N.Z. Diplomat To Lead U.N. Safari In Africa

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27407, 21 July 1954, Page 11

N.Z. Diplomat To Lead U.N. Safari In Africa

(Rec. 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, July 20. A United Nations safari, heavily armed with pencils and pads, will take off today for East Africa. A “New York Times” correspondent reported that in a couple of weeks, Mr John Stanhope Reid, the chairman of the group—“a peppery gentleman from New Zealand”—would be standing in a clearing in Kitega, m Belgian Ruanda-Urundi, inviting anybody within the sound of his voice to step up and tell his troubles to the United Nations. „ , By early autumn, the New Zealander would have repeated that invitation’almost a hundred times in RuandaUrundi, British Tanganyika, and Italian-administered Somaliland, the three United Nations trust territories in East Africa. This will be the seventh United Nations mission to see first-hand how natives are doing under their administrators. There are 11 territories under United Nations trust and each year a mission goes out to take a look —one year to the Pacific, the next year to West Africa, and the third year to East Africa. This is the third to East Africa. As always, there will be two delegates from countries that do not administer any trust area—Mr Rafael Equizabal, of El Salvador, and Mr Tikhi Jaipal, of India—and two from countries that do—Mr Mason Sears,

of the United States, and Mr Reid. There will .be five United Nations staff members on hand to help. The correspondent said the administrators, naturally enough, put much emphasis bn improvements that could be seen—new hospitals, schools, and roads. But a successful mission was one that did a lot of listening and open meetings were held almost every day. All of these “forest grumble sessions” were attended by administering officials. Veterans of earlier missions said that the presence of the officials sometimes put a damper on the meetings, but that in many areas the natives spoke out plainly. By now, the mission delegates had a very clear idea of what they could expect in the way of native response. In x Ruanda-Urundi, there would be a lot of ceremonial greetings and dancing and not much open complaining. In Tanganyika, the barazas —Swahili for meeting—would be a good deal livelier. And in Somaliland, the mission would be bombarded by political opinions. Some of the complaints that cropped up at the meetings were personal—a local squabble about who owned how many cattle and an official ruling against the indignant petitioner. Some were more serious—perhaps a tribe complaining of being evicted from its lands.