Welensky Memoirs

South Seas Message In Welensky Memoirs

Readers who require an antidote to Sir Hugh Foot’s A Start in Freedom (reviewed last month), have the remedy at hand in Sir Roy Welensky’s 4,000 Days—The Life and Death of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Apart from the fact that Sir Hugh and Sir Roy are both members of the genus contemporary man, all else is sheer coincidence.

SIR HUGH believes that to be human is qualification enough for a vote and that if there are enough of the same kind of votes, they should rule.

Sir Roy believes that all humans are not born equal and that until, with the effluxion of time, they be come more equal, the one-man-one vote principle, or rule by weight of numbers, is nonsense.

Although the subjects of their re spective books are quite different, their battleground is the same and to read both within a short time is a salutary experience in the divergence of men’s minds today.

Sir Roy never mentions Sir Hugh in his book—although Dingle Foot gets some attention. Sir Hugh merely lumps Sir Roy in with his other pet hates—Tshombe, Salazar and Verwoerd.

What causes Sir Hugh mental anguish—for example, the British stand over Southern Rhodesia in the UN at the end of 1962 which led to Foot’s resignation from the UK Mission—gives Sir Roy satisfaction.

And the things that give Sir Hugh much sentimental pleasure—such as hauling down the Union Jack on yet another newly independent territory— probably causes Sir Roy to be sick to his stomach.

Foot is always a gentleman. Even when he disagrees with the British Government, he does so in pained, diplomatic language. Welensky wastes no time on niceties. He considered that the British Government, over 10 years from the creation of the Federation to its dissolution at the end of 1963, let him down. He says so and spares no one.

South Seas Interest At no time, even at his most angry, could Sir Hugh be imagined describ ing (as Sir Roy does), a message from Mr. Harold Macmillan as having the “customary thick coating of Mac millan treacle and cottonwool,”

Both books are of singular interest to many in the South Pacific, Welensky’s particularly so. Even allowing handsome discount for pre judice, his description of the back room vacillations of the British Gov ernment between 1956 and 1963, is sufficient to stop anyone still in a vulnerable position in his tracks.

Roy Welensky was the 13 th child of a Polish migrant father and a ninth generation Afrikaner mother.

He was born on the wrong side of the tracks in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia, in 1907.

He left school at 14, had a number of dead-end jobs, at 19 was champion heavyweight boxer of Rhodesia and at 21 joined Rhodesian Railways as a fireman. It was as an engine-driver that he entered politics as an un official member of the Northern Rhodesian Legislative Council in 1938.

In late 1948, the then Labour Government of the UK called a con ference in London to consider the

uture of Britain’s dependencies in ifrica. Welensky was a member of le Northern Rhodesian delegation nd it was at this time that he began > consider a closer association be veen the two Rhodesias—first as an malgamation, then as a federation n the Australian pattern, and in [uding Nyasaland.

The Federation had a stormy birth, idia had achieved independence and le attention of the British intellectual eft was free to focus on Africa and iricans.

From 1947, African nationalists, ot Indians, were lionised and the mse of Africa for the Africans— r more correctly, perhaps, for the frican political elite—found powerful [lies in some churchmen, such as anon Collins (better known these ays for his activities on the Ban the omb Committee of 100); the Rev. [ichael Scott, of the Africa Bureau; id the Church of Scotland, which ad traditionally strong links with yasaland.

The Banda Problem Most of their activity was centred *ound Dr. Hastings Banda, who had ft his native Nyasaland in 1935 and ad been practising medicine in orth London since 1941. From MB, as an absentee, he became in easingly interested in African ilitics, increasingly ambitious, in easingly opposed to plans to fed ate the three States. Banda was the >ck on which, 10 years after the ory Government founded the Fed ation, the same Tory Government acked it wide open.

The Federation came into being in sptember, 1953, with Lord Malvern □rmerly Sir Godfrey Huggins), as •ime Minister. When Malvern re ed in 1956, Welensky inherited the jst—and the Suez crisis.

Suez, according to Welensky, was e watershed. After it, Britain no

longer had the will to rule her former overseas territories; all there after was tempered to Mr. Mac millan’s “winds of change” and to shedding the burden of Empire.

“Suez,” he says, “was, or ought to have been, a blazing danger signal to those of us in Africa who still de pended on Britain. For the last time probably in this century Britain tried, along with France, to defend her overseas rights, responsibilities and interests.

“We all know the reaction of the United States and the results of that reaction. We all know that Parlia ment, the Press and the BBC in Britain were deeply and fiercely divided; that the Commonwealth was split, with Australia and New Zea land, as well as ourselves, on Britain’s side and Canada and India against her; and that from Suez there dates that French suspicion and coolness towards Britain which culminated in the flat rejection of her efforts to enter the Common Market.”

From 1956, the cracks that had been cast into the Federation at its birth began to widen and the process of disintegration speeded up after the return of Dr. Banda to Nyasaland in mid-1958. His followers had asked him to come on June 29 but, accord ing to Welensky, Banda never answered and, in fact, on that day, busied himself addressing a meeting in London. Nevertheless a crowd of 2,500 and all the Congress bosses, assembled at Chileka airport to wel come him . . . When the aircraft arrived without Dr. Banda there was wild excitement and the crowd thronged on to the tarmac. Rumours flew around: The Government had withheld telegrams; there was a plot to kill Dr. Banda. The crowd threatened to burn the aircraft , . . and insisted on searching it from nose to tail.”

Federation Died Slowly The crowd was eventually dispersed when Congress leaders telephoned London to find out what had hap pened to the messiah. He arrived a week later.

If the Federation had any chance of fruitful life up to this point it had few after it. Through the various reigns of Lord Home, lain Macleod, Sandys, Maulding and Butler as pre siding deities of Colonial Office or Commonwealth Relations; through Royal Commission and Congo crisis, one by one the props on which the Federation precariously stood were whittled away and the structure was destroyed—“not by our avowed enemies,” says Welensky, “but by

those who called themselves our friends and said they believed in what we had built. They killed it slowly, in the dark and by stealth; and they wept hypocritical tears as they finished the deed. That is the measure of what happened in Britain between 1952 and 1959.”

To the struggle to keep the Fed eration intact, Welensky brought vast tenacity, a capacity for political “in fighting”, as he called it, and, in view of his mixed Jewish-Afrikaans an cestry, a surprisingly naivety in assess ing the upper-class English politicians with whom he assumed he was work ing in a partnership.

In this Welensky was neither Polish, Jewish nor Afrikaans but all Southern Rhodesian, with a long in grained belief in the integrity of the word of the British Government and the thing that was once called the British Empire.

Chequers Weekend

His scepticism of the treacle and cottonwool, of the British political devices of the “Chequers weekend,” the private dinner party, the dear old boys together, came only gradually.

Welensky, whose mind is probably a great deal more devious than his book indicates, writes like an out raged colonial or an angry engine driver. It is a most damning indict ment of the Macmillan Government, and of the men who made up that Government; it throws the whole Congo-Katanga operation into sharp new focus; and presents new facets of African nationalism seldom gleaned through contemporary sources of information.

His book isn’t cricket and, un doubtedly, will be the most unpopular of the year. He outrages all current popular thought, flies in the face of providence but, in a world dedicated to the sweet sauternes of sentiment he produces a draught as vigorous as a pint of good, icy-cold beer. In the humble view of this reviewer, the world would be a better place with a few dozen more like him.—JT. (WELENSKY’S 4,000 DAYS. Published by Collins. 46/-.)

• Unless otherwise stated, all book prices quoted are in Australian currency.