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The Rhodesia Herald, December 24, 1943
While Salisbury prepares to enjoy its Christmas, the Salisbury Post Office staff are winning the battle of receiving and delivering the great piles of mail that are flooding the Post Office.

Some idea of the task which has been faced by the staff may be obtained from the fact that yesterday morning, more than 1 000 parcels were received from the United Kingdom and more than 800 from the Union.

The telegraph section expects today to be a record day in a very busy week.

Large numbers of women are employed on work where there was not one before the war. Senior officials describe their work as being beyond all praise, and say that without them, it would have been impossible to carry on the work of the Post Office.

Work trebled

Numerically, the staff has not been increased, but since 1939, the work has increased enormously, in some branches by as much as 200 percent.

The Christmas rush has meant 12-hour shifts for the staff. In the circulation branch, which deals with the receipt and despatch of all mail matter, the men of the staff have had to work far into the night to keep pace with the unceasing flood of mail.

As fast as one lot of mail bags is dealt with, another comes, and the peak rush is expected today.

Yesterday morning, more than 1 000 parcels were received from the United Kingdom alone and more than 800 from the Union.

Working Christmas Eve

In a “secret sanctum”, registered packets and letters are handled; 1 580 registered packages were dealt with yesterday.

The slogan is “A register cannot be lost.”

In the telegraph office too, Christmas Eve means a hectic rush for the staff, who will work far into the night. They hope to clear Christmas messages by midnight, but even that is doubtful.

During the week that ended on Wednesday, 13 377 telegrams, local and transmitted, were dispatched and 4 390 delivered locally.

Transmitted telegrams are those which pass through the Salisbury office from other offices in Mashonaland.

These figures were about double those for any week in any other month, but they will not be anything like the figures for today’s traffic over the telegraph channels, teleprinters, Creed instruments and morse.

Last year, the Christmas mails from overseas did not arrive until March.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

• This is Christmas through the eyes of one racial group – the settler colonialists, but it still shows that the hustle and bustle associated with the season, which we see today, when everyone is included, has not changed. It remains a season of giving and remembering one another.
• Post offices now under TelOne were centres of activity as they were trusted with safe delivery of Christmas cards and gifts. 76 years on, technology has radically transformed the manner in which Christmas messages and gifts are transmitted and distributed.
• “Telegraph channels, teleprinters, Creed instruments and morse” have been replaced by faster and more efficient ways of communicating messages: Internet-related platforms, planes and other distribution channels.
• Since World War II was being fought, (white) women, had to replace their male counterparts at the workplace. We can easily conclude that Rhodesian women were not as liberated as we would want to believe.