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Rhodesia Accuses.Pdf "In these pages I ask you — you people of the United Kingdom, you people of the older Dominions, you people of by the United States of America, you people of Europe — and the A.J.A. Peck respective governments of each one of you ... are you not, per­ haps, even as I write, now guilty ofj and contemplating yet, the perpetration of that final treason: the unconscious further­ ing of the ends of evil in the name of all that is most holy?" That is the question asked in this book. — Is it a question that the West can afford to ignore? A THREE SISTERS SPECIAL www.rhodesia.nl CONTENTS Preface Chapter 1. Introduction .. .. .. .. ... 7 2. A Letter to The Times 11 3. Reactions to "The Times" Letter .. .. 15 4. Ethical Insanity menaces Central Africa .. 19 5. The Good Faith of Mr. Macmillan's Govern­ ment 25 6. The Seeds of Bitterness: Rhodesia's 1961 Constitution 31 7. The "Sins" of the Rhodesians 52 8. The "Freedom" of African Nationalism .. 76 9. Todd and Whitehead 103 10. Ethical Insanity in Action 125 11. Thoughts concerning a Solution .. .. 144 12. Postscript .. 159 Appendix: The Middle Road—an Election Manifesto .. 165 PREFACE The letter reprinted here as Chapter 2 was origi­ nally published by The Times of London on the 19th November, 1965. It was reprinted in its entirety six days later by the East Africa and Rhodesia, a. weekly periodical published in London; it was quoted in The Rhodesia Herald, a Salisbury daily newspaper; and, after a further three weeks, it was re-published in full by a Salisbury weekly newspaper, The Citizen. Added to this, it has evoked a flood of correspon­ dence (of which extracts are printed in Chapter 3), together with numerous requests for permission to reproduce and distribute it. I have, in this book, sought to amplify and to prove the contents of that letter to The Times; and, since the Rhodesians have had to endure such constant, prolonged —and often grossly unfair—attacks, I make no apology for presenting only the one side of the case, and for presenting it vigorously. Should my reader suspect my title to have been derived from the title of Zola's J'accuse, he will not be incorrect. A.J.A. Peck. Salisbury, Rhodesia. Twentieth Century Rhodesia —Jameson Avenue, Salisbury. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Rhodesia was born of a vision—the vision of one man, Cecil John Rhodes, who believed that the British way of life was the best and made it his own life's work to spread that British way of life over as much of Africa as possible. Rhodes died on the 26th March, 1902, a millionaire three times over, gasping for a little air. It had been said of him that when he stood in Cape Town his shadow fell upon the Zambezi. Born at Bishops Stortford in 1853, he had come seeking a cure for tuberculosis in the sunshine of South Africa, and had stayed to amass his fortune at the Kimberley diamond fields. The thought then came to him, Rhodes later declared, "to render myself useful". Africa lay to the North—the "Dark Continent"—ruled by despotism, ignorance, witchcraft, slavery, savage tribal warfare and by disease unbounded. To bring light, to bring a nobler way of living, to that Dark Continent seemed to Rhodes to be work worthy of a man. Accordingly, in 1890, he fitted out an expedition to occupy what is today Rhodesia. The Pioneer Column came to a land in which there were no roads and there were no bridges, no telegraph lines and no electricity. Its inhabitants were totally illiterate, dressed in skins, living in huts of sticks, mud and thatch, and subsisting by the herding of a few scrub cattle and by the scratching of the soil for meagre crops; and the vast majority of the inhabitants were Mashona, living with their huts perched high up in the stone hills in deadly terror of the raiding parties of the Matabele. The handful of white men brought peace to that ravaged land. Medicine. Education. The fullness of the Western way of life. The indigenous peoples pros­ pered, multiplied. 7 In 1923, His Majesty King George V thought fit to confer self-government upon Southern Rhodesia; and, under that 1923 Constitution, of which more will be said in Chapter 6, save for the fact that during Federation certain powers were delegated to the Federal Government, the Rhodesians were completely self- governing for the forty-two years prior to the Declara­ tion of Independence. Surmounting the hard times of the Great Depres­ sion, Southern Rhodesia marched steadily forward. The British South Africa Police—a force equalled perhaps only by the Canadian Mounties—and a fine body of District Commissioners, Magistrates and Judges, administered a system of justice second to none, and unbroken peace replaced the previous ceaseless slaughter. Magnificent roads and bridges spanned the country. Free rural clinics fought pestilence to a standstill. Industry, mining, agriculture and commerce yielded rich fruit. Apart from South Africa—an older country with a vast output of gold—the educational facilities afforded to the indigenous peoples were unsurpassed in the whole continent. By 1953, Southern Rhodesia could have had Dominion status for the asking. But no!