Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:36:58.792Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Liberal Women in Rhodesia: A Report on the Mitchell Papers, University of Cape Town

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 May 2014

Kate Law*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield

Extract

The Mitchell collection at the Manuscripts and Archives Department of The University of Cape Town (UCT) consists of the papers of Diana Mary Mitchell, a leading white Rhodesian liberal in the 1960s and 1970s as well as private papers of some other politically active Rhodesians, such as Morris Hirsch, Pat Bashford and Allan Savory. This report presents the Mitchell collection as an instrument to investigate issues of agency by liberal White Rhodesian women in the period 1950-1980, thus aiming to counter some dominant trends in the historiography of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe.

Diana Mitchell was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia, in 1932. Her father was a merchant marine officer and her mother was originally from Australia. She attended Eveline High School in Bulawayo and with financial help from her mother she completed a BA in History at Cape Town University in 1953. Before entering formal party politics, Mitchell ran a “backyard school” which provided schooling for African children who otherwise would have had no access to education. After the announcement of the illegal Declaration of Independence (UDI), in 1965 the Rhodesian Front (RF) closed such schools and Mitchell charges this move as being “the key to my activism.” While Mitchell acknowledges that she “worked voluntarily because I could afford to, my husband was the breadwinner […] so I could afford to be this so called ‘liberal’ because of my standard of living,” she became heavily involved in parliamentary politics and was one of the founding members of the Centre Party (CP).

Type
Archive Reports
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Alexander, Karin, “‘Orphans of the Empire’: An Analysis of White Identity and Ideology Construction in Zimbabwe,” in: Raftopoulos, Brian, and Savage, Tyrone (ed.), Zimbabwe Injustice and Political Reconciliation (Cape Town, 2004).Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette, “Thinking Beyond Boundaries: Empire, Feminism and the Domains of History,” Social History 26 (2001).Google Scholar
Burton, Antoinette, Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home, and History in Late Colonial India (Oxford, 2003)Google Scholar
Campbell, Horace, Reclaiming Zimbabwe The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation (Claremont, 2003).Google Scholar
Dobson, Miriam, “Letters,” in: Dobson, Miriam, and Ziemann, Benjamin (ed.), Reading Primary Sources–The Interpretation of texts from Nineteenth and Twentieth Century History (London, 2009).Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York, 1972).Google Scholar
Godwin, Peter, and Hancock, Ian, Rhodesians Never Die, The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia c.1970-1980 (Oxford, 1993).Google Scholar
Hancock, Ian, White Liberals, Moderates and Radicals in Rhodesia, 1953-1980 (London, 1984).Google Scholar
Hodder-Williams, Richard, “Party-Allegiance among Europeans in Rural Rhodesia–A Research Note,” Journal of Modern African Studies 10 (1972).Google Scholar
McEwan, Cheryl, “Building a Postcolonial Archive? Gender, Collective Memory and Citizenship in Post-apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 29 (2003).Google Scholar
Meredith, Martin, The Past Is Another Country: Rhodesia 1890-1979 (London, 1979).Google Scholar
Mitchell, Diana M., and Cary, Robert, African Nationalist Leaders in Rhodesia: Who's Who (Salisbury, 1977).Google Scholar
Verrier, Anthony, The Road to Zimbabwe (London, 1986).Google Scholar