The Case for the White Man:
GANN, PETER DUIGNAN AND LEWIS
Africa Today The Case for the White Man By Peter Duignan and Lewis Gann IN AFRICA today, nationalists claim that there is no justification for special privileges for colonists. They commonly...
...African progress has been tremendous...
...The scramble far Africa was not, moreover, confined to white Europeans...
...Here again, state planning, prevailing authoritarian traditions and an indigenous middle class consisting mainly of civil servants are not the right props for a stable parliamentary regime...
...It makes little difference whether we deal with Asians, Africans, Europeans or Americans...
...or it may be a temporary union between the educated and feudal ruling groups, as in Nigeria...
...The problem of the coming realignment of political power looms large and the many unknown denominators may obscure the issues...
...Consequently, it is very doubtful how far the West would be justified in subordinating its interests to the real or imagined demands of neutralists...
...Imperialism was accompanied by white settlement...
...It then followed that economic development was most pronounced in precisely those areas where Europeans established permanent homes for themselves...
...In Portuguese East Africa enormous plots of fertile land lie idle and the rich Zambezi valley is not well exploited...
...Altruism might be able to do quite a lot, but it could not supply all of Africa with the capital required to turn underdeveloped countries into modern nations...
...An African country like Rhodesia has now reached the equivalent of the English 19th-century stage...
...The situation becomes particularly ticklish when white minorities are involved...
...In Africa this group was faced with vast difficulties and a very hard life...
...Translated into economic terms this means that an unusually large proportion of the country's na tional wealth can be used for productive purposes...
...The only countries where European parliamentary traditions—with their established machinery of peacefully changing the government in power—have a chance to survive are those where European settlers are both numerous and politically influential...
...In Ethiopia the Amhara were strictly military conquerors who managed to secure a substantial slice of alien territory...
...The two opposing philosophies make it necessary to clarify just what the true story of the scramble for Africa was...
...Until recently almost all the education facilities in Africa were set up by white missionaries...
...It was a multi-racial affair...
...They provided the plans, technicians, administrators and the capital...
...Many African politicians are dissatisfied with the arrangements in any of these areas...
...Despite the infantile fixations of anti-colonial neutralism, a new scramble for Africa is on...
...Liberals like to imagine that multi-racial countries should be able to pass through a development Dimilar to that of Great Britain in the 19th century...
...Here—and in Accra, Lusaka or Nairobi—clerical jobs appear most desirable...
...The emphasis on status is an additional drawback to the formation of an efficient labor force...
...Ritual murder and the killing of twins were forbidden...
...Compulsion presents a greater possibility and has been employed to some extent by the Communists in underdeveloped areas of the Soviet Union and elsewhere...
...There does not exist a mobile reserve army of highly qualified labor that is ready to take on short-term tasks at moderate pay...
...This array of "ammunition" makes the outlook for new African nations less than cheerful...
...Then gradually hospitals, dispensaries and medical out-stations were set up to provide improved health services on a larger scale...
...Few, however, will go abroad for purely altruistic reasons...
...This failure of acceptance should serve as a warning to any would-be "White Africans" in East and Central Africa...
...For an allowance must be made for the explosive birth rate which doubles the black population of some countries every 25 years...
...This depressing but characteristic feature of early European industrialization was made unnecessary by a system of labor migration...
...Peter Duignan and Levis Gann are close observers of African affairs whose collaborative efforts will be published soon by Penguin Press as White Settlers in Tropical Africa...
...Army control is relatively easy to explain: In an underdeveloped country the 'army is usually the most Westernized group...
...This point of view clashes with that of the colonist, who justifies privilege for outstanding performance and claims basic contributions to African development...
...Their numbers alone made such a policy impossible for the white conqueror...
...It looks upon the present struggle for world supremacy as a sort of ideological beauty contest, with a panel of judges all made up of Asians and Africans...
...Rhodesia also was spared the evils of woman-andchild labor in mines and factories...
...Occasionally it permeated all phases of life...
...The temptation to use Europeans as the universal scapegoats for the tensions and frustrations of a primitive society in the throes of rapid transformation is very great...
...But these nations cannot and will not be Western democracies, even if they continue to adopt the phraseology of their imperial tutors...
