The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1926. WEST AFRICA.

Waikato Times, Volume 100, Issue 16712, 30 January 1926, Page 4

The Waikato Times With which is Incorporated The Waikato Argus. SATURDAY, JANUARY 30, 1926. WEST AFRICA.

One by one the peoples of the ! West African Colonies have been given a voice in the management of their own affairs, and the announcement at Accra recently of the new Constitution for. the Gold Coast marks another important step in the direction of self-government. Within the last year or two the elective element has been introduced into the Governments of Nigeria and of Sierra Leone, where Africans sit with Europeans in the Council Chamber. In the Gambia, the smallest, but the oldest British settlement in Africa, although the vote has not yet been granted to the people, the Legislative Council has its proportion of unofficial members, including representatives of the natives themselves. The new Constitution of the Gold Coast is framed on generous lines. It provides for the election of fourteen unofficial members in a Council of twenty-nine, and affords full opportunity for the Omanhins (or paramount chiefs) to meet and to eiect their own spokesmen. The very fact that their duties will bring the head chiefs together at stated intervals should make for progress and for unity, quite apart from the task of nominating their representatives , which will be their first charge. The Omanhins themselves have already given evidence of their fitness to take a share in the responsibilities of government. Under the old system their chiefs sat in the Council, and men like Afori Alta, the wealthy and powerful Omanhin of Akimabauka have long been familiar with Parliamentary procedure. It was this chief who, when the Prince of Wales attended the meeting of the Council, presented the address of welcome which —placed in the hollow of an elephant tusk —did 'honour to "Ohcne Ba," the Great King's son. It is little short of a miracle that the span of a single lifetime should bridge the gap between the bloodstained human sacrifices of Kumasi and the parliamentary debates of the Chamber of Accra. In days of old the Omanhin's "stool" was the symbol of his power. More than that, it was revered by all as a shrine that contained the soul of the tribe and the spirits of its ancestors. The sacred stools still remain, hut the mind of the native is gradually * turning to the.

more practical, if less picturesque, seat in the Legislative Council as the real place of power. Naturally the movement towards self-government is far more advanced in the towns and in the coastal regions than in those distant villages where the roll of the talking drum still echoes from hill to hill. Mixture of races, and contact with the new world have given the native of Accra and Secdndi a more cosmopolitan outlook on life than that of his fellows farther inland, and the careful provision in the new Constitution for wider municipal powers is a reflection of the active participation in civic life that is already the rule. It must never be forgotten that the proper education of the native is the only way of ensuring that the privileges whicn have now been granted will beneficially used. For this reason the new Constitution should be read side by side with the scheme for the establishment of the Prince of Wales College at Achimota, five miles from Accra. Here old and unsuitable methods of purely literary education have been abandoned in favour of., a system of training in character, in which both the environment and the ethnic composition of the student are taken into account. Nothing is better calculated to promote industrial and political progress on the West Coast than the training of its people in their own country. The alternative system—that a few of them should make a hurried trip to England, to return to their homes with an ill-digested smattering of Enropean education — has wrought more harm than good in other parts of the Empire and causes only too often unrest and dissatisfaction If the native is to be educated in politics he must be educated slowly Playing at politics has a dangerous fascination for peoples unused to the game; but it does not; as a rule, add much to the annual output of their cocoa gardens and their copra plantations. A great responsibility, greater to-day than ever before, rests on Achimota; it js the members of its staff, and those students who in their turn will teach thousands of their countrymen, who will make or mar this experiment, the latest example of the resolve of the British race to let the African peopie themselves help in the ruling of Africa.