THE TWO RHODESIAS

Evening Star, Issue 22573, 15 February 1937, Page 7

THE TWO RHODESIAS

THE HATIVE PROBLEM There is a strong desire for amalgamation felt by the whites of the Rhodesias —South and Northern, separated by the Zambesi River and governed, in the case of Southern Rhodesia, by the grant of its own Parliament in 1923, and in the case of Northern Rhodesia by a Legislative Council controlled directly by the British Colonial Office, says a writer in the ‘ Winnipeg Free Press.’ This desire to amalgamate resolved into an appeal to the British Government made at a joint conference held at the Victoria Falls in January, 1936. The British Government, conveying its decision through its Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs, did not favour union, and its objection seemed based on the undesirability of handing over an extra million unrepresented natives in Northern Rhodesia to virtually unrestricted control by the Government of Southern Rhodesia at Salisbury. If there is a fallacy in this hesitation it is set out by Lieut.-Colonel C. L. Carhutt in a recent issue of the ‘ Empire Review.’ Colonel Carhutt has been a resident of Southern Rhodesia for 40 years, and was that self-governing country’s chief Native Commissioner. Southern Rhodesia claims that it has for 14 years looked after its own million natives, and should not be doubted as intending to give similar good care to an extra million brought in under the proposed union. There have, however, been doubts as to how fairly the natives in both Rhodesias have been treated, and just what degree of freedom they are allowed. Intolerable restrictions are said to have been imposed. Natives are said, for instance, not to be allowed to move freely in their own territory, to have to show passports, and to be checked up by police when moving from one township to another. This practice may be adopted to keep the natives on their lands and to prevent them flocking to the industrial centres, which are chiefly in the Union of South- Africa, but although it may or may . not help to reestablish the native in indigenous welfare, it imposes a very real and a very aggravating control over movements usually freely permitted.' Union between the Rhodesians seems natural, and Colonel Carhutt says there are no valid reasons for delaying an amalgamation that is bound to come sooner or later., He does not say so, but it is well known that the settlers in both Rhodesias are more concerned about the risk they run of having to receive a large influx of European people than they are about their readiness to treat fairly with the native populations. The whites are very few in an immense area which is exceedingly fertile, and Northern Rhodesia has become one of the great basemetal producing areas. If the British people will not populate the Rhodesias, others cannot be prohibited indefinitely from doing so. This is at the back of the appeal for union. The two Rhodesians are convinced they could manage their affairs better and develop more satisfactorily if Northern Rhodesia were withdrawn from control of the British Colonial Office. And as to the imputation that the two territories, if united, would not be so solicitous of the natives’ interests as is the Colonial Office of the interests of the natives already in the Protectorates, the answer is said to bo found in the way in which the Colonial Office already looks after the Protectorates. Colonel Carhutt says that Bechuanaland is in a sadly backward state. Basutoland is ' impoverished, Barotseland (in Nox-thern Rhodesia) has no direct control of its affairs and would have more voice in its own direction if under the Southern Rhodesian constitutional form of government, WAY TO SOLUTION. Colonel Carhutt advocates solving the native problem in much the way the joint House of Parliament in South Africa solved it recently. That solution lifted the fear of the whites, of political domination by the black man over the white man, by refusing natives native representation in Parliament, and by establishing provincial native councils, in which natives would advise the Union on all native affairs. Something of this sort is contemplated by Colonel Carhutt to meet the objections raised by the British Colonial Office against allowing amalgamation of the Rhodesias. So long as the white man cannot be induced to admit the black to qualify at elections for a parliament having jurisdiction over both white and black, there must be a state of affairs bound to lead “ to acute and justifiable dissatisfaction among the civilised Africans, and will produce dangerous racial friction.” The remedy, both for this racial dissatisfaction and tor the union of the Rhodesias, is said by Colonel Carhutt to be: To create large exclusively native ai'eas in Africa within the sphere of control of the various European Governments, and organised as native provinces of the territories in which they are situated. “In these black provinces there should be provincial councils composed of black men, elected by members of their own race, and official positions should not only be open to the black men to fill, so soon as they are qualified to do so, but the aim should be that in a black province the services of the State should be performed eventually by Africans. In this way,” writes Colonel Carbutt, apparently expressing an unofficial but general view held by the whites in the two Rhodesias. “ the legitimate aspirations of civilised black men could be met, and a long way would be gone towards attaining Mr Rhodes’s ideal (of equal rights for all civilised men south of the Zambesi), without jeopardising the supremacy of the white man.” .