Tropical Africa

ATLANTIC

December 1955

on the World today

AFRICA is in ferment. From the north, where the fires of Arab irredentism are raging, to the far south, where arrogant but uneasy “white” supremacy holds sway; from the tropical west coast, where new “ black” nations, independent within the British Commonwealth, are emerging, across to the east to Kenya, where barbarism and civilization have been locked in bloody conflict, the whole continent is astir.

Almost everywhere the economic as well as the political pulse is quickening. The world is eager to buy more of the food and raw materials which Africa can supply. Capital is flowing in; jungles are being replaced by farmland, new factories are going up, and new mine shafts are being driven deep down into the earth.

Because the European pioneers and technicians cannot farm or build or manufacture without local labor, primitive Africans are being drawn, willynilly, in an ever-increasing number into the industrial and commercial life of the twentieth century. Men whose fathers could not conceive that the spoken word could be written down, or that there were such simple aids to living as a wheel or a plow, are today learning to drive tractors, handle complicated machinery, and keep accounts.

Economic progress at so hectic a pace inevitably exacts a price. The price in Africa is the breakup of the traditional pattern of native life, the undermining of tribal authority and discipline, and the creation of a spiritual vacuum in the minds of millions of simple folk, which must be filled.

But with what? Religion or atheism? Faith in freedom or autocracy, Communist or otherwise? An eagerness to pull together with men of other races or a rabid nationalism of race and color? An acceptance of what the modern world has to offer or a despairing reversion, as in Kenya, to atavistic impulses and cults?

Race consciousness

These are questions which perturb the whole Western world. For African race consciousness is spreading like wildfire across the continent. On the west coast it has already found practical expression.

In Britain’s Gold Coast and Nigeria indigenous African political leaders have grasped the reins of office; and it cannot be long before these two territories, in which dwell more than 30 million people, as hungry for education as for food, attain full selfgovernment.

That such rapid strides are possible in these coastal regions is partly due to their centuriesold contact, unlike so much of the interior, with the developing civilized world, and partly to the existence, in the coastal area at least, of the basis of a viable economy which, given leaders willing and able to accept responsibility as well as power, can prevent self-government from proving a mockery and delusion.

Indeed it is argued by some with long personal knowledge of West Africa that political advance there has already tended to outstrip social and economic progress; and that with Britain’s restraining and guiding hand finally withdrawn, a repetition of the tragedy of Communist infiltration and chaos we are witnessing in the former Dutch East Indies is a melancholy possibility.

Nevertheless, and more optimistically, it is a measure of the success achieved so far that African political leaders like Dr. Nkrumah, Prime Minister of the Gold Coast, and fiery Dr. Azikiwe, the veteran Nigerian nationalist, have recognized that even after the recruitment and training of sufficient native administrators has made it possible to dispense with colonial officials, their countries will need to import expatriate capital and administrat ive and technical experts for a long time.

Hence it must be the first duty of their governments to create conditions which inspire confidence in overseas investors and their representatives. In short, there are in West Africa not only a great welling-up of nationalist feeling and an understandable impatience among Africans to do things for themselves, which is all to he expeted, but also a healthy blend of realism and moderation which bodes well for the future.

The force of example

Elsewhere in Africa these developments take on a different aspect—different according to whether one’s skin is while or black.

There are white racialists in the Union of South Africa who see themselves as little islands of civilization surrounded by a vast black sea of ignorance and savagery, and whose minds are never free from fear. Yet events are steadily pointing to the certain failure of this policy. While Dr. Strydom and his friends strive to turn the clock back by discriminatory social and political legislation, the growing demands of the expanding national economy for plentiful skilled labor (and it is only black labor that is available in the numbers required) inexorably make nonsense of their policies.

For black racialists in East and Central Africa, on the of her hand, the achievements of Dr. Nkrumah and Dr. Azikiwe have created rather dangerous illusions: under the spur of ambition widely differing conditions are forgotten. No matter that the peoples of the west coast are much more advanced than those of their own homelands in the interior. No matter that the European who dwells on the west coast is there, and always has been, solely to trade, to teach, and to build — not to make it his permanent home. Climate alone forbids permanent white settlement.

No matter that geography, climate, and history have committed Kenya, Rhodesia, and South Africa to a multiracial pattern in which the interests and destinies of the different races are now so closely interwoven that no one can stand without the others. For non-colored families often have lived in these East and Central regions for as many generations as their colored neighbors; and it would be as unreal to talk of expelling the former as it would be to urge that North America should be returned to the Red Indian. Yet to the aspiring young African politician in the grip of race emotion it is not the realities that matter, but what he would like them to be.

In Konya black racialism has taken a particularly cruel and depraved form, but it is not an isolated phenomenon, and African history reveals a number of somewhat similar examples of reactions to say age barbarism. The jungle is never far away; and so if Mau Mau bears no resemblance at all to conventional and respectable African nationalist movements, it is nevertheless indicative of what might happen on a larger scale if African aspirations should take a wrong turn through frustration or Communist subversion.

The Indians in Africa

Fnhappily, rising national consciousness along Africa’s “backbone” does not come solely from self-induced fervor. It is being encouraged from without — by Western left-wing idealists who fondly believe that all the ills of society can be cured by the export of ballot boxes; by distinctly less idealistic Communist agents; and more recently by the new “imperialists,” the Indians.

