CENTRAL AFRICA: Jungle Drums

In all the vast reaches of the Central African Federation, there is no man of consequence more accessible to his white compatriots than the Prime Minister. 30O-lb. Sir Roy Welensky, onetime locomotive engineer. But despite the fact that both Welensky and his four-year-old country—a union of Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland—officially subscribe to the doctrine of “racial partnership,” Welensky has remained aloof from the Africans who make up the majority of its people. “Except for his servants,” says one African leader, “Welensky has hardly spoken to an African since he ascended the political platform.”

Last week, convinced that the time had come “to meet the people and answer my critics,” Sir Roy set off on a five-day tour of “enemy territory”—the bush country of Nyasaland, whose 2,500,000 Africans (there are few whites there) are vociferously anxious to get out of the federation. At one of his early stops in southern Nyasaland, scene of bloody African riots in the days immediately preceding federation, Sir Roy wowed his audience by declaring “I am an African like yourselves. I was born here in Africa.” Said one of his audience: “We like Welensky because he is fat and looks like a chief. We do not like thin men.”

But at Nkata Bay the notables of the Thonga tribe coldly boycotted the Prime Minister’s indaba (powwow). And at Mzimba, headquarters of 170,000 warlike Angonis, the sound of jungle drums rolled down from Mzimba’s leopard-haunted mountains, as Mmbelwa II, paramount chief of the Angoni, said: “Your Honor, Nyasaland belongs to the Africans, not to you and your white men.”