Herbert Chitepo at the National Press Club (ca. 1973) (Herbert Chitepo)

Herbert Chitepo at the National Press Club (ca. 1973)
Author	Herbert Chitepo
Spoken on	1973-07-17
Type	Speech
Source	YouTube

Foreword by ProleWiki

This is a transcription of a video of Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) leader Herbert Chitepo speaking in 1973 on the history of Zimbabwe and the situation of the liberation war at the time. This taped meeting includes a speech by Herbert Chitepo, announcements by the host, and a Q&A. The video cuts off mid-sentence during the Q&A.

The source video is titled "Herbert Chitepo at the National Press Club (ca. 1973)" and was uploaded to YouTube by PAMUSOROI! on 2022-10-02. Some utterances have been marked in brackets as [inaudible] by the transcriber, others have been estimated, indicated by brackets and a question mark: [example?]. Please keep in mind the possibility of transcriber error. Further transcription notes and contextual information are available in the footnotes.

Original video description: "A speech by Herbert Chitepo at the National Press Club of Australia. Recorded on 17 July 1973 the address promotes an understanding of the confrontation in Southern Africa from the African point of view. Chitepo led the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) until he was assassinated on March 18, 1975."

Transcript

Speech by Herbert Chitepo

I must take the first opportunity to express once more my own and my people's deep appreciation for the efforts of the Australian Union of Students who have made it possible for me to visit here at this time, and for—[interruption]—and for the comrades here in the executive committee who have arranged for this particular meeting. I want to thank everybody in that regard.

I come from Zimbabwe, to many of you, a small little territory of some 150,000 square miles set in central Africa, landlocked, and occupied by a small white minority of some 230 thousand, is known by the name of Rhodesia.

We, the African people of Rhodesia, do not like it to be called Rhodesia. Rhodesia is the name that was given to that part of the world following on the occupation—I use the word guardedly—of our land by troops mounted and operated and commanded by a man known as Cecil John Rhodes, and the country was named after him.

Cecil John Rhodes was probably the richest and the most ambitious of the capitalist imperialist empire builders known to British imperial history.

And the whole establishment of the country of Rhodesia—as it is known by the white people—what really is a commercial enterprise. The company that established it was known as the British South Africa Company, whose chairman and director was Cecil John Rhodes and others. His whole purpose was to exploit, largely the mineral, the land, and animal resources of our part of the territory.

And I think the history of Zimbabwe ever since has been that it has been looked upon by white people as an area in which, even if you went there as a white man to settle, your intention was to exploit, not only the natural resources of the country, but the people. In fact, the people were looked upon as an exploitable natural resource.

I think those of you who read history might have read a description given by Arnold Toynbee in A Study of History on the definition of the word "native". I'm usually called a native when I'm in Zimbabwe, by the white people—and Toynbee says when we Europeans call people "native" we take away from them anything which suggests that they are human beings. They are to us like the forests which the Western man fells down, or the big game that he shoots down. They have no tenure of land. Their tenure is as precarious as that of the animals whom they find. And what shall we, the Lords of Creation, the white people, do with the natives whom we find? Shall we treat them as vermin to be exterminated? Or shall we treat them as hewers of wood and drawers of water? There is no other alternative if niggers have no soul.

This actually comes from a quotation from Toynbee's A Study of History. Indicates the sort of mental outlook that those who settled in our country had about us. We were a natural resource for exploitation. The same as the trees, same as the grass, the gold mines, the gold under the ground, the same as the wood, everything. Just a natural resource.

And this is the sort of mental outlook that we are dealing with in Zimbabwe. The outlook of the white men who comes to settle there, to regard that and to treat us as a natural resource available for exploitation. This they have taken completely to this logical conclusion.

When the so-called pioneer column—the column of the first settlers in the first vanguard of exploitation—when they arrived at Salisbury City—what is now called Salisbury—they set up, they put up the Union Jack. They set up an administration. Before very long, they started parceling out the land of Zimbabwe to the people who had come with them. Each one was given large tracts of land. Those who wanted more were allowed to buy it. They bought it for as much as shilling an acre. And large tracts of land, all the best parts of it, went into the possession of the Europeans.

With it, of course, went the people who were living on the land. So that a man who had lived on a piece of land, cultivated, built his home and reared his cattle, and goods, and sheep in the same piece of land, suddenly woke up to be told by a European who has come from afar: "No, you are a tenant now. You are a squatter. You must now pay rent to me. If you don't pay rent to me, you must work for me, as a kind of payment for continued residence in my plot. You are nothing. You are now, in effect, my chattel."

