Doris Lessing
SPIES I HAVE KNOWN
I don't want you to imagine that I am drawing any sort
of comparison between the Salisbury, Rhodesia, of thirty years ago,
a one horse-town then,
if
not now, and more august sites. God forbid.
But it does no harm to lead into a weighty subject by way of the
miniscule.
It was in the middle of the Second World War. A couple of
dozen people ran a dozen or so organisations, of varying dee;rees of
left-wingedness. The town, though a capitol city, was still in that
condition when "everybody knows everybody else." The white pop–
ulation was about ten thousand; the number of Black people, then
as now, only guessed at. There was a Central Post Office, a rather
handsome building, and one of the mail sorters attended the meet–
ings of The Left Club. It was he who explained to us the system
of censorship operated by the Secret Police. All the incoming mail for
the above dozen organisations was first put into a central box marked
CENSOR
and was read - at their leisure, by certain trusted citizens.
Of course all this was as to be expected, and what we knew must
be happening. But there were other proscribed organisations, like the
Watchtower, a religious sect, for some reason suspected by govern–
ments up and down Mrica - perhaps because they prophesied the
imminent end of the world? - and some fascist organisations, reason–
ably enough in a war against fascism. There were organisations of
obscure aims, and perhaps five members and a capital of five
pounds, and also individuals whose mail had first to go through the
process, as it were, of decontamination, or defusing.
It
was this last
list of a hundred or so people which was the most baffling. What
