Bonnie Campbell

DOUG MILLER 00:00

Sure.

DOUG MILLER 00:04

Good day, everybody. Hello, Gwen. It's Doug Miller here in Montreal. Gwen in Montreal, and I'm here with Bonnie Campbell. Bonnie, could you just introduce yourself, please? Tell us who you are and where you are.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 00:13

Yes, indeed, I'm very pleased to be here. I'm Bonnie Campbell. I'm a retired professor, Professor Emeritus of University of Quebec in Montreal, and in Montreal to meet you.

DOUG MILLER 00:25

Well, that's wonderful. Thanks, thanks so very much. Bonnie, you, you've signed the consent form that we sent you, and you, you understand the nature of this project and agreed to sort of be a full participant accordingly.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 00:38

I did sign the consent form, and I'm delighted to be a participant.

DOUG MILLER 00:42

Thank you.

DOUG MILLER 00:44

Thank you so much. Well, this is this is wonderful. We've waited a long time for this, and I'm so glad it's happening. Bonnie, could you just sort of begin at the beginning, where give us some of your background and how you slowly became involved in anti-apartheid and anti-colonial kind of issues around Africa?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 01:06

I'd be pleased to, but let me say at the outset that what I have to say is more revealing of the context in which I've been working in the 70s and 80s, about which apartheid has, well, it's been a focus for many people, and what my modest story has will be revealing of how that context has been evolving.

So, I think it's a kind of interesting way to pick up on these different historical movements. I should point out that I come from a – I fell into an internationalist background because my father was at UNESCO and I was brought up in France in a very interracial kind of context where people didn't even notice colour and then as I grew up I got involved very fast in student politics when we came back to Canada at University of Toronto and of course the issues of apartheid were very much present and I was involved, not as a leader or militant but obviously with the student ministers association, taking positions boycotting as everyone else was doing.

I should think it's interesting to recall the context of U of T at that time. I was doing African studies, and you may know or not, but there was something called the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Portugal's African Colonies, TCLPAC, which was founded in 1972 and some time after in the, when Portugal, the regime of Salazar fell in 74 this organization became the Toronto Committee for the Liberation of Southern Africa, and I mentioned this because a lot of the people under whom I work, my professors were with John Saul and Jonathan Barker, Cran Pratt, there was a whole range of people who were very involved, not necessarily members of TCLSAC, but very influenced by this.

And another point, which is important, that the people who were teaching us had obviously in African studies had been very involved in, notably, Tanzania with Cran Pratt setting up, he was the first chancellor of the first university, and so very early on we were brought into a milieu of progressive Canadians who were also, Cran Pratt took positions pointing the finger at Canadian policies, Canadian foreign assistance policies towards South Africa, which then spearheaded discussions about Canadian Canada's stand against apartheid. So I came into when I became more involved directly with apartheid through this milieu, a child's milieu. And as a child I should maybe mention that my parents were quite adventurous, they, they took us to Cuba with a tent and a fishing rod in 1962 and that was a fascinating trip, and we learned about what a multicultural and multiracial society could look about, look like, and from that time on, I think that affected my thinking about Black people, and I started reading avidly things like Baldwin, and everything I could put my hands on in terms of the discrimination that was going on in the United States.

So, from my childhood, and then perhaps that explains, I don't know why exactly, I met people from Ghana when I was studying, but then I became very interested in African studies and understanding how it is possible that the oppression continues and the racism continues and the inequality of resources and extraction all the rest. Just more, what's shaped the next what 60 years of my life, but then I could go on, if you want, over to what happened when I went to England. I'll just go on. Is that right?

DOUG MILLER 05:13

This is fascinating already. What a list of eminent Africanists who just named at U of T in your circles in Toronto. My goodness gracious.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 05:21

So I'm very modest because I had the privilege of being surrounded by these incredible thinkers and very inspiring people. I got a Commonwealth scholarship because I didn't want to go to the States, and when I arrived in September in London, September 1969 to be greeted, we were all going off to our different universities. I was going to Sussex, but the first day or so we were greeted by the Commonwealth Secretariat.

And if I mention this, it's right from the very start I got a wake-up call about what England was like and Rhodesia was like, because one of us, the students from Zimbabwe, got picked up by the secret police, and I don't know where they took him, but there was a big stew, and he got released. I didn't actually have a chance to sit down with the guy, because he disappeared, but it just to mention that the context of 1969 as I got to England, was like that.

Then I went to Sussex, and I kind of, through my friendships and affinities met a bunch of people who were very sympathetic to and involved with anti-apartheid work, and in fact I didn't myself, I was trying to do two masters, and I was a bit busy, so I wasn't involved in much more than taking stands and occasional demonstration in London, or whatever, but it sort of just to tell you about the milieu. It was a group of students who had come from a lot of different countries, and my best friend was an Australian woman, and her boyfriend was no other than, at the time he was called Barney Mutumbuka. He was the to become the educational minister of Zimbabwe, so any, so the friends of friends and people I had Zimbabwean friends who were there, and we would talk about Zimbabwe when I was at Sussex.

