Chalimbana was the first, and for a long time, the only teacher training college in Northern Rhodesia – an hours’ drive out of Lusaka. The principal, Maxwell Robertson, regularly brought his clothes to be dry cleaned by my father.  He mentioned he had read in the Bulawayo Chronicle that I was then heading a South African students’ debating team touring British universities. He asked my father “Do you think when your son gets back, he might come out to Chalimbana and talk to my boys about debating at British universities?”

My father knew my hostility to the racism of most white Rhodesians and how sympathetic I was to African aspirations. He said he was certain I would be delighted.

Maxwell Robertson collected me in his car. On the drive out he mentioned in passing that he had not always been an educationalist. He had started out as a Church of England parson.

“What made you change your career>” I asked. His reply surprised me:

“I had lost my faith!”

I was about to ask more, but then decided I had no right to pry into such matter.

They accommodated me in a guest “rondavel” – an African-style round thatched hut – a few feet from their house. Before I was due to speak to the students, he warned me: “Don’t expect lively questioning. In their junior schools it’s all been rote learning and chanting in unison.  It’s a struggle to get them to question anything, or debate anything. We try, but it’s an uphill struggle.”

So I was surprised, when I finished my talk, a dozen hand shot up to ask questions. What had I done to accomplish this

“Did you say that in the students; union beer was served?”

I confirmed that I had but reminded them I had also explained that spirits were banned in the union.

“But those who drank beer, they were not expelled?”

“No.”

I realised I had strayed into a minefield. Several asked confirmation they had understood me correctly. They then complained loudly and bitterly that one of their fellow students at Chalimbana had been expelled after sneaking off to a nearby village to drink locally brewed millet beer.

I was about to say that students in England were, of course, much older than these schoolboys – but looking around I could see that was not true. Many young Africans had to interrupt their schooling while they went off to earn school fees for the following year.

My session ended in noisy debate.

I was not invited to speak at Chalimbana the following term – nor ever again.

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