news/check on southafrica and africa

ON SOUTHAFRICA AND AFRICA
T
EVERY SECOND FRIDAY / 12TH OCT. 196
OL 1 NO 7

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VICEROY
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MANUFACTURED IN SOUTH AFRICA, U.S.A., SWITZERLAND, VENEZUELA, CHILE, PANAMA, GUATEMALA, DENMARK
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NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

THE
EXPERTS
ARE
CONVINCED!
"This Vauxhal
tinction of b
we can recf^f'
not have a'-^^
week-end road te
was one of the happ
have had for many a
behaviour is quiet
cient. The boot is big7
car comfortable, the engine
economical and powerful, seats
are roomy, transmission
smooth, suspension firm and
the handling superb."-Evening
Post. "Vauxhall have produced
a winner in the 1962 Victorl"
-Personality Car Test. "Ac-celeration-the
FB has lots of
it! The standing quarter-mile
results were so good that a
double <strong>check</strong> was made during
test... First run, up 20.6
sec, down 21.1; second run,
up 20.6 sec, down 21.0.
Average; 20.8 - beyond doubt
proving that the sports-type
gear lever is no orna>ment!"-
Car Road Test. "This Jfetj- does
all its own boastingl
Tribune. "The ride and
of a big car are combined'
a big
e
nomy of
to a remarkable
e new Vauxhall
Rand Daily Mail,
d road test of this
ne of the happiest
for many a day...
ictor!"-Personality Car
lour is quiet and
iiNuwe Vauxhall sal baie
. The boot is big,
vriende wen."-Dagbreek en
•ar comfortable, the
Sondagnuus. "Aoceleration-the
economical and powerful,
FB has lots of it! The
seats are roomy, transmission
standing quarter-mile results smooth, suspension firm and
were so good that a double
the handling superb."-Evening
<strong>check</strong>
mrimviNci^i
Post. "Wat ons veral beindruk
was made during test...
Firsl
se
21.ll
sec . I
die gewillige enjin wat
-beyond doubt proving that the
werk so geruisloos doen."sports-type
gear lever is no
Motorgids. "A handsome, clean-
ornament I"-Car Road Test.
cut car of international
"This car does all its own appeal."-S.A. Garage & Motor
boasting!"-Sunday Tribune. Engineer. "Acceleration-the
"Die nuwe Victor sal nog tien FB has lots of it! The
tot vyftien jaar in die toe- standing quarter-mile results
beskou word as 'n motor were so good that a double
odern lyk."-Die Volks- <strong>check</strong> was made during test."
-Sunday Tribune Road Test.
it's VAUXHALL FB for VIVID MOTORING!
\
BUILT BY GENERAL MOTORS, PORT ELIZABETH AND BACKED BY GENERAL MOTORS SERVICE THROUGHOUT SOUTHERN AFRICA
OO- A2iO-Ue
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 flSfc-;

DOWN!
Down! Down! Down! Thousands of feet into the golden rock. Here's
where the seam begins. Drilling. Tunnelling. Mining. Shift change and up to
the surface. Continue the theme to get coal, asbestos, tin, iron, copper.
In mining, above ground and below. Shell plays its part. Example. Developing a
new special dressing for hoist ropes. Fuels for engines. Oils for lubricating.
??T«"=- .*T^
SHELLJ IN THE LIFE OF SOUTH AFRICA
LS263«/lr
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
'•^

NEWS/CHECK ON SOUTHAFRICA AND AFRICA
Vol 1 No 7 CONTENTS 12th Oct 1962
SOUTHAFRICA 5
NEWSPEOPLE 11
AFRICA 12
WORLD/CHECK 18
Coverstory
BRITAIN'S AFRICAN
QUEEN 20
BUSINESS 25
LIVING 28
SPORT 30
ENTERTAINMENT 31
ART 32
PRESS 33
MEDICINE 35
RELIGION 35
EDUCATION 36
SCIENCE 37
BOOKS 39
LETTERS 40
EDITOR OTTO KRAUSE
STAFFWRITCRS Stuart Ballantine
Robert tlodgins
Harald Pakendorf
Michael Shepley
Martin Spring
CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Esme Berman
Olive Hirschhorn
Roy Terry
Madeleine van Biljon
Ruth Weiss
EDITORIAL RESEARCHER Sheila van der Merwe
BUSINESS & ADVERTISING
MANAGER Peter Kamstra
NEWS/CHECK is pubrished by CHECKPRESS
(PTY) LTD at 42 Marshall Street, Johannesburg
Printed by Radford Adiington Limited, Caithness
Street, Ophirton, Johannesburg. Distributed by
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Phone: 83S-40S1 P.O. Box 1742
Registered at the G.P.O. as a <strong>news</strong>paper
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Overseas Surface Mail R7.50
United Kingdom .. (Airmail Delivery) R18.20
Europe (Airmail Delivery) R20.80
North America .. .. (Airmail Delivery) R31.20
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
NOT LEAVING IT TO PRETORIA
TT was a small group of private
enthusiasts in the Germany of the
Weimar Republic who started rocketry.
Later, governments took it up.
From the first amateur attempts of
men like Werner von Braun have
grown the government space organisations
of today, devoted to keeping
their countries ahead. Last week, a
long way down the trail from the early
amateurs, the United States shot
Walter M. Schirra into orbit, a feat
hailed as a national triumph. At the
same time in Southafrica, a second
generation of amateurs were preparing
to launch their own rocket—with the
Government taking note. (See SCIENCE.)
The sequence from individual enterprise
to state interest was being
repeated.
The Natal and Port Elizabeth rocket
enthusiasts represent an important
tradition of Do-it-yourself, a tradition
which seems to be losing out to perhaps
the country's fastest growing
idea: Leave it to Pretoria. From
farmers foxed by surpluses to businessmen
relying on an often too benign
Department of Commerce and Industries,
the trend is to let Pretoria solve
the problems, get things moving. But
government has its limitations: anci
Southafrica is the loser.
This week's coverstory deals with another
Do-it-yourselfer: Britain's Margery
Perham. Although operating on
another plane, in many ways she represents
a strength of Britain as much
as Southafrica's private rocketeers represent
a strength of the Republic. As
a private authority on Africa she has
done things for Britain that government
could never have done. She has
often battled with British governments,
even baulked them, yet been an outstanding
asset to Britain in Africa. She
has influenced a generation's colonial
thinking, and now that Britain is leaving
Africa, her influence assumes a
new importance; for she has also
taught and made friends with a generation
of African leaders.
The withdrawal of the metropolitan
powers from Africa underlines something
that was always true for Southafrica:
that Africa is vitally important
to it. But Africa has traditionally been
ignored by us, as though we are scarcely
part of the continent. Even the new
Africa is something to be horrified
at rather than to be seen as an oppor-
SPACEMAN SCHIRRA
Preceded by individual enterprise . . .
tunity. And not all Africa is a Congo,
not all doors are closed to Southafrica.
Today one side blames the
Government for our exclusion from
Africa, the other waits for government
to do something about it. Now, more
than ever, Southafrica needs Margery
Perhams, businessmen, students, scientists
who will get out and do in
Africa what government cannot do.
EDITOR

KLM's VC-8 IrUerconlirnnltU Jet in flisht
KLM now introduces the Douglas DC-8 jetliner! Read how
you can enjoy KLM reliability plus DC-8 speed on your
way from Johannesburg to any destination in the world.
The introduction of DC-8 Jetliners on the KLM Route
between Johannesburg and Amsterdam completes the KLM
jet network that links 104 cities in 68 countries on all six
continents. Now read 15 other important facts about KLM.
1 A KLM plane takes off" or lands every
four minutes somewhere in the world.
2 KLM's total route network is
168,000 unduplicated miles - the
world's second largest air network.
3 A KLM pilot achieves rank by hard
work. After twelve years of flying, he
may become a Pilot First Glass.
REMARKABLE VOTE OF
CONFIDENCE
4 More than 30 per cent of KLM'S
maintenance work is done for other airlines
- including a U.S. airline. A remarkable
vote of confidence in
KLM reliability.
5 Every KLM DC-8 jet has weather
radar. Your captain can see what the
weather is like 150 miles ahead. If it
looks turbulent, he finds a calmer route.
6 KLM has had 43 years to perfect its
reliability. Founded in 1919, KLM is
literally the world's ^wi airline.
7 KLM's DC-8 jets have two pantries
(for faster service), five flush toilets and
several cloakrooms. The cabin is airconditioned
on the ground as well
as aloft.
8 The cabin of a DC-8 jet gets a fresh
supply of air every three minutes.
9 KLM is one of the world's largest
carriers of commercial freight, KLM'S
on-time delivery record is so good that
an independent insurance company insures
against the unlikely possibility of
delay.
NO LANGUAGE PROBLEM
10 KLM insists that every crew member
must have command of four languages,
a good education, gentle
manners and reliability.
11 KLM loves babies. It supplies cribs
that hook firmly to the racks and leave
mother's lap uncluttered. Your stewardess
helps prepare your baby's food.
12 KLM's 'Pay Later' Plan means that
you need pay only a small deposit be­
fore flying with KLM to any destination
in the world. The balance of your fare
can be paid in easy monthly instalments
after your return.
13 KLM also has a Family Fare Plan
that saves you money on flights across
the Atlantic. From October 1 to
March 31, your wife - and children
from 12 to 25 - can fly with you for
much less than the usual fare. Children
under twelve save 50 per cent. Babies
under two save 90 per cent.
KLM STOP-OVER PLANS
14 KLM lets you stop off in many
cities on your way - at no extra fare. If
you are going to Amsterdam, for example,
you have a choice of several
stop-over plans. One of these enables
you to visit Rome, Nice, Geneva, Paris,
Brussels, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and
Zurich - all for the price of your ticket
to Amsterdam and back.
15 Your KLM-appointed travel agent
is a man you can trust. So go to him
and get his advice before planning
your next trip.
POST COUPON FOR FREE TRAVEL INFORMATION.
TO: KLM ROYAL DUTCH AIRLINES (REPRESENTED BY N.A.T.A.) BOX 8624, JHB.
Please send me further information on KLM and its services to:
MR/MRS/MISS
ADDRESS
MY TRAVEL AGENT IS
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

