AFRICANS MAY DIE’

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30955, 11 January 1966, Page 11

AFRICANS MAY DIE’

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) SALISBURY, Jan. 10. Thousands of Africans may die in Rhodesia’s worst drought unless Britain lifts its oil embargo, the Rhodesian Agriculture Minister, Mr George Rudland, said today. He said the Government was prepared to start feeding

schemes for the droughtstricken African tribal areas I but the food would have to ; be brought in by road. ; He said that because of the ; oil embargo, the Government did not have sufficient fuel for any large-scale distribution plan. On Friday the British Prime Minister, Mr Wilson, announced a Commonwealth plan to rush in wheat from Canada and Australia to the droughtstricken regions of Rhodesia and three of its Commonwealth neighbours.

The plan cut across Britain’s economic sanctions against Rhodesia on the grounds that the lives of thousands of Africans in Rhodesia were threatened by the drought. Mr Rudland’s statement said in effect that if Britain really wanted to save the Africans it would have to lift the oil embargo, which has had a crippling effect on the rebel government. “Our own Government is accepting full responsibility for these people, but at the

other end of the stick the British Government is denying us the .oil we need to organise relief supplies,” he said. Rains Start Seasonal rains have started on the Upper Zambezi river, however, and the flow of refugees from Rhodesia and South Africa into Zambia by way of the “freedom ferry” has slowed to a trickle. The rains could also mean that Rhodesia may be able to do without grain supplies from Australia and Canada, because the maize crop maybe saved, the London "Financial Times” said. The “freedom ferry"—a rickety barge of oil drums lashed together, powered by two small outboard motors—plies between a Zambian hamlet and the Bechuanaland Protectorate.