WIND OF CHANGE IN CENTRAL AFRICA

...The British government was enthusiastic about these ambitions, but it made two moves which proved the undoing, six years later, of Wel-ensky's plans...

...Meanwhile they have begun to recruit two battalions of regular European troops for internal security duty, and the cost of this is to be deducted from social services...

...A new course has been set, even if the boat has not sailed very far yet...

...nearly two years later forty-three were still in prison or restricted in remote areas...

...If Southern Rhodesia seceded from the Federation, it would speedily fall under the sway of the Union of South Africa...

...The disturbances there have been less severe, not through lack of nationalist spirit among Africans, but through the emphasis on Gandhian non-violence by their leader Kenneth Kaunda...

...Yet, as every American knows, if ignorance of, and prejudice against, other races could be swept away, the problem would dissolve swiftly...

...So the Federation began, over the objections of nearly every articulate African...

...Trouble will come instead from the white electorate of Southern Rhodesia, reacting against the changes which Britain may support for the territorial constitutions of the Rhodesias...

...Whitehead, an economist-farmer isolated by deafness, poor sight, and bachelorhood from many of the realities of Southern Rhodesian life, has followed a policy of timid reform coupled with almost vicious repression of African political movements...

...The federal association has also attracted great overseas investment, making possible, for instance, the 230 million dollar Kariba hydroelectric project...

...Only about 3,000 Africans are voters on a roll of 70,000, and nearly half the electorate comprise white artisans who fear their jobs will be taken by Africans unless Europeans remain in political control...

...They would help each other to joint prosperity...

...It will mean nothing of the sort, if Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland erect tariff barriers against Southern Rhodesia's secondary industry...

...The answer of Whitehead and Welensky, who both belong to the same party though in different spheres, is equally simple: Leave us to run our own affairs, for we know the pace at which our countries can change...

...Their careers and characters could hardly be more different—Huggins CtYDE SANGER roams over Africa for the Manchester Guardian...

...Pass laws, under which Africans must carry a pocketful of identification cards, have been relaxed...

...The so-called reforms mean little or nothing in practice, they say...

...From being what Oliver Lyttleton called "a great experiment in partnership," the Federation has become—after the cold war and disarmament—Britain's toughest problem...

...A remarkable feature of the Monckton Report was the way Lord Monckton had persuaded the Rhodesian representatives to depart so far from traditional attitudes...

...As a result, the Monckton Report had scarcely been mentioned during the two weeks of federal talks, before they were adjourned...

...African leaders dismiss these arguments utterly...

...What was Britain to do about the whole situation, particularly about Southern Rhodesia, where race relations last year deteriorated into spasmodic rioting in which, according to official figures, seventeen have been killed...

...So Nyasaland was included...

...A year ago Whitehead threatened that his government could not stomach being associated in a federation with two other governments dominated by "extreme black nationalists...

...Nigeria, where nearly one-fifth of the continent's 200 million people live, became independent in October...

...Four months later, Macleod managed to get agreement on a new constitution for Nyasaland, giving the Nyasas a majority in their legislature over the British officials and the representatives of the few white settlers...

...The two Rhodesian politicians who had been promoting federation for years were Sir Roy Welensky of Northern Rhodesia and Sir Godfrey Huggins of Southern Rhodesia...

...There have been reports from constitutional commissioners, rejoinders from economists, four different conferences in London...

...Although more than a thousand Nyasas were detained in prisons and camps for several months, and the Devlin report was shamefully brushed aside while Macmillan was winning 1959's general election, his new colonial secretary, Lain Macleod, set about to rescue the situation at the beginning of 1960...

...If these countries were left as they were—Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland as British protectorates, Southern Rhodesia a self-governing colony under an all-white legislature—Southern Rhodesia might even be annexed by South Africa...

...Northern Rhodesia, it is argued, has contributed most to federal funds but has gained the advantage of a federal "cushion" to fall back on...

...The Southern Rhodesian whites did not like this at all, but Huggins assured them that black-white partnership meant the same to him as the partnership of horse and rider...

...a neat and sharp family doctor...

...its capital, Salisbury, has been Africa's boom city...

...The waves of nationalism which were to obliterate colonialism had risen years before in the north—in Egypt, Tunisia, Ghana...

