BOOK REVIEWSA Non-Racial Island of Learning: A History of the University College ofRhodesia from its Inception to 1966 By M. Gelfand. Gwelo, MamboPress, Zambeziana Series No. 4, 1978, 376 pp., illustrated, Rh$12,00(p/b. RhS9,80).The Future of the University in Southern Africa Edited by H. W. van derMerwe and D. Welsh. Cape Town, D. Philip, 1977, 302 pp., Rh$12,00.Professor Gelfand would be the first to admit that he is not a professionalhistorian. His book is not easy to read, largely because he is not selectiveenough in distinguishing what should go in the text and what should berelegated to footnotes or appendices. The result is that the attention of thereader is distracted from time to time from the main thread of what is afascinating story.There is, however, no possible doubt that Professor Gelfand has writtena very important book. He has meticulously tracked down a variety of primesources, supplementing the printed and written word with recorded inter-views of some of the dramatis personae. It is unfortunate that he did nothave access to Government records in the National Archives of Rhodesia forthe period after 1955. When they are available to scholars they mayreveal that the College owes much to senior civil servants who managedto persuade their masters to keep their hands off what a Rhodesian businessjournal once called 'a political Trojan horse in the midst of a country fight-ing for its existence as a white state'. This was certainly the impression Iformed from my visits in 1959, 1966 and 1969 when I chaired committeesreviewing the financial needs of the College.Another marked feature of the book is the author's detached approachto his account of events in which the most intense passions were roused andin which he must have been personally involved, at least to some extent. This'dead-pan' attitude has of course its disadvantages. For example, I was actuallystaying in the Principal's Lodge on the night that Maluleke escaped fromdetention and made his way to the College campus. I saw at first hand howSir Walter Adams wrestled with his conscience and finally the followingmorning decided to disobey the Emergency Regulations under which heshould have reported Maluleke's presence to the police. The extreme tensionof that situation is certainly not conveyed to the reader. Gelfand's treatmentof the Birley Report of 1966 is rather non-commital though he does go sofar as to say that Birley's criticism of Adams for not taking 'a sufficientlystrong stand against [governmental] attacks on the academic freedom of theCollege . . . appears to be a contradiction' of other statements in the Report.Professor Murphee, the Director of the Institute for Inter-Racial Studiesat the University, contributed a very interesting paper on the UniversityCollege to a seminar in Cape Town, the proceedings of which have been pub-lished under the title The Future of the University in Southern Africa. Init he points out that 'the autonomous university is a fiction. For the universitythere are only degrees of relative autonomy/ For example, the extent to whichthe College could attract African students was severely restricted by thepaucity of sixth-form facilities in African schools, a matter outside the juris-diction of the College.99tooBOOK REVIEWSThere is no doubt that some people connected with the College genuinelythought that it ought to have been more politically motivated while otherswent further and really wanted to provoke the closure of the College inorder to embarrass the Smith Government. But my vote has always been andstill is for those who fought to keep the College afloat as long as its academicfreedom, in the sense of that term as defined by Sir Robert Birley, and itsnon-racial character were not impaired. Subsequent events have vindicatedtheir attitude and Rhodesia enters on self-government with a proportionallylarger and better qualified cadre of Africans than any other newly independ-ent state in the continent.At the risk of being accused of bias,I must say that in my opinion theUniversity of London played a more important part in the decision that theCollege should be non-racial than Profesor Gelfand's narrative implies. I waspresent at the meeting in London when Manfred Hodson and his delegationwere told categorically that adherence to the non-racial principle by theCollege was a condition precedent of Special Relation with the University ofLondon and without Special Relation the College would never have got offthe ground. It is no coincidence that the clause in the College Charter en-shrining this principle is based almost word for word on Statute 4 of theStatutes of the University of London which traces its lineage back to its firstcharter in 1836.Perhaps in conclusion a few more personal comments are permissible.The book contains a striking portrait of Manfred Hodson, the driving forcebehind the acceptance in Rhodesia of the need for a university institution.Even more vivid is the picture of Walter Adams who shines through thepages of the book like Mr Valiant in Pilgrim's Progress. Less successful is thedelineation of Sir Alexander Carr-Saunders who played a dominating rolein his dual capacity as Chairman of the Inter-University Council for HigherEducation Overseas and the University of London's Committee on HigherEducation Overseas Š but this is not surprising since I know from personalexperience what an enigmatic character he was. Perhaps a little more stressshould have been placed on the contribution of Professor C. T. Ingold, whosucceeded Sir Alexander as Chairman of the Committee on Higher EducationOverseas. Without his staunch advocacy in the troubled years followingU.D.I., when the extremists in London were demanding the immediate ter-mination of Special Relation in complete disregard of the interest of bothstudents and staff of the College, the proper and orderly phasing out ofSpecial Relation would have been impossible.For those interested in the early years of the College, Professor Gel-fand's book is prescribed reading and, when the definitive history of thatperiod comes to be written, the author will be eternally indebted to ProfessorGelfand for the magnificent preparatory work he has done.University of LondonSIR DOUGLAS LOGANUmendo By B. C. Makhalisa. Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1977, 136pp., Rh$0,70.Umhlaba Lo! By B. C. Makhalisa, Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1977, 80pp.»Rh$0,60.The author of these works, Mrs Nkala, writes under her maiden name ofBarbara C, Makhalisa. When she wrote her first book, Qilindini (Longmans