When I got to Montreal in 1973, as soon as I had a chance to define a course on Africa with a content which I could name myself, because we were told what we had to teach, but this was called Variable Content New Variable, and I did the course on liberation struggles in Portuguese colonies in southern Africa, and out of that I turned out a little book, very, very modest little book, “Nationale Construction de Socialism” [Libération nationale et construction du socialisme en Afrique], which was a contrast of what was going on in the three different colonies, a struggle taking on different forms for FRELIMO, MPLA and PAIGC, anyway, that that just the importance of the specificity, but also bringing that kind of historical knowledge to the students I was teaching.

One of the things that I enjoyed doing, and I think the students had a lot of fun doing when I was teaching, is to try and counter the kind of information we had in Quebec and Canada at the time, we're in the early 70s, and it was a process of deconstruction. So, what we did was I would get them to take for their assignments and make it fun. It was sort of like investigative journalism, and the assignment was to have on one page of the one side of the page news that you would get in the Quebec newspapers of UNITA this or South Africa that, and then using counter information, reread with the information we had been given using something, facts and reports [Facts and Reports: International Press Cuttings on Southern Africa], which I'm sure you know about, this it came out of the Netherlands. It looks like it looks like this, and

DOUG MILLER 09:14

yes, of course. Well, we've written it as a Bible.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 09:18

I have saved mine from 1976 1976 to 1984 I have to wherever it might be safe to deposit them, but I haven't. I sent a lot of material back on Western Africa, to Côte d'Ivoire, but this kind of thing I have saved here, and also books like Cabral in French, the old books L'Arme de la théorie, Amílcar Cabral. I have still some of those publications from that time that I want to put in a safe place. So that was the beginning. Of teaching the course allowed us to invite people, and that is, that was a way of trying to make sure that it wasn't just myself speaking and using whatever films, and that's how I'm not quite sure how I got in touch with Jacques, who came a number of times into the course with his films he had done with the MPLA, which were very impressive for the students to be able to see somebody work in side by side with the MPLA, and-

GWEN SCHULMAN 10:32

Then tell us a little bit more about Jacques Roy for people who don't know who he was.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 10:37

Well, I understand he's written a book I didn't know about, he studied.

DOUG MILLER 10:43

I just read it.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 10:44

Oh yeah, he studied out, I read on the cover of the book in African history and Kiswahili in Montreal. And then he went with CUSO to Dar es Salaam. He met Agostinho Neto, the president of and founder of the MPLA, and they then, because Dr. Neto needed somebody who worked in radio, Jacques was identified as somebody could help, and all this obviously was done in great secrecy to put nobody in danger, and he, in 68 Dr. Neto invited Jacques Roy to Eastern Angola, to the front, and he liked, Dr. Neto liked the results of what Roy was doing, and he sent Roy to mobilize Canadian opinion, a public opinion. Maybe that's about the beginning of how he got back, and how we got to meet him. Anyway, as of, I think, 1974 Dr. Neto was brought by Jacques Roy to Ontario's parliamentary committee, and at that time he was able to plead for the liberation of six countries still under minority rule.

So it's important to recall that this is the kind of political work that needed to be done in Canada, and there were Canadians who were like Jacques Roy, who were instrumental in making those kinds of connections. That there was, there's more that there's the Fowler Report, etc. I don't know, I can.. I don't know enough about that, but he was then instrumental in other steps. Canada's ambassador to the UN, Fowler, visited Africa, and I think there was some discussion, which explained how, because Roy was working on the question of smuggled diamonds, blood diamonds, and then there was a position the UN imposing sanctions, because of that kind of subsequent engagement. I'm speaking on second information. I don't know about that aspect. I've just read about that.

DOUG MILLER 13:12

Oh, but at the period you're talking about, in the early 70s, he had just, he was still fresh out of Angola and full of all passionate. He was so passionate and

BONNIE CAMPBELL 13:21

Exactly, and he would come, and he came several times, and spoke to the students with his, his documents about what he was doing, and so it was, it was very important to know the passion of a Canadian who could be with, but he also translated the passion and the commitment of the people he was working with which was for me very, very important for the students to be aware that that was going on, because of course one heard nothing of it here.

Jacques Roy suggested I should go to Angola in the summer of 1975 that was just before obviously independence, to write articles and I got as far as Lisbon, but then conflicts became very violent in Luanda, so I was told it was much better not to proceed, and to write the articles from Lisbon. They were published in Le Jour. It was an interesting trip, because Portuguese people were euphoric after the toppling of the Salazar dictatorship in April 74 however, having worked on the question of the liberation struggles it rendered with the huge costs that had been to the populations of the colonies.

