A COUNTRY BETWEEN TWO FLAGS - Part 2
For protection, the civilians had 500 men of the newly-formed BSA Company Police. In overall command was Lieutenant-Colonel E. G. Pennefather, a Regular Army officer. The equipping and supplying of the Column was brilliantly done by. a young man, Major Frank Johnson (he commanded the Corps), who in 1944 was to die in Norfolk after living through the German occupation of the Channel Islands in World War Two. (His son, "Budge," died in Salisbury in 1967; his grand-daughter, Maureen, is a news reporter in the same city). .
In the 33 years during which it administered Rhodesia, the BSA Company never paid a penny dividend to its shareholders. And the British Government never put a penny's investment into the young country, although it offered much advice on how the Company should run it.
Self-reliance was no new characteristic in any pioneer country, but it explains how the Rhodesian outlook was fashioned, developed and hardened.
The quota of rogues and misfits was small in the early Salisbury and Bulawayo,. and the influx of undesireabIes hardly noticeable. Many of the "characters" were comic rather than evil, and the hard living and working conditions soon sorted the men from the boys, frightening away the weaklings and deterring the indolent newcomers.
THE TURN of the century marked a testing time for Rhodesia. After j the Matabele and Mashona rebellions in 1893 and 1896 came the rinderpest to decimate the cattle herds.
The Anglo-Boer War took its toll of the volunteer soldiers who had left their farms and mines and businesses to fight alongside the British in South Africa.
The composition of the Pioneer Column is worth noting for, unwittingly at the. time, it set a pattern which subsequent Governments in Rhodesia and then the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland adapted to their policies of selective immigration.
The Pioneer Corps was the civilian section of the occupation force. Every man was chosen for his special skill or unusual ability. There was, naturally, an emphasis on farming and mining, but medicine, surveying, geology and other sciences were represented.
It was an elite corps, far removed from the rabbles which swarmed into the Yukon, the South African diamond fields and the Australian goldfields.
They went to war again in 1914. to soldier in East Africa, South-West Africa and in France.
Undermanned on the home front, the country battled to develop its natural resources and its growing (and . invaluable) mineral industry. gold, coal, asbestos and chrome were to be found in abundance. Copper and many "specialised" minerals came later came.
In the eyes of many farmers, tobacco growing was hardly a worthwhile pastime, but its supporters persisted in careful planning and soon had laid a strong foundation on which was built an industry envied throughout the world - until hammered by sanctions in 1966.
"Responsible government" was a phrase linked with the renewal of the Company's charter in 1914, and after the war Rhodesia sought such a government, only to .be told by the Colonial Secretary, Winston Churchill, that incorporation with the UniOIl Of South Africa had to be an alternative choice in an essential referendum.
In spite of the fact that General Smuts stumped Rhodesia, offering very attractive terms should it join South Africa, the country voted for responsible government in 1922, and on September 12, 1923, Southern Rhodesia was formally annexed to the British Crown.
The British Government reserved the right to "oversee" certain legislation 8 affecting the indigenous peoples where it might discriminate between white and black, external affairs and one or two other matters. In defence, the Governor, appointed by Britain and approved by Rhodesia, was the Commander-inChief.
Above: The new flag is raised - November 11, 1968
Right: The signing of the Declaration of Independence, November 11, 1965
