TROPICAL AFRICA

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXX, Issue 4891, 3 September 1936, Page 6

TROPICAL AFRICA

COLONIAL SERVICE. FORMER RHODES SCHOLAR. Some interesting facts concerning the British Protectorate at Uganda were given to a “Post” reporter by Mr. J. C. Dakin, of Invercargill, who arrived in Wellington recently from Sydney. Mr. Dakin left New Zealand as a Rhodes Scholar in 1930, and went to Uganda as an administrative cadet in 1932. He was recently promoted to the position of assistant district officer. He said that the Uganda Protectorate lay to the north of Lake Victoria Nyanza, in Central Africa. Its population' numbered about 4,000,000, including about 2000 Europeans and a few thousand Indians, who were engaged in trade, either as buyers or as

middlemen, in the cotton industry. At the present time Uganda was one of the most prosperous British colonies in the world, and this was due largely to the steadily-increasing cotton crop, which, with the possible exception of India, was the largest in the British Empire. The natives grew the cotton, and the price they received for it enabled them to live at a standard considerably higher than was usual in Africa.

An administrative officer in Uganda, said Mr. Dakin, had many and varied duties to deal with. It was possible for him to be requested to act as tax collector, licensing authority, township authority, and Magistrate and registrar. He retained the essential function, however, as representative of the Government in all questions of native policy. Chieftainships were established as far as possible on the basis of the-old native tribal system. Each chief was put in charge of a definite area, and made responsible to the district officer for the maintenance of law and order and the collection of taxes in the area under his jurisdiction.

Owing to the work of the Christian churches established in Uganda over

fifty years ago, the standard of education was unusually high. Recently five natives passed the Cambridge University entrance examination. Also, several natives were registered medical practitioners, qualified to practise in Uganda.

Mr. Dakin will spend about four months in the Dominion before returning to Uganda. At Oxford he went to Trinity College and studied modern languages. He took his B.A. in this subject in 1932. During his second year at Oxford he took a tropical African service course, and gained the University diploma in anthropology in prej)aration for his administrative work in Uganda.

Mr. P. C. Minns, of Auckland, who was the other Rhodes Scholar in 1930, is also in the Colonial administrative service in Uganda.