House of Stone: The True Story of a Family Divided in War-Torn Zimbabwe. Christina Lamb
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in Umtali, which was reached by climbing Christmas Pass where the blue gums gave way to the eucalyptus and pine-scented firs of the Vumba hills. Umtali sounded like an African name but was actually the white way of saying Mutare, the easternmost city in Rhodesia, not far from the border with Mozambique. War had been raging just across the mountains since 1964 as Frelimo (Frente de Libertacáo de Mozambique) guerrillas led by Samora Machel fought to oust the Portuguese colonists. Our hostel was right on the border and sometimes mortars would go over the top of us and land inside the compound. It was a phenomenally loud noise and we would hide under the blankets.
Chancellor was an ‘A school which meant it was all-white and the day began with an assembly thanking God for all their blessings and a shrill chorus of ‘Morning has broken’. The school had extensive grounds, a swimming pool and even a roller-skating rink, but Nigel counted the days to the holidays when he could run free with his brothers and sisters. Although even at an early age I was aware of tension when there was drought and farming seemed a lot of work, I could not imagine a better lifestyle, the outdoors and the space. We were little kings.
As the car turned off the main road from Umtali to Headlands and onto the winding red track signposted ‘Riversdale Farm’, he thought excitedly about the swimming, hunting, biking and cricket ahead of him. Rustling gum trees lined the way, and after a couple of miles a twin-towered anthill marked a fork in the road. The other turn-off led to their nearest neighbour, an old Afrikaner doctor they called Oom Jannie. It was to Oom Jannie's clinic that farm workers and their families went when they were sick. Nigel was slightly scared of him. He used to say, ‘The bleks come with runny noses and leave with itchy scrotums,’ then laugh, ‘Heh heh heh! We were too young to understand what he meant but his patients never became fathers again after that. It was his way of reducing the black population.
Beyond Oom Jannie's turn-off was a big hump in the road that Nigel and his siblings called Danger Hill. Dad would go fast over it so the car would sort of lift off, you know that kind of feeling where your tummy drops, and we'd all beg, ‘Again, again, please can we do it again?’ Then it was through the gate with the Riversdale sign and into lush peach orchards, beyond which opened out a green and yellow tapestry of tobacco and maize fields spread across a series of hills. At the top of the track were the farm buildings, a cluster of white-painted stores and barns, and then an exuberant garden of palm trees, Jacaranda, honeysuckle and African tulip trees with their bulbous red blossoms. The tiled roof of the one-storey house was just visible through the trees and the dogs would run out jumping and barking whenever a car drew up.
As Nigel got out, his mother Mary would come down the steps and greet him with a brisk hug, then quickly return to her jam or pickle making. Born in 1962, Nigel was the fifth child, with two older brothers and two older sisters, and as the house filled with the sound of all the children shouting and bickering Mary Hough would shake her head in amused despair.
On the first day of holidays, the children would be allowed to stay up late as a special treat with a tray of her home-made lemonade and cookies on the terrace. As on most Rhodesian farms, this was where much of life took place and where tea turned to sundowners brought by servants. Mary and John Hough always sat there at dusk with cold beers, the dogs curled at their feet barely stirring as the couple clinked glasses and looked out over their lands. Often John would be tending a wounded bird he had found in the fields or reading Blake's poetry to Mr Ponsonby, his pet crow. ‘Mr Ponsonby never answers back’ he joked to neighbouring farmers with a nod to his talkative wife.
At 1,000 acres, Riversdale Farm was small by Rhodesian standards. But everyone agreed that the view was hard to beat. An open veranda ran all along the back of the house, looking across lawns kept brilliant green by sprinklers. Beyond lay the fields of crops leading towards a smudge of mountains that changed colour with the seasons. Yellow-green in summer when eagles circled their peaks, in winter they were purple-blue and dawned draped with strange mists known as gutis.
As a chorus of crickets heralded nightfall with growing insistence, the five freshly scrubbed Hough children in pyjamas would be paraded out by Faith, the nanny, to say good night. Another maid brought out the Tilly lamps, and, if there were visitors, Mary might suggest a hand of canasta or bridge. Light switched suddenly to dark with just the tiniest swivel of the earth, and someone could usually be relied upon to mutter that it was the best climate in the world and perhaps the best landscape too, and they nodded and felt blessed to have been born in such a place.
Such reassurances had taken on a more urgent note since Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain (UDI) on 11 November 1965. Finding themselves the first white settlers to rebel since the Boston Tea Party in 1776 had come as a shock for the Houghs, like most Rhodesians. Although the colony had been self-governing since control was transferred from Rhodes' British South African Company to Whitehall in 1923, its formal occasions were always opened with the national anthem; its army and air force had been integrated with the British in the war; and Smith once boasted it had more Union Jacks than Britain. Even the names of farms and settlements reflected nostalgia for what was seen as the motherland. Typical examples were Surrey, Arun-del and Dorset farms, the small towns of Plumtree and Bromley, the lake of Loch Moodie, Essex Valley and Brighton Beach, while the capital Salisbury had suburbs of Kensington and Belgravia.
But the region was undergoing enormous change. Apart from Portuguese Mozambique to the east and South Africa-controlled Namibia to the west beyond Botswana, all the other surrounding colonies had been given independence under constitutions granting majority rule. The independence of Ghana in 1957 had been followed by Nigeria and Belgian Congo in 1960, then Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and Zambia in quick succession.
Smith had no doubt that black-run government was a bad thing. ‘The story was always the same,’ he later wrote in his autobiography. ‘Tribal violence and massacres, political opponents imprisoned, coups, streams of white refugees who had been dispossessed of their property, rampant corruption and the establishment of external bank accounts by their leaders.’ In particular, he commented, the white refugees fleeing from the newly independent Belgian Congo ‘left an indelible impression on our people’.
When he was elected Prime Minister in 1964, Smith had no intention of being the next victim of what Harold Macmillan called the ‘winds of change’ sweeping through the continent. Rhodesia was more complicated because although the whites numbered only 220,000 compared to almost 5 million blacks and went back at most three generations, they considered themselves just as indigenous. The Rhodesian leader also pointed out that, unlike other African colonies, his country had a sophisticated economy based on mining and agriculture with its own merchant banks and stock exchange. If it was to be independent, he wanted it under continued white minority rule to safeguard all this.
But Wilson's Labour government insisted that independence must come with a constitution entrenching universal suffrage, and negotiations ended in stalemate. After taking the precaution of moving the country's gold and other assets out of the Bank of England, Smith took a vote of his cabinet, placed a crack SAS unit on standby and drove to the studios of the Rhodesian Broadcasting Company. There he recorded a message to the nation in which he accused the British of shattering years of loyalty ‘on the rocks of expediency’ and proclaimed independence. Smith was no orator, but even in his flat nasal monotone it was dramatic.
After the initial Shockwaves, the white community rallied round, generally agreeing with their Prime Minister's assessment of Rhodesia as ‘an oasis of peace in an otherwise turbulent continent’. Some African states called for a British invasion, but this was ignored, and although an international trade embargo was imposed, Rhodesians soon developed ways to circumvent it, helped by Portugal and South Africa on whom they depended for ports. Alone among the European colonial powers, Portugal's fascist regime refused to grant independence to its African possessions and fought a bitter war in Mozambique, which borders Rhodesia. South Africa's apartheid regime was a natural ally of Smith, and extended considerable military and economic assistance as well as allowing Rhodesian gold and other minerals to be passed off as of South African origin. Farmers like the Houghs were urged to increase production to feed the nation.
Nigel's