Racial Problems in Africa: a Suggestion

Abstract

MUCH interest has been aroused by a suggestion for dealing with the native problem in East and South Africa, which has been put forward by Col. Carbutt, Chief Native Commissioner for Southern Rhodesia. Writing in the annual publication appearing under the auspices of the Native Affairs Department, and pointing to the problems which arise from the development side by side of the white and black populations, it seems that he advocates the formation of a dominion in which the interests of the black population would be paramount. Such a dominion, which would permit of the civil and political development to the full of the black population, might, it is suggested, comprise the present territories of Uganda, Tanganyika, Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, where white settlement and development have not reached a stage, such as that, for example, in Kenya and Southern Rhodesia, which would prove an insuperable obstacle to this policy. Inevitably, some sacrifice would be involved, but in other areas, in compensation, the interests of the white population would be recognised as paramount. Col. Carbutt stresses the argument, of which indeed the force must be patent to everyone, that a solution of the native problem is vital for the future of the commonwealth of British peoples, and at the same time maintains that such a solution as he suggests would be acceptable to, and indeed welcomed by, the natives themselves. It would appear already to have been received with some measure of approval in Africa, if mainly as representing an advance toward the idea of a federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, or even of a united East and South Africa.