Going Home - Doris May Lessing [113]
I wanted to visit the radio station in Lusaka, which people say is enterprising and efficient. It is listened to by Africans all over the Federation. It broadcasts in various African languages and has programmes of traditional music. But I rang up Central African Airways, was told an aeroplane was leaving early on Monday morning from Salisbury for Nyasaland, and so I could not stay. I took a plane to Southern Rhodesia, leaving Northern Rhodesia, without much regret, behind me.
Having arrived at Salisbury, I was told I had been misinformed about the plane to Nyasaland. There was no plane until Tuesday. My plane to London left on Thursday. Since all the planes are heavily booked I could not afford to miss it. I worked out a rather precarious plan to rush up to Nyasaland for one day, try and see Chief Gomani, who is in considerable trouble with the Government, and then rush back again, taking a chance on getting into a plane at Blantyre. But in the end I decided not to.
It was a big disappointment to me, giving up Nyasaland. I have never been there. Everyone who has speaks of it as the most beautiful country. The Africans I have known from Nyasaland are a fine lot: alert, independent, subtle, proud. And the white people (there are only six thousand of them) are less colour-ridden than anywhere in the Federation.
But it is not like Northern Rhodesia, which has its Copper Belt towns strung out close together, easy to reach. Nyasaland is a long, narrow, mountainous, lake-divided country, with bad roads and widely-scattered towns. Useless to go there for a couple of days.
Being in a paranoiac state of mind just then, I was convinced that all the wrong information that had been given me about the planes was deliberate, part of a plot to prevent me from going there. But now, having recovered, I don’t think so. It was due to the natural inefficiency of the place.
And so I left, to return to London, where people ask: ‘Well, what is the future of the Federation?’
I don’t know.
There are two vital questions to which no one knows the answer. One is, will there be a slump in America? If so, and the price of copper is seriously affected, the very precarious financial structure of Federation can crumble into chaos.
The second is, will the Labour Party get back into power in Britain? If it does, and its Left Wing is strong enough to force a more liberal policy, it is possible African bitterness may be softened. I have heard it suggested that the white settlers, afraid of the Labour Party getting back, may stage some sort of coup d’état, taking complete independence by force or trickery. I don’t think so. I hope not. I hope they have more sense, for I am convinced that if they do the whole place will go up in flames like Kenya.
But the real question, the big imponderable, is this: Just how much are the Africans prepared to take?
It has been said that the epitaph of the white man in Africa will be: He allowed his intelligence and his conscience to become blunted by colour prejudice, and did not realize it until too late.
I am certain only of one thing: that if the Federation does not advance very fast, and with real sincerity of motive, towards complete racial partnership, it must retreat rapidly towards what is happening in the Union of South Africa. There is very little difference even now.
I don’t feel very optimistic. I don’t see how the next decade can be anything else than stormy, bitter and unprofitable.
LONDON,
August 26, 1956
While I was writing the above, I had a letter from the Immigration Officer of the High Commissioner’s Office in London, saying that he wished to see me.
Being familiar with the devious ways of Partnership I wrote asking that he should put what he had to say in writing. But he wrote back saying no, the information