RHODESIAN PROBLEM

Greymouth Evening Star, 3 November 1923, Page 6

RHODESIAN PROBLEM

FUTURE OF TERRITORY. Recent events in Southern Rhodesia have nowhere been followed with closer attention or greater interest than by the white settlers m Northern Rhodesia (writes a London “Times” correspondent). Like their brethren living south of the Zambesi, the settlers in Northern Rhodesia are almost wholly of British stock- the most noteworthy foreign element being provided by the French t' and Swiss Protestant missionaries, who are carrying on in Barotseland the excellent work begun by the Paris Evangelical Society in Basutoland. The settlers are animated by the same spirit of independence which hag characterised the Southern Rhodesian. They approve the decision of Southern Rhodesia to undertake self-govern-ment; the goal which they set before themselves. There has been much speculation and some anxiety as to the status of the Northern Territory after the new Government has been, set up in Southern Rhodesia. The Colonial Office has done well in not delaying to announce that when it assumes direct responsibility next year a Crown Colony Administration will be established in Northern Rhodesia.

Southern Rhodesia is part and parcel of South Africa, and either as a self-governing colony or, eventually, as a province of the Llnion its future lies in close association with its southern neighbours. Northern Rhodesia, however, is geographically, climatically, and in its vegetation part of Central Africa. It is of vast size—some 360,000 square miles—extending from Lake Tanganyika in the east to Angola in the west, presents a great diversity of physical features, and has no common- history or any homogeneity, save such as is provided by the British administration. It is and must remain for the main part . a black man’s country. Its native inhabitants number about a million — the whites, all told, some three thousand. In large areas the only Europeans are officials and missionaries. For it is not only the paucity of their numbers, but their geographical distribution, /which makes the problem of dealing with the white settlers in Northern Rhodesia one of some perplexity. The railway from Capetown crosses the centre of Northern Rhodesia from the Victoria. Falls to the Congo frontier, and over that railway comes all the wealth of copper from the Katanga mines. It is along this “railway strip,’’ as it is called, that the great majority of white inhabitants live. Just north of the Zambesi is the capital, Livingstone, and by the side of the railway is the Broken Hill lead and zinc mines—of growing importance. .Along this “railway strip” lives a. vigorous and somewhat assertive white community, with few interests in the big black blocks to their east and west.

Indeed, the only other part of Northern Rhodesia where there is a white community of any size is at and around Fort Jameson, where some 250 to 300 Europeans supervise plantar tions and raise cattle. But Fort Jameson lies in the extreme east, three to four weeks’ journey from Livingstone, and within a few miles of the border of the Nyasaland Protectorate. It is an economic dependency of that Protectorate, and will become increasingly bound to Nyasaland when the railway from Beira to Blantyre reaches Lake Nyasa. East of the “railway strip” the whole country, with the exception noted, is practically a native reserve, and little of it is suited to white settlement. Much of it is dense bush; around Bangweolo are vast swamps — it was by these swamps that Livingstone died—the climate is purely tropical, and the natives include some of the most backward as well as more enterprising Bantu tribes. ’’.these people came under British rule nor, by conquest, but by agreement, and in the future Government of the country their interests must be paramount. They are very well disposed to the whites and the Native Commissioners under the Chartered Company have looked well after them, and the result was seen in the war, when practically all the adults volunteered as carriers to take supplies to General Northey’s force. In the same way the country west of the. “railway strip” is native land. A third of it consists of Barotseland, and the inviolability of Barotseland as a native territory is as strongly guaranteed as is the case with Basutoland.

These diverse conditions in different parts of Northern Rhodesia led to suggestions for the partition of the lerritory when Chartered Company rule ceased; one suggestion being that the “railway strip” should be annexed to Southern Rhodesia. This probably would have been done had Southern Rhodesia elected to join the Union. The Buxton Committee, ni fact, regarded it as “eminently desirable” before a final decision was taken to ascertain the views of the settlers on a division of Northern Rhodesia so as (1) to unite the eastern portion to Nyasaland; (2) tb make Barotseland a separate administration ; (3) to make the “railway strip a separate colony or to add it to Southern Rhodesia.

No such inquiry appears to have been held, and the decision of the Colonial Office tio erect- Northern Rhodesia into a Crown Colony renders it superfluous. A Legislative Council on which elected representatives of the white settlers will have seats should meet the wishes of that community for some years, and time ■will show whether the division contemplated by the Buxton Committee is, in the end, the proper course, or whether, ultimately, Northern Rhodesia as a whole will be drawn into the orbit of South Africa.