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Imperial Rhodesians: The 1953 Rhodes Centenary Exhibition in Southern Rhodesia

2005; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 31; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03057070500109573

1465-3893

Allison K. Shutt, Tony King,

South African History and Culture

Abstract Reviewing the Rhodes Centenary Exhibition (RCE) of 1953, this article focuses on three interrelated themes in post-war Southern Rhodesia. First, significant post-war immigration challenged the state to educate new white Rhodesians on the founding myths of the colony, especially that of Cecil John Rhodes. Secondly, Southern Rhodesians were anxious to emphasise their status as British subjects in contrast to Afrikaner nationalism in South Africa. And finally, a rising and vocal black middle class challenged the state to adjust its national narrative to include blacks in the social process. The RCE spoke to all of these concerns by highlighting Rhodes and the British Royal family as central to a Southern Rhodesian identity that all races could share. Importantly, the black middle class had long embraced Rhodes's notion of ‘equal rights for all civilised men’ as their entryway into colonial society. At the RCE itself, the ‘African Village’ showcased African achievement in the arts as a noble contribution to the country. Taken together, the RCE's emphasis on Rhodes and royalty, as well as the focus on African contributions to culture, marked Southern Rhodesia as distinct from apartheid South Africa. Notes The authors thank the JSAS anonymous referees, and Kate Flynn, Eira Kramer and members of the Department of Economic History at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. We also thank the staff at Rhodes House Library in Oxford and at the National Archives of Zimbabwe, Harare for their assistance. Allison Shutt thanks Hendrix College for financial support and the Department of Economic History, UZ for hosting her as a visiting researcher. Not least, thanks also to Mark Schantz, Britt Anne Murphy and Norman Boehm for support and encouragement along the way. 1 The Federation, also known as the Central African Federation, comprised Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Nyasaland (Malawi). 2 Jan van Riebeeck landed at what is now Cape Town in 1652. He was the first Dutch governor of the Cape, and is credited with being responsible for introducing the European presence in southern Africa. 3 D. Kennedy, Islands of White: Settler Society and Culture in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, 1890–1939 (Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1987). Novels were especially important to the creation of white national myths. See the outstanding thesis by A. Chennells, ‘Settler Myths and the Southern Rhodesian novel’ (DPhil thesis, University of Zimbabwe, 1982). 4 The literature on the white settler community is deep and diverse, and often contradictory in interpretation. Among others see Kennedy above; A. King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation: the Policy of Partnership in Southern Rhodesia 1945–62’ (DPhil. Thesis, Oxford University, 2001); R. Hodder-Williams, White Farmers in Rhodesia, 1890–1965: A History of the Marandellas District (London, Macmillan, 1983); A. Mlambo, White Immigration into Rhodesia, From Occupation to Federation (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Press, 2002). Also see P. Kaarsholm, ‘The Past as Battlefield in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe’, Culture & History, 6 (1989), pp. 85–106. Kaarsholm's sketch, while useful, is largely ahistorical in its overview, suggesting that white impressions of blacks were static from conquest to 1980. 