Guy Clutton Brock (1906-1995)
Sandy Grant | Wednesday September 27, 2017 15:02
How can this be? Both it can be said represent a great honour. Yet these are honours which, in a way, tell us more about Zimbabwe’s terrible recent history than they do about Clutton Brock himself.
The differences in the recent histories of Zimbabwe and this country are, mercifully, enormous.
Here, there has been no civil war to topple a white-controlled, apartheid style government. Consequently, there has been no need for a Heroes’ Acre nor for someone to be the only white person to be buried there.
Thankfully, the very idea is ridiculous, absurd – for which this country should give due thanks.
But I do wonder if Clutton Brock, given the chance, would be in any sense pleased and gratified that he should be so honoured.
Would he not be profoundly uneasy? How could we know?
There is a way, however, because in his 1959 book, Dawn in Nyasaland, he made his beliefs abundantly clear. ‘Every man is the common man. He is eternally individual, with an infinite diversity of gifts and experience. He is also a member of the community of Man, that spiritual communion into which he is individually born.
We are all members of this community. We withdraw ourselves wholly or in part when we pursue primarily our own ends, our own individual, sectional, denominational or racial ends.’
This is the credo, the testament, of an extraordinarily humble man who must have abhorred the enormous publicity that resulted from his lone stand against Ian Smith and his white regime.
Zimbabwe has honoured him in ways that it deems appropriate. It would be cheering were this country to do the same in an appropriate but obviously different fashion. It is true of course that Clutton Brock belongs more to Zimbabwe where he became an international celebrity, than here where today he is virtually unknown.
This is something that needs to be turned around. With the backing of the Bangwato Regent, Tshekedi Khama, Clutton Brock was instrumental in establishing the multi-faceted Bamangwato Development Association in 1961 and 1962 in Tshekedi’s home village of Pilikwe. This was the first of the modern NGO development initiatives predating van Rensburg’s Swaneng by a few years.
I am not at all clear what were the factors which caused its decline or even how long drawn out this might have been.
Yet, even in its relatively short heyday, the influence of the BDA was considerable.
It did not spawn similar initiatives elsewhere, although it might have done so had Tshekedi not died.
It is worth noting, however, that both Bessie Head who was accommodated there, and Vernon Gibberd whose heroic efforts so lifted the project, should both have migrated to Serowe and to Swaneng’s Farmers Brigade, each making their own mark there.
I met Guy and his wife Molly just the once at the old Gaborone Hotel in, I think, 1980.
The impression he made was immediate and it was obvious that here was a truly remarkable person. How often does that happen?