Rebel in Rhodesia:

...Old scruples, interests and commitments have been plowed under in a rapid series of moves designed to give Africans greatly increased, even (with the exception of Southern Rhodesia) dominant control...

...Of Northern Rhodesia's three million population all but about 60,000 are black, while the Federal Government is exclusively dominated by white settlers, particularly the 200,000 in Southern Rhodesia...

...The first objective is merely unlikely, whereas the second is patently impossible...

...The Devlin Report astounded everyone—most of all the British Government which appointed the Commission—by acquitting that distinguished Presbyterian elder and fiery, nigh-untodemagogic black nationalist leader, Dr...

...It also urged the acceleration of African political development in the three territories as the final bid to win over African opinion to the federation idea...

...Once before, in December of 1958, the Federal Government had intervened in London to alter an agreed constitutional scheme for Northern Rhodesia...

...Macmillan endorsed the new image with his famous and daring "winds of change" speech in South Africa...

...Instead of recommending the transfer of more power to Sir Roy Welensky's Federal regime, it strongly criticized racialism in the Federation and recommended a substantial loosening of the Federal tie, with more power being returned to the territories...

...but a division of white votes between three rival parties had narrowly prevented it...

...After seven years of giving loyal support to Welensky's Federal Government, it is now outbidding the British in the "old-boy" approach to African nationalist leaders...

...Another is that Macleod, at this juncture, reputedly carried about his letter of resignation...

...Now that the British Government has coolly and unsentimentally weighed the halfbillion colored citizens of the Commonwealth against the 1.5 million African white settlers of British ancestry, the latter's cause could not but be found wanting and no pressure the white settlers might exert could be expected to reverse the verdict...

...This is constitutional plowing time in British Central Africa and in London...

...The Southern Rhodesian agreement has yet to be ratified by a plebescite among the predominantly white electorate of the "self-governing colony...

...Even while making this provision, however, the new Constitution assured that the white legislators would be elected chiefly by black votes...

...This has been followed by a battery of elaborately genteel constitutional conferences in the gilded halls of Lancaster House—London's most magnificent 19th century mansion and the Independence Hall of half a dozen British colonies...

...The white settlers have been handed this last chance of a reversal in the trend of the "new conservatism" by a revolt in the ranks of the Conservative party...

...According to indigenous lore, the parasitic bird represents the Federal Government of Sir Roy Welensky and it is the people of Northern Rhodesia who are symbolized by the poor captive fish...

...The direction and pace have been confirmed by pressure from other former British colonies which are now her partners in the Commonwealth, particularly Ghana and India, and aspersed with a wave of anti-colonialist liberalism (and isolationism) which has washed over the sceptered isle since the public discovery of the Great Fault at Suez...

...That time they had succeeded in reducing by two the number of legislators elected by African voters and had increased equally those elected primarily by white settlers...

...In their ranks there happen to be an inordinately high percentage of businessmen with heavy investments in British African industries dependent on cheap native labor...

...Hastings Banda embarrassingly dubbed him "that great Christian gentleman...

...Lord Salisbury himself is a director of the British Africa Company, the corporate heir of Cecil Rhodes...

...Still, the overall picture is not misleading and events of the past two months have helped to confirm an impression of growing Federal interference in Northern Rhodesia...

...Surrounding the Marquis of Salisbury is a coterie of about 100 rightwing Tory members of parliament who see the surrender of white-settler supremacy as the abandonment of British democracy in Africa...

...But the real issue is Britain's new courtship of black African opinion...

...The Nyasaland conference followed, and to everyone's amazement the Presbyterian Doctor and the Great Christian Gentleman together quaffed the sacrament of harmony from the battered, cracked cup of Nyasaland politics...

...The object is not so much to alter Macleod's plans for a new Northern Rhodesian constitution as to bring down Macleod and thus alter the whole new direction of British colonial policy...

...This time the objective of Welensky's intervention was far more modest—no longer to seize the reins but only to prevent their passing into black hands...

...An unfilled Governor Generalship has stood vacant in Australia for some months...

