Northern Rhodesian Tragedy
By T. R. M. CREIGHTON
IT is deplorable that a European woman and her children should have been attacked by Africans on the Copperbelt. No sympathy can be adequate for the fate of Mrs. Burton, who died this violence Week, and for her survivors. 'Violence is ""enee wherever it occurs and whoever perpe- trates it,' said Mr. Kenneth Kaunda, leader of the Northern Rhodesian United National Inde- pendence Party in London this week. But one should not forget in revulsion at this tragedy that many more people were killed by European bullets at Sharpeville, or last year in Nyasaland, k,slitl that nearly all of them were equally innocent.
Northern for the recent disturbances in Northern Rhodesia rests with the whole policy of Federation in Central Africa introduced by Britain in 1953 and with the. attitude of the Protectorate government towards African politi- cal organisations. It is no good talking of 'the primitive savagery of African mobs.' Much more Violent demonstrations against frustration and autocratic government have been made by the populace of many European countries over the last centuries. That a crowd of disillusioned 'means, returning from an Independence Party nleeting forbidden by the police, saw in an tnno- Lent woman and children a symbol of white :t1,Pren'aeY and settler rule and plunged into nihilistic violence is a measure of the bitterness 'tnd despair among Copperbelt workers, not of ,Fle'r savagery. The Northern Rhodesian troubles ;t,re tihe Protest of a frustrated and unenfranchised r ()Icing class, which happens to be black. The ce, cent tragedy is evidence of the tensions, suspi- 01"s and fears set up by disregard of their legiti- Lt,te aspirations in a normally patient people. N '0 African was directly consulted about iyorthern Rhodesia's inclusion in Federation in b 33. Their chiefs opposed it bitterly. The num- keit.. European immigrants, many of them rikaners rose sharply to 80,000. They attained st,r(IIIgh the copper boom perhaps the highest ni'llldtird of living in the world. Africans remain i ti 134erished and underpaid. The new Constitu- °4 introduced by Mr. Lennox-Boyd in 1959 Live effective control to the settlers of twenty- re seats in the Legislature against eight seats 4Presenting three million Africans, by the way toil‘vhieh it encumbered an ostensibly common ye: with a financial qualification of £720 a by4r. Most of the African members are elected re a Majority of European votes and do not ,113.,resent African wishes. The result has been ill united. Federal (Welensky) Party dominance k Legislature and Cabinet, which have opposed k,rican aspirations. The two African Ministers "anded by the Constitution enjoy European rather than African confidence. In the 1959 emergency the Zambia National Congress, sup- ported by most Africans, was banned and its leaders rusticated. After the emergency the same leaders founded the present National Indepen- dence Party. But by the recent Public Security Ordinance the Governor has retained in normal law most of the powers he possessed in the emer- gency—a sure sign that trouble was foreseen and that there were sound causes for it—and he has used them to ban the Independence Party and all its meetings and activities on the Copperbelt last week.
Northern Rhodesian Africans fear that, while Nyasaland may be given independence after the constitutional review of 1960-61 as a sop to world opinion, Northern Rhodesia will be quietly left in a truncated white-dominated Federation because of the wealth of the Copperbelt. The uneducated oppose this because they do not like what they have seen of 'partnership.' (The two African Cabinet Ministers are the only Africans in Northern Rhodesia allowed to live outside locations, or reserves, in a European area, and the Government considers this generous.) The more sophisticated add that the Copperbelt should be aiding African development from Lake
Victoria to the Zambesi rather than sustaining the living standard of a handful of Europeans. All are determined not to remain under Sir Roy Welensky and his European colleagues, and claim rightly that Britain, in accepting the Protectorate in 1924, promised them an eventual self-deter- mination which Federation has already vitiated.
It is useless to argue that the Africans should bide their time and trust the Europeans. They have no cause to. Social and industrial dis- crimination flourishes by custom in Northern Rhodesia as vigorously as if it were part of the law. The prevarications and deceptions of the Federal and Territorial Constitutions entrench European supremacy under a guise of common roll democracy and for an African to question the inherent justice of this is called 'black racial- ism' by the settlers, who contrive to convince themselves that their privileged position is equiva- lent to 'interracial partnership.' The National Independence Party is calling for an African majority in the Legislature and Executive, not on grounds of race but of numbers of population, and for universal suffrage. Its President, Kenneth Kaunda, is a fearless and dedicated ascetic of unusual charm, one of the most impressive per- sonalities among contemporary African leaders. He is utterly opposed to violence, by his own side or any other, and is hurrying back from a visit to America to try to check it—if the Governor allows him the freedom of movement to do so when he gets back. He is ready to guarantee the most stringent safeguards for the protection of European and Asian minorities under an African majority and recommends the continuation of a British-appointed Governor with full powers of veto to ensure \this. He is aware that it is in Northern Rhodesia that Britain faces the crucial test of her sincerity of purpose towards the Afri- cans of the Federation and of her ability and resolution to protect them against European minorities. And in this he is right.
'1 think it's playing "Colonel Bogey."'
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