...A military dictatorship, as in Egypt and the Sudan, is only one form that centralization of power may take...
...These problems of a multi-racial African state are so ingrained that the experiences of a racially and culturally homogeneous country of Western Europe have very little pertinence...
...Sanitation, vaccination and the emphasis on better nutrition all helped to lift the level of public health...
...Short-term contracts for qualified personnel might be an alternative and would not involve permanent settlement...
...Thoughtful people would not even want to eee them undone...
...It limited the arbitrary rule of chiefs and the practice of witchcraft...
...The concessions to the whites seem minor also if weighed against the forced-labor program initiated by Sekou Touré in the Republic of Guinea or the absolute manpower control system in Red China...
...Revolutions require careful planning and well-trained cadres...
...An even more outstanding example is the Union of South Africa...
...They commonly regard equality as an absolute, to be enacted by political means or by a code of law...
...Not only has Rhodesia moved forward very quickly, but it has even avoided some of the worst evils of labor management that characterized the early stages of industrialization elsewhere...
...None of them is easily influenced by gestures...
...Perhaps Africa will split into different zones of influence according to the proportion of political strength enjoyed by each segment of a plural society...
...Some liberals take the attitude that the Europeans in Central Africa would be wise to meet the demands of the more extreme African nationalists...
...And the working class is split because the "spread" in wages that formerly separated whites from blacks is now appearing within this group itself...
...Africa"-then, resembles more the minority-ridden lands of the Near East and of Eastern Europe of the past, where class, race and national divisions tended to coincide...
...Even the rural population lacks cohesion...
...Indeed, the Southern Rhodesien "master-farmer" scheme is known throughout Africa for its outstanding results...
...The basic concept remains the same: Power must be concentrated within a limited group, because democracy with liberty and stability cannot be ordered to work and the African as a rule is not capable of making it work...
...This new "battle" for the continent is fought by the weapons of dollar and ruble loans, by means of high-powered propaganda, by the infiltration of armed irregulars, and by the most intense diplomatic and military pressures brought to bear by powerful continental blocks...
...Democratic society, however, cannot resort to the big stick...
...Why upset the applecart if there is no need...
...There is no doubt that much can be done in underdeveloped areas with large sums of money...
...Did a gang of white robbers really hurl itself upon a peaceful continent and stir up previously undisturbed, satisfied aborigines...
...He did not come only as a selfish prospector, but often as a devoted missionary or colonial official...
...Two factors make its wholehearted acceptance unlikely: the whites' lack of numbers, and the absence of the passionate nationalism that is a striking feature of Union politics...
...The opposition is far from united, suffering from division along class lines...
...Capital, unfortunately, is scarce all over the world...
...The average modern nation nowadays maintains a peacetime strength of from one to two per cent of its population in its fighting and police forces...
...As a result there is a lack of employment opportunities...
...They disregarded economic consequences and were simply directed against an alien property-owning minority...
...It must rely on the carrot alone...
...Virtually without exception the new leaders of Africa, who now attack colonialism and Christianity, got their education and knowledge of a better world through mission schools...
...The ruling group stands for economic progress...
...In the scramble for these favored spots they forget that increased industrialization and greater agricultural productivity will automatically increase the number of jobs they seek...
...It may also be the rule of an educated elite wielding a strong party organization, as in Ghana...
...None of these revolution-breeding conditions exist in such countries as the Union of South Africa, either of the Rhodesias or Nyasaland...
...In terms of political power it indicates that the ruling strata are compelled to rely to a much greater extent on peace fui persuasion than is commonly assumed by anti-colonists...
...There is little force in the much repeated arguments that the more powerful nations should plan their policies so as to win the sympathy of the "uncommitted" nations of Asia and Africa...
...No mines have been developed and almost no factories are operating...
...Over and over again, newly independent regimes have been tempted to confiscate alien-owned property...
...Belief in the exploitation of African labor by the colonists rests on the tacit acceptance of the Marxist labor theory of value, which idealizes the unskilled at the expense of the entrepreneur...
...As an alternative to straightforward military control, imperial conquest was the lesser of two evils...
