Dominion Wide

In central Africa, squeezed between the Belgian Congo and Portuguese Mozambique, is a lung-shaped piece of land which last week was shouting lustily for air. The land has no composite name, but, come January 1954, it may well be Rhodesia, the eighth self-governing dominion of the British Commonwealth.

It is an area nearly twice the size of Texas, now divided into one crown colony (Southern Rhodesia) and two protectorates (Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland). The vast majority of its 6,000,000 inhabitants (so far as their wishes are known) do not want to sever their relationship with the British Colonial Office in London. Reason: they are black. In central Africa today, the black man feels he has more to lose in local white governments (e.g., Malan's Union of South Africa) than by rule from a benevolent Britain.

But last week, when the people of the crown colony of Southern Rhodesia went to the polls to decide on federation, the blacks had little or nothing to say about it. The voting qualification was the possession of assets worth $1,400 or an income of not less than $700 a year; only 429 Negroes qualified. Among 40,000 whites who did, 25,500 favored federation. Mau Mauism to the north and Malanism to the south--unhappy extremes

feared by most Southern Rhodesians

figured heavily in the election. The opposition consisted primarily of those who felt that federation's skimpy safeguards of Negro status are still too much. Proponents of federation argue that the resulting dominion will be large enough to grow and prosper, to the benefit of all of its citizens. Their slogan: "Federate and flourish."

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