CENTRAL AFRICA: New State

In the tree-lined Southern Rhodesian capital of Salisbury (pop. 53,000), jovial Sir Godfrey Huggins, 70, was sworn in last week as Prime Minister of British Central Africa, the brand-new federation of the British protectorates of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland and the self-governing colony of Southern Rhodesia. Sir Godfrey adjusted his spectacles, tuned in his hearing aid and almost shouted his oath of allegiance to the Crown. For Sir Godfrey, a lively and sure-handed surgeon with a flair for colonial politics, a 30-year dream had come true.

In his 20 years as Southern Rhodesia’s Prime Minister, he badgered London for a federation of the three colonies. Northern Rhodesia, rich in copper, needed Southern Rhodesia’s coal; both colonies needed Nyasaland’s ample supply of African labor. “A black front is advancing from the Gold Coast, a white front [Boer South Africa] is moving from the south,” he explained. He believed that the federation would save Central Africa from becoming “the clashing point of those two fronts.”

With the swearing in of the Prime Minister (who also assumed the posts of Defense, Finance and External Affairs), the Federation was in business—and already beset by disquieting signs of the racial clash it was supposed to forestall. Fearful that Federation would open the door to a flood of land-grabbing whites, Nyasaland’s African tribes were kicking up trouble (TIME, Sept. 14). Last week angry crowds assaulted some of Sir Godfrey’s Nyasaland tax collectors and chased some of the pro-Federation tribal chieftains into the bush. Beyond the crocodile-infested Shire River, a white district commissioner and his family were cut off by another mob; troops and police had to shoot their way through the jungle to get them out.