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Liberal Women in Rhodesia: A Report on the Mitchell Papers, University of Cape Town
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 May 2014
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The Mitchell collection at the Manuscripts and Archives Department of The University of Cape Town (UCT) consists of the papers of Diana Mary Mitchell, a leading white Rhodesian liberal in the 1960s and 1970s as well as private papers of some other politically active Rhodesians, such as Morris Hirsch, Pat Bashford and Allan Savory. This report presents the Mitchell collection as an instrument to investigate issues of agency by liberal White Rhodesian women in the period 1950-1980, thus aiming to counter some dominant trends in the historiography of Rhodesia and Zimbabwe.
Diana Mitchell was born in Salisbury, Rhodesia, in 1932. Her father was a merchant marine officer and her mother was originally from Australia. She attended Eveline High School in Bulawayo and with financial help from her mother she completed a BA in History at Cape Town University in 1953. Before entering formal party politics, Mitchell ran a “backyard school” which provided schooling for African children who otherwise would have had no access to education. After the announcement of the illegal Declaration of Independence (UDI), in 1965 the Rhodesian Front (RF) closed such schools and Mitchell charges this move as being “the key to my activism.” While Mitchell acknowledges that she “worked voluntarily because I could afford to, my husband was the breadwinner […] so I could afford to be this so called ‘liberal’ because of my standard of living,” she became heavily involved in parliamentary politics and was one of the founding members of the Centre Party (CP).
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- Copyright © African Studies Association 2010
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