Heroes or Neros?

It is easy for most black African leaders to complain about apartheid and call for the destruction of the South African and Rhodesian governments that practice it. Malawi's President Hastings Kamuzu Banda is forced to be more pragmatic. Not only is his nation almost surrounded by white-ruled Mozambique, but it depends for its livelihood on the earnings of Malawian workers in the factories and mines of South Africa and Rhodesia. Malawi is the only black African nation that openly refuses to comply with the U.N. economic sanctions against Rhodesia, and last month it became the first black African nation to sign a formal trade agreement with South Africa.

As far as the rest of black Africa is concerned, the trade pact only proved that Banda is a "traitor to his race." In the past few weeks, he has been condemned and cursed from the Zambezi to the Niger and beyond, and the Organization of African Unity has even threatened to throw out Malawi as long as he is there. Banda is unimpressed. Last week he went before his Parlia ment to answer his critics with a quotation from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "There is no terror, Cassius, in your threats."

Accusing his accusers of hypocrisy, Banda challenged them to stop issuing empty threats against South Africa--which, after all, is the continent's most powerful nation--and concentrate instead on convincing the whites that apartheid is unnecessary. The only way to convince them, Banda suggested, is by proving that black Africans can get along well with their white neighbors--and that they can govern themselves with responsibility and stability. So far, the record of the OAS nations is hardly convincing, he said: "They practice disunity, not unity, while posing as the liberators of Africa. While they play in the orchestra of Pan Africanism, their own Romes are burning."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.