The Smith regime announced on 23 March that Mgr. Donal Lamont, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Umtali, had been stripped of his Rhodesian citizenship and declared an "undesirable inhumanant of, or visitor to Rhodesia". He was put onto a South African Airways flight to London by immigration officials that evening.
The revocation of the Bishop's citizenship - acquired by registration in 1950 - was confirmed by the regime's Minister of Internal Affairs, Mr Jack Mussett, after hearing a report from a Commissioner appointed under the Citizenship of Rhodesia Act to inquire into the matter. The inquiry, which stemmed from a request from Bishop Lamont's lawyers to the Minister of Internal Affairs and was heard in the Water Court, Salisbury on 16 March, heard that a Rhodesian citizen by registration could be deprived of his citizenship if he had been convicted of certain crimes, of which failure to report the presence of guerillas to the authorities was one. Bishop Lamont had been "justifiably" sentenced to 10 years imprisonment, subsequently reduced on appeal to an effective prison term of one year for this offence. His trial had, furthermore, shown that he was a threat to national security.
A number of people apart from Bishop Lamont have been presented with deportation orders by the regime in recent months. The press appears to have been a particular target. Mr Michael Holman (31), a Salisbury journalist who reports for a number of British newspapers and is the staff representative in Rhodesia of the South African-based Financial Mail, has been fighting a protracted battle with the authorities in this respect. At the end of July 1976 he was served with a notice declaring him a prohibited immigrant and given 7 days in which to leave Rhodesia. He contested the order on the grounds that he was a domiciled Rhodesian citizen and had never taken up permanent residence outside the country. Mr Holman was born in Britain but came with his parents to Rhodesia as a small child. He attended school in Rhodesia and became youth Mayor of Gwelo. In August 1967, while president of the Students' Union of the University of Rhodesia, he was served with a restriction order confining him for one year to his home in Gwelo. After five years of higher education at Edinburgh University in Britain, he returned permanently to Rhodesia in 1973.
On 30 December 1976, the court found in Holman's favour that, as a "domiciled resident" of Rhodesia, he could not be deported. Four days later, however, he received call-up papers telling him to report on 15 January for 84 days military service in a protected village as a member of the Guard Force. He has since been endeavouring through the courts to obtain an exemption order on the grounds that "it is incongruous that a man regarded as a security risk and declared an undesirable resident of Rhodesia should now be expected to fight for the regime". Furthermore, he believed that the military forces were "the main instrument of preserving the institutional violence of minority rule" and were guilty of "systematic oppression" in the face of the legitimate nationalist guerilla struggle.
Other deportation orders include: * Michael Macara, a 30-year-old Canadian doing a postgraduate thesis on Rhodesian political sociology at the University of Rhodesia. He was declared an "undesirable character" in October 1976 but allowed an extension to work on his thesis. An appeal to the Minister of Information, Immigration and Tourism to explain the reasons for his expulsion was ignored and on 5 January Macara was given a week to leave the country. He was finally deported on 4 February after spending three weeks in detention at Salisbury Remand Prison. On 9 February, a prison officer at Salisbury Remand, Carl John van Helsdingen, was found guilty of common assault of Mr Macara and fined Rh 150. * Paul Harris (30), a British photographer working for the Rhodesia Herald on photographic assignments in the operational areas, was declared a prohibited immigrant on 24 February and given eight days to leave.
