Host to Rebels

Through the fogs and damps of London drift thousands of Africans, a long way from the sunlit ease of their homelands. They live in bleak, crowded rooming houses in Netting Hill and Paddington, find their entertainment in smoky cellar nightclubs that are loud with West Indian steel bands, bongo drums and maracas. They are genuinely puzzled when the Jumbles (a corruption of John Bulls) object to the noise and the dawn revelry. "What harm do we do?" asked an African last week. "We like to dance and sing, and we've worked hard all day and till late at night. The only time I have to enjoy myself is when I finish work."

On Trestles. But London has another meaning for Africans than just a place to work and play. It is the city where Mazzini plotted the independence of a unified Italy, where Karl Marx labored through 34 years to create Communism, where Sun Yat-sen planned the death of the Manchu Empire and the birth of the Chinese Republic. Historically, London has always given asylum to political exiles and revolutionaries, and the Africans are no exceptions--even though much of their plotting is in effect against Britain itself, or at least against the British colonial rule of their countries.

Two basement rooms in Gower Street are headquarters for the Committee of African Organizations. Working at tiny desks, surrounded by trestle tables loaded with duplicating machine, proofs and pamphlets, each African concentrates on his job regardless of the surrounding conversation, loud argument and clatter of machines. When the rooms overflow, the conversations move outside to the cellar steps or across the road to a cheap cafe. At headquarters one morning last week were representatives from the Southern Rhodesian Congress Committee Abroad, the Revolutionary Front for National Independence of Portuguese Colonies, the Tanganyika Students Association, the National Association of Socialist Students' Organizations and South Africa's African National Congress.

Drums for Independence. West Africans, who number about 7,000 in London, center on the dreary red brick building of the West African Students Union in Warrington Crescent. East Africans throng the tall, modern Georgian building near Marble Arch called East Africa House, a combination university hostel and West End club. East Africa House is subsidized by the individual colonial governments, but members also pay an annual subscription. The different nationalities generally group together. In the pleasant bar, Moslem Somalis sit in one corner drinking Coca-Cola; a group of Kenyans sip martinis, Tanganyikans have their whiskies, and a Uganda engineer drinks beer by himself. All the talk is of politics, both international (a majority held that Khrushchev was right and Eisenhower wrong on the U-2 question) and domestic. Where West Africans have little time for fun and games ("except," said one, "when we celebrate each other's independence days and get out the drums and dance"), East Africans take girls out on dates, drop over to a friend's house for a drink after dinner, or "look in at the cinema."

Silent in the Streets. The political talk is largely leftwing, and nationalism is still the main subject. "It's inevitable," said a tall Tanganyikan in hound's-tooth tweeds. "When our country is at such a dramatic point in its history, we are eager to be a part of it." Black South Africans in London number scarcely a dozen. "Only the safe ones get sent to British universities," said a student, "and they will not do anything while here to prejudice their futures back home." Privately, and to British friends they can trust, they sound off like a series of rockets on every aspect of South African life. "But the moment we step outside into the street, we are silent again."

Most Africans have to find jobs as well as attend school, for only a few have scholarships or wealthy parents. Explains Geoffrey Adumah, 39, who is taking his final bar exams: "In Ghana we have big families because we have more than one wife. Family members band together to send the brilliant one to London to study and improve himself. But it is not always enough. For myself, I have to work as a kitchen helper in the evening. I'm in a lawyer's chamber in Middle Temple in the day. I study in between. It's the only work I can get-no one here will give you anything else."

Question of Respect. Adumah has made several visits to Communist Czechoslovakia, where he has been warmly entertained by his Red hosts. He contrasts those visits with life in London, where he has lived for six years. "If there are two empty seats on a bus, an Englishman will choose the other one, not the one beside me," he says. "Nobody wants you in his house. I pay $10.35 weekly for this room out of my $19 pay. It is lonely here in the winter. We have nowhere to go. At home, we are always strolling outside. And the churches-they are the biggest hypocrites Of all."

Dozens of British do-good organizations dabble at improving race relations, and individuals give their time to help run community centers and mixed black-and-white clubs. "But a lot of them make you feel as though you were receiving charity or as though you personally were a social problem," complained a Nigerian girl. Just before Parliament rose, Labor's Sir Leslie Plummer introduced a bill making it an offense to discriminate against colored people.

Most London Africans, who will one day be members of the ruling class in their native lands, share either the bone-deep bitterness of Adumah or the puzzled frustration of the girl from Nigeria. At the Shah Restaurant, off Gower Street, a haunt of African intellectuals, Tanganyika's Martin Kazuka explained: "You can put through an Act of Parliament, if you like, or set to work educating your children-both will take a long time. But the real thing that will solve these problems of prejudice is the independence and progress of our African countries. Only by our achievements as free nations will we earn your respect and friendship."

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