Notebook
Whenever the Spectator has an impor- tant anniversary, we indulge in an orgy of mutual congratulation over the fact that the magazine is still around. Encounter has more dignity. In its current 30th an- niversary number I can find no signs of in- trospection at all. But the survival of En- counter is altogether more remarkable than the survival of the Spectator. We enjoy, as we always have, the patronage of a benevolent proprietor who sees us through the hard times. At Encounter, the editor and the business manager between them make six trips a year to the United States in order to raise money for the magazine. I am amazed that the editor, Mr Melvin Lasky, did not lose heart years ago, but he soldiers on, surmounting each crisis and weathering each storm with imperturbable good humour. He also, more importantly, con- tinues to produce an excellent magazine. Unfortunately for Encounter, it continues 0 be viewed with suspicion by the Left because of the fact that it was at one time indirectly subsidised by the CIA. But even at that time the CIA exercised no influence over its contents, and the contributors to the magazine continue to span the whole world and the whole democratic political spectrum. Sales have declined a bit over the Years— they are now about 18,000 copies a month, mostly in Britain and the United States — but it is hoped that the new larger format and glossy cover will attract new readers who may have been misled by its previlous austere appearance into thinking that it was too highbrow for them. It is in fact generally very readable. Now all that is needed is a suitabre buyer to make Mr Lasky's life a little easier.
Nice to see Godwin Matatu's byline in the Observer at last. Mr Mat atu, atten- tive readers of this column may remember, is a Zimbabwean journalist who was ap- pointed to the staff of the Observer last June on the recommendation of the newspaper's proprietor, Mr 'Tiny' Rowland. Since then he has been living in Harare on a fat salary but has had nothing Published in the paper at all. Nothing, that is, until last Sunday when there appeared What I thought was rather an interesting Piece by him from Mozambique about the cosy relations which the Marxist President Samora Machel was hoping to establish With Mrs Thatcher during his visit to Lon- don this week. Well done Godwin! If he has failed to get anything else printed until now, this is partly because of objections to him by the journalists of the Observer who suspected that his appointment had been in- spired by Mr Rowland's company Lonrho in order to curry favour with a Zimbabwean minister to whom Mr Matatu is related. This is Mr Eddison J. Zvogbo. Curiously, while nothing had yet been published by Mr Matatu himself until last Sunday, the previous issue of the Observer contained a full-page advertisement from the Zimbabwe government, defending its detention of two white Air Force officers who had been ac- cused but found not guilty of sabotage. The advertisement was signed by and carried the photograph of the Minister of Legal and Parliamentary Affairs, Mr Eddison J. Zvogbo. A front-page story in the Observer, referring to the (fully paid up?) advertisement, stated that Mr Zvogbo is a 'close confidant of the Prime Minister, Robert Mugabe'. Such an assessment is not widely credited in Zimbabwe where there is much factional feeling among the Shona people between the Karanga clan of Mr Zvogbo and the Zezeru clan of Mr Mugabe. As reported in the Sunday Times and the Spectator, this clan rivalry even provoked a bottle fight in Harare's Quill Club, involv- ing among others the Karanga Observer man, Mr Matatu, Is 'Tiny' Rowland at: tempting to back, in the person of Mr Zvogbo, a successor to Mr Mugabe? I only ask because of Lonrho's record in this respect. At the time of the Lancaster House talks in 1979, before Zimbabwe's in- dependence, I was asked to a cocktail party to meet Mr Ian Smith, who spoke out in no inhibited fashion about Rhodesian (Zim- babwean) politics. He spoke so freely that I and a Spectator colleague ventured to ask Mr Smith how much, if anything, 'Tiny'
Rowland and Lonrho were paying the rival African politicians. Mr Smith proceeded to say what he thought Lonrho has paid to Joshua Nkomo, the Rowland favourite, and certain others. Clearly Mr Rowland backed the wrong horse with Nkomo. WW1 he be more successful this time?
T have been thinking how difficult it is for 1 a woman to cope successfully with sex scandals of the Parkinson sort. Whatever line Mrs Thatcher had taken, she would have risked looking either too soppily com- passionate or too meanly vindictive. For the first time in years I have felt that the Con- servative Party would fare better with a man as leader. According to our political correspondent, writing on the opposite page, Tebbit seems to be the one. I could not agree more. Watching Mr Tebbit being interviewed last Sunday by Mr Brian Walden on the television programme Weekend World, I thought how nicely he had come along. A few years ago the idea of Mr Tebbit as prime minister would have appeared preposterous; today he looks completely right for the job. He manages to appear grave, yet to twinkle merrily at the same time. He propounds conventional Thatcherite doctrines while making them sound almost new, and at any rate a good deal less frightening than she sometimes makes them sound and they sometimes are. He supported everything she had done dur- ing the Parkinson affair, claiming that he would have behaved in an identical manner, but somehow making one feel that he would have handled it a good deal more skilfully. No longer does he look like a former airline pilot. He looks dark and Latin and distinguished, like a very grand foreign politician. I am not suggesting that Mrs Thatcher should make room for him yet. But when she goes, he is clearly it.
'T only took things for the children that I
couldn't afford to buy,' said Mrs Patricia Millar, mother of five, accused of stealing from Woolworths in Colchester. These are the things she took: one jacket, two skirts, five head scarves, six nightdresses, a housecoat, two dressing- gowns, five body warmers, eight dresses, four pairs of flip-flops, 84 items of baby clothing, a torch, 10 shirts, five T-shirts, 88 pairs of socks, a sports bag, two shopping trolleys, and four shopping bags. 'It was just like Christmas,' said Mrs Millar, who had found the back door of the store open after closing time. Colchester magistrates gave her a six-month prison sentence suspended for two years. The strange thing about Mrs Millar is that, because she is poor, she seemed to feel she deserved all these things. The poor may sometimes have strange ideas about what richer people do with their money. It is after all most unusual for anbody to buy 88 pairs of socks at one go.
Alexander Chancellor
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