This is what happened in the history of Zimbabwe. There is a reaction of our forefathers back in 1893. And they suddenly realized that the man who was coming, the white-faced man who was coming, whom they had not even immediately resisted because they didn't think he was coming to do anything so terribly evil, was actually trying to rob them of their land.

They rose up in rebellion. It was called the war of chimurenga. Chimurenga is a Shona word. The Shonas constitute the largest people, the largest African group, language group in Zimbabwe. Probably some 70 to 80 percent of the Africans in Zimbabwe speak Shona. The word "chimurenga" means rebellion, means rising, a resistance, a war of resistance from oppression.

No doubt our old people then, our grandfathers in 1893, '94, '95, '96, '97, during those wars, fought gallantly with bows and arrows. I see somebody has carefully put one here. And they were faced against muskets, they were faced against Maxim guns. And they were defeated. To that day our African people have never accepted that position. Quietly, sometimes, without words, they have continued to look upon that land as theirs, continued to prepare the day, for the day when they must wrest it back into their own control.

And, as time went on, in about 1923, the British government decided to grant, to something less than a hundred thousand white people who then lived in Zimbabwe, internal self-government. They got it. They got a parliament of 30 white men. Prime minister and a cabinet. That body of people then set about using the newly acquired power of internal self-government to build up a massive armory of laws of discrimination, of suppression, and exploitation. Trade unionism was prohibited. Africans were required to carry passes. The Land Apportionment Act was introduced in 1931. Africans may not own this land or that land, they must own only that land. The land that was chosen for African occupation was obviously those portions which the white people, in their [inaudible], they had not taken. Why is not—that they'd not taken it? Because it wasn't good.

So, you get a situation today in which, in actual fact, the so-called fifty percent of the land that is reserved to the now six million African people is actually the poorest, the most barren, and the most disease-infected because all the best land had already been taken even by the time that the Land Apportionment Act was introduced in 1931. It'd already been taken by the white people. But even that which had not been taken, if it was good, it was recommended to be set aside for European exclusive occupation and use. That is the position today. And this is a serious situation.

I could go into whole field within discrimination in legislation, in residence, in economic opportunities, in education, I could go into that. But I will restrict myself to the question of land because I think this is very basic. To us, the essence of exploitation, the essence of white domination, is domination over land. That is the real issue. The essence of what they have done to us has been the deprivation that they have done by taking the land away from us. And this is a very serious situation.

If you realize on their own estimation—that is on the estimation of the white settlers themselves in Zimbabwe—the six million population of Zimbabwe, of African Zimbabweans today, will in 20 years increase to something like 12 million. It will double itself. That is their own estimation.

Now, they have now decided under the latest amendment to Land Apportionment law, that 50 percent, just over 50 percent, is reserved for Europeans, and only just under 50 is reserved for Africans. In 20—if you try to allocate that amount of land per head, there is something like 200 acres per white head in Zimbabwe and just about eight acres per black head.

In another 20 years, if the African population does double itself, there will be only about four acres per black head. The white areas will probably have increased. Because as a matter of fact we don't anticipate that they will increase in their population size. If you add another 20 years from there, it will come down to probably just near, just about two acres per head.

What does this mean? This means a process of almost the equivalent of homicidal or genocidal extermination of a people. How can 12 million, 24 million people, live on that small amount of land? They can't. They can't survive.

Because they can't survive, what must they do? They must sell themselves in slavery to white capitalists and imperialists, who want, who have designed this law for the very purpose of making sure that they can drain the African labor into their own industries, into their own farms, into their own mines. Exploit them, pay them next to nothing because they have no alternative. They must try to live. This is the situation. And you can see the whole of the land issue has been made basic. It is the beginning of every other form of exploitation that is in Zimbabwe. In industry, in education, in every other form, this is the beginning, this is the base of the exploitation.

Obviously you must appreciate, if there is any group of people in a country who are affected and hurt and injured more than any other group on land issues, it is the peasants, the ordinary man and woman who is living on a plot of land in his country.

I think anybody who knows about revolution knows that the revolution has been about land everywhere in the world. It has been about land because the land is the thing on which you live. You build your house on it, you get your food from it, life is sustained on the land and without it you're really facing death. That's what revolution is about.

