Then there was a knock on the door, and through the small window they could see the shape of a policeman against the sky, and then another policeman. Four of the men in the room got up, and without a word ran out of the house by the back door into the night. For they were citizens of other countries, that is to say, they came from Nyasaland or from Northern Rhodesia, and even though they might have worked in this country all their lives, like Samson, they could be deported within a day.
When the two policemen came in there were only three men and Samson. But it could be seen that there had been more in the room. They asked to see the papers of the three men, and from these papers it could be seen that they were from this country. The three men wished Samson good night, like friends saying good night after a visit, and went out.
Then the two policemen went into the kitchen and saw Mrs Mujani sitting by her stove knitting a jersey for her daughter. She looked up and went on knitting, though it could be seen that her hands were trembling, and her knees were held together to keep them still. They left her, and went back into the other room, and Samson was straightening the chairs, like a host after his guests were gone. They stood for a moment, watching him, with their sticks in their hands, and then one saw a bundle of papers lying on the table, and he jumped forward for it.
‘And what are these papers?’ he shouted at Samson, unrolling them.
‘I do not know,’ said Samson. And then, thinking he might get his friends into trouble, he said: ‘I found them lying on the ground.’
The two policemen, both tall, strong, fine fellows, spread the papers on the table, and looked at them, and then one turned to Samson and said, ‘Do you not know these papers are forbidden?’
‘No,’ said Samson. ‘I know nothing.’
And now the two policemen came towards Samson, threatening. And the old man shrank back a little and then stood his ground. A timid man he had always been, a gentle man, a man who avoided trouble, and yet here he stood, in his own house with two big policemen standing over him. And his wife was crying in the next room. He could hear her.
‘Where did you get these papers?’ asked one of the policemen, and he hit Samson with his open hand across his head. Samson fell sideways a few steps, recovered, and said:
‘I know nothing.’
And then the other policeman, grinning, moved across and hit Samson with his open hand on the other side of the head, so he staggered back to the first.
Now the wife was in the open door, wailing aloud.
The first policeman said: ‘We will put you in prison, my fine fellow, you damn fool, you Kaffir.’
‘What are you doing in my house?’ asked Samson, breathing hard. ‘This is my house.’
‘Your house—you say that to the police?’
And he hit Samson again, with his closed fist, on the side of the head, and as Samson reeled across the room the other policeman hit him with his closed fist.
And now there was a silence, for instead of staggering back, to be hit again, Samson stood, his face screwed up, eyes shut, then his mouth dropped and his head fell sideways, and he slumped to the ground.
The wife wailed again.
The two policemen looked at each other, hurriedly bent over Samson who was lying on the ground motionless, and then ran out of the house into the night.
When Dickson came in from his friends’, he found his mother sitting beside his father, swaying from side to side, moaning. His father was dead.
When the other sons and daughters came in, they talked over what to do.
Some said to go to the Superintendent. But the mother was frightened.
One said that policemen were not allowed to kill a man by hitting him, but another that the policemen would lie and there would be trouble.
At last one ran for the nurse at the hospital, and men came with a stretcher and carried Samson away. They said he had fallen down dead suddenly.
He was an old man, and none had eaten for two days.
On the next day the mother sat wailing in her kitchen, and the sons and daughters were with the crowds around the hall and the playing ground, listening to the talk about the strike, and to the men who were standing on boxes explaining about the strike. It was here that Dickson saw a policeman looking close at him. And the policeman came up to him through the crowd and stood by him and said: ‘Where’s your situpa?’ Dickson produced his papers, and the policeman said: ‘You’d better go home, you go to Nyasaland, before they catch you. I know you have those papers in your house.’ Dickson looked at him, and then around for help, but the people about him had melted away to give distance to the policeman. He said nothing. Then the policeman went away, swinging his stick, and Dickson slowly went home.
What is this about the papers?’ he asked his mother.
She raised her voice and wept. He said: ‘Mother, mother, it was those papers that killed him.’
She had put them in the back of the cupboard in the kitchen, and Dickson took them out and looked at them, and understood nothing. But he put them under his coat, and was going to find the men who had been there the night before, to ask why these papers had killed his father, when he saw the policeman again, walking slowly past his house, looking at him, and then he turned and walked slowly back, looking at him all the time.
And now for the first time he listened to the wailing of the old woman, who was saying that she was alone, she was alone, and she wanted to go home. She meant to Nyasaland. In Nyasaland the police did not come into people’s houses and hit them, there the police did not walk with sticks in their hands. She spoke as if she had come from there a week ago, instead of so many years. But Dickson listened, and he stood by the window and looked out and saw the policeman go past again, looking at him, fierce and threatening.
The papers were hot and uncomfortable under his coat. When at last the policeman went away, he left his mother and hastened to the house of one of the men who were directing the strike, but he was not there, and he did not like to leave these dangerous papers. He went to another house and another, but no one would tell him where the men were. So at last he returned to his own home, and all that night the mother and the children discussed what it was they should do. One of the daughters and one of the sons said they would stay in this city. Why go back home? There was nothing there, only the old people in the villages, and no work, and nothing to buy with money—no money even.