...The linguistic and cultural cohesion of the Bantu-speaking peoples, for instance, was never smashed...
...Elsewhere, power either must become highly centralized or anarchy is likely to ensue...
...At first only plagues and other epidemics could be controlled...
...These essential ingredients have been made available to African peasants in Southern Rhodesia, a country of extensive European settlement...
...The mechanics of a revolution, however, are not those of a defective pressure cooker...
...Some suggest adoption of the principle of apartheid, modelled after that of the Union of South Africa, for a country like Southern Rhodesia...
...These demands often outweighed all considerations of efficiency and were designed to benefit the new group at the expense of the old...
...The reasons for this state of affairs are manifold: lack of both physical and social capital, of communications, marketing facilities, organization and plain know-how...
...The coming of a rule of law ended tribal warfare and the slave trade...
...There may be some rioting, but such disorders by themselves will not change the balance of power decisively...
...Application of the numerus clausus in various professional and academic fields, boycotts, and other economic pressures were employed...
...Rather they were the fruits of cooperation between white and black...
...roads, bridges, railroads and communication systems opened up the continent to trade and commerce...
...On the basis of this analysis, pro-colonists may come up with a plea for doing nothing...
...In the past, political progress has come at various speeds throughout Africa...
...Experimentation under unknown conditions, lack of markets, disease, and many unforeseen difficulties faced him...
...Here a man's language was all-important and social and economic struggles began to be overlaid by linquistic conflicts...
...they must, in short be endowed altruistically with a complete foundation of public services...
...A more acceptable formula is that of partnership...
...This is supposed to be farsighted diplomacy, because those now uncommitted may eventually control the future world balance of power...
...The state should have become seriously weakened, either from the impact of foreign war or from internal decay...
...White control of the existing key positions will enable Europeans to continue their decisive part in the country's future, provided they can retain political and economic leadership...
...There is, of course, much left to be done...
...Good hydrologists, agricultural engineers, motor mechanics, and even efficient and honest "kaffir-store" keepers are simply not willing to "lend" their know-how briefly to underdeveloped countries...
...In such a situation, when nationalism rose, encouraged by social and economic demands, there would be a savage attack on alien minorities...
...In these successful enterprises the lead was always taken by the Europeans...
...Nor did democracy survive in any Middle Eastern country with the exception of Israel...
...Rule of law, parliaments, civil rights and constitutions taught Africans how to become free and rule themselves...
...They may also leave for ideological reasons, in the hope of finding political security, or under compulsion...
...There is no doubt, however, that African progress has been relatively fast" in some countries...
...Before the first shot is fired, key positions in the economic, military and administrative structure should have been well infiltrated...
...Health and welfare services have increased by leaps and bounds...
...In East and Central Africa, Arab and half-caste adventurers from the East coast penetrated deep into the heart of the continent...
...In any case, natives and whites are groping for a solution everywhere and this is truly an era of flux and experimentation...
...the "web of kinship" discouraged individual enterprise...
...They were never Anglicized or Afrikanerized...
...In Africa the position is very different...
...In comparison, the military and police strength in the territories of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland varies between one and two per thousand of the total number ot inhabitants...
...In its most extreme form, discrimination had the physical extinction of the minorities as a goal...
...For when all is said and done, it is only the strength of the West—and nothing but this strength—which up to now has made it possible for the Afro-Asian countries to afford the luxury of neutralism...
...Those that hope to duplicate this situation in Africa simply discount the troubles of multi-racial countries...
...This is a very essential characteristic of Rhodesia fand for that matter the Union of South Africa, too) and is counter to the charges ol "police-state" that are made quite indiscriminately...
...Even white Communists are unlikely to fare well on the African continent...
...Under the conditions prevailing in Eastern Europe and the Middle East the chances for Western-style parliamentary democracy were dim...
...Ghana and Nigeria have no white settlers, yet prestige-hungry Africans tend to shirk manual or technical work...
...communal tenure inhibited experimentation and advances in agricultural techniques...
...It has a serious land problem and is suffering from under-industrialization...
...To meet this expected and inevitable population boom, industrial and agricultural revolutionary changes are mandatory...
...The balance of a bicycle can be maintained, but only if the rider is going forward rather than trying to stand still...
