FOREWORD
THOSE WERE THE DAYS
FOREWORD
I have attempted in this little book to record some of the incidents and experiences in the life of a District Commissioner in Rhodesia and Zimbabwe during the 36 years between 1946 and 1981, which saw the phasing out of the colonialist era and the coming into being of the new nation of Zimbabwe. It is in no way a technical book and I have attempted to record all facets of a District Commissioner's life in as entertaining a way as possible without digressing in an erudite manner into the realms of ethnology, law and custom. I have tried to be as non-controversial as possible, because I live in Zimbabwe and have my loyalty to Zimbabwe.
For the benefit of my readers who are not familiar with the new names of various districts, towns and rivers, I have in most cases retained the old names. From a chronological point of view, I should have used the word "Native Commissioner" for events up to 1962 and "District Commissioner" thereafter, but that would have been most awkward and so I have used "District Commissioner" throughout except where it is necessary from the context to use the former version.
Trevor Hemans
Bulawayo
Zimbabwe
Publisher's Note
This book, written by my father, was originally typed out using Easyscript on a Commodore 64. It languished uselessly on 5 1/4" discs for many years before I found a way to transfer it onto the PC world and thence into the World Wide Web. Some characters and formatting were lost or changed during the transfer. I have attempted to correct these but some may still remain. If you find any more of these or others errors, please let me know.
Send Comments/Questions/Corrections to Mike Hemans
Chapter 1 | Index