VOL 1 NO 7
SOUTHAFRICA
DEFENCE
Hot reception for troublemakers
If you wish for peace, prepare for
war, said the Romans. It is a sentiment
Southafricans go along with.
Should any nation or even combination
of nations be unwise enough to
go to war against the Republic, they
can already be certain of a hot
reception, and the nation's military
might is growing rapidly.
If real trouble came, Southafrica
could call on a quarter-million
trained men: at any time, 7,500 men
are doing military training. At Glasgow
last week, the Navy's new frigate
President Kruger was commissioned,
pointing up the growing force of
vessels, equipped with the latest subchasing
gadgetry, available to guard
the nation's shores: Commandantgeneral
P. H. Grobbelaar has announced
that the Air Force is to be
equipped with maritime strike aircraft
to back up the Navy. Combatgeneral
S. A. Engelbrecht, Army Chiefof-Staff,
has given another boost to
defence by announcing the virtual
doubling—from 65,000 to 120,000—
of the authorised strength of the
school cadet force, so that more young
men get basic training in musketry.
The startling fact is. the striking
power of the Defence Force has
multiplied twenty-fold in the past two
years.
Shepherding things forward. Most of
the credit goes to alert, forward-looking
Defence Minister Jim Fouche. A
Free State sheep and cattle farmer, he
was brought into the Cabinet less than
three years ago from the administratorship
of his home province. He
adopted a three-pronged programme
to boost the Defence Force—more
training, more research, a build-up of
weapons and ammunition. Financing
the programme this year is a record
peace-time defence budget of R120
million. It amounts to 13 per cent of
the total budget, but it is still a much
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
NEWS/CHECK
ON SOUTHAFRICA AND AFRICA 12 OCTOBER 1962
lower proportion than that spent by
many other countries.
Fouche ordered 10,000 civilians a
year to do nine months of training in
place of three: the first batch of 2,500
Citizen Force men to do so passed out
last month. Commandos have been
revamped for more effective action,
and five new Afrikaans and 25 new
English-speaking units set up. Fouche
is sending 115 officers, 560 men
overseas (countries secret) for military
SABRE FLY-PAST
Muscling up against musclers-in
courses this year. By the end of this
month, the nation will have 6,000
specialist troops standing ready to go
into action within an hour. Within
three years, the figure will be 20,000.
jet fighters, armoured cars. An arms
build-up is under way, too. The
Defence Force has bought 1,500 mph
French Mirage III jet fighters and
French helicopters, has placed orders
for the most modern reconnaissance
and transport aircraft, and is making
French-designed Panhard armoured
cars in the Republic.
Ammunition stocks are mounting.
.303 ammunition is being made on a
large scale; soon to be made are 7.62
mm rounds for the FN rapid-fire rifle
(already in use by Southafrican troops,
to be made locally), also ammunition
for 9 mm sub-machineguns, .38
revolvers. Shells, rockets, field equipment,
supplies, rations ... the Republic
has them all, and the fact that
nearly 60 per cent of the nation's arms
budget is spent locally points to the
maturity of its defence industries.
Science the new weapon. Soon after
entering the Cabinet, Fouche decided
to set up a special Defence Research
Council to bring together scientists
and military chiefs. Next step was
for Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research vice-president Dr Louis
le Roux to start working closely with
the armed services on a full-scale
defence research programme. Says he:
"The link between Science and the
Defence Force has exceeded the
boldest expectations, and important
progress has been made that will be
of great significance to the country."
The morale of the Defence Force was
at a low ebb under former Defence
Minister, Frans Erasmus. Fouche's
new spirit of initiative and vision has
captured the imagination of its men.

DEFENCE MINISTER POUCHB
Muscle builder
Politically moderate, conservative,
Fouche has gone out of his way to be
fair to English-speaking regiments'
monarchist ties, and has tried to
bring more English-speaking Southafricans
into the nation's defence setup,
stopped political promotions.
Shared glories. Afrikaners once
looked upon the Force as the instrument
that went to wa:r against Afrikaner
political conviction. All that
is now forgotten, and the glories of
North Africa and Europe are becoming
shared. Typifying the new
spirit is the Republic's newest unit, the
1st Parachute Battalion, which has
been called "probably the fastest
developing parachute unit in the
world."
Men who fought Southafricans in the
Second World War found them tough.
The reputation stands. When Fouche
was discussing the purchase of the
Mirage planes with a French factory
official, the Minister asked if Southafrican
pilots would not find it hard
to adapt themselves to the ultra-fast
killer aircraft. "What!" said the
official, "a month ago we had three
of your pilots here. After a 20minute
lecture on the ground, they
got into the planes and every one of
them went through the sound barrier
twice. Sir, you have pilots!"
Post haste pary claim
The young man who passes you your
2Jc stamp across the counter may be
quite cheerful about it—but he is not
as happy as he seems. He is dissatisfied
about his monthly paypacket,
does not like his working conditions
either. The three post office
staff associations are all pressing for
wage increases for their members.
They are the Posts and Telegraphs
Association (for clerical and administrative
staff) which will be having an
indaba with Minister Albert Hertzog
next week; the Postal Association
(the uniform branch) and the Telecommunications
Association (technical
staff).
Drain-off. The wage demands are
two-pronged: bigger starting salaries
to get enough new recruits, and better
salaries for old hands to keep up staff
numbers. Post Office workers point
out that their Standard Eight recruits
earn R54 a month—a policeman with
Standard Eight starts at R75. That
means a man can work in the PO for
two years, then start at the bottom in
the Police Force and still get a bigger
salary. His earnings will be even
bigger if he goes into commerce.
After five years, a PO worker can
expect R80 a month. If he goes to
the Johannesburg Municipality he can
drive a bus for R120. The Post
Office is estimated to lose thousands
of rand a year through the drain-off
of trained men and women. It costs
about R 1,000 to give a thorough twoyear
training in telex work or moneyhandling
to PO recruits, the first four
to six months being unproductive
from the Post Office's point of view.
Then the recruits get offers of fat
salaries outside. Private firms snap
up telex operators who have gone
through the thorough PO training;
banks and commercial houses attract
young people who have been taught
how to work with money and people.
In the 1960-61 financial year the PO
lost 673 trained Post and Telegraph
Assistants (395 of them women), a
rise of 294 on the previous year. In
the same twelve months 378 learners
left the PO service while still under
training. 887 got through their training
successfully, then 102 of them left
before their probationary appointments
could be confirmed.
The boss, too. Post Office workers
have been seeking better wages for
about 18 months. They last had
salary adjustments in 1957 when their
cost-of-living allowance was consolidated.
One result of their representations
so far has been the creation of
300 higher level posts for 1,411 Post
and Telegraph Assistants Grade I
who had got to the top of their scale.
But that left over a thousand assistants
who could not aspire to better
positions. Lack of room for promotion
means frustration. Demands
now being put forward are for a
minimum starting wage for clerical
staff of R90 a month (as against R54
at present). Increases are wanted in
other grades and even the Postmaster-
General has not been forgotten. His
staff want his scale notched up from
R6,800 to R8,000, reckon he has a
bigger job on his hands in running t^e
Post Office than most other heads of
state departments and should get more
than they. They know that in their
present chief, Antonie Botes, they
have a man who will fight just as hard
for them as they will root for him.
Botes is outspoken, is not slow to criticise
the treatment his department gets
from other state departments, says
exactly what he thinks about staff
conditions, and backs up his men
fully in their strivings to improve their
position.
Business or state department? It was
Botes who first came up with the
suggestion (not received very well in
official circles) that the Post Office,
like the Railways, be run as a business
enterprise, not a Government Department.
This is a sore point with postal
workers. They rightly point out that
the service has to be modernised,
streamlined and kept in top running
order if it is to keep abreast of today's
demands. But they are being hamstrung
by other state departments.
GPO CHIEF BOTES
Morale builder
For what they pay, Southafricans enjoy
one of the cheapest postal systems
in the world. If they want standards
of efficiency maintained, even improved,
in the future, they may not
find it quite so cheap.
ANTARTICA
Out in the cold, cold snow
Polesquatting is a phenomenon of the
times. It takes on dignity and interest,
however, when the Pole to be squatted
turns out to be the South Pole in
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

