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Salient. Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 26, No. 7. Tuesday, June 18, 1963

Federation Failed Through Tight Reins Policy — The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland: Part 2

page 5

Federation Failed Through Tight Reins Policy

The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland: Part 2.

The first of these two articles outlined the steps that were taken to establish Federation. The assumption underlying it was that the strategic, economic, moral and social grounds for going ahead outweighed the strong African opposition in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. This opposition was based on the fear that under Federation, Southern Rhodesian native policies, which were far less liberal than those of the Colonial Office in the other two territories, would be made to prevail throughout. No amount of persuasion was able to shake the Africans in this belief.

The Federal structure was therefore designed so as to make it unlikely that the Africans' fears would be justified. This was done by making such matters as African education, African agriculture and land tenure, and African customary law still the responsibility of the Territorial Governments, and by transferring to the Federal Government such matters as had always been of main concern to Europeans, e.g. finance, defence, external affairs, higher education. In this way native policies as they had been developed over the years in the three territories would not be disturbed.

The Federal Government itself was pledged to a policy of "partnership." Partnership as a concept was never defined, but in practice it was taken to mean the gradual advancement of the African to a position of equality in all spheres with the European. If this ideal had been achieved, or had seemed to Africans to be in process of achievement, the resistance to the Federal structure might have been overcome. In fact it seemed to most African leaders that the ideal would never be achieved—hence the mounting resistance leading to the ultimate break-up.

In fairness it has to be said that a great deal was done, but not enough to invalidate the African Nationalists' cry "Too little, too late." In fairness, too. It has to be said that the problem was exceedingly difficult. African society, even in 1953, was to European eyes a strange and primitive thing. There was a highly complex and conservative social structure, there was a strong animistic belief in spirits and witchcraft, there was the fatalistic outlook which derives from subsistence agriculture, there was virtually no impact of modern science and technology in any sphere of life—in short it was a society in the grip of fear, disease and ignorance.

If any blame is to be apportioned for this, most of it must fall on the shoulders of the Europeans and their political leaders. They failed to grasp the opportunity which Federation gave them to remove racial discrimination, to break down cultural barriers and above all to institute crash programmes of African training and advancement.

No wonder it seemed to the best disposed Europeans that it would take generations of patient tutelage to make any real impact on this. What they failed to realise was that the change had already begun and was moving apace, but was being frustrated at many sensitive points by European attitudes and assumptions. These sensitive points became the rallying points for the Nationalists and they were not slow to build on them. Nationalist parties had existed in all three territories before Federation. In those days their aim was independence of colonial rule; now their target became the end of Federation and the retention of colonial rule for a while, before the granting of full independence.

In all this, of course, they were much influenced by what was happening elsewhere in Africa. Everywhere there was to be seen the pattern; Colonial dependence;—violent conflict;—full independence. The Pan-Africanist movement, lead by Ghana, gave cohesion and purpose to the efforts of the Nationalist parties, in Rhodesia and Nyasaland no less than elsewhere. The play of these forces is to be seen in the line up of the political parties which have existed under various names since Federation. Parties are basically racial in composition, with the liberal or centre parties tending to be multi-racial.

Mr. Field's party was elected to office by a predominantly European electorate in Dec, 1962. This means that Southern Rhodesia has become more hated by African nationalists than ever before—hence the appeals to the United Nations and to the British Government to withold independence from the territory until a different franchise and a different government can be introduced.

African parties are all nationalist, i.e. they wish to overthrow European dominance so as to achieve power themselves, and then move on to independence of colonial rule. Thus there is no important difference in policy between the Malawi Party led by Dr. Hastings Banda (Nyasaland), the United National Independence Party led by Mr. Kaunda (N. Rhodesia), the African National Congress led by Mr. Nkumbula (N. Rhodesia), and the banned Zimbabwe African Peoples Union led by Dr. Nkomo (S. Rhodesia). Differenees, where they exist between these parties, rest almost entirely on tribal affiliations.

European parties hold to the view that African advancement at best must be slow and gradual and that for some years ahead control must be in European hands. This is the basic policy of the United Federal Party (UFP) led at the Federal level by Sir Roy Welensky, and at the territorial level by Sir Edgar Whitehead (S. Rhodesia), Mr. Roberts (N. Rhodesia) and Mr. Blackwood (Nyasaland). A more extreme European party in S. Rhodesia, the Rhodesian Front Party, led by Mr. Winston Field, denies that Africans will ever have full control of government in that territory.

The centre parties believed in a rapid handover of power to Africans, but with full European support, and hence without racial recriminations on either side. Such was the Liberal Party in N. Rhodesia led by Sir John Moffat and the Central African Party in S. Rhodesia led by Mr. Palmer (formerly by the New Zealander, Mr. Garfield Todd). The past tense has to be used in describing these parties since they were both wiped out at the last elections and have now disbanded or in process of doing so.

The background to failure is therefore basically the unwillingness of the European to accept rapid African advance. Because of this African fears of Federation were not allayed and African Nationalist leaders were able to use the fears to build up their strength to the point where the British Government had to accede to their demands.

It must be said, nevertheless, that however culpable European intransigence appears at a distance, it is rooted in long experience of working with a people still very primitive by modern standards. The new states will not have an easy passage. Black government will not necessarily mean good government, nor is it all impossible for the unhappy experience of the former Belgian Congo to be repeated across its borders in the Rhodesias. People in such a situation cannot be blamed too severely for being reluctant to entrust their lives and livelihoods to untrained and untried political leaders whose philosophy up to now has had a large measure of hatred in it-even though the lack of training and some of the hatred is attributable to their own lack of positive action in the past.

The worst that can happen to the three territories is that the Congo experience is repeated in the northern territories and the Algerian experience in S. Rhodesia; the best is that out of the ruins of Federation there may come at last a genuine sense of partnership.

It is not necessary, I hope, to underline which way men of goodwill will wish to see things go.

Cartoon of four men sticking forks into a man in a safari suit