Votes v. Violence

From Cape Town to Casablanca, across the length of Africa, the answer to one question takes many forms--bloodshed, brutality, bigotry, benevolence. The question: Can 5,000,000 Europeans learn to live in harmony with 200 million Africans, many of whom are learning that poverty and servitude need not be their lot? Last week, under quite different circumstances, two men of Africa tried to bring in moderate answers.

In Kenya. In Mau Mau-scarred Kenya, where 40,000 whites rule 6,000,000 mostly illiterate Negroes, Ernest Vasey, 53, the cigar-chewing Minister for Finance, shocked the diehards by demanding a vote for Africans. Vasey urged that a limited number of educated Africans be allowed to participate in Kenya's next election--not on the high-minded ground that democracy demands it, but out of the hardheaded consideration that the alternative to votes is likely to be violence.

"I recognize," said Vasey, a man whom Kenyans listen to, "that what a number of us would regard as the 'wrong type' of African might be elected. But it is better that such opinion should be out in the open where it can be seen, than driven underground where it is whispered and often unheard until fairly well consolidated." The whites, he warned, must recognize that "because an African voices a grievance, he is not necessarily disloyal."

In the Congo. A thousand miles to the West, in the prosperous Congo, Belgian Governor General Leo Petillon, 52, spoke out still more boldly. To the 14 million Negroes and 70,000 whites he announced a drastic change in Belgium's successful policy of economic advance but no votes --for whites or blacks. Henceforth, educated Africans will 1) be gradually assimilated into the Congo's administration, 2) get a voice in local councils.

A diminutive (5 ft. 3 in.) lawyer known as the "Little Lion," tough-minded Governor Petillon took as his authority a recent promise made by King Baudouin: "human relations have now to be tackled; economic development no longer is enough." Last month the Little Lion ordered all Congolese bars to admit Africans so long as they behave well and are properly dressed. When some owners refused to admit Negroes unless they first submitted to a medical checkup, Petillon bluntly warned them to obey his decree or get out.

"There are still too many Europeans," said the Little Lion, "who, invested with authority or assuming an authority of their own, instill into their relations with the natives an odious character of haughty condescension, of offensive familiarity and, sometimes, of rudeness or brutality. There are still people--and I hope that those I aim at will recognize themselves--men and women who behave here as in a conquered country."

Sin through Pride. At the same time, warned Petillon, the Negroes, and especially the evoluants or educated ones, must learn to get along with the whites. "The evoluants sin through pride. And there is no more serious--and may I add --revolting form of pride than that cultivated by those who, having but little merit and suffering from their own inadequacy, take on the attitude of martyrs. There is no more stupid attitude than to blame every difficulty which is merely the result, of life itself on the European authority."

Petillon's new policy of selective assimilation will not make the Congo a democracy, for the government, in the person of the Little Lion, fully intends to retain "control through veto." Yet in the absence of a white-dominated parliament, benevolent despotism in the Congo may do more than some African democracies to bring peace and some kind of assured future for Africa's blacks and whites.

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