202 BOOK REVIEWSsought to come to terms with their catastrophic experiences and to beginthe necessary post-conflict process of healing.Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War is a significant book because ittells the story of what occurred in those nightmarish years of the war andthe post-war Matabeleland conflict and thus makes public what has hithertoremained closed to Zimbabwean society as a whole. By addressing thesesensitive but important issues and attempting to understand the forcesthat helped shape Zimbabwe's current social and political reality, itprovides the necessary foundation for that national healing process whichcannot begin unless Zimbabwean society as a whole confronts the past,the 'heroic' and the 'terrible things', squarely in the face. The book will beuseful to both professional researchers and academics because it pointsto new directions for academic enquiry. It will also be useful to the generalpublic, who need to know what happened then in order to come to termswith the present reality as well as to contribute towards the constructionof a Zimbabwean society in which such traumatic experiences are neverrepeated.University of Zimbabwe A. S. MLAMBOAre We Not Also Men? The Samkange Family and African Politics inZimbabwe 1920 to 1964 By Terence Ranger. London, James Currey Ltd.;Cape Town, David Philip (Pty) Ltd.; Portsmouth, Heinemann, 1995, iv, 211pp., ISBN 0-435-03977-3, Z$135.Professor Terence Ranger, whose earlier works, especially Revolt inSouthern Rhodesia and its sequel, The African Voice in Southern Rhodesia1898-1930, established him as a household name among Zimbabweanhistorians and freedom fighters, has once again produced in Are We NotAlso Men? an outstanding study of the rise of the African elite and massAfrican politics in Zimbabwe. Before reading his latest book, it might havebeen difficult to imagine that Ranger had anything new to tell us on thesetopics. Admittedly readers will tread on familiar ground in this book, butthey will also find familiar things presented in a different and refreshinglynew light together with some new discoveries, some of which substantiallyrevise our current views of certain important events and socialdevelopments. In particular, Ranger throws new light on gender relationsamong the emergent African elite, argues for a very radical and relevantAfrican National Congress in the mid and late 1940s, and disputes EdisonZvobgo's assertion that the National Democratic Party leadership plannedand orchestrated the violent demonstrations and riots in Bulawayo in1960.BOOK REVIEWS 203Such new insights resulted from a wide range of sources, some ofwhich have not been tapped before. In the National Archives, Rangerconsulted Methodist records especially the papers of Herbert Carter, whowas close to Thompson Samkange and Chairman of the RhodesianMethodist District for many years, and the Rhodesian press devoted toAfrican affairs. Ranger was the first to consult the Samkange family archive,containing rich deposits of Thompson's and his son Stanlake's papers,and he complemented all this with oral interviews as well as his ownpersonal recollections and those of his wife Shelagh, both of whom activelyparticipated in the transition of African politics from elitist protests tomass nationalism in the late 1950s and early 1960s.The book is primarily a biography of Thompson Samkange, one of theearly African Methodist pastors in this country, and his two sons, Stanlakeand Sketchley. All the three were deeply involved in the politics of thiscountry. Ranger's study of them offers a unique opportunity to look atcolonialism, and African opposition to it, through the experience andmotivation of an African family. Ranger covers other important sub-themes,including the emergence of an African middle class, 'the rise Š and alsothe fall Š of the ideal of Christian civilization' and 'the role of women inthe making of the Zimbabwean middle class and some of the costs of theirinvolvement'.Ranger draws our attention to three features of Thompson's Christianitywhich deeply influenced his ecclesiastical and political careers, namelythe political implications he drew from the concept of 'ChristianCivilization', his attachment to ecumenism and his fervent WesleyanMethodist evangelism. On ecumenism, the book pays little attention toother churches in the movement and so misses something of hiscontribution to Christianity in this country.Ranger exposes the rise of the Samkanges as a middle class family.Thompson was a 'progressive' Christian leader, who set out consciouslyto build a middle class family. In this he was assisted by his wife Grace,also an early convert to Methodism. Their task involved transforminggender relations between themselves and among their children; investingheavily in family education; and providing a secure base for the family.Both Grace and Thompson insisted on the equal education of bothmale and female children and training all the children without genderdistinction in domestic and other activities of the family. Contrary to therecent assertions1 that wives of emergent African elites in the colonialperiod had their importance diminished, Ranger shows that Grace became'famous and honoured' through her leadership roles in the large Samkange'See for example Elizabeth Schmidt, Peasants, Traders and Wives (London, James Currey;Portsmouth N. R, Heinemann, 1992).204 BOOK REVIEWS'extended' family and in the Ruwadzano. This was possible in Thompson'senvironment that accepted the Christian ideal of equality between husbandand wife in marriage and in