By Ted Eustace
Somewhat unfortunately I cannot remember if I was ever told of the actual reason for the setting up of our office in Rhodesia, .but the reasons could have been largely general and our Archives will doubtless have the full particulars.
On leaving Pretoria by train for Salisbury, I was seen off by the Chef de Protocol - my first compliment of this nature. As stated in my former report, Mr Roy Gale accompanied ma and even at that stage was hardly conventional as he arrived late at the Pretoria station and had part of his luggage wrapped up in a newspaper. I forced him to remedy this latter matter in Bulawayo by buying an additional suitcase which was just as well for we were met formally et Salisbury by the Secretary for External Affairs, the Controller of the Household (Government House), the Aide de Camp, the Head of the Army and the Commissioner of Police. Here poor Gale again failed to distinguish himself for he put our luggage into a private car and not into the limousine sent for us by Government House. Here I have to give Gale his due: He worked hard with great ability and got through an enormous amount of work while he was e member of the staff in Salisbury. In fact I wondered at times if I overloaded him, but he did little overtime at any stage as far as I can remember.
In some way that was difficult to understand, the Rhodesian Government booked us in at the second best hotel and not the best. The next morning I called on the Secretary for External Affairs and also met the Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, later to become Lord Malvern, whom I had met on several occasions in Nairobi, whilst on duty in East Africa. The Under Secretary of the Department afterwards took me to see a small and dilapidated building in the centre of town which I was assured was the only accommodation than available. Pockett's Cottage was truly a cottage and a tumbledown and dirty one at that. Insisted that we would work from the Grand Hotel, that was not so grand, until the cottage had been white-washed and all the weeds in the garden were cut down - they were many feet high. Our office boy had also to do the cutting. When we moved into the two bedroomed house, I had the diningroom as my office, Mr Gale had the one bedroom and Mrs Sheila Steytler, the attractive and most able secretary that we recruited, had the second bedroom. The small kitchen was used by the messenger and a very bad pantry had to serve as our stationery store. The kindly P.W.D. lent us some furn1ture and the Government provided us with a car and a.driver for our first month.
The hurried opening of our office in Salisbury was initiated by the Department to ensure that I would be ranked, as is usual in the Corps Diplomatique, as senior to the British High Commissioner who was also expected about the same time as I arrived. He did not, however, arrive till some six months later and I was then told that as he came from the United Kingdom, under whom Rhodesia fell constitutionally, he would rank as my senior. This I accepted 8S largely natural but nevertheless taunted the Secretary for External Affairs with the statement that he should have insisted on recognised Corps procedures and that he should not apply rules to me, as though for a game of marbles.
We did not stay long in Pocket's Cottage as we found rooms that were very much more suitable in the old Salisbury Board of Executors Building on Manica Road. There we lived for about two years and then transferred to the Sanlam Building which had just been completed and which even now houses our much larger Diplomatic Mission.
Official Residence
The Rhodesian Government also helped us to get a house for my family who arrived some two months after I did. The building itself was large enough end pleasantly furnished for a private family but it was about six miles out of town, right in the country and we got to it after driving for at least five miles along the most dusty road I had even driven on. Here we stayed for six months and would have stayed longer but the owners returned from their long holiday in England and wanted their home. We had to seek another house and were lucky in getting one for a similar period of six months. This house was in town, on Lanark Road, on a pleasant site only a mile away from our office, shops and schools. We had been instructed to seek a good house which our PWD would purchase if they approved of it. Salisbury was though overcrowded and there were few houses that were of a calibre of an official residence. The Chief Architect of the PWD was sent to Salisbury to assist us in our search but he too failed to find anything suitable.
