Page:MALAYSIA BILL RHODESIA AND NYASALAND BILL (2) (Hansard, 11 Juli 1963).djvu/18

 Africans, even in Southern Rhodesia, have got relatively worse off. For instance, the Kariba Dam produced electricity, but it was for European homes and European-owned factories. The African homes did not receive this electricity, certainly not in the early stages. It must be remembered that even in the Northern Rhodesian mines most of the wealth went to American or United Kingdom investors, while the total wages of the African miners were less—about a half, I believe—of the total of the wages being received by European miners, although the African miners exceed the European ones fourfold.

It is no good talking to Africans about the need for economic progress if they are denied the opportunity of political advance and if they can see visible effects of discrimination all around them. It has been only too clear, certainly in Southern Rhodesia, that this discrimination has existed. I have in mind, for instance, the Land Apportionment Act under which more than half of the land area, an area larger than England and Wales combined, has been allocated to the European population of 200,000 or so; the population of one town in England.

I am glad that the Federation is being wound up, because I consider that it has been an imposition on the majority of the population of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. It has held back beneficial economic progress in many spheres, particularly agricultural development in Southern Rhodesia for the African population, and also in Northern Rhodesia, where large areas of the country have been neglected because too great a part of the proceeds from copper has gone to bolster up the federal economy rather than being used for developments there—for example, the Kafue Flats development which should have been started many years ago.

I am also glad that it is being wound up for a personal reason. In 1959 I had the experience of being prohibited from the territory when I had the temerity to say, during some discussions and speeches in Salisbury and Bulawayo, that the African people had the right, along with Europeans, to share in the running of their own country. I appealed to them then and I appeal to them now to remember that whatever happens as one gets to political advancement they must learn to live with the Europeans. They should not regard the Europeans as enemies but should co-operate with them.

On the occasion when I spoke in Salisbury I well remember the favourable response to my words that there was from the crowd. I have no doubt that the majority of Africans in Southern Rhodesia—as in Kenya and Ghana—want to have friendly relations with the white people in their territories. They want to use the whites' talents and skills to the full; but on the basis of human dignity and equality and not on the basis of the white man trying to dominate them with political power which they enjoy through fraudulent constitutions.

I am pleased to think that I shall now have an opportunity of returning soon to Zimbabwe, which is what Rhodesia will come to be called and which, incidentally, happens to be of my own name.

It has been regrettable that the Welensky administration particularly, although it realised for many years that the Federation would undoubtedly come to an end, has done its best to delay the acceptance of this fact. If, years ago, when these facts were becoming only too clear even for them—say, five or even four years ago—they had grasped the nettle of bringing the Federation to an end as a white-dominated Federation, there would have been an opportunity to produce changes in the Southern Rhodesian Constitution which might, perhaps, have enabled the federation between the three territories to have continued.

I believe that, even now, if the Southern Rhodesian Constitution could be changed within the next few months, if it could be made clear that the African population would have an opportunity of participating in the democratic administration of their own country, there would be a possibility of continuing the economic links which so many speakers opposite have described as important; but they cannot be continued if the Southern Rhodesian Government continues to be white-controlled. It is, therefore, in the interests of the white population as well as of the African population in Southern Rhodesia that there should be fairly speedy changes in the constitutional structure of that territory. As the hon. Member for Lancaster (Mr. Berkeley) said, the situation is entirely different from that which the