Africa Speaks

TRADE, it used to be said, follows the flag, but the flag has sometimes followed the portable altar, and our greatness as a colonising nation can be partly if not wholly aceounted for by the ease with which we have combined the Cultivation of our interests With our-conception of our diity. We have never been satisfied to put forward only an eeonoinic justi- fication for our activities in trade or warfare, btit :Mist find a moral one as well. Undue emphasis upon the righteousness of our motives has led a thousand times to cant, and just as there 'are many utterances on record whichauggest that we went to war in 1914 almost entirely to champion " plucky little Belgium," so an immense quantity of writing and speechifying seems designed to advance a theory that we are in 'Africa for the `sole PUrpbse of acting as trustees for peoples less fortunately placed and less lightly pigmented. The fact remains, however, that a vast number of well- meaning people have devdted their lives to an attempt at improving the lot of the African by making him a worker instead of a warrior and a Christian instead of a devotee of witchcraft. But has his lot been improved by detribalising him and compelling him to form part of a world which has produced calico drawers, harmoniums, and mustard-gas as . well as Oxford, Mozart, and the Middlesex Hospital

The question cannot be answered with a flat yes 'or no, but only with yes and no. Realising this, Miss Margery Perham has given us an important chance of hearing the African speak for himself.

The plan of her book was to collect ten autobiographies and to range them in order from the most primitive to the most emancipated. Her authors have been taken from all over the place. Some have poured their tales into a familiar and trustworthy white ear, whose owner has later done a translation ; some have written down whatever they had to say in fluent English. Meet them one by one. Bwembya is rather a vain old man in north-eastern Rhodesia. As one of the new poor he is snobbish and a little sour. He thinks that the young people of today have no respect because they take no notice of him.

" I tell you it was better in the days before the white man came (he says). But then sometimes I think in my heart, But where could we find the clothes and the salt and the matches that we buy at the stores ? ' "

Udo Akpabio is a " chief by government warrant " in Southern Nigeria. Honourable and enlightened, he is " a big man in every respect." He is uxorious, rather Victorian, and likes lecturing his descendants, being especially given to proverbial

wisdom and glimpses of the obvious : e.g., " When the hawk takes the chicken and passes over the river, there is nothing more can catch that fowl:" He finds us whites odd, with our habit of growing flowers and leaves where we could

perfectly well grow yams ; we are all rich, but will only be seen about with one wife. Ndansi Kumalo, of the Matabele tribe, who took the part of Lobengula in the Gaumont British film about Rhodes, thinks our methods of warfare unmanly.

At present we appear rich and happy, but he has shrewd suspicions about our " inner lit-es " and our " jealousies." Rashid Bin Hassani can give a first-hand account of the opening up of East Africa. His life has been adventurous.

He has been a slave, a policeman, a forest guard, all sorts of things. Looking back, he prefers the present to the past— when life in his part of the world was far more dangerous and- Uncertain. Nosente, an old Xosit lady from the Cape

Province, obviously has great dignity and charin, and tells her story, which is a simple one, with art: It is monumental, like a poem, but ends on a familiar note " Children no longer honour their parents as they used to do. Times have

changed." Amini Bin Saidi, a l'ao. of NyaSaland, has strong

views about mercenary or disobedient women, but believes in progress and what used to be called " the march of mind," as does Parmenas Mockerie, a Kikiiyu who has studied in Europe. Martin Kayamba comes from Zanzibar, and is clearly a valuable citizen. He visited England some years ago on a political mission, and describes his experiences with a wealth of detail. Miss Koforowola Aina Moore, the daughter of a Lagos barrister, comes of a family which has been more or less Europeanised for four generations ; her own education culminated at Oxford. She quotes with approval the opinion of a friend that

" we have a new school of European thinkers which views Africa on, shall I say, a world basis. They seem to have realised it fulfils some function in the world as an organic whole."

Taken together, these essays, allowing for polite reservations, illustrate very graphically the nature of European influence upon the African, and his readiness to raise his standard of living and to respond to consideration. One of them, not yet mentioned, is probably the most important of all, for it raises

the problem of the talented, high-spirited, educated and ambitious young African who has moved more quickly than his fellows, and who, as a result of becoming embittered by injustice, is liable to turn revolutionary. Gilbert Coka, a young Zulu from the banks of the Mfolozi, " reveals," as Miss Perham says, " the inner history of the .first Bantu attempt at Trade Union organisation," .namely, the famous affair of Kadalie and the I.C.U. The case he states is unanswerable :

" Although he lives in a wealthy, civilised, Christian land, he enjoys none of its amenities. He stands in the way of a white South Africa, White Prestige, European Supremacy . . Insecurity, starvation, poverty, ignorance, unemployment and injustices are his portion . . . The question has risen to my mind : If the .European is so superior and the African so inferior, why fear him and restrict him so much ? ' "

WILLIAM PLOMER.