to the Nats!’ And so on. Whitehall—when it has been in a responsible mood—has always made the mistake of treating these children seriously. And in the meantime they control a country half the size of Spain and in a key position for the entire continent.
As for sanctions, they were bound to be ineffective, since white Rhodesia could count on aid, open and hidden, from the Republic and from the Portuguese territories. If sanctions prove uncomfortable enough to force concessions, then we can expect some face-saving formula to be agreed to by Britain which will give the appearance of an agreement by the whites to advance the Africans. The whites will hold their power; the Africans will stay exactly as they are. Meanwhile, in the background, that handful of dedicated heroes, black and white, will continue to work, trying to improve conditions, trying to let in a little agitators. For how long? For a very long time, I believe. What is to change things?
I think that, in politics, people do not consider geography enough. The realities tend to be rooted in geography. Rhodesia is now one with the Republic in everything but name, and the southern part of the African continent is isolated. On either side, thousands of leagues of sea; just below, the Antarctic. Embedded between the two white-dominated countries, Bechuanaland (now Botswana), a bitterly poor country concerned only not to let itself be swallowed up by its very powerful neighbours. Then, north, across the Zambezi, Zambia, with problems enough of her own and certainly in no position, as romantics seem to expect, to fight a liberating war. And Malawi, which has turned out to be a black dictatorship, with all its opposition in exile, is fighting some solitary battle for its own interests. Africa, now that the white men have left most of it, has become like any other continent in the world, a mass of nations, each one of which has its own interests, its own form of nationalism. And every one of these countries is very poor. It is not likely that these nations, even if they were able to agree among themselves to do it, could launch a successful war to ‘liberate their brothers down South’ as some people seem to believe they will. Brotherhood and entrenched national interests, as recent history has abundantly shown, don’t march together. The Republic and Rhodesia—and they would be aided by the Portuguese colonies—have highly equipped modern armies, highly efficient secret police and sections of their black populations corrupted into spies and informers. And besides—look at the map.
And, more importantly, consider world priorities. As I write, there is danger of a war between Egypt and Israel; and the war in Vietnam is at crisis point. The world is so precarious that nasty slums like Southern Africa, slummy explosive continents like South America, must get on with it, they aren’t a danger to world peace, they don’t threaten our very existence. Southern Africa will go on exactly as it is now, as it has been for decades. What is to change it? The much-too-lately aroused moral idealism of small sections of Britain and America? If the big mining interests that own most of the wealth of the subcontinent put pressure on—but big companies don’t behave like this. And if they did—in Going Home I said that the whites would prefer to dwindle into a poor isolation rather than give up their idea of themselves. I think I was right. They would. This particular complex of manias is more