In my case 1877. Over this long time, we have assimilated and become more African than our European roots. In fact, when I went back to the UK for the first time I was shocked to discover I was not European, because most people at home said I was.
We came, we dominated and controlled and tried to keep our privileges when they were threatened, now we struggle to find our identity and to be accepted as a minority in a continent that we still do not fully understand. Our African compatriots also struggle to understand us!
I was born into a privileged society in Africa. My father was an executive with an oil company, paid well, we lived in a wealthy suburb in a large colonial home with several servants. We had a maid who looked after us who was a South African, a gardener who took me to school on a bike and covered for me when I bunked school. My school was a large complex that only took white boys and gave us an education that rivalled most of the rest of the world. Our servants were shadows who called me “Nkosi” (Lord) from when I was 2 years old and had no personality in my eyes but who took orders from me.
When I turned 12 and started secondary school, I spent all my holidays on three farms in the Essexvale Valley – two small ranches and an irrigation property. When we got to the farm, my shoes came off and did not go back on until I went back to school. I had two friends in those days, David and Richard and we worked on the farms, cutting hay, driving cattle, fighting bush fires and milking cows in the dairy. I built a series of small earth dams on the one Ranch which turned a long donga (gulley) into a small stream. The owner of these properties was my Godfather and lifelong friend of my father and he assigned a member of staff to look after these three small boys and to make sure we did not get into trouble.
Richard was the only son of a family who owned the next door ranch to ours in the Western Matopo Hills. He never went to school until he was a young teen and we organised for him to start school in Bulawayo. This meant he spoke the local language, Ndebele better than English and was a real bush baby. We wondered through the Hills and hunted baboons and sat around fires in the local villages where we were tolerated and listened to stories of the days when Ndebele Impi’s raided tribes as far away as Malawi. The Induna’s still had a ring of hair which designated them as a leaders.
Back at school we played sport, studied a wide range of subjects under teachers who all had University qualifications. Weekends I often went out to the Matopo Hills on Friday evenings, coming back Sunday. I was a Scout and became Troop Leader in my Troop, the 3rd Bulawayo. My weekends were spent camping under the stars at the world famous Baden Powell Park. We built lodges, dug wells and laid pipes. Our vehicle was an old Ford which had seen better days.
I had no idea that I was the beneficiary of a political and economic system that my settler community had created for themselves. It was no mystery to us that in a society where we were less than three per cent of the population, we went to school, played sport and even ran Scouts as white only activities. I had no black friends, not even close, I had no idea how black kids lived or what their interests and problems were.
But that was to change, when I was 9 years old and at school, we were suddenly surrounded by soldiers and we watched as hundreds of black workers marched past demonstrating against poor working conditions. It was the first such demonstration by new Trade Unions flexing their muscles. Their leader a man I was to be friends with much later, Joshua Nkomo.
As I grew up, my older brother left school and was drafted as a Territorial soldier into the Army. In that capacity he travelled throughout the region keeping “Law and Order”. In 1962 the first shots were fired in a conflict that was to engulf the country until in 1980, the Nationalist Parties won Independence under a democratic Government.
I passed my Matric in 1957 and at the age of 17 years, I went to work as a farm assistant on a Mashonaland tobacco farm. There I worked long hours, in the fields during the day supervising several hundred workers, then tying tobacco and curing the crop in barns fed by heat from fires fed by wood. We graded the product and it was despatched to vast auction floors in Salisbury. I earned a tiny salary and hated it. I resigned and went back to Matabeleland where I worked as a manager on a small ranching property. A life I was completely used to from my holidays in Essexvale.
In those days there were two agricultural colleges awarding diplomas after a two year course in practical agriculture. The one for white students was Gwebi College some 27 kilometres out of Harare on the Lomagundi Road. It took 36 students each year after they had worked on farms for two years. I applied and was accepted and a local farmers Association gave me a small scholarship to pay my fees and residence costs. My parents topped that up with $50 a month and when the time came I travelled up to Harare and joined the intake for 1959.
After I graduated from Gwebi, I worked for 4 years – most of it in the wild bush of the Gokwe District where I was tasked, along with others, to settle people displaced by the construction of what is still the largest dam in the World at Kariba Gorge. The dam displaced probably 250 000 people in Zambia and Zimbabwe and this was quite an exercise. It was here where I had my first contacts with the growing threat from Zipra, the liberation army of Zapu.
I left Gokwe and went to University as a mature student and took a degree in Economics. Here for the first time, I was among black students as an equal. However, it was not that which changed my personal views of the society I had grown up in. I am a committed Christian, had been since I was 17 and it was a visit to a Methodist Youth Group in Mbare where I met my metamorphosis.
He was a short, black man of Ndebele extraction who was the son of the Methodist Minister. He challenged me on my views of the country and the many issues faced by the black community. I spent two weeks with him and found that he was a Zipra guerilla just back from training in Algeria. He became a Christian and I became a political activist. He left the country for Germany and I was never the same.
My story may be a bit different from those of us who have grown up in Africa as white Africans of different origins, but in many ways we have had similar experiences. When Independence came in 1980, my family and I had decided that we were Zimbabweans and that we would stay and try to help make this place work. Out of the nearly 300 000 white Rhodesians that lived here before Independence, probably 50 000 remained after 5 years. This small community is again growing and it is interesting to watch because many of those returning are the grandchildren of those who left for what they thought were greener pastures.
What I hope is that those of us who remain living in Africa and those of African descent who return, will discover what we have found, that in many ways we are white Africans and that this, with all its problems, is home. Were our ancestors angels; no, and we have to overcome centuries of prejudice and oppression of those who lived here before we arrived.
Eddie Cross
Harare, 21st February 2024
Post published in: Featured