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Bicycles and the Social History of Bulawayo
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76 Bicycles and the Social History of Bulawayo Terence Ranger Introduction The University philosopher, David Kaulemu, has recently discussed the ‘early history of the bicycle as a technical object’. Kaulemu says that the bicycle seems to be just a technical invention, ‘designed by experts in their secluded workshops’. But in fact the very nature of the bicycle was uncertain – some inventors designed it as a racing machine, others as a vehicle. ‘There were debates about what a bicycle ultimately was.’ So the bicycle is an ‘ambiguous object’ and it was ‘actually a political project, shaped by the needs and interests of varied groups’. This philosophical discussion is very relevant to the history of the bicycle in Bulawayo, where it has been used for so many different things by so many different people. Here I can best describe this history as a series of snapshots of different uses at different times. The first is of the ‘European bicycle’ in the 1890s. European Bulawayo as the Town of the Bicycle ‘It is a curious fact’, writes D.L.Thompson in his A History of Sport in Southern Rhodesia, ‘that the country’s cycling activities have been confined almost entirely to Bulawayo.’ The first white residents of the town brought bicycles up from South Africa as soon as Bulawayo was marked out as a white town. They brought in both ‘roadsters’ and racing bikes. A ‘roadster’ cost 45 shillings and a racing bike a good deal more. ‘There was a time’, Thompson says, ‘when everyone who could afford to rode a bicycle. Mr Rhodes was the only exception. Nothing could persuade him to give up his beloved pony for the iron contraption on wheels’. But the ‘Rhodesians’ rode bicycles everywhere. They used them for many different purposes. They used them to 77 ride from their homes to their offices. They used them to go for picnics in the countryside. But they also used them to race. The first cycle race took place in 1895; the first racing club was formed in 1896. ‘In 1896 the Queen’s Club built a cycle track which will remain forever in the memories of the old riders. It was, to all intents and purposes, square, and four and one-eighth laps to the mile. It was banked on the “home” corner only, with the result that the riders often went over the top into Grey Street. In spite of many disadvantages, however, some exciting events took place on this track.’ On occasion the social and racing uses of the bicycle were combined. The King’s Club, formed in 1901, held ‘social outings when about a hundred cyclists would turn out. They formed two groups, the fast squad who put their heads down and raced for the picnic, and the “steadies” who did the journey in comfort.’ Of course, cycling was not only for whites only, but also for men only. Ladies came to the picnics in cape carts. Rhodesian whites used bicycles for military purposes too. During the uprising of 1896 white cyclists ‘rode dispatches between Bulawayo and the outlying laagers’. They did the same in South Africa during the Boer War. The early colonial European bicycle is immortalized in surviving photographs. There is a photograph in the Bulawayo Club of settlers greeting the arrival of the first train; each man holds his bicycle. In the National Archives in Harare there is a photo of ‘the Bulawayo Amater (sic) Cycle Club’ meeting at the Umguza Hotel in September 1898. The cyclists sport straw hats and cloth caps; many wear bow ties. They are all young and male. The most famous early Bulawayo photograph of a bicycle – the ‘Modern Matabele Maiden’, in traditional dress, astride a bicycle, with one foot on a rock to hold her steady – is an expression of fantasy rather than reality. The absurdity of a black person, and a woman at that, being able to afford to ride a bicycle was what made the photo funny and ensured that it had a brisk sale as a postcard. [3.230.76.153] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 20:46 GMT) 78 The African Bicycle in the Late 1920s and 1930s In fact the sale of the bicycle followed the same trajectory as the sale of the camera – first only to European men; then to European women; then to African men; and finally to African women. The bicycle, though, was a more expensive investment. By 1930 the Hercules bicycle cost five pounds five shillings at a...