The Press WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1967. British Aid For Zambia

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31295, 15 February 1967, Page 14

The Press WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1967. British Aid For Zambia

The signing of an agreement for about £l4 million of British aid to Zambia should lead to some improvement in British-Zambian relations. Zambia has been under heavy strain, economically and politically, since Mr Smith’s unilateral declaration of independence in Rhodesia. Indeed, most of Zambia’s present difficulties are directly attributable to the Rhodesian crisis. President Kaunda has resented what he regards as the ineffectiveness of British attempts to break the illegal Smith regime. Sanctions against Rhodesia are proving increasingly harmful to the Zambian economy. A land-locked country, it depends on the maintenance of open routes to the sea.

Dr. Kaunda’s hostility to the Smith regime is unabated. Yet he may now have to face the humiliation of negotiating directly with Mr Smith for the division of the jointly-owned railway system. In spite of the improvement of road routes to Tanzania and Malawi, only the railway can carry economically the Rhodesian coal needed for the working of Zambia’s copper mines. Rhodesia has retaliated against Zambian hostility and its application of sanctions by keeping as much as possible of the railway rolling stock on its side of the Zambesi, thus preventing Zambia from using the rail link with Lobito to the best advantage. Dr. Kaunda’s Government has already spent nearly £2O million on improving and extending access roads, buying lorries and building depots, and acquiring the nucleus of a fleet of transport aircraft Apparently the British aid, which had been under negotiation for some months, is to be used largely to engineer land routes that will by-pass Rhodesia.

Dr. Kaunda had been inclined to blame Britain for all his difficulties, and was scornful of the offer of aid, which he said would be inadequate to “ compensate ” his country for the losses caused by the enforcement of sanctions against Rhodesia. He is well aware that more than any other of the emerging African States, Zambia is at the mercy of the successive crises, racial in origin, that can be expected in Rhodesia, South-west Africa, the Portuguese territories, and South Africa itself. Other African States can ignore these countries—except, perhaps, to pass condemnatory resolutions about them. Zambia cannot, since it has frontiers with them and trades with them. Dr. Kaunda says that Britain should already have done more than she has now agreed to do to ease his difficulties. He remains openly mistrustful of the British Government. He stayed away from the Commonwealth talks last September, and is said to suspect Mr Wilson’s motives on the Rhodesian problem. It was not overlooked in Whitehall that he pointedly avoided London on a round of calls that took him to Washington, Ottawa, and the capitals of the Caribbean.

Zambia provides nearly half of Britain’s total imports of copper. Yet Dr. Kaunda has lately negotiated with the Chilean Government for the setting up of a national corporation to control copper marketing. He is also reported to have taken a £2O million contract for the construction of an 1100-mile oil pipeline away from a British firm and given it to an Italian engineering group. He has encouraged trade approaches by both Russia and China; and, according to the British National Export Council, has turned increasingly to Denmark, Belgium, and France for drugs and other medical supplies, at lower prices and with better delivery dates than were offered by British manufacturers. It is obviously important for British industry that a friendly relationship with Zambia should be restored and maintained. It must be hoped that the signing of an aid agreement is a first step in that direction, even if Dr. Kaunda’s problems arising out of the Rhodesian impasse remain unsolved.