One Man in Africa
Jack, Homer A.
One Man in Africa A Time to Speak, by Michael Scott. Doubleday. 358 pp. $4.50. Reviewed by Homer A. Jack What can one man do, especially against colonialism and racism in Africa? Especially a...
...from traveling outside Manhattan...
...But no matter, for Scott's obvious ideal is C. F. Andrews, an Anglican who was equally on the edge of organized religion, but who died as the most revered Englishman in the eyes of Gandhi and the other fathers of free India...
...or on some mission to Africa...
...Although almost a legendary figure to Africans, Scott considers himself quite ordinary and his book merely an account of how ordinary people can be propelled by a cause greater than themselves...
...As Gandhi was a strange combination of saint and politician, so is Michael Scott...
...The institutionalized churches in Africa and England tend, equally, to resent him...
...A Time to Speak is the autobiography of one man, Michael Scott, and an account of what he has done, principally in Africa and for Africans, during the past decade and a half...
...As concerned as Michael Scott is with Africa, he shows evidences in his autobiography, as in his recent activities, of devoting increasing time and interest to a problem vastly bigger than even Africa: the prevention of nuclear war...
...He can be a mediator as well as an advocate...
...It is almost certain that he will also attend the births of half a dozen other African countries in the next decade...
...Scott is an effective, British admixture of Jesus and Gandhi, with more than a trace of Marx...
...Michael Scott is a new type of world citizen, whose address may technically be in care of the Africa Bureau, Denison House, London, but who may more often be found in the corridors of the U.N...
...He reached that degree of self-serenity where he cared not that his identification with the oppressed made him look ridiculous to the respectable...
...In this modest, well-written, often stirring volume, Scott reveals how he himself lost his pretensions, even went to prison with some Indians in Durban during a Gandhian demonstration...
...Father Scott is an Anglican clergyman without a church, but with the whole African continent as his parish...
...He feels that the true church cannot be content with sermons and resolutions, but must be an instrument for social change...
...The book also encompasses a personal catalogue of many of the recent political battles within Africa: the exile of the Kabaka, the marriage of Seretse Khama, apartheid in the Union of South Africa, the creation of Central African Federation, and—above all— the poignant petitions of the Herero people of South West Africa to the United Nations...
...He resents positional-ism in the church—"the wise defining of attitudes by the elders...
...Today, to be sure, he can enter only certain parts of that continent, for he is a prohibted immigrant to the Union of South Africa (as he is prohibited by the other U.S.A...
...In this book one reads the philosophical battles within Scott himself: vocational, ideological, theological...
...When the Gold Coast became Ghana, Scott was rightfully Prime Minister Nkrumah's guest...
...He has the prophet's scorn for injustice, but he has the lobbyist's patience also...
...Especially a white man...
Vol. 22 • December 1958 • No. 12
