Going Home - Doris May Lessing [85]
And, from a politician in Northern Rhodesia: ‘The reason why Lord Malvern’s stuck out for his Kariba is because his fancy has been tickled by the fact that the lake will be the biggest man-made lake in the world. At last it’s a monument big enough to retire on—like Rhodes and Rhodesia.’
But such carping remarks would not go down well at Kariba itself, which is infected, if any place is, by a pioneering, obstacle-crashing, rip-roaring atmosphere of achievement.
After lunch we descended to the verge of the Zambezi, where a hippopotamus stood shoulder-deep in the shallows, very enviably, for it was steamy and hot, 86 degrees in the shade. But apparently this is considered cool in these parts, for the temperature only a few weeks back was in the hundreds.
And then I returned to my proper business of looking at housing and collecting figures. I had read speeches by African politicians that the labourers at Kariba had been dying like flies and working in very bad conditions. I was shown the site where an African hut-camp had been, and was told things had been so bad there that the welfare people had insisted the whole place must be bulldozed down. So they must have been bad. But I do not believe that the Africans were dying like flies. Time and again, speaking to Africans, I hear the terrible: ‘The Europeans want to kill us all off, they won’t feel happy and safe until we are all dead.’ But my personal belief is that no one African will be allowed unnecessarily to die as long as there is such a shortage of labour; they will be treated in such a way as to preserve health and working efficiency—no worse, and no better.
The temporary housing for Africans looked like that I have already described—adequate, inhuman, barrack-like. Showers one for fifty men, latrines one for twenty, three single men to a hut, twenty to a dormitory. The new township on the hill, which will hold eight thousand Africans, will be on the same lines.
I interviewed at random one worker, of whom Paul had made a drawing. His name was Jeremiah; and he came from Portuguese East Africa, near Beira. He was a Shangaan, and had been three months working in Southern Rhodesia at £3 a month. In Portuguese territory he had been earning £5 a month. Why, then, had he come to Southern Rhodesia? He wanted to travel, he said. He had never been to school, was illiterate, did not know how old he was. He had a wife in his village at home, but no children.
My guide asked him: ‘Which white men are kinder, those in Portuguese East Africa, or those in Southern Rhodesia?’—which was how my query, which nation he preferred working for, translated into kitchen Kaffir. To which he replied: ‘All white men are nice.’
But he hated being questioned and wanted to get away.
I said, ‘Well, we’ve got the facts, but we don’t know what he feels.’
At which the official said: ‘These types don’t know what they feel. Only the educated ones do, and they’re embittered.’
This official, when asked what he thought of Partnership, said: ‘Huggins is a Kaffir-lover. He doesn’t care about the white people, only the natives. I prefer the South African system.’
Again, much complaint about prostitutes. Most women here are not wives, but camp-followers: the welfare man’s term for them. There are about three dozen; and they earn as much as £60 to £90 a month.
‘We allow the prostitutes because if you have wives around there’s so much trouble with the single men always fighting with the husbands. We see that the prostitutes don’t live here; they live in neighbouring villages.’
The compound manager said: ‘Everyone applying for married quarters here is going to have to produce a marriage certificate; we’re not going to have these temporary wives here. And there isn’t a Native Commissioner