Reluctant Malawi Part Of Rhodesian Crisis

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30937, 18 December 1965, Page 25

Reluctant Malawi Part Of Rhodesian Crisis

(N.Z. Pre** A>»n.—Copyright) ZOMBA (Malawi), December 17. Malawi is doing everything possible to keep out of the Rhodesian crisis but is finding this about as difficult as a child’s effort to run away from his shadow, Jospeh Lelyveld, of the “New York Times” news service reported today.

The crisis can only mean trouble for this green and lovely, but woefully poor land, the first of the three territories of the old federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to achieve independence. With white Rhodesia and black Zambia, the other two survivors, caught in a confrontation across the Zambesi river, the involvement of little Malawi is easily overlooked. But each new development produces tremors here. The reason is Malawi’s across-the-board dependence on trade with Rhodesia. Short of Oxygen Last week that trade was interrupted for only a few days. But almost immediately hospitals in Malawi found themselves running short of oxygen, stopped on its way from Rhodesia. The stoppages were an almost unnoticed side effect of Britain’s freezing of Rhodesia’s sterling holdings in London as part of a programme of sanctions aimed at forcing Mr lan Smith’s regime to back down from its independence stand. Since the sterling was no longer of much use to Rhodesia. Smith ordered exporters in his country to demand other hard currencies from Zambia and Malawi. Zambia, a major producer of copper, was able to make the adjustment But Malawi was stuck. To get the trade moving again, Rhodesia after three days authorised her exporters to accept payment in sterling for goods sent to Malawi. But since the payments will presumably still be blocked in London, the trade is likely to [bog down. Shift Prompted If this happens, Malawi will have to turn to Portuguese Mozambique and South Africa —not a very obvious gain from the standpoint of African nationalism. Already such

a shift has been prompted by Rhodesia’s loss of a preferential tariff in Malawi as a resuit of her expulsion from the sterling area. Last year Malawi took 38 per cent of her imports from Rhodesia, running up a bill there of 14.7 million dollars. Her exports to Rhodesia, a mixed lot of non-essential agricultural commodities, were one-fifth that value. Even more ominous was Mr Smith's threat to start repatriating alien labourers from Rhodesia if sanctions led to widespread unemployment

By all accounts, there are fewer Malawians actually employed for wages in Malawi than in Rhodesia. It is estimated that about 70,000 Malawians work in Rhodesia but the figure could be as high as 200,000 when dependants are included. 'The population of Malawi is thought to be about four million.

Britain is at present un-

derwriting 40 per cent of the Malawian Government budget, supplying the country with about 28 million dollars a year in aid. Prime Minister Hastings Kamuzu Banda, the volatile former physician who earned his medical degree in Nashville, Tennessee, told his Parliament: “The Rhodesian Army, if Smith pushed, would conquer the whole of East and Central Africa in a week—this is the truth. The Rhodesian Air Force would reduce to ashes and dust all the capitals of East and Central Africa—Zomba, Lusaka, Dar Es Salaam, Nairobi, Leopoldville, Brazzaville—within 24 hours.”

When he is not orating, however, the doctor keeps a cooler head and his real fears, diplomats believe, are much less lurid. Having put down one rebellion already this year, he knows, they say, that a bad turning in the Rhodesian crisis could set his Government tottering.