...Even so, Sir Roy returned in March to press his suit once more with Macmillan at the Commonwealth Prime Minister's conference (which the head of the non-independent Federation attends by virtue of one of those British constitutional anomalies preserved eternally and embarrassingly by precedent—the embalming fluid of the law...

...In 1952, those African leaders who had boycotted the Lancaster House Conference (which created the Federation) had simply been ignored while the conferees went about their work...

...That the British cabinet had had to make so many ambiguous approaches to the boycotters was a measure of the pressure being exerted by the Conservative right wing...

...Although the African leaders came to Lancaster House last December demanding "one man one vote" they were ready to accept this formula for a transitional period...

...By Thomas Franck REBEL IN RHODESIA Sir Roy Welensky refuses to accept Britain's new courtship of black African leaders Rampant ON the coat of arms of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaiand (which is cluttered by no less than five animals, a waterfall, a radiant sun, some clods of turf and a motto: magni esse mereamur) is a giant eagle with a fish in its claws...

...Unfortunately, such ratification now seems unlikely as relations between the white settlers in British Africa and the British Government have suddenly deteriorated...

...Failing that, the report reluctantly, tentatively, foresaw the inevitability of unscrambling the eggs...

...This time, however, it was the conferees who were allowed to cool their heels in London while the Prime Minister entertained Welensky's personal emissary and Minister of Justice, Julian Greenfield, at his country house...

...The hallmark of the new British policy has been, typically, not a "new administration" galloping towards a "new frontier" but a series of Royal Commissions—that system of dignified, impartial government fact-finding which casts doubt on congressional investigation as the dernier cri of democracy...

...He was frequently mentioned as Macmillan's successor and the image of the "new conservatism...

...Captain Briggs was, in effect, told by Macleod to "take it or leave it...

...There is...

...Thomas Franck, Associate Professor of Law at New York University, recently traveled through Africa and is the author of Race and Nationalism...

...And this time, too, although the count is not quite finished, the intervention appears not to have been successful...

...Unhappily, the damage done by Welensky's interventions in Northern Rhodesian (and British) politics cannot be undone by his failure...

...Under the Federal constitution, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaiand are joined for certain limited purposes: trade, commerce, defense and external affairs...

...The Rhodesian Selection Trust group of American-owned copper mines in Northern Rhodesia is, however, trying not to get caught on the wrong side...

...Hastings Banda, of responsibility for the bloody Nyasaiand riots of 1959...

...They claim, with some justification, that the Africans are "unready" to preserve "British" standards (although comparison to the Congo is far too gloomy...

...In the quaint tribal language of British officialdom (set out in the 1953 White Paper on the creation of Federation), "the existing machinery and the responsibilities of her Majesty's Ministers (in the United Kingdom) remain unchanged, but her Majesty's Ministers would naturally seek the views of the Federal Government before advising her Majesty...

...It is an honorable maxim of war that the enemy which cannot be defeated in battle must be subverted from within...

...The chairman was the new Colonial Secretary, Ian Macleod, who had replaced the undistinguished Alan Lennox Boyd on the latter's fortuitous translation to the House of Lords...

...The impression, however misleading, was of a Federal Government not merely being "consulted" but actually calling the tune...

...The white settlers have awakened to find themselves the spurned brides, with their trousseaus of white highlands, angus cattle and copper mines already acquired but now probably having to be returned...

...A dispute over the constitutional future of Northern Rhodesia—the third panel of the Federal triptych— is the immediate cause of the breakdown...

...The retreat of the white settlers has been unbroken through the Royal Commissions and the Lancaster House conferences, and culminated in the humiliation of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd of South Africa at the recent London Commonwealth meeting...

...The Federal Government is entitled to be "consulted"—nothing more...

...Sir Roy Welensky has shrewdly coordinated a show of intransigence over the Northern Rhodesian constitution with this palace revolt in Tory ranks...

...And what, then, of Sir Roy Welensky, who might have offered most of all...