...Here white settlers created marketing and training facilities and white and black alike benefited...
...The white man is badly outnumbered everywhere but in Algeria and South Africa...
...This form of democracy has, indeed, never flourished anywhere in Eastern Europe outside of Czechoslovakia, despite numerous attempts to implant it in an uncongenial soil...
...They insist on nothing less than full power for themselves...
...They argue that otherwise pressure will inevitably keep mounting and the final bang become all the louder...
...With rare exceptions, there was no conscription of labor, because overseas opinion would not tolerate such an expedient...
...Yet in the heat of such condemnation they often forget what the status of Africa would be without the white man of the past and the present...
...In areas where Europeans have settled in Africa, the territories concerned, as a matter of fact, got their "original accumulation of capital" at bargain rates...
...But tribal society, even at its most advanced level, implied poverty...
...These attacks on minorities invariably took the form of cries for "land reform...
...More important still, a revolution will succeed best if the ruling class has become a group of functionless parasites and if their regime represents an intolerable drag on the country's economic development...
...The partnership idea advanced by the whites is based on the assumption that the emergent African middle class can be "built" into the existing political structure...
...Few Europeans have settled in the small country...
...It also visualized an elimination of social and economic segregation at a very moderate pace in order to avoid friction...
...Its prospects are equally unfavorable for the newly liberated "Bandung" countries of Southeast Asia...
...The prospect of higher pay and higher standards of living may turn them into emigrants headed for Africa...
...There will be additional scars and pain as remedial surgery continues and regardless of whether the white man or the black is in control...
...Past actions of the white man in Africa cannot be erased...
...In Tanganyika a compromise has been adopted and now each racial group has the same number of representatives...
...They favor adjustments now, while there is still a chance to do it peacefully...
...The fact is that no intensive kind of peasant fanning has come into being in areas where no Europeans have settled...
...Gann is a research officer at the National Archives in Southern Rhodesia...
...Research resulted in help against old crippling diseases...
...In Tanganyika and Kenya it has been relatively fast...
...Examples are the experiences of the Anatolian Greeks, the Ottoman Armenians and the German Jews...
...The Kenya whites—operating from a relatively narrow social basis—recently lost their equality of representation with Africans and Indians...
...One segment looks forward to future individual landownership, while another dreams of the glorious tribal days of old...
...Though this country has now been cast in the role of the "unspeakable Turk" of the 20th century, it has more skilled African workers in its labor force, and at higher average wages, than any other African country...
...There may be political experimentation and flux in Africa, but in certain fields of life solid achievement is a fact and the credit must be given to the white man...
...Duignan is Curator of the Africa Collection at Stanford's Hoover Institution...
...Mines, railroads, factories, tobacco barns, hydroelectric installations, and good farms in central and southern Africa were not "stolen" from the natives by the white men upon their arrival...
...In general their economies are expanding fast, their armed forces and administration are reasonably efficient, and the key positions are firmly in "loyalist" hands...
...These conquerors brought only a rudimentary gunpowder feudalism which did little to advance the cause of the African and his way of life...
...and last, but not least, the army does after all have the best weapons...
...Hinden's demands also ignore the fact that some of the newly created Afro-Asian states are not good risks for private investments...
...Anti-colonists, political scientists and sociologists have consistently neglected to emphasize another feature found in African countries of white settlement: their profoundly unmilitaristic set-up...
...Admittedly there is some instability and discontent in Nyasaland...
...A modus vivendi between whites and blacks will have to be found to make the mandatory economic reconstruction feasible...
...Rhodesia, with its relatively large white population, is in a much more favorable postion industrially, for instance, than Ghana and Nigeria...
...Then gradually he will acquire greater political influence...
...And history has shown that the persecution of minorities does not necessarily end under Marxist regimes...
...These countries must be concerned with profound cleavages of race, color, social tradition and class...
...Rita Hinden of the Fabian Society quite rightly blames the stark poverty of some colonial areas on lack of capital...
...Agricultural advances raised the standard of living and industrialization made many natives part of a modern urban society...
...These rights weighed less heavily on the masses than such sacrifices as are demanded by the deliberate under-consumption of a Communist state...