5 See the comments of C. Dunn, Central African Witness (London, Victor Gollancz, 1959), p. 208. Writing of immigrants, Dunn observes, ‘Above all, how lost they sometimes seem! … For some, the bush-fires may recall the smoke of standing trains behind the gasworks of Home, but the effect is still alien and desolate. How, after all, shall we sing the songs of home in a strange land’. (emphasis in the original). For a later period see P. Godwin and I. Hancock, ‘Rhodesians Never Die’: The Impact of War and Political Change on White Rhodesia c.1970–1980 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993). And for contemporary Zimbabwe see, N. Kriger, ‘The Politics of Creating National Heroes: The Search for Political Legitimacy and National Identity’, in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds), Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War (Portsmouth NH, Heinemann, 1995), pp. 139–62. 6 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’. 7 National Archives of Zimbabwe, Harare (hereafter NAZ) S482/132/4/49, Immigration. J.R.H. Shaul to Huggins, 17 April 1946. 8 See Mlambo, White Immigration, Chapter 5. Many Italians were former POWs who stayed on after the war, augmenting the small local Italian population. Greek immigrants were unwelcome because Rhodesians preferred British or South African immigrants or, failing that, northern Europeans. The preference for northern Europeans was evident in post-war Britain as well. For an interesting take on the subject, see D. Cesarani, Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (London, Phoenix, 2001), pp. 66–81. 9 Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Monthly Digest of Statistics (Salisbury, Central African Statistical Office, February 1956). 10 Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Monthly Digest of Statistics, March 1957. 11 Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Monthly Digest of Statistics, March 1960. 12 P.J.M. McEwan, ‘The European Population of Southern Rhodesia’, Civilizations, 13, 4 (1963), p. 438. 13 P.J.M. McEwan, ‘The European Population of Southern Rhodesia’, Civilizations, 13, 4 (1963), p. 430. 14 P.J.M. McEwan, ‘The Assimilation of European Immigrants in Southern Rhodesia 1945–58’ (PhD Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1963), p. 31. 15 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, Chapter 5. 16 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, Chapter 5, p. 108. 17 As a result of labour shortages for ‘white’ jobs, Rhodesian railwaymen were able to negotiate pay rises of 10 and 15 per cent in 1946 and 1947. J. Lunn, Capital and Labour on the Rhodesian Railway System 1888–1947 (London, Macmillan, 1987), p. 105. 18 R.C. Tredgold, The Rhodesia that was My Life (London, Allen & Unwin, 1968), p. 166. 19 NAZ, S824/590, Minutes of the Social Services Sub-committee, 18 September 1947, marked ‘confidential’. 20 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, pp. 104–11. 21 P. Mason, Year of Decision (London, Oxford Unversity Press, 1960), pp. 269–70. 22 McEwan, ‘The Assimilation of European Immigrants’, p. 45. 23 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, p. 56. 24 On the socialisation process in general, see Kennedy, Islands of White, Chapter 9. For one reflection on the assimilation process see J. Parker, Rhodesia: Little White Island (London, Pitman, 1972), especially Chapter 1. See also Chennells, ‘Settler Myths’, pp. 238–9, for the importance of pioneer myths to the socialisation process. See also Government of Southern Rhodesia, Your Servant and You (Salisbury, Southern Rhodesian Department of Public Relations, 1950). This pamphlet was written with the assistance of the Federation of Women's Institutes Southern Rhodesia (FWIRS). The inspiration for the pamphlet was a notorious confrontation between a newcomer woman and her black male servant. See NAZ, WO 6/5/2 Volume 18, FWISR Congress, 1948 on the assault and NAZ, WO 6/5/2 Volume 19, FWISR Congress, 1949 on helping the government with a pamphlet on servants. 25 Editorial, ‘Sixty Years’, Rhodesia Herald, 12 September 1950. 26 An interesting feature of the pioneer story was the emphasis on their lack of civilised refinement. This image reproduced pioneer manners in Southern Rhodesia as distinctly uncivilised, but necessary to the establishment of civilisation. See NAZ, ZBA 1/28: ‘Perils for Pioneers’, Rhodesia Herald, 26 August 1939. 27 ‘Britain's eyes and ears are turned to Rhodesia’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 3 July 1953, p. 15. 