...Nevertheless, it seems clear that Britain intends to give Northern Rhodesian Africans a majority in their territorial legislature this year, one step short of self-government...

...They both wanted to join the wealth of Northern Rhodesia's Copperbelt, which in a good year produces a profit of about 270 million dollars, with the white skills and the capital of Southern Rhodesia...

...He is now busy preparing for territorial elections, which his Malawi Party is bound to win, and for the next more constructive stage of cooperation in government, having turned his back on the Rhodesias, at least temporarily...

...But the Nyasaland territorial government (which is still under the British Colonial Office) has been able to treble its expenditure on African education, for example, because it no longer has to build major roads, hospitals, post offices, and so on...

...Banda and Nyasaland swiftly wrecked Welensky's plans...

...Britain wants to keep the three territories together as an economic unit, and the Africans are agreeable to this as long as there is not a white-dominated federal government controlling the economy and perpetuating the enormous differences of income between white and black...

...Oxford economists have written books illustrating, with the examples of Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the theory that, when .two countries of different stages of development are linked, the more developed will prosper still more, and the other lag even farther behind...

...A third of Nyasaland's able-bodied men were permanently abroad in the Rhodesias as farm or mine labor, and it was only right, he argued, that the Rhodesias, through a federal government, should subsidize Nyasaland's development...

...There are among the African nationalist leaders many fine men dedicated to the good of their country and all its inhabitants...

...These are arguments which Macmillan's government acknowledges, while urging the Southern Rhodesian government to crowd on more sail...

...But African nationalist leaders rejected the Report, because it wished to retain a political form of federation, and they followed this up by walking out of the conference...

...The latter had temporarily impoverished herself by doubling her white population in eight postwar years through massive immigration schemes...

...In 1960 they were to roll south...

...but it wrote into the federal constitution's preamble a sentence declaring racial partnership its aim...

...Lyttleton insisted that Nyasaland, a picturesque but poor hill country, be included in the Federation...

...Partnership" has become for Africans a word to use with bitter scorn...

...And as long as he fights for the present sort of composition and powers of the Federal government, his strong following of white voters will battle with him...

...it would be remarkable if he were to step into oblivion in his early fifties from the high office to which he has climbed...

...and Britain's trust territory of Tanganyika, which has been helped along by the avuncular United Nations...

...Early in these talks the British government recognized that the African leaders were interested only in discussing the alteration of their territorial constitutions so that the parliaments might become more representative of the people and the pace of economic and social reforms might be dictated by Africans, rather than left to the whim of Europeans...

...However, because it considered a federal structure necessary "to regulate and control the economy," the Commission (on which there was a powerful group of representatives of the Federal and Southern Rhodesian governments) also recommended retaining the federal assembly, but with the knife-edge compromise of racial parity in membership...

...and it has got Welensky to postpone resumption of the federal talks "until progress has been made" in the talks about the territorial constitutions...

...The phrase "Boston Tea Party" is commonly heard in Salisbury...

...Now, seven years later, federation in its present form has proved a failure...

...Britain's second move was to insist that the Federation be officially dedicated to the principle of racial partnership...

...The white politicians put it another way...

...Eight months after Banda's return, Nyasas rose in revolt, and fifty were shot dead by troops...

...Britain sent out a commission of inquiry led by a judge, Justice Devlin, whose profoundly sympathetic report is probably one of the most important documents in colonial archives...

...It is all conflicting and confusing: one's own view depends on whether or not one believes the federal association has brought economic benefits to all the territories and has helped to liberalize the racial policies of Southern Rhodesia...

...If, in addition, they are asked to swallow radical alterations of their own constitution, they may rise like the Algerian ultras...

...Welensky himself rejected a most important recommendation of the Commission: that the territories should have the right of secession under certain circumstances...

...this has mostly gone into postal services, roads, and health services because these are federal functions...

...It was this feeling of injustice that led the tough but kindly Nyasas to call Dr...

...The odd country out is, of course, Southern Rhodesia...

...The Congo, because of Belgium's lack of preparation, exchanged colonialism for chaos...

...Huggins and Welensky objected, but Lyttleton banged the conference table in his best tycoon manner and said with finality, "All or nothing...

...This year promises to be another such "African Year...

...to the south, the Union of South Africa's apartheid policies were gaining a stranglehold...

