the Monday Musings column from that consultant bloke

This I read a piece by Andrew Harding, a British journalist currently working for the BBC, and entitled Break the Silence About South Africa. It’s around on the internet if you’re interested, and talks about the situation there in their brave new world.

I became interested in Africa through reading H Rider Haggard’s books and, whilst I understand that these were fictional, there was a strong element of truth in the scene setting, especially when describing the main cities. I read these books around 1960/61, and later read other books set in various African locations.

Nelson Mandela seemed an attractive name, certainly memorable, and I began to read of him, his trial and imprisonment in the British press, but I had no real feeling either way about the rights or wrongs of his case until around 1967 when, whilst heading for the ‘bus home from Marble Arch in London one Sunday I picked up a Free Nelson Mandela badge; there had, presumably, been a rally in support of him. On the ‘bus I pinned the badge to my duffle bag and thought no more of it.

On day the next week I transgressed at school in some way and, having seen the badge on my bag, the teacher imposed a punishment of writing two essays, each to be exactly 500 words, one in support of Mandela’s freedom, the other for his continued incarceration. I had no clue either way, so had to find one.

One of our teachers was my first port of call. He was what was known as a Cape Coloured, and he was very forthcoming in his opinions. A chain smoker, he gave me twenty minutes in exchange for twenty cigarettes, and I think that I learned more from him about how the world worked than in any other twenty minutes of my life.

Another source was from a man that I thought of as an Indian, but who was from what we now call Bangladesh by way of South Africa. He, too, taught me a lot about the realities of life in the colonies. Between them I had enough to write my two essays, but I had a view of the former Empire that seemed different to anything that I had read about to that point. I never wore the Mandela badge again for a start.

It is a complicated continent, and I do not profess to understand it. My own experience of it is confined to a short period of work in Libya, which is a story in its own right. In around 2015 I declined to take on a job in Nigeria because of the situation there. Back in my late schooldays we had adopted the Biafran troubles as a charity, and our interest in what had happened there still horrifies me, so to go to the country that had wiped out Biafra was, for me, not on, especially as the Foreign Office were advising against travel there. However, I did work with the Nigerian Ministry of Education when a team of their people came over to Oxford.

Africa is still somewhere that fascinates me, although I have left it too late to go there again, at least in terms of working there, and it is in working abroad that I have learned so much more from other countries than I would have done had I gone there as a tourist. I shall have to satisfy my interest through my reading, and Mr Harding’s piece was intriguing.