AROUND the fireplace we killed time, while waiting for the evening meal, with ‘zvirahwe’, riddles play.
Riddles like, “Rakazvirova rikazhamba”; “Kuenda humbangu kudzoka humbangu”; were mind blasters to the first timer.
This was time for mental anguish.
Each time a riddle was said out stony silence followed and we searched for answers.
The silence was followed by a guessing frenzy.
Occasionally one of us got the answer right, but quite often you would here groans of disappointment when the puzzler finally offered the solution.
Little did we know that just over 70 years earlier, Cecil Rhodes had posed to the young nation of Rhodesia a much simpler riddle on the ideal Rhodesian voter; “A man, whether white or black, who had sufficient education to write his name, has some property or work.
“In fact is not a loafer.”
This was a giveaway chirahwe.
It required no rocket scientist to realise that Rhodes was describing a European voter.
The Rhodes riddle on civilised man and consequently the voter was to shape debates on the Rhodesian ‘vote’.
It became a seed for 80 years of vote rigging through manipulating the voters roll under the guise of a celebrated Rhodesian ‘multiracial common role’.
Every Rhodesian election carried under the Rhodes riddle had a predetermined outcome.
The resultant voters roll was predominantly white.
Very few black people met the Rhodes threshold.
Apart from being able to register on the ‘multiracial’ common role, educated blacks suffered equally with the rest of their black colleagues.
For example, they still had to raise their hats to all whites.
The small group of educated Africans was dominated by the Mfengu, originally from the Cape.
Africans only had two seats in the Legislative Council and these were elected by a common role that was 99 percent white.
Still the educated African elite sought to organise themselves into groups that sought to transform the colonial state for more elitist privileges.
In 1923 the Rhodesian Bantu Voters Association was formed hard on the heels of the Rhodesian Natives Association.
Voting in Rhodesia typically involved white selected candidates and white selected voters.
With the attainment of self-government in October 1923, Southern Rhodesia’s Legislative Council was replaced by a fully elected 30-member Legislative Assembly.
Rhodes’ riddled voter qualifications remained in place to ensure that the electorate would remain overwhelmingly white.
This scenario persisted right into the 1950s.
To the earlier elitist groups of educated Africans emerged the Southern Rhodesian African National Congress, which emerged in the 1930s under the leadership of Reverend TD Samkange.
These groups wanted white privileges as they felt they had distinguished themselves from the majority ‘uncivilised Africans’.
Educated Africans were elected into parliament by a common role that was 99 percent white.
These Legislative Assembly representatives were considered compromised and required police protection when visiting townships.
Southern Rhodesia continued to be troubled by the gaping holes in its claimed multiracial common role.
The rigging was there for all to see.
The Southern Rhodesian white electorate public relations machinery sought to fend off clamour for universal suffrage which they felt was being pushed for under the guise of the two voter’s rolls (European and African) campaign.
In 1957 Tredgold Franchise Commission concluded that universal suffrage had to have a “homogeneous electorate, at a fairly high standard of civilisation.”
The Tredgold report argued for measurement of people’s capacity to vote.
It reasoned that even under majority rule universal suffrage was still qualified on age, sex and mental capacity.
The Tredgold Franchise Commission report proposed four categories of voters.
Category one voters had to have had an annual income of 720 Pounds for at least two years or to have owned fixed property of 1 500 Pounds for a similar period.
Categories two and three were a combination of education and lesser income/property qualifications.
Category four, the special qualification, required 120 Pounds annual income for two years and two years secondary education.
The later was the one meant for Africans and had many mathematical safeguards to ensure that the number of African voters remained a minuscule in comparison to European voters.
These included capping, fractional voting and multiple preference voting.
The latter allowed for redistribution of second preference votes, a complicated and bizarre way of counting votes.
Indeed complicated mathematics for elections in which Africans would have only five of the 30 seats.
I had exposure to something closer during the University of Zimbabwe SRC elections in the 1980s.
The counting made the UZ Registrar appear a mathematics genius.
One man one vote became a key demand of the NDP on formation in 1961.
The subsequent 1961 constitution and its ‘A’ and ‘B’ rolls, modelled along the Tredgold report, was a carrot and stick that divided the NDP.
Many aspects of the constitution were considered progressive except the part on franchise.
For many nationalists the issue was about one man one vote and any arrangement that fell short of that had to be rejected.
The ‘A’ voters roll, also called the European voters roll, was for income/property qualified white people, African chiefs and headmen.
The ‘B’ voters roll (African voters roll) was for kraal heads, ordained priests and education and income/property qualified Africans.
In addition, there was a complicated fractional votes counting system.
All this ensured that European votes had a 75 percent influence on any election outcome.
Eventually the NDP nationalists overcame their division on the matter and rejected the 1961 constitution.
By the time the Rhodesia Front tabled proposals for the 1969 constitution, nationalists had given up on negotiated universal suffrage, opting to achieve it through the gun.
Ian Smith was left to work with turncoats like Chief Sigola and Charles Mzingeli.
The resultant franchise position was hardly surprising.
The Common roll was for anyone not African and meeting the income/property thresholds.
Africans were elected through Tribal Trust Lands electoral colleges.
Universal suffrage, using a common roll, remained elusive even at Lancaster House Conference.
Majority rule was achieved through an election with African and European voters’ rolls.
One man one vote on basis of one voters roll only became a reality with post-independence constitutional amendments.
For nearly a century this country had battled with Cecil Rhodes’ vote rigging riddle.