Going Home - Doris May Lessing [46]
While he was doing Standard IV a strike took place among the students and Isaac was suspected of engineering it. The students were sent home. After a while some of them were readmitted. Isaac received a letter from the principal forbidding him to return. Isaac returned to Domboshawa and pleaded with the principal. He was taken back.
Isaac’s influence among the students was dynamic. He formed a group known as ‘The Band of Outlaws’ which held debates after school hours. The principal naturally looked upon it with disfavour and did not like Isaac very much for it. But the boy did his examinations well and was very loyal to and popular with the teachers.
After doing post-Standard VI in agriculture he went to teach at Jonas School in the Epworth Circuit, at a wage of £2 5s. a month (being an untrained teacher). After three months he left and took up the post of agricultural demonstrator at the Government Experimental Farm, Msengezi, Makwiro. Old demonstrators resented this meteoric promotion of a junior. There were protests and Mr Samuriwo was transferred to the Gatooma Cotton Ginnery Station. Jealousies followed him there, and he did not last more than three months.
Going to Kwenda he taught agriculture for two years. Then he went to Tjolotjo as a builder, quarrelled with a European over accommodation and was fired. He came to Gwelo and became hide buyer for the Bata Shoe Co. at a wage of £6 10s. a month. He saved some of the money, got a passport and went to the Tsolo School of Agriculture in the Transkei, Cape, for further training.
That was July 1943. He arrived at the school on a Tuesday. The following Monday he was made a prefect. A week after that he became head prefect. He told his class-mates: ‘I shall be great.’
Two years afterwards he wrote the final exams and passed in the first class, with a percentage of 80.3. That was in June 1945. In July came his marriage, which he was arranging as he was preparing for the examinations. The bride was Miss Rotina Ntuli, daughter of the head of the Hlubis at Etyeni, Tsolo.
He returned home with a certificate and a wife. The Education Department offered him a post at Domboshawa as an agricultural instructor. He turned it down, saying, ‘I want to be a land development officer.’ The Government would not give him that post, which was for Europeans only. Samuriwo went to work for Mr Meikles at Leachdale Farm, Shangani. He received good pay and treatment. After a year he left and bought a secondhand lorry, which he drove in Harare, Salisbury, carting sand, bricks and firewood. He made money and bought a new bus for £2,300. Before it was fully insured he drove it home to the Chihota Reserve on a third party cover to show it to relatives. A half-brother out of his senses set fire to it, and it was completely destroyed.
Mr Samuriwo came back to Salisbury and drove his old lorry. He rebuilt the business, sold the old vehicle and bought a new one. Then he bought a diesel bus. Then another bus. Then he built two stores—one at Mt Darwin, one at Chiweshe. Soon afterwards he established two stores in the Chihota Reserve, one in Salisbury, and a service station in Chihota. Recently he has acquired three new lorries.
He says he owes all this success to truth, hard work and fearlessness.
In politics he is not unknown. Soon after his return from the Cape he took an interest in the Southern Rhodesia African Association, whose membership includes a number of chiefs. Before long he was appointed its vice-president, eventually president. When a branch of the Federal Party was established in Harare he was chosen its first chairman. For some time he was a member of the Harare location advisory board and one of the location’s streets is named after him.
Mr Samuriwo is the first president of the Southern Rhodesia African Chamber of Commerce and is now president of the Southern Rhodesia African Transport Operators’ Association. He is an agricultural and horticultural adviser in Salisbury, a building contractor, a cartage contractor, greengrocer and provision