WHICH AFRICA?

By FR.
PAUL CRANE, S.J.
[in an interview with Hugh Kay)
This is Africa's most crucial week for many years; the future of a continent is in the melting pot. Northern Rhodesia's Africans tensely await Mr. Macleod's statement on the constitution he put into cold storage early in the year. Southern Rhodesia faces a referendum on the Sandys constitution. Julius Nyerere is here to talk about East African Federation.
All three are closely interlinked. Mr. Macleod's decision is one of the most complex ever to confront a Commonwealth statesman. I hope he will persuade his colleagues to decide that African aspirations in Northern Rhodesia should not be sacrificed, under pressure from the Salisbury-Turton school of thought, merely to maintain the artificial structure of the Central African Federation.
It might be better to abandon the Central African concept altogether in favour of an East African grouping — for this would be a more natural centripetal movement. one based on consent and spontaneously conceived.
PRESIDENT?
This would probably mean releasing Jomo Kenyatta and offering him the presidency of the new federation. There would be nothing fatal about this, provided that the federation's prime minister were Julius Nyerere (now Prime Minister of Tanganyika). For most thinking Africans are satisfied that Nyerere could handle the man from Kenya, and, after all, we would be giving to Kenyatta no more than we gave to Archbishop Makarios — because we had to.
The release and admission to office of hem° Kenyatta is not a palatable thought. But it is a question of facing the political facts of life, as we had to do with regard to Cyprus. Failure to see the point, far from staving off the violence we fear, may very well create yet another Congo or Angola.
In prison, Kenyatta has all the symbolic strength of a martyr. Released, his mystique will become more commonplace. Even if he wanted to resurrect Mau Mau at his age, he would be hard put to it to find more than a handful to follow him.
An East African Federation with Nyerere as its effective leader would almost certainly seek admission to the Commonwealth. But deny the aspirations of the N. Rhodesia's Africans. and Africa's confidence in Britain and in the man they trust most, namely Mr. Macleod, is gone for ever. And the dogs of war are out.
The constitution offered by Mr. Macleod to N. Rhodesia earlier this year did not give outright the clear African majority in the legislature which the Africans had been led to anticipate. It offered 15 seats to the whites, 15 to the Africans, and 15 "middle" or national scats.
THREAT
It seemed clear that the national seats would be so arranged as to let in Sir John Moffat s liberal Europeans and moderate Africans, thus giving an overall African majority in effect. But tempers were high, and Macleod put the whole thing into the cooler for a few months. Now he has to give a clear indication of what he is going to do.
Sir Roy Welensky, the Federal Prime Minister, has threatened that if the Africans get their way in Northern Rhodesia, his own United Federal Party in Southern Rhodesia would be thrown out of office by angry white electors in favour of the extremist Dominion Party — and the latter would take Southern Rhodesia out of the Federation, and go it alone.
As against this, it must be realised that, if we do not give the Northern Rhodesian Africans what they want, their moderate leader, Mr. Kaunda, will no longer be able to contain the violence he has managed to hold down during these past few months.
In any case, it might he argued that the Central African Federation has almost gone already, for it is clear that Nyasaland has every intention of opting out of it, once its independence is achieved. Dr. Banda's African majority is assured in that territory, and selfgovernment is well on the way.
PROOF
Mr. Macleod has to balance the certainty of an outburst in N. Rhodesia against the possibility of a breakaway in S. Rhodesia. It is by no means certain that the Dominion Party really would contract out. Capital is flowing out of the country as it is, and it is doubtful whether the S. Rhodesian economy could be viable without the N. Rhodeatan copper belt.
The racial superiority ethos of S. Rhodesia is pragmatic, not scriptural as in the Union of South Africa.
No federation can, in the long run, be maintained by force, and by far the more natural grouping would be one composed of Kenya, Uganda, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia, and even Ruanda-Urundi.
It would take over, quite naturally, and extend the services of the East African High Commission, and would tend to centre on Julius Nyerere who has given to the world a Tanganyika which is a conspicuous proof of the way in which whites can live in harmonious co-operation in an African governed country. The 20,000 Europeans of that country have suffered no loss of status under the Nyerere regime.
If we carry on as we are doing at present, the position of the whites in Africa at large is very dubious. But, give the Africans power to run their own countries, and the white's position will be promising. No responsible African wants to see them go — and this includes the European farming communities in the While Highlands of Kenya. Africa siMply cannot do without them. But, in the heat of bitterness generated by efforts to hang on to white supremacy, Africa might lose its temper and turn them out.
KAUNDA
So far as Kenya is concerned, those Africans who do go round talking about expropriation of the Europeans' land must stop doing it at once On the other hand. the White Highlands must become more and more accessible to everyone; elsewhere the schemes associated with the consolidation of land holdings is well under way.
Another perfect example of what responsible African gdvernment can mean comes from Northern Rhodesia itself, where the restraint of' Mr. Kenneth Kaunda this year has prevented what might have been the biggest flare-up of the lot. But if we let him down now, and he loses office, the door will he open to the extremists, and they will come in with fire and sword.
It is impossible to maintain white supremacy in Africa any longer — even if it were right to do so. The magnificent Whitsuntide Pastoral of the Southern Rhodesian Bishops has given us the lead, encouraging us to let the African voice be heard, remaining there with them in the brotherhood of a multi-racial society.