Class, Work and Whiteness: Race and Settler Colonialism in Southern Rhodesia, 1919–79

289 Pages·2020·12.588 MB·English

by  Nicola Ginsburgh

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General editors: Andrew S. Thompson and Alan Lester
Founding editor: John M. MacKenzie
When the ‘Studies in Imperialism’ series was founded
by Professor John M. MacKenzie more than thirty years
ago, emphasis was laid upon the conviction that
‘imperialism as a cultural phenomenon had as significant an
effect on the dominant as on the subordinate societies’.
With well over a hundred titles now published, this
remains the prime concern of the series. Cross- disciplinary
work has indeed appeared covering the full spectrum of
cultural phenomena, as well as examining aspects of
gender and sex, frontiers and law, science and the
environment, language and literature, migration and
patriotic societies and much else. Moreover, the series has
always wished to present comparative work on European
and American imperialism, and particularly welcomes the
submission of books in these areas. The fascination with
imperialism, in all its aspects, shows no sign of abating
and this series will continue to lead the way in
encouraging the widest possible range of studies in the
field. ‘Studies in Imperialism’ is fully organic in its
development, always seeking to be at the cutting edge,
responding to the latest interests of scholars and the needs
of this ever- expanding area of scholarship.
Class, work and whiteness
ii
SELECTED TITLES AVAILABLE IN THE SERIES
KNOWLEDGE, MEDIATION AND EMPIRE
Florence D’Souza
CHOSEN PEOPLES
ed. Gareth Atkins, Shinjini Das and Brian Murray
CREATING THE OPIUM WAR
Hao Gao
LAW ACROSS IMPERIAL BORDERS
Emily Whewell
THE BONDS OF FAMILY
Katie Donnington
COMIC EMPIRES
ed. Richard Scully and Andrekos Varnava
GENDERED TRANSACTIONS
Indrani Sen
SERVING THE EMPIRE IN THE GREAT WAR
Andrekos Varnava
EGYPT
James Whidden
PHOTOGRAPHIC SUBJECTS
Susie Protschky
iii
Class, work and

whiteness
RACE AND SETTLER COLONIALISM IN
SOUTHERN RHODESIA, 1919– 79
Nicola Ginsburgh
MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS
iv
Copyright © Nicola Ginsburgh 2020
The right of Nicola Ginsburgh to be identified as the author of this work has been
asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Published by Manchester University Press
Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA
www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing- in- Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 5261 4387 7 hardback
First published 2020
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for any external or third- party internet websites referred to in this book, and
does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
Cover image: Vintage World Map, 2015 © Michal Bednarek, bednarek-art.com
Cover design: riverdesignbooks.com
Typeset by Newgen Publishing UK
v
CONTENTS

List of figures—page vi
List of graphs—vii
List of tables—viii
Founding editor’s introduction—ix
Acknowledgements—xii
List of abbreviations—xiv
A note on terms—xvi
Introduction 1
1 The making of white worker identity 33
2 The Great Depression and shifting boundaries of ‘white work’ 76
3 The Second World War 107
4 The ‘multiracial’ Central African Federation, 1953–6 3 165
5 White fights, white flight and the Rhodesian Front, 1962–7 9 207
Conclusion 257
Selected bibliography—264
Index—268
[ v ]
vi
FIGURES