—the greatness of Rhodes was in the blood of the Rhodesians: in a national Referendum they voted, following the wishes of the United Kingdom, to join Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland to form the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland—a vast Federa­ tion with almost exactly four times the land area of the entire British Isles. Sir Godfrey Huggins (later Lord Malvern) who had been Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia since 1933, became Prime Minister of the new Federation, to be succeeded in that capacity by Sir Roy Welensky in 1956, when Malvern retired on the grounds of advancing years. Mr. Garfield Todd replaced Sir Godfrey Huggins as Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, only to be compelled to resign in 1958, in circumstances to be outlined in Chapter 9. Sir Edgar Whitehead, also to be mentioned in 8 Chapter 9, replaced Mr. Todd as Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia until defeated in the General Election of December, 1962, by the Rhodesian Front, first led by Mr. Winston Field, a Marandellas farmer, and then by Mr. Ian Smith. During the years in office of Mr. Todd, Sir Edgar Whitehead and the Rhodesian Front, five main African nationalist organisations were formed, each being banned in turn:— (1) The African National Congress (the A.N.C.) (2) The National Democratic Party (the N.D.P.) (3) The Zimbabwe African People's Union (Z.A.P.U.) (4) The People's Caretaker Council (the P.C.C.) (5) The Zimbabwe African National Union (Z.A.N.U.) These various organisations were, essentially, all one and the same organisation resuscitated after repeated bannings, save that the latter two factions, the P.C.C. and Z.A.N.U. represented a split in the African nation­ alist movement, and were two separate organisations, bitterly hostile to one another, formed and banned at about the same times. The reasons officially given for the banning of these organisations are set out in Chapters 8 and 9. Despite all that the enemies, external and internal, of the Federation and of Southern Rhodesia might say and do, Southern Rhodesia strode forward like a young giant within that Federal framework. Criticisms there were—of course ... The white man in Africa is adjudged unclean amongst the peoples of mankind simply because he is white; and I have considered those criticisms in Chapters 6 and 9. Has the white man's "crime" been any more, essentially, than to protect himself and his country from possible degeneration ? Be that as it may, in Salisbury, the capital city of Southern Rhodesia and of the Federation, multi-storey buildings soared upwards. On the Zambezi was built the greatest man-made lake in history—-Lake Kariba. The three Territories flourished, and wealth poured into Rhodesia's poor relation, Nyasaland. All Southern Rhodesia asked was her Independence 9 so far as was possible within that Federal structure. In Chapter 6 we see how, in 1961, the Rhodesians were squalidly tricked by those whom they believed they had most reason to trust. And, in 1963, as is recounted in Chapter 5, the very Federation itself was destroyed by resort to a subterfuge desperately unworthy of rulers of— This royal throne of kings, this sceptered isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise ... This precious stone set in the silver sea . Nyasaland was given independence, and re-named "Malawi". Northern Rhodesia was given independence, and re-named "Zambia". Neither Territory had ever before been self-governing. And Southern Rhodesia, now named simply "Rhodesia", the richest and most sturdily self-sufficient of the three, who had been self-governing for 42 years, who had sacrificed her independence in order to join the Federation—a Federation later to be destroyed by Britain—whose Electorate had been promised indepen­ dence in 1961?—was she given her independence? No! On the 11th of November, 1965, after two years of barren negotiation to be considered in Chapter 11, the Rhodesian Government, under the leadership of Mr. Ian Smith, felt compelled to declare Rhodesia indepen­ dent. Wilson's Government immediately imposed the most vindictive sanctions possible. And the prospect of war upon Rhodesia has "not been ruled out" . In these pages I ask you—you people of the United Kingdom, you people of the older Dominions, you people of the United States of America, you people of Europe—and the respective governments of each of you .
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