And the reading that those of us who had worked on that kind of struggle had was to the effect that the coup was very largely an explanation for the toppling of that regime, rather than being something as the Western countries, Poor Head, or even Portugal tended to present this as something that Western countries, or that it was driven by the Portuguese, and ignoring the role of the liberation, most people know this, but it was very striking to be there and to try and, through the writing to bring another nuanced, more nuanced vision of the toppling of that regime of a racist dictatorship. In fact, I see it as the liberation movements liberating Portugal, but that's my reading on it exactly.

Then continuing on involvement in Quebec, I got involved in 76 so this is all about the same time in Oxfam, Quebec. It was under the leadership of a dear friend, a Peruvian, Lucía Echecopar, who had brought a team together in her comité de projets, her project committee, and we had as an idea to fund educational projects in the newly liberated colonies of Portuguese, former Portuguese colonies, after their independence, and we were able to do that for a certain amount of time, but there was it, and it speaks of Quebec, as I mentioned, there was a backlash, and people wanted us not to be doing educational work in those parts of the world, which were they, they didn't like us being there, and they wanted us to be in Francophone Africa, and so we didn't accept it to reorient, excuse me, the work of the committee. So in the end we got kicked out by a kind of a coup in which some very well-known people in Quebec were involved against us, but all the members of that committee, Jean Guyon, Cour, Monique, myself, the whole team around Lucía Echecopar were kicked out, and it was done in a kind of striking way.

They had to pack one of the general assemblies of Action Quebec to turn around the whole situation to get rid of the committee, so that speaks of the politics of anti-apartheidism. When we were trying to do something very well, you know, educational work, it wasn't – we weren't shipping arms or anything like that.

About that time as well as in 1976 our dear friend Mtshana Ncube decided to bring a number of us together to create something called the Zimbabwe Cultural Educational Institute. It was based at McGill, and he had a great deal of foresight. It was incorporated under the Canadian company laws. It had to have four members, we had four people. It was everything was done by the rule. I looked up and there still is it's filed as a company. In fact, it was in existence from 1976 to 1984 and it had, as the name suggests, the mission of being an educational and cultural institute, and in terms of objectives, as far as I can summarize, it's not written because the things that are on websites now, and unfortunately, in spite of the fact that we went to great lengths to have letterhead, etc. because we did a great deal of work to try and put these ideas forward. There's not much left, I'm afraid, in terms of archives.

The person who housed it was Professor Sam Noumoff at McGill, and we had meetings at his office, and they were always very cordial, and there were four of us in terms of the key people who were registered officially, and in terms of objectives, I think Mtshana very incisively had recognized that when countries had been under oppressive colonial rule and became liberated at independence, there were enormous lacks or things missing in terms of gaps in technical training, so his idea, it wasn't to create a big university, will the needs of the country be, and so we were trying to prepare technical training courses in Zimbabwe for Zimbabwe, once the country was freed from apartheid and colonial control, and this was, we're still in the pre-apartheid, pre-independence period, when 1976 Question,

DOUG MILLER 19:47

yes, I was just.. I mean, you slipped into Mtshana very, very nicely, but could you just give us a little bit more background about who he is and who he was, and what he was doing at the time?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 19:56

He was a student at McGill. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think he was in law.

DOUG MILLER 20:02

He did law.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 20:03

yes, yeah. And from

DOUG MILLER 20:06

what I am,

DOUG MILLER 20:06

… and then he started a PhD with Sam.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 20:09

Right? I must admit, I was brought in to be part of this institute. I'm not quite sure how he knew what I was doing, perhaps we'd met at meetings, etc. But my work with him at that time was working really hard to make sure that this cultural, the Zimbabwe Cultural and Educational Institute would, would go forward. I'll say maybe a few words at the end of everything about him, if you, if you accept,

DOUG MILLER 20:38

Sure we talk more about it after,

BONNIE CAMPBELL 20:41

Yeah. Well, because I wanted to propose a tribute to him anyway. That's for later.

So, the idea was to prepare the new independent Zimbabwe for its needs, learning from what gaps and had been identified elsewhere. We worked with Dawson College, where I happened to have one of my cousins, who was the DG, and we went in and explained to him what we wanted to do. He thought that was a good idea, and the idea was, what's the best way to undertake training to bring people here to assume that? How do you not create dependence? How do you do it in a successful way to avoid all the errors of all this expert training? So we wanted to take the time to learn, and Dawson had experience with all sorts of international exchanges with China and other places after the election monitoring, which I'll talk about. I went back via Lusaka.

DOUG MILLER 21:46

79 is it 80?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 21:49

No. After the 80, after the elections. Okay, I went back. I remember it was Lusaka, because I had to switch planes and spend the night in the airport. And anyway, it was there weren't that many flights quite yet going back and forth as I remember, but what I did was to try and understand the needs. I went and visited, what the technical colleges looked like, and it was just out of a film. There were bricklayer courses, and everybody was Black, and then there was mining courses, and everybody was white, and the white young chaps were from Zimbabwe or Rhodesia at the time, that's why they thought of themselves in South Africa, and the whole idea was to see, you know, how we could turn this all around.

