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‘NORMAL POLITICAL ACTIVITIES’: RHODESIA, THE PEARCE COMMISSION, AND THE AFRICAN NATIONAL COUNCIL

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2012

LUISE WHITE
LUISE WHITE*
Affiliation:
University of Florida
*
*Author's email: [email protected]
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Abstract

In 1972 a British commission arrived in Rhodesia to test how acceptable the latest and most comprehensive proposals to end Rhodesia's rebellion were to its entire people. Africans rejected the proposals in overwhelming numbers. Such powerful opposition was attributed to the African National Council, said to be a new and spontaneous organization, but in fact the creation of the banned political parties. This article examines the political agitation during the Pearce Commission's visit to show how commonplace the layers of political affiliation, substitution, and deception were in the groups that both supported and opposed the proposals in 1970s Rhodesia.

Keywords

Zimbabwedecolonizationnationalismpolitics
Type
Race, Education, and the Politics of Nationalism
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , November 2011 , pp. 321 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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30 Muzorewa, Rise Up, 106; Kirk, Tony, ‘Rhodesia's “Pro-settlement groups” and the Anglo-Rhodesian constitutional dispute’, Issue: A Journal of Opinion, 3:1 (1973), 2–5Google Scholar; Rhodesia Settlement Forum, ‘Why Settlement is vital for Rhodesia’, Salisbury, 21 Nov. 1971, in Christopher Nyangoni and Gideon Nyandoro (eds.), Zimbabwe Independence Movements: Selected Documents (New York, 1979), 187–201.

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33 NAZ ORAL BE2, Rt. Hon. Sir Hugh Beadle, Bulawayo, Feb. 1972; NAZ ORAL QU2, Hon. H. J. Quinton Salisbury, May 1977 and May 1978. The sympathies of the former colonial governors is a minor trope in Pearce Commission writings, see Judith Todd's account of her meeting with Sir Glyn Jones, Say No, 115–16.

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35 Smith, Betrayal, 154–5.

36 Report, 12–13.

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39 Meredith, The Past, 97; Hancock, White Liberals, 159.

40 Report, 6.

41 CL Smith 4/003(M), Record of Meeting between Harold Smedly and J. F. Gaylard, 17 Jan. 1972, Pearce Commission, Sundry Meetings. In the US, random, or probability, sampling had become increasingly inclusive and scientific in the 1940s and ‘50s; by 1955 there was a shift in scientific sampling to develop ways to recognize the variety of minority opinions. See Igo, Sarah, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge, 2007), 126–34, 148–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Southern Rhodesia had been the exposed to survey research since the late 1950s, and researchers prided themselves on the rigorous methods they brought to survey research and the census. See Rogers, Cyril A. and Frantz, C., Racial Themes in Southern Rhodesia: The Attitudes and Behavior of the White Population (New Haven 1962), 42–86Google Scholar; Shutz, Barry M., ‘European population patterns, cultural persistence, and political change in Rhodesia’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 7:2 (1975), 3–25Google Scholar.

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43 Todd, Say No, 72.

44 Report, 31–2, 38.

45 CL Smith 4/003(M), Record of Meeting held in Prime Minister's Office, 12 Jan. 1972, 4PM, Pearce Commission, Sundry Meetings.

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47 Report, 70; Todd, Say No, 114–18; Mutasa, Didymus, Rhodesian Black Behind Bars (London, 1974), 75–6Google Scholar.

48 Report, 58–9, 72–3. In contentious public meetings, the Asian community supported the proposals by the narrowest of margins.

49 Report, 165, 168. In a few urban areas, public meetings had to be postponed because of demonstrations and riots. Subsequent meetings were held in the magistrate's court and went smoothly, 172.

50 Berlyn, Phillipa, The Quiet Man. A Biography of Ian Douglas Smith, I. D. Prime Minister of Rhodesia (Salisbury, 1978), 205–6Google Scholar. Berlyn was a journalist assigned to the commission as an interpreter. The only time she saw a crowd outraged was when the commission arrived two hours late.

51 Report, 17; Muzorewa, Rise Up, 99–101.

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53 See Morgan, Edmund S., Inventing the People: The Rise of Popular Sovereignty in England and America (New York, 1988), 183–9Google Scholar; Frank O'Gorman, ‘The secret ballot in nineteenth century Britain’, in Romain Bertrand, et al. (eds.), The Hidden History of the Secret Ballot (Bloomington, 2006), 16–42.

