EUROPEANS IN RHODESIA

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30192, 25 July 1963, Page 6

EUROPEANS IN RHODESIA

“Second-Class Citizens” “Those of us who are out of Africa can took back to the exciting years when we were working hard to make a country,” said Mr R. W. Sutcliffe, who went to Northern Rhodesia in 1949 and came to New Zealand last year after the granting of self-government.

Mr Sutcliffe spoke at a Royal Commonwealth Society luncheon meeting yesterday on life in central Africa. “We had a vital interest in this country. We soon stopped thinking of ourselves as Englishmen; we were Rhodesians. We were quite prepared to share the prosperity we had built up with the Africans,” he said. “There was no trouble at all. In general the country was going forward in a rapid way, possibly too rapidly.” said Mr Sutcliffe speaking of the period before 1951. “When the question of selfgovernment arose, the general opinion was that the African people had every right to govern the country as long as they governed it properly. Nobody on the spat had any grouch at all,” Mr Sutcliffe said.

“We were quite prepared to stay, but soon we found elements were ready to take over the Government more quickly than we white people thought was wise,” he said. "There are an enormous number of people still living in the country. They can leave everything they have and go. or stay there and be second-class citizens in a second-class country. Whatever they do they will lose everything they have built up," he said