Jill Baker

From a working life, over many years, as a journalist, television news reader, documentary and programme producer and presenter, I decided the time had come to write.

First off were interviews with my father, John Hammond, about his life as a headmaster in African Education only 45 years after settlement of Rhodesia. I became utterly intrigued by the incredible difficulties he had to try and equip African youngsters sufficiently well to be able to run the country effectively - with a ridiculously short time span in which to do it.

From the cerebral malaria of the schools initial base in Tjolotjo (now Tsholotsho) the teachers and boys themselves travelled to the new site near Essexvale (now Esigodini) to make the bricks, following the plans, build and finish with all they had learned, the wood and metalwork, for first a classroom - then a dormitory. Having completed that, they would return to their academic learning at Tjolotjo and a new batch of schoolboys and teachers took their place to plant fruit trees and vegetables, build piggeries and put up fencing for cattle. And they would return to Tjolotjo. It took them four years to complete - and that was just the start of an extraordinary story of how my father battled to teach them enough in the short time there was - with minimal support from the government department and active hostility from members of the community and staff.

BELOVED AFRICAN was launched at the Adelaide Writers' Week in 2000 ... it is now available as an e-book and from August 2023, due to a fascinating and new surge of interest, it is once again available as a paperback through Amazon.

As the daughter of this extraordinary man, my best friends were the three sons of African staff at his schools - two the sons of teachers and one of a medical orderly at the school clinic.We made mud cattle together - I learned Sindebele and they learned English. But the differing lives we all led thereafter is the subject of the ZAMBEZI TRILOGY . . . Book one, THE HORNS, re-lives their history as young adults meet up again to discover and debate everything from King Mzilikazi crossing the Limpopo in 1840, to settlement and administration by the British South Africa Company, then self government as a British Colony until in 1965 Prime Minister Ian Smith declared the country's Independence (UDI) from Britain. Who did what right and who patently didn't! Writing this history from the perspectives of the four of us has been an extraordinary, but immensely worthwhile challenge.

THE ZAMBEZI TRILOGY BOOK TWO: takes the story from just after UDI to the death of a remarkable man, as months of debate and discussion at Lancaster House in London come to an end. His death almost certainly made the success or otherwise of the new Zimbabwe conspicuously more difficult. If plans come to fruition, this book will be launched in London in 2024.

THE ZAMBEZI TRILOGY BOOK THREE: will be co-written by an African journalist and friend, taking the story from the inauguration of Robert Mugabe as Prime Minister - to whatever point it feels right to end it.

My close association with Zimbabwe as a result remains in daily touch, Following the events of 2000 when productive farms were taken and 6000 farmers faced losing everything, as did an estimated 250,000 farm workers, and in conjunction with a band of ex Zimbabwean volunteers, we formed the Zimbabwe Connection and managed to enable over 300 families to get positions and visas to move to Australia. For this initiative, I was awarded the Order of Australia medal.

Since then, another great honour is to have been asked to become a Special Envoy for the Matabele Royal Family - this has become a key focus in trying to help where I can.