Principle and Prejudice
| Author | Clyde Sanger |
| Published date | 01 September 1970 |
| Date | 01 September 1970 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/002070207002500311 |
| Subject Matter | Review Article |
Review
Article
Clyde
Sanger,
Ottawa
Principle and
Prejudice
The
style
is
the man,
is
it
not?
When
some
university
students
-
mostly
black,
but
a
few white
Rhodesians among
them
-
had
the
temerity
to
heckle
Ian
Smith
during
an
election
meeting,
the loyalists
in
his
crowd
burst
into
a
rugger
song
to
drown
out
the
youngsters.
An
Afrikaans
rugger
song. And
Smith,
their
sporting
prime
minister,
a
centre
three-
quarter
when
he
was
studying
commerce
at
Rhodes
University,
joined
in
heartily.
The
title
and main
words:
"Bobbejaan
Klim
die
Berg";
in
translation:
"The baboon
climbs up
the
mountain."
When someone
murmured
afterwards
that
this
was
a
rather
racial
show
by
a
man
who
had
all
along
professed not to
be
a
racist,
Smith
took
the
oppor-
tunity
of
the next
meeting
to
explain
himself.
You
should
not
infer
anything
from the
words
of
the
song,
he
said.
Then
he
added:
all
the
same,
the
students
had
been
behaving
like
apes.
This
isn't
the
sort
of
tale
you
will
find
in
Kenneth
Young's book.1
(But
it
didn't
escape
that
newspaper
of record,
The
New
York
Times,
on
10
April
1970.)
Mr.
Young,
for
all the
four
years
during
which
he
says
the
Zambezi
flowed
through
his
drawing-room
in
Kent,
is
only
really interested
in
the
Rhodesian
question
at
one
level.
That
is
the
wobbly
level
at
which
the
Rhodesian
whites
negotiated and nagged
with
the
British
government. Another
shortcoming in
his
book
is
that
he
was busy
being
editor
of
the
Yorkshire
Post
up
to
1965
and
did
not
visit
Rhodesia
until
then.
And
by
then
half
the
actors
had
been
carted
off
the
stage,
to
restriction
at
Gonakudzingwa
or
to
prison
near
Gwelo
and
Salisbury.
To
put
it most
charitably,
a
book
on Rhodesia
is bound
to
be
narrow
in
scope
if
its
author
has
not
known
and
talked
with Joshua
Nkomo
and Ndabaningi
Sithole
and
their
main
supporters,
and
was not
there
to
feel
the
strength
which
the nationalist
movement
was achiev-
ing
in
the
early
1960s
before
repression
became
efficient.
To
put it
less
charitably,
such
a
book
is
bound
to
be
badly unbalanced.
The
most
interesting thing
about
Mr.
Young's
book
is
also
some-
thing
that
isn't
there.
In
no
place
does
he
offer
any
evidence
that
the
Rhodesian
whites
were
put
under
pressure
by
the
British
government
-
either
that
of
Douglas-Home
or
that
of
Wilson
-
to
move
at
any
speed
to
majority
rule.
Duncan
Sandys
worked
out
the
1961
constitution,
which
in
practical
terms
gave Africans immediate
access
to
15
of
parliament's
65
seats.
Thereafter,
the
only times
when
British
leaders
told
the
Now
with
the
Ottawa
bureau
of
the
Globe
and
Mail,
Mr.
Sanger
was
associate
editor
of
the
Central
African
Examiner
(1957-59),
and
staff
correspondent
for
the
Guardian
in
Africa
(1960-65)
and
at
the
United
Nations
(1965-67).
He
is
the
author
of
Central
African
Emergency
(1960).
1
Kenneth
Young,
Rhodesia
and
Independence.
London
and
Toronto:
J.
M.
Dent.
1969.
xvi,
684pp.
$13.00.
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