The White Knight

Over the hammering of the rain on the tin roof of a tobacco shed, the burly, shaggy-browed six-footer boomed into a microphone: "I know that the African National Congress is saying. 'Freedom at any price!' This is an emotional appeal to a not-so-advanced people. I hope those who talk this way realize what would become of the ordinary black man in this country." The speaker: Sir Roy Welensky, 51, Prime Minister of Britain's Central Africa Federation, stumping for his party just before last week's national election. In the shed's semidarkness, 400 white voters roared their approval, but in the back 200 Negroes sat in stony silence.

The richest slice of Africa over which Britain still has a measure of control, the federation, which is larger than Britain, France, Holland and Germany combined, was founded in 1953 by welding the protectorates of Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia to the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia. The Central Africa Federation (pop. 7,450,000) is the world's second largest exporter of copper, fourth largest of tobacco--a land dotted with modern cities and rich in asbestos, coal, lithium, chrome and cobalt. But in the stretch of the Zambesi River Valley, soon to be flooded by the Kariba Dam, the Stone Age Tonga tribe still wear porcupine quills in their noses, and in Northern Rhodesia, Barotseland is regularly plagued by gruesome ritual murders. In the whole federation there are only four Negro physicians and three Negro lawyers, among 7,100,000 blacks. Ever since the federation was formed, the cry of more and more blacks has been "Kwaca!" (dawn, meaning beginning of freedom).

"I'll Agitate Until . . ." It is in Nyasaland, the poorest region of all, that the cry is loudest. Though the Nyasas benefit most from the federation (for every pound sterling they pay to the central government, they get back two in subsidies), they look with horror at the example of more prosperous Southern Rhodesia, where a kind of apartheid exists and the blacks are plagued by pass laws. curfews, and even segregated phone booths. Stirring up the Nyasas' restiveness is Dr. Hastings K. Banda, the prosperous physician who returned last summer from a self-imposed exile in London to campaign for freedom (TIME, July 21). He has addressed scores of mass meetings, has stubbornly refused to talk things over with Welensky, has stuck to his simple goal of removing Nyasaland from the federation entirely. "I'll agitate," says he, "until they send me to prison. I'm quite ready for Makarios' old room in the Seychelles. It's empty."

When Sir Roy became Prime Minister in 1956, he alarmed some extremist whites by his announced policy of slowly working for the "racial partnership" that the federal constitution calls for. His enthusiasm for partnership has slowed even more after riots in Nyasaland, train derailings in Northern Rhodesia, and Mau Mau-type cattle slashings in piotest against a government campaign for vaccination. A self-educated man who started out as a prizefighter and locomotive engineer, blunt, sophisticated Sir Roy has gradually stiffened his attitude toward racial partnership until he has become a sort of White Knight of the white man's cause. Though he wants the federation to be independent within the British Commonwealth by 1960, he also wants the government to rest in "civilized hands."*He detests the starry-eyed idealists in the Colonial Office who seem to have "a color complex in reverse--the assumption that the white man can do no right. It is high time," says he, "that the white man in Africa be given a little more credit for what he has done."

"I Don't Accept . . ." On the surface, the election--the second in the federation's history--was to have been a boon to the Negroes: their representation in the expanded 59-man Legislative Assembly was up from six to twelve. But the whole machinery of registration was weighted against them. To qualify for the general roll to elect all candidates, including Europeans, a voter had to have an income of $148 a month, and few blacks come near to making even a third of that. A new special roll for black candidates requires only $35 a month, but special voters could choose only Africans, and these were to be elected only by a combination of the two rolls.

In Nyasaland the boycott of the election was so nearly complete that only 15 special voters signed up. Southern Rhodesia had 625, Northern Rhodesia only 53. As a result, Welensky's United Federal Party gobbled up 46 out of 59 seats; the idealistic Constitution Party, which plumped for racial equality, got none--might just as well have stayed home. The only other party to gain was the Dominion Party, which got 35% of the vote, and nine seats, on a platform not much different from the racist doctrine of South Africa. By their standard, Sir Roy is a liberal.

With his victory behind him, Sir Roy announced that he would soon head for London to secure independence in 1960. But he also had some other significant business to transact with the Colonial Office: to present the case of the whites against appointing two Negroes to his Cabinet, as London wants. "My position," said he, "is very clear. I don't accept the thesis that only an African should be concerned with African affairs."

*A variation on Empire Builder Cecil Rhodes's famed formula, "Equal rights for every civilized man," which held out the promise of eventual rights for Negroes with 1) literacy, 2) property.

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