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58 Report, 104–7; Hancock, White Liberals, 152–3; ‘What happened to Ronnie Sadomba’, Centre Point, 2:4 (1972), 2; Peter Niesewand, ‘Settlement’, 8–10; Niesewand, In Camera, 67. This infuriated the RF, who were to complain that the commission did not want district commissioners present when Africans gave evidence, and thus had failed to see ‘that they were taking evidence from the same crowd at each meeting’. These men traveled in buses, ‘three busloads at a time’, filled the halls and took turns giving evidence ‘so it's not always the same men’. Quinton interview, NAZ/ORAL/QU2. Smith repeated this in his memoirs: ‘leading agitators traveled in advance of the commission, from meeting to meeting, orchestrating the opposition.’ Smith, Betrayal, 155.

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63 Among the groups that now made up the ANC were the African Christian Council (founded 1906), the African Farmers Union (founded 1936), and the African Teachers Association (founded 1944). ‘Rhodesia: ANC and others’, Africa Confidential, 13:10 (19 May 1972), 6–7; Muzorewa, Rise Up, 106–11.

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65 CL Smith 4/003(M), Meeting, Dorneywood, 17 Apr. 1972, 11AM. The Centre Party had also come to London in March to ask that the proposals be implemented so as to develop rural areas; they had only been vetoed, they argued, because of intimidation. See Hancock, White Liberals, 160; ‘Rhodesia: ANC and Others’, 7. Six months later, the Centre Party disconnected its phones and closed its offices. BHI CE/5, Diana Mitchell, Paper for circulation at Centre Party Congress, 28 Oct. 1972.

66 For much of 1972 Douglas-Home and his negotiators claimed to have been misled by Rhodesians and their fictions. Lord Goodman said Smith had assured him that chiefs could deliver the African vote: ‘No one warned me that the idea that chiefs could control tribes was wrong. The tribes controlled the chiefs.’ Quoted in Brivati, Lord Goodman, 204. Before the White Paper was published, however, Douglas-Home wrote memos about what to do if the proposals were rejected: British National Archives, Kew (BNA) CAB 129/159/128, Alec Douglas-Home, ‘Rhodesia: Options in the Event of a failure to achieve a settlement’, 5 Nov. 1971.

67 Rhodesian cabinet committees were more flexible than Smith was. A fraction of the United Kingdom committee, for example, suggested that Rhodesia implement some of the proposals anyway, and wait for Britain to react. CL Smith 4/003(M), United Kingdom Committee, Cabinet Room, 26 Apr. 1972.

68 CL Smith 4/003(M), Meeting, Dorneywood; Second meeting, Carlton Terrace, 19 Apr. 1972.

69 CL Smith 4/003(M), Meeting with Prime Minister and Sir Denis Greenhill, 17 May 1972, Test of Acceptability Discussions and Meetings with British.

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72 Parliamentary Debates, 8 June 1972, cols. 207, 209–10, 213; ‘Rhodesia: distant prospects’, 7. A government pamphlet published that month concluded that the British should amend the proposals to earn ‘the respect and gratitude of those Rhodesians whose interests Britain claims to represent’. Ministry of Information, Where Did Pearce Go Wrong? A Brief Appreciation of the Pearce Report (Salisbury, 1972), 5Google Scholar.

73 Muzorewa, Rise Up, 118, 123.

74 Kirk, ‘Pro-settlement groups’, 4–5. Muzorewa noted that these African groups were funded by the Rhodesian government, at the same time it denounced the ANC as ‘rabble-rousers’. Years later, he boasted that the ANC was not banned because the Rhodesian government could not establish a link between it and the banned political parties now in Lusaka. Muzorewa, Rise Up, 120–1, 124–5.

75 ‘Rhodesia: Distant prospects’, Africa Confidential, 13:16 (11 Aug. 1972), 6–7; CL Smith 4/003(M), Minutes, Working Committee of the United Kingdom Committee, 11 Oct. 1972.

76 CL Smith 4/003(M), United Kingdom Committee, Memoranda, 8 Dec. 1972, and Minutes, 31 May 1973.

77 Muzorewa, Rise Up, 131–3; Smith, Betrayal, 157–8.

78 Quoted Martin and Johnson, Struggle for Zimbabwe, 101.

79 Throughout 1972, the 1961 constitution was hauled out as an example of the consequences of African intransigence: had Africans not boycotted the referendum on the 1961 constitution, white Rhodesians never would have elected the Rhodesian Front in 1962. When Africans removed themselves from the political processes specific to Rhodesia, they got what they deserved. Bowman, White Politics, 187; Hancock, White Liberals, 152–3; Meredith, The Past, 101–2. For the afterlife of the 1961 complaint, see Shamuyarira, Nathan, Crisis in Rhodesia (London, 1965), 165–7Google Scholar; Wood, So Far, 74.