NYASALAND TERROR GREETS MACMILLAN

A CANE struck black bodies. A knee thudded into Africans pleading for symbolic arrest. An officer's boots crashed down on women's bare feet.

The Blantyre police officer responsible for this sadism egged on his junior officers to follow suit. Within view, premier Macmillan munched his specially imported Scotch pheasant and sipped his port wine at a civic luncheon.

Demonstrating Nyasalanders, carrying slogans for Dr. Banda's release and against the Monckton Commission, were slung into cages on three-ton trucks.

Screaming white settlers encouraged the police. Two settlers threatened to smash the camera of a newsreel photographer. One settler rushed out and took a swinging kick at a small boy shrieking: 'It's the only thing the beggars understand.'

As Africans were kicked and rabbit-punched, the 'Empire builders' with gin-and-tonics in their hands sneered and jeered. Others waved and cheered the police on. One moron cynically surveyed the plight of the Africans and remarked: 'Funny little monkeys, aren't they.'

Afterwards Macmillan blandly said: 'They were all most courteous and smiling.'

The fury and anger of the settlers is not to be wondered at. All their economic and social privileges rest on theories of racial superiority. These uncultured cretins can only maintain themselves by forcibly suppressing the African people.

Peaceful advance

Macmillan told his fellow guests at the luncheon: 'Advance must come in a peaceful way and not by violence. If the African leaders will accept this, then I am sure we can advance.'

No doubt, then, the settlers' minds flickered to Algiers. There, their French counterparts are fighting a similar battle. But right now they have their consolation. Their control of the government is secure and the police force stands solid behind them. Furthermore, the man with the rather vacant face and the walrus moustache can be relied on to give a Christian tinge to clubbing and terror.