Historian Ronald Hyam argues that ‘if one had to choose a single fateful date which signalled the moral end of the British Empire in Africa it would be 3 March 1959’. On this day, eleven Africans were killed (and a further 20 were seriously injured) at Hola Camp, a ‘rehabilitation’ centre for Mau Mau detainees in East Africa, ‘as a result of beatings administered to force them to work on an irrigation scheme’. It was also the day on which Dr Hastings Banda, the president of the Nyasaland Congress Party, was arrested at home (in his pyjamas) and flown to Southern Rhodesia with 72 fellow detainees as part of ‘Operation Sunrise’. At Nkata Bay, 20 Africans demonstrating against their arrests were shot dead. The Government declared a State of Emergency and further deaths would follow over the next few days (Hyam, 2006, 263).

The title of the second item within this edition of Rhodesian Spotlight is ‘Nyasaland back to Normal’ (the previous issue had an item entitled ‘Back to Normal in Nyasaland – after “small crisis”’). In reality, there was no return to ‘normal’ and this Emergency and the Government’s actions in March 1959 would prove to be contributing factors in the demise of the Federation and in the rapid moves towards decolonisation across the region. Indeed, while Nyasaland’s Governor, Robert Armitage, claimed that ‘we seem to have been getting back to normal by early April’, he nonetheless acknowledged that ‘I cannot report that there is any less anti-Federation feeling’ (Armitage, cited in Baker, 1997, 69).

By July 1959, Sir Patrick Devlin published his report into the disturbances. Widely read as a condemnation of the Government’s actions, the report stated on its first page that ‘Nyasaland has become, doubtless only temporarily, a police state… where it is unwise to express any but the most restrained criticism of government policy’ (Elkins, 2007, 351). In commenting on this phrase (‘police state’), historian John Darwin concluded that ‘no colonial government in living memory had been so savagely criticised by an official enquiry’ (Simpson, 2002, 18). The report repeatedly questioned whether it was appropriate for a British administration to act within the colonies in a manner that would be deemed wholly unacceptable within Britain. While, as Brian Simpson shows, much critical content was removed from the original report, the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was incensed by the published report, which he described as ‘dynamite’. He dismissed Devlin as an Irishman ‘with that Fenian blood that makes Irishmen anti-Government on principle’. His Government launched a counter-attack, linking the situation in Nyasaland with the Mau Mau ‘and possibly with the Indian mutiny’ and hastily commissioned a rival ‘Armitage report’ (Simpson, 2002, 46; Hyam, 2006, 264). The link with Mau Mau, while used to justify government action and to exacerbate popular fears, was pertinent in at least one respect. The Devlin report was released at the exact same moment as a report on the Hola Camp. Historian Caroline Elkins in her critique of the British within Kenya argued that the debates over these reports in the House of Commons served as a ‘referendum’ on Britain’s colonial missions and showed that ‘it was becoming abundantly clear that there was blood on the hands of Britain’s so-called civilizers in other parts of the continent as well’ (Elkins, 2007, 351).

The newsreel refers to ‘the rioters’, ‘the agitators’ and talks of ‘wild ideologies’. Devlin saw the conflict instead as a clash between the Colonial Government and Congress. ‘Congress behaved as if Nyasaland was capable of functioning as a Democracy in the fullest sense’, he wrote, ‘and that Government was holding things back. The Government on the other hand became increasingly intolerant of any opposition on western and democratic lines because it considered it tantamount to the setting up of a rival authority’ (Simpson, 2002, 20). This ‘conflict’ was exacerbated on 25 January 1959 when the Congress Party proposed a ‘policy of non-cooperation and resistance to authority’. The colonial government responded to what it saw as a violent threat (subsequently referred to in incendiary terms as the ‘murder plot’) by declaring a State of Emergency and detaining members of Congress on 3 March.

Rhodesian Spotlight was produced for white audiences within the Federation. Geoffrey Mangin, one of the members of the Central African Film Unit who worked on the newsreel, explained that the 8-minute 35mm ‘magazine-type’ newsreel was shown every three weeks in the supporting programme before the main feature in public cinemas. ‘The powers-that-be were keen to show how federation was progressing, so we were assigned to film stories of new developments, traditional gatherings, sporting activities, visiting VIPs and so on. I found it rewarding’, he continued, ‘operating from a privileged viewpoint at historic occasions in a fast developing country’ (Mangin, 1998, 32). The newsreels were staunchly pro-Federation, endorsing government policy throughout. For the most part, they avoided overtly political subjects, with mentions of unrest within the region extremely rare.