I presented the proposal we had drawn up with Dawson to the chap who is at the time Manpower Planning Minister, it was Manpower Planning and Development, his name was Edgar Tekere, and he looked at it and we discussed it, and he had to admit to me with great regret and embarrassment that they had just accepted another technical training plan, a program from WUSC, which was to use redundant Canadian teachers to send them to Zimbabwe and to pay them to go there to the sum of $200,000 and he, the minister, we had a lot of complicity because Tekere was much more in line with the philosophy of what we were trying to do to train Zimbabweans, so that they could be immediately effective in their country, rather than plugging in Canadians, and he said to me, “How can we refuse?”. and he made it, made it be clear that if he had had Israel, he would not have accepted it.

So our work at the Zimbabwe Cultural Institute was drowned by WUSC, because then all the efforts and the way we were trying to do things, there was no more what's the word, interlocutor, or buy-in on the Zimbabweans, because they had their project, and they would not, they wouldn't leave that kind of project,

DOUG MILLER 24:17

Just, just a point of information, World University Service of Canada, they had at that point started investing very much more heavily in manpower than they had in the past, as CUSO, so was sort of politicizing itself and getting less and less manpower overseas.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 24:36

Well, that's my reading of what happened to the best of my memory into interesting discussion about, you know, whether countries need Canadians being plugged in to waste pain, so that they take our expertise, rather than building up their expertise to set up for. Philosophy, and also it's a political question about how you build autonomy for countries around technical assistance, which Mtshana had understood right from the start.

Then I come to the last part of what I have to say, and it concerns the election non-governmental observer team, if I recall correctly, the whole idea was Mtshana's, and I must admit I'll say a bit more later, but it speaks to his foresight and his creativity concerning the team and there was a selection process to ensure representation from different constituencies, the unions, Yvon Charbonneau from the CEQ, faith groups, Père Roger Poirier, a lawyer involved in community work, Donique Bouverer, and myself from academics. So, in terms of our credentials, we were there –

DOUG MILLER 26:03

high-powered

BONNIE CAMPBELL 26:04

Well, it was multi-sectoral, if you like, and we had the official endorsement of the Ligue des droits et libertés in Quebec, which illustrates the political awareness of a certain group of people and engage people awareness on these issues here in Quebec, as well as the Fédération internationale des droits de l'homme in Paris, which this obviously was important security for us. The objectives were twofold, and what I describe here is detailed in much, much, much more detail in the report we made, which is quite thick and as fascinating if you want details, but basically we had to do two things: conduct research on the ground, that is field work, go all over the country to see whether the clauses of the Lancaster Agreement, which had been signed by the British and the Rhodesians were respected or not, and whether the entire process of transition from a colonial state to an independent country was taking place in a democratic manner, and one which respected individual and collective rights of the Zimbabwean people. Its first objective, second to produce a report of a findings and participate in a campaign of information concerning the situation in Zimbabwe. So the duration of the mission went from November 9 1980 to March 12, 1980 for two of us, we stayed almost a –

DOUG MILLER 27:46

Month, that would be November 79 wouldn't it, into March 80?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 27:52

But the elections, no, no, February, it was in, in 1980 because elections were in 1980

DOUG MILLER 28:00

Yeah, and the Lancaster was signed in November 79 –

BONNIE CAMPBELL 28:04

Before, before, yes, but when we arrived on the ground, it was 1980. Before the elections, two of us were there to the month, and the two others could stay less, excuse me, it was a very intense trip, we were not invited. The situation is very militarized and unstable. We were fortunately to transit via London and see colleagues in London, whose name is in our report, in an organization which was very, very close to what was going on in Zimbabwe, and they gave us all sorts of advice of what not to do, like get rid of all our material, etc. and to be aware that it was going to be a very well unstable kind of mission.

The concern first was that the Rhodesians would not let us in, and of course, when we got to the ground, on the ground, we realized that the strategy of the Rhodesians was to create so much violence that the elections would be called off, so right from the beginning our role was to monitor the violence, the main focus at the time was on the Rhodesian strategy, which meant we had a blind spot for other things, which were going on: the American strategy, the British strategy, and the South African strategy. The situation was highly, highly complex, but modest.

As observers, our mission, and those who had asked us to go, we're just afraid that the election would not be called off, and would not be, would be called off, and then there would be violence because of the frustration, so we travelled everywhere, to the far to the west, to the south, and when, when we came. The United Nations and the Organization of African States, or African Unity as it was called then, were not allowed, OAU, and so we did a great deal of groundwork were able to see horrendous things and able to report to the UN people and the Organization of African Unity people who hadn't seen what we had been able to see.

