Whenever I was at university and phoning home from a public call box in my residence, or elsewhere on campus, it was an absolute miracle to get through to my parents on my first attempt. The line was semi-permanently busy. I had to keep trying on and off, traipsing up and down from my room to the payphone, and hoping I would get through eventually. No easy task, especially as families with teenagers spent hours on the phone and didn’t give a thought to anyone else who might want to use the line.
I hated the fact that some neighbours listened in to other people’s calls. Yes, we all knew it happened, though we couldn’t work out who it might be. A bored housewife, perhaps? A mischievous child? A nosy teenager? There was no means of identification possible. All we could hear was a click when someone picked up a phone to use it, and a second click when the receiver was put down again, because the line was busy. Most people replaced their receivers immediately. Not everyone was as polite, though. Instead, they stayed on the line where we could now hear gentle breathing in the background of our telephone call. So rude! So inconsiderate! So off-putting! We couldn’t do anything except ask whoever was listening to our conversation to put their phone down again, please. Did they or didn’t they do so? That was their choice, of course.
Another problem arose because of the local operator who was not always professional in her dealings with her customers. She, it was always a “she” in those days, could listen in, too! We all knew this, and we knew why. When the right-winged government of Ian Smith had come into power, censorship and monitoring of both phones and mail had begun immediately. So, letters arrived, with their envelopes having been opened and stuck back down again in a haphazard way. There was no attempt to disguise the fact. It was obvious. Our telephone calls could be monitored at any time, by the government, through the telephone operator.
My parents urged us never to write or say anything that could be used against us. In my case, I was particularly worried because I was at the tiny multi-racial university college to study French. I had not gone to an all-White university in South Africa, so as far as the government was concerned, I had to be an outright Communist, didn’t I?! It was ridiculous because we weren’t Communists. We were simply fair-minded in thinking that the Africans and the Coloured people of Rhodesia should have the same right to vote as did the Whites. Ian Smith and cronies were heading nearer and nearer towards Apartheid, as was practised in South Africa. I was terrified of losing my government bursary and scholarship. I understood that I had to keep a low profile, say nothing, do nothing that could be perceived as anti-Ian Smith and party, because my parents could not afford to keep me at university if I lost the money awarded to me by the government.
So, I found the telephone frustrating and time-consuming, but it was still our lifeline. We had no cell phones, no computers in those days, so what other method was there of communicating quickly with friends and family? I could hardly put a message in a bottle, could I, because, for a start, we were 350 miles away for the nearest ocean!
