Victoria Falls Deadlock
The Victoria Falls conference on Central African confedera- tion has not been a success in the sense of registering any visible progress towards a goal desired on the whole by most of the white population of Northern and Southern Rhodesia and Nyasa- land but desired by few, if any, of the black population. But it would be a mistake to write it off as a total failure. It was never intended that any final decisions should be taken at Victoria Falls, and it may still be hoped that the conversations that have taken place there may, as they are discussed in retro- spect in African circles, remove some at least of the doubts and suspicions which fill the African mind. Certainly much further education in the meaning of federation, and the practical effects of the adoption of the particular scheme of federation before. the Victoria Falls conference, is needed, and the nine months for which the conference is adjourned will be by no means. too long for that_ It is probably true that His Majesty's Government, in deprecating the exercise of any influence one way or the other between the publication of the federation scheme and the meeting of the conference sacrificed the opportunity of explaining the scheme carefully and objectively to Africans to whom federation was no more than a meaningless word. Be that as it may, it is clear that the native populations of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland at present feel much safer in the hands of Whitehall than of some new federal body whose constitution—particularly the safeguards embodied in it—they do not begin to understand. Meanwhile, it is something that the British Government has declared for federation, and that all parties concerned have cate- gorically rejected the idea of amalgamation.
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