...How often has a fresh, generous gesture been held back, only to be presented the next day curdled by the heat of acrimony...

...The accelerated rate of development has been prompted, like the Belgian abandonment of responsibility in the Congo, by the need to coordinate London's schedule of progress with a timetable set in Paris—one which sped all of the French third of Africa from rudimentary colonialism to full independence in a little over two years...

...however, a poignant inaccuracy: The fish in the emblem is white and the bird black...

...It is generally known that Macleod's plan for a new Northern Rhodesian constitution would have given Africans a small majority in the Legislative Council—perhaps with reliance on a few white moderates...

...First, there was the Nyasaiand Commission, headed by the belated Brandeis of British jurisprudence, Justice Patrick Devlin...

...The colors ought to be reversed...

...As a bonus of historic nemesis, Kenya's African legislators were permitted to savor the presence in their midst of white "stooges" elected because of their "moderation," against the will of the overwhelming majority of the race they "represented...

...Still it is unfortunate that the Tory reflex to the irritant of change should have come at the very moment when a firm British rebuff to the Federation's white leaders might have saved the Federation...

...In the past year new or radically revised constitutions have been negotiated for Kenya, Tanganyika, Nyasaiand and Southern Rhodesia...

...Macleod emerged from the conference as the darling of African nationalists, the influential Conservative Bow Group of "intellectuals and movers" and the British Labor party whose colonial policy he had largely embraced...

...But when Welensky, borrowing a leaf from the black nationalists book, instructed his Northern Rhodesian lieutenants to boycott the constitutional conference, the British cabinet faltered...

...In two short weeks around Lancaster's tables, the Africans, supported by Blundell's moderates, won what five years and 20,000 casualties of Mau Mau had not—a black government for Kenya...

...It was Salisbury whose backing, after Anthony Eden's resignation, allowed Macmillan to snatch the premiership from the heir apparent, Richard A. Butler...

...He also used the opportunity to address the Conservatives in Parliament...

...In the election which followed, this slight shift should have given Welensky's followers an absolute majority in the legislature and the right to demand the reins of government...

...but Britain retains full and final responsibility for the political advance of her Northern Rhodesian protectorate...

...The only concession made to the white settlers, who had hitherto been the apple of the imperial eye, was the reservation for them of a minority of seats in the Kenya Legislature...

...It is led by the venerable Lord Salisbury, heir of the Cecil fief, conscience of the establishment, bitter opponent of imperial surrender from Munich to Suez...

...Now the leap forward will be made, anyway, but it will not save the Federation...

...The only question for the Federation now is whether it will be disassembled on the initiative of the whites in the south or the blacks in the north—people who had so much to offer each other...

...It placed the blame, instead, somewhat obliquely, on the colonial government and on Federal interference...

...The Monckton Commission had urged a constitutional leap forward to persuade the Africans of Northern Rhodesia—with its very small reservoir of trained leaders and professional men—that there were advantages to progress within the Federation...

...Next, at the beginning of 1961, the British Government (this time represented by the new Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations and sometime son-in-law of Winston Churchill, Duncan Sandys) was able to negotiate an equally surprising agreement with the all-white Government of Southern Rhodesia which for the first time makes provision for adding 15 Africans to the territorial Legislature...

...A Bill of Rights, which will be interpreted by a British court (the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council) is to replace an obsolete, unused provision for British executive veto over territorial legislation in the new Southern Rhodesian constitution...

...Banda got his Africans a majority in the Legislature, but did not demand either independence or control of the executive...

...Perhaps it is waiting for its next incumbent to finish setting his house in disorder...

...Next came the (Lord) Monckton Report on the Federation itself...

...Bad timing has everywhere in Africa been the cardinal sin of colonialism...

...When the conference ended, without decision, it was clear that there had been as much negotiation at the back door as around the conference table...

...Lancaster House, meanwhile, played host to delegations from Kenya: the Governor, African nationalists like James Gichuru, Tom Mboya and Gikonyo Kiano, moderate white settlers like Michael Blundell and immoderates like the late L. R. Briggs...