Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
The question of populism in Uganda was investigated by Professor D. A. Low in this journal in 1964.1 He argued that the concept of populism was appropriate to describe the political agitation by the independent small landholders and poor peasants against the breakdown of the traditional hierarchical structure of Buganda under the impact of colonial rule. The populists were particularly concerned to reduce their economic disabilities through control of the marketing system for cotton, but at the same time were concerned to articulate ‘the kingdom's corporate solidarity’. To that extent Buganda populism was socially conservative, though it may have seemed radical to the colonial rulers.
1 Low, D. A., ‘The advent of populism in Uganda’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 6: 4 (1964).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
2 Barber, James, Rhodesia, The Road to Rebellion (London: Oxford University Press, 1967), Chs. 12, 13Google Scholar; Bull, Theodore, Rhodesian Perspective (London: Michael Joseph, 1967), pp. 20ff.Google Scholar; Shamuyarira, Nathan, Crisis in Rhodesia (London: Andre Deutsch, 1965), pp. 210–26.Google Scholar
3 Palley, Claire, The Constitutional History and Law of Southern Rhodesia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966), pp. 236 ff.Google Scholar; Leys, Colin, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959), Ch. 5.Google Scholar
4 Bowman, Larry W., ‘Rhodesia since UDI’, Africa Report, 12: 2 (02 1967)Google Scholar; see also his ‘Strains in the Rhodesian Front’, Africa Report, 13:9 (12 1968)Google Scholar; for details of the Tiger and Fearless proposals, see my sections on Rhodesia in The Annual Register: World Events in 1966 (London: Longmans, 1967), pp. 98–9Google Scholar; and The Annual Register for 1968, pp. 90–1.Google Scholar
5 Arrighi, Giovanni, The Political Economy of Rhodesia (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), pp. 19–20Google Scholar; see also his ‘The Political Economy of Rhodesia’, New Left Review, 39 (09–10 1966)Google Scholar; Fox, H.Wilson, Memorandum on the Constitutional, Political, Financial and Other Questions concerning Rhodesia (London: British South Africa Company, 1912).Google Scholar
6 Leys, Colin, op. cit., p. 14.Google Scholar
7 Rhodesia Herald, June 27, 1913.Google Scholar
8 F.Head to the editor, Rhodesia Herald, March 16,1912.Google Scholar
9 Annual Report of the Rhodesia Native Labour Bureau, 1908, quoted in the Bulawayo Chronicle, August 28, 1908.Google Scholar
10 Mitchell, J.C., ‘Wage Labour and African Population Movements in Central Africa’, in Barbour, K.M. and Prothero, R.M. (eds.), Essays in African Population (London, 1961)Google Scholar; and Fox, Wilson, op. cit., pp. 238 ffGoogle Scholar. For the correspondence on labour recruitment, see ibid., p. 244; Palley, , op. cit., pp. 176–8Google Scholar; Cd. 1200 of 1902: Correspondence Relating to the Regulation and Supply of Labour in Southern Rhodesia; Mackenzie, John, ‘The relationship between the Colonial office and the BSA Company, 1890–1914, with special reference to labour relations’ (University College of Rhodesia, Department of History: unpublished Henderson Seminar Paper No. 6,1967).Google Scholar
11 Cd. 3993 of 1906 gives details of conditions for Nyasas in the Southern Rhodesian and the Transvaal mines. See also Rhodesia Herald, September 8, 1911, and November 3, 1911Google Scholar, which reports the Rhodesians' angry response to the Nyasaland Government's Gazette Notice of September 30, 1911, prohibiting the recruitment of natives for service outside the Protectorate.