...The color bar has been removed in the civil service, in trade unions, in some hotels...

...They say, "Government must remain in the hands of civilized and responsible people...

...The task of the Monckton Commission was, according to Macmillan, "to advise how the Federation may best go forward...

...The British government believes both these things have happened...

...alternatively, an African majority in the Federal Assembly would be to their liking...

...The comparison is of course absurd...

...Macmillan clearly sees the risks of pushing the Southern Rhodesian government too fast, for there is a great danger that it might be swept by the emotions of its electorate into disastrous secession...

...Nyasaland receives an annual sum of about eleven million dollars from the federal government to help development...

...Banda was recalled for a single purpose: to destroy the Federation and bring Nyasaland to self-government...

...So far so good...

...Macmillan and his ministers skillfully altered the order of priorities, and put both Whitehead and Welensky on the defensive...

...Wind of Change in Central Africa by CLYDE SANGER Ayear ago, 1960 was being hailed as "Africa Year" by those who had felt Britain's Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's "wind of change" rising in force...

...And in the three British territories in central Africa, grouped in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, this will be the year of momentous decisions...

...At best, the opposing politicians there could agree to remodel completely this tightly knit Federation as a loose economic union...

...The races may be integrated in the civil service and trade unions, but whites have made rules to ensure they remain in command...

...The bulk of federal loan funds were sunk in Kariba, on the border between Northern and Southern Rhodesia, while Nyasaland's Nkula Falls power scheme is pigeonholed and its main towns have water for only seven hours a day...

...Recently he has been quiet on this subject, because he realizes the terrible economic consequences to his country of the alternative, secession...

...Possibly Tanganyika will play a large part in saving Central Africa: its twinkle-eyed chief minister, Julius Nyerere, has already shown many whites in Africa that there is little reason to fear the future, and that it is frequently wise for white men as well as black men to swim with the tide...

...he argued that the subject of secession was outside their terms of reference...

...Federation has also changed racial outlooks in Southern Rhodesia, its proponents claim...

...Welensky himself has said that, if the review talks failed, "then I personally would not be prepared to accept that Rhodesians have less guts than the American colonists...

...On the other hand, the African leaders are impatient for results, and are not prepared to engage in months of talks-Britain's tactics in the talks, which resumed in January in Salisbury, are to bring home to the white delegates, and to the white electorate behind them, the fact that there is no alternative to a much more liberal constitution if racial turmoil is to be avoided...

...Hastings Banda back from forty years abroad, years which began with philosophy courses at the University of Chicago and ended with a medical practice in Britain and Ghana...

...To him, federation of these territories, each of which has a population of about two and one-half million but completely different economies, made business sense...

...Instead, Nyasaland was suffused with joy...

...However, the problems of change are somewhat greater, since the white population is eight times as large— about 65,000—as that of Nyasaland, and many are tough-minded South Africans drawn to the Copperbelt...

...I covered Macleod's trip, and the way the surly stares on Thursday turned to gay waves on Friday was wonderful to see...

...The revolt had been almost spontaneous and remarkably non-violent, despite the wild stories of a "massacre plot" to kill all Europeans and Asians...

...Britain therefore blessed the federal scheme and pressed it through with scarcely a second thought...

...Welensky a lumbering, bluff railwayman and trade unionist—but their aims were the same...

...He returned to his country a week before Christmas, joyously exclaiming, "Federation is dead...

...Britain has followed the same policy with her other protectorate, Northern Rhodesia...

...Time was short: Britain seemed to have agreed with Welensky to give the Federation full independence as a dominion at the federal constitutional review conference, which he persuaded Britain to hold at the earliest possible date—1960...

...The Monckton Report was planned by Macmillan to be the key document for the federal review conference which began in London in December, the blueprint for the next stage of the Federation's life...

...There was another reason why the Conservative government bustled federation through, after the Labor governments of 1941-51 had dithered, seeing the potential advantages but noting the strength of African opposition...

...But Welensky is most unlikely to accept either...

...The British learned for the first time of the intense and universal hatred felt by Africans for Federation...

...this is agreed by everyone except those with vested interests in it, such as Sir Roy Welensky, who succeeded Huggins as federal prime minister in 1956...

...My government does not subscribe to that tradition...

