The Way of Michael Scott
SIR,—What Mr. Michael Scott and those who have supported him in your correspondence columns seem not to realise is that the European communities In the Central African Federation (and the British Government to the extent of its responsibilities) face an inescapable dilemma that is not unlike what often faces the rescuer who, in saving a drowning man, must bring and keep him under firm control, lest they both drown.
For Europeans, by bringing modern westeFn civilisation to Africa, have introduced an element in which Africans are out of their depth and, therefore, need constant support and guidance. No analogy can be perfect but, in either case, the safety of rescuer and rescued, of supporter and supported, depends on firm control and discipline.
And there is every reason, at the present critical stage of African progress, to concentrate, not on the political, but on the industrial and social development of Africans. For little or no progress can be ' made in any direction without ,the wealth provided by industrial development. And that need is greatly magnified in Africa by the growing dangers of soil erosion, in regard to the cure of which Africans are, at first, instinctively un-co-operative.
Industrial expansion is, in turn, creating crises in African social development in industrial areas because of its reliance on migrant labour, which is destroying African family life. There is no prospect of establishing self-respecting stabilised African society in industrial areas until African family life is fully restored.
Yet the economic problem is immense. In Salisbury (Southern Rhodesia), for example, there is a concentration, mainly for industrial purposes, of some 70,000 African males but less than 10,000 females. In order to replace them with a stabilised married community it would be necessary first to provide the land and services and to build approximately 25,000 houses likely to cost, in the aggregate, at least £7,500,000. Moreover the houses might have to be let at sub-economic rents until the average output (which is abnormally low) per African unit an be raised.
The problem calls for all the zeal and energy that are available and is likely still to need the generous aid of the whole western world. Probably few would deny that in our modern civilisation stabilised well-conducted communities are the best foundation for good citizen- ship, which connotes duties and obligations just as much as rights and obligations and which is the real test of fitness for political
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