Travel
Central Africa : The Cost of Copper
Fort days we had been pushing on through the primeval forest in the very heart of Africa. From Northern Rhodesia we had crossed the Luapula into the Belgian Congo, taking our lorry over on a roughly constructed raft ; from the Belgian Congo we had crossed once more into Northern Rhodesia and plunged again into the virgin forest. It seemed an almost empty land.
In a hundred miles of travel we did not pass half a dozen villages. But here and there along the winding forest path we met little groups of people. As we drew near, some of them stepped into the long grass or the bush, and gave us right of way ; as we passed they raised their hands in salutation and gave us words of greeting : the untouched African is naturally courteous and rarely impolite. But in other cases the men just stood and stared sullenly at us as we passed ; they gave us no salutation or word of greeting. On inquiring the reason I was told that these latter had been to the mines ; they had seen the white man close up and it had not increased their respect ; in any case, if they had not lost their respect, at least they had lost their manners at the mines.
A few hours later we stopped at a village to have conference with the people, and we took the opportunity to ask about these men returning from the mines. But the old men of the village and the chief men in the Church shook their heads and said : " They are a disturbing influence ; they bring back new notions ; they respect neither the Chief nor the customs of the tribe ; and they pay no heed to the word of God." We soon found that this breaking down of tribal life and customary morality due to the impact of Western industrialism upon a , primitive and unprepared people is one of the most serious problems Africa is facing in our generation. There is a black trek in South and Central Africa to-day, a steady movement of the people towards the mines and towns ; there is also a mental and moral trek, a change of mind and spirit which goes with this change of locality. This latter, though less obvious, is more serious. We said good-bye to the village folk and plunged on again through the virgin forest. The only things that broke the monotony of the bush were the numberless anthills, many of which were as large as a house. The labour represented by a single one of these anthills is beyond telling. Myriads of ants must have been engaged patiently and purposefully through long years upon the task. If only all that labour could be harnessed to human purposq it would do half the work of the African Continent !
Suddenly we came out of the forest upon a great clearing, and there before us stood vast engine-rooms, power-houses, machine-shops, clanking masses of hauling and crushing machinery, and, thrusting itself above the primeval forest the second tallest chimney in the world ! We had reached N'Kana Mine in the Copper Belt. There are half a dozen or more mines in the Belt, and in this mine alone some 13,000,000 has been spent in constructive plant in the last two years. Five years ago all this country was untouched forest-land ; to-day there are vast compounds and great buildings of steel and reinforced concrete, banks and offices, tennis-courts and cinemas.
What the effect of all this is upon the African people no words can tell. In the forest-villages all round people are living as their ancestors have lived from time immemorial. They are in the patriarchal stage ; they live as men did in the days of Abraham. But by the coming of modern industrialism into their midst they are being compelled, whether they like it or not, to jump from the leisurely patriarchial life into the bustling age of electricity, from the days of Abraham to the days of Henry Ford. It is the most stupendous leap in human history. Only a people of vigour and virility can make it without disintegration and moral decay.
I woke the next morning to the sound of sirens and factory hooters, and if it had not been for the mosquito net round my bed I might have thought that I was in Rochdale or Bradford. I went down the mine, over the Native compound, and through the great poWer houses and the clanging work- shops. In one of the machine-shops I stopped amazed. Mighty machines, electrically driven, were being worked by Native men. In front of one man who was sharpenial electric drills I stood fascinated. He was in sole charge of a great machine. With one hand he worked three electric switches ; with the other he received the drills, red-hot at one end, with which he was being fed at the rate of one per minute from the forge. He placed the drills in position, pulled this switch, pressed that one and moved the other. The great remorseless machine crushed its mighty teeth down upon the drill, flattening it here, shaping it there. The man released the switch, pulled out the drill, twisted it round, placed it in position again, and repeated the flattening and shaping process. Loosening his switches, he handed on his drill to the neighbouring machine, where it underwent some other process, while he received his next drill from the man at the forge. It was work that demanded accuracy, speed, regularity and dependableness. The man who was doing all that was almost straight from the bush. Four years ago he had probably never seen a machine, except possibly a bicycle. As I watched him that day he was doing the work of a skilled industrialist. The industrial side of his being was living in the twentieth century ; the moral side was still with his primitive ancestors. Within that man's personality there was an almost unendurable strain ; one part of him was being drawn onward by the very machinery he controlled, the other part lagged centuries behind.
The old moral sanctions of African tribalism are inadequate to such conditions. The strain at the roots of the man's being must be almost past bearing ; a rupture is fairly certain to occur. Only the growth of new moral sanctions and the building of new and powerful moral buttresses can avert internal breakdown and moral decay. That is the price that Africa, or rather the African, is paying to provide Europe with copper. It is a price which cannot be put down on a balance- sheet. It is the moral and the human cost. The least that Europe can do is to provide new moral supports to take the place of those that it has undermined, or the last state of the African will be worse than the first.
A. M. CHIRGWIN.
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