Africa on the Move

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 916, 1 March 1957, Page 4

Africa on the Move

N March 6, when the Gold Coast becomes Ghana, a new self governing State will take its place in the British Commonwealth. The important and encouraging fact is that this new Dominion will be African. In recent years there has been so much bad news out of Africa that reports of progress have not always been heard or noticed. Some of the news is still bad. Centuries of exploitation cannot be expiated in a few years, and many Europeans are unable to believe that the sins or mistakes of their fathers should now be a charge upon their own consciences — and purses. But Africa is on the move. The whole vast continent has felt the presence and challenge of the West. In some places, deeply hidden in jungle, the response may have seemed as slight as a tremor in the treetops before the coming of wind; but elsewhere the railways and dams and tractors have changed ancient societies. Migration has been a flow inwards of Europeans in search of trade and ‘new freedoms, and a flow outwards of native people to the labour markets and schools of the West. Industrial progress has economic and social results. Wherever men use machines and acquire new skills, their lives are changed and they become receptive to political ideas. More than 180 million Africans live south of the Sahara. Tribal diversity and isolation are barriers to unity, but the African peoples: begin to see what place they should occupy in their own country. The European Powers which have ruled them are not all convinced that they should step aside. Some are still trying to live in the past; but others are helping to bring about the transition from tutelage to independence. The Central African Federation, only a few years old, promises to be a successful experiment in inter-racial co-operation; Nigeria is learning slowly to con- | trol its own affairs; and the Gold

Coast is now to become a Dominion. : Britain’s part in these movements has been enlightened; but progress is slower, and the difficulties are greater, where European settlements are firmly rooted. The Mau Mau uprising in Kenya was seen as a reversion to barbarism. Yet native peoples do not turn to the past for reassurance unless they feel insecure in ‘the present. There have been other signs in Africa of revivals in custom and superstition. The witch doctor comes back when =the tribesman feels that the white man has failed him. Sometimes, too, archaism is a symptom of nationalism, an attempt to strengthen racial identity by drawing upon tradition. These trends are more noticeable in places, as in Kenya, where European and _ native peoples must learn to build a common society. The suppression of the Mau Mau uprising was harsh, sometimes brutal, and the wounds will not heal quickly. But the hardest task is in South Africa. It is doubtful if self-government for Ghana will be welcomed as warmly in Pretoria as in Wellington. Every increase of freedom in an African territory brings Apartheid more deeply into reproach. The situation has elements of tragedy, none more obvious than the sincerity of those who believe that Apartheid can lead to emancipation. Their basic premise is that the natives can reach full citizenship within a_ segregated society. This is a delusion which every year becomes more apparent as the Union needs fuller use of its human resources. A democracy built upon subject peoples cannot survive indefinitely: it is not even workable as an economic system. The South Africans are facing a crisis. They must not be judged by people whose own countries have racial minorities. In South Africa the Europeans are outnumbered by nearly five to one, and fear is a bad policymaker. It is elsewhere in Africa, where millions of natives are learning to walk like free men, that the future of the south will be decided.

M.H.

H.