AFRICA-SACRED AND PROFANE

WITH Africa holding the centre of the world's stage, the publishers are releasing a flood of books, sacred and profane.
The Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at Oxford, Kenneth Kirkwood, in Britain and Africa, succinctly covers Britain's past and present relations with all except North and North-Eastern Africa (Chatto & Windus, 25s.). It is a valuable and factual appraisal.
The author is optimistic regarding the future of the continent, but has reservations on South Africa and Ghana. Now that Rhodesia is the current flashpoint, it is to be regretted that Mr. Kirkwood has so little to say about this country. His book, however, can be confidently recommended as the pithiest guide to political Africa available at the price.
In a totally different vein is the Rev. Arthur Blaxall's inspiring autobiography, Suspended Sentence (Hodder and Stoughton, 16s.). Church of England clergyman, missionary, pacifist and friend to the deaf and blind Mr. Blaxall's life is an example of Christian charity. Perhaps the most interesting pert is his fight against apartheid in South Africa —a fight which led to his conviction on a charge of aiding banned political organisations.
After the trial, the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail had this to say of this heroic and quixotic man: "South Africa is left to wonder what might have been the outcome had there been a thousand other men like him, as ready to enter the danger zone as he was."
The trained eyes of the journalist survey the four million white people and 14 countries in Africa south of the Sahara. Richard West's The White Tribes of Africa, paints a depressing picture of the minority so much resented by the now politically awakened black majority (Carc, 21s.).
With very few exceptions, notably in Kenya, the calibre of the Europeans holding out in Africa is poor. They tend to be racialists, selfish materialists, unChristian and narrow-minded bullies resenting the emergence of an increasingly educated body of Africans.
So often residence in Africa brings with it a bogus rise in social standing and a consequent inability to realise that noblesse alike. The chapter on the Rhodesians is enlightening and frightening.
In contrast, the South Africans come out rather better. As an example of hardback journalism, this survey makes entertaining yet disquieting reading.
"Now tell me, Father, do we have to water down the Faith for the darkies?" was a question put by a young missionary priest on his way out to Africa to a White Father and overheard by a friend of mine.
Had The Catholic Church in Modern Africa been published at the time, there would have been no need for such an ignorant inquiry (Geoffrey Chapman, 30s.). Mgr. Joseph Mullin's pastoral theology for Africa can be recommended as the vade mecum for all actual and potential African missionaries and, indeed, for missionaries almost anywhere, for his wise book deals with problems which are pertinent not only to Africa.
A cardinal, bishops, priests and laymen met in Katigondo, Uganda, in 1964 to discuss the problem of putting across the Christian message in Africa. Edited by Fr. Robert J. Ledogar, M.M, Katigondo presents the proceedings of "this first PanAfrican Catechetical study week", (Geoffrey Chapman, I8s.). Together with Mgr. Mullin's book, it should be required reading for the African missionary and Catholic lay worker.
The Rev. F. B. Welbourn's East African Christian deals with the social and spiritual problems of the East African and his endeavour to be both African and Christian (Oxford University Press, 10s. 6d.). It is a thoughtful, sympathetic paperback, written from the non-Catholic viewpoint, and deserves to be widely read.
Although L. H. Gann's A History of Southern Rhodesia (Chatto & Windus, 55s.) only goes up to 1934, its publication could not have been better timed. Those interested in the present crisis will find it an invaluable background book.
Basil Rooke-Ley