Our tenancy of the Lanark Road property came to an end and it looked as though we would all have to live in an hotel. The Secretary for Agriculture, a South African in origin, however, came to our assistance and let us have his home in Deary Avenue for six months on condition that we housed his daughter aged about eleven, who was attending a school in Salisbury. The Secretary and his wife went to live on their farm some miles outside town. Public Works officials from Pretoria paid a second visit to Salisbury and agreed to purchase No.1 Ross Avenue, a house still owned by the South African Government. Small though it was we loved the Ross Avenue property and garden, a garden in which we held four highly successful parties to celebrate Union Day, holding the parties in the morning and having upwards of four hundred guests. Here I must mention that I was given the sum of £100 annually for this function. ; The mineral waters for such occasions tended to cost about £60 And there were other and greater expanses!
Staff
The following people were members of the Salisbury staff at various times Mf Roy Gale, Mrs S. Steytler, Mr A.J.F. Viljoan. Mr F. Ferreira from our Information Services, Mr Hennie de Vllliers, Miss Carry Durwig, who succeeded a woman whose name I cannot remember, of the Welfare and Pensions Department, Mr J. Eyssen, who succeeded Mr Ferreira, Mr W. Barnard of Commerce and Industries and Mr Willem van Heerden, who succeeded Mr Viljoen In addition we recruited e number of woman locally to fill typist and reception posts.
The Pensions clerks were appointed to reduce the work that had been done on behalf of our Pensions Department by the Rhodesian Treasury - they pleaded that our office taka over the payment of our own pensioners. Some eighteen hundred pensioners were concerned. At the beginning of our responsibility in this matter, the work was most burdensome but we gradually rationaIised the exercise, something that was possible due to the very very able Pensions girls that were sent to us by the Pensions Department, as it was then called.
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I had been appointed as H.E. Mr T.H. Eustace on the basis that as a High Commissioner it was correct so to call me. But after some weeks I realised that the Department was not correct in describing me as an excellency. Southern Rhodesia was not fully sovereign and could not really accept Diplomatic representatives, either of Ministerial or Ambassadorial status. When South Africa appointed me as High Commissioner, and when the British sent a High Commissioner to Salisbury, they were merely using a title that suited themselves. In London where the Dominions all had High Commissioners, it was necessary to have them rank with the Ambassadors who were accredited to the Crown, but the courtesy titIe of Excellency was not truly correctly used in Salisbury. I wrote to Pretoria expressing my views, which were accepted and the title of Excellency was dropped .
My appointment and that of the 8ritish High Commissioner started off the opening up of several consular offices, including those of France, Italy, Germany, the United States, Belgium, Holland and India. Portugal had had a Consul-General in Rhodesia before my arrival. We all formed a very happy group, got on wall together and made an acceptable sector of the local social life.
Special Problems of the Period
The relations between neighbour states tend to vary; if one country is large and the other is small and relatively unimportant, if the populations have different languages, if one is poor and the other is wealthy - many factors make for sensitivity. In Southern Rhodesia a high percentage of the whites were of South African origin. Some such families had left South Africa because of their antipathy to the National Party Government. or so they asserted locally. Some of the Afrikaners who had recently come to Rhodesia from South Africa resented two facts in particular - for them, people to whom political life was very important, there was no place in the Rhodesi political sun. Then too they were in a minority. As many of them had come to the country to farm and as they were proving that they were of the best of the farming community, that would have high ranking in any part of the world, it rankled that they had to suffer e degree of superiority and even arrogance from the English speaking sector. Some of these Afrikaner farmers gave me a bad time both officially and personally. Matters were exacerbated when an Information Officer was sent to the South Africa Office in Salisbury who was to marry into the family of the most aggressive of the local Afrikaner farmers. .
My attendance at all Dingaans Day ceremonies enabled me to meet a big percentage of the Afrikaners. Most of them were very friendly to me and to the local Magistrate who also came to the ceremonies. The two or us, the only English speaking people present, had to listen, somewhat naturally to long and at times blistering attacks on all English speaking people both in South Africa and Rhodesia. The Magistrate doubtless was expected to make full reports on the occasions and such reports were likely to have been brought to the attention of the Prime Minister, who was also the Minister of External Affairs. I omitted to make any detailed reports to Pretoria. I am though
tempted, here, to "mention that on one occasion, to my distress, the principal speaker, a Professor from Stellenbosch, asked me, when the service was finished and in the presence of a group of people, if I had liked his address and he could hardly have been surprised when I made a negative reply.