28 Upon the lapse of the British South Africa Company's charter to run Southern Rhodesia, the British government granted white settlers a referendum to choose between self-government – ‘responsible government’ – and union with South Africa. 29 D. Lowry, ‘“White Woman's Country”: Ethel Tawse Jollie and the Making of White Rhodesia’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 2 (June 1997), p. 269. 30. L. Gann, A History of Southern Rhodesia: Early Days to 1934 (London, Chatto & Windus, 1965), p. 237. 31 King, ‘Identity and Decolonization’, p. 134. 32 The Jan van Riebeeck festival, celebrating 300 years of white presence in South Africa, was a conscious display of white racial solidarity and of nation building, elevating Van Riebeeck to a national icon of white solidarity for the first time. See C. Rassool and L. Witz, ‘The 1952 Jan van Riebeeck Tercentenary Festival: Constructing and Contesting Public National History in South Africa’, Journal of African History, 34 (1993), pp. 447–68. L. Witz, Apartheid's Festival (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003). NAZ, S932/226, Draft Broadcast, W.D. Gale, ‘Southern Rhodesia at Van Riebeeck Fair’, c.1952. Southern Rhodesians inserted themselves into the beginning of white settlement with the arrival of Van Riebeeck. 33 G. Horne argues that white Americans in particular were critical to the construction of whites in Rhodesia precisely because the colony's shallow roots failed to transcend whites' ethnic and religious divisions. G. Horne, From the Barrel of a Gun (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 2001), especially pp. 26–7, 34, 36. Horne overestimates divisions within the white community, but his thesis that white unity was not natural is well worth remembering. 34 See King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’; Dunn, Central African Witness; P. Keatley, The Politics of Partnership (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1963). ‘Partnership’ proved difficult to define, and Huggins' tactless image of the horse and the rider became infamous. On the ambiguous definition of partnership see C. Leys, European Politics in Southern Rhodesia (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1959), pp. 272–4 and see note 3 on pp. 272–73; Tredgold, The Rhodesia that was My Life, p. 202. 35 M. West's book is the best introduction to the aspirations of the black middle class, The Rise of an African Middle Class: Colonial Zimbabwe, 1898–1965 (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2002); also see his, ‘“Equal Rights for All Civilized Men”: Elite Africans and the Quest for “European” Liquor in Colonial Zimbabwe, 1924–1961’, International Review of Social History 37, 3 (1992), pp. 376–97. 36 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, pp. 159–96. 37 Parker, Little White Island, p. 3. 38 S. Harrison, ‘Cultural Difference as Denied Resemblance: Reconsidering Nationalism and Ethnicity’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 45, 2 (April 2003), pp. 343–61. 39 Harrison, ‘Cultural Difference’, p. 354. 40 See, for example, NAZ, F209/1506, Rhodes Centenary Exhibition, European Education Department Exhibit; W.D. Gale, Heritage of Rhodes (Cape Town, Oxford University Press, 1950); see also Chennells, ‘Settler Myths’. 41 One of the most interesting books in this regard is B.J. Mnyanda, In Search of Truth (Bombay, Hindkitabs Ltd., 1954). 42 On the symbols of empire see D. Cannadine, Ornamentalism: How the British saw their Empire (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 2002). 43 Leys, European Politics, p. 250. 44 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, p. 35. 45 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, p. 35. See also ‘Crown is Sign of Unity of Empire’, Bantu Mirror, 13 June 1953, p. 1; Editorial: ‘Long Live the King’, Bantu Mirror, 19 April 1947, p. 6. 46 See West, The Rise of an African Middle Class. 47 King, ‘Identity and Decolonization’, pp. 36–7. 48 Lowry, “White Woman's Country”, p. 265. 49 D. Lowry, ‘“Shame upon ‘Little England’ while ‘Greater England’ stands”: Southern Rhodesia and the Imperial Idea’ (unpublished paper, Oxford Brookes University, 1996), p. 2. 50 J. Gunther, Inside Africa (London, Reprint Society, 1957), p. 598. 