Extremism v. Extremism

Of the three British territories that make up the loosely knit Central African Federation, Southern Rhodesia comes closest to following the harsh segregationist ways of South Africa's apartheid. Negroes are barred from the Parliament, are excluded from most hotels, must use separate entrances to post offices and banks, are denied entrance to some shops, which serve them through hatches opening onto the sidewalk. By such measures. Southern Rhodesia's 211,000 whites have managed to keep a semblance of racial calm, but they have also alienated the blacks of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia from the whole idea of federation. Last week not only the calm, but the federation itself, showed ominous signs of cracking.

Englishman, Go Now! The tension began when Dr. Hastings Banda, the fanatic Nyasaland physician whose cry is "To hell with federation!" (TIME, Jan. 5), stopped over in Salisbury. As part of its new get-tough policy against nationalist agitators, Southern Rhodesia classified him as a "prohibited immigrant" and sent him on his way. As usual, Dr. Banda made political hay of it ("I am the bad boy. I went to Southern Rhodesia and spoiled their 'natives' for them"), but other African nationalists did not leave it at that. At a mass meeting in Salisbury, the fiery young general secretary of the Zambia Congress of Northern Rhodesia shouted to a crowd of 6,000 Africans: "The Englishman must go now! He is in our power!" Two days later, the young firebrand, declared a prohibited immigrant, was packed off on a bus to the border.

Whites in Salisbury were distressed by the recent bloody riots in the Belgian Congo; last week they found troubles closer to home in Nyasaland. There, when police in the capital city of Zomba tried to break up an illegal parade in honor of the ubiquitous Dr. Banda, a riot broke out in which cars, shops and offices were stoned. In Salisbury, something sprang up called the European National Congress, dedicated to "the unity of the white race in all Africa in the face of the rising tide of black nationalism."

Not for the Immature. At the head of the Congress is a Honolulu-born, 39-year-old racist who runs a native trading post on the outskirts of Salisbury and bears the ironic name of David Blackman. Members of Blackman's Congress must swear not to "contribute to multiracialism in any form" and to resist all efforts to give Negroes more power "in their present immature state." A branch of the movement opened in Northern Rhodesia, and members began signing up in Kenya and Tanganyika.

Sadly, Federation Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky complained: "The Congress is not the sort of organization I believe will benefit the Federation. You can't fight extremism with extremism with any hope of success." But the fact was that Welensky's own policy of "partnership"-i.e., a policy of advancing the Negro, but so slowly that the whites will hardly notice -has satisfied no one. If the Dr. Bandas wanted an end to the Central African federation, so apparently did Southern Rhodesia's whites. In the last territorial election they gave a majority of their votes to the anti-Welensky Dominion Party, which wants to cut the territory loose from its predominantly black partners and turn it into a smaller version of the Union of South Africa.

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