A mention of two further matters worried me at these meetings - the Union Flag was always flown at the entrance of the Dingaans Day Camp and .the anthem "Die Stem" was sung. I feared that the local Press would get to hear of these two matters and so describe them that real bitterness would result.
I mention this set of circumstances linked with the Dingaans Day services for it was obvious that anti-South African attitudes were building up fast. The newspapers did nothing to reduce tension, in fact they seemed to take real joy in providing fuel for the flames. Several occurrences must be quoted. Some of them were not reported to the Department at the time, that is acknowledged.
(1) About three weeks after I started duty In Salisbury I was invited to be the guest speaker at the annual general meeting of the Rhodesian Chambers of Industry. My speech dealt with the advisability of investigating in depth the requirements of the Africans, both rural and urban, to see how many things could be fabricated locally and inexpensively to fill the needs. I was thanked for an imaginative contribution and then a senior industrialist asked for permission to speak. Why had the representative of a really unfriendly neighbour state been invited to address the meeting? This government was undoubtedly building up a Sudetenland problem. He went on to add that it was well-known that half a dozen members of the South African Cabinet had recently bought farms in Rhodesia, etc, etc. He even implied that my very appointment was significant in the circumstances. I grinned but made no reply.
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(2) I naturally had a nameplate erected at the entrance of Pocket's Cottage, using both of our languages on the metal strip. One morning I arrived at office to find that the Afrikaans title painted on the strip had been scratched out. I said nothing either officially or privately to either of the Governments but had the nameplate repainted. There was no further mutilation. Letting either Government know of the incident or permitting the Press to highlight what had happened would not have improved the interstate relations, which were going through a poor patch.
(3) The Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins, made e public speech about this timethat was definitely anti-South African. I was instructed officially our" Prime Minister, Dr Malan, to make a strong protest. This I did and took the precaution to give Sir Godfrey an aide memoirs on the "matter and at the same time asked for written reply. When the reply was later received, it could hardly have been regarded as a straight-forward answer to a legitimate complaint.
(4) I was asked to open the Agricultural Show at Blndura: One of the executives of the Show Society complained that asking the representative of an unfriendly state to perform this function was wrong. The President of the Society thought fit to tell me about this saying that the men had been utvoted. I pretended that the objection was a matter of little consequence.
These little incidents made me realise that I had arrived as said before at an unfortunate period of our interstate relations. My refusal to believe that such affairs were likely to be permanently upset, proved right.
In this atmosphere Rhodesia had to hold an anniversary of importance. Our office was asked to approach the South African Government to sand a representative to attend the ceremonies. My first approach failed, so I returned to the problem and implied that more good than harm would be done if someone really senior could be nominated to attend. To my joy, Dr Jansen, then the Minister of Native Affairs was asked to attend and agreed to do so. I had some qualms about his nomination as I had always been under the impression that he was most austere. It was arranged that he should stay at Government House. He delivered a very sincere speech at the principal ceremony, which made an excellent impression and this speech received full publication and favourable comment in the Press both in Rhodesia and South Africa. I got to know Dr Jansen welll and never had any doubts about him again. He in fact showed marked kindness to me and my wife on several subsequent occasions. His visit was in fact one of the good things that happened in the period.
It was not though only little things that were difficult, and I will itemise some of the matters that had to be tackled by our South African Office in Salisbury.
