Sport and Racial Discrimination in Colonial Zimbabwe: A Reanalysis

The British colony of Southern Rhodesia, later governed by a white settler minority as unilaterally-independent Rhodesia, practiced racial segregation in many spheres, including education, health care access and political participation. Though racial segregation tended to exist on a less formal level than in Rhodesia's neighbour, apartheid South Africa, segregationist policies were nonetheless invasive and virtually complete in some areas. Sport was a heavily contested sphere, in which pockets of black African autonomy and advancement existed alongside near-complete white domination, largely, but not entirely, free of government intrusion. This article is an effort to develop a working hypothesis of racial discrimination in Rhodesian sport, discrimination that was never as formal or complete as in South Africa but which nonetheless provided a firm foundation for Rhodesia's exclusion from international sporting competition in the 1970s.     

Rhodesia,Rugby and the Afrikaner: ‘Working Together to Send this Country Ahead’

Abstract

Rugby played an influential role in assisting South Africa’s Afrikaners to migrate to the British colonies of Southern and Northern Rhodesia while maintaining strong transnational ties with their country of origin. The focus of this investigation is on the period immediately after the Second World War although it is necessary to locate events within wider social and political developments that shaped societies in the two Central African colonies. For the first half of the twentieth century the Southern Rhodesian government in particular pursued a policy of deliberately limiting the immigration of the Afrikaner, a white population group of Dutch, French or German descent. The British feared the growing strength of Afrikaner nationalism whilst the majority of Rhodesians did not wish to be absorbed by their powerful neighbour. There was nevertheless a shared passion for rugby which was clearly apparent in Rhodesia’s long-established affiliation to the South African parent body. This meant that Rhodesia not only played as a province of South Africa but the highest ambition of their players was to achieve Springbok selection. The linkages were welcomed on both sides with Afrikaans-speaking players strengthening Rhodesian rugby teams in the course of seeking their fortunes in the tobacco and copper industries.     

Political Prisoners' Memoirs in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT

Prison narratives are a key genre of African nationalist writing. They offer a unique window onto the relationships between the personal and political, the self and nation. This article focuses on the memoirs of three Zimbabwean political prisoners in order to explore claims to agency in prison, constructions of gender and race, and the complexities of individual passages within the collective narrative of nationalism. The memoirs are revealing of a formative period in Zimbabwean nationalism, and of the individuals and ideas that shaped independent Zimbabwe.