snowclad Antarctica, to which icy
wastes Southafrica is to despatch
another 13-man scientific team at the
year's end. The team will be the
fourth (one each year) since December,
1959. in which year Southafrica
became one of twelve nations signatory
to the Antarctic Treaty, providing for.
at worst, a shared watch over Antarctica's
windswept, snowbound, icy
vlakte known as Queen Maud Land
(1^ times the area of the USA, including
Texas). Last week the team's
members were announced: its leader:
Andrew Murray Venter, of the GSIR.
What goes on down there. Southafrica's
southernmost base is that of
Sanae, in Queen Maud Land, a post
taken over by international agreement
from the Norwegians in 1959. In
addition the Republic staffs and maintains
the two weather stations on
lonely, chilly Marion and Gough
Islands from which latitudes men
return with fair regularity to the Cape,
eager to get back to their wives if
they are married, their bewhiskered
faces bursting into Page One pictures
as they step from their ship.
Science in the snow. Invariably the
longhaired repatriates are scientists
drawn from such institutions as
Universities, the Weather Bureau, the
CSIR. and the Department of Transport
(under whose aegis falls the
Weather Bureau). There is much to
concern these tall-domed thinkers,
down there under, and on top of, the
perpetual snow: little time for cardgames.
Antarctica has revealed the
presence of diverse deposits of
minerals (coal, uranium, gold, iron,
manganese) though nothing in quantities
important enough to warrant
company flotation to mine them.
There may be oil down there; there
certainly are whales, the hunting of
which provides the only economic
attraction to man at this stage. What
there is plenty of, however, is weather
—all of it cold, much of it windy, and
some of it in the sea in the form of
currents. All this is studied, with
access to each of the 12 nations'
stations being free and unfettered, information
freely pooled and shared:
all such relevant information is
regularly radioed back to Pretoria for
filing, analysis and forecasting.
Footing the bill. For all this activity.
little though it seems to be worth to
the man in the street, there must be a
bill. While their beards are growing,
men have to be paid scientists' wages;
the ice ship RSA, specially built in
Japan, has to be maintained and
operated. So, too. must be the
meteorological and radio equipment.
Iceberg-like, officials in Pretoria are
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOIER 19&2
ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION DIGGING IN
A place in the snow
reluctant to disclose the cost of all
this; but estimated cost of running the
ship is R20.0(X) a year, special allowances
for the men in Antarctica and
on the islands would be in the same
bracket. The man in the street may
wonder whether it's worth whatever
the cost. This much is sure: Southafrica.
secure of its place in the sun.
is making no less sure of its place in
the snow, should anything come out
of it.
CRIME
Blunt spear
When Justice Minister John Vorster introduced
the "Sabotage Bill" in Parliament
earlier this year, he asserted that
its stiff penalties (from a minimum of
three years' jail up to the death sentence)
were aimed at curbing political
violence. Last weekend hotheads had
a horse-laugh, tried to blow up Sasol
storage tanks at Industria, Johannesburg,
and power pylons at Kew and
Noordgesig. The saboteurs made their
third attempt to cut the Witwatersrand's
power supplies in a year—and
failed.
Said Colonel At Spengler, head of the
police Security Branch on the Reef:
"The people involved are not amateurs
—they obviously have a working
knowledge of explosives."
Miscarried plans. Claiming kudos for
the crime is a mysterious organisation
called The Spear of the Nation, whose
Bantu spokesman makes cloak-anddagger
phone calls to Reef <strong>news</strong>papers.
From a badly-typed, misspelt document
signed "Spearhead" previously
sent out to the Press, it appears as if
the organisation plans its sabotage well
in advance, and that some of its plans
have miscarried.
Police rule out the suggestion that the
saboteurs are trained abroad: if they
were, their work would be more efficient.
Quantities of dynamite have
disappeared from a road-building site
near Pinetown, Natal, and from Amcor
quarries near Witbank, indicating that
the saboteurs are having to make do
with what they can steal, and are not
receiving explosives from abroad.
Rash of bombings. The political
motive behind the crimes is pointed up
by their timing and targets. Last
December, it was about the time of
the Day of the Covenant celebrating a
white victory over Bantu forces that
the rash of bombings occurred. Power
pylons were blasted, post offices
damaged and pass offices attacked on
the Reef and at Port Elizabeth. In
one incident, things went wrong and a
saboteur blew himself up. The latest
crime seems timed to coincide with the
UN debates on Southafrica.
Although political violence is minimal
in the Republic compared with other
African countries (Ghana, Southern
Rhodesia) the incidents are worrisome,
and reasons given for the new fashion
in political protest vary. Some say it
is because, by banning the African
National Congress, the Pan-Africanist
Congress and the Congres of Democrats,
the Government has left the
Bantu no other means of expressing
their hostility to Separate Development.
The other view is that Bantu
extremists have lost their grip on the
urban masses to such an extent that
they must recourse to violence both to
raise their prestige and, eventually, to
bully ordinary law-abiding Natives into
supporting them.
Whatever the reason, police success in
arresting the criminals responsible for
previous crimes shows that Southafricans
have little to fear.

AGRICULTURE
A sweeter pill
This week 75 sugar experts from all
over the world are talang part in a
two-week tour of the sugar industry
on a see-all, intensive cane-to-mill
survey sponsored by the Southafrican
Sugar Association. Every
statistic they want will be provided.
Every process they want to look at
will be shown to them. They have
come from Argentina, Australia,
Hawaii, Mauritius, Madagascar,
Puerto Rico, Reunion, Nationalist
China, Britain, Venezuela and the
West Indies—every country rich in
canebrake on the surface of the earth,
in fact. What gives, then? Why this
world probe into the Southafrican
sugar-bowl?
Sweetening. There is nothing sinister
in the visit. The 75 have just been
attending the 11th congress of the
International Sugar Technologists'
Association in hard-by Mauritius:
with so many international experts all
together, what better time than now to
expose the Republic's national sugar
showcase to them?
Lost markets, found markets. Quite
coincidental is the fact that the
experts' visit occurs at a time of
crisis in Southafrica's sugar affairs.
First shock came when the new
Republic quit the Commonwealth,
thereby ending the Commonwealth
Sugar Agreement which had assured
Southafrica sugar sales at preferential
rates. A second jolt was the abandonment
at Geneva of the International
Sugar Agreement, throwing
open the world market to free competition.
Southafrican sugar farmers
were ordered to produce only 75 per
cent of previous output. On rubber
knees Southafrica's sugar industry
sagged to the canvas, heard the count
SUGAR
Grown . trimmed . . . destroyed
to about eight, rose again, and decided
to fight on. So telling has been the
counter attack that farmers have just
had their 25 per cent cut relaxed to
a mere 10 per cent.
Global market probes. First success
came when SASA signed a deal to sell
142,240 tons of sugar to Japan, and,
at the same time, more than 50,000
tons to Canada. Sugar suddenly became
sweet again, became sweeter
still when SASA chnched a contract
to sell 168,000 tons a year for five
years to Britain. A new market
suddenly opened up in Iran. Southern
Rhodesia and Nyasaland also wanted
the product. But the big lift came
with the Cuban-American crisis: the
moment the US's Cuban quota became
a free-for-all, chartered ships
cleaved the seas to race 85,000 tons
from Southafrica to the bittered US; all
of it sold, with the hope of winning the
States as a regular customer.
Production, now. The nation's canefields
will yield 1,300.000 tons of
sugar this year (80,000 of it from
Swaziland). Of this, the Republic
itself will consume a mere 290,000
tons. 500,000 tons are already earmarked
for export and a new R3
million bulk sugar store at Durban
harbour alone, will hold 200,000 tons,
all of it waiting for SASA's next sales'
success which, however small, will
still be sweet.
Arson? Fire remains the farmers
biggest hazard, bigger still than the
marketing problem. This year more
fires than ever have been reported in
the Natal cane belt. So far this
season no fewer than 21 Bantu have
been arrested for alleged acts of arson.
Though many farmers allege that the
frequent fires are deliberate economic
sabotage. Security Branch police
claim they have found no evidence
that the fires were acts against the
State. This year at least 265,000 tons
valued at R2,000.000 have been swept
by fire. Most of the cane was
salvaged before rot set in, and sent
to the mills.
Police claim that the fires are started
for revenge—a sacked worker getting
his own back on his former employer.
Many fires are started by drunken
labourers drinking in canefields.
Other fires, which have been known
to sweep across as many as four farms
in a night, have been started by hot
coals from passing locomotives.
Sugar daddies. At least R80 million is
invested in the Republic's sugar industry,
R52 million of which are invested
by major companies. Daddy of
all the companies is the gigantic Sir
J. L. Hulett and Sons' three-mill
enterprise, whose capital alone is a
solid R9.1 million. Eighteen other
companies run large estates, with
6,000 independent growers at work.
Right now, Southafrica's visitors may
detect traces of overproduction or, at
least, traces of under-selling. But
there is a feehng, coming through
loud and clear, that prosperity lurks
where it has ever been suspected: just
around the corner.
SMALLHOLDINGS
On the fringe
Living on the border line of Southafrican
cities (though many of them
are far from any financial borderline),
are 63,000 occupants of what are
called "smallholdings": plots of from
2| to a not-so-small 25 morgen in
extent, best-known, perhaps, around
Bloemfontein, clustered equally cheekby-jowl
around Pretoria, Johannesburg,
along the whole Reef, Port Elizabeth
and Durban.
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

