In early 1966, during her gap year from studies at the University of Oxford, Polly Toynbee served as the secretary for the peer and former West Indian cricketer Learie Constantine on an Amnesty International mission to Nigeria and Rhodesia, two countries in Africa. In Lagos, the capital of Nigeria, Toynbee and the other Amnesty members were supposed to be helping political detainees, but Toynbee recalled, "We sat around drinking and entertaining the press. We must have spent an enormous amount but we never achieved anything. We never saw anyone important. We just got vague assurances that the prisoners were all right." The mission then went on to Rhodesia, where the predominantly-white minority government under Ian Smith had unilaterally declared independence the previous November. Since the declaration of independence, there had been reports of mass arrests of black nationalist leaders.
