Collapsing Bastion

Nigeria, Ghana and Guinea were easy to set free: they were almost all black. The first big bastion of white strength to meet the full onslaught of Africa's wind of change was Britain's sprawling Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, a seven-year-old amalgam that the more populous blacks disliked from the start.

Despite wave after wave of African protest riots, the federation's 297,000 whites, outnumbered 26 to 1, held on grimly in the conviction that federal unity is the very foundation of white rule. Late last year, worried Mother Britain appointed the 26-member Monckton Commission to recommend constitutional changes designed to salvage the federation. Last week the commission's report was published, and the federation's whites angrily concluded that Britain was about to sell them out.

The Monckton report flatly urges that the federation's present central structure be wiped away. In its place would be a loose association of three semi-autonomous territories--Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. The central government would retain control only of foreign policy, defense, and broad economic matters. The new territories would have power to levy taxes of their own.

Voting Parity. Under liberal new voting rules, African majorities would be almost guaranteed in Northern Rhodesia (73,000 whites, 2,280,000 blacks) and Nyasaland (9,000 whites, 2,750,000 blacks); only Southern Rhodesia's 215,000 whites (v. 2,630,000 blacks) could be reasonably sure of continued domination--for a time.

In the federal legislature, blacks would get equal representation with whites. Also proposed was an ironclad prohibition of racial discrimination in the future. Worst of all, in the eyes of the federation's shocked whites, was the suggestion that any one of the three territories should be permitted to secede completely after a five or seven-year trial period of the new system.

The Monckton group included secession only as a "safety valve" and clearly expressed its hope that no state would opt out. But portly Federal Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky was outraged that the word had even been mentioned. The Monckton report is "the death knell of federation," he snapped. "I and my colleagues reject it out of hand." Most white Rhodesians agreed. But no matter what the whites said or thought, Britain was clearly determined to make drastic changes when all sides sat down to discuss the new constitution in December. Addressing the Tories' national convention at Scarborough last week. Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod declared: "I cannot promise you a popular colonial policy, but this is the road we must walk, and we can walk no other."

Macleod knows that it is already dangerously late to begin making concessions to Central Africa's restive Africans and hard enough to persuade black leaders to accept even the Monckton Commission's daring proposals. Sniffed Southern Rhodesia's African Nationalist Leader Joshua Nkomo*: "Five or ten years ago, this would have been attractive; today it is nothing." Says Aleke Banda, secretary general of the Nyasaland Malawi Congress Party: "We want to secede now, not in five years. We are not concerned with what the Monckton Commission says . .. It is just a waste of time." Said Northern Rhodesia's powerful Kenneth Kaunda, "So far as we are concerned, the issue is, 'Away with federation now.' "

As they spoke, white police patrolled the native locations in Salisbury and Bulawayo, clearing the debris of days of rioting in which a dozen had died and scores were injured. The immediate cause of the trouble had been wage demands, but the politicians noted that the loudest shouts from the mobs were the black man's words for freedom: "Congo!" and "Kwaca!" The Southern Rhodesia government replied at week's end by moving in battalions of troops and by banning all public meetings among Africans until further notice.

*Who has lived in exile in Britain ever since Southern Rhodesian police arrested all the top leaders of his party early last year.

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