The Press MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1962. Kenya’s Change Of Pilot

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29989, 26 November 1962, Page 12

The Press MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 1962. Kenya’s Change Of Pilot

No former British colony in Africa has met more difficulties in its advance to independence than Kenya. These difficulties persist in spite of the constitutional agreement reached in London last April. Economic bankruptcy already besets the territory; political bankruptcy, resulting from the African parties’ incapacity for self-rule, stares it in the face. The United Kingdom Government, to which Kenya remains a particularly onerous financial and political burden, clearly hopes that a new era will begin when the retiring Governor (Sir Patrick Renison) is succeeded by that veteran conciliator and architect of territorial independence, Mr Malcolm MacDonald. In the eyes of the world, as of the Kenya peoples. Sir Patrick Renison is associated with the distressing period that followed the Mau Mau excesses, and with the difficult reconciliation among former enemies that was necessary to any constitutional progress. Sir Patrick Renison’s retirement from a taxing assignment leaves the way clear for renewed efforts to heal the formidable divisions that still impede the growth of a Kenyan nation. These efforts will need to be directed as much to the economic as to the political salvation of Kenya; and for this reason one of Mr MacDonald’s most urgent tasks will be the reassurance of the Europeans upon whom Kenya’s economic welfare has hitherto depended and Whose numbers are fast dwindling as the result of migration, either beyond the African continent or to the South African Republic. Mr MacDonald brings to his new post a life-time experience of colonial and administrative problems. Probably he is best known for his work as the first GovernorGeneral of the Malayan Union and subsequently as Commissioner-General for South-east Asia. Among his outstanding qualities are his understanding of and sym-

pathy with coloured peoples. Non-white recognition of his impartiality and ability was exemplified recently by an invitation to visit Peking.

Prospects of stability in Kenya have deteriorated since the Lancaster House conference last April; and the coalition Government set up as a result of the conference is making slow work of preparing for general elections and, possibly, independence fairly early in 1963. This is the more galling because of Uganda's achievement of independence in October. Too much confidence seems to have been put in the power of Mr Jomo Kenyatta, the former Mau Mau leader, to unify the Africans. Differences among the African factions have multiplied; there are dark hints of a revival of Mau Mau; and tribalism causes unremitting anxiety. All this, too, takes no account of the plight of the European settlers, for whom the British Government’s scheme for resettling Africans on land bought in the White Highlands has brought fresh perplexities. What, for instance, is to be the fate of European farmers whose properties are not scheduled for purchase, but who are to have new African neighbours? Among the Kenya Africans the scheme has been given a mixed reception; and it appears unlikely to alleviate the three most pressing problems in Kenya today: understanding between Europeans and Africans, African landlessness, and the maintenance as far as possible of an economy now dependent on European agriculture. In Kenya, therefore, Mr MacDonald will confront perhaps the supreme test of his administrative career. Upon his response may depend whether the Lancaster House draft becomes the basis of national development, or whether the territory reverts indefinitely to an economic and political wilderness.