Homogeoous buch. Smallholders
are a homogenous bunch, sharing in
common the size of their plots, their
headaches (lack of water, light, fuel
— and crops), their ambition (to live
the hell out of town with its hustle),
differing only in their interests.
Among them community life is sometimes
refreshingly strong; more often
than not, altogether non-existent.
Water shartage. Right now, they are
in the <strong>news</strong> because of the water shortage
among Johannesburg's smallholders
caused by the Transvaal's protracted
and devastating drought.
Water shortage, however, is no novelty
to smallholders.
It is suffered perpetually, and probably
at its worst, around Bloemfontein
where 3,500 landlovers cluster, like
piglets at their sow. around the centre
City (total Free State smallholding
count: 4,700). Here, hundreds of windmills
tower atop boreholes that used
to go down 75 feet, now probe 300 feet
and more to get to the subterranean,
life-giving flow of water. Sometimes
the electric or petrol-driven pump replaces
the windmills. But it provides
no greater relief, waterwise, as smallholders,
themselves wan, watch the
listless, drab khaki of drought.
In from the land. The de-population
of the platteland has been going on
at an increasing tempo since the beginning
of this century. Rural people,
loth to relinquish their way of life, but
forced into the towns, found the
psychological answer in smallholdings.
They could still be farmers,
obtain a steady income from the city.
Smallholdings became a half-way
station to urban adaptation. Landowners
bordering on the towns cut up
their farms accordingly. As well as
selling to the rural dispossessed, they
also found ready takers among the
ranks of prosperous city businessmen
who wanted to get away from it all,
hankering after an "estate." Other
takers were pensioners hoping to hve
cheaply. Out of all of these came the
population that peopled the nation's
93,000 smallholdings.
Forty per cent of those around Bloemfontein
have their plots under "For
Sale" signs; half Natal's 16,000 plots
are undeveloped; 30,000 of the whole
country's total of 93,000 plots are unoccupied.
A minority, belong to cityaffluent
men, are beautiful, but they
are always more in the nature of large
garden estates than farms.
Big thirst Hardest hit by lack of
water are the Bloemfontein smallholders.
Clustered around the city, the
smallholdings of the 3,500 landlovers
at some points stretch as far as twenty
miles away from the city centre. The
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
city's water supply comes from the
Modder River, but there is none to
spare for the smallholders. Their only
source of supply (until the Ruigtevallei
Dam, part of the Orange River
Scheme, is completed in five or six
years time) is underground. And it is
not as plentiful or accessible as it
once was. Boreholes are going deeper
and deeper, and with more being sunk,
old boreholes are constantly drying
up. Out of every three boreholes, one
has dried up.
Five-morgen holdings on which five
or six boreholes have beeen sunk are
common. One man at Bainsvlei, near
Bloemfontein, has just sunk his
eleventh. The lack of water has resulted
in the Natural Resources Development
Council not allowing smallholding
on the Free State goldfields.
The Bloemfontein smallholders find
the cost of boreholes eating into their
city wage-packets while — without
adequate water — they cannot recoup
by selling produce to the city.
Go easy. But the danger of a water
shortage is realised. Urging peri-urban
dwellers to conserve their underground
water is Schalk Malan, chairman of
the Free State Society of Smallholders
Associations (a federal society linking
33 smallholders associations, 27 of
them in the Bloemfontein area). Malan
uses his own 700-gallon-an-hour, 210feet
borehole sparingly. On a largerthan-usual-holding
(25 morgen:
Bloemfontein average 5), his largest
enterprise is a 400-tree orchard. He
keeps only four cows to milk for his
own household, a few fowls, and a few
bee-hives. As secretary of Bloemfontein's
vast National Hospital he does
DRILLING IN FREE STATE
Disappointed hopes
ABANDONED SMALLHOLDING
Not so profitable
not have to eke out a small salary,
but he knows how particularly valuable
the sub-surface water is to those
smallholders who rely on their
ground's produce. It was the failure of
boreholes in another area that forced
him to move to his present smallholding.
Says Malan: "To go in
seriously for agriculture on smallholdings
here is impossible."
You go broke on a plot. A large
number of Southafrica's smallholders
have found that they cannot show a
profit from a plot: only 57 per cent
of all the country's smallholders do
show a profit. At last count the total
product off plots was RlO-m., with
R2-m. of this taken up in home consumption,
leaving R7-m., of marketable
produce (eggs, milk, cut flowers,
fruit, pickles, home industries) to be
shared by 60,000. Eight out of ten
smallholders are Afrikaans-speaking:
even the English-speaking would be
the first to admit there is only one
word for the plight in which they find
themselves: Broekskeur, ou maat.
CELEBRATIONS
Less public, more holiday
Southafricans had another national
day to celebrate this week: Kruger
Day. And the changing political
patterns of the times became more
apparent. Interest was less than
usual, more people looked upon it as
just another day for fishing, tennis or
a trip to the beach. The trouble with
Kruger Day is that it has been celebrated
for political as well as sound
patriotic reasons. It could not have
been otherwise. Paul Kruger stands
as the strong historic symbol of independence
and every year Afrikaners
paid tribute to him as The Great
Republican: he represented something

UNVEILING OF VEBEENIGING MONUMENT
Last of the big crowds?
from the past they were striving for
in the future.
Settling down. Last year's celebrations
had a special significance—
they were in the first year of the
Republic. Prime Minister Dr Vervoerd
unveiled the Vereeniging Monument
to an Afrikanerdom renascent
after its blow in the Southafrican
War; State President Swart addressed
a major gathering in Pretoria. These,
held in the flush of Republican glory,
look as though they will be the last
big Kruger Day celebrations for some
time to come.
Now that Southafrica is settling down
to its Republic, the political reasons
for celebrating Kruger Day fall away.
Trouble is that in the backwash after
victory, the patriotic reasons may also
decline. The trend is for Kruger Day
to fade in importance and for republican
celebrations to be focussed on
Republic Day—May 31. Last year
Professor A. N. Pelzer, chief of the
Kruger Society, forecast this development.
He declared that 1961 was probably
the last year in which Kruger
Day would be celebrated on such a
scale.
Wider ambit. The trend is not only
confined to Kruger Day. Englishspeaking
Southafricans have always
had an aversion to formal celebrations,
even their own Settlers Day
has presented a problem in mustering
sufficient numbers. Only Grahamstown,
in the heart of the Settler
country, holds significant gatherings.
Afrikaners, in contrast, have flocked
to festivities to hear long, usually
windy speeches by their leaders. But
even they are getting a little weary of
volkswil and volkseenheid. Those
battles have been won. Long treks
by car and hours in sun or rain
listening to rarely-inspired declamation
have blunted enthusiasm. So has
Two tyre treads working for you on every wheel, to give you double safety!
That's General Jet-Air DUBLETRED — the tyre design that moulds
itself to the shape of speed . . . gives safer cornering, surer braking, greatest
traction in both dry and wet conditions. DUBLETREDS end tyre squeal. . .
spell silent safety . . . longer life!
10
JET-AIR DUBLETRED-THE TYRE WITH TWO TREADS!!
an entrenched political position.
The once huge crowds are dwindling.
. . . Are Southafricans growing more
mature, or decadently losing political
awareness? If volicsfeeste are to
assume their old-time importance,
there will have to be an injection of
new imagination.
FOREIGN RELATIONS
Lively corpse
The northern autumn has arrived
again, and at the UN Headquarters in
New York it is the open season for
nasty speeches about Southafrica: a
torrent of hatred which comes as regularly
each year as the fall of leaves in
Central Park. Ghana led the pack
with a call for sanctions, including the
breaking-off of diplomatic relations,
the closing of all ports to Southafrican
vessels, a ban on ships of UN memberstates
entering Southafrican waters, a
trade boycott and the breaking-off of
air, postal and other communications
unless the Republic came to heel. The
Ghanaian delegate proclaimed (rather
more hopefully than factually) that the
UN should "take the opportunity and
drive the last nail in the coffin of
Apartheid." Southafricans, used to
international threats never put into
action, were just bored by the whole
thing.
NEWS/CHECK
B13SI
12 OCTOBER 1962

