Capricorn: David Stirling's Second African Campaign

Abstract

Capricorn: David Stirling's Second African Campaign. By Richard Hughes. New York and London: Radcliffe Press, 2003. Pp. xiv, 321; 21 illustrations. $39.50. They were a dedicated band of visionaries working for a multiracial Central and Eastern Africa in the 1950s. Alternatively, they were a pragmatic group of white supremacists endeavoring to salvage some semblance of power in an era of (in the words of its leader David Stirling) militant and uncompromising nationalism (p. 70). Was the Capricorn Society liberal and progressive or reactionary and racist? Richard Hughes' account, that of an insider, a member of the Kenya branch from 1955, is testimony to the contradictory nature of an organization that could count among its members and sympathizers such notables as J. H. Oldham, Roy Welensky, Godfrey Huggins, Laurens van der Post, S. J. T. Samkange, and Lawrence Vambe. The upper echelons of the Society -there appear to have been no lower echelons -were generally upper-class Britons with establishment connections. Stirling himself could command an audience with the British prime minister. Imbued with a sense of duty as well as self-importance, Capricornists reviled the blatant racism of apartheid and the racial nationalism of black Africa (pp. 75, 77, 125). What better way to counter these evil and subversive influences (again, Stirling's words, p. 77) than subscription to Christian values and the common loyalty of nonracial citizenship. Apart from these noble ideals, where truth and love seem to have trumped politics, the Capricorn Societies -with branches in the two Rhodesias, Nyasaland, Kenya, and Tanganyika-lacked both coherence and direction. Members made declarations with precepts and contracts, organized conferences, issued press releases, and had tea and biscuits with civilized Africans. Yet the Capricorn Society (signifying settler territories lying between the Tropic and the Equator) were virtually ignored by white contemporaries, denigrated as misty by the Colonial Office, and dismissed by African nationalist leaders. One member of the London office admitted that in the city they could boast no crisp organization, but only a few limp and uncoordinated amateurs (p. 49). Richard Hughes is no historian. While he has conducted oral interviews and delved into the archives, his bibliography is antiquated, thin, and Eurocentric. As a consequence he concentrates on the internal dynamics of Capricorn with little foray into its connectedness with the broader milieu of decolonization. To his credit his involvement as a member has produced a warts and all narrative rather than a gushing encomium. Unfortunately, the book has a surfeit of protracted quotes of marginal significance (including extracts from the author's student theses) and irrelevancies (do we really wish to know that Lewis's wife died over Christmas, choking on a piece of meat while Lewis himself was away with a girlfriend known as Bluebell? [p. 257]). All this clutter, though, surrounds some essentials about Capricorn politics in what is the first-ever book on the subject. The Society's philosophy was pronounced in the Salisbury Declaration of 22 May 1952. …