Huggermugger Trouble

The pamphlet put out by the tourist office called it "Nyasaland--Darkest Africa in Fairest Mood." But in this fair spot last week the mood could not have been darker. Each day the upland country of clear lakes, sun-splashed valleys and misty mountaintops saw fresh upheavals, and the violence echoed beyond its borders. Not since Britain in 1953 merged Nyasaland with the two Rhodesias--forming a Central African Federation larger than California, Texas and New York combined--has there been such turmoil. And it seemed to be only beginning.

Ironically, Nyasaland, poorest of the federation's three territories, has the most to gain from the union. It has the smallest (8,000) white minority, all but lost among 2,700,000 blacks. Last July the demagogic Dr. Hastings Banda returned from self-imposed, 40-year exile to cry "To hell with federation" and proclaim himself "extremist of the extremists." Before his oratory, moderate African leaders fell back.

Banda described to his screaming fans the plight of their brothers in Southern Rhodesia, where the whites keep the blacks in their place by a system of pass laws and curfew, and have shown a tendency to follow the apartheid spirit of South Africa. For the Central African Federation, 1960 is looming as the crucial year. Federal Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky, a onetime locomotive driver, wants to be on the road toward independence within the British Commonwealth by then. Banda's greatest fear is to see Nyasaland dominated by apartheid-minded whites unrestrained by the more benign rule of the Colonial Office in London. Eventually, he hopes it will be linked to Tanganyika, parts of Northern Rhodesia, and possibly Uganda and Belgium's U.N. trust territory of Ruanda-Urundi.

"We Will Not Hesitate." Late in January the Central African Federation government began to hear disturbing reports about a secret meeting of Nyasa nationalists in a forest near Blantyre. Within days, the first incidents began--an attack on two white veterinarians, a demonstration in Kotakota that had to be broken up with tear gas, the stoning of European cars in Blantyre. Then one morning in the wooded northern tip of Nyasaland, something far more serious started: a series of apparently coordinated attacks against government airfields and installations.

At Karonga a mob armed with stones and clubs swept onto the airfield, burned down a building, stormed a jail and released 13 prisoners. In rapid succession trouble flared in Livingstonia and at Mzim-ba. At first the Nyasa government minimized the outbreaks, but Federal Prime Minister Welensky did not. "We have adequate forces," said he, "and we will not hesitate to use them."

Barrels & Boulders. Into Blantyre he sent four Dakota DC-3 planes carrying troops from the white Royal Rhodesia Regiment; two battalions of the black King's African Rifles soon followed. After one plane landed at Fort Hill, near Karonga, the nationalists covered the airfield with barrels, stumps and boulders, effectively putting it out of action. In Blantyre police and rioters collided in the streets, and blacks, hiding in the tall grass along a stretch of road that was promptly tagged the Missile Mile, ambushed and stoned cars. At Lilongwe the King's African Rifles fired on a crowd, while planes dropped tear gas bombs.

On the Zambesi River, forming the border between the two Rhodesias, the entire African work force of 6,600 at the great Kariba Dam (TIME, Dec. 15) went out on strike. Southern Rhodesia, otherwise least affected by trouble because its Africans have always been the least militant, was determined to set an example of toughness for its neighbors. Prime Minister Sir Edgar Whitehead mobilized the white population, slapped a strict censorship on the press, and declared a state of emergency; in one 2 a.m. roundup, his cops grabbed 250 members of the African National Congress and stuck them in jail, incommunicado.

Such forthright action seemed to please the local white population, but it dismayed London. Though committed to the federation, the Colonial Office is beginning to have regrets that it had ever agreed to the idea. The Spectator took Britain to task for bundling Nyasaland "huggermugger into an unwilling association with the Rhodesias." The Daily Mirror demanded that the government make it absolutely clear that Britain would never abandon the Nyasas "to the control of local whites," lest one more Union of South Africa be born.

With Cyprus on the way to solution, Britain seemed to be facing another agonizing situation, one that, if not handled wisely, might become a repetition of Kenya, where only after much bloodshed did both sides learn some moderation.

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