Interstate Railways
Shortly before we arrived in Salisbury, a new General Manager of the Rhodesia Railways, serving both Rhodesias, Colonel Sir Arthur Griffin, was appointed. He had been General Manager of the Punjabi State Railways in India, where he could hardly have been loved. He certainly proved a stormy petrel in Rhodesia. I paid an official visit to Bulawayo a couple of months after taking up my appointment and was invited to a tete-a-tete luncheon at the Griffin home. At this meal I had to listen to a long list of South Afrlcan Railways misdeeds, that Rhodesia, according to the' Colonel
suffered from. Most of these misdeeds ware attributed to our General Manager, Mr Heckroodt. My report on the luncheon tirade caused Mr Heckroodt to pay a visit to Bulawayo some weeks later, when the two General Managers had a real set to. Mr Heckroodt then came to Salisbury to see me and to itemize the Rhodesia Railways crimes, or more particularly those of the Colonel. Inter alia many hundreds of South African Railways trucks were being used by the Rhodesia Railways for sending their goods to Beira and even to the Belgian Congo, etc, etc.! I suggested that our Railways should have a senior representative stationed in Bulawayo, the Railways Headquarters, who would be able to attend to details and thus possibly lessen the amount of friction that had built up. My suggestion was turned down by Mr Heckroodt as it had been turned down by Slr Arthur Griffin, at the unpleasant luncheon.
At about this time I got to know the Chairman of the Rhodesian Railways Board, General Sir Clarence Bird, who had little love for Sir Arthur. It was obvious that many of the difficulties being experienced by the Rhodesian Railways were due to their lack of financing. Sir Clarence told me that it would take some seven million pounds sterling to make the system viable and in those days this was a very large sum.
Somewhat later South Africa began to use pressure of various kinds to persuade Rhodesia to build a railway line to Beit Bridge. All such pressures were countered by Sir Arthur and by his Prime Minister, Sir Godfrey Huggins. They both contended that their earnings on the line though Bechuanaland were likely to be badly affected by a second railway line. I proposed a guarantee by the S.A. Railways that no such damage would be caused. When this was turned down by both sides, I tried to get acceptance of the idea that our Railways should buy the line from Vryburg to the Rhodesian border and recommended that our offer should be a generous one. This proposal too was not favoured. It needs to be borne in mind that the line and appendages from Vryburg to Bulawayo belonged to Rhodesia as the successors of the B.S.A. Company, who had built the railway on this route. The S.A. Railways though had run this sector for over fifty years and more. It seemed highly rational that we should not let the Rhodesian Railways possess a line within the Union and that we should make an attractive offer for it at a time when the Rhodesian Railways were desperately in need of a large sum of money. But either South Africa was itself short of capital or was not prepared to do anything to help Rhodesia, when there had been a build-up of bitterness between the two countries.
Mr Heckroodt retired end to my delight Mr D.H.C. du Plessis was nominated as his successor. He soon came to Bulawayo to make friends. In this he was not entirely successful but he managed to evolve a modus vivendi. To my relief he appointed a senior Railway-man in Mr van Zyl Hibbert as the Railway repreaantnt1ve in Bulawayo. The former custom of trying to ensure co-operation during a fixed time telephonea conversation, that took place every Thursday morning and which both .
Sir Arthur Griffin and Mr Heckroodt had insisted upon, was greatly improved. Mr du Plessis arrived a few days later in Salisbury to stay for a couple of days to put me into a greatly improved picture.
Conflict over Railway matters though was not to end entirely. South Africa badly wanted the rail link with Beit Bridge to cope with rapidly increasing exports to the two Rhodesias. The Union, feeling that their cause was logical, appointed an international commission of railway experts to make recommendations on the problem of where a second railway line should be built. At first it seemed that South Africa would win and that the commission would pronounce that there was no doubt that the Belt Bridge proposals were the only logical ones, but on visiting Salisbury the Commissioners changed direction and gave support to the idea of building a line out of Rhodesia to Lourenco Marques that neithar touched Beit Bridge nor entered South African territory. Both Sir Arthur and his fellow knight, Huggins, were undoubtedly in the woodpile. Southern Rhodesia managed to find the money to build this latter line.
