Anarchy 44/An anarchist in Africa

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An anarchist
in Africa

JEREMY WESTALL

As an intro­duc­tion to this article it is my in­ten­tion to estab­lish that, through my an­ces­tors and my­self, I can claim to be a per­son who is inter­ested in help­ing Africa rather than ex­ploit­ing her. This is worth men­tion­ing be­cause many Euro­peans who have been as­so­ci­ated with Africa havee been greedy ex­ploit­ers, tak­ing rather than giv­ing, de­stroy­ing rather than build­ing.

  There is how­ever a trad­i­tion in Africa which speaks for Euro­pean rad­ic­als. It can be seen hist­or­ic­ally in the life-work of Living­stone; today men like <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: Guy Clutton-Brock">Guy Clutton-Brock and Terence Ranger fit into this trad­i­tion. In Africa “the lib­er­als” are re­nowned for cour­age and de­term­in­a­tion, they are a proud ex­ample of be­lief being trans­ferred into action; un­like the weak lib­er­al­ism of the Euro­pean coun­tries Africa’s lib­er­al­ism is tough and prac­tical. Its rad­ical tough­ness places it close to the anar­chist philo­sophy.

  I can claim some as­so­ci­a­tion with the Living­ston­ian trad­i­tion. My great-grand­mother was the sister of Adam Sedg­wick, a close friend of Living­stone’s. Adam Sedg­wick as a Fellow of Trin­ity Col­lege, Cam­bridge was in­flu­en­tial in as­sist­ing Living­stone. Of Living­stone Sedgwick wrote: “He stood before us a plain, single-minded, cheer­ful man and he ad­dressed us in un­adorned and simple words.” The auth­ors of Sedg­wick’s bio­graphy re­port that when Sedg­wick spoke at a meet­ing in Cam­bridge after Living­stone “he en­treated his hear­ers not merely to wel­come and thank Living­stone for what he had said, but to carry for­ward the noble work which he had so auspi­ciously begun. His words were few, but well chosen, and when he sat down the ap­plause told that they had gone straight to the hearts of his hear­ers.”

  Sedg­wick, as can be seen, was a rather senti­mental Chris­tian and his at­ti­tude was a trifle ex­alted but when Living­stone’s “Lec­tures” were pub­lished and Sedg­wick wrote the pre­face the auth­ors of his bio­graphy write that “prob­ably no­thing con­trib­uted more di­rectly to the estab­lish­ment of the Uni­vers­it­ies Mis­sion to Cen­tral Africa than this short essay.”

  Writ­ing of the Living­ston­ian trad­i­tion in Cen­tral Africa Patrick Keat­ley men­tions the two em­pire build­ers of Rhod­esia, Cecil Rhodes who “built with money and mil­it­ary power” and David Living­stone who “built his empire in the abid­ing al­le­gian­ces of men.” Keat­ley quotes an old Afri­can friend of Living­stone’s who wrote of Living­stone

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as a person who “treated black men as brothers” and whose “words were al­ways gentle and man­ners kind, and who knew the way to the hearts of all men.”

  For my­self I feel it legit­im­ate to claim that to teach in an Afri­can run school in Salis­bury, South­ern Rhod­esia for close on a year at half wages is evid­ence of a de­sire to help the Afri­can people. I have worked out that the amount of money due but not paid to me by High­field Com­mun­ity School is rather more than the con­trib­u­tion made to the school by the Brit­ish South Africa Com­pany over the same year.

The School

  In his de­scrip­tion of the birth of High­field Com­mun­ity School, Mr. Chin­amano the Prin­cipal of the School paints the back­ground to the story by men­tion­ing the lodger sys­tem which oper­ates in the High­field Afri­can Town­ship of Salis­bury. These lodgers were al­lowed in High­field so that the owners of the houses would be better able to pay off in­stal­ments on their houses. But “be­cause, ac­cord­ing to law, chil­dren of lodgers may not enter gov­ern­ment schools, this year (1962) more than 1,500 chil­dren found them­selves with­out school­ing.”

  Mr. Chin­amano goes on to de­scribe the demon­stra­tions that the chil­dren made for schools. “Gov­ern­ment” he wryly re­marks “de­cided to stick to the legal aspect and dis­persed the chil­dren with <span data-html="true" class="plainlinks" title="Wikipedia: tear-gas">tear-gas. De­ter­mined to get school, these young­sters de­cided to ‘In­vade’ class­rooms de­mand­ing to be taught. And again gov­ern­ment turned deaf ears to the de­mands of the chil­dren and in­stead charged them with tres­pass.” Even­tu­ally the com­mun­ity of High­field formed an as­so­ci­a­tion to pro­vide school­ing for the chil­dren.

  “By means of this self-help ef­fort”, Mr. Chin­amano con­tinues, “Afri­cans were able in a matter of a week, to raise about £3,000 as school fees.” The Gov­ern­ment toler­ated the estab­lish­ment of the school but did not sup­port it and a fund-rais­ing cam­paign was started. Enough money was raised and church halls and old shops were lent or given to the school, 32 teach­ers were em­ployed and 1,300 chil­dren pro­vided with school.

  An inter­est­ing com­ment is made by the School Prin­cipal in his re­port when he writes: “The High­field Com­mun­ity School As­so­ci­a­tion is con­vinced that the answer to this edu­ca­tional crisis lies in the hands of the people and not of the Gov­ern­ment. As a re­sult of the High­field scheme vari­ous centres in the coun­try are estab­lish­ing sim­ilar lo­cally sup­ported schools.”

  In Septem­ber 1963 I left Britain to teach at the High­field Com­mun­ity School. A re­turn to Living­stonia was evid­ent in the fact that a trustee of the school, Sir Robert Tred­gold is re­lated to Living­stone. It was not my first visit to Rhod­esia, those inter­ested in my earlier ex­peri­ences with the North­ern Rhod­esia Gov­ern­ment can find them re­lated in the “Uni­vers­ity Liber­tarian” No. 11.

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