A Rhodesian Farm

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 4

A Rhodesian Farm

Our African Farm. By Charlotte Truepeney. Gollancz. 190 pp. It is not uncommon to have a relative farming overseas, but for two city-dwelling sisters to be summoned by such a relative to be his heirs was a breath-taking shock—and a challenge. Uncle Alexander was a family legend, a man who had not been in Britain for 50 years: now old age and ill health had laid hold on him, and eventually he sent for his nieces Charlotte and Anne to take over his two farms in Rhodesia. The sisters were warned by his friends that their uncle was inclined to be “difficult,” and it was with considerable trepidation that they at last entered his dilapidated homestead, where lion skulls piled upon the veranda and Uncle Alexander himself lay in bed with a sjambok at his side. But their love for the country was immediate, and the story of their settling in is told with vivacity and charm, illustrated by the author's drawings. There was the house to be cleaned and repaired, there was the life of the farm to learn, where mealies were all-important, and above all there were the Africans themselves to meet and try to understand. In this the sisters were helped by their domestic help, the flamboyant Rosaleen. who came as a single woman and then, when she felt it safe to do so. introduced to the household first her baby, then her husband, then her elder child and finally another child whom she had hired to be the baby’s nurse. It was hardly surprising that the water shortage became acute after such a population explosion.

It would be unrealistic to review a book on Rhodesia without some reference to the author’s views on independence and African majority rule. Naturally, Miss Truepeney sees through the eyes of her uncle and his friends, men who hacked their farms out of the bush, who spent a lifetime establishing crops and herds and whose labourers are illiterate, ignorant and superstitious. Of course such men regard it as insanity to consider African rule: Miss Truepeney states their case, directly or by implication, throughout her book and one must feel considerable sympathy for them. But—and it is a large but — there is no suggestion that there might be another viewpoint. Apart from a fleeting admission that Europeans cause bushfires as well as Africans there is no suggestion that not all the settlers are cast in the heroic mould, or that some Africans have managed to acquire a good education, or that the piccanins on the farm might have benefited if Miss Anne had dosed them with alphabets as well as Native Cough Mixture.

The reviewer would certainly have felt happier if Miss Truepeney had shown some awareness of this other side of the coin. Perhaps she is aware, and it is hidden by the engaging modesty with which she writes, for however lightly she may treat of their tribulations and alarms, it is clear that something more than optimism was required. On the death of Uncle Alexander the sisters determined to run the farms themselves, and all readers will surely join in wishing them well.