DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31780, 10 September 1968, Page 28

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

Difference In East Africa Democracy does not mean quite the same thing in every country where it is practised, Dr J. R. Dawson, of Christchurch, discovered on a recent visit to East Africa. While he was in Kenya, the local body elections were being held. "The entire opposition party was disfranchised on a technicality,” he said, “so there was no opposition to vote for.” Dr Dawson said that the white Kenyans seemed very fearful of what would happen when Jomo Kenyatta left the scene. They were worried about who might be his successor. The same fears were held about a successor to Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. Dr Dawson and his wife visited their daughter, Katharine, in Tanzania, where she is working as a hospital radiographer in the British Volunteer Service Overseas scheme. Dr Dawson said that his daughter’s criticism of Tanzania was that it was reluctant to give any credit to Britain, while being ready to accept aid from any country. He said that Britain had stopped its aid to Tanzania because the Tanzanian Government stopped paying pensions to Europeans replaced in their jobs by Africans, and Britain had to pay them. “But Tanzania doesn’t care,” he said. “Russia, China, the United States and Scandinavia will give them aid, and they don’t have to pay any pensions."