PHILIP CHIRWA, Lusaka
ON NOVEMBER 8, 1960, the African Mail (forerunner to the present-day Zambia Daily Mail which fought alongside African nationalists in their struggle against colonial rule) published a profile on the then federal prime minister, Sir Roy Welensky, entitled: “Welesnky: Success Story that Ends in Failure.”
The article, published with the courtesy of the “New Statesman”, London, was written in such a way that it ridiculed Sir Roy without necessarily defaming him.
For example, after mentioning that Roland Welensky (Roy was a nickname he had carried since childhood) was born in 1907 a “poor white of the Pioneer Street district of Salisbury (Harare) whose father was a Polish Jew and his mother Afrikaans, his family just above the bread line”, the paper’s correspondent then went on, “His father took to keeping a flop house for the sorriest kind of white loafers, who seldom paid and regaled themselves with talk of capturing natives and hanging them on the spot.
“Such were the earliest, formative years of the man destined to carry the banner of ‘partnership’ in an experimental multi-racial state sandwiched between triumphant black nationalism on top, and desperate, defiant whitebaasskap below.”
An organisation calling itself the Rhodesian Republican Army (RRA), which had been banned in Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), was apparently so angered by the article that a week later, it sent a strongly-worded letter to the newspaper, threatening it with CLICK TO READ MORE