White Africans are Also People compiled by Sarah Gertrude Millin
Published by Citadel Press Cape Town (1966)

THE year 1966 is a historic year for Zimbabweans as it is in that year when the Second Chimurenga that birthed the country’s independence began.
What motivated the thousands of men and women to take up arms against the Ian Smith Regime was the brutal and unfair treatment they were being subjected to by the colonial government.
Ironically at such a time when the locals had decided to take decisive action against the harsh living conditions, the whiteman was on a drive to convince the world that it was acting for the good of blacks.
Smith was also busy trying to convince the world that blacks in Rhodesia were the happiest Africans and this was during a time when blacks were strategising on how to topple the colonial regime from power through the use of guns.
The book, White Africans are Also People is a compilation of reports by various writers namely Sarah Gertrude Millin, Robert Arthur James Gascoyne Cecil, Clarence Randall, Roy Welensky, Jack Penn, Stuart Cloete and Frank Broome.
The writers tried to proffer solutions on how best whites and blacks could co-exist.
It is not surprising that despite the fact that the writers acknowledge that the two races should co-exist without challenges, emphasis is given on the fact that whites are superior to blacks.
It is common knowledge that by colonising Africa, whites considered themselves the superior race that had to rule.
Former South African President Piet Botha during the apartheid era made it clear that whites would never regard blacks as equals.
“We do not pretend like other Whites that we like Blacks. The fact that, Blacks look like human beings and act like human beings does not necessarily make them sensible human beings,” he said.
Clarence Randall in his contributions in the book poses questions to Africans suggesting just like Botha that blacks are not sensible enough to rule and develop the continent.
“Where would black Africa be today had it not been for the white man?
“Where did the new leaders, many of whom are extraordinarily able, receive the education that makes it possible for them to govern and to play their part at the conference tables of the United Nations?
“In Christian mission schools, established with dedicated selflessness by inspired men and women from the West,” he writes.
Randall forgets to enlighten the writer the real reason behind the bringing in of missionaries to Africa.
At a time when Christianity was being introduced to Africans, the West took that opportunity to plunder the continent’s resources.
Just as King Leopold II of Belgium wrote in a letter to colonial missionaries in 1883, the underlying reason for bringing evangelising to Africa was not to ‘save’ it but to ‘inspire above all the interests of the coloniser’.
“Your essential role is to facilitate the task of administrators and industrials, which means you will go to interpret the gospel in the way it will be the best to protect your interests in that part of the world.
“For these things, you have to keep watch on disinteresting our savages from the richness that is plenty in their underground,” wrote King Leopold II.
It is not surprising Randall ignored that key part of history and decides to paint the missionaries as good Samaritans, who had no hidden as well as evil agendas and mandate.
Was it not African resources that were used to build the mission schools and locals that provided the cheap labour to build them?
Randall advances the warped thinking that development in Africa should be attributed to whites.
“What took millions of black Africans out of their kraals and put them in clean houses with modern plumbing?
“What lifted them from daily hunger and a bare subsistence standard of living and gave them meat and bread?” asks Randall.
The writer as expected forgets to mention the developments that were already made by the Africans before the white man came to Africa.
Speaking of houses in Africa, was it the white man who helped the Shona people build the Great Zimbabwe which housed up to
18 000 people.
With such a great monument having been built before the arrival of the white man how can the white man be accredited for bringing to the black man clean houses.
The white man should instead be apologising to Africa for plundering her resources at the expense of her people.
And yes white Africans are also people but they should realise that they cannot be masters over owners of the land they rule.
In as much as the whites tried to justify colonisation, the Africans would have none of it and took up arms and fought for their independence. Colonialism was premised on expropriating people of their land and exploiting their resources.
Today Africa stands proud and independent and they continue to try and exploit the continent.