Dance of Death

It was his first royal tour, but Prince Andrew, 19, handled himself with the aplomb of a seasoned veteran. In Tanzania, on the first leg of a state visit, Andrew often competed with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip for the attention of crowds. As hundreds of thousands of Tanzanians cheered the royal family in Dar es Salaam, one busty woman tried to seize Andrew's attention. Ignoring the words TAKE MY BODY emblazoned on her T shirt, he discreetly averted his gaze. Two teen-age girls got more of a rise from the prince by standing outside church on Sunday morning and holding up a banner that read HI ANDY, STOP ROUND FOR SOME COFFEE. He walked over to the startled girls and gallantly responded, "I'm terribly sorry, but I haven't the time. But I'll try."

Villagers from the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro presented Queen Elizabeth with a stuffed oryx head and 600 lbs. of coffee, and a three-day festival in her honor featured native dances. One performance, on the theme of "defending the nation and building the economy," was danced by ten-year-olds brandishing wooden rifles, spears, hoes and machetes. At one point half the youngsters set about symbolically killing the other half. Asked what this scene signified, a Tanzanian official explained that the victims were "either the forces of Idi Amin, or racists."

After that, the Queen flew off to Malawi and Botswana, and to Zambia for a meeting of the Commonwealth Conference where the "racism" of the new regime in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia will be the topic of discussions that should match the Tanzanian dance for symbolic violence.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.