51 Rhodes House, Oxford, Welensky Papers, 103/7 f. 29. Poem by John Spicer on the cover of Federation, n.d. (probably 1952). 52 See also C. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka and the Limits of Historical Invention (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1998). 53 R. Rotberg, The Founder. Cecil Rhodes and the Pursuit of Power (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 689. 54 West, The Rise of an African Middle Class, p. 79. 55 Witz, Apartheid's Festival. 56 This paragraph is from NAZ, S101, Chairman's Report, National Co-ordinating Committee, Rhodes Centenary Celebrations, 1953, 18 September 1953, pp. 4–6, 3, 7–8. The Report makes no mention of the African Village. 57 King, ‘Identity and Decolonisation’, pp. 139–40. 58 NAZ, S483/13/4A, 6th Meeting of National Co-ordination Committee, Rhodes Centenary, 31 July 1951; W.D. Gale to Secretary for Internal Affairs, 2 May 1951. 59 NAZ,S483/13/4A, W.D. Gale to Secretary for Internal Affairs, 2 May 1951. 60 See NAZ, S483/13/4A, Minute Sheet, 19th November 1951, Record of a meeting between a delegation of the Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Committee and the Prime Minister and the Minister of Internal Affairs, Friday, 16th November 1951. 61 ‘Cottages for Exhibition’, Bantu Mirror, 20 June 1953, p. 2; ‘Rhodesia's Most Exclusive Club at Exhibition’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 22 July 1953, p. 7. 62 ‘Thankful for Accommodation’, Bantu Mirror, 26 September 1953, p. 15. Only seven Africans took advantage of the Cottages. 63 See NAZ, S101, Chairman's Report, National Co-ordinating Committee, Rhodes Centenary Celebrations, 1953, 18 September 1953, p. 3. 64 Official Catalogue and Guide (‘Pageant of Rhodesia’), p. 15; S101, Chairman's Report, National Co-ordinating Committee, Rhodes Centenary Celebrations, 1953, 18 September 1953, p. 9; ‘The Pageant of Rhodesia’, Centenary News, May 1953, p. 2. The pioneers aggressively lobbied government officials for housing at the RCE as close to the Queen Mother as possible. See NAZ, S289/T1/32/2, J.M. Greenfield, Minister of Internal Affairs to T.G. Gisborne, Prime Minister's Office, 9 March 1953. 65 Official Catalogue and Guide, p. 3. 66 West, The Rise of an African Middle Class, p. 79. 67 NAZ, S101, Chairman's Report, National Co-ordinating Committee, Rhodes Centenary Celebrations, 1953, 18 September 1953, p. 10. 68 Official Catalogue and Guide, p. 85; ‘Know Your Exhibition – Significance of the Baobab’, Rhodesia Herald, 7 August 1953, p. 7. 69 NAZ, S932/240d, Volume 1, ‘Rhodesian Pavilion’, n.d.; Also see Official Catalogue and Guide, p. 85. 70 NAZ, S932/240d, Volume 1, ‘Theme for Government Exhibit: Progress and Vitality’, n.d. 71 ‘“Bushmen Designs” for Centenary City’, Centenary News, 20 February 1953, p. 2. 72 This paragraph is from Official Catalogue and Guide, 1953, p. 13. 73 Editorial, ‘Centenary Year’, Bantu Mirror, 29 August 1953, p. 12. 74 J.M. Burns, Flickering Shadows: Cinema and Identity in Colonial Zimbabwe (Athens OH, Ohio University Press, 2002). 75 See Mnyanda, In Search of Truth, p. 38 on films, and throughout for an exceptional clear exposition of middle-class demands for a ‘culture bar’. See also West, The Rise of the African Middle Class. 76 And diagonal from the South African Pavilion. Official Catalogue and Guide (Pictorial Plan of the Centenary Exhibition). The idea of authentic villages of native peoples had been an integral part of imperial exhibitions since the nineteenth century. See, for example, T. Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt (Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1991). 77 Official Catalogue and Guide, Pictorial plan of the Centenary Exhibition. 78 Holleman himself recruited dancers and artists from the region to perform at the Village, while Native Affairs Department officials also aided in this task by locating people and objects for the Village. See ‘African Dancers for Rhodes Centenary Exhibition’, African Weekly, 13 May 1953, p. 1; NAZ, S160 ARG 16/1/54 [Box], CNC Powys-Jones, Circular 39/52, 3 December 1952, that exhorts Native Commissioners to collect objects and persuade people to participate in the RCE and Village. See the file in general for the Native Affairs Department activities on behalf of the RCE. 79 See, for example, ‘Farmers – Do Not Miss the Exhibition’, Rhodesia Herald, 10 July 1953, p. 6; J.Z. Gumede, ‘An African Looks Back on the Celebrations’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 15 July 1953, p. 8. 