NEWSPEOPLE iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii^^
Hungarians out . . .
Two Hungarian refugees who came to
Tanganyika with "love and friendship
for all Africa" were told by the
Tanganyika Government to leave by
the first available aircraft. Claiming
to have spent a total of seventeen
years in Soviet gaols, Tamas Kuthy is
blind and Tibor Tollas disfigured.
Describing their mission as "a warning
to newly-independent countries
against the dangers of the Communist
monster" they have been trying to
win African support for their Sovietdominated
country at the United
Nations. Both men represent the
Vienna-based <strong>news</strong>paper Nemsotor
(Tollas is the editor) which was
founded in 1956 by escaped writers
and poets after the Hungarian revolution.
It is published in German,
French, Arabic, English and sometimes
Spanish.
Reason for their expulsion: the
immigration officials claim they have
broken visa regulations; the Government
said they had not observed
Tanganyika's convention that individual
refugees—as distinct from
organised political parties—should
refrain from political activities. Just
before they left, an official Hungarian
delegation arrived to discuss
the negotiation of a trade treaty.
Guess whose face is Red.
. . . and in
In hotly anti-Communist Southafrica
last week, 107 Hungarians were
granted citizenship, the first of the
refugees who came to Southafrica
after the 1956 Hungarian revolution
to take this step. To mark the occasion,
the biggest of its kind yet, the
Under-Secretary for Interior, Jacob
Howard, handed over the citizenship
papers. Said he: "Southafrica has
taken you to its bosom and it is a
privilege to give you what we value
most — Southafrican citizenship."
Difference between Tanganyika and
Southafrica seems to be the negotiation
of a trade treaty — and more.
Which way the wind?
Mohammed Ben Bella, ruler of the
fledgling Republic of Algeria, flew
into New York last weekend to head
his country's UN delegation. Algeria
had not been voted membership of the
UN when Ben Bella arrived but he
was determined to be on hand when
formal acceptance of Algeria came up.
The fiery hard-core nationalist, a
handsome figure at 46, lost no time
in making contact with foreign states­
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
men. No sooner had he arrived than
he was closeted with Communist
Cuba's President Osvaldo Dorticos
Torrado for a chat on Ben Bella's upcoming
visit to the Caribbean island.
America had first put forward
Algeria's UN membership candidature
and President John Kennedy's aides
did not conceal their concern at this
early Ben Bellist contact with the
Communists on their doorstep. Ben
Bella's next call was on Guinea's
Marxist President Sekou Toure. Ben
Bella claims he is no Communist, but
his policy for Algeria includes Socialism,
which means about anything.
He managed to placate the ruffled
feelings a little by following up his
call on Toure with a visit to French
Foreign Minister Couve de Murville
and President Kennedy was later to
entertain him. But Ben Bella's contactmaking
at high level was not over. He
decided to invite President Gamal
Abdel Nasser of Egypt over to Algiers
—another strengthening of the Casablanca
group of African states, which
leans more to the Communists than
the other two power blocs, the Monravia
group and the Brazzaville group.
Ben Bella, hardened by his years of
campaigning against the French
(including a spot in French prisons), at
the crest of the wave following his
disposal of Ben Youssef Ben Khedda,
is a hard, determined man often
described as a fanatic. He knows
exactly where he wants to go. But the
trouble is America and the West are
not quite happy about the direction in
which his sails are set.
ALGKRIA'S PM
Bella dancer on a tighrope
CHARLOTTE SINGH
Headlines yesterday, obscurity today
Yesterday's faded headlines
Syrub and Charlotte Singh, subject of
headlines in Southafrica eight months
ago, have had their first child (a girl)
in Tanganyika, whence they fled from
persecution under the Immorality Act,
and where they intend to stay. They
married in Rhodesia, returned to the
Republic to find themselves not legally
able to live together.
Celebratin', finger shakin'
Francis Ewiu did not much like doing
it, but he had to. Although he wished
to be no wet blanket on this week's
independence celebrations in Uganda,
the Acting Secretary General of Teso
county felt it necessary to point out
that there were limits to Uhuru.
Countering a popular rumour that
other people's daughters and wives
would be on the house for Independence,
spoilsport Ewiu snooted: "If
some of you fellows think that the
handing owr of power to Africans by
the Europeans will mean an opportunity
to eat the forbidden fruit, you
will find yourselves, behind bars,
facing condign punishment for your
sins." Cries of "shame": no applause.
Black justice
The first-ever Bantu magistrate was
sworn in recently at Nongoma, future
capital of the Zululand Bantustan.
Holder of the Senior Civil Service Law
Certificate, 36-year-old Charles Wesley
Sipho Mcwango has already served as
Assistant Magistrate and Additional
Bantu Affairs Commissioner at Nongoma.
He joined the Civil Service
in 1947. Mcwango was sworn in
together with two white magistrates.
Said Government information man
Chris Prinsloo: "He has taken the
same oath that other magistrates have
taken." Important advance, but
question is: will he perform the same
duties, trying bl^k and white?

AFRICA
SOUTHERtl RHODESIA
Return to the kraal
A portly, perspiring African, looking
like Lobengula in a city suit, settled
down this week for a three months' enforced
stay at the kraal of his ancestors
in the wild Matopo Hills. For Joshua
Nqubuke Nkomo, first class world
travel at party expense is over, for the
moment. He is restricted to within
three miles of his ten-foot pole-anddagga
hut by order of the Southern
Rhodesia Government, which has outlawed
the Zimbabwe African People's
Union he led (NEWS/CHECK September
28).
Visitors? He had plenty this week . . .
journalists, photographers, television
interviewers. Never had the simple villagers
and all the little unknown
Nkomos of the poverty-line family
kraal seen such a turn-out of slick,
busy whites in big cars and tropical
suitings.
\KOMO AND COUSIN STEPHEN
And many visitors
Open house. They found him sitting
cross-legged on a low, wooden stool,
unperturbed, relaxed, perhaps even
glad of his enforced rest in the rural
surroundings (thorn bush, parched
grass). Like other African leaders
jailed, detained, restricted, he is certain
his time will come. When it does,
he has revenge in mind for the white
ministers who outlawed him. "We
shall send them to their tribal areas.
Whitehead will find himself in Berlin,
because that is where he was born."
Nkomo's host is his cousin, farmer
Stephen Nkomo, who scratches a precarious
living from the soil with a few
chickens, three goats and one cow. The
nearest water is three miles away.
Stephen's first action was to make
Joshua comfortable—he bought a bed,
linen and other small luxuries from
the local store. For three months
Southern Rhodesia's leading African
politician will just sit in the sun, eat,
drink kaffir beer, reflect on the past,
certainly plan for the future.
New campaign. By coming home to
restriction instead of swanning around
the world on comfortable "missions,"
Nkomo has hoisted his falling prestige
back to new heights among Africans.
Before returning, he left a ZAPU party
office as a going concern in Dar-es-
Salaam's "Revolution Row" in the
charge of author-clergyman Ndabaninge
Si thole, who escaped the dragnet
when ZAPU was banned. Sithole will
carry on the propaganda war against
Southern Rhodesia, launch campaigns
at the UN, lobby the British Government,
agitate among the Americans.
While Nkomo was being flown to his
birthplace, Southern Rhodesian Prime
Minister Sir Edgar Whitehead was
launching a massive campaign in the
reserves to fill the vacuum left by the
banning of ZAPU. A team of ministers
safaried into the bush to explain to
African villagers why ZAPU had been
banned, what they were expected to do,
how they could co-operate with the
Government.
Following Southafrica. Whitehead has
a new policy for the reserves, based on
the return of powers to the chiefs—a
new form of the long-abandoned system
of indirect rule. The authoritarian
powers of the Native Commissioners
are to go: they will now advise chiefs
on running their own courts, local
government. Tribal Land Authorities,
something like Southafrica's Bantu
Regional Authorities, will control land
use and distribution under the overriding
power of white experts who will
prevent misuse, erosion.
Explained Native Affairs Minister
Blair Ewing to 500 Africans in the
Chiweshe Reserve: "The time has
come for you to make your own decisions,
to learn how to manage your
own local affairs. It is your responsibility
to combine the old and the new,
build up your own way of life in the
manner which makes you happy."
NIGERIA
Action, with a bang
Independent Nigeria was two years'
old last week, celebrated its birthday
with a march-past of thousands of
singing schoolchildren, units of the
smart national militia, in Lagos' Tafawa
Balewa Square. The festivities,
however, were tinged with sadness.
Nigeria, largest independent African
territory in terms of population, is
sharply divided into three areas,
Muslim North, Yoruba West and Ibo
East. Although the country is still
Britain's bright hope in Africa, the
federation's success was always doubtful
and it seems to be gradually
getting caught up in the whirlpool
of plots, violence and arbitrary
Government action which has characterised
its rival, Ghana. Federal
Premier Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa
made a nation-wide independence
day broadcast to announce that
police had uncovered a plot to overthrow
his Government, seize power by
force. In Montreal Dr Teslim Olawale
Elias, on a visit to Canada, laid
the blame for the plot on Ghanaian
agents and "extremists influenced by
Moscow and President Nkrumah."
Locked doors for Awo. No. 1 "extremist":
Opposition Leader Chief
Obafemi Awolowo, placed under
house arrest with other leaders of his
Action Group. The three men named
as leaders of the plot, and said to
have fled to Ghana, all held high
positions in the Action Group. Chief
Anthony Enahoro, a barrister and
and spokesman on foreign policy;
attorney Ayo Adebanjo was a former
president of the Group's British
section; Sampel Grace Ikoku was its
assistant secretary-general.
Police are said to have broken open
the plot when they raided a house
near Lagos last month, found a
clandestine arsenal and arrested a
man who had "received military
training abroad." Police searched
houses of Action Group leaders
throughout Nigeria, are reported to
have uncovered three arms caches
containing nine machine-guns, 35
tear gas pistols, ten revolvers, 13
automatic pistols and 7,000 rounds of
ammunition.
Taxing his patience. Balewa's troubles
are not confined to his plotting
Opposition. In Okrika, Eastern
Nigeria, a police officer and five other
people were reported seriously injured
in a riot last weekend over tax payments.
Strong police units moved in.
In Western Nigeria, a months-old state
of emergency lingers on. Balewa,
getting nervous about Nigeria's bad
publicity abroad, clamped down I
12 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

