The Massacre Mystery

NYASALAND

To many an anxious Briton, the exploding events in distant Nyasaland seemed inexorably to be falling into the same old tragic pattern. "The Colonial Secretary," taunted Labor's Colonial Specialist Jim Callaghan, "can dust off all the phrases he used about Cyprus and bring them out again." Callaghan continued, his emotion showing: "In the end, we shall concede to force what we failed to concede to reason." But Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd,* in an almost swaggering parliamentary performance, was confident that the news he had up his sleeve would be enough to shock the Opposition into silence.

"Some days ago," he said, planting his elbows on the dispatch box and gravely taking the House of Commons into his confidence, "information came to the notice of the government of Nyasaland of a very serious kind." So serious was it, in fact, that the Governor of Nyasaland had declared a state of emergency. "I have seen the information. I am not in a position to disclose it," said Lennox-Boyd, as the Opposition hooted. "[But], in fact, a massacre was being planned."

"Diabolic" Plots. The massacre that never happened was to remain the mystery of the week. Only the day before the emergency was declared, Nyasaland's Governor, Sir Robert Armitage, had flatly stated that no such drastic action would be needed. Now Sir Robert had suddenly taken a stand that seemed contrary to everything that this elegant, liberal, and somewhat indecisive civil servant had ever stood for. He had helped speed

Ghana on her way to independence, and had been the mild Governor of Cyprus during the early days of trouble there (1954-55). In Britain's Central African Federation, a combination of black Nyasaland and the two Rhodesias, he has recently been increasingly at odds with tough-minded Sir Roy Welensky, Prime Minister of the federation.

Sir Roy, onetime locomotive engineer, insisted, as he later put it, that there were "diabolic" plots afoot, "strikes, riots, then real violence culminating in assassination of whites and Africans." In the end, Armitage, who himself expressed no such fears, transmitted them to London, proclaimed an emergency in Nyasaland, began mass arrests, and banned the African National Congress, which he conceded was the most popular political movement in a land where there are 3,000,000 blacks and only 8,000 whites. These fateful steps were taken after a week of jitteriness (TIME, March 9) in which men lost their lives--but not one of them was white.

Messiah in a Bathrobe. In the dark, Jeeps began circling the Blantyre bungalow of Dr. Hastings Banda, Congress President and self-styled "extremist of extremists," who has been leading the campaign against federation on the grounds that once the federation becomes independent, Nyasaland will be dominated by the apartheid-minded white minority of Southern Rhodesia. Scores of his followers, who regard him as their Messiah, gathered around to protect his house, but tear gas quickly dispersed them. Wrapped in a bathrobe, Dr. Banda was whisked to an airport and flown into exile in Southern Rhodesia.

After that, there was a daily airlift of captured Africans: 249 were arrested and 136 deported, among them Nyasaland's only African lawyer and only African physician. Hour after hour the government press office, its walls anachronistically decorated with inviting travel posters, ground out fresh communiques--a road block put up here, a prison stormed there, a European game warden and a forest ranger attacked elsewhere. Against the clubs, stones and pan gas of the Africans, the government had Bren guns, Sten guns, spotter planes--even Vampire jets--plus the services of the King's African Riflemen, the Rhodesia African Rifles, the Royal Rhodesia Regiment, Southern Rhodesia's South African Police, the Royal Rhodesian Air Force, the Tanganyika police, the Nyasaland police, and assorted white vigilante "special constables" from Southern Rhodesia. Gradually the death toll climbed to 39, all Africans, and 71 were injured.

But would all this force really be effective against the will of 3,000,000 blacks, Sir Robert Armitage was asked. He replied: "I doubt it." The sad, familiar communiques had begun: because of the threat of trouble, "security forces had been obliged to open fire," and the casualty lists followed. Force could not make Nyasaland accept the domination it feared from Southern Rhodesia. Many predicted the end of federation. But this was no answer, argued London's Economist. Poor Nyasaland would become a "rural slum"; self-governing Southern Rhodesia, isolated, would become a satellite of South Africa, and Africa might be split between African and white at the Zambezi River, with ominous consequences. Was it too late to arrest the trend? In London, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's Cabinet, without seeking Welensky's advice--and, as it turned out, against his wishes--began making counter plans. It put British troops in Kenya on a six-hour alert, flew in transport planes from Cyprus and Singapore. If an emergency had to be policed in Nyasaland, reasoned London, better outside troops than Rhodesian vigilantes, whose presence would stir the fears and emotions of the blacks.

* Beset by poor health and one crisis after another, Lennox-Boyd plans to retire from politics soon, join the family business brewing Guinness Stout.

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