The Sunday Mail
Tjenesani Ntungakwa
After the Wankie and Spolilo campaigns of the late ‘60s, it became apparent that Rhodesia was at war.
The boundaries shared by Rhodesia and her neighbours became porous conduits for guerrilla infiltration.
Rhodesia’s white population was on record as one of the heaviest-armed civilian communities in Africa, and by the early ‘70s, Africa’s Portuguese colonies were on fully fledged fire.
There were certain variables that made the Rhodesian scenario different. Whereas pro-worker movements had some room for activism in England, they were completely shunned upon by the authorities in Lisbon.
The Portuguese Intelligence organisation which went by the acronym PIDE spread its wings as far as the colonial territories in Africa.
There was also a prevailing ideological posture on the part of the working class in Europe to control of the means of production as a step towards their full emancipation. Such premises of thought were partly influenced by the work of Karl Marx. Marx became the authoritative architect of Marxism.
Old and frail, Karl Marx spent his last years in Britain where he died, having acquired a belated proficiency in English. It was from Marx’ observations that some militant trade union platforms began to emerge in post-WWII Europe.
They challenged the yoke of laissez faire capitalism and left the political structures worried particularly in Portugal, Germany as well as France.
It was for such realities that the British felt that the future of Central and Southern Africa remained vulnerable.
Given such a state of affairs, Britain would not sit and watch whilst the political plane in Rhodesia was faced with imminent danger.
The matter was further compounded by the fact that a Rhodesian right wing formation won an astounding victory in the 1962 elections.
Initially led by Winston Field and later, Ian Douglas Smith, the Rhodesia Front became the bastion of settler colonial power. As a matter of fact, the RF presented itself as a prodigal son to the demands of British foreign policy.
Inevitably, Rhodesia was slapped with punitive sanctions after the UDI of 1965. Thus in the part of Britain , there was a growing tendency of talking more about constitutional, rather than militarised means solutions to the Rhodesian question.
It was in such an ambit of reasoning that Britain and Rhodesia took into account the need for a new constitution. As observed before, the 1961 approach had its flaws and never lived to expectations.
The other side of the equation dictated that Zanu and Zapu which were banned in Rhodesia could not take part in the manoeuvres for constitutionalism.
Taking into light the status quo of those years, there was no guarantee that the warring parties would enter into any fruitful negotiations.
It was for such and other factors that the Rhodesian authorities insisted on what they felt to be the best way out of the stalemate. The so called, “Anglo-Rhodesia Constitutional Settlement proposals” were agreed upon on in Salisbury, on November 24, 1971. The British government was under then the premiership of Sir Alec Douglas Home. However, it was found necessary to subject the proposed framework to what was referred to as a “Test of Acceptability”. Such a test would ensure that that the preferred conceptual order in Rhodesia was adopted as “legitimate”.
For that reason, the British put together a team commissioned to go into various districts of Rhodesia and seek the views of its citizens.
An organised commission under the leadership of Lord Pearce was put together.
Lord Pearce had a thick resume of serving in the British legal as well as ship-building sector.
He had been called to the bar in 1969.
Before then, he held the position of deputy chairman in East Sussex from 1948 to 1954, sat on the Queen’s Bench division from 1954 to 1957, assumed the responsibility of Lord Justice of Appeal from 1957 to 1962, presided as Lord of Appeal in Ordinary 1962 to 1969 and became the chairman of the Committee of Ship-Building Costs.
His duties also extended to the Royal Commission on Marriage and Divorce. Some of Lord Pearce’s contingent were Sir Maurice Dorman, Lord Harlech, Sir Glyn Jones, Mr THT Cashmore, Mr GC Rawlings, Mr JE Blunden, Mr PL Burkinshaw, Mr GRB Blake, Mr DF Frost and PA Large.
Most of them had rendered their services in what was referred to as the British Overseas Service.
They were more like technocrats who had become politically adaptable to the diplomatic corps.
The project came to be known as the “Pearce Commission”, for the simple reason that it was the under the tutelage of Lord Pearce. Before the Pearce Commission arrived in Rhodesia on 11 January 1972, there were some reactions on the ground which influenced the direction of the events to follow. The nationalist organisations and their leaders were wary of the Anglo-Rhodesian settlement proposals, vis-a-vis the Pearce Commission.
As Arthur Chdazingwa put it, “If the Settlement Proposals had been accepted, it was going to make the fight against the settler colonialists much harder than it had already been. If accepted, the propositions would further entrench the power of the UDI government and come up with an isolated and highly discriminatory regime like the Apartheid establishment in South Africa, some kind of independent white republic in Africa.”
Basing on such possibilities, it was necessary for ZANU and ZAPU to mobilise against the Anglo-Rhodesia proposals.
From a practical point of view, organising for anti-settlement support was not going to be easy because of the banning that had been imposed on ZAPU and ZANU.
An alternative route was necessary to mobilise against the Anglo–Rhodesia arrangements.
It so happened that some clergymen had been very active in highlighting the problems of Rhodesia from the pulpit.
Their stance became an open secret as they took every opportunity to raise the issues that many were adamant to talk about openly.
The prevailing feeling was that the church leaders easily interacted with the generality of black Rhodesians and could not be trusted in one way or the other.
One of them was Reverend Canan Banana who had something to do with the Zimbabwe Peoples’ Movement (ZPM).
Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa of the United Methodist Church was another visible character in that regard.
Muzorewa and Banana seemed to have had access to the detained contenders in ZANU and ZAPU.
To be continued…
Tjenesani Ntungakwa is the project advisor of the Revolutionary Research Institute of Zimbabwe-RRIZ an initiative involved with documenting as well as disseminating the contribution made by the Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African Peoples Union, PF ZAPU and its military wing the Zimbabwe Peoples’ Revolutionary Army, ZPRA in the liberation and development of Zimbabwe.
