BOOK REVIEWS125Those interested in the technical development of agriculture and inimproving its service to farmers will be grateful to Dr Weinmann, the Univer-sity and the various sponsors for making these two publications possible andit is to be hoped that the difficult task of continuing the story will be tackledbefore long.Sugar Experiment Station, Mount Edgecombe, NatalP. A. DONOVANCold Comfort Confronted By G. and M. Clutton-Brock. Oxford, Mowbray,1972, 201pp., £1,25.Rhodesian Black behind Bars By D. Mutasa. Oxford, Mowbray, 1974, x,150pp., £0,95.The Rhodesian Board of Censors has determined that neither of these twobooks will be available in Rhodesia. I am not entirely clear as to the purposeof reviewing 'banned' books in a Rhodesian iournal. Is it to let the readers ofthe journal know that these 'illicit' books exist and give them an indicationof their contents? Given the inevitable brevity of a review this cannot be ofmuch help. Or is it to let some of the academic community abroad knowthat their colleagues in Rhodesia are not totally isolated and that they some-how still manage to get hold of banned books (usually on visits abroad)? Oris it to assess the potential value of such works for a limited circle of 'special-ists' inside, and possibly outside, Rhodesia in terms of scholarly research,should thev have, or be able to gain access to them? This last is probably themost realistic and useful objective. At the same time, the publication withinthe country of a review such as this could also be interpreted as a symbolicdenial of the legitimacy of the political censorship which is practised inRhodesia.Be th^t as it may, the banning; of these books as well as the fate of theauthors, who have been closely associated with each other in the Cold Com-fort co-operative farm venture, provide some significant pointers to the natureof Rhodesian society. I recall a meeting at the University of Rhodesia soonafter my return to the country in 1969. It had been organised by the campusCurrent Affairs Association to commemorate the centermnl of Ghandi'sbirth. The three speakers were Garfield Todd, D'dvmus Mutasa and GuyClutton-Brock. Todd and Clutton-Brock obviously enjoyed the occasion and Iremember the approving roar which issued from the predominantly blackstudent audience as Clutton-Brock exclaimed: Th;s vear our black motherswill bear more babies than there are Europeans in Rhodesia!' I also remembermv own incredulity at the fact that such speakers could still address a studentgathering within Rhodesia in such terms. Of the three speakers, Mutasa wasthe most subdued and circumspect in his statements, as behoves a black manin the situation. Todav none of them can operate freely in Rhodesia. Mutasawas detained late in 1970 and was onlv released two years later on conditionthat he left the country for Britain where he was to pursue a university educa-tion. Earlv in 1971 the Cold Comfort Farm Society itself was declared illegal,Clutton-Brock was stripped of his (acquired) Rhodesian citizenship and wasdeported. Todd was detained and later restricted to his farm after the PearceCommission had arrived in early 1972 to test the acceptance of the Anglo-Rhodesian settlement proposals.If one compares Cold Comfort Confronted and Rhodesian Black behind126BOOK REVIEWSBars, it is the Glutton-Brocks' book which now appears mild and relativelyinnocuous (despite their insistence on referring throughout to the post-1965regime as 'illegal') against Mutasa's forthright and frequently impassionedaccount in which the impact of imprisonment and the subsequent experienceof living abroad clearly shows. Both are essentially autobiographical accounts:Clutton-Brock's (for Guy is evidently the principal author) provides an out-line of his whole career, and Mutasa's deals chiefly with his detention (althoughhe fills the reader in briefly on his background). Yet in the end, it is clearlythe intention of both to say something about Rhodesian society rather thansimply about themselves. And both accounts are well worth reading for any-body wishing to gain a general acquaintance with the way in which thepernicious system of minority domination and racial discrimination operates.Both books have limitations even when viewed as partial auto-biographies. Coverage is highly selective and tendentious in the sense that theauthors are intent on making a number of points regarding settler society,the failings of the church, the virtues of traditional African society and soforth. Yet, in the case of Clutton-Brock, the account reveals a considerableamount about the person. His is a story fluently, even pleasantly, told. It ispossible that somebody might attempt a serious historical biography ofClutton-Brock in due course. But although the Rhodesian phase proved tobe the major involvement of his variegated and interesting career, I believesuch a study would cast more light on a peculiar strand of an idealisticBritish liberal socialism which emerged during the 1920s and 1930s than, say,on the rise of black nationalism or the prospect for collective enterprises inRhodesia. One thing that strikes the reader about Clutton-Brock is how littlehis optimistic and rather ill-defined faith in the evolutionary potentialitiesof man had changed from the time that he started working in the East Endboys' clubs to his forcible departure from Rhodesia. There is more than theordinary contradictions apparent in the Rugby and Cambridge-educated sonof a stockbroker's clerk who declined throughout his life to collect any posses-sions, but has always had friends in high places in Whitehall and in therespectable British left-wing establishment; who never really shunned pub-licity, but 'worked' all of these and a range of ecumenical contacts diligentlyto gather support for his various projects in Central Africa, or to bring moreinternational pressure to bear on the settler regime.As sources of specific historical data these books could be of some, iflimited, value. We learn as much about a small body like the Makoni Students'Association from Mutasa as is likely to be known until such time as C.I.D.files might become available in archives. Clutton-Brock gives a bit of detailregarding the role that he personally, and St Faith's Mission in general,played in the founding of the 1957 African National Congress. But anybodywho might eventually want to judge the successes and failures of the collectiveventures which he helped to initiate at St Faith's, Nyafuru, Bamangwato, orCold Comfort, would not find much data in these two books on which tobase their assessment. Significant insights are more likely to be drawn from'anecdotal' evidence which happens to be mentioned in passing. A case inpoint concerns the pervasive and partly informal surveillance of blacks whichemerges from Mutasa's experience. Any essay on citizenship which he hadwritten as punishment at Goromonzi secondary school during the fifties sur-faced as a key piece of evidence at Review Tribunal hearings during hisdetention nearly twenty years later to prove that he nursed a hatred againstWhites and was therefore likely to pose a threat to public peace and safety.University of RhodesiaC. M. BRAND