Civic Virtue, Young Men, and the Family: Conscription in Rhodesia, 1974-1980

Abstract

In John Lonsdale's concept of civic virtue it hard work of young men (and women), performed either for themselves or for others, that earns them rights of membership in, and responsibilities toward, a broader political collectivity in which public debate always somewhat disturbed by differences among older men young men have grown up to be.1 This may be an extremely useful way to think about African politics after World War II, because it brings families into political processes so forcefully: it a way to interrogate how families see state. The idea of civic virtue may have an application well beyond Kikuyu politics in 1950s. In this essay, I want to use Lonsdale's idea of civic virtue and apply it to Rhodesian struggles over national service, as illegal and embattled state fought a guerrilla war against two African armies in 1970s. Southern Rhodesia was founded by British South Africa Company for mineral exploitation and white settlement in 1890; it was granted self-governing dominion status by British in 1923 after its electorate of 20,000 whites rejected closer union with South Africa. The white population increased dramatically after World War II, from 82,000 in 1946 to about 250,000 in 1965. Almost all this immigration was of English-speaking whites, dwarfing Afrikaner and Greek populations and making country more British than ever before. In 1953, Southern Rhodesia had become part of Central African Federation. Some form of amalgamation with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland had been bandied about by Southern Rhodesian politicians for years, but by 1953 a federation was seen as a hedge against majority rule. Such a hedge was temporary, of course, and when Federation ended and other member states became independent black-ruled countries, Rhodesia (no longer distinguishing itself from country that was now Zambia) sought a return to its dominion status. This was not possible in mid-1960s, and in November 1965 Rhodesia rebelled from England and made a unilateral declaration of independence (UDI) under Rhodesian Front (RF) government, led by Ian Smith. As an independent entity, Rhodesia was as much a fantasy as it was a state. Officials and supporters described it as a peculiar Utopia located outside time and space, and certainly outside Africa. For many authors, UDI was, after Thermapolaye and Lepanto, third time forces of civilization stood firm against eastern hordes.2 Rhodesia was like Britain at its best, like Britain in 1940s, or even a recreation of Rhodesia in 1920s.3 For many, Rhodesia was a right-wing social imaginary, last stop on imperial highway that most observers believed had reached a dead end well before 1965. To be a Rhodesian was to be out of place, fixed in action if not in borders. A Rhodesian, foreign minister intoned, is a breed of men like of which has not been seen for many a long age and which may yet perhaps by virtue of example that it sets, go some way towards redeeming squalid and shameful times in which we live.4 Indeed, to be a Rhodesian was to be not a Rhodesian. They only true Britons left,5 freed, according to a new immigrant, from the sorrow of editorials, UNO, trade unions, pundits, culture and rest.6 Such imaginings were accompanied by a guerrilla war fought from exile by two African nationalist armies; war began timidly in mid-1960s and escalated in early 1970s. This war took its inevitable toll on Rhodesia's economy and manpower-not only war casualties, but emigration-and after several failed settlement proposals, Rhodesian Front proposed an internal settlement that involved sharing power with some of African political parties that had been unable to gain a foothold among nationalist parties in exile. As war intensified and Rhodesia lost ground in countryside, in 1979 it became short-lived and no less illegal Zimbabwe-Rhodesia that had an African president at its helm and a new sanction for military. …