The New Africa

...However, I do not want to dwell any longer on the sins of the West, for that is not my subject here...

...I want this for two reasons: The two paramount considerations of my life are that the countries of Africa should be liberated from every vestige of subordination to other powers, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people should take deep root in these new countries...

...And it is because of the decline of this dominance that the African continent experiences such turbulence...

...But this should not blind one to the fact that even in England people are sometimes humiliated because they are colored...

...The President also expressed the hope that Africa would be able to give the rest of the world lessons in international relations...

...The first is the desire, the determination, to have freedom...

...President Eisenhower's "Five-Point Plan" for Africa...

...Uhuru, the East African word which one now finds painted on the walls of southern Africa, and to have it as soon as possible...

...Nor do I need to remind Americans that every race clash in America is immediately made known to the entire world, while examples of tolerance and harmony are often made to sound like excuses...

...this can mean—and we should face the possibility—hostility to Christianity, hostility to the churches, hostility to the white skin, hostility to Western ideas of freedom and democracy, hostility to offers of Western aid, even hostility to the United Nations and to its magnificent Secretary General, Dag Ham-marskjold, even hostility to Ralph Bunche, the distinguished honorary chairman of Freedom House...

...I am thinking not only of help to develop the internal educational systems of Africa, but throwing open the colleges and universities of this great country, on the most generous scale possible, to studen's from Africa...

...Luckily, however, there lies between these two extremes—the color bar on the one hand and the hatred of the West on the other—a great deal of middle ground...

...The second striking characteristic is the desire, the determination, to enter fully into the modern, technological industrial world, to eliminate poverty, to educate every child, to train all the men and women required to administer, teach and operate a modern society...

...I want to see the West—party because of its material debt to Africa, partly because of these sins that I spoke about and don't want to speak about any more, and partly because of its own self-interest—giving the most generous assistance to the new African countries, primarily in two ways...

...And if anyone in this audience wants to know what I mean by the good life, let me say that I mean the same as he or she does, and if that doesn't satisfy him or her, then I mean that one is given the opportunity to do one's work and perform one's duties, and to retain as far as possible the belief that one is a self-determining creature, and isn't just being pushed around...

...That means to me, plainly and bluntly, that no attempt must be made to draw Africa into the power conflicts of our age...

...The third striking characteristic is the dangerous one, and that is a bitter resentment, not so much against having been ruled, but against having been ruled arrogantly...

...No country is better able to offer this educational help than the United States...

...I hope philosophers in the audience will forgive me this statement, but they must remember I am only a part-time philosopher...

...It is my firm belief that this kind of generous economic and educational assistance, given concurrently because either without the other is dangerous to freedom, given in such a way as to win men's willing friendship, given directly or through the United Nations as wisdom advises, will be a much greater bulwark for the freedom and security of the West than any series of treaties or any number of bases...

...This article is adapted from his acceptance speech...

...I have no doubt whatsoever that some Africans turn to Communism not because they are convinced by its arguments, but because they so hate the color bar...

...This statement will be welcomed in Africa, and should help to clear up doubts that existed in regard to Western aid...

...I welcome, as an African and a Westerner...

...this is often taken by white persons to be a manifestation of black ingratitude, but it is in fact a revolt against the arrogance of the color bar, and in this revolt kindness and generosity are hated just as much as coldness and cruelty...

...This new Africa has three striking characteristics...

...This is not only a good way to defend democratic freedom...

...it is not only the best way...

...I am here both as African and Westerner, and I want to see the countries of Africa enriched by the contributions of the West, and helped by the West on their way to that kind of nationhood that each of them so earnestly desires...

...the second is to help them to educate their children, their young men and young women in such a way as to make their independence real...

...Above all, I welcome his suggestion that Africa should be spared the ravages which "chauvinism has elsewhere indicted in the past...

...It is characteristic of the rioting in South Africa that clinics, schools and churches are often burned down...

...it is the only way...

...The first is to help these countries to develop their resources and raise their standard of living...

...pression of such arrogance, and the extreme reaction to it is anti-Western-ism...

...You all know that it was the Westerner who, by virtue of that fantastic flowering of human genius which took place in the West, controlled the world to all intents and purposes...

...But such a dominance could not last, because neither human knowledge nor human aspiration can be thus contained...

...and these are only too often the most bitter, the most implacable, the most dangerous enemies of the West...

...The color bar is the extreme exALAN PATON, a native of South Africa and author of Cry, the Beloved Country and Too Late the Phalarope, was honored last month with an award from Freedom House...

...I want this so that the African people need not be subjected to new tyrannies, and so that the new African state should, in Lord Acton's words, recognize that its supreme function is to make it possible for man to lead the good life...

...One cannot help thinking at this moment of the warmth and generosity that have characterized the achievement of Nigerian independence: recently Westminster Abbey, the national shrine of the British nation, was filled with Nigerians and Britons giving thanks for this independence...

...Nor do I need to tell this audience how the Government of my own country, the Union of South Africa, has recklessly thrown away all its chances of leadership on the African continent, and has not only ceased to be an asset but has become a burden to the West, because of its policy of apartheid...

...powerful forces have been released from external control, and are now seeking a new equilibrium...