...Such support can be gained only if the ruling group believes that the interests of the country can be served better by joining the West than by remaining neutral...
...No one denies that expert knowledge and skills are needed for progress in underdeveloped regions...
...The situation is no different for the new states of Africa...
...The system is supposedly suitable to a growing economy, which will give the emergent African sufficient opportunity to meet his needs...
...The squeeze of aliens was sometimes developed into a complex science...
...Their influence is likely to be eroded further still, so in Kenya the whites look for protection from the imperial factor, rather than the blacks, as in Nyasaland...
...What about the future...
...Do the advocates of the "sympathy" idea really believe that a tough policy against its own settlers will add to the strength of the West...
...Yet by the time Europeans got to Africa, native civilizations were decaying...
...The fact is that the army's direct political role in these countries is insignificant, although this does not apply to many of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa...
...It was his coming and his presence that provided all Africans and not just a ruling elite with a chance to participate in a world of greater freedom and opportunity...
...Africa itself provided unskilled labor and natural resources...
...This very human explanation for the coming of the individual white settler to Africa may perhaps be condemned by anti-colonialists...
...army discipline cuts across local and clan ties more than any other social bond...
...Nevertheless, even here the possibility of a forcible transfer of power is not within the realm of practical politics at the present time...
...Experts may be willing to leave their homelands for economic reasons...
...In Communist countries this percentage is even higher...
...To put it bluntly, then, the progress of underdeveloped countries in the past depended largely on help by selfishly motivated experts who were willing to come as immigrants and stay on to seek their fortune...
...These are only variations in detail...
...The reason is that the social equilibrium of multi-racial societies may be compared with that of a bicycle...
...Indirect pressures of taxation were used and did add to the tribesmen's need of ready cash, but there was little direct force except in Portuguese Africa...
...But she is unrealistic when she demands that the African states "must be given their railways and roads and harbours and water and power supplies, they must be equipped with schools and hospitals...
...White liberals still wish to prescribe the old parliamentary medicine for the ills of emergent states...
...There followed demands for "adequate" representation in the public services, business and the professions...
...The trouble is that this point of view neglects the military realities of power...
...But throughout the world many important skills are in greater demand than supply...
...African nationalists cite the potentialities of African peasant farming...
...The price was simply that of certain economic, social and political privileges for the white minority...
...THE STORY OF industrial economics on the Dark Continent is quite similar...
...Under such circumstances a wealthy African bus owner, a "master-farmer" in Southern Rhodesia, or a successful fishtrader on Lake Bangweolo will have little interest in trading prosperity for a rifle...
...Peace and a new wage economy were substitute attractions and they expanded the horizons of tribal society...
...All these advances are in addition to political and economic progress, for which white rule provided the framework...
...In Liberia, American Negro settlers brought extensive tribal lands under their control...
...Even the most thoroughgoing attempts by members of minorities to identify themselves with their host nations were of little avail...
...Altruism may not have been a basic motive, and yet a case can be made for the white man in Africa...
...New independent nations may easily fall under army rule...
...Rhodesia with its large white population has managed to compress a century and a half of English social history into two generations, as far as attitudes toward the unskilled are concerned...
...It merely adopts class, rather than race, as the accepted criterion of liquidation...
...Even maintaining the status quo and operating under existing principles would mean retrogression...
...The new African states will also have to contend with difficulties arising from the international situation...
...It is true that the coming of the white man led to the deterioration of the tribal society, but it also meant a break with the bonds of a life at a communal subsistence level...
...Not even a wholesale expulsion of all whites from a country like Rhodesia would induce a single African state to support NATO...
...Great Britain first enfranchized all its middle classes, then its urban population and finally its rural working classes...
...The whole complex machinery of civilization had to be built up laboriously from rock-bottom...
...To train this needed man-and-brain-power on the spot is timeconsuming and expensive...
...It is true that nations are influenced by ideas, but ideological considerations only rarely outweigh economic and strategic factors as the guiding principles of a country's foreign policy...
...Pre-conquest Africa, of course, was not simply peopled by masses of undifferentiated savages without any culture or history...
...Nasser and Nkrumah today still use colonialism as an excuse for all their countries' weaknesses...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 1
