AND NOW NYASALAND
SIR,---After twenty years of, enjoyment of your estimable paper, as much for its :being impartial as informed, it is sad indeed to read your hasty edi- torials of February 27 and March 6. And Taper too, even Taper appears to be a will-o'-the-wisp instead of a steady beam!
If you'd read your East Africa and Rhodesia pub- lished the day before (February 26) (and even if you don't care for Mr. Joelson's voice crying in the wilder- ness, you must at least concede that the facts are all there as in no other journal about Africa), you would know that your comment was inaccurate and unhelp- ful. You suggested that Nyasaland's -withdrawing from the Federation might not be disastrous economically. We on the spot know that to be untrue, and you can read the technical answer in the last number of the Central African Examiner..
You deplore the early declaration of an Emergency in Southern Rhodesia (and so do 1), but it may be that it had to be done to give an opportunity for security regulations to come into force legally; and it is likely that the emergency will soon end. How- ever, on the opposite tack, Taper blames the Gover- nor of Nyasaland for being tardy in his declaration, knowing that a massacre was planned. Surely he hoped against hope that law and order could be restored without that step, which he knew would fulfil Banda's eicpectations and those of the extremists in Britain.
At least Taper agrees with us over here about our friend Fenner Brockway, but what a long way you have come since you showed deep insight into African affairs referring to the Strydom-Collins Axis! I think you would find Mr. Patrick Wall more informed than Mr. Stonehouse, as he came here with an open and inquiring mind.
Would it interest you to know that at Sir John Mciffat's first big electoral meeting, held at Ndola, more than half were Africans, in itself a most sig- nificant point in the history of multi-racial meetings in this country. And after hearing his speech, 'Satis- fied, Satisfied,' rumbled their deep-throated support from all over the hall.
Blindly advocating splitting up the Federation plays straight into the Dominion Party's hands, thus giving comfort to our enemies. It doesn't matter to you really, safe in Gower Street. We live here all our lives, and extremists either Black or White are equally dangerous in our view.--Yours faithfully,
MONICA FISHER
Greysione Park, P.O. Box 928, Kitwe, N. Rhodesia
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