Africans and Federation SIR,—Professor Macmillan in his recent article in
your paper appears to uphold federation because (says he) Africans have everything to gain from it and nothing as far as he can discover to lose. I think it is despicable to suppress facts because they are distasteful, and to disparage those who might expose them with such statements as that they are not even capable of conceiving a non-co-operative movement except by some externally imposed instigation and that the best of them knows less of history and politics than a grammar-school child— though why a people should go the whole gamut of studying European history and politics before knowing what is good for it is not exactly clear.
The disinterested humanitarian _attitude would be to base one's stand on the balance of one's own pros and cons. For instance federation with its admitted privileges is not opposed as such, but what would these privileges mean to Africans if federation confined their source to the hands of a selfish racial fraction of the community ? Yet this is precisely what the proposed federation scheme and the so-called African Affairs Board do: for the Federation Asmbly the draft scheme allots seventeen seats to S. Rhodesia alone, eleven to N. Rhodesia and only six to Nyasaland. When it is realised that even in Nyasaland Africans are likely to obtain only two seats, the inadequacy of their representation is evident. But the African Affairs Board is even more insultingly offensive. One would have expected that in a body meant to protect Africans' interests some amount of confidence (which at this time it is so necessary that each side should repose in the other) would be assumed, at least for a test period, in the ability of a board with an African majority to make responsible criticisms. Instead there will be exactly three Africans and three Europeans, and a president whose nationality is carefully left unspecified but who is to be appointed by the Governor-General or his equivalent !
In the face of this camouflage and prevarication is it surprising if the Barotse through their Urban Council pulled up the Minister of State for Colonial Affairs, Mr. Hopkinson, when in his recent African tour he said, " They (` the Queen's Government in London ') will not tell you that (the scheme is acceptable) unless they believe that it is good for you. . . . They and we are sure that this scheme is good " ?
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