I grew up in the 1960s in a newly built Lusaka suburb that was affectionately known to its residents as ‘Bullville”. Us kids were warned not to say the name too carelessly, especially in front of Theo Bull, after whom it was named. He might not take too kindly to the slight edge of mockery implied in the nickname.
But Bullville it willy-nilly came to be known as, and I believe even Theo eventually adopted the name with his usual grace.
Bullville was a single street of modest double-storey houses set in a cul-de-sac in an unfashionable part of town, just across the road from the sprawling, high-density township of Kabwata, on a piece of land stuck between the city’s teeming hospital and the grim-faced Central prison. We could see the prisoners digging in the prison garden in their white shorty-pyjamas as we rode our bicycles to school, and frequently heard the screams of mourners gathered round the hospital mortuary.
In spite of this seemingly grim and unpromising environment, it was a happy place to live. Theo’s vision had been to establish a new style of affordable housing in newly independent Zambia that would set a different trend from the usual
colonial pattern of the sprawling white bungalow and the black township hovel. Bullville was based on the proposition that elegant, practical accommodation could be created for multiracial occupation.
And comfortably multiracial our little street of houses certainly was. Our immediate neighbour was Gwen Koni, one of the first black women destined for high office. Across the road was Chris Parker, an Englishman and the local Reuters correspondent, who went through a string of black fiancées who were clearly taking him for a ride. Further down was Margaret Hathaway, an earnest American missionary. And so on and so forth. This was the brave new world of post-colonial Zambia, formerly Northern Rhodesia.
This articulation of a post-colonial vision was particularly poignant because Theo Bull was a grandnephew of Sir Alfred Beit, close collaborator of Cecil Rhodes, who had helped to carve out the colonial territory that was to bear his name. English-born Theo came out to the Rhodesias in the 1950s, presumably to carry on the work his forbears had begun, and ended up being something of a revolutionary, outspoken against racial prejudice and passionate about building a free and just society. His career as a minor press baron in what was then Southern Rhodesia did much to articulate the anti-apartheid position, and certainly played a role in the eventual break up of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, and the emergence of independent Zambia and Malawi.
I first met Theo when my family arrived in Zambia at the beginning of 1964, shortly before independence. He was still under 30 years of age, but was already an eccentric personality, wearing the air, as someone in our circle pointed out, of an old man, with his baggy trousers, large spectacles on the end of his nose, and his insistence, whenever there was a party, on dragging his hapless partner round the floor in ballroom style (he used to call it ‘a bit of old fash’”) while the rest of the room was getting down to the post-independence jitterbug.
But he was a personality who grew on you. You can’t change your origins, but you can certainly do your best to break the mould, if you’re that way inclined. And break the mould Theo certainly did.
On the public side there were developments like Bullville (way ahead of its time, of course) and his engagement in other business, social and, in later life, political enterprises. On the personal side, he went a long way further in breaking the mould by courting and ultimately marrying a distinguished young Lozi woman named Mutumba Mainga.
What a wedding that was. The bride and groom had travelled ahead to the bride’s home village of Senanga in Barotseland about 500km away. Most of the rest of the wedding party (including my father, who was to play the church organ) followed in a convoy made up of several rickety cars. Tyres burst one by one on the long, dusty gravelly road to Senanga, as a result of which a much-reduced convoy limped into the little town long after the service was over, but in time to join in the last part of the wedding feast.
Theo never stopped being something of an English eccentric, which in no way contradicted his passionate commitment to Zambia, his second home. He was cautious about how he spent his money (everyone assumed he had loads of it, being a descendant of the Beits) but he could be generous to a fault with his friends. On the other hand, he never spent much on himself.
On one of the last occasions on which I saw him, he was heading back to Lusaka after his first round of treatment at a Pretoria hospital for the cancer that would ultimately bring his life to a premature end.
It was quite early in the morning. I had arrived at Johannesburg airport to catch a flight, and bumped into Theo Bull rushing around the departure hall, wearing tight, bright red bell-bottom jeans that he had probably had since the 1970s, and pushing a trolley laden with a variety of plastic bags, into which he had stuffed his documents and a few other possessions. He never bothered with luggage or briefcases.
He had a big white bandage over one eye. ‘They fucked up with that treatment!” he said to me over and over again, incensed at the incompetence of the hospital. His eye had been badly damaged, his condition was likely to prove fatal, but his spirit, as ever, was feisty and full of a sense of the injustices of the world. He excused himself and rushed off to catch his plane.
Theo Bull died in Pretoria on February 6, at the age of 67, and was buried in Lusaka. His passing is one of the most emotional experiences for all those who knew him — not just because of his good deeds, but because he was a true friend, and a great personality. Hamba kahle, Theo.
John Matshikiza is a fellow of the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research