It is for that reason that our people, the Zimbabwean African people, for years have fought. Back in the early 50s there was a chance for progression in Zimbabwe to achieve, or towards independence, self-government, and towards majority rule by the usual steps which had been taken in elsewhere in the British Commonwealth or around the British Empire. Year by year, from time to time, the vote was extended. It was more and more representation of African people until you got parity, later on you got a majority of Africans. Gradually, you reached independence.

That's what happened in India, that's what happened in Burma, that's what happened in Ghana, that's what happened in Tanzania, that's what happened everywhere in Africa. But it didn't happen in Zimbabwe. But we in Zimbabwe, back in the 50s, thought it could also happen in Zimbabwe. So, we built up our national organization the Zimbabwe African Congress in the early 50s, it went on.

But when it began to speak, and speak boldly for justice, what happened? It was proscribed. It was banned. The leaders were arrested and detained without trial for years in the jails of the government, in the jails of the white racists.

We were not content. We thought, well, this was an aberration, perhaps. We might well try again. We set up the National Democratic Party. Within a year, it too was banned, property of the party taken, the leaders arrested and detained, and put in prison without trial. Some of them are still there today as I am speaking. They've been 10 years in jail, without trial, and others have been released and taken back again because they would never give up the struggle.

We still didn't stop there, we created another one, the Zimbabwe African People's Union. Within a year that too was banned. Became clear to some of us, really, the road to independence, the road to majority rule, via constitutional discussion and agreement and changes of a peaceful nature was not open. It was a dead end road. The whites would imprison, detain, proscribe, ban, and banish anybody who dare do no more than speak for justice and shouting the streets in favor of justice. What more, what shall we do?

We looked upon the situation we were facing. It was clear we were facing a situation of assault, a situation of violence. We were at all intents and purposes being made under compulsion, under force, under duress, of a very vicious type, to serve in the mines, to be minions, to have no place, no education, to live like serfs in the country of our birth. We thought no, the time had come to change tactics. We will have to confront the regime. We can no longer beg it to talk to us. It won't talk to us. We must now confront it.

So, back in 1963, the Zimbabwe African National Union, of which I am the acting the chairman—at present our president is still in jail, Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole—was created on the very slogan of confrontation. It was called direct confrontation. Very shortly after its establishment, massive attempts of confronting the regime by violent action with stones and sticks, and hands and matches, took place. As a result Ndabaningi Sithole was arrested and tried. I happened to have been a lawyer and I went and defended him on those charges—it was a little booklet of 30, nearly 30 pages of charges which [inaudible] he was faced with.

It was alleged then that he had been responsible for all the violence that had been taking place in the eastern and southern districts of Zimbabwe because he had advocated it. He was arrested, he was tried, even before the case was over, the party was proscribed and banned. [inaudible] some of us happened to be outside the country. We continued the struggle. We felt the time had come to strengthen the form of confrontation. In the early days, we saw it was done with stones, and hammers, and sickles, and anything you could lay your hands upon. We sought to sharpen the weapons of resistance, the weapons of confrontation. We acquired weapons, modern weapons. So we prepared for the day. In November 1965, the white settlers, in an attempt to get complete and unlimited freedom to exploit and oppress our people, declared what is now commonly known as UDI. Nothing angered us so seriously as that. We retaliated—you will recollect by the Sinoia battle early 1966, by battles at Hartley, et cetera.

We didn't really make much progress in those battles. We got a lot of press publicity, but we didn't really make much progress. We realized before very long why we hadn't made very much progress. It was because there had not been a complete harm[ony?] between the freedom fighters and the masses of the people in Zimbabwe. And it is for that reason that during the period that followed, we concentrated on a regime of political education of the masses to get them to appreciate the goals that the struggle was aiming at, to be inspired by the new vision of a new Zimbabwe, and to participate in its realization, and to realize that the realization of the new Zimbabwe, the new vision that we tried to sell, which we tried to inspire in their hearts, could only be achieved by a struggle which involved life and death. By armed struggle.

And by 1962 we were able to commence operations which have been able to go on successfully. And since towards the end of last year, those of you who have had access to Rhodesian papers, or South African papers, or through the papers from Africa and news media, will have read of continuous reports of incidents, of attacks, et cetera, particularly in the north, northeast, and in eastern part of Zimbabwe. We have been continuing that struggle.

What is the form of that struggle? The form is that we realize that what we are dealing with is not simply racism as such, it is also imperialist exploitation. The white people who are in Zimbabwe are very largely of the post-Second World War sort of generation. They left England after it had been war-torn, they left Europe after the war, to seek greater opportunities, to seek more fortunes, more money, more status in society which they couldn't even have got in their own country.

