FACING THE WINDS OF CHANGE

Three men of widely differing temperament, views and backgrounds stand out in the white communities of eastern and southern Africa facing the onward rush of black nationalism.

Michael Blundell, 53, bluff, Yorkshire-born farmer, is the closest thing to a liberal leader in Kenya today. Thirty-five years ago, he turned down the chance of a legal career in England after school (Wellington), and with -L-100 and a shotgun made his way to Kenya to work as a farmer. Today Blundell's 1,200 acres of asparagus, pyrethrum and dairy-cattle land, in the lovely Subukia hills about 70 miles northwest of Nairobi, are so prosperous that he can devote most of his time to public affairs.

As leader of the European elected members, and as a member of the emergency Cabinet that fought Mau Mau terrorism, he was as determined as any settler to preserve the sanctity of the "white highlands." But last year, alarmed by the spreading gap between African and European (white) attitudes, he dramatically resigned as Minister of Agriculture and formed the New Kenya Group, a party resolved to break the white highlands monopoly, create a common electoral roll for all races, but preserve a special place for Kenya's 66,000 whites. "We must stop this racialism and build a Kenya nation," he cried, his voice choked with emotion, but the angry farmers of his district shouted, "You are selling us out!" Six weeks ago, Blundell could fairly claim that half the whites in Kenya were behind him; today, after the concessions he made at the constitutional talks in London, experts in Nairobi agree that 10% would be a closer figure.

Sir Roy Welensky, 53, is a burly former prizefighter and locomotive engineer who in 1956 became Prime Minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, a landlocked prairie nation almost twice the size of Texas, whose existence is in such peril that two of its three federated territories are in an official state of emergency. Wedded to a policy of avowed racial "partnership," Sir Roy is in fact guided and moved by a Parliament that rejects a political voice for Africans, and by a public opinion that supports laws and customs not much different from South Africa's--except, say its critics, for the addition of hypocrisy. The son of a Russian-Polish immigrant who gave up a profitable fur trade in the U.S. Midwest to try his luck in the South African diamond rush, husky young Roland Welensky left school at 14 and wandered all over Africa, taking jobs as clerk, butcher and baker, then settled in his native Rhodesia. His success as a union organizer led on to politics.

Sir Roy argues for a qualified franchise not based on "the color of a person's skin," but most of the federation's 7,230,000 Africans regard his reservations as a means of keeping them from effective political power. Nevertheless, Sir Roy continues to argue, "Partnership, moving as fast as social conditions will allow, will give the African the right to play his full part but will not destroy the heritage that the European has created for himself."

Dr. Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd, 59, South Africa's 6-ft. 2-in. Prime Minister, is creator and chief apostle of apartheid, the intricate web of race rules by which 3,000,000 whites hang on to Africa's southern tip by brute force over 11 million nonwhites. A genial mixer, a brilliant scholar (Hamburg, Leipzig, Berlin), Psychology Professor Verwoerd (pronounced Fair-voort) launched the Afrikaans daily Die Transvaler in 1937 and was its editor for eleven years, including the wartime period, when it boldly took a pro-Nazi line. In eight years as Minister of Native Affairs, Verwoerd constructed a maze of laws and procedures to cage the Africans in less desirable places and jobs, using the "separate development" of races as his moral justification.

Verwoerd now dreams of a series of statelets or "Bantustans" in the bush reserves, to which most blacks--those not needed to work in cities and mines--will one day be sent to live. "We should live apart, as the lion and the elephant live apart," he tells native audiences. The banishment distresses the Africans, and its cost is beginning to disturb even his own Boer supporters. This year Verwoerd also hopes to start toward his other main goal--making South Africa a republic to get rid of the last symbol of British authority.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.