White Minorities in Africa

Abstract

E ARE becoming used to the acceleration of political movement in our world. But surely all records of the pace of change have been broken in the continent of Africa during the last few years with the sudden emergence of one state after another from colonial control, or the promise of such emergence in the near future. Whereas the period of colo nialism for Britain's major white and Asian dependencies could be measured in one or two centuries, her black ones, admittedly immeasurably more backward in every aspect, have run the course from annexation to independence or its threshold in little more than half a century. As the tide of independence rises until it covers almost the whole of Africa, with some parts clearly on the edge of sub mergence, certain islands of European control catch the eye. The great majority of the 5,500,000 Europeans who live among the 220,000,000 native peoples of Africa are in the two tem perate extremities, Algeria in the north, South Africa in the south. Here are long-established European populations which are determined not to allow the indigenous population to take control. Algeria is still under metropolitan rule and there the political settlement waits upon a military decision and upon the mind of General de Gaulle. In South Africa the Nationalist gov ernment seems to be sternly marching against the ideas and ex perience of nearly all the rest of the world, defying economics as it goes, and is apparently bound for disaster. But not yet. The unwavering resolution of a small and lonely nation, which can see no alternative between domination and disaster, may long hold down a black majority which so far shows few signs of being competent at revolution. The patches of African political landscape which seem to be in the most immediately equivocal position lie in the British territories between South Africa and Ethiopia. Here are small areas of white settlement, containing some 300,000 people, by no means all true settlers, scattered amongst an African popula tion of more than 20,000,000. Will this small minority be able to control the rate of the rising flood of Africanism? Will they float buoyantly off, still a secure and influential minority, even w