But Dickson and his youngest brother, who was only twelve years, and one sister said they would go with the mother.
But first they must get money from the people who employed them, and then there was the question of the papers.
On the next day the strike was finished. The mother and the youngest son, who worked as piccanin, or odd-job man in a house at the other end of the town, and the daughter, who was a nanny, went to tell their employers they must leave quickly, they must go home, their mother had died, or their father, or their child—anything, so as to leave quickly.
But Dickson, who had the papers under his coat and who seemed to see that policeman everywhere, waited until the night came. When the dusk had fallen, he was hurrying out of the gate of the township, when he did indeed see the policeman, who fell into step beside him, and said, ‘Where are you going?’
And Dickson said quickly, in a low voice: ‘We are going to Nyasaland, we are going home…’
And then the policeman swerved off and away, on his own business, and Dickson came quickly through the streets to the Mansions, and up the narrow staircase and to the kitchen.
In the morning, when we went to look for him, and could not find him, we examined the bundle of wet and torn papers. In it were copies of the World Federation of Trade Unions Journal from Britain, which is banned, and other journals from down south. There was a copy of the Industrial Conciliation Act. There were also two pamphlets, very worn, as if innumerable hands had held them, one called Peoples of Soviet Asia Awake! and the other Fight the Devil Drink.
13
Going to Nor
thern Rhodesia means visiting the Copper Belt, which is the backbone of the country; so that unless one is careful one sees the place as a string of little mining towns. But the country is a vast, scarcely developed, hardly populated area with a tiny metal spine. From the point of view of the Africans, the Copper Belt and Lusaka are places to earn money in. Their life is based on the tribe and village much more than in Southern Rhodesia. For one thing, only about 5 per cent of the land has been alienated from them. For another, there has been no deliberate attempt to smash the tribal system, as is being done in Southern Rhodesia. Outside the towns, the Chief is the focal point of authority and respect, the symbol of the old feeling, where land is owned in common, everybody knows his or her place in the community and rights and duties are not in dispute because they have been established for generations.
The paradox of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland is this: the Africans are avid for advancement, to acquire skills, to become educated, to find a place in the modern world. But because of Federation, because of their fear of the Southern Rhodesian and South African systems, which they see as identical, because they see every move the white settlers make as a trick to take their land from them, they are resisting what they most desire and need. They fall back on the Chiefs and on tribalism because that is something of their own, a protection against the destruction of their dignity as people.
What they are saying, in effect, is this: ‘If the price of entering the modern world, civilization as it is defined in Europe, of becoming industrialized, is to lose what small vestiges of liberty we still retain, then we prefer to remain what you call backward.’
The symbol of this choice is the Colonial Office.
‘As long as we can keep Colonial Office control here, it will save us from being handed over body and soul to the white settlers.’
And so, in Southern Rhodesia, officials argue bitterly: ‘We are advancing the Africans much faster than the Colonial Office because under our administration they are going to have no choice but to enter industrialism, to leave tribalism behind.’ And they really feel aggrieved about it because they cannot see the Africans as a people, as a people with its own soul.
This is one of the cases, I think, where liberty has become more important to a people than more money, better living conditions.
The Copper Belt is owned by two big companies, Anglo-American and the Rhodesian Selection Trust. The ramifications of the finance are involved; but, broadly speaking, Anglo-American is South African, that is, British capital; and the Rhodesian Selection Trust is American. That, at least, is how they are spoken of by the citizens of Northern Rhodesia, and a great deal of interesting gossip goes on about the rivalries between the two, their different methods of handling labour, and how Anglo-American is conservative by temperament, while the Selection Trust is more flexible and go-ahead. But after two weeks in Northern Rhodesia I had formed an image in my mind of these two copper giants facing each other with an angry scowl, left hands secretly linked, while they shadow-boxed with their right.
The rate of exploitation in Northern Rhodesia is higher than in any other Colonial territory.
The annual profits from the copper mines have reached £50,000,000, of which more than half leaves the country for external shareholders. The annual wage bill for the Africans is less than £5,000,000.
I was going to Kitwe-Nkana, under the aegis of Anglo-American. With their representative in Salisbury, a most courteous and helpful man, I had had the by now familiar interview, during which I had been able to agree, with every sincerity, that the industrialists were against the industrial colour bar and for African advancement, and that the white trade unions were in comparison reactionary.
I therefore took the plane north to Ndola.
Ndola is a small-scale Bulawayo or Salisbury, and I had no wish to stay there; but I wanted to find the friend of a friend who lived there, a man who spends his time investigating African conditions of living, and who could give me the sort of information I wanted. For in a town in Southern Rhodesia twenty-four hours with a couple of anthropologists investigating urban Africans had taught me more than interviews with several dozen officials. (Incidentally this couple had asked permission to do a survey on the effects of the colour bar on the lives of the white people; this caused great offence—they were instructed to stick to the Africans.)
