Wayaleshi

At reference 1 I noticed a chance encounter with a book by one Peter Fraenkel, originally from Breslau. I now follow up with notice of a more detailed account of his time with the Central African Broadcasting Station. Wayaleshi being an approximation to how certain natives approximated the English 'wireless'.

The civilised tone continues, with Fraenkel and his colleagues, black and white, trying to build a radio station serving the the native peoples of what is now Zambia - native peoples who spoke a variety a languages and most of whom did not speak English. Not a promising start for a shoe-string operation - but they managed, at least for a time, with Fraenkel himself leaving when tensions rose with the enforced incorporation of Zambia into what turned out to be the short-lived Central African Federation.

I was interested to find that Roy Welensky, the second and last Prime Minister, had an interesting pedigree, by family not unlike Fraenkel and by trade a railway then a union man. For some reason and without inquiry, I had always assumed that he was a white farmer.

Also to read of the weaknesses which let the Europeans in in the first place, with, for example, the king of Borotseland (roughly a large chunk of western Zambia) doing a deal with the British which gave him protection from the attentions of the nearby Matebele in return for mineral rights. A kingdom whose exploitation of the upper Zambesi flood plain was helped along by the use of slaves - a practice which we at some point put a stop to. A kingdom which, according to wikipedia, is still pushing for more autonomy within, if not independence, from Zambia. And we think we have problems with Scotland and Ireland.

Fraenkel and his colleagues tried very hard to deliver a radio service to the natives. Natives who were keen to get their hands on European goodies but who did not trust us, assuming (not unreasonably) that we were after their land. Some of whom paraded their European accoutrements, some of whom paraded their African ones. Or perhaps turn and turn about. Most of whom were very poor and more or less uneducated, at least in the European sense of the word. Life expectancy also poor. Probably a high level of violence, including the sexual and domestic sorts. And it was probably also true that an even larger proportion of them believed in the power of witches and witchcraft than, say, believe in visitations by aliens in the US now.

But then Fraenkel gives us a more than a glimpse of the vibrancy and fun of life in this part of Africa, on a good day. The music, the dancing and the mime shows. Fraenkel shares his sense of privilege in being able to be in on the fringes of such things. Probably no longer possible.

It is to our shame that the decent whites, mostly in the colonial civil service like Fraenkel, were not able to face down the settler whites, mostly out to make an easy living out of someone else's land, and make a better settlement back in the 50's and 60's. Not to mention the mining interests. Not that they were much helped in this by the government back home.

With thanks to ebay for the picture. My own copy, I hasten to add, has no library sticker, inside or out.

PS: I think my talk of the bad behaviour of some of his colleagues at the Station in my earlier post was mistaken. I would have done better to make the comparison with whites generally.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/ein-schlesier.html.