And well, the situation was highly unstable. A Jesuit priest was killed. There was sounds of the South Africans practicing right before, beside where we lived, you could hear the shells going on, so that was the kind of atmosphere it was in, and rather than, well, decide that this was something that we had to just accept, together with other teams of non-governmental observers, we decided, and I wasn't behind the idea, and it wasn't the people who had, but it was the other non-governmental, there were Canadians and Americans who decided to call a press conference after having done work in the hospitals, five hospitals, interviewing the people who were bleeding, maimed and hurt, harmed, asking them, “How did it happen? Who did it?” And to document that was the Rhodesian security forces, which were maiming people, that was the word they used, that brutalizing them.

And so the there was a kind of decision, could force, and we were sure we will be kicked out to call a press conference to speak of what we had, what the report said. I didn't do the interviews, I was doing all sorts of other groundwork at the time, and instead of being kicked out, the report of the non-governmental observers was published the next day, February 27 I think it was on the front date and front page of the local newspaper, the Herald, and it got a great deal of attention. And the next day they asked to publish the whole report that we had with all the documentation.

DOUG MILLER 32:14

Herald, really – the Rhodesian Herald published.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 32:19

Yes, I think it had become evident that with the degree of violence, and people who knew what was going on, I'm not quite sure what our role was. It wasn't all about us, but many other people, like religious people, other people who were working at the same time. It, I think, it became clear that it was not possible. I don't know what the thinking was, but strategically, but it was the Herald that published it. I used to have, but I think I've given them away.

The actual, we could probably find it if you wanted that, the actual publication on the very front page, or we, it's in our report, we have copies of it, so that was that was a kind of unexpected turnaround of our, because we thought, quite frankly, we would be put on a plane, and we weren't quite sure how all this would end, but as I said before, our focus was on the fear that the election would not take place, and we failed to scrutinize what else was going on.

In fact, when the elections, the actual elections, actually took place, conditions were very exceptional. Freedom fighters who'd come back from years in exile in Zambia or Mozambique were regularly harassed, picked up, imprisoned. This happened to Mtshana while we were there, and obviously we were on our toes was the fact that a bunch of non-governmental observers, as we gave ourselves as many credentials as we could, and we acted, of course, with the greatest discretion, but the fact that they knew that people were watching and filming,

I did a little film and taking pictures all the time, did that pay continue, Lebanon said that count in the outcome of what happened. We have no way of knowing. We were not alone in what we were doing, but what happened, for example, during the polling days, just an illustration of the impunity of the Rhodesian forces. Well, we were there.

They picked up the ZANU polling representative, the representatives from different parties in the polling stations, and he, a truck, just came up and picked him up and took him off, probably to prison, and I happened to be able to film it, and when he was just, he could hardly. It, but at least I was there with my little micro camera, which I hardly knew how to use, being able to take the pictures. So there was an actually that trip was done when the Commonwealth observers arrived. They were on this bus, and then we were finally able to go around strips with official people, and we, I was on the bus, and we got, we persuaded the driver to go to the prison where the young fellow had been taken. Well, he was released shortly afterwards.

So it was because all these kind of fogey Commonwealth all dougy people were there at the prison asking about the guy, and that's the kind of thing that was possible because of the non-governmental. I think that I'm not quite sure what our role was. We never had more explicit instructions about what we, which, but we were monitoring as the first objective was, as best we could, whether things were done in a respectful way of the population.

There were so many irregularities in the West. One ballot box was held in a foreign-owned mining company. I've got the name of it in, in the report, but nobody could have any access to the ballot box, and many other ballot boxes. These elections happened over three days, and in terms of how, how those, the count was possible under those circumstances, it kind of blows your mind, and that's to be put in in the context of the results that we know happened. Just another little anecdote, and the last one was Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who is the leader of the United African National Council gave all sorts of gifts, T-shirts, caps, bicycles at his rallies to get people to his rallies. He had founded the UANC in 1971 It had briefly been the room in poor he 79 to 1980 when he was a leader in this party, was founded in 1971 and he obviously was putting himself forward as a Black compromise to the liberation representatives, and doing what he could with obviously all sorts of probably Rhodesian funds, I know where he got his funds, he had an enormous amount of funds to give out all these gifts to try and get people to vote for him, and we still have a ballot that where they give all that, how you should vote. Yes, exactly, you have it too.

DOUG MILLER 37:34

Well, you forwarded it to him.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 37:36

Yeah. Anyway, that was the kind of atmosphere where the enormous pressure on people in of every sort, but people did vote well.