which educated women were to be given freereign to exercise their skills and talents not only in the rural but also in theurban areas.Together with the rest of the emergent African middle class, theSamkanges believed in providing their children with a sound education.They sent all their children through primary and teachers' training atWaddilove, and two received secondary schooling and university educationin South Africa. All this entailed enormous investment in effort and money.Therefore Thompson and Grace established a secure home on a privateproperty in the Msengezi African Purchase Area, which Grace managedwhile Thompson continued his educational and pastoral work. The twowere also particular about their children's marriages, insisting on partnersof equal educational status. Unfortunately children who for one reason oranother did not perform or live up to expectations became what Rangercalls 'casualties of progress'.Although Ranger stresses too much the peculiarity of this family, hisrewarding use of a family archive and family biography has blazed a trailfor all of us in our striving to understand the creation of the elite in thiscountry.A trip to India and Ceylon in 1938 brought Thompson into contactwith famous nationalists of the third world, and with the indigenousMethodist church of Ceylon. On being appointed on his returnsuperintendent of Pakame circuit, Thompson tried to implement hisTambaram vision of the church. Although he was successful in laying afoundation for a future indigenous Methodist church in Zimbabwe byproducing many African ministers, his full vision remained a mere mirage.Neither African Methodists, who had apparently put off the prospects ofan indigenous church by the financial implications of self-reliance, nor theyoung White missionaries, who felt their dominance threatened, supportedhim. His superintendency of Pakame, which he had so much wanted aspart of the advancement of Africans in church leadership, in fact provedto be his undoing. A poor bookkeeper and record keeper, he found himselfexposed to severe criticisms by White education officers and youngmissionaries. Finally, he clashed with young African progressives whowanted to improve their schools but found his ecclesiastical controls oneducation stifling.Such opposition to progressive church leaders from local communitiesand White missionaries is not peculiar to Thompson and the Methodistchurch. This opposition stands out more clearly in the biographicalapproach of this book than in general studies of missionaries and churches.BOOK REVIEWS 205In the political arena Ranger sheds new light on Samkange and hisleadership of Congress. The current picture is that of a weak Congress inthe mid-1940s and of an ineffectual leader. Ranger shows that Samkangewas elected to the leadership of Congress in July 1943 specifically torejuvenate and radicalise the organisation. Samkange focused attentionon two key political issues of the time Š opposition to the proposedamalgamation of Southern Rhodesia with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasalandand to the threatened limitations of the already limited African franchise.His growing disillusionment with the failed promises of Christian civilisationin the church and with the emptiness of British justice and freedom,served to radicalise Thompson's leadership. He urged the building of amass organisation through the mobilisation of the rural people so that thecolonial government could not dismiss Congress as a mere clique ofmalcontents. While Ranger brings out the expressed radicalism ofThompson, there is little evidence of translation into concrete action onthe ground. Moreover the key issues which he concentrated on were morethe concern of the elite than of the masses. Ranger is aware of thiscriticism: 'It was not in Thompson to place himself unequivocally at thehead of rural or urban protest' (p. 121). Yet the urban and rural protestsoffered the surest road to successful and popular leadership and a wayout of being a mere elitist leader.The use of the Samkange family archive has also enabled Ranger tocorrect substantially our views of the role of Congress and Samkange inthe 1948 strike. Where previously some of us saw no role for Samkangeand Congress in this strike, Ranger demonstrates that they were verymuch involved.Thompson's last years were years of disillusionment, disappointmentand bitterness. His clashes with Native Education Department officials atPakame got worse and his superintendency and ecclesiastical authoritycame under heavy criticism in some of his village schools. There wereslanders concerning church money and examinations. All this seemed tobe directed by White missionaries and education officers towardsundermining his leadership and role in education and the church andtherefore towards discrediting African leadership in general.Further disappointment came with the dismal failure of the youngeducated generation to provide selfless leadership and service to theirpeople. Thompson and other older leaders had been delighted whenStanlake, Tennyson Hlabangana and Enoch Dumbutshena came back armedwith university degrees and took over the leadership of Congress. But by1953 these had led Congress into oblivion. The educated youth quarrelledamong themselves. Attracted by a promise of partnership, Stanlake gotsucked into the politics of multi-racialism, which already had becomeirrelevant for the people. The disillusioned Thompson saw all these206 BOOK REVIEWSflirtations with White politics by the educated as mere self-seeking androundly declared, 'the