Stewart Gore-Browne

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Sir Stewart Gore-Browne (May 3, 1883 – August 4, 1967) was a White settler and politician in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).

[edit] Early life

Gore-Browne was born in London, England. His paternal grandfather was Sir Thomas Gore Browne, who had been governor of New Zealand and Tasmania. He was educated at Wixenford preparatory school for 5 years and Harrow School for 3 years. He passed into the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1900 and was commissioned into the Royal Field Artillery. In 1902–4 he did survey work in Natal before returning to England to take up motor racing at Brooklands. He went to Northern Rhodesia in 1911 as part of an Anglo-Belgian boundary commission, laying out the border between Belgian Congo and Northern Rhodesia. In 1914, while working in the land of the Bemba people in the north-east of Northern Rhodesia, he noticed Lake Shiwa Ngandu. From his boyhood, Gore-Browne had an ambition to own an estate on which he could perpetuate a patrician regime that seemed to be dying out in Britain. He decided to set up his estate at Lake Shiwa Ngandu.

[edit] Shiwa Ngandu

During the First World War, Gore-Browne was sent to the Western Front, where he reached the rank of lieutenant-colonel and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). In 1920 he retired from the army and returned to Northern Rhodesia to settle at Shiwa Ngandu. At his new home Gore-Browne cultivated a military bearing and wore a monocle. He often frightened his workers with an explosive anger; the Bemba people called him Chipembere (‘the Rhinoceros’).

On the Shiwa Ngandu estate Gore-Browne tried to produce essential oils, using the labour of hundreds of resident African workers. From 1931 to 1933, he supervised the workers in the production of building materials and the construction of a manorial mansion. However, his projects were heavily subsidized by his aunt, Dame Ethel Locke King, because Shiwa Ngandu failed to make a profit until the Second World War closed off supplies of essential oils from the rivieras of France and Bulgaria. Gore-Browne was obsessively attached to his aunt and he corresponded with her from his childhood until her death.

In 1927 Gore-Browne married Lorna Grace Bosworth (1908–2001), with whom he had two daughters. However, from 1934 the couple spent much time apart and got divorced in 1950.

[edit] Political career

Gore-Browne's political career began in 1935, when he was elected to Northern Rhodesia’s Legislative Council, in which Black people were not represented. Gore-Brown represented one of seven constituencies of White voters. He disagreed with British colonial ‘trusteeship’ and, instead, looked to a future ‘partnership’. He thought settlers ought to have a larger share in government, but also argued for the interdependence of White and Black prosperity. Unlike other White politicians, such as his friend Roy Welensky, a trade union leader, Gore-Browne felt no threat from African social and educational advance.

From 1938 to 1951 he was nominated to represent African interests in the legislative council. For this work, he was knighted in 1945. He also served on the executive council from 1939 to 1951. When African mineworkers went on strike in 1940, Gore-Browne counseled limiting the use of force. He also sought out African opinion and denounced various forms of the color bar (a form of racial segregation). He welcomed the growth of African welfare societies and trade unions, and managed to get the White government to set up African representative councils. In Britain, he made contact with Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda (the future president of Malawi) and his faith in African abilities was strengthened by visits to Uganda and west Africa in 1946–7.

By 1946 Welensky began campaigning for amalgamation of Northern Rhodesia with the country of his birth (Southern Rhodesia), where White settlers enjoyed self-government. Gore-Browne was opposed to Welensky's push for amalgamation and resigned in protest from the leadership of the elected members of the legislative council. Instead, he devised a scheme intended to appeal to both White and Black people, calling for ‘responsible government’. However, he mishandled the scheme's presentation in 1948 and alienated his African supporters. By 1950 he felt that he no longer had a role in politics and resigned from the legislative council early in 1951.

[edit] Semi-retirement

Gore-Browne spent most of his later years at Shiwa Ngandu, where he replaced citrus crops with cattle. However, he remained actively interested in politics. When, in 1953, the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was imposed against the wishes of the Black populace, Gore-Browne opposed it because he felt that it was based on the discredited the idea of ‘partnership’. By 1960 he was committed to African majority rule, and was friendly with Kenneth Kaunda, leader of the United National Independence Party. In the general election of 1962, Gore-Browne stood for that party. However, he failed to win enough white votes to qualify. In 1964 he was an honored guest at Zambia's independence ceremonies in Lusaka.

He died from pneumonia at Kasama Hospital, Zambia, on 4 August 1967. He was buried at Shiwa Ngandu two days later in Zambia's only-ever state funeral for a White person.

[edit] References

A. D. Roberts, ‘Browne, Sir Stewart Gore- (1883–1967)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press (2004) accessed 1 Oct 2006

Christina Lamb, Africa house: the true story of an English gentleman and his African dream (2000)

R. I. Rotberg, Black heart: Gore-Browne and the politics of multi-racial Zambia (1978)