But I could not find the man I wanted. The address given me by the bank turned out to be an empty house, and I pursued various false scents without result. The time was not wasted, because my African taxi-driver, having heard I was a journalist from Britain, talked without inhibition or a moment’s pause about what he thought about Federation, Partnership, white supremacy and so on. Nothing new; but I had, after all, chosen his taxi at random. Again I was struck by the comparative independence of the northern people; no Southern Rhodesian African would ever express himself to a stranger with such confidence.
There being no train, plain, or coach to Kitwe-Nkana, I went by taxi, harangued all the way by my driver. An expensive business; 50 miles so far as I can remember.
Kitwe-Nkana has one hotel, at which I found a bed with difficulty. Everything is so overcrowded in all these cities that one has to book weeks in advance.
I tried to get through to my hosts at the mining offices, but it turned out to be Labour Day and an official holiday. Therefore I went in search of Mr Katilungu, President of the African Mineworkers’ Union. The taxi-man knew at once who he was and where I might find him. ‘At this time of day he will be at his house.’
This taxi-driver was a Southern Rhodesian, come up to the Copper Belt in search of higher wages. But he did not like Northern Rhodesia, in spite of the wages. ‘They do not enjoy themselves here as well as we do,’ he said. But I think he was simply homesick.
He asked me spontaneously, ‘Why are these trade unions? What is the good of them? Why do you want to see Mr Katilungu?’
I explained the purpose of a trade union.
‘Yes, I know that is what is said. But our wages are still very low, and already trade unions have been here many years.’
And then, after listening politely to what I said: ‘Congress is good, yes. Congress makes white men frightened. But white men do not mind trade unions.’
Mr Katilungu has a little house in one of the townships. It was filled with people—a friend of his, a visiting Chief from the Northern Province, was there with his entourage of young men.
So there was a three-cornered interview.
The Senior Chief, a very dignified old man, expected and got homage from Mr Katilungu, and everything that was said was translated for his benefit.
Discussion about the trade union centred, of course, around the industrial colour bar, and about the attempts by the Companies to form a stooge union, the Salaried Staffs Association.
Federation: ‘Even the whites don’t like it,’ said Mr Katilungu. ‘All the Copper Belt money goes to Southern Rhodesia. Everything has gone up in price since Federation.’
And the Senior Chief joined in here to say: ‘They promised us complete social, economic and political equality. They have broken their promise.’
Capricorn: ‘They were campaigning here for Federation, trying to get us to support it. Now they want us to forget that campaign, and to believe they are for racial equality.’
During the discussion children were drifting in and out of the room, perching on the arms of chairs, standing by the knees of their elders. A tiny child came and climbed on my knee, sat staring with solemn interest into my white face. This touched me very much, though I told myself it was nothing but sentimentality that it should.
It was the Senior Chief who particularly interested me. The moment I began to ask questions about what was happening out in the country, he said: ‘I am glad the foreign journalist is interested in the people in the villages as well as the people in the towns.’ I think he was a little resentful because I had been asking questions mainly of Mr Katilungu.
I asked about the pos
ition of the Chiefs. He emphasized that the Chiefs were superior to the District Commissioners, that only they had the right to distribute land, and that because of their strength and authority the Northern Rhodesian Government had not been able to destroy the people’s cattle as had been done in the south.
As soon as he finished talking, one of his young men said in English: ‘Yes, but a Chief the Government doesn’t like is deposed. And the District Commissioners put what they call troublemakers into prison. We young men are always going to prison. And don’t forget to write in your articles that it is the District Commissioner who tries a man, as well as sending him for trial. The District Commissioner can do as he likes.’
I don’t think the Senior Chief understood these remarks. He said something in his own language, which sounded to me like a demand for them to be translated; but Mr Katilungu went on quickly, talking about something else.
That afternoon, in that small, hot room, I was seeing the clash between the two different kinds of African leadership: the traditional and hereditary, and the new leadership of the towns. It seemed to me that the great courtesy and deference shown by Mr Katilungu towards the old man was the willing deference of a man who knows himself to be stronger and can afford to give way, all the more so because with a part of himself he wished to pay homage to the old ways.
As for the young men, save for that one who spoke about troublemakers, they sat and said nothing, leaving their elders to speak for them.
At the hotel I found my room already shared by a young woman called Eileen. She was a fat, phlegmatic, freckled girl who sighed at every second breath, while she told me the story of her life, which she did at once.
It seemed that Eileen was thirty years old, and she lived with her Mom in Salisbury. Mom did not allow her to smoke or to drink, although she allowed her married sister to smoke and drink because she was married. Eileen was a typist, earning £65 a month; although she could earn far more if she wanted to move to another firm which was offering her £80. But she was used to her boss, and preferred being respected to earning more money. But last year she had got restless and went to Johannesburg, where she at once secured a job out of 120 applicants. But she got homesick at the end of the first week and went back to Salisbury. Then she got restless again and applied for a job on the Copper Belt at £80 a month, and got it; but Mom said: ‘You are a nice girl, Eileen, and you’ll never be happy with those rough types on the Copper Belt.’ So she had thrown up that job before even starting.
NF (1957) Going Home Page 23