In short, what they were seeking is comfort. Big homes, servants, large salaries, an economy that made life easy for them.

It is our determination in the attack that we have embarked on to remove that false structure of society based on corruption, on privilege, on exploitation. Backed not only by the Rhodesian settlers themselves, but backed by huge international capital. I think you must appreciate this. The Zimbabwe situation, the settlers there, can and truly should be looked upon, really, the immediate local agents of a huge international capitalistic maneuver to control and continue to exploit the resources of Zimbabwe—in which they include ourselves. We are just a natural resource to be exploited for the benefit of these big combined, these big companies.

You'll notice that among the techniques of exploitation has always been to seek—among these settler regimes in the southern Africa—to seek the involvement of big capitals from abroad. I think you've read about the Cabora Bassa. Cabora Bassa is nothing but Portugal's way of implicating, of bringing in capitalist involvement in Mozambique, and obviously, incidentally, in Southern Rhodesia, or Zimbabwe, and in South Africa. In order to strengthen the local people—the white people—both in Rhodesia and in Mozambique and in South Africa. That's what Cabora Bassa really is meant to do.

If you look at the whole of the economy of Rhodesia, there is a massive attempt to draw the big international capitalist organizations to come and participate in the exploitation because they think by doing this, you then get the support of the big capitalist nations in the world. And therefore you are able to continue the exploitation. They have been able to get the involvement of big countries, [inaudible] be able to send armies, because they are ruled by their companies. The companies are the biggest influences in America and in various countries.

If in fact these companies get threatened by the indigenous peoples, you will no doubt find that they will send troops to go and defend their so-called properties in these areas. This is what all this machine is. It is part of the machinery of international capitalism to try to exploit the third world, in particular southern Africa.

They want to use the resident white minority as their immediate agents for carrying out their exploitation on their behalf. So they will create the support of capitalism in the world.

I say this because I think it is very important for us to appreciate that the struggle that we are engaged with is not simply a struggle against the immediate European settlers by themselves. They are not alone. With them are in the background a whole lot of other people. South Africans, the Portuguese, the British, the French, the Germans, the Americans. They're all in it. They are all trying to get something out of the wealth of southern Africa. They are all part of the exploitive machine that is really, that we are fighting against.

So, here we are Zimbabwe African National Union, other movements in Zimbabwe, having decided to take up arms against this continued expression. The last eight months or so, I think you will have the heard and read of the continuous confrontation between the white forces and the liberation forces in Zimbabwe.

We now—we don't say we occupy, we don't say we control—but we do describe the area to the north, northeast and eastern parts of Zimbabwe and a battleground In which fighting is continuing. It is our intention to increase it. It is an area of some 50,000 square miles. Rhodesia has a total of 150 000 square miles. It is an area which we intend to continue to expand into other areas of confrontation. But in that area, I think white people have found it impossible to feel safe. And we can tell you quite definitely it is our intention that nobody in Zimbabwe will ever feel safe, either in any form, in his property, in his economic privilege, in anything, until the ultimate goal is won. And what is the ultimate goal? The ultimate goal in political terms, is majority rule. The ultimate goal is, in economic terms, is the abolition of systems of exploitation, that means the whole basis of the capitalist structure of society in Rhodesia.

We don't merely seek a sort of rough-changing society in Zimbabwe. We are seeking what we sometimes describe as a systemic change. You want to change the whole system. We want revolution. By revolution we understand a turning of the wheel. We want to turn it right over, to get an entirely new society based on no exploitation, true equality, and true justice for all. It is this vision which our people have been fired with, so fired with that vision that they've been prepared to take up arms to fight against the regime that oppresses them, in the hope, and for the purpose, of establishing a new Zimbabwe, a new country, new justice, new economic system, new society. Thank you.

[applause]

Announcements

Announcer: If I could, before any questions are asked, make a few announcements. First of all tonight at Melbourne University Buffet there will be a dinner which people interested in meeting Herbert and other African students can come along to. That will be—the cost of that will be two dollars. We'll be starting at, I believe eight o'clock? Sorry, 6:30. Furthermore, I think it's quite obvious that we need to do more about this than just show our moral disgust for what's going on in Zimbabwe and southern Africa and we need to make a political commitment. Tonight at 5 PM in the trades hall room three, there will be a meeting to establish some sort of group liaison with trade unions. That meeting will be starting at 5 PM. That's room three of the trades hall.