so-called educated African ... (is) a danger to thecommunity and to himself.To understand the careers of Stanlake and Sketchley, Ranger tells uswe need to know the ideas held by their father Thompson, which after hisdeath became increasingly incompatible and could not be successfullyespoused by one person. Thompson advocated a national politicalmovement which concentrated on common interests and left intactautonomous institutions, organisations and practices of civil society. Hecould not have tolerated the totalitarian behaviour of mass nationalism atits height, when for instance people were directed not to attend Sundayservices in order to be at political rallies. He held education to becompatible with service and not merely a stepping stone to higher andmore lucrative professional and other economic rewards as became latercommon practice. He was opposed to the secularisation of the schoolsystem. He would have applauded any African initiatives directed towardsself-reliance; this would have been in line with his call for indigenisation inthe church. He condemned White racism as much as he abhorred 'Blackracialist repudiation of Whites'.After Thompson's death the growing divergence of his ideas seemedto be epitomised by the divergent careers of Stanlake and Sketchley.Stanlake became an ally of Garfield Todd and a champion of multi-racialism,while Sketchley became intimately associated with, and involved in, massnationalism. But both of them had the streak of their father's idealism andshunning of authoritarian violence. Thus Stanlake successfully pursuedthe Nyatsime project, promoting self-help in education. Even when hebroke up with Todd in 1961 and was attracted to mass nationalism, Stanlakehesitated from joining either NDP or ZAPU, being put off by their apparentintolerance of dissent and of the autonomy of civil society institutions.In the meantime, Sketchley combined his father's nationalism andconviction in non-violence. When Congress was banned in 1959, manyleaders were involved in the politics of Federation and were reluctant totake on leadership of a new organisation. Sketchley was able to fill thisvacuum. Brought up on his father's stories and admiration of Gandhi'sphilosophy of non-violence, Sketchley urged NDP to use non-violence as aweapon against the colonial system and authorities. On this Ranger differsfrom Edison Zvobgo. In 1983, Zvobgo claimed that Sketchley's publicstatements of non-violence camouflaged his preparations with MichaelMawema for the violence which later erupted in the Bulawayo riots anddemonstrations in 1960. Ranger writes:In my view Zvobgo's account is influenced partly by a desire to praise Mawema'sleadership at the expense of Joshua Nkomo and Ndabaningi Sithole, and partly bya desire to establish as early a date as possible for the origins of the liberation war(p. 181).BOOK REVIEWS 207One of the outcomes of the violent disturbances was the decision ofthe two brothers Š Stanlake and Sketchley Š to pull out of politicalleadership.One thing that students and other researchers will find irritatingabout the book is its omission of a section on sources and bibliography.Frankly the otherwise excellent discussion in the introduction of the mainarchives used is not a substitute for the traditional bibliography.The omission, however, is minor compared to the importance of thebook. Written by one of the few accomplished and devoted scholars ofmodern Zimbabwean history, who has the further advantage of havingbeen an active participant in some of the events that are dealt with in AreWe Not Also Men?, this book will for a long time remain important readingfor both the general reader and history students in the study of the rise ofthe African middle class and of mass nationalism in Zimbabwe.University of Zimbabwe PROFESSOR NGWABI BHEBELabour Export Policy in the Development of Southern Africa By BillPaton. Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications; London, MacmillanPress Ltd., 1995, xii, 397 pp., ISBN 0-908-307-41-1, Z$100.In this book, Paton seeks to contribute to an understanding of the originsand functions of cross-border migration, and of states in the labourexporting countries of Southern Africa. The study is motivated by theneed to explicate two major propositions. The first one is that 'the evolutionof the power to control labour flows among the jurisdictions of differentterritorial administrations in Southern Africa was of major importance inthe formation of a regional system of states' (p. 3). The second one is that'the overall importance of the policies of labour-exporting administrationshas been seriously downplayed' (p. 15) in past studies of the phenomenonof labour migration in Southern Africa, hence the need for an elaborationof the various policies undertaken by the different states in managing andcontrolling labour flows in the sub-region.That the countries of Southern Africa have historically been intertwinedin a web of cheap labour circulation centred around the sub-centre of theSouth African economy (which itself is a periphery in the global economy)is a well-known fact to lay-persons and academics alike. On the politicalplane the emergence of groups such as the Southern Africa DevelopmentCommunity (SADC), the Frontline States, and the Southern Africa LabourCommission (SALC) is either directly or indirectly motivated by the needto reduce the dependency of labour exporting countries on South Africa.The belief that Southern Africa represents a unique configuration ofstates is one of the reasons there is the current paralysis in the attempt to