Gamble with the Wind

While South Africans jailed and shot blacks last week, the British freed a black who symbolizes demands for Negro self-rule in the shaky Central African Federation to the north. The symbolic figure is Dr. Hastings Banda, 55, fiery, U.S.-educated leader of the Nyasaland African National Congress, who was jailed last year after mass demonstrations much like those now exploding all across South Africa.

It was Britain's able, ambitious Colonial Secretary Iain MacLeod who took the bold gamble. The white Rhodesians who dominate the Central African Federation tried to dissuade him. They pointed out that Banda, self-styled "extremist of the extremists," had fought for a separate, all-black Nyasaland. shouting, "To hell with the federation!" Southern Rhodesia's Prime Minister Sir Edgar Whitehead had even warned darkly that if the blacks gained control in the north, Southern Rhodesia would secede from the federation.

But a week in Central Africa convinced MacLeod that the African "wind of change" was blowing too hard to be contained. There was a chance of bringing whites and blacks together, he concluded --but only if Banda was freed first.

Fearful that Banda's release would set off fresh violence in Nyasaland, Governor Sir Robert Armitage organized an elaborately secret "Operation 1066" to spirit Banda from his jail cell in Southern Rhodesia to meet MacLeod in Zomba. After a go-minute session at Government House, Banda emerged jubilant.

The bush telegraph crackled that Banda was back, and within half an hour of his arrival at a friend's house in nearby Limbe, cheering blacks appeared outside as if by magic to cheer their messiah.

From a balcony, he told his followers that he was going to London soon for constitutional talks. "Do not spoil my work," he warned. "If you listen to me, you will get your own government." MacLeod's gamble was daring but it was not novel. In the long recessional of empire there was plenty of precedent--from Ireland to India to Cyprus--for turning the Queen's prisoner into the Queen's Prime Minister.

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