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Native Labour
During the early fifties Rhodesia increased farming acreages under tobacco very rapidly. As this industry is intensive labourwise, using a man per acre, the local farmers were soon in difficulties. Rhodesian Africans were and still are far from keen on the really hard work associated with tobacco growing and curing. A system of getting a large percentage of the labour needed, from both Nyasaland and Mozambique, was built up, but the South African gold and coal mines also wanted these categories of labourers. Competition built up and in one respect e o t the Rhodesian Government behaved poorly, to say the least of it. W.N.L.A. had for many years sent in recruiters and transport into Rhodesia, from Pafuri, who took a route along the borders of Rhodesia and Mozambique and on this route managed to pick up labourers who fell outside of the SA/Mozambique agreements. Rhodesia had given tacit approval of this procedure. Suddenly the Minister of Agticulture published a Notice in the Government Gazette that prohibited both the use of the transport route and the recruiting of the Mozambique labourers. I called on the Minister to protest, saying that such summary action, as between neighbour states, was both unusual and unfriendly. He knew this full-well but dismissed the complaint tersely.
I tried and succeeded in helping W.N.L.A. during a visit that I later paid to Nyasaland as will be shown later in this report. The Association though asked for my further support to get Angolan Escudos allotted to them by our Reserve Bank. I doubt that my letter had special value for the W.N.L.A. had a good cause. Natives returning from our minas to their homes in Eastern Angola were routed through Barotseland In western Northern Rhodesia where the Association had a very effective section of their organisation. They needed the Escudos to exchange for the South African Pounds that the Angolans were carrying home with them in considerable quantities. In the wilds of eastern Angola the natives ware given mighty little for their Pounds. Our Reserve Bank somewhat later agreed to supply W.N.L.A. with the Escudos that they needed. To show gratitude for my intervention and to give me a better knowledge of their operations, I was invited to visit the truly wild parts of Barotseland that were concerned. It was certainly interesting, but I have never' had such a strenuous journey - bad and almost impossible roads across the Kalahari desert sands and in intense heat, along the western banks of the Zambezi provided a grim if memorable experience.
South African/Rhodesian Trade Agreement
This Agreement had been in force for some years when I arrived. It might be said that an attempt had been made by the bigger and more affluent neighbour to benefit the smaller partner to the Agreement. Agricultural products and a somewhat limited number of Rhodesian manufactures had been entitled to enter the Union on specially favourable terms. At a conference held in Salisbury in about 1951, which I attendsd, Dr Norval, the leader of the South African delegation and the Chairman of our Board of Trade, showed plainly that as regards both such types of goods, Rhodesia could no longer expect most favoured treatment. South African farmers resented the fact that Rhodesian maize, tobacco and other farm products were so highly competitive. Then too Union makers of clothes and khaki clothes in particular were badly hit by imports from Rhodesia. The local papers set out to show how poorly the Rhodesians regarded the definite change in attitudes relating to the Agreement. Frictions of many kinds, even over what was felt to be harsh treatment by our Immigration and Customs officials, at the borders were highlighted in the Press and our office received very numerous complaints from Rhodesians on a variety of grounds.
I believe that the South African Government did a lot to improve interstate relations by her first-class participation in the 1954 Bulawayo Exhibition. It was a truly great occasion - the Queen Mother opened the Exhibition itself, whilst various seniors opened the individual stands. Mr Eric Louw, then the Minister of Commerce end Industries came specially to Bulawayo to open the beautiful and excellently presented South African Pavilion. Our exhibit undoubtedly was the truly outstanding show-piece of the numerous show-pieces. In addition our Governor General, Dr Janssn, and his wife came to Government House in Bulawayo, for several days of the show and proved very gracious guests of the local Governor. The Rhodesian and the South African press commended the Government very highly indeed on our participation.
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