African Realities
Central African Witness. By Cyril Dunn. (Gal- 1,' nci. 21s.) Tintoucai all the gathering quarrel between Rhodesia and London, the slang flying over from Africa,has called itself fact and British critics have t too often had only moral judgments to fire back. But now the ammunition wagon has got through and hard fact, hard observation and hard reason- ing abciund to proclaim that the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in its present form is not likely to build a real partnership, and that more independence should therefore be denied it.
Writing before the Nyasaland collapse, and before these irreparable self-revelations of Sir Roy Welensky's on television and elsewhere, Mr. Dunn assesses the Federation on the basis of his Years there as correspondent for the Observer, and mildly, patiently, totally calls its bluff. Partnership is certainly not a present reality, and Mr. Dunn discerns two main reasons why it is not likely to become one. The first is the unwillingness of 'black public opinion,' whose existence Welensky explicitly denies, to accept the geological slowness of African advance which White opinion appears to propose; nor does the writer see why it should accept a rate based on a failure to observe the Present capacities of Africans in Africa and on fatuous myths about the nature of civilisation. The result of this failure will probably be the surge forward of unexpected African ambition against a mentally unprepared European community, Who will set off the alarm gongs and erect further and stronger barriers between races.
The second reason is that Mr. Dunn does not 'believe that the direction of the White-run Pederation is towards partnership at all. A change in direction has taken place, The regime of Mr. Garfield Todd in Southern Rhodesia was `liberal' only by comparison, but it marked the limit of the movement towards partnership. Mr. burn cleverly shows how Todd was no liberal to his colleagues but an autocrat in government : he attempted to ease through electoral and economic concessions to the African at a rate which alarmed them, and so they destroyed him. From then on, the race issue ceased to dominate White politics, Which relaxed into a policy of keeping things as comfortably screwed down as may be compatible With giving Britain the impression of eager liberal- ism necessary for 1960.
Mr. Dunn implores us not to be taken in by. the front of altruism and high endeavour put up hY the Federation and its southermost member. The whole aim of policy is to keep, things as they are for as long as possible.' And he points out the way in which worried minds here, attracted t° an ideal of inter-racial co-operation and hesitant t° make their voices heard when it is suggested that the Federation ought to be taken apart again, are easily disarmed by noble promises from the ,Ithodesias. A false impression was given by the tact that Welensky's UFP won victory in last Year's elections from a party which. at times aPpeared to advocate apartheid. "None but those Well tutored in Central African realities could have Known how worthless this comparison is as a Means of determining the liberal content of the United Federal Party.'
Central African Witness is, incidentally, one Of the most vivid travel books ever written about the Rhodesias, as well as a brilliant and methodical study of politics. The tea-shops of Salisbury filled with the gossiping young wives in cardigans, accompanied by 'schoolboys of immense size Wearing grey trilbies with the school colours . banded round them . . .; the black prophetess Lenshina in her sandshoes, absently stickling her baby in the nave of her half-built church; these are all part of the book's argument. Mr. Dunn has seen and noted enough convincingly to rebut the ancient charge : 'You haven't been here so you don't know,' and to counterattack by declaring that the average White town-dweller who argues the backwardness of the African has practically never met him. The communities are already effectively separated. As for generalisations about the inherent superiority of white energy,'one won- ders for example how many white workers would exhibit their celebrated energy and drive in return for 30s. a week.'
NEAL ASCHERSON
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