...It needs only a burial certificate and the undertaker...

...When, in 1957-58, copper prices slumped, the economy was sustained in large part by Southern Rhodesia's tobacco and secondary manufacturing industries...

...Having done so, Whitehead has blandly demanded that Britain surrender her few remaining "reserved powers" over the Southern Rhodesian constitution, offering in exchange to allow three or four Africans to enter his fifty-man parliament...

...None of the 500 was ever brought to trial to prove his charges of subversion...

...Such a nightmare never occurred to the British Conservative leaders who launched this Federation in October, 1953...

...They would be prepared to accept a loose structure for economic cooperation, similar to the East Africa High Commission which links Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika...

...The British government paid little heed to these protests, believing that the benefits of federation would soon become evident to all...

...But few can agree on how it should be changed...

...Southern Rhodesia has gained enormously from federation...

...In his youth he used to challenge all comers to street corner boxing bouts for a sixpenny prize...

...But other countries came into being more gracefully: several former French territories, led by wise men like the Abbe Youlou...

...Macleod flew to Rhodesia to take personal responsibility for any trouble which might follow Banda's release from prison in April...

...Together, the two Rhode-sias, Huggins and Welensky believed, could form a great new industrial nation in the heart of Africa...

...The African answer is simple: Suspend the constitution and impose a "democratic order...

...Britain's answer was typical of Macmillan, who knows better than to rush bull-headed at problems and equally knows that this kind of problem does not get better of its own accord if you just look the other way...

...Africans claim one hundred have died...

...The Conservatives had watched black and white extremism rear up on both sides of Central Africa: to the north in Kenya, Mau Mau terrorism was at its height...

...Even the two Soma-lis, far in the east, where men survive in an arid land on cattle and pride, passed the danger point of swift independence quietly...

...African opposition to federation had eloquently centered on the objection that Southern Rhodesian whites behaved like a herrenvolk to their own Africans and, since they were to be preponderant in the federal assembly, white domination would be spread through the other two territories...

...He set up an advisory commission under Lord Monckton, whose reputation as a "fixer" when he was Minister of Labor was supreme...

...Under his rule, the Southern Rhodesian government has passed a series of detention, public order, and security acts which are as restrictive of individual freedom as any in the non-Communist world...

...The Monckton Commission, although unsupported by Labor and Liberal party leaders who disliked its narrow terms of reference, and boycotted by the African parties, produced a report recommending that many federal powers be returned to the territorial legislatures, in which Africans should be given far greater representation...

...In February, 1958, some 500 Africans were arrested on the orders of the premier, Sir Edgar Whitehead, who said frankly: "It is a very ancient tradition of the British people that governments should defer action against subversive movements until actual rioting or bloodshed has occurred...

...African agriculture has been sacrificed to the development of European secondary industry, and the economy has become unbalanced, since African farmers who could provide the base of a broad cash economy have been left to grow subsistence crops...

...It is good also that Banda, who looked on his task of excising Nyasaland from the Federation more as a surgeon than a politician, and has sometimes shown himself an inept negotiator, is out of the picture now, as far as talks are concerned...

...In some corners the waves, and problems, are mounting—in Algeria and the Congo, for instance...

...A great number of Afrikaners had trekked north into Southern Rhodesia and might act as the "wooden horse" warriors did at Troy...

...There is no chance of 200,000 Southern Rhodesian whites building a country like the United States in the Africa of 1961...

...Most Southern Rhodesian whites deny this and say, "it will just mean we'll have to pull in our belts for a couple of years...

...At worst, the year could end with central Africa becoming Britain's Algeria...

...But it is almost certain that most Southern Rhodesian whites will react bitterly against an African majority coming to power in Northern Rhodesia, even though their fellows in Northern Rhodesia have come to accept this as inevitable...

...Instead of considering Welensky's claims for a higher status for the Federation, and Whitehead's demands that Britain cede her "reserved powers," Britain has got Whitehead to sit down to a conference reviewing the whole of Southern Rhodesia's constitution, which is tantamount to considering how Africans may play a larger part in government...

...The colonial secretary at that time was a big businessman, Oliver Lyttleton, who soon afterwards returned to commerce as head of Britain's huge Amalgamated Electrical Industries...

...Welensky had predicted there would be riots...