80 ‘Entertainment at Centenary Exhibition Village’, Bantu Mirror, 4 July 1953, p. 2. 81 ‘Spectacular Pole Dance’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 28 August 1953, p. 1. 82 ‘Entertainment at African Village’, Bantu Mirror, 15 August 1953, p. 1; ‘Fortune Teller at Rhodes Centenary Village’, Bantu Mirror, 11 July 1953, p. 2; ‘Central African Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Opens’, Bantu Mirror, 6 June 1953, pp. 1, 12. 83 ‘Large Inter-racial Crowd at Centenary’, Bantu Mirror, 12 September 1953, p. 8; ‘Entertainment at Centenary Exhibition Village’, Bantu Mirror, 4 July 1953, p. 2. White schoolchildren also attended as part of their school outings, though unlike black children they did not formally participate. At the end of the RCE, however, some white schoolboys entered the arena of the African Village to accept a gift from one of the Village's residents. See Bulawayo Chronicle, picture caption, p. 7; ‘Zulu Finds Two Things to Admire in Rhodesia – Donkeys and Schoolchildren’, Rhodesia Herald, 29 August 1953, p. 9. 84 ‘Large Inter-racial Crowd at Centenary’, Bantu Mirror, 12 September 1953, p. 8; Dorothy Masuka later remembered the Village as the centre of attraction where she made good money. See ‘Dorothy (Dotty) Masuka’, African Parade, May 1959, p. 17. 85 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: A Guide to the African Village (African Section, Rhodes Centenary Exhibition, 1953), forward. 86 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: A Guide to the African Village (African Section, Rhodes Centenary Exhibition, 1953), forward, p. 3. 87 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: A Guide to the African Village (African Section, Rhodes Centenary Exhibition, 1953), forward, p. 3. 88 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: A Guide to the African Village (African Section, Rhodes Centenary Exhibition, 1953), forward, pp. 3–4. 89 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow: A Guide to the African Village (African Section, Rhodes Centenary Exhibition, 1953), forward, p. 5. 90 NAZ, S100 (1952), ‘African Arts and Crafts at Exhibition’, Rhodesia Herald, 30 September 1952. 91 ‘Organising African Section’, Centenary News, 28 November 1952, p. 3; J. Woodham, ‘Images of Africa and Design at the British Empire Exhibitions Between the Wars’, Journal of Design History, 2, 1 (1989), pp. 15–33; Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt; Witz, Apartheid's Festival; J. Robinson, ‘Johannesburg's 1936 Empire Exhibition: Interaction, Segregation and Modernity in a South African City’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 29, 3 (September 2003), pp. 759–89. 92 NAZ, S100, (1952), ‘African Arts and Crafts at Exhibition’, Rhodesia Herald, 30 December 1952. 93 Robinson, ‘Johannesburg's 1936 Empire Exhibition’, p. 799. Also see P. Manning, ‘Primitive Art and Modern Times’, Radical History Review, 33 (1985), pp. 165–81. 94 ‘African Section: Village, Market and Dancing Area’, Centenary News, 6 February 1953, p. 2. 95 ‘Touring Exhibition Will Be to See Africa’, Centenary News, 3 April 1953, p. 2; ‘Visit to Centenary Exhibition Likened to a University Course’, African Weekly, 1 July 1953, p. 1. 96 Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt; A. Apter, ‘On Imperial Spectacle: The Dialectics of Seeing in Colonial Nigeria’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 44, 3 (July 2002), pp. 564–96. 97 ‘African Section: Village, Market and Dancing Area’, Centenary News, 6 February 1953, p. 2. On commodification in Nigeria see Apter, ‘On Imperial Spectacle’, pp. 569–70, 589. Also see T. Burke, Lifebuoy Men, Lux Women Commodification, Consumption and Cleanliness in Modern Zimbabwe (Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1996). 98 ‘The African Village is Taking Shape’, Centenary News, 14 November 1952, p. 2. The same was true for understanding the dances and the music, p. 3. 