••«««»*^*'.«!&'

NIGERIAN TRAINEE TV PRODUCER SAMUEL ADEGBIE
British advice man, Africa tie-up later
absolute censorship on reports about
security matters, the Western Nigerian
emergency. Governor-General Dr
Nnamdi Azikiwe coolly ascribed it all
to "the teething troubles expected in
any sovereign and independent nation
such as ours." But there was no doubt
the teeth really hurt.
COMMUNICATIONS
Africa-wide see all, hear all
The New Africa resents the word
"backward", likes to think of itself as
"less privileged" or, better still, "developing".
While rejecting European
paternalism, often white guidance,
sometimes the very bases of Western
civilisation, the leaders of the New
Africa are, however, quick to adopt
anything which adds to prestige.
When the "thing" is a television broadcasting
system, which is not only a
prestige symbol but also highly useful
for educating (or indoctrinating) the
masses, then African leaders tumble
over each other to invite foreign help,
and the dirty word "neo-colonialism"
is not even whispered.
Just wild about TV. Egypt has television.
Nigeria has television. The
Rhodesian Federation has television.
Even Ivory Coast and Senegal, with
per capita incomes of less than R130
a year, have succumbed to the lure of
the telly. Latest country to start beaming
pictures is Kenya, whose first station
opened last week. Anxious to go
on the air soon are Kenya's neighbours,
Tanganyika and Uganda.
Now Africa's television chiefs want to
go a step further, link up their systems
in an "Afrovision" modelled on
Europe's "Eurovision", which enables
British televiewers to watch the Pope
bless crowds in Rome, Swedes to follow
their heroes in the Grand Prix
races. Frenchmen to tune in to US
stations via the Telstar satellite.
To get the project off the ground, and
provide for African co-operation on
other aspects of broadcasting, the
URTNA (Union of African National
Radio and Television Organisations)
has been formed by 23 African countries.
Its administrative headquarters
will be in Dakar, Senegal; its technical
centre at Bamako, in Mali.
Line-up. To ease the way to a continent-wide
TV link-up, URTNA president
Diallo Alpha has called upon
African nations keen on starting television
to use the so-called "625 line"
system already widely accepted in
Africa (the Federation, Nigeria, Senegal,
Ivory Coast). Big remaining problem
is to find trained technicians to
operate national television systems
properly, let alone such an ambitious
link-up as Afrovision. Typical case
is Nigeria's. There are four TV stations,
but shortage of technicians
hampers expansion. Nigeria is sending
many of its trainees over to
England for experience, but the newest
idea is to establish a local centre for
training radio and television technicians.
The training would be done,
not by Europeans, but by the Japanese,
who are anxious to get a foothold
in Africa for their cheap, high-quality
electronic equipment. Oddity is that
the one country which has both the
industrial infrastructure and knowledge
of African conditions best to
supply the expanding market for television
equipment — Southafrica — is
right out of the picture because of its
righteous abnegation of the flickering
screen.
UGANDA
Of princes and pagans
Things have changed since Speke,
discoverer of the Nile source, first
entered Uganda in 1862 and frolicked
with the queen-dowager of Buganda,
most important of the country's
several kingdoms. The lady was fat,
fair and 45, and found cups inadequate
when the merrymaking got going, so
drank her pombe (banana beer) from
a trough Uke a pig. She showed, however,
an advanced interest in genetics,
and presented Speke with a couple of
local girls to discover what colour the
offspring would be.
The tone improved. Uganda was
blessed not only with natural resources
but such first-class British colonial
administrators as Lord Lugard and
Sir Andrew Cohen. With a minimum
of police, the territory became
Britain's model African colony.
Peasants' progress. In the process, the
Ugandan landscape changed. Cotton
was introduced as a cash crop in 1903,
coffee more recently, with the result
that all but a quarter-million of the
6i million Ugandans are peasant
farmers producing for export (white
settlement has always been prohibited).
As the British expatriate civil servants
built their bungalows, so the rulers
of the four kingdoms — the Kabaka
of Buganda, the Mugabe of Ankole,
the Mukama of Bunyoro and the
Mukama of Toro — moved into
colonial-style country houses, still
surrounded, however, with the traditional
elephant-grass stockade. (The
"palace" of the Mugabe of Ankole is
fronted by two stone lions, as the
spirits of dead Mugabes are supposed
to go into lions).
BUGANDA'S KABAKA
All twins, all firewood
14 . NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
iiwsM

Seven-foot asters. This is the land of
thornveld, of grassy, flat-topped hills,
of banana groves, bright costumes, of
the mountain gorilla (the nearest
animal to man) and of the seven-foot
asters in the Mountains of the Moon.
It is the land which, this week, became
Africa's 32nd independent state with
feasting, bonfires, revelry and a goodwill
message from Queen Elizabeth
carried by her nephew, the Duke of
Kent, and his lovely Duchess.
Uganda may have been a model
colony, but even model colonies want
independence, although Uganda
politics have developed on rather
different lines from those in Britain's
other African territories; with no
"white problem" and progressive
governors; polemics have been more
about internal problems than the
relationship with the colonial power.
Buganda. particularly, is the scene
of religious competition between
Catholics, Protestants and Muslims
which has spilled over into the political
field. Buganda has its own martyrs
and pioneering history. Mwanga, the
grandfather of the present Kabaka,
was a homosexual: a group of his page
boys became converted to Christianity,
and this put Mwanga into such a rage
that he sentenced them to death. The
boys refused to recant; he had them
bound in mats and burnt alive.*
Religion and politics. The impact of
Catholic and Protestant proselytisers
in the early days had tragic result in
a short but bloody religious war. It
was as if St Augustine and Martin
Luther had both landed in England at
the same time to convert the pagans.
It was the outbreak of religious warfare
which led to British intervention:
today the ruling Uganda People's
Congress is characteristically Protestant,
the opposition Democratic
Party the voice of Catholicism.
Other sources of trouble: the fear of
the northern, Nilotic peoples of
aggressive domination by the Bantu
of the southern kingdoms; quarrels
between the kingdoms themselves
over chunks of real estate, the bestknown
being about Toro's so-called
"Lost Counties," handed to Buganda
by the British for its help in the conquest
of Uganda.
Aggressive, positive. The watershed
for modern Uganda was the governorship
of Sir Andrew Cohen. Arriving
in 1952, his aim was to outpace
nationalism by making the Government
itself the most aggressive and
•Another story of the early days is about the
enormously fat Father who had to cross a lake
and a mountain to reach the area to which he
ministered. The mountain was too much for the
Father, who had to be pulled up one side on a
rope and let down the other. Eventually he
decided it would be easier to settle among his
chUdren. The mission station has been there
ever since.
positive force for change. Lingering
traces of colour bar were eradicated,
the national legislature was made a
more representative, multi-racial body,
agrarian reforms were set in motion,
educational, medical and health
services were expanded.
Cohen was unpopular with some civil
servants ("Some Europeans don't
realise that Africans are human, the
Governor doesn't realise that Europeans
are human"), but everything
went swimmingly until Britain suggested
incorporating Uganda in an
East African Federation. Buganda
dominates Uganda, but it could not
hope to dominate a Federation, and
its ruler, the Kabaka, made so much
trouble that Cohen exiled him to
England.
Not only twins. His Highness Edward
William Frederick David Walugembe
Mutebi Luwangula Mutesa II, 35th
Kabaka of Buganda, Possessor of
Almighty Power and Knowledge,
Lord of the Clans and the Land, The
Father of All Twins, The Blacksmith's
Hammer, The Cook with All the
Firewood — and honorary captain
in the Grenadier Guards (King
Freddie to his friends) is the centre of
Buganda life. The reaction to his exile
was sharp. His queen-consort, or Nalinya,
Alice Zalwango. an immensely
stout woman who was eating grass-
UGANDA
0 20 40 6o 80
SCALE m MILES
MSTCOllHTiesCT
AK» PUWEWJU Z'^_^'
CONGO
INDEPENDENCE THIS WEEK
Religious wars and lost counties
UGANDA'S CAPITAL, KAMPALA
All lit up
hoppers when the <strong>news</strong> reached her,
died of shock. Uganda women, who
feel a symbolic (and sometimes more
than symbolic) relationship with the
Kabaka as the husband image, were
plunged into emotional turmoil.
Eventually the British Government
allowed him to return as a constitutional
monarch, but his exile had
turned him into a rallying-point for
the nation. For the moment this
prestige, linked with the political
power he enjoys through his Kabaka
Yekka party's governing alliance with
the UPC's Appolo Milton Obote,
assures King Freddie of continued
supremacy in independent Uganda.
The future is less certain. African
nationalists are not normally happy
to share power with feudal chiefs.
•$ KENYA
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 15

