Cooking Data: Culture and Politics in an African Research World

Abstract

who could not attract free labour” (139–140). Copper increased Northern Rhodesia’s importance to London. After the war, it “became even more vital to Britain’s economic survival” (126), providing crucial dollar earnings for the sterling group, with demand remaining buoyant due to the emergent Cold War. This increased wealth led to increased political autonomy for the settler-colonial administrations in both Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), which Tembo argues was a key factor contributing to the emergence of the ill-fated Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (129). The last chapter details the demobilisation of the NRR and what the author terms the “great disappointment” of war service among African veterans (142). This is a powerful and moving chapter which demonstrates that racist colonial policies resulted in the awful treatment of African troops who had fought for Britain during WWII. Tembo shows how African veterans with war injuries were treated terribly by a colonial government that saw them as “cheap and expendable” (157). Injured NRR veterans were given very meagre pensions, and no provision whatsoever was made for those with mental health problems (157). Furthermore, “unlike Africans, discharged European soldiers with at least twelve months’ service were entitled to receive free treatment... for one year” (158). “Tracts of land” were set aside “to draw (or draw back) existing European residents to farming,” along with subsidised loans, whereas African veterans received very little in the way of post-war resettlement (152–156). Gratuities given to “Africans were as much as three times less than those of Europeans” (174). African NRR veterans also struggled to make use of the skills they had acquired during wartime as “there were few secondary industries with openings for the skilled tradesmen who came back from the war,” and the “territory-wide implementation of the colour-bar policy” restricted the opportunities on offer for African veterans (160). Despite their wartime sacrifices, many ended up destitute. Lastly, Tembo argues that while “many early Africanist historians stressed the important role of African ex-servicemen in postwar nationalist politics,” his research concords with recent work by other scholars that shows “ex-servicemen as a group were no more significant” than other occupational groups within the African nationalist movements (162). In conclusion, this is an outstanding work, rigorously researched and thoroughly engaged with manifold literatures. Tembo’s arguments throughout the book are nuanced and well considered. Occasionally one has the privilege to read a history that will almost certainly never be bettered: this is such an instance.