First of all, were the elections free and fair? That's what we were asked, and the answer is obviously extremely complicated. Our fear, as I keep saying, is that they be called off, and we didn't scrutinize other types of strategies. There were clear signs there was an awful lot going on behind below the radar that we could monitor, and the surprising results that everybody knows in certain constituencies, ZANU had more party members than they got votes, so there's something very strange about how the results were tabulated, that although we were not in any position to be able to go through what the results were, we didn't even have access to that, so when it was declared an overriding success and victory for ZANU, that was extremely surprising to many people, and made us realize that many of the signs that we had seen were not just sort of anecdotal signs, but in fact spoke of another strategy to make sure that yes, ZANU would get in, but under conditions that probably Lancaster made sure that they would go along with, certain conditions, whether it's land, whether it's elections, or whatever, which we were not privy to at the time of the –

DOUG MILLER 39:15

Elections. Anybody but ZAPU –

BONNIE CAMPBELL 39:17

Exactly. You have to recall also that the progressive wings of ZANU had been pushed aside, there'd been strange car accidents. Tongogara, I think, is anyway, though strange things happen to make sure that ZANU, which could have been PF, and ZAPU, which could have fought the elections together, as would have been the logical outcome from these terrible years of struggle, but no ZANU fought the election not as ZANU-PF but as ZANU, with the results that they had this slight overriding majority.

There are many details of, that I could mention, but I think one before I end with the last word, and your questions, if you have that one of the things our monitoring was permitted us to see was the unbelievable brutality of the regime. At one point I had the chance when the official observers came to go to the north, it's close to the Mozambican border, something called Mushumbi Pools, and there were so-called protected villages, where they were, they were like in Vietnam, they put the women and children in a camp with barbed wire, and they couldn't go to the fields, and when we there got there, they were starving, and I picked, I had, I filmed this, they hadn't had the Red Cross, couldn't get in, it touches me when I speak of it, but anyway, that the, the degree of brutality that we were witnessing doesn't explain anything that we did, but it made sure that our idea was to make sure that the elections went on, and explains a little bit.

We weren't kind of in a political science mode of looking at Lancaster and reading all the different accords, but we were doing the field work, if you like, rather than, we didn't do the analysis, and we were not able to do it while we were there, and when we did the report, so the report points out, I think we couldn't denounce what we had seen because we didn't have the information, but it is one very skeptical as to the role of observers, the role we can play, because we remain as observers very vulnerable to them in manipulations of those who are orchestrating the elections. You obviously you see as much as they allow you to see, and you come away with the best of intentions, but were they free, were they fair? I would never answer that question anyway. Our report is available, and it's very, very detailed, we presented it to the, in Paris, and then we did very massive campaigns of information in Quebec, in rural in Drummondville, and all sorts of places to go and speak of the situation there as we had been asked to do to let people know about the struggle about the new situation and the need for support for Zimbabwe because of the challenges facing it.

DOUG MILLER 42:51

Can I ask you a question about that, Bonnie?

DOUG MILLER 42:52

So you come back with this information from, you know, what for many people would be a very remote part of the world and Zimbabwe, Rhodesia slash Zimbabwe was not necessarily on a lot of people's radars, so you returned to rural Quebec to talk about this experience. What was the level of interest and knowledge that you found on the ground in smaller localities like Drummondville?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 43:20

A lot people would come out, I guess. It wasn't Monsieur or Madam tout le monde, but we, we have the list. We were exhausted because we did so many of them, and we were always struck. We kept going because we, but we wanted to share the story, but we were struck by the interest of the people, and the fact that people from here had gone, and we would talk, we had our slides at the time, diorama, and my little film, or whatever, we would show, and it was sort of, it was things that they would never imagine existed, and it was speaking also of other liberation struggles, and probably the things that they had vaguely heard about, but it was very interesting to see the receptivity,

DOUG MILLER 44:09

and when you say it wasn't necessarily Monsieur Madame tout le monde, so who, who do you have a sense of who was coming to these, was ition structures, and –

BONNIE CAMPBELL 44:18

What, probably people in solidarity movements, I would say, basically, but it's a good question, but the unions were, I mean, there was Yvon Charbonneau, no, the CEQ, that, who, who delegated that, that means people were able to get leave for three or two or four weeks, in my case, that means the institutions with which we were affiliated funded us to do that kind of work.

I happened to be chairing my department at the time, and I persuaded them that this was more important than chairing the department, and I mean it was just … it speaks also of the receptivity in Quebec in different, very different milieus for this kind of thing, so.

So when, when Doug, you were there, I just wanted to end, to say the interview gives me the chance to pay tribute to a very special person, Mtshana Ncube. One could not imagine a more committed individual who always put the struggle of his people and his country, above his own personal interest, and any idea of his own motive before his motivation or his promotion. He was a brilliant thinker who left his student, his studies at McGill to work with ZAPU, where he acted as information secretary, which brought him to New York. Most people know he was a thinker and an activist of great modesty. He was a kind, gentle, and thoughtful person, more concerned about the well-being and safety of others, including some of us as observers whom he worried about when we were doing our work, never saying a word about what it was like for him to return at last in 1980 to Zimbabwe, where he could be arrested and harmed at any moment in his own country.