12 Financial Times (London), 09 29, 1911; October 2, 1911.Google Scholar
13 Rhodesia Herald, September 22, 1911.Google Scholar
14 National Archives, Salisbury: catalogue entry on McChlery.
15 Rhodesia Herald, November 24, 1911.Google Scholar
16 Brock, W.R., ‘The United States’, in New Cambridge Modern History, Vol. 11 (Cambridge, 1962), pp. 500 ff.Google Scholar
17 Rhodesia Herald, February 2, 1912.Google Scholar
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid., February 15,1912. In early March McChlery claimed 7,000 resisters, but his figure was probably optimistic. As late as 1926 the total figure for Europeans employed in agriculture and forestry was only 3,995. Though there are no separate figures to distinguish smallworkers from other miners, it is unlikely that they equalled the number of farmers. Perhaps McChlery was counting women and children. Rhodesia Herald, March 8, 1912Google Scholar: Leys, , op. cit., p. 17.Google Scholar
20 R. A. Fletcher, President of the Rhodesian Agricultural Union, and one of the few resisters who was an official of a formal farming organization.
21 Rhodesia Journal, March 21, 1912Google Scholar. The Government preferred to recover the fines by civil process rather than give the option of imprisonment, which was loudly demanded by the resisters. Magistrates imposed nominal fines, such as 2/6d., but this seems to have made the resisters even more adamant. Some resisters agreed to go home only because their wives were nervous about living on the farm ‘alone’. Obviously, a frontier society with a large subject population could hardly afford to incarcerate a large percentage of its manpower. Order was more important than law.
22 Rhodesia Herald, May 10,1912; May 24,1912.Google Scholar
23 Rhodesia Journal, March 16,1912.Google Scholar
24 African World, March 9, 1912Google Scholar; Rhodesia Journal, March 28, 1912.Google Scholar
25 A naive and sentimental interpretation of the past traditions of a society is a feature of populism. Myburgh, one of the ‘Seven’, argued that the tax was ‘the clearest case of taxation without representation that could be found in the British Empire’. There was much talk of ‘liberty’ during the revolt. For instance, Rhodesia Herald, March 15, 1912Google Scholar. It will be recalled that Mr. Smith';s illegal declaration of independence, November 11, 1965, began with a paraphrase of the American one of 1776: ‘Whereas in the course of human affairs history has shown that it may become necessary for a people to resolve the political affiliations which have connected them with another people….’Proclamation(Government Printer, Salisbury, 1965).Google Scholar
26 Eyles, the M.L.C. most closely associated with the farmers, found himself in a political morass. He was originally against the new Bureau, but was instructed by the farmers and smallworkers to vote for it in May 1911, when the latter were apparently unaware of i s implications. Against his own convictions, he voted for the Bureau. He was also against the tax. but he found the farmers divided about it, and he voted for it on the grounds that ‘we had to swallow it, whether we liked it or not’. He was then severely castigated by the angry farmers for supporting the Company against them. Rhodesia Herald, March 8, 1912.Google Scholar
27 Gwelo Times, May 18, 1923.Google Scholar
28 Socialism often lies in the eye of the beholder. The Bulawayo Chronicle called Keller ‘the Lenin of Rhodesia’, a phrase much relished by Keller himself. Bulawayo Chronicle, April 11, 1923.Google Scholar
29 Independent (Bulawayo), May 20, 1923.Google Scholar
30 See my Oxford B.Litt. thesis, 1965, ‘The Attitude and the Policy of the Main Sections of the British Labour Movement to Imperial Issues, 1899–1924‘.The main argument is that socialliberal intellectuals had made precious little impact on the party's thinking on imperialism by 1924. Thomas, J.H., the Labour Colonial Secretary in 1924, was a noted imperialist and chauvinist.Google Scholar
31 ‘When he [Keller] made a general assertion against capital, he had in mind the big financial groups which operated in this country … [and not the small capitalists]’. Bulawayo Chronicle, 5 September, 1923.Google Scholar
32 Bulawayo Chronicle, 10 October, 1923.Google Scholar
33 RLP: Statement of Policy and Legislative Enactments, Salisbury, 1939.Google Scholar
34 RLP: Policy Statement for the 1948 Election attempts to argue that, but for the RLP, these measures would not have been achieved.
35 Walker (Chairman of the RLP) wrote to the Dominions Secretary in 1937 complaining of the criticism of Rhodesian native policies by Arthur Creech Jones (Labour) in the British House of Commons. He pointed out that he had seen nothing in Rhodesia to equal the depressed areas, slums and appalling poverty of Great Britain. Maasdorp Papers, National Archives, Salisbury MA/19/2/1/3.