Zambezia (1977), 5 (i).ESSAY REVIEWBLACK LIBERALISM REVISITEDLAWRENCE VAMBE, a well-known Zimbabwean journalist, has recently pub-lished From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe,^ an autobiographical sequel to An IIUFated People which described his earliest years and the life of his ancestors.This new work begins in 1927 when he was ten years old and covers theperiod up to the early 1960s. The first seven chapters deal largely with aspectsof rural life, and then the narrative moves on to the urban environment ofFlarare, after World War II, the ensuing industrial conflict, and the birth ofa Zimbabwean nationalism.From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, by being both autobiographical and histori-cal, lends itself to assessment on two closely related levels. Firstly, in so faras it constitutes a part of the Zimbabwean literary response to the colonialsituation, it can be classified with the so-called 'New World' novels.2 At thesecond level, it can be criticized as a contribution to our historical understand-ing of the condition of black Zimbabweans' existence; in this aspect the book'sliterary qualities are secondary to its relevance.In the first seven chapters we are given a sequential account of his yearsof childhood and adolescence.. There is a very noticeable element of artifi-ciality in Vambe's endeavours to strike a balance between events which wereobjectively significant and those which made a vivid and lasting impression onhis mind; a good example is the following description of the impression thatthe Great Depression is supposed to have made on him at the age of ten:What had appeared before to be a prosperous industrial com-plex booming and bustling with the movement of men and machinery,was slowly grinding to a halt as the twenties came to an end . . .What most of us in Chishawasha did not know was that the countrywas caught in the devastating grip of a world wide economic de-pression. We noticed from about 1927 that the noise from the mines*stamping mills grew more and more muted.3This however seems to be a common failing in autobiographical works bySouthern African writers. Gerald Moore's criticism of Peter Abraham's TellFreedom and of Bloke Modisane's Blame Me on History can also be appliedto Vambe:Since we do not in fact experience the recollection of our pastsequentially but rather in a series of flashes, pools and explodinglines irradiating darkness, the art of unofficial autobiography seemsnowadays to demand the development of new narrative forms.4In the first part of the book, Vambe is at pains to find a link with thepast, through such characters as his grandmother, Madzidza, and particularlyi L. Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (London, Heinemann, 1976), xiv,290pp., £6.50,z G. P. Kahari, The Novels of Patrick Chakaipa (Salisbury, Longmans (Rhodesia),1972), 47-97.a From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, 56,Ł» G. Moore, The Chosen Tongue (London, Longmans, 1969), 205-6.9192ESSAY REVIEWhis grandfather, Chief Mashonganyika, whose death in 1927 he takes tosymbolize the end of an era. The striving for a link with the past is acharacteristic of most African writing as Moore tells us:African writers have in the main sought to release the energiesof the past by methods more humdrum direct and humane. Theyhave not sought an artifact they could thrill to, so much as a grand-father they could recognize, a living and suffering man who knewwhat it was to make moral choices and to endure their consequences.3This is an obvious and understandable reaction considering the denigra-tion of the African past by European missionaries and administrators, butthere is also the danger of painting too perfect a picture of the past. ChiefMashonganyika, the symbol of the past in Vambe's book, stands out as theparagon of all virtues:Though spare of body and a man of extreme humility, he hada remarkable presence. He exuded a kind of all-pervading love anda direct personal concern for each one of his people and they in turnhad repaid him with a reverence and obedience that could only havesprung from their conviction that he was the supreme symbol of theirtribal existence.6The question may well be asked whether in the mid-1920s, at least thirtyyears, that is, after the imposition of colonial rule and capitalism on Zim-babwe, there was really an authentic tribal existence Š or is this just nos-talgia on Vambe's part for the supposed simplicity of the past?Vambe's characterization follows the pattern of most African writingthat deals with the impact of colonialism on African traditional society. Asin Bernard Chidzero's Nzvengamutsvairo, we get the juxta-position of socialgroups, expressed through the characterization: the arch-traditionalists whoare stubborn to change, those who try and find a modus vivendi between thenew way of life and the old, and those who have unreservedly imbibed westerncivilization. In From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe these three social groups arerepresented seriatim by: Madzidza, Vambe's grandmother, who is opposedto 'Chirungu', the European way of life;8 Jakobo and Nherera who 'managedto keep one foot in the African world and the other in the European';9 andfinally John Nyamayaro who had bacon and eggs for breakfast and 'seemedto typify best of all the adaptable character of most of his generation and theurge to go the whole way in fitting themselves into the European way oflife'.10Vambe's characterization, however, is in instances oversimplified. Thetact that as he puts it, he was at one time labelled a 'stooge', in spite of whathe calls 'his past and present record in fighting discrimination and whitesupremacy in all its guises',11 reduces his leit-motif to mere self-justification.One gets the uncomfortable suspicion when reading his characterizations thatthere is a conscious and rather vulgar attempt on his part to construct ageneological justification for his place in the struggle for the liberation ofs Ibid., 133.6 From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, 3.7 G. P. Kahari. 