Bravo, Talc'
Sir: My heartfelt congratulations to Taki (Spectator, 21 July) for getting 'bon vivant' right. Lest he think that I am being facetious, let me assure him that, for more than 30 years, I have fought a lonely and utterly unsuccessful battle against the incorrect but ubiquitous English usage of bon viveur — an expression which does not exist in French. (The word `viveur' on its own does, of course, but means quite a different sort of rake!) Wiens Brisby 20 Ansdell Terrace, London W8
Rhodesian realities
Sir, Xan Smiley ('How to save Zimbabwe' 28 July) rightly suggests constitutional changes and Mrs Thatcher has made the same point in Lusaka. In black African education, for instance, a heavy layer of white civil servants still sits on top of the system, blocking the promotion of black teachers. African schools lag far behind white schools in standards of teaching and in facilities such as libraries and games. Massive aid from Britain and the supply – as elsewhere in her former African colonies – of expatriate teachers would help. As regards land tenure, many white farmers are in fact smallholders too poor to contribute to the economy beyond employing a little foreign (Malawian) labour. Others are making insufficient use, often as absentee farmers, of huge wired-off acreages. Yet there is congestion and land hunger in TTLs.
This is not to say that Africans are demanding the 'wholesale eviction of white expertise' (they know they will starve without it). It does involve the replacement by Africans of many Europeans• at present employed as clerical workers and shop assistants, and of shopowners and businessmen (often Greeks or Portuguese) who compete with black traders.
There are snags. It is true that white residential suburbs have generally been desegregated, but Africans have been slow to take up empty plots either because they haven't the money, or they fear the boys will brand them as sell-outs and take reprisals against their relatives in the villages.
In the last resort the white man's survival in Zimbabwe Rhodesia depends on a change of attitude to black men whom he still looks down on as `kaffirs'. Not long ago, for instance, it was suggested in the Rhodesian press that white women examined by black doctors in hospital should be permitted to wear hoods to avoid being embarrassed.
Changes such as I have outlined above would make the Bishop's bandwagon more attractive to an emerging black 'bourgeoisie' which has in large part already shown its support for him by registering its vote at the general election. Meanwhile I have yet to meet a black Rhodesian who thinks the war will stop. 'The boys will go on fighting,' they say, 'till one cock rules the roost.?
Denis Hills 83 Grange Road Dorridge, Warwickshire
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