Light Through the Cloud

WE ASKED FOR EVIDENCE ! cried the London Daily Herald. THERE IS NOT A SHRED OF IT IN THE WHITE PAPER. With varying degrees of indignation, all but two of London's newspapers agreed: the Tory government's White Paper, explaining the wave of arrests in the Central African Federation, spoke of "trends toward violence" in Nyasaland but never once offered any proof of the much-touted "R day" white massacre that had triggered all the uproar, the 50-odd African deaths and the 500 arrests (TIME, March 30). The Colonial Office limply tried to explain that "we could not jeopardize our sources," presumably paid African informers. Faced with the outcry, Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd appointed a commission to investigate the situation, headed by High Court Justice Sir Patrick Devlin, 53, who ably presided over the famed murder trial of Dr. John Bodkin Adams (TIME, Jan. 28, 1957 et seq.).

Only 48 Years. The naming of the commission mollified the House of Commons, but the sedate House of Lords was treated to a speech that nearly unsettled everything again. Up popped 75-year-old Lord Malvern, who as Sir Godfrey Huggins was the first Prime Minister of the Central African Federation when Nyasaland and the two Rhodesias were linked together in 1953. His credentials to discuss Central Africa were that "I have only lived there 48 years," and that he knows more about the subject than "itinerant politicians" who, he said, prowl about Africa, writing for left-wing newspapers and stirring up the natives. Visiting M.P.s such as Laborite John Stonehouse ("really quite harmless, except that he was extremely ignorant") had been completely taken in by the Africans, who "until they are very much advanced are all liars." When the hubbub in the House subsided, His Lordship went on to talk about the "burden, at any rate, the mission [of] looking after Nyasaland. I should like to say that the people in the Federation have not the slightest intention of surrendering Nyasaland to destruction by its own people."

All this was hardly the sort of thing to endear the get-tough policies of Malvern's successor, federal Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky, to his London critics. No African, said the Earl of Lucan, could now "have any doubt as to the kind of attitude of certain of the Europeans." But last week, in the Rhodesias themselves, just when matters seemed to be getting out of hand, calmer views began to prevail. Southern Rhodesia's Prime Minister Sir Edgar Whitehead, faced with strong criticism by clergymen and lawyers, withdrew his police-state Preventive Detention Act and set free about 50 Africans held without charge.

First in the South. In Northern Rhodesia, late election results showed that Welensky's United Federal Party finished out front but failed to win a clear majority. Four out of 20 seats on the legislative council went to the new Central African Party, headed by Garfield Todd, whose liberal racial views cost him the Southern Rhodesian premiership in 1958.

And as if eager to show that he too was trying to make racial partnership work, Sir Roy named Jasper Savanhu as parliamentary secretary of the federal Minister of Home Affairs, the first black in all of Southern Africa to achieve so high a government post.

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