99 ‘African Section: Village, Market and Dancing Area’, Centenary News, 6 February 1953, p. 2. 100 ‘The African Village is Taking Shape’, Centenary News, 14 November 1952, p. 3. 101 N. Hunt explores the topsy-turvy world of the Belgian Congo in A Colonial Lexicon (Durham NC, Duke University Press, 1999). The Village education in the sophisticated craftsmanship and culture of Africans played a role similar to the one that Hamilton has described for representations of Shaka in South Africa in the lead-up to the 1994 elections. According to Hamilton, by including academic experts in the research process for the Shakaland tourist park, the owners fulfilled the ‘demanding new criteria of political sensitivity, and academic precision and respectability’. Shakaland ‘taught its visitors new forms of discernment and inculcated new criteria which allowed visitors to reinterpret as highly sophisticated and civilized that which they might previously have rejected as barbarous’. Hamilton, Terrific Majesty, p. 190, 193. 102 ‘Know Your Exhibition – Old Ways and New in Africa’, Rhodesia Herald, 12 August 1953, p. 6. 103 ‘Know Your Exhibition – Old Ways and New in Africa’, Rhodesia Herald, 12 August 1953, p. 6. 104 ‘Know Your Exhibition – Old Ways and New in Africa’, Rhodesia Herald, 12 August 1953, p. 6. 105 NAZ, S3148/3, Provincial Native Commissioner, Midlands, Circular, 20 March 1953. 106 NAZ, S3148/3, Provincial Native Commissioner, Midlands, Circular, 20 March 1953. 107 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, foreword. 108 Summers had only recently excavated the Zimbabwe ruins and largely confirmed the finding of Caton-Thompson that the site was originally built and occupied by African peoples. M. Hall provides a summary of excavations at Great Zimbabwe in Farmers, Kings, and Traders – The People of Southern Africa, 200–1860 (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 103–10. On Summers' contribution see pp. 104–9. This was politically charged for Africans as well. One man told Dunn, ‘If you want to do us a service, find out that Zimbabwe was built by Africans!’ Dunn, Central African Witness, p. 71. 109 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, p. 8. 110 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, p. 8. 111 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, pp. 20–22. 112 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, p. 19. 113 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, pp. 19, 24–5. On settler problems with the vocabulary and reality of healing in colonial Zimbabwe see D. Jeater, ‘Rethinking “the African Voice”: Language Interpretation in the Native Commissioner's and Magistrate's Courts, Melsetter District, Southern Rhodesia, 1896–1914’, in S. McGrath, C. Jedrej, K. King and J. Thompson (eds), Rethinking African History (Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press, Centre for African Studies, 1997), pp. 379–401. 114 See West, The Rise of an African Middle Class. 115 Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, p. 31. 116 Apter, ‘On Imperial Spectacle’, pp. 586, 587. 117 See ‘Visit to Centenary Exhibition Likened to University Course’, African Weekly, 1 July 1953, p. 1. The article noted that few Africans were attending the exhibition. The RCE organising committee did not publish any official attendance figures. 118 Burns, Flickering Shadows, pp. 142–3. 119 T. Ranger, Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture & History in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1999), especially p. 211. On the development of a Ndebele cultural nationalism in independent Zimbabwe see P. Kaarsholm, ‘Inventions, Imaginings, Codifications: Authorising Versions of Ndebele Cultural Tradition’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 23, 2 (1997), pp. 243–58. 120 ‘Matabele Home Society and Centenary Celebrations’, Bantu Mirror, 6 June 1953, p. 8. The struggle over African cultural symbols and landscapes is the subject of Ranger's history of the Motopos. See Ranger, Voices, especially Chapter 7. 121 ‘Aim of Rhodes Centenary Celebrations’, Bantu Mirror, 2 May 1953, p. 1. 122 ‘Aim of Rhodes Centenary Celebrations’, Bantu Mirror, 2 May 1953, p. 1. 