Law and Disorder
By T. R. M. CREIGHTON IT is worth looking closely at the Southern Rhodesian United Federal Party's Law and Order (Maintenance) Bill, which is not yet law, and at the Vagrancy Act which is, because they give one a good idea of what Sir Edgar White- head's Government really thinks of Africans, What it thinks is the right way to treat them, and of how slight the chances are that Southern Rhodesia can, within the brief time available, become capable of participating in the kind ..f reformed Federation envisaged by the Monck- ton Report.
If the Law and Order Bill is passed—and it matters less whether it is, in a colony already armed to the teeth with intimidatory legislation against African political movements, than that tt has ever been thought of—the authorities will have absolute power to prohibit every kind of Political activity, all sorts of publications, and even the expression of private opinions between friends, if in the opinion of the Minister of Home Affairs such activities may engender hostility between the races or lead to the making of sub- Versive statements. 'Any person who sings any 8"8 or utters any slogan which may lead to public disorder' can be fined £50 or imprisoned !or six months. Encouraging a boycott can lead to seven years' imprisonment (and a boycott is defined as combining to refuse to hold public, Private or business relations with any person); strike picketing—£100 or one year in prison; also 'using any opprobious epithet or any jeer or jibe about anyone' whose choice of a job Y..°4 may not approve of (even an 'African in- former in the pay of the CID). For anyone who 'says or does anything likely to expose to con- tempt or ridicule or disesteem or to stir up flatted against or undermine the authority of Federation '—three officer of the Government of the Colony or '—three years in prison without the o on. And 'any person who at a gathering of three or more people at which a subversive state- ibir ent is made in any way indicates his approval' --one year.
The come the famous minimum sentences. to courts are obliged, if this Bill gets through, o inflict five years in prison on anyone 'who throws or threatens to throw anything likely to who damage or injury at a motor vehicle,' or ° sets fire to a car or building; and at least 1... aYears for malicious damage to property. ..lineY may impose as much as twenty. Right of ectPPeal is heavily qualified by the provision that r.11,ell if the High Court believes 'that any point ised Ion appeal] may be decided in favour 04e tile appellant, no conviction or sentence shall be quashed by reason of any irregularity or de- fect in the record or proceedings unless the High Court considers that a substantial miscarriage of justice has taken place.' The idea that a legal distinction can be drawn between a per- son's guilt and the means by which it was estab- lished, between a miscarriage of justice and the way it came about, indicates the kind of authoritarian rough justice the United Federal Party has in mind. A few amendments—mainly touching publications and subversive statements and providing for minimum sentences only in proceedings authorised by the Attorney-General —have been introduced to the Bill but do not alter its intimidatory purpose.
The same assumption that certain persons— Africans who make a nuisance of themselves— are guilty unless they prove innocence lies behind the already legal Vagrancy Act. A vagrant is any beggar; any person unable to show he has employment or visible and sufficient means of subsistence; any person lodging in a 'verandah, outhouse, shed, unoccupied building, park, garden, open trench, culvert or drain' without the consent of the owner; any person professing to tell fortunes or 'using any subtle craft . . . by palmistry or otherwise' and, comprehensively, `any person who is unable to show that he is living by honest means and has a settled way of honest living,' with the burden of proof squarely on the accused. Any such person may be arrested without warrant and sent to a 're- establishment centre' for three years. His con- ditions of life in detention and release before that time is up are wholly at the Minister's pleasure. There is no right of appeal; only of 'objection to the Governor,' who may do any- thing he likes about it—or nothing.
Several thousand people are held under this law at present, nearly all of them the miserable, landless, unemployed Africans who have been thrown into the towns by the Government's policies for African agriculture and the lack of land for African occupation. They are denied the right to live there legally by the Location regulations and have failed to find employment in an economy where the benefits of Federation have been much less evenly distributed than the Monckton Reports suggests.
The Whitehead Government clings to the ex- ploded myth which claims that nearly three million Africans, placidly and gratefully con- tented under its just and paternal rule, are being misled by a few 'intimidators, agitators, hood- lums and spivs' into rejecting the slow rate of progress allowed them by the white man. These laws, though they do not say so, are directed against Africans exclusively; they will not be used against Sir Robert Tredgold, whose recent courageous remarks are certainly subversive. At the same time as it introduces such legislation, the Government is admitting the error of its ways by allowing Joshua Nkomo, the newly elected leader of the Democratic Party, to return to the country, undertaking not to arrest him and agreeing to include African representatives in its delegation to the Constitutional Review. But the Government cannot enlist the co-opera- tion of Africans while keeping them down, and Sir Edgar seems only ready to co-operate on his own terms. This will lead to more racial troubles and his own downfall. It is a safe pre- diction, in view of his intense, if misguided, dedication to the task he has set himself, that he will not resign till he has done more damage. And there is not at the moment any alternative government that could do the job differently— only the Dominion Party that would do it, if possible, more repressively.
Sir Robert Tredgold's brave and impressive action is probably the most significant event in the colony since Cecil Rhodes went there; but it is useless to expect it to bear fruit at once. It offers a real hope of a rallying point for the European good will that exists; and as time goes on and things get worse it will offer an increasing number of Europeans some hope of a resolution of their fears and perplexities. Per- haps in six months Sir Robert will command a significant following. But if Whitehead went to- morrow, Sir Robert would not carry a majority of Europeans with him in support of a policy anything like drastic enough to meet the inter- racial crisis. In any event, it will be no good his rallying the Europeans unless he can gain the confidence of Africans. To do so he will need to be bold indeed, and to risk his standing with Europeans far more than he has yet done. No one who does not renounce allegiance to any Federation imposed by force and who does not come out for a wide franchise, an African majority in Parliament and Government, the end of land apportionment and much else that even now is unthinkable to the vast majority of Europeans can hope to do so.
Sir Robert's task is no less than to cram into six months the political education which the European population has been myopically avoid- ing for twenty years. His chief allies—except the few liberal Europeans who stand with him already—will be the African nationalists; but it is wildly optimistic to hope that either side will recognise this fact. It is nevertheless the only chance to save Southern Rhodesia from disrup- tion and disaster on the South African pattern, into which Sir Edgar Whitehead is leading a. The intensity of the Southern Rhodesian crisis cannot be exaggerated—providing an additional argument, if one were needed, for the end of Federation. It is impossible to expect the pro- gress of the Northern territories to wait upon the political education of the Europeans in Southern Rhodesia; both parties will have a better chance of developing satisfactorily in separation. The economic arguments in favour of Federation are now as nothing in face of the political, emotional and psychological ones against it.
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