Also, if I could take this opportunity to read out some motions which were past the last SRC meeting, which I think shows the spirit of the student body here at La Trobe and their condemnation of the oppression in southern Africa. First motion—there were three motions passed of relevance—first of all, this SRC officially welcomes to La Trobe with humility and pride, Herbert Chitepo commander-in-chief of ZAPU-ZANU forces. It declares its full support for the struggle for majority rule in Zimbabwe and condemns the compliance of British, Dutch, French, and American industrial and financial interests in the maintenance of the cruelly exploitative and oppressive Smith regime. That this SRC welcome Herbert Chitepo to speak at La Trobe on July 18th and that we give full support to the liberation struggles in southern Africa and resolve to organize appropriate functions to raise money to be sent to the various African organizations supporting the movement. And finally, this meeting of the seventh La Trobe SRC, while acknowledging the Australian labor government support of UN resolutions condemning the white racist regimes of South Africa, demand that it abide by the resolutions for which they voted, and (a) force Qantas to cancel the reciprocal agreement between it and South African Airways, cease TAA's transportation of Dutch troops and equipment to [Timor?], and BHP's exploration for minerals on [Timor?], (c) cancel Dr. Cairns' department's trade mission in Johannesburg in October, and abide by calls for an end to trade with the respective regimes, (d) close the Rhodesian information center in Sydney, (e) cut off all diplomatic relations with white southern African governments, and (f), more importantly, support financially—as has the World Council of Churches—the liberation movements of South Africa, Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea, and Zimbabwe. Copies of these motions were to be sent to the Prime Minister, Dr. Cairns, the media, and AUS. Thank you, and I'll remind you again of a meeting tonight at 5pm. in the trades hall. Thank you.

In [inaudible] of what I've just said, I think it's very important that we now take a round of collection during question time. This collection will be will be given to Herbert to take back, hopefully to Zimbabwe, and use in any way he and his movement sees fit to further their struggles in Zimbabwe. A collection will be going around in the rubbish bins—not that that's any indication, certainly. But the rubbish bins will be going around, so we ask you please to give as generously as you can. Thank you.

Questions and Answers

Announcer: Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions please, ask them.

Question: I noticed [inaudible] that Smith had had some conversation [inaudible]

Answer: Well, I think we ought to understand the position and nature of the African National Council which Bishop Muzarewa leads. That body was created in 1971 as a rallying point for resisting the agreement that had been reached between Ian Smith and Lord—and Hume for a settlement of the Constitutional crisis in Zimbabwe. I think I must say when the ANC organized that resistance to the settlement proposals, it was acting in complete harmony with both our own views and which we believe is the views of practically everybody in Zimbabwe, once actually we were actually at work. The problem arose when after the settlement had been turned down to Lord Pearce, the Africans they definitely declare they do not accept those settlement terms. The ANC then decided to continue as a political organization. And then, of course, it was then faced with a very simple proposition. In view of the history of all the other liberation movements that have been in Zimbabwe, it helps to choose for a platform for continued existence, some innocuous way of presenting itself. So it said what it sought was that there should be a national convention of all people, all races, all political shades of political opinion in Zimbabwe, to agree on the constitutional future of Zimbabwe, and then to call a constitutional conference presided over by Britain at which these agreements will be ratified and brought into law. That is what they have been suggesting. Now on that basis, obviously, they must continue to say they want to talk to Ian Smith. The difficulty has been that, I think everybody knows, that in Zimbabwe the African people will be satisfied with nothing short of majority rule and now, I don't think they will be satisfied with anything like parity now. We don't think we want parity. We want majority rule. We do not want parity. And we— they will not be satisfied with anything short of the kind of demands that the liberation movements are making. Therefore, and I think the real issue that Smith is facing is not between himself and the ANC. It is between himself and the demands that are being backed up by the liberation forces of the matter. That is the real thing that he's facing. Consequently, Bishop Muzorewa will meet Ian Smith. I myself am very doubtful that they can ever come out with any agreement at all. If they did come out with an agreement, it will certainly be short of the kind of demands that are being backed by the liberation forces and by the people of Zimbabwe in whole, in total. If that happens, and obviously if Muzorewa were to agree to anything short of that, he himself may find himself actually rejected by the people whom he purports to represent. I think the people of Zimbabwe, after all this experience, will not tolerate and will not accept anything short of absolute and clear majority rule, and now.

Question: Obviously this—the struggle the Zimbabwean people have taken on is going to be a very hard one. Obviously it takes the support of the vast majority of the people of Zimbabwe. Therefore, what role do you see the women playing in the revolution? Are they taking—[end]