218BOOK REVIEWSSwadel. And he refers to Pat Bashford's 'Rhodesia Central Party' Š whichwas, of course, the Centre Party.Finally, a clarification of that famous (or infamous) Victoria Fallsconference that sealed the fate of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland,Sir Roy Welensky and Sir Albert Robinson (the High Commissioner inLondon) urged Winston Field not to agree to attend any such conferencewithout a guarantee that Southern Rhodesia, like Northern Rhodesia andNyasaland, would come away from the conference an independent country.He had a strong hand, he was told. The conference could not be held withoutthe participation of the Government of Southern Rhodesia. Their consterna-tion was great when, to their surprise, Winston Field agreed to attend withoutthis guarantee being given. He was, as he told me himself, persuaded byButler. He was, of course, outmanoeuvred.Eugene Wason's book revived for me many memories of people andevents, some of them pleasant and some of them not. I enjoyed reading it.University of RhodesiaR. G. MEIERMucheke: Race, Status and Politics in a Rhodesian Community By A. K. H.Weinrich. Paris, United Nations Educational, Scientific and CulturalOrganization, 1976, 278 pp., no price indicated.The publication of this book might have been a minor event. There is asyet only a handful of community studies set in African towns or cities.Mucheke is the first work of this genre to come out of Rhodesia. It is thefourth major book to be published by Dr Weinrich (often better known asSr Mary Aquina), and the first since she left the country precipitately in1975, although the manuscript was completed before her departure. DrWeinrich who now teaches Sociology at the University of Dar es Salaam,was a controversial figure among White Rhodesians and occasionally amongher colleagues as well. Readers, other than those maintaining some of thebiases she mentions, are, however, not likely to find much that is controver-sial in this book, even if it is true that the author allows her personal judge-ment to intrude more than once.As it is the appearance of the work has passed unheralded in thiscountry. It has been issued by UNESCO as one of a series of three studies,the others being Racism and Apartheid in Southern Africa, Part II: Rhodesiaby R. Austin and Southern Rhodesia: The Effects of a Conquest Society onEducation, Culture and Information by M. O'Callaghan. The advertisingand distribution of books published under the auspices of UNESCO hasnever been good anywhere, let alone in the illegal and unrecognized stateof Rhodesia. In addition they are rarely cheap, even in paperback form. Ivery much doubt that anybody actually concerned with the administrationof Mucheke has seen this book or is likely to. Neither am I sure that thefuture policy makers of Zimbabwe would draw any particular lessons fromit.Dr Weinrich's work is focused on the African township of the provin-cial centre of Fort Victoria and does not deal directly v/ith the non-Africanpopulation of the rest of the town other than employers of a sample ofdomestic servants in the White (and Indian and Coloured) parts of town.Yet the lives of Mucheke's residents are directly and intimately affected byBOOK REVIEWS219the rest of the town, not simply because that is where many of them workin shops, industries and offices, but also because that is where many ofthe major decisions affecting them are shaped. Her book is not quite theconventional kind of community study, for, although it contains sectionsdealing with work and economic conditions, recreation and voluntary associa-tions, politics and frequent references to conditions within the homes,there is no systematic treatment of the family, of township administrationas such, of church and religious life, or of the organization and impact ofschools. Dr Weinrich herself also did not live for a protracted period inMucheke as would normally be expected of an anthropologist (and asC. and P. Kileff did in Westwood and Marimba Park in Salisbury; see'Black suburbanites: An African elite in Salisbury, Rhodesia', in C. Kileffand W. C. Pendleton, Urban Man in Southern Africa (Gwelo, Mambo Press,1975), reviewed ante (1975), IV, i, 151-3). Given the state of 'race relations'in Rhodesia and her identity as a nun, it would, at any rate, have beendifficult enough for her to carve out, and be accepted in, a role of a relativelydisinterested observer. Much of the credit for the illuminating quality ofdata and richness of detail in many places must no doubt go to her ableAfrican research assistant who spent nearly two full years in Mucheke.But Dr Weinrich also drew on official statistics and information from noless than three sample surveys, whilst using the opportunity to compare thisdata with several other studies outside Rhodesia, but particularly Stopforth'sstudy of Highfield township in Salisbury. This gives her present book asignificantly broader data base than any of her earlier studies,Mucheke conveys a vivid picture