Mark Huleatt-James was a solicitor and partner in a City of London law firm until his retirement in 2009. He was born in 1950 in what was then Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, and lived in Africa until 1972. He is a director of ILFA, a company established for the purpose of building legal excellence in Africa.
This is an important work. It is a gentle, humorous memoir of an idyllic coming of age in post-World War II Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and is also a poignant tribute to a vanished age of family and community. But it is also a reminder of white settlerisms last gleaming before the pent-up grievances of the repressed African majority would lead to armed conflict and, ultimately, majority rule. The core of the work lies in the authors remembrance of things past; but his juxtaposition of the past and present lifts the book from being just another slice of Rhodesiana.
Knox Chitiyo, Associate Fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and Chair of the Britain Zimbabwe Society
A multi-layered exposition of the lives of immigrants from all over the world who had come to find new frontiers, a historical background of the country giving a socio-political and economic context, and an insight into the culture and mores of the countrys people.
Dame Linda Dobbs
Harmony and Discord in Africa
Memories of Childhood in Southern Rhodesia
Mark Huleatt-James
First published in 2015 by
The Radcliffe Press
An imprint of I.B.Tauris & Co Ltd
London New York
www.ibtauris.com
Copyright Mark Huleatt-James 2015
The right of Mark Huleatt-James to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978 1 78453 312 0
eISBN: 978 0 85772 923 1
A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available
For my parents, Tom and Angela,
and for Nicole, Duncan and Dani,
all of whom love the land that is
Zimbabwe
ILLUSTRATIONS
All images from the authors private collection
My mother, Angela, in her fixer station
My father, Tom, as a fresh-faced midshipman just out of school
Nigel and me, with the distant prospect of a Rhodesian PK (picanin kia, or WC)
The Great Enclosure in the ruins of Great Zimbabwe
Drying off after our daily bath
Makosa singers assembling on the back of the farm truck
Stuck on the main road between Sofala and Vilanculos
Embarkation at Vilanculos
A mounted ramble with my grandparents
The new farmhouse, Ballymakosa
Nigel and me with Digby and Pixie
Ruzawi central dormitory and administration building
My sister, Averina
My father, getting ready for the Farmers Handicap Race
A Christmas collection of Huleatt-Jameses, Bennetts and de Montforts
Parrot Kopje in the Ruzawi estate
A bachelor herd of buffalo, Kanyemba
FOREWORD
What appears, at first blush, to be simply recollections of a childhood spent in Southern Rhodesia between 1950 and 1966, turns out to be a multi-layered exposition of the lives of immigrants from all over the world who had come to find new frontiers, a historical background of the country giving a socio-political and economic context, and an insight into the culture and mores of the countrys people. The spirit of adventure and enterprise blossom, flourish and then decline with the changing political landscape. The physical landscape beautiful, but bruising permeates the story, as does the love of the author and his family for the land of his birth. The clarity and simplicity of writing conveys the childhood thoughts and reminiscences well. The political commentary is insightful. There was harmony in abundance in this childhood, but underscored by social and political discord not truly understood by the child at the time. The insights are invaluable nonetheless.
The Hon Dame Linda Dobbs DBE
PREFACE
This book is the story of a childhood spent in Southern Rhodesia between 1950 and 1966. It fills a niche not covered by memoirs and autobiographies such as those of Doris Lessing. Her books, Under My Skin and African Laughter, cover the periods 1925 to 1950 and 1982 to 1992. Peter Godwin, with Mukiwa, covers the 1960s through to the 1980s and focuses on problems of cultural identity. Alexandra Fullers memoir, Dont Lets Go to the Dogs Tonight, commences in the 1970s and deals with survival and civil war.
It is the story of a time when the European hegemony in the area was at its zenith. The tough times of the Depression and World War II were over and an agricultural and commodities boom was under way. The Europeans felt confident and increasingly prosperous. The guerrilla war in Rhodesia did not really begin until the end of the 1960s. This book is therefore much sunnier than those of the authors just mentioned. It is written as an act of gratitude to a country that provided me with a happy childhood. In the same vein, it is also an appreciation, hung on the framework of that childhood story, of the history and cultures of Zimbabwe (albeit only up to the end of 1966), its countryside, people, fauna and flora which remains to a large extent valid in spite of the changes over the last forty-nine years.
But whilst the story is essentially a happy one, it occurred against a background of cultural misunderstanding and at a time of increasing racial and political tension. It was a tension insensible to a child, but which caused some confusion and introspection on the part of an adolescent, leading to a slowly growing awareness of prejudice and its unfairness. That tension is therefore an important strand in the overall story.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thanks go to my late father for regaling me with tales and lore of Zimbabwe. They were inspirational in the commencement of this book. My one regret is that the books nature as a memoir precludes me from making more use of what I heard from him. I must thank my wife, Nicole, for her continued encouragement once I was started on the process of writing the book. I am very grateful to my mother who, notwithstanding her eighty-nine years, has checked and, in a few instances, corrected the record of my childhood memories. I am similarly grateful to Desmond Bennett, who is not quite so old. My brother Nigel, sister Averina, Paul Crook, Brett Hone and Anna Gardner have reviewed the manuscript and provided helpful comments. Any residual errors and failings are my responsibility alone.
My thanks must also go to Judy Luddington for her help in obtaining a publisher for the book, and to those involved in the publishing process itself, in particular Dr Lester Crook, Jo Godfrey and Laila Grieg-Gran, for their support. I am grateful to Peterhouse School for allowing me to include in the book an extract from Fred Snells retirement speech given in 1967. Finally, I must express my gratitude to Dame Linda Dobbs for finding the time away from her many educational and charitable commitments in the United Kingdom and Africa to write the foreword to this endeavour to inform and entertain the reader about some significant, as well as some not so significant but personal, parts of the Zimbabwean story and stage.
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