123 NAZ, S100 (1952), ‘Benefits to Africans Since Birth of Rhodes’, Rhodesia Herald, 29 December 1952. Compare this protest to the organised protests that greeted the Van Riebeeck Festival in Cape Town in 1952, Witz, Apartheid's Festival, Chapter 3. 124 ‘Matabele Home Society and Centenary Celebrations’, Bantu Mirror, 6 June 1953, p. 8; Resentment towards Holleman lingered after the close of the RCE, see ‘The Matabele and Dr. Holleman’, African Home News, 23 October 1953, p. 8 and ‘Dr. Holleman leaves’, African Parade, April 1957, p. 11. 125 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, p. 16. 126 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, By the 1960 Trade Fair in Bulawayo Africans' reluctance to participate in government-sponsored exhibitions had become farcical. The organiser of the 1960 Fair complained that there was no use holding a multi-racial event if Africans refused to participate. ‘African Apathy to Trade Fair “Big Problem”’, African Daily News, 19 December 1959, p. 1. 127 ‘Africans at Centenary Exhibition’, Bantu Mirror, 10 June 1953, p. 4. 128 ‘Admires Exhibition’, Bantu Mirror, 13 June 1953, p. 13. 129 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Through the Spectacles of an African’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, p. 3. 130 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Through the Spectacles of an African’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, p. 3. 131 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Through the Spectacles of an African’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, p. 3. 132 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Through the Spectacles of an African’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, p. 3. 133 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Through the Spectacles of an African’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, p. 3. 134 L.C. Vambe, ‘The Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Through the Spectacles of an African’, African Weekly, 2 September 1953, p. 16. 135 J.Z. Gumede, ‘An African Looks Back on the Celebrations’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 15 July 1953, p. 8. On Gumede's government career, including a stint as Zimbabwe–Rhodesia's President under the government of Abel Muzorewa see, ‘“I Will Not Exist” Says the Man Who May Be President This Week’, Sunday Mail, 27 May 1979, p. 15; ‘Who Will Be President?’, The Herald, 23 May 1979, p. 11; ‘Former Head of State Dies in City’, The Chronicle, 31 March 1989, p. 1. Gumede's notion of proper etiquette between peoples as critical to good race relations seems to have been one of his guiding principles. See NAZ, RH 20/7/1: J.Z. Gumede, ‘Bridging the Gap’, Lecture to the Rhodesian National Affairs Association, 16 July 1971. 136 Gumede, ‘An African Looks Back on the Celebrations’. 137 Gumede, ‘An African Looks Back on the Celebrations’. 138 Gumede, ‘An African Looks Back on the Celebrations’. 139 Gumede, ‘An African Looks Back on the Celebrations’. 140 Gumede, ‘An African Looks Back on the Celebrations’. Such manners were very meaningful to the emerging African middle class in Rhodesia and elsewhere. See, for example, ‘Centenary Exhibitions Said To Be An Eye Opener’, Bantu Mirror, 8 August 1953, p. 8; R. Reynolds, Beware of Africans: A Pilgrimage from Cairo to the Cape (London, Jarrolds, 1955), pp. 242–3; N. Shamuyarira, Crisis in Rhodesia (London, Andre Deutsch, 1965), p. 53; West, The Rise of an African Middle Class. 141 The society pages of newspapers covered elite Africans who attended the 1936 Empire Exhibition. See Robinson, ‘Johannesburg's 1936 Empire Exhibition’, p. 784. 142 West, The Rise of an African Middle Class, Part 1 especially. 143 See J. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990), especially p. 107. 144 As in South Africa, R. Ross, Status and Respectability in the Cape Colony, 1750–1870 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 88. 145 ‘African Journalist’, ‘I Travelled With Royalty’, African Parade, November 1953, p. 15. 146 ‘African Journalist’, ‘I Travelled With Royalty’, African Parade, November 1953, p. 15. 