Africa Seething Coast To Coast

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30364, 13 February 1964, Page 13

Africa Seething Coast To Coast

(Special Correspondent N.Z.P.A.)

LONDON, Feb. 12.

From the breakers of the Atlantic coastline to the roaring monsoons of the Indian Ocean, Africa was “seething with unrest,” says a special correspondent of the “Daily Express” emphasising the magnitude of the growing crisis in that continent.

Although 1964 was only six weeks old there was already a long tally of bloodshed and mutiny. In Zanzibar, there were more than 2000 dead and a Covernment had been installed by the guns of revolutionaries. In Tanganyika, Uganda and Kenya there was mutiny in the battalions of every army. The entire East African armies were suspect. In Somalia, .Ethiopian troops were battling with their neighbours. On the disputed border between Kenya and Somalia the British district commissioner had been shot dead and hundreds of tribesmen had been murdered or taken hostage. In Portuguese Angola a “bloody and terrible re”olt’’ continued. In Southern Rhodesia there was talk of a break with Britain “rather than see leadership surrendered to an ignorant majority.” In Rwanda at least 10,000 persons had been murdered in three weeks.

In Ghana a mockery of a referendum had given totalitarian powers to President Nkrumah.

In the Congo there was “rape, pillage and witchcraft.”

“It is a sad and wretched story,” says the correspondent, “and we have only our-

selves to blame. In Africa the white man has shed responsibility on a panic scale. The lives and property of millions of loyal subjects have been entrusted to nationalist Governments who do not know the meaning of responsibility.”