Indian encouragement of African nationalism is a fresh and disturbing phenomenon. Not only is white opinion in Kenya angered by the knowledge that individual Indians have aided Mau Mau, but there is a widespread belief, among blacks as well as whites, that India has imperialistic designs upon Africa.

Today, for example, there are more than twice as many Indians in Kenya as there are Europeans, and they compete far more keenly and directly than the latter with the indigenous African in the economic, forward march of the territory.

Thus, not surprisingly, in the past the African has heartily disliked the Indian immigrant, regarding him not only as an interloper but as an exploiter and an obstacle to his own advancement. That this dislike can be fanned into murderous fury, suddenly and without warning, was shown in the bloodthirsty black-brown Durban riots which occurred in 1949.

Astutely, therefore, a good many Indians in Africa and beyond try to turn the edge of African resentment by seeking to identify themselves with African aspirations. This is particularly the case in South Africa, where both Indians and Africans are lumped together by the whites as inferiors, are socially ostracized, and are not permitted a share in the political life of their country.

Not the least danger of such a coalition of colored against noncolored is that it could mobilize and encourage anti-white feeling not only in the Union, where it has provocation, but elsewhere in Africa, where different relationships obtain and different ends are sought— where there are still affection and respect for the white man and a genuine desire on his part to help his less fortunate black brother.

Hence no government with responsibilities in Africa can be indifferent to the steady poisoning of race relations in the Union, and to the effect it may have on peoples beyond her borders.

That is why the most important task of constructive statesmanship in multiracial Africa is to create among Africans an incentive to work with Europeans, while at the same time arousing among the whites a genuine willingness to improve not only the living standards of the African but his status as a human being.

Status the key

Indeed, status is the nub of the problem. For what is being undertaken in colonial Africa is human engineering on a vast scale. And because human beings are concerned it is not sufficient to effect an economic revolution. If, in the end, Africans are to identify themselves with Western civilization, to work for its maintenance rather than its destruction, then their imagination as well as their ambition must be stirred, and their trust must be inspired and not their rivalry.

The most subtle, searching, and urgent need of colonial administration in this second half of the twentieth century is to find the key to African hearts, and not just to fill stomachs. The answer must be one that meets the needs of the black African and allays the fears of his white countryman; that gives the black what he is entitled to as a human being without depriving the white African of his stat us.

Fear the incendiary

The black fears that he is never to be allowed to escape from the economic limitations and social restrictions his people’s backwardness have hitherto imposed upon him. The white fears that black numbers, sooner or later, are bound to rob him of his own and his children’s hardearned stake in the country of their birth or adoption.

Compromises are many and varied. In Portuguese East and West Africa no advance to political democracy is even on the horizon, and educational and economic opportunities lag far behind the neighboring British example. On the other hand racial tension as such is less acute — partly because virtually no social color bar exists, and therefore there is no feeling of inescapable race inferiority; and partly because, as a result of this situation, the minority of chieftains and other colored Africans who have “made good” economically are linked by mutual self-interest with the Portuguese administrators and settlers.

In the rich Belgian Congo too, the color bar is little in evidence as a social stigma, and encouragement and facilities are provided for the Africans’ industrial and economic advancement. But there is praetically no opportunity for political progress in the sense of taking a part in the running of the country.

This repression of political ambition has, of course, in the long run the familiar danger of holding a lid on a simmering kettle; but, for the time being, there is less ferment than one might expect. This is probably because domestic political rights are not exercised by the Belgian settlers themselves, since the country is treated much more as an administrative province of Belgium than as a young “ward” growing to maturity.

The principal responsibility for tropical Africa’s political future, therefore, devolves upon Britain, since it is only in the territories for which she is trustee that any significant stops to meet rising African political consciousness, apart from economic or social advance, are being taken. The problems of achieving some kind of political independence for the Africans without taking the risks involved in handing over electoral power to millions of primitive savages are immense.

Experiments in democrncy

In Southern Rhodesia, the emphasis is upon an all-color common voting roll with an educational and minimum property qualification to ensure that those who use the ballot boxes are capable of exercising this privilege responsibly, and not merely as the dupes of would-be tribal dictators or Communist stooges. In Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia the trend is more toward tribal and municipal councils, and representatives nominated or elected from the councils to a central assembly.

To the north in Tanganyika, where race relations arc certainly as good as anywhere in Central Africa, the method is being tried of communal representation irrespective of total numbers, with nine delegates from each of the various races, African, European, and Asian.

Further north in Uganda, the problem is made easier by a number of factors. The country is blessed with rich natural resources to finance education and social services. The tribes there, and particularly the Baganda, are among the most intelligent in Africa, and there are so few European or Asian settlers that the same need to find a multiracial solution does not exist.

In Kenya, although Mau Mau has caused delay, there are thoughts of a mixture of a common roll on the same principles as obtain in Southern Rhodesia, with a joint communal representation to make sure that each race’s legitimate interests are adequately safeguarded. Meantime the Governor there is aided and advised by an all-races “Cabinet,” with ministerial portfolios held by resident Europeans, Asians, and Africans; and a determined attempt is being made to inculcate a pride in “Kenyan” nationhood, irrespective of color or racial origin.

By whatever method, whatever pattern, success must be achieved, if only because the price of failure is too tragic to contemplate.