Dawn in Nyasaland, by Guy Clutton-Brock

[p037] Dawn in Nyasaland. By Guy Clutton- Brock (Hodder Pocket Books, 3s. 6d.).. The dawn breaking in Africa is very romantic. But not in Nyasaland, where the African’s communal life is being broken up by the change ‘from communal land-holding to a complete system of individua] tenure ... toa peasant farming structure operating in a market economy’. Through federation his land plot is reduced. infertility sets in. The federationists are transferring Europe wholesale to Nyasaland. The African is deprived of his traditional social security. In Europe such de- generation of a full social life is re- placed by the welfare state. In Africa it is planned for him to go to the industrial city to provide cheap labour. Western capitalists are en- couraged to invest profitably. The profit is that of the money-owners and the highly-paid, semi-skilled European immigrants. Guy Clutton-Brock’s book not only analyses the basis of the Central African plan and disturbances but contains facts and figures that must be known by anyone interested in the colonies. One discovers sanguine truths like the utilizing of profits from beer parlours for municipal develop- ment. The laws are over-coded in the name of the rule of law. Partnership means the enterprising African join- ing in a society where the measure of personality is the possession of wealth and property. Land values inflate. He loses all wealth and personality. There are instances of Welensky out- doing Verwoerd, like the proscription of the South African National Con- gress in Rhodesia. The Nyasalanders know these facts. They also know they lose economi- cally from federation. They lose their human dignity, by the carrying of passes on their persons. One might disagree with Clutton- Brock on occasion, as when he shows how Christianity was betrayed in Africa. From the early history of colonialism Christianity was meant to deceive the people. But one cannot help respecting the manner in which he sums up the issue at stake in colonial Africa. It has been appro- priately summed up by Sir Roy Welensky himself: ‘It is time we took a stand on the issue of whether civilization is to remain here. That is whether you and I, as Europeans, are to remain, and whether on that basis this federation is to go for- ward... . From Mr. Clutton-Brock we learn what that civilization is—capitalist ex- ploitation and denial of a full social life. ADE OLU. Torture, Ltd? Gangrene. With an introduction by Peter Benenson. Calder Books, 7s. 6d. A recent news report that French army Officers were attending training courses in ‘torture’ was hardly sur- prising in these times, although they, like their counterparts in other armies and police forces, have always seemed to get on remarkably well without formal instruction. This book docu- ments some brilliant—or should it be clumsy?—-examples of the handiwork of some French and British practi- tioners: a comparatively small sample, it must be said. Here are the accounts of their torture, in Paris itself, by Algerian student suspects, which formed the book ‘La Gangrene’ which was pursued by the de Gaulle govern- ment last summer. A real study in the refinements of the modern Inquisi- tion. There is an account of the Hola Camp massacres and, in be- tween, the remarkable experience of an English officer whose human in- stincts (he rose from the ranks) put him on the wrong side of the brutal- ised agents of colonialism in Kenya and earned him five fantastic months in prison without trial. These valuable documents are pre- ceded by a lengthy disquisition on 35 torture by Mr. Benenson which is, shall we say, tortured. If I have under- stood him aright, torture is wrong because it does not achieve its pur- pose—‘the greater the pain, the less of the truth’, he says. When threatened with torture suspects give wrong and misleading information to save their skins, thus preventing the true facts from being brought to light. Khrush- chev gets the truth quicker than Stalin ever did, &c. Harken, ye interrogators and gaolers the world over, a little kindness goes a long way! If Mr. Benenson’s advice is followed, the army and police will attend courses in extracting information without pain or discomfort.to the victim. And, to save democracy, Ministers will resign when tortures and atrocities perpe- trated by their underlings are brought to light. I did have the feeling, which be- came a certainty when reading this book, that the title had a significance which had escaped its editor. The regimes which use torture exude brutality as a gangrenous wound ‘exudes pus—and the remedy is a surgical operation, not a soothing balm. TOM KEMP. Baron Corvo & Labour