of the physical conditions of life inthe various neighbourhoods of the township (to which the photographs inthe text also contribute). The author succeeds particularly well in sketchingthe subtleties of the status graduations characterizing the community, and ascan be expected shows a special sensitivity for the problems and changingposition of women. A variety of interesting sidelights also emerge in thecourse of her account regarding the response of the population to a newpolitical party (the National Peoples' Union), the behaviour and positionof the police, and the operation of some clubs and trade unions.Yet it remains very predominantly a descriptive account throughout,with only an occasional speculative hypothesis thrown in (such as the reasonfor the more urban outlook of women). Numerous analytical possibilitiesare left unexploited. The subtitle ('Race, Status and Polities') accuratelyindicates the three major themes which run though the text, but the absenceof a sustained analytical argument does detract both from the interest andreadability of the book. Especially in the earlier chapters a welter of em-pirical detail and survey frequency distributions are presented first, fromwhich a few conclusions or generalizations are then drawn inductively. Buteven in the factual account problems occur. Dr Weinrich herself pointsout the deficiencies in her samples She is careful in her qualitative des-criptions to indicate the full range of variations which occur, but then, fallsprone to laying too much emphasis on a typical case or example. Thusat the end of the book one is better informed on the activities and positionof the Black M.P. and school inspectors' households than on anybody else inthe township. Sometimes she is in danger of losing a sense of proportion.Prostitutes (which category is never clearly defined or differentiated) seemto abound in Mucheke until one learns that the majority of them live inthe vfemale hostel which contains only eleven double rooms. Later one istold that there are 'many' Coloured prostitutes in a small housing scheme of120BOOK REVIEWSsixteen units in the Indian and Coloured neighbourhood on the other sideof town.Finally, there are simply too many unnecessary errors. I mention onlya few. The author of a pilot P.D.L. survey is given as Roger instead ofRogers (fn., p. 235). Dr Weinrich claims (p. 29) that employment figurescannot be released under the Emergency Regulations. It is true that un-employment statistics are hard to come by and where they are available (suchas from the Labour Exchanges) they are so unreliable as to be useless. Butnational employment figures are routinely published by industry in theCentral Statistical Office's bulletin every quarter. Where she refers to anew 'comprehensive' secondary school, she probably means an F2 (practic-ally oriented) school (p. 30). Her claim that railway employees in othermajor centres, unlike in Fort Victoria, are accommodated in six-roomedhouses would hold only for very few (p. 112). Later she indicates that thefive hundred people who were detained during the 1959 Emergency werenot released until 1962 (p. 184); this, again, is only true for a few, since thevast majority were released within the first three months after the Emer-gency. This, of course, is not to say that it was necessary or should be con-doned.Nonetheless, in an area in which little has been published in Rhodesia,this book, due to its wealth of detail, is an important and useful contribu-tion. For those who would wish to understand change, or absence of change,in the urban Zimbabwe of tomorrow, Mucheke would provide a valuablebackground.University of RhodesiaC. M. BRANDA Bibliography of the Birds of Rhodesia, 1873-1977 By M. P. Stuart Irwin.Salisbury, The Rhodesian Ornithological Society, 1978, 241pp., Rh$5,00.This is definitely a book for the specialist worker in ornithology, andcannot, therefore, be expected to have a wide popular appeal. It is, however,one of the most comprehensive works of its kind ever produced. Even in agreatly condensed form, it runs to over 200 pages, with another seventeenblank pages at the end (presumably for the user to make his own additions).It covers 656 species, most of which have one or more major and severalminor references, amounting to something like 5000 all told. Truly amagnum opus!While it could under no circumstances be called a book to take up andbrowse through, I found a number of comments under various species whichintrigued me and made me want to read further. For example, 'The referencein Ostrich 169 was originally listed under Gallinago nigripennis, but is amisidentification of the present species' (Great Snipe); 'The reference inIbis 25 to a bird perhaps near M. olivaceus is probably an allusion to thepresent species and is included on this presumption' (Orange-breasted BushShrike); 'The occurrence of this recently proposed species within Rhodesiastill requires confirmation as does its specific status' (Brown Firefinch ln-digobird).