TANGANYIKA
Tarnished image
When the British gave Tanganyika its
independence less than a year ago, they
considered it a showpiece for a
Western-style democracy in Africa.
With moderate Julius Nyerere in
charge, they said, Tanganyika might
turn out to be a model state in a
latently authoritarian Africa. Most
local whites agreed, and it was only a
few cynics who pointed out that
Nyerere enjoyed overwhelming support,
asked how he would react if his
support was threatened.
There is still no sign that Nyerere and
his TANU (Tanganyika African
National Union) enjoys anything but
overwhelming support, yet last week
the nation took its second big step towards
a Ghana-style autocracy (the
first step—curbs on trade unions a few
weeks back).
Without trial. In Dar-es-Salaam's
startlingly white National Assembly
building, MPs quickly voted through
the drastic Preventive Detention Bill,
giving the Government power to arrest
and detain people indefinitely, without
trial, who threaten "the continued
stability of the state." The power is
broad enough to allow Nyerere, when
he becomes President in two months'
time, to lock up anyone he does not
like. The only MP to speak against
the measure was Chief F. C. Masanja,
Vice-President of the People's Democratic
Party. The Bill, he said—in a
maiden speech—was in TANU's, not
Tanganyika's interests. He was jeered,
laughed at. The crowds mingling in
suits, shorts and national dress beneath
the great trees on the lawns outside
the Assembly kept their cheers, to a
man, for dapper, impeccably-dressed
Minister of Home Affairs Oscar Kambona,
who introduced the stern
measure.
The wrong way. Outside Tanganyika
(and beyond the reach of the Tanganyika
police) the cheering was more
muted. Kenya nationalist politician
Ronald Ngala commented tartly: "Any
legislation bypassing the process of
law and which places matters affecting
individual rights in the hands of
the political executive, is objectionable.
The correct course, if the law is not
sufficiently strong, is to strengthen it
and then to leave it to independent
courts to implement this strengthened
law."
Kambona's explanation for the move
is that there is a link-up between Tanganyikan
elements and "foreign powers
believed to be hostile to the country."
He has yet to produce proof.
DEVlSLOrMEM OP G.liBON'S MANGANKSE RICHES
Neo-colonialism? Mba doesn't care
GABON
With the West, a bright future
Playing off East against West to get
the maximum possible amount of aid
and investment—being blackmail or
enlightened self-interest, according to
how you look at it—is a popular pasttime
in Africa today. It does not
necessarily pay off. One African
leader who has stuck firmly with the
West, and caused his country to profit
handsomely, is the Gabon's President
Leon Mba.
The French did not do much with
Gabon when they ruled it. Backward,
sweaty, bug-bedevilled, the territory
was not a colonists' paradise. Although
the French knew there were
vast mineral deposits, they did not get
development moving until Gabon was
slipping from their grasp into the
hands of Mba and his fellownationalists.
In faith and trust Mba, like most
African leaders, has big ideas for his
country. Unlike many, he has the sense
to know how to put his big ideas into
practice. He has asked for help from
the West, and has got it.
More impressive than the aid (from
France, the US) is the inflow of private
investment capital. Nations will give
aid to potential foes to keep them
sweet: businessmen only put their
money where they trust the territory's
leaders, have confidence in its future.
To one of the biggest plywood factories
in the world (which dates from
French rule), has been added the makings
of a primary industrial complex.
Oil exports already total 900,000 tons a
year. Uranium exports have begun.
Last week came the official opening,
by Mba, of the biggest project of the
lot—a manganese mine which will
place Gabon among the top world
manganese producers. The proceeds of
sales of half a million tons of ore a
year will be split evenly between the
Government and Comilog, a joint
Franco-American private company.
Good luck, good government. Behind
the scheme are the giant US Steel Corporation,
big French companies, and
the World Bank. Said Mba: "This is
an example of what friendship and
understanding can do for a developing
country."
By combined good luck (the wealth
beneath the soil) and good government,
Gabon has already attained one of the
highest standards of living in Central
Africa (R96 per capita income). With
exploitation of its huge iron ore deposits
planned for the 1970s, Gabon
has a bright future. Private investors
know it, are getting in fast. Mba,
shrewdly, has brought in an investment
"code" so the businessmen have guarantees
that their money is safe. "Neocolonialism?"
Mba laughs. "You cannot
live on slogans." Manganese. Oil.
Iron. These are Gabon's slogans of
the future.
CAMEROON
The one that got away
Upset about the thieving and hooliganism
plaguing his area, the Police
Commissioner of the Western Cameroon
town of Victoria ordered his men
out on a round-up of the bad 'uns,
joined the swoop himself. The result:
39 people in the cells, either caught
red-handed in the act of pilfering, or
unable to give a proper explanation
for their wealth. Trouble was, when
the commissioner sat back in his
office chair to consider his success,
he felt in his pocket, found the roundup
had not been such a winner after
all. Somebody had lifted his wallet.
16 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

KENYA
African Siberia hots up
The arid, dust - blown wastes of
Kenya's Northern Frontier District are
of little value to anyone—yet all of a
sudden everyone is threatening to fight
over them.
The lean, lanky Somalis who wrap
colourful cloths around their heads,
turban-fashion, are about the only
people who can scratch any sort of
living from this barren area. Cut off
from the rest of Kenya for long
periods by torrential rains which wash
away the tracks, the Somalis have
lived in isolation for hundreds of
years, roaming the desert lands with
raggle-taggle herds of camels, white,
long-haired cattle and scrawny sheep
and goats. Arrogant, aggressive and
agile with their wicked-looking curved
knives, the Somalis are fervent followers
of Islam, do not consider themselves
Africans and look on the stocky
Bantu with contempt.
The Northern Frontier District, (NFD
to British officials) covers one-third
of the country's total land area, but
with only one-fortieth of the total
population. It is not difficult to
understand why. The place looks like
the face of the moon. Few but the
hardy camel-rearing nomads would
choose to live there.
Away from it all. British officials in
Kenya have always regarded the NFD
as a "punishment station", a sort of
African Siberia. Only guests have
been political prisoners and exiles.
Jomo Kenyatta served his eight-year
SOMALI TRIBESMAN
Friendlier with foreign folks
jail sentence on its fringe and Mau
Mau fanatics were herded into Hola
detention camp on the banks of the
sluggish, muddy Tana River which
forms the natural geographic boundary
between the NFD and the rest
of Kenya. South of the river is off
limits for Somalis without Government
passes.
Ever since Britain established administrative
posts in this beleaguered
corner of Africa up towards "the
Horn", this has been a "closed area".
No tourist can enter the NFD without
special permission from the authorities
in Isiolo.
Recently, in an effort to present to
the world their case for secession from
Kenya, three political parties favouring
union with the Somali Republic
to the north-east published a pamphlet
"A People in Isolation", which
groused: "No-one outside Kenya
seems to be aware that for decades
a 'pass' system has been imposed upon
us, not unlike the system that operates
in Southafrica. We are. for all
intents and purposes, incarcerated.
The vast majority of us in the NFD
have never set eyes on Nairobi. We
are not allowed to do so. Yet some
say we have been part of Kenya for
over 60 years. A curious partnership
indeed! In contrast, our brothers to
the East have always left their artificial
frontiers open to us so that we
can move in and out of the Somali
Republic, sharing the freedom which
is our natural heritage."
Sneaking a look. The "incarceration"
continues and the barrier
remains as insurmountable as ever—
or almost. African politicians who
have long been denied the opportunity
to visit the Northern area on organising
jaunts for their respective parties
have found a loophole. Those who
are now ministers in the Kenya
Government have found various "excuses"
to visit the forbidden territory
on the pretext that they were studying
matters affecting their portfolios —
roads, tourist potentialities and so on.
Neither KANU nor its KADU rival
wants to allow this vast area to fall
into the hands of its opponents and
apart from the prestige which it has,
the NFD occupies a vital position
between the productive Kenya Highlands
and the countries to the north
and east. (In the Second World War,
Italian invaders penetrated almost to
Wajir before Southafrican troops aiding
local forces repelled them). But
the policies of the black nationalist
parties of Kenya evoke little interest
among the Somalis. The last thing
they want is to be ground down by
the juggernaut of African nationalism.
KENY.VSOMALI BORDERLAND
Who goes where^
While they say they have no quarrel
with the rest of Kenya securing independence
from British colonial rule,
they, for their part, want no part of
an independent Kenya. Their desire
is to unite with the Somali Republic,
thus achieving another step in the
direction of "Greater Somalia", which
envisages the ultimate inclusion of
Djibuti and the Haud and Ogaden
regions of Ethiopia, all under the one
Somali Republic.
Real Estate problems. This is where
international politics comes even to
the remote, windswept wastes of the
NFD. The Somalis and the Ethiopians
are bitter enemies, ready to take
up arms against each other any
minute. Even if Kenya were to agree
to cede part of the NFD to Somalia,
the Ethiopians would regard this as
a hostile act, only to be made good
by the grant of an equal strip of territory
to Emperor Haile Selassie; for
they claim that tribes such as the
Boran and Galla. living in the NFD
alongside Somalis. originated in
Ethiopia.
Feelings in the area are now running
so high that a British Government
commission that was to have heard
evider.re from the various secessionist
groups ii3S shied off at the last
minute. Thoy were so advised by the
Kenya Government, after a party of
Kenyatta's KANU men were forced
to abandon their meeting at Isiolo
and flee for their lives when the stones
started to fly.
Sooner or later there is going to be
trouble in the NFD. The British
Government is hoping that it will be
later—after it has handed over power
to the African politicians.
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 17