DOUG MILLER 46:11

Tremendous. Wow, my goodness gracious, that what a, what a rich recounting.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 46:19

Can I share an anecdote, just to put a little note on the last when I met him the first time, he was obviously aware that he could be picked up or killed any, any time, and when we would go into a public place, a little restaurant, to have a coffee, he would sit with his back to the wall, and looking at the door to make sure that he knew everything that was going on, and right from the start he made us feel how the situation for us it was, it was fine, but for him it was very, very precarious.

DOUG MILLER 46:57

Absolutely, absolutely, and of course, in well, we won't go there for now. Can you tell us how you first met him, Mtshana?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 47:08

I can't remember, I think around McGill, maybe he asked that I be part of I, or maybe it was one of at a rally in solidarity for the anti-apartheid. I frankly, I don't have that kind of recollection.

DOUG MILLER 47:25

And do you have any, you talked about the committee with the education and culture for Zimbabwe. Do you remember anything about the Third World Forum that he and a group of progressives have put together

BONNIE CAMPBELL 47:38

That rings a loud bell. Where was that?

DOUG MILLER 47:42

It was here in Montreal, and it was a publication they put out on a quarterly basis, and covered Vietnam, and just about every struggle that was going on around the world from the grassroots.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 47:54

Yeah, well, it was, I'm sure I was aware of it then, less aware of it now, the international solidarity work with people like yourself, Ole Qui. We were, and I mean, there were people who would go to meetings on Brazil. There was a great deal of international solidarity and commitment at that time, as you well know,

DOUG MILLER 48:23

Yes, okay, that's fine, it's quite understandable, and, and really, we are all busy people too, so it's not like we focus on this one thing alone either, we got other things happening in our lives,

BONNIE CAMPBELL 48:39

I don't think there was a connection between it and the institute.

DOUG MILLER 48:44

No, not at all. I think that was quite an independent operation. I remember the same person, Dr. Barbara Bodomer, who was part of that, but that's all I can remember about it, and I know, I know he was instrumental, because anyway, this is not my story, so this is

BONNIE CAMPBELL 49:03

Mtshana was instrumental.

DOUG MILLER 49:06

Yes,

BONNIE CAMPBELL 49:06

Yes. Oh, well, there are many aspects of his life. I was trying to chair my department, and I mean, I was obviously, we're in our worlds, we were very busy, and the many things I missed, or maybe I was aware of it, but I wasn't involved as I might have been, or should have been.

DOUG MILLER 49:28

Sure. And do you remember the Commonwealth Counter conference in, I believe, 74 when the Commonwealth heads of state was being held in Ottawa, and activists came together across Canada to put the Zimbabwe struggle up on the agenda. In fact, the newsletter that went out was “The Missing Delegation to the Commonwealth Conference”.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 49:50

That yes, rings about was that the one that Roy got Neto to.

DOUG MILLER 49:55

No Neto came in in April of 74 as part of what. Campaign heighten the well, the whole awareness of Angola was here ,the night of the coup in Portugal, in Ottawa, and then Toronto, that shortened his tour, but again, it's not my story, but Roy’s story is that he, he got them there, couldn't get to see any official person except some low-level bureaucrats in external affairs, and of course a couple of NDP reps on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and then when it's when the coup occurred in Portugal, suddenly there was one of the ministers, Pelletier, his son was a SUCO rep, and through SUCO, Pelletier, the minister and colleague of Pierre Trudeau at the time, met Neto, so we actually got to meet a politician in Ottawa before he left. That's my story for Jocko.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 50:59

It says something, doesn't? I had a similar experience when I – this is completely off the record – when I tried to bring the person who thought, conceived of the Africa Mining Vision, who's a Mozambican. I brought him to Canada to speak, and he was to go to Ottawa, no interest whatsoever. And that's recent.

DOUG MILLER 51:19

Yes, yes. Hardly

GWEN SCHULMAN 51:22

Surprising.

DOUG MILLER 51:23

Wow, Bonnie. I, of course, being part of your history in a way, I was one of those people you invited into your classroom, and mangled in, mangled French explained the situation in, in Rhodesia, the, in 79 when I first arrived back from –

BONNIE CAMPBELL 51:42

Thank you.

DOUG MILLER 51:44

I apologize for massacring Molière's language in front of you.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 51:47

No, no, no, but I depended on people like, like you, like Jacques, and I don't have the list of them, and I don't have my course outlines, but the whole idea was it was for me to be interpreting what was going on, it was to get people who knew who to stand.

