Balancing Act

When able, ambitious Iain Macleod asked Harold Macmillan for a crack at running the Colonial Office after the 1959 elections, he knew he was taking on a post that could break or make a politician. Last week African nationalists, white settlers and a sizable bloc of Tory M.P.s all had a try at breaking Macleod in a bitter fight over the political future of racially divided Northern Rhodesia. At stake, along with Macleod's neck, is survival of the entire Central African Federation, a wobbly, three-state union as big as Texas, California and New York.

Copper-rich Northern Rhodesia supplies most of the federation's revenues. Racially, it is the pivotal state, lying between Nyasaland, which is almost all black and slated for black rule, and Southern Rhodesia, whose 215,000 white settlers intend to cling to power indefinitely. Macleod last week sprang a proposed new constitution on Northern Rhodesia's 73,000 whites and 2,280,000 blacks. As ingenious as it was complex, it was designed to give Africans an equal voice with the whites in government.

Two Rolls. Voters will be divided into two rolls, one mostly white, the other mostly black. Each will elect 15 members of the legislature. The remaining 15 will be elected by both rolls under a percentage system that will ensure both the black and white voting blocs the power to veto any candidate. Though London's Daily Mirror called it "too clever by half," the plan's intent was clear: to give swing power to moderates of both races.

But Northern Rhodesia's black leaders want total power, and its whites are not prepared to relinquish any. As the constitutional talks in London dragged on for weeks, the white settlers boycotted them, while the black leaders attended and fumed. When Macleod finally gave both sides a look at his proposed compromise, they erupted. In Salisbury, Federal Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky, a strapping ex-boxer who speaks for the white settlers, stormed: "The vicious influence of African nationalism has apparently turned the bone marrow of many metropolitan countries to jelly. I intend to stem that tide if it is within my power." Northern Rhodesia's leading black nationalist, Kenneth Kaunda, in pressing for the black majority rule he had promised his followers back home, condemned the constitution as "British betrayal." Warned Harry Nkumbula, who is Kaunda's chief black rival: "Anything can happen." Sir Roy's answer was to call up 5,000 army reserves to "deal with any insurrection."

Tory Trouble. For a time, Macleod's proposal split the Tories almost as badly as it did the Rhodesians. A group of 97 backbenchers, including not only the usual hard core of empire tub thumpers but an important moderate bloc as well, introduced a motion in Commons urging Macleod to go slow. The right wing was furious at Macleod and hinted that he might be forced to resign. Snapped Columnist Peregrine Worsthorne in the Sunday Telegraph: "He actually seems to be enjoying the job of presiding over the dissolution of the British Empire."

But Macleod, with Macmillan's Cabinet solidly behind him, turned all of his smooth skill to winning over the dissident Tories. After a series of closed-door meetings, most of the Tory rebels were ready to let their motion die.

First Gong. The plan must still be sold to the Northern Rhodesians, and that will be harder. Only the moderate multiracial Liberal Party, which stands to win a good number of the swing seats, endorsed the scheme. Kaunda and his fellow nationalists might eventually cooperate, on the theory that the new constitution is at least a big step forward. But that will still leave the toughest nut to crack--the white settlers. In the Northern Rhodesian capital of Lusaka, the five elected members of the governing executive council, all members of Welensky's United Federal Party, resigned in protest. An extremist white mob met in a Lusaka movie house, angrily blamed its troubles on the United States Information Service, which had been 'Inflaming Africans." Warned Welensky: "The gong has only sounded for the first round."

Welensky toyed with the idea of calling a federal election at which the predominantly white voters would choose independence from Britain. But the move would have no legality in Britain's eyes, since both Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland are still protectorates. The third member of the federation, Southern Rhodesia, is a self-governing colony and has threatened to quit the federation if Northern Rhodesia ever came under black domination. This would also be illegal. And it is an ineffective threat to black nationalists, who have hated federation as an instrument of white rule ever since it was set up in 1953; they would be delighted to see the federation break up.

In Macleod's dogged mind, the greater danger is not bruised white feelings but open black rebellion. Warned Kenneth Kaunda recently: continued white domination of Northern Rhodesia would bring "an explosion of a far-reaching nature" that would "by contrast make Kenya's Mau Mau seem a child's picnic.''

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