'Tradition and innovation in Shona literature: Bernard Chidzero'sNzvengamutsvairo', Revue des Langues Vivantes (1971), 37, 78-80.e From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, 4.» Ibid., 15.io Ibid., 12.» Ibid., 263.T, D. SHOPO93Zimbabwe, Thus concerning his uncle Jakobo we are told that 'what madehim unusual was his lack of spurious African nationalism'; similarly of oneof his cousins, we learn that 'Francis Kaseke showed no inclination whateverto enter the employment of a European . . . His motives were as politicalas those of Jakobo'.12One asks then how relevant is From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, as an ex-pression of the mass of black Zimbabweans' existence and how useful is itas an historical source?It is quite obvious that Vambe can be classed alongside the SouthAfrican black writers who, it has been said, 'wrote from the acrobatic positionpeculiar to African intellectuals in the 1950's, the audacious one of a youngblack who has a foot in the white liberal world and the other holding hisplace in the black proletariat of the township'.'3 Vambe's description of whathe terms 'tha lowest of the lowest' stratum of black society, reveals a certainsuperciliousness and lack of empathy. This is how he describes his first en-counter with them:I found it difficult to believe that grown up human beings could livelike the oxen and the mules which they were looking after and beproud of working under these conditions. I had never felt so superiorbefore and the wav to show it was not to stay there a minute longerthan was absolutely necessary.14In several instances, it is easy to detect the pangs of regret and frustra-tion he felt because of the levelling effect of segregation, which denied theblack middle class a place in the sun:We were 'native' and as 'natives' we had to share a commonway of life, although we represented every level of human develop-ment, from the most primitive tribesman who could not use alavatory seat properly or ran like a demented stone-age man at thesight of a whining ambulance to a university graduate.13At the subconscious level From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe is undoubtedlyaimed at white readers in order to rouse their consciences to the frustrationssuffered by the black intelligentsia. It is therefore not surprising that Vambesnows no definite commitment to any particular political ideology, and hispolitical comments can best be summed up as liberal platitudes mingled withself-evident truths. Characteristically, there is over-concentration on suchlegislation as the Land Apportionment Act, the Industrial Conciliation Act,which assume for him a symbolical and mystical significance. He thusextensively defines and describes the conditions under which black Zimba-bweans lived in a discriminatory system, but does not relate these conditionsto the socio-economic structure of Rhodesian society.This probably stems from his failure to comprehend the dialectical rela-tionship between capitalism and racism:Not even the hard-headed industrialists in need of growing internalmarket, nor the white trade unionist, with all his doctrinaire supportfor just lates of pay realized how seriously handicapped the black»2 Ibid., 13, 19.«3 N. Gordimer, 'English language literature, and politics in South Africa', Journalof Southern African Studies (1976), 2, 141.i* From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, 31.is Ibid.. 195.94ESSAY REVIEWworkers were, nor recognized the deadening effect such a system couldonly have ultimately on society as a whole.'8Vambe thus echoes a main supposition of liberal ideology that moderncapitalism in Rhodesia has been a functional socio-economic system charac-terized by racial inter-dependence:I also witnessed how inter-dependent the whites and the blackswere. Black servants were a necessity of life to every white person inhis home, at his office and in every other sphere except in his think-ing ... By the same token, I realized that these working Africanscould not do without the white either. Every black person who cameinto the town became wholly dependent for his very survival on thewhite people. He could not achieve any dream without the goodwilland assistance of the Europeans, who had the wealth and ran thesystem. I was beginning to realize that in the event of the white manpulling out, the African would be left with nothing more thanshattered dreams. It was an interesting discovery.17In the same vein. Vambe makes the naive and emotional assumptionthat racism in Rhodesia could have been circumvented by a change in whitealtitudes:their fear of speaking out against racial injustice led the Jesuitfathers to keep the minds of my people off questions of human rightsand their future in Chishawasha itself. It was out of the egg of thisfearful silence maintained by all liberal-minded and Christian peoplethat the venomous serpent of the Rhodesian Front was to be bornin December 1962,'8In spite of all the faults in the book that have been discussed so far,there is much of value in it for the historian, especially from Chapter8 onwards. There are useful biographical sketches of African politicalleaders such as Charles Mzingeli. James Chikerema, Joshua Nkomo andothers. Other aspects of interest which Vambe deals with are Š the 'locationsystem', housing conditions, the insecurity of African women in urban areasand the development of the African press.It is unfortunate that he had to end the book in 1962 and did not takeit up to the present. The part of the book which discusses the beginning ofpolitical consciousness is extremely useful to the student of African national-ism in Zimbabwe. He appropriately describes Harare as having been 'thebreeding ground of Zimbabwe black nationalism as well as of its foremostthinkers and planners'.19 One can trace the development of black politicaland social consciousness from the 'reformist consciousness' expressed by suchbodies as the National Youth League and the Harare Civic Association andthe Reformed I.C.U. (which did not go beyond mere protest at marginalliving conditions in urban areas) to a dialectical awareness of the processesof marginalization,20 expressed in the formation of militant nationalist partiesdedicated to institutional changes and to a restructuring of the economy.University of RhodesiaT, D. SHOPOŁ 6 Ibid., 65.t? Ibid., 33.'e Ibid.. 40.«9 Ibid., 143.20 S. Amin, 'Accumulation and development: A theoretical model'. Review of Afri-can Political Economy (1974), 1, 24-5.