Which Way to Go?

However checkered its career, British colonialism has always had its idealistic side, and the Central African Federation is no exception. Its motto is, "Let us deserve to be great," and its avowed policy is the "partnership" of the races. But last week the Federation was a land emotionally at war with itself, undecided which way to go--forward or back.

Southern Rhodesia, most advanced of the three states in the Federation (it has been self-governing since 1923), likes to boast that, as a result of keeping its black majority firmly in a minority place, there has been no serious racial trouble for 50 years. But in the present grim atmosphere of expected violence, M.P.s in Salisbury began acting as if panga-bearing rebels were already chopping away at the great teak doors of the Assembly itself.

"I am quite prepared," said Opposition Leader Stewart Aitken-Cade, "to snatch weapons from the Communists and use them against them. If undemocratic methods are necessary, I will be the least democratic of all.'' The honorable members rapped their desks in well-bred applause, then began debating a drastic series of bills to slap down the blacks even harder. Among them: a "Preventive Detention Act" which for the next five years would give Rhodesian police the power to detain indefinitely suspected nationalists or anyone "likely to endanger the public safety." Under the act the police could issue detention orders without the approval of any court and the only appeal would be to a star chamber composed of five Rhodesian M.P.s.

The bills accurately mirrored the feelings of many settlers, but strongly repelled others. The Salisbury Bar Council in emergency meeting condemned ten encroachments on political liberty in one of the bills. The Federation's top clergymen, including the Anglican Archbishop of Central Africa and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Salisbury, wrote a joint letter declaring: "We believe that no emergency or danger of emergency can justify injustice."

Northern Rhodesia. In a more hopeful mood, Northern Rhodesians trooped to the polls last week to elect new members of the legislative council, under new provisions that increased the number of registered black voters from an absurd four in 1954 to 7,617 (out of a total black population of 2,500,000). Once again the basic issue was whether there should be a Federation at all. Burly Federal Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky, who in the face of increasingly insistent African demands has grown less and less keen about any actual partnership, plunged into the territorial campaign with a plea aimed directly at the whites. Only his party, he insisted, could get independence for the Federation and thus free the white settlers at last from the tiresome interference of the Colonial Office do-gooders in London. Sir Roy hoped to get a "magic 16" of the elected votes on a council where total membership (including appointees) is 30.

Many of the blacks deliberately threw their support to the ultra-racist Dominion Party in order to deny Sir Roy his magic 16. In doing so, they ignored the call of their most extremist leaders to boycott the election, and turned out 80% strong to exercise their right to vote and to show their faith in constitutional means.

Nyasaland. In the third and most primitive of the three federal states, the days were full of the sounds of new detention camps being built to hold African supporters of the volatile Dr. Hastings Banda (see box). Already 560 were being detained. Sir Roy has yet to reveal the evidence that there had ever been a black plot to massacre the whites--the major excuse in the first place for the wave of repression that had so far killed 50 Nyasa blacks but no whites. Neither had anybody proved that the blacks of Northern Rhodesia were about to set up a "Murder Inc.," as Governor Sir Arthur Benson alleged. Lord Perth. Minister of State for Colonial Affairs, arriving from London on a visit, announced that he had no doubt whatsoever that such a plot existed. But when asked whether he had seen the evidence, Lord Perth haughtily shifted position: "I believe it when a governor says something. I see no reason to look into it further."

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