A COUNTRY BETWEEN TWO FLAGS - Part 1
A QUESTION OF LOYALTIES. The period of time between the raising of the Union Jack at Fort Salisbury on 13th September, 1890, and the adoption of Rhodesia's new green and white standard on 11th November, 1968 has seen the painful growth of a nation. The embattled Union Jack at Fort Charter symbolizes Rhodesia's allegiances during the first seven decades of her file, Is a scene that was repeated whenever an Imperial call to arms was made.
One of the young country's major tests of loyalty was the Union Issue of the early 'twenties.. Winston Churchill insisted In 1923 that the people of Rhodesia themselves had to decide their own future. The choice: Responsible Government, or absorption by South Africa. General Jan Smuts stumped the country, offering the colonists some very attractive terms.
ON A SUNNY Saturday -i t was September 13, 1890 - the 860 men of Cecil Rhodes's. Pioneer Column pulled up the Union Jack in what is now Cecil Square in Salisbury. They had arrived on a bare patch of veld the previous day and had needed time in which to wash and brush-up after the 1,000-mile journey.
On a gusty, clouded Monday-it was November 11, 1968-the Rhodesian Government pulled down the Union Jack and hoisted an Independence flag of controversial design.
The Rhodesians had waited 78 years in which to decide that Britain's policy in South-Central Africa was no basement bargain and that the standards she had laid down were unacceptable.
Elghty-minus years Is a short time In which to survey a country's greatness.
History may be the chart and compass of national endeavor, but it is also (said Edward Gibbon) only a register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind. In 1884 Augustine Birrell called history "that great dust heap." Ralph Waldo Emerson thought differently. "The use of history," he wrote, "Is to give value to the present hour and its duty."
The problem in 1969 for the historian, the analyst or the reader of the Rhodesian story is to distinguish between the dust of time, the winds of change in Africa and the current fog which obscures the future.
THE STORY of Rhodesia is a disjointed compound of exploration, occupation, exploitation, sound development and-in 1969-a certain preoccupation with what the future holds for the white man in a world apparently entranced, spellbound and hynotised by catch-phrases such as "anti-imperialism" and "Black Power."
It started in 1888, when Cecil Rhodes, having obtained from the Matabele king, Lobengula, a concession to seek minerals and open mines in what was to become Rhodesia, sought from Queen Victoria a charter to administer and develop the country. He got the charter in October, 1889.
Hunters, prospectors and missionaries had, in general, been the only explorers from the south, although the adventurous Portuguese, striking north-west from the Indian Ocean shore, had reached the fabled land of Monomotapa in search of gold and other treasures which have always helped to finance the spreading of religion. Suits of armour are slight protection against mosquitoes (they make scratching difficult in vuInerable areas), and. the pioneer visitors from Europe soon withdrew their remnants to the coast.
There was no white settlement for many years. The African tribes were on the move, however, closing in on the lands north of the Limpopo River from the south and the north. The activities of the Arab slave raiders north of the Zambezi kept the land in ferment, and from the middle of the f9th century the Matabele impis held themselves in fine fettle by .raiding the docile Mashonas and viewing with increasing hostility the handful of missionaries who were trying to establish themselves in Matabeleland.
QUEEN VICTORIA'S Charter gave the British South Africa Company formidable authority. The Company needed it, for it was about to occupy and develop a vast area, almost blank on the map, in which savagery ruled unchecked and survival was the lesser breeds' first requisite.
The composition of the Pioneer
Above: Fort Charter
Right: Sir Charles Coghlan & Jan Smuts, during his visit to Cape Town in 1922 to discuss the terms of UNion with South Africa