1 ‘Who pays?’ (RRR, March 1923, p. 19) page 40
2 ‘The good old song’ (RRR, January 1929, p. 103) 41
3 ‘A peep into the future: “Unity Hall” ’ (RRR, November
1923, p. 11) 42
4 ‘A coming event’ (RRR, January 1930, p. 28) 53
5 ‘Why “anon”? Do it now – you can’t go wrong!’ (RRR,
January 1930, p. 60) 54
6 ‘The way of the non- unionist’ (RRR, January 1929, p. 33) 55
7 ‘A peep into the future: “intelligent natives” engaged on
“easy” and “irresponsible” jobs’ (RRR, August 1927 p. 17) 66
8 ‘A noble nightmare’ (RRR, December 1933, p. 47) 89
9 ‘Rhodesia’s Santa Claus’ (RRR, January 1926, p. 13) 90
10 ‘The branch secretary’ (RRR, December 1930, p. 26) 95
11 Making Christmas pudding, RAF Hillside 114
12 RAF men at Cecil Rhodes’s grave 115
13 Women marching at RAF base at Hillside 117
14 ‘Beware of trains’ (RRR, October 1951, p. 19) 178
15 ‘We’re proud of him’ (RRR, April 1952, p. 16) 188
16 ‘We’re proud of him’ (RRR, May 1952, p. 15) 189
17 ‘A typical Bulawayo branch meeting’ (RRR, March 1959, p. 14) 190
18 ‘Railwaymen back on the job’ (Rhodesia Herald, 9 June
1954, p. 1) 191
19 Salisbury street map showing the proximity of lower-
class European residential areas south of the railway line
to industrial areas and Coloured and African residential
areas, c.1974 211
20 ‘Be a man among men’, Rhodesian army recruitment poster 221
21 ‘Airy up here/ FAC’ (Sookol, Life with the Terr … and Fun
with the Forces, Salisbury, Rhodesia: City Printers) 225
22 ‘Joint operation centre’ (Sookol, Life with the Terr … and
Fun with the Forces, Salisbury, Rhodesia: City Printers) 226
23 ‘Too many weapons are in irresponsible hands’
(Illustrated Life Rhodesia, 19 December 1978) 231
24 ‘No, you idiot – I said prick his boil’ (Sookol, Life
with the Terr … and Fun with the Forces, Salisbury,
Rhodesia: City Printers) 243
25 ‘Forfeiture of pay’ (Sookol, Life with the Terr … and Fun
with the Forces, Salisbury, Rhodesia: City Printers) 245
[ vi ]
vii
GRAPHS

1 European women and men married at time of census
as a percentage of the European male and female adult
population page 60
2 European women and men never married as a percentage
of European male and female adult population 60
3 Numbers of Italian men and women in Rhodesia, 1926– 61 119
4 Numbers of Polish men and women in Rhodesia, 1926–6 1 120
5 Total male and female minority European populations in
Rhodesia, 1921–6 1 120
6 Economically active European women as a percentage
of adult European women and of totally economically
active European persons, 1926– 69 132
7 European women’s occupations as a percentage of total
economically active European women 133
[ vii ]
viii
TABLES

1 Percentage of total economically active Europeans engaged
in mining and quarrying page 23
2 Economically active European women as a percentage of
adult European women and of total economically active
European persons, 1926–6 9 58
3 Numbers of European females per 1,000 males, 1907–6 9 59
4 European women’s occupations as a percentage of total
economically active European women, 1926– 69 130
5 Percentage of women performing clerical work across
Rhodesia, the United States and Canada 130
6 Railway employees north and east of Bulawayo 171
[ viii ]
ix
FOUNDING EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

Since the era of violent conquest of the Shona and Ndebele peoples in
the 1890s, Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe has always been a country of paradoxes.
Intended as the ‘Second Rand’ by Cecil Rhodes (who felt he had missed
out on the wealth to be made in the Transvaal), it became merely a
territory of small and scattered mines, quite unlike the larger- scale
capitalism of the Rand. It was soon considered to be primarily an agri-
cultural country, with significant developments in tobacco and sugar
growing, maize production, as well as in cattle ranching. The rela-
tively slow growth in the economy was nonetheless intended to pull in
British settlers and it rapidly came to be regarded as a supremely British
colony. It was this supposed adherence to Britishness that seemed to
lead the settlers to guard their autonomy by voting in 1922 for respon-
sible government and against incorporation in South Africa. In 1953,
however, they were generally active participants in the Central African
Federation (with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland), eager to extend
their power in Central Africa. Yet, the reality was that the composition
of the white settler group turned out to be highly cosmopolitan, par-
ticularly as time went on. Moreover, the great majority of the settlers,
as in other territories of settlement, headed for the towns rather than
the rural areas. Most significantly, the expected explosion of capit-
alist enterprise did not materialise. Capitalist formations in the terri-
tory tended to be relatively small scale, including the development of
manufacturing that took place during and after the Second World War.
But small scale did not mean lacking in complexity, particularly
in respect of labour supply, its ethnic and class composition and the
resulting labour relations. Moreover, despite the scattered and rela-
tively fragmentary nature of much employment, trade unionisation
did take place, particularly after the First World War, and this forms a
key focus of this book.
This was particularly true of the railways, with employment
concentrated in Bulawayo and Salisbury (Harare), embracing a striking
hierarchy of different trades and services. It was on the railways
that the full intricacy of racial, class, ethnic and even gender issues
abounded. It was railway employment that stimulated the liveliest
trade union activity, created club affiliations and even influenced the
significant spatial layout of the two main centres of Bulawayo and
Salisbury. Ginsburgh’s book is the first to examine the dynamics of
labour, both in the railways and elsewhere, over a longer timescale
[ ix ]