Roan Blacks

It is a long way to Northern Rhodesia, any way you go. South Africa bumps northward from the Cape, in a succession of plateaus separated by rivers, until it drops into the Congo basin. Beyond Cape Town, beyond the veldt of the Boers, beyond Bechuanaland and the hinterland of Cecil Rhodes's dreams, nearly 2,000 mi. by railroad from the cape, is Northern Rhodesia, a high, flat, subtropical savannah, full of elephants, roan antelope and a million lean blackamoors. On this British territory's northern frontier is one of the world's richest copper mines, famed Roan Antelope, an amazing furrow of ore 200 ft. wide, 10 miles long, 3,000 ft. deep at the centre. Roan and its companion mine Mufulira could flood the world's copper market, if that should be the desire of Board Chairman Alfred Chester Beatty, onetime partner of Herbert Hoover. To the world's other coppermen Roan Antelope is a fabulous nightmare.

It is a very ordinary nightmare to the sweating Bantu natives who work it for as little as fourpence a day, under 1,200 white men and a blistering sun. Roan Antelope is a comparatively small source of profit to the territorial Government of Northern Rhodesia. The Government, getting most of its revenue from income tax, native taxes, customs stamps and licenses, is actually poor. For that reason Northern Rhodesia's executive council lately raised the native poll tax from 10 to 15 shillings. For black Roan workmen, who cannot quit during their contract term, that was the last straw. Last week they went on strike, first at Mufulira, then at Nkana, then at Roan Antelope itself at Luanshya. The 10,000 white Britons on the savannah, who are rated with the cream of British colonists, began to think about the 100-to-1 odds against them.

As it happened, the annual Cape-to-Cairo airplane junket had reached Southern Rhodesia last week. Two platoons of British colonial troops were piled into four Royal Air Force planes, rushed to Roan's railhead, Ndola, followed by an entire regiment in a special train. Officials read the riot act at Luanshya. Tin helmets were issued, floodlights swept the compounds, the mine patrols went their rounds with fixed bayonets.

It soon developed that the blackamoors had a highly unsavage awareness of what they wanted, a dangerously efficient organization. Because of the poll tax increase, they wanted more pay. Their anger was against the poor Government, not against rich Roan. Last week the black mob swarmed into Roan Antelope's mine compound at Luanshya, wrecked it, turned to the company offices, demolished them, swarmed toward the power house. The white police advanced. An officer gave the command to fire. The corpses of six kinky-polled blacks were left behind in the dust after their fellows had stampeded away. When 300 of the survivors had been thrown into jail, the rest went back to the mines. The white men went out for a round of golf on courses with giant anthills for bunkers.

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