SIR,—As a regular reader of some fifteen years' stand- ing,
I feel I can criticise you, in the words of Taper, for your 'flagrant and increasing political dishonesty' with regard to Africa. I have always taken the Spectator so as to get a balanced and witty summing- up of the events and trends of the day, but since the Nyasaland riots, I have only read biased vituperation of the 'White settler."Dr. Hastings Banda could not, prima fade, have planned mass murder as he was a member of the Church of Scotland.' What fatuous reasoning is this?
All the Africans Taper knows are more civilised than Lord Malvern. How many does he know, and are they a fair cross-section of the African com- munity?
In your leader of March 3 occurs the phrase . nor the freedom that is accorded to white settlers to exploit and oppress non-whites, as in vir- tually every part of Africa where English is spoken.' There are probably seven million Tanganyikans who would take you up on that, if only the vast majority were not illiterate. In the last two months, Tanganyika has merited only three lines of your valuable space, . in an article on Nyasaland, despite the 'social revolu- tion' we have managed to pull off. Of course there were no race riots, bloodshed, or wicked white settlers. . . . The waves was all fiddlin' and small,
No wrecks and nobody drownded, In fact nothing to laugh at at all.
Do try and be of assistance in Africa's difficult problems and publish some balanced articles and criticism, or, to quote Taper again, 'the steady grip of grossly biased presentation of political argument will begin to tell in the long run.'—Yours faithfully, BRIAN FREYBURG Ketembellion, 01 Molog, Moshi, Tanganyika
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