Owen Sheers - The Dust Diaries

‘Yes, I know. You’ve told us already.’ Sir Donald turned back to the Native Commissioner. ‘Well that would seem to support what Had-field had to say about him.’ He reached forward from his chair and shuffled through some papers on his desk. ‘Yes, here it is. ‘…an absence of order and restraint which revealed an attitude of mind in that great and honourable man not in itself commendable when detached from his good qualities’.’

‘I’ll tell you what it’s like,’ Atherstone continued, finally pausing from his pacing at the far end of the room. ‘It’s like those weaver birds, the ones that build their nests by the hornet’s so when you try to shake the buggers down you get a face full of hornets instead. That’s what it’s like. The kaffirs are the bloody weaver birds and he’s the bloody hornet, buzzing his way up here to sting us.’

‘Oh, please sit down!’ Sir Donald raised his voice for the first time that afternoon. Atherstone took a seat in the wicker chair, sullen as a scolded schoolboy.

‘I don’t think it’s as bad as all that,’ Sir Donald continued more calmly. ‘He may be an irritation and I know from my own experience that the man’s certainly a very difficult person to deal with. But he’s harmless enough. Herbert?’

The Native Commissioner shifted his position in the reading chair again. Nodding his head and frowning he opened his mouth to speak, but Atherstone interrupted before he could get any further.

‘Look, with respect, Your Honour, it’s all very well him tramping up here from the bush, ranting about injustice done to some piccaninny, but this is a different matter. I don’t think you realise. We need that railway, and we need that land for that railway. And he’s not just complaining to us, you know. Those pamphlets went all over the place. He’s had questions asked in the House, letters in The Times and the Manchester Guardian . And now the Archbishop of Canterbury wants to see him about the ‘Native Reserve Affair’.’

‘Believe me, Atherstone, I’ve made it perfectly clear to him that I don’t like what he’s doing. Inexcusable, really.’

‘Bloody treasonable,’ Atherstone agreed.

‘Well, yes…’ Sir Donald didn’t like the way this was going, but the Surveyor did have a point. The missionary was certainly causing a stir in Britain, and as the British government still had an Imperial veto on all native affairs, he had good reason for concern.

He turned to the Native Commissioner again. ‘What do you think of this?’

This time the Native Commissioner spoke quickly, pre-empting any attempt at interruption from the Surveyor. ‘Well, I don’t think he’ll stop until he’s got his way. He’s more native than European, you see, defends them like his own because he thinks he is one of them. And they love him for it.’ He cast a glance at the Chief Surveyor, ‘Try to budge him and you might find it’s him who’s the weaver bird and they who are the hornets.’

The sun had edged a little further into the window, dipping under the frame on its descent towards the horizon. Its rays shone into Sir Donald’s face, igniting orange stars in his eyes and playing across his desk, sparking to light the nib of a pen, a silver letter knife, a marble paperweight. He wanted to be in his garden while the sun was still up, to watch its deepening glow across the petals of his flowers and the leaves of his plants.

‘Yes, well, leave this with me, Atherstone. I’ll have a word with the Bishop, see what he has to say. He sails for London soon, maybe he can put things right there.’

Atherstone rose from his wicker chair and crossed to the open window. He stood with his back to the room, his arms on the frame, blocking out the sun from Sir Donald’s face.

‘The Company needs that land, it’s as simple as that. I mean, who came here and found it in the first place?’ He turned back into the room. ‘Some bloody sky-pilot can’t stop us getting it.’

Sir Donald leant forward, put his elbows on the desk and pulled his hand down his face, feeling the heavy cool of his wedding ring pass over his skin. As his fingers passed his eyes, he exchanged a glance with the Chief Native Commissioner, who was still sitting in the reading chair, nodding towards the Surveyor’s back, his eyebrows raised and tapping the face of his watch with his forefinger. Sir Donald knew what he meant. Time was getting on. It was time to go.

The Times , 11 June 1920

SOUTHERN RHODESIA

to the Editor of The Times

Sir — During the past four months, while in England on furlough, I have noticed with surprise and great regret the attempts recently made in the Press and on public platforms to create a feeling that grave abuses exist in the administration of the natives in my diocese of Southern Rhodesia, and that they are subjected to oppression at the hands of the British South Africa Company, or the European settlers, or both. From my intimate knowledge of that territory, and considerable experience for 17 years of the manner in which the native problems have been dealt with, I can unhesitatingly endorse the recent high tribute of our High Commissioner (Lord Buxlon) to the sympathetic treatment which our natives receive at the hands of the administrative officials and of the white population. The remarkable progress which they have made in numbers, wealth and education during the last 20 years is in itself a sufficient testimony to the prudent, just, and benevolent methods adopted by the Company, with the whole-hearted support of the white community, in handling this, one of the most difficult branches of Colonial administration. It is not my intention to enter into any controversy on this subject, but I feel it my duty to say what I know and believe to be true.

Fredric Southern Rhodesia

12, St John’s Street, Chichester

§

14 July 1920

Maronda Mashanu,

Mashonaland,

Southern Rhodesia

To John Harris,

Anti-slavery and Aboriginal Protection Society,

London

Dear John Harris,

Many thanks for sending me the Bishop’s Jetter. I suppose he means well and is in his own way conscientious. Personally, I quite sympathise as to the picture your vivid words conjure up of the disciples of the Black Christ forsaking him and fleeing. There is some stern work ahead of us (D. V.) assuredly. Well God bless your society!!!

Yours ever,

A.S. Cripps

P.S. I have just read a report from the West Sussex Gazette of another of Bishop Beaven’s speeches. The Bishop emphatically denies that there was oppression of the native races, who, he declared, ‘were dealt with in the spirit of even-handed justice for which the flag of Britain stands’. God forgive him if he really said that. Would it possibly help the Native Cause if I challenged him to disown or withdraw this statement, or if he would do neither, to take three months’ notice from me?

§

1 January 1921

Maronda Mashanu,

Mashonaland

To John Harris,

Aboriginal Protection Society,

London

Dear John,

…This unawakened race does not perceive yet the injury that has been done it. But one day it will arouse itself, become articulate…and then…? But this is for the next act in this sombre drama.

Yours

A.S.C.

Another Blue Arrow morning. The touch of the bus’s air conditioning, its taste of dry ice after the heat outside. The shake of its awakening and the stop-start weave and roll, out of the thinning town and into the scrubland of the veld.