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

 them sufficient power to enforce law and order. Those of us who complained about it when we returned to this country were told that this just was not true, that there was law and order and that everyone else out there was wrong.

I returned to Nyasaland last autumn. While I was there, I again found this great anxiety about the state of law and order in the territory. District commissioners, provincial commissioners and tribal chiefs were expressing the same anxiety. All the time their power is being gradually taken away by Dr. Banda. There was a general feeling that no real attempt was being made to prevent Dr. Banda and his Malawi Congress from becoming a dictatorship with control over everyone in the territory.

When one discovered that the Attorney-General had issued instructions to the police that they were not to initiate proceedings against anyone for violence or incitement to violence without his personal permission, one began to believe that there was great danger there.

While I was waiting to catch my aircraft out of Blantyre, a British journalist came to see me. He had written an article which Dr. Banda did not like and, as a result of it, he was chased and beaten up. He managed to escape, but there followed in the Malawi News an editorial calling for justice to be done to this man, and it finished with these words: "A wicked man like this must not be tolerated. We do not care who punishes him or how he is punished, but he must be punished." This young man, who had a wife and young child there, considered that this was a direct incitement to violence against his person and family. I believed that it was, too. He asked me to make representations to the Government on his behalf. He had gone to the police. In due course, when I reached Salisbury, I saw the British High Commissioner and told him, having written to him in advance, about this man's anxiety and asked that the Governor should have his attention drawn to this case. It seemed to me a blatant incitement to violence which, if allowed to go unchecked, would be a direct invitation to people to continue the reign of violence in that territory.

When I got back here, I wrote to the First Secretary about the matter and expressed my anxiety. I said that I had made direct official representations to the British High Commissioner on behalf of a British subject in that territory and asked him if he would look into the matter. Later I asked a Question in the House, but I still did not get a satisfactory answer. I was merely told that it seemed to the Attorney-General that there was no incitement to violence in the words of which I complained.

This sort of thing disturbs me greatly, and I am not the only one who is disturbed. We now learn that in recent weeks the Malawi police have been beating up Europeans and Asians. The latest thing, as appears from the newspapers today, is that Mr. Chipembere has made a threat to Europeans saying that if they do not behave themselves they will net just be deported—that would be the legal way—but that the Malawi Youth will get after them and will terrorise them out of the country. This is not a state of affairs which one can tolerate in a country at anytime. I am therefore amazed that my right hon. Friend should suggest today that law and order are being maintained in Nyasaland. Surely if independence is handed to a State in that sort of condition there is little hope of it being a peaceful transition to independence.

I warn my right hon. Friend that I have recently had telegrams from people in Blantyre. There is a grave fear that the regular official police will start fighting the Malawi Youth police. If that happens there will be the most terrible conflict. There is much more danger in Nyasaland than there is in Southern Rhodesia, and I beg my right hon. Friend to take seriously the warnings which have been coming out of Nyasaland. All the warnings from Member of Parliament after Member of Parliament and from every visitor who goes there and comes back here have been ignored and brushed aside. It is said,"This just is not so. What you have seen does not mean that there is no law and order. Do not believe what people have told you. They do not know; we do".

This is one of the great tragedies of Africa. There have been people in this country who thought that they knew better than the people on the spot. TI [sic] cannot help feeling that there are still those in this Chamber who, with all the good