Page:MALAYSIA BILL RHODESIA AND NYASALAND BILL (1) (Hansard, 11 Juli 1963).djvu/27

 On its upper roll it has a voting qualification on the register of 90,000 persons forming almost the entirety of the European population. On its lower roll it has the possibility of registering something like 28,000 Africans, 1 per cent. of the total African population of the country. Very naturally, in the last election the Africans refused to engage in this humiliating charade of an election. In fact, only 1,400 Africans out of a total population approaching 3 million took part in the election. Today we have in the Southern Rhodesian Parliament 15 African Members of Parliament who represent, on average, 90 votes each. That would hardly qualify for a parish council election in this country.

When we talk, as many hon. Members do, about the possibility of Southern Rhodesia obtaining independence without any change in her constitution, we should remember the words written by Lord Milner about this part of the world in 1899: "The spectacle of thousands of British subjects kept permanently in the position of helots…does steadily undermine the influence and reputation of Great Britain and the respect for the British Government within the Queen's Dominions." Lord Milner was writing at that time about the British Outlanders who were deprived of political enfranchisement by the Boers, but the principle seems exactly the same. Whereas the deprivation of political enfranchisement of British subjects at that time led only a few months later to the Boer War, the deprivation of political enfranchisement of the overwhelming mass of the African population in Southern Rhodesia will soon conjure up very grave problems indeed for that country.

A great deal has been said in the House and in Southern Rhodesia about the possibility that if we dissolve the Federation and do not, concurrently with the granting of independence to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, grant it to Southern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia would claim and take independence herself. It is said that we would have no power to prevent such an unconstitutional act from being performed. This is absolutely true. We have no military power which could stop Southern Rhodesia taking independence—but that is certainly no argument for conniving in that kind of conduct.

In all seriousness, having witnessed the way in which the Southern Rhodesian Government acted with caution and discretion at the Victoria Falls Conference, I do not believe that the Southern Rhodesian Government would take this action, because if it were to do so it would be embarking upon a course fraught with danger for itself. Lying in the very heart of Africa, Southern Rhodesia would cut herself off not only from the main stream of African development and from the African markets lying all around her to the North—but she would cut herself off from the Commonwealth and virtually the entire membership of the United Nations. If she took this action, Southern Rhodesia would be enlaagered and alone with South Africa and Mozambique and Angola.

Some of my hon. Friends who recognise the possibility of Southern Rhodesia seizing independence and those outside the House who advocate that she should take this step are no doubt very true and dear friends of Southern Rhodesia, but if their advice were taken they would be rendering a disastrous disservice to the people who live in that country, disastrous both in political and economic terms.

It would be disastrous in political terms because we know the views expressed at the Pan-African Conference at Addis Ababa. We know what would be the reaction of the newer Afro-Asian members of the Commonwealth. I think that I am right in saying that the older and once called"White Dominions" of the Commonwealth, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, have all warned Southern Rhodesia in private that they could not accept her as an independent member of the Commonwealth with her existing constitution. In a wider sphere, there is the probability not only that a Government in exile would be established on the borders of Southern Rhodesia but that that Government in exile and not the established Government of Southern Rhodesia would be recognised by the mass of the world.

In economic terms, the dangers of such a course of action are very grave. Even at the moment, Southern Rhodesia has seen a fall in her industrial investment from £14 million in 1960 to £6 million in 1961, and I understand that there was a comparable fall in 1962. She has seen this happen just at the time when there has been a great influx of capital from white business, not into Salisbury, but into Lusaka underneath an African Government. She needs the markets in