LOOKING BACK

The Herald 100 years ago

SALISBURY, 1 November 1919. — The Rhodesian Administration, in common with every other educational authority in South Africa, are experiencing the greatest difficulties in their efforts to keep pace with the rapidly expanding needs of education.

In this district, the principal difficulty is connected with the provision of adequate boarding accommodation.

Before alluding to a letter from Mr. R. D. Gilchrist published in another column, we ought perhaps to draw attention to what the Director of Education said on the subject in his report for the year 1918.

Referring to the difficulty of providing adequate facilities for boarders, he said: “A well- designed school boarding housing is a very costly building; in normal times the expenses may be reckoned at no less than £225 per boarder housed, including furniture, and the present time probably no much less than £300 per head.

The Herald 75 years ago

SALISBURY, 1 November 1944. — Not before time, as letters published in our columns recently clearly showed, the Government, says a statement from the Information Officer, “has taken steps to meet the demand oversees for information about Southern Rhodesia.”

A satisfactory feature of this war-time official publicity effort is the compilation of just the kind of facts and figures which prospective settlers will find so helpful as they compare what the many countries now competing for them have to offer. “Any gliding of the lily,” says the official statement published yesterday, “is being rigorously avoided.” That is wise move. The people who are making up their minds to emigrate after the war want hard facts, not colourful descriptions, with there and there palpable exaggerations of life as it is lived in this part of the Empire.

It was, therefore, with considerable relief that we read the official outline of the Colony’s restricted publicity campaign and found an assurance that this country does not offer “lotus-like existence” but rather opportunities for hard work and endeavour.

The Herald 50 years ago

SALISBURY, 1 November 1969. — About 1 000 new industrial projects, expansions and diversification schemes representing a fixed capital investment of nearly £12 million have been approved by the Government, the director of the Association of Rhodesian Industries, Mr. John Graylin, said in Salisbury yesterday.

Speaking to a lunchtime meeting of the Rhodesia National Affairs Association, Mr Grayling said the cumulative effects of the new projects and the output of existing industries “must inevitably ensure that industry continues to maintain its present momentum, and may even increase it”.

“Taking all factors into consideration it seems that overall there will be a very substantial rate of economic growth this year. Indeed it is possible that the rate will be such that it will rival some of the high growth rates which we experienced in the middle of the 1950s,” he said.

“It is understood that more than 100 new projects, including diversifications and expansions came on stream in the first six month of this year.”

The Herald 25 years ago

HARARE, 1 November 1994. — The 40th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference held in Canada last month agreed that political policies and legislative systems employed to bring them into practice be revamped so that democracy could provide peace and facilitate public involvement.

At a Press conference in Harare yesterday, the Speaker of Parliament, Cde Nolan Makombe, said more than 100 Commonwealth parliaments and legislatures, including provincial parliaments represented at the conference called for major reforms to political practices so that democratic institutions retain relevance in today’s rapidly evolving societies. The parliamentarians, from the eight regions of the Commonwealth, agreed that an increasingly cynical electorate would only abandon its suspicious if only all significant streams of opinion were involved in the formulation of public policy.

The conference, hosted by the Parliament of Canada and the country’s 12 provincial and territorial legislature, closed on October 14.