DOUG MILLER 52:06

Absolutely, wow. Gwen,

GWEN SCHULMAN 52:10

Yes. Okay, so I have a question. Bonnie, we're going to do a big, we’re going to do a big switch. So you were a professor at UQAM, and I was a student at McGill at the time, and you and I crossed paths in several different contexts, but the one that certainly sits with me most powerfully, and that I would like you to talk about what you recollect about it was the assassination of Dulcie September. So, do you remember sort of that news coming to us, your response to it, and how, how we, how we organized around that.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 52:52

I mentioned to Doug, I'm embarrassed to say I, of course, knew about the incident. I'm not quite sure where was that in my own life? Then I don't have clear recollection of the organization, or, but I mean, yes, the moment, but not what happened,

DOUG MILLER 53:13

Right?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 53:14

Remind me of the year,

GWEN SCHULMAN 53:16

So she was assassinated in 1988 and my recollection again, it's, you know, it's fuzzy, also for all kinds of reasons, but we did, we ended up organizing a service, sort of a commemoration for her in a church basement somewhere, and I don't remember where, I kind of feel like it might have been NDG or something like that, but you came to it, I remember that very well. Dan was there, Aziz was there, a bunch of us were there, but we came together in a kind of shared grief and horror, you know, that brazen assassination, extraterritorial assassination of an ANC person.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 53:57

Yeah, well, it's not because it's been recorded, it's not the place to mention this, but I was going through some kind of traumatic things in my own life with death and other things.

GWEN SCHULMAN 54:11

And yet you, and yet you came to it's your commitment, you came to the commemoration –

BONNIE CAMPBELL

It was when one thing went on to another, so maybe that's why those,

GWEN SCHULMAN 54:21

That's fine. I just wanted to know if you remembered it's not, it's not at all, it's not, a big deal.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 54:27

Reminding me I was there because,

GWEN SCHULMAN 54:31

Well, another good little foot soldier, which is the name of our radio documentary series, because you were a good little foot soldier, despite what was going on in your life? You were at that commemoration. I can attest to that.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 54:45

I wouldn't have known. I would never have said I was there. I would have said I wasn't there.

GWEN SCHULMAN 54:49

Yeah, well, you were. So, I guess one other question, then. And again, this is just on the level of recollection, and even kind of emotional response. Yes, when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, do you recall kind of feelings and thoughts about that at last?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 55:11

No, but how shocking all this has happened, I and what a shame. I said, yeah, we should be so ashamed because we have a country which has been supporting that regime and continued well, so it, it was a, but the, the moment can't in any way, efface the incredible legacy of horror that that regime represented, and I guess that's what I stay with.

GWEN SCHULMAN 55:54

Fair enough.

DOUG MILLER 55:55

My goodness gracious, wow, um the wash of memories is great, and as I say, it's not my story, but this is your story today. So, we'll, we'll leave it at that. And, my goodness, Gwen, any last things?

GWEN SCHULMAN 56:17

No, I think I really appreciate it. I learned a lot, Bonnie, today, listening to you, you know, these are these are things I was unaware of, and it just, it's so fascinating as we continue to flesh out various dimensions of this story, and so, thank you, really appreciate it,

DOUG MILLER 56:37

overview, or something you might like to say, but

BONNIE CAMPBELL 56:41

Thank you so much for doing this. I mean, you do an incredible, it's incredibly important that what you're doing, as I was saying, this Palestine now, and this is, part of it's the continuation of where we should be thinking about what might not have happened if people went a little bit more well, and where are we now? This is what the question I have compared to that period.

GWEN SCHULMAN 57:08

Do you think the legacy of the anti-apartheid struggle can provide any kind of insights or tools for the Palestine solidarity movement?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 57:20

Well I think that the complicity of our own governments is where the point I, I stay with, and what that means in terms of our responsibilities.

DOUG MILLER 57:37

Wow, I think I think that that serves as a pretty good conclusion. Nothing changed in reality, has it much. Sorry.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 57:53

Thank you very much for what you're doing.

DOUG MILLER 57:55

Sincerely, goodness,

BONNIE CAMPBELL 57:57

No, no, really, it's, it's so important.

DOUG MILLER 58:01

Well, thank you for participating and contributing with another important story that fills, fills more and more blanks.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 58:09

Tell me if the things that I might have, like these, the facts and reports.

GWEN SCHULMAN 58:16

Oh yeah, that's amazing. I remember those. That's just fantastic.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 58:19

I have a huge box of them,

DOUG MILLER 58:23

perhaps. Perhaps I could drop by, and we could just sort of talk our way through things.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 58:29

Yeah, I've given quite a bit away, but I'd be, I don't think you could take them on your bicycle.

GWEN SCHULMAN 58:36

He probably could.

DOUG MILLER 58:39

Okay. Well, what I'm going to do is shut down the recording for now.

DOUG MILLER 58:42

Yeah,

DOUG MILLER 58:42

Carry on this discussion.

BONNIE CAMPBELL 58:44

Okay.

DOUG MILLER 58:44

is that okay?

BONNIE CAMPBELL 58:46

Good, fine. Yes.

DOUG MILLER 58:47

Okay. Thanks. Thanks again. I'm just stopping the record.