MORE THAN ONE BILLION DOLLARS FOR A SANDWICH reported the BBC in its recent coverage leading up to the recent Zimbabwe elections. My first visit to Zimbabwe following its independence from Britain in 1980 was in 1989 and I received just over two Zim dollars for my one US dollar. Thirteen years later as the situation in Zim started on its downward spiral I received sixty six Zim dollars for each US dollar. The current exchange rate in the hundreds of millions of Zim dollars to a US dollar tells the story of how far the country’s economy has tanked. The BBC also called Zimbabwe a country of “destitute billionaires”.The recent sham election for president has caused me to reflect on the good old days in Zimbabwe when we, in Zambia, looked south with envy at how good they had it in Zim. It is unfortunate to see how the oppressed has again become the oppressor. From the safe haven provided by Zambia in the ‘70’s Robert Mugabe led the freedom fighters or terrorists, depending on which side you were on, to independence in April 1980. He represented those “oppressed” by white rule under Ian Smith. Now for years he has oppressing his own people with far greater tyranny than the Smith regime ever dreamed about.
In November 1965 I was a boarding student at Kabulonga School for Boys in Lusaka, one of about 50 students housed in the hostel known as Williams House. We were in the early days of integration in the schools after the segregation of British colonial days. I remember that in Williams we had Hamir, the Madagascan, and Biggie Nkumbula, the son of Harry Nkumbula, the leader of the African National Congress in Zambia, before President Kaunda banned it. We also had Indian students, like Chugani, who insisted in tuning his short-wave radio into Bombay for Hindi music every afternoon which only he appreciated.
I was not much attune to the politics of the day so really had no clue as to what was going on around us. However on the afternoon of November 11th one of the white boys in the senior room suddenly started run through the hostel yelling “UDI, UDI!” It took me a while to figure out what was going on but then I was told that Ian Smith, the white leader of Rhodesia, had signed a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain (see picture above) after all efforts had failed by Britain to convince the white minority government to move to majority rule before Britain would grant independence to the country as it had to Malawi and Zambia in 1964. As you might gather from he story above, there was a considerable amount of sympathy for the white minority regime under Ian Smith by other white people, and some were happy to shout their sympathies from the roof tops.
Following UDI the United Nations declared economic sanctions against Rhodesia which tended to hurt Zambia more than Rhodesia since, as a landlocked country, Zambia imported almost all its goods through the Indian Ocean port of Beira, Mozambique and through Rhodesia by rail and exported its copper by the same route.
(to be continued)