147 ‘Centenary Exhibitions Said to be an Eye Opener’, Bantu Mirror, 8 August 1953, p. 8. 148 ‘Centenary Exhibitions Said to be an Eye Opener’, Bantu Mirror, 8 August 1953, p. 8. 149 ‘Centenary Exhibitions Said to be an Eye Opener’, Bantu Mirror, 8 August 1953, p. 8. 150 ‘A Revelation of Latent Talent’, Bantu Mirror, 18 July 1953, p. 2. 151 W. Robert Foran, ‘Bad for Race Relations’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 21 August 1952, p. 7. 152 The inability to control the spectator's interpretation is a risk of festivals and exhibitions. See Witz, Apartheid's Festival, pp. 20, 182–6. 153 ‘Centenary Village Entrance Fee Raised’, Bantu Mirror, 20 June 1953, p. 1. In this the organisers may have been influenced by the general notion that the 1952 Van Riebeeck Festival was littered with uncultured, uneducated people and warned against allowing similar peoples to flock to the Rhodes Centenary. NAZ, S932/240e, A.D. Chataway, High Commissioner, Van Riebeeck Festival Fair, 22 April 1952. 154 ‘Centenary Village Entrance Fee Raised’, Bantu Mirror, 20 June 1953, p. 1. 155 ‘Centenary Village Entrance Fee Raised’, Bantu Mirror, 20 June 1953, p. 1. 156 The notion of an alternative racial etiquette is from J. Ritterhouse, ‘Learning Race: Racial Etiquette and the Socialization of Race in the Jim Crow South’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1999). 157 Reynolds, Beware of Africans, pp. 243–4. 158 L. Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (London, Heinemann, 1976), p. 252. 159 L. Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (London, Heinemann, 1976), p. 253. 160 L. Vambe, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe (London, Heinemann, 1976), p. 253. 161 Central African Rhodes Centenary Exhibition Limited, Balance Sheet at 30th June 1954. 162 Indeed, the Centenary and especially the housing constructed at great expense by the Southern and Northern Rhodesian governments lost money. The financial loses were so great that both governments considered whether to take the Centenary organisers to court. NAZ, S2809/T1/32/2, W.J. Fick, Secretary to the Treasury, to T.C. Gardner, c/o Secretariat, Lusaka, 5 March 1955. Fick suggested a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the financial losses. 163 On the Exhibition inspiring white Rhodesia see ‘Exhibition is Ready for Final Spurt from the Public’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 21 August 1953, p. 1. Also see ‘A Blaze of Glory’, Bulawayo Chronicle, 29 August 1953, p. 8. Reynolds reported that white reaction to the Centenary in general bordered on ‘hysteria’. Reynolds, Beware of Africans, p. 259. 164 ‘Large Inter-racial Crowd at Centenary Village’, Bantu Mirror, 12 September 1953, p. 8. Hugh Aston estimated that 100,000 people had visited the African Village, see ‘Rhodes Centenary Exhibition’, Bantu Mirror, 5 September 1953, p. 1. 165 Editorial, ‘Centenary Year’, Bantu Mirror, 29 August 1953, p. 12. 166 ‘Rhodes Centenary Exhibition’, Bantu Mirror, 5 September 1953, p. 16. 167 Assimilado (Portuguese) and evolué (French) were classifications of Africans who had reached certain levels of education or social standing within colonial society, and were recognised, in effect, as a class apart. 168 ‘“I Will Not Exist” Says the Man Who May Be President This Week’, Sunday Mail, 27 May 1979, p. 15. 169 Savanhu resigned from the Federal government in 1961, claiming partnership had been a sham and that he had been used as “window dressing”. 170 Chennells, ‘Settler Myths’, p. 314. Additional informationNotes on contributorsTony King The authors thank the JSAS anonymous referees, and Kate Flynn, Eira Kramer and members of the Department of Economic History at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ) for their comments on earlier drafts of this article. We also thank the staff at Rhodes House Library in Oxford and at the National Archives of Zimbabwe, Harare for their assistance. Allison Shutt thanks Hendrix College for financial support and the Department of Economic History, UZ for hosting her as a visiting researcher. Not least, thanks also to Mark Schantz, Britt Anne Murphy and Norman Boehm for support and encouragement along the way.