PS FEDERAL SOI/DIEB GUARDS ARRESTED STUDENTS
The Old South stirring
Spirit of the (18) sixties
No American state is more deeply
Southern than Mississippi. It produced
Jefferson Davis, the President
of the Confederacy. Its symbol is the
magnolia. The bulk of its Negroes
(who make up almost half the population)
still labour in the cotton fields
as their enslaved ancestors did.
Hatred of the "Yankee" and the
Federal Government he controls is
still alive in the South, although
almost a century has passed since the
Confederacy crumbled. Last week the
hatred flamed into violence as one
irresistible force (the Kennedy Administration)
met another (Mississippi
Governor Ross R. Barnett) — who
did not prove so irresistible after all.
Progress, or politics? Cause of the
boil-up was a 29-year-old Negro Air
Force veteran, James H. Meredith,
who resigned from Mississippi's all-
Negro Jackson State College in June
to transfer to the all-white Mississippi
University at Oxford. Said Meredith:
"I feel that every citizen should be
a first class citizen and should be
allowed to develop his talents on a
free, equal and competitive basis. To
be denied this opportunity is a violation
of my rights as a citizen."
Meredith's transfer seemed more a
political stunt than an academic stepup,
but he had the big guns on his
side. When Governor Barnett tried to
bar his registration at the university.
Federal courts ruled him out of order,
finally threatened to throw him into
jail and fine him R7,0{)0 a day for
contempt of court if he did not give
way.
Yankees always fair game. Barnett's
answer was to invoke the dubious
constitutional theory of "inter-posi­
tion", which suggests that a state has
the right to defy the Federal authorities
where they act unconstitutionally.
The Governor declared he would go
to jail rather than allow Meredith into
the university, called up several thousand
Mississippi National Guardsmen,
even mobilised his game wardens.
Faced with such defiance of the law.
President Kennedy had no alternative
but to act firmly, and act fast. He
placed the Mississippi National Guard
under Federal orders, sent in paratroops,
1,000 armed marshals. Segregationists
converged on Mississippi
from Alabama, Louisiana and Tennessee,
carrying firearms, bricks and
clubs to help the locals stop the
"nigger". In the ensuing violence, two
men died (Agence France Presse correspondent
Paul Guihard and jukebox
repair man Ray Gunter) and 166 marshals
were injured by bullets, buckshot,
acid. Among the arrested —
rightwing extremist General Edwin A.
Walker, charged with offences for
which he faces 39 years in jail,
R30,000 in fines.
Guarded Spanish. Governor Barnett
screamed "invasion" but, as was
inevitable, buckled, appealed for
peace, allowed Meredith into the
coldly hostile university. Armed men
guarded him as he attended lectures
in Spanish, American colonial history.
Kennedy got warm applause from
overseas for his toughness, but there
were embarrassments, too. The Portuguese,
tongue-in-cheek, offered to
put Meredith through one of their
universities (the message: we may be
one of your betes noires, but there is
no racialism here). Cuban Communist
leader Fidel Castro said Mississippi
was one of the few places where
US troops had been put to "correct"
use. Red faces in the White House.
FRANCE
Shades of the fourth republic
France's President Charles de Gaulle
makes a stately passage through life
preoccupied with France's gloires,
unruffled by lesser mortals such as
politicians. Trouble is, the lesser
mortals resent being ignored, do not
share de Gaulle's conviction that he
is God's gift to France. Last week
they told him so in no uncertain
fashion.
Cause of the trouble was the President's
plan to rejig France's constitutional
set-up. He wants the nation's
president to be elected directly by its
27i-million registered voters instead
of. as at present, indirectly by 80,000
worthies (MPs, municipal officials) on
behalf of the people. The idea is to
give the president popular sanction to
act, if necessary, in defiance of Parliament.
Depends who you're raping. The plan,
in itself, was enough to upset the
politicians. What made it worse was
that Le Grand Charles, without consulting
Parliament, announced that the
people would decide "yes" or "no" to
the constitutional change in a referendum
on October 28.
The MPs, pointing out (with good
cause) that de Gaulle was violating
the constitution,* censured the President's
Government, headed by M.
Georges Pompidou. Although not
obhged to, de Gaulle decided to dissolve
Parliament, declare a general
election—to be held after the referendum
which he seems certain to win.
With an intransigent Secret Army
Organisation out to assassinate the
President, and most politicians out for
his political head, de Gaulle's Fifth
Republic begins to look more like the
chaotic Fourth.
YEMEN
Beware the Praetorian Guard
Pro-rebel Cairo said the Imam was
dead, the people joyously acclaimed
the new regime. Anti-rebel Amman
said the Imam was alive, the people
were against the new regime. Western
sources, more cautiously, said they did
not know what was going on. One
thing only was certain about the situation
in Yemen, Arabia's feudal backwater,
this week: there was trouble.
It all began when the nation's tyrannical
master. Imam Ahmed, died—to
everyone's surprise—a natural death
(NEWS/CHECK September 28). His son.
Crown Prince Saif al Islam Muhammed
al Badr, a well-read, youngish
leftwinger. succeeded to the throne, but
made the fatal mistake of appointing
*De Gaulle's reply: "Does one rape one's
own wife?"
IS NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
i'i' ".

as commander of the palace guard one
Colonel Abdullah Sallal, who had been
implicated in earlier plots against al
Badr's father.
Under ruins, or rumours? Just eight
days after ai Badr became Iman, the
radio station in Sanaa, the capital, proclaimed
to the world that he had died
in his palace under an artillery barrage
when the "tyrannic dictator" refused to
resign. Sallal moved fast. He established
a Yemen Arab Republic, executed
43 "enemies of the regime,"
appealed to Egypt's President Gamal
Abdel Nasser for military help. Nasser
obliged with a planeload of arms, ammunition
and military experts. Sallal
claimed he had released 3,000 people
kept chained in dungeons and tortured
by the old Imam. Russia, Egypt and
Red China gleefully granted immediate
diplomatic recognition to the revolutionary
government: Sallal growled
that unless the Americans got as
friendly mighty soon, the Americancontrolled
Yemen Development Corporation
would lose its oil and mineral
concessions. To keep the Yemenis
themselves in line, Sallal upped the pay
of the 20,000 regular troops, broadcast
boastful messages about the tribal
chiefs who, he claimed, supported his
regime—and threatened to bomb any
towns or villages which opposed his
authority. Sallal imperiously ordered
all the Yemen's envoys abroad to
return home, sent off his own, new,
representative hotfoot to the UN.
Tribes v troops. Radio Amman,
broadcasting from the capital of Nasser's
arch-enemy. King Hussein of
IMAN MUHAMMGD ALBADR
Dead or alive?
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
Jordan, told a very different story. Al
Badr was alive, and was in hiding at
Hajjah, 50 miles from Sanaa. Powerful
northern tribes, outnumbering
Yemen's regular forces, were on the
march against the rebels. As for
"bombing" recalcitrants, Amman reported
that Yemen had only one pilot
to fly three squadrons of Russian 11-10
bombers, said that, in any case, none
of them were in a fit state to fly.
Yemen's UN delegate. Emir Seif el
Islam el Hassan, to dispel all doubts
about whether there was an Imam
alive or not, promptly declared himself
Imam, set off hot-foot for Yemen to
reconquer his kingdom. He can expect
mihtary support from King Saud
ibn Abdul-Aziz, ruler of Yemen's
neighbour, Saudi-Arabia, who like al
Badr's father Ahmed also went sour on
Nasser when the Cairene plotted to
assassinate him. Yemen's troubles are
more than a civil war: they are the
first military clash between the traditional
and revolutionary forces striving
for control of the Arab world.
MONACO
Pay as you yearn
Nobody Ukes paying income tax, but
the Latins have a particularly rooted
aversion to this horrid practice. Film
stars blandly declare taxable incomes
amounting to a labourer's earnings.
Industrialists charge up their mistresses
as deductible expenses. Businessmen?
Of late they have discovered
the craftiest dodge of the lot—registering
their companies in Monaco.
Monaco, a sun-soaked 360-acre enclave
on the French Riviera, famous
for its Monte Carlo casino and its
Princess, ex-screen idol Grace Kelly,
is one of the few places in the world
where there is no income tax at all.
Better still, French businessmen found
that by registering their companies
there, they could carry on trading in
France (there are no tariff barriers,
exchange regulations or import-export
controls between the two countries)
without paying French income tax.
Raking in the cliips. Monaco's handsome
ruler. Prince Rainier III, faced
with declining receipts from his casino
as competitive gambling joints opened
their tables in France, welcomed, even
encouraged, the corporative influx.
The number of Monaco-registered
companies rocketed to over 500, business
activity tripled in three years, and
revenue from indirect taxation, property
transfers and company registrations
brought so much cash into the
royal coffers that Prince Rainier had
a R28-million budget surplus last
year.
All this did not pass unnoticed in
PRINCE RAINIER
Reluctant tax man
France, whose Government not only
lost out on the tax rake-off, but also
came under pressure from businessmen
who huffed that vast new imports
of Monagasque products were cutting
into their markets.
Earlier this year, Monaco got an ultimatum
from France's autocratic President
Charles de Gaulle: levy income
tax or lose your privileged economic
ties.
Francly, no alternative. Monaco's
independence dates from 1297. and
Prince Rainier's proud reply was:
"Neither I nor the Monegasque people
can or will accept these demands.
They mean the end of our liberties."
The prince later had second thoughts,
ordered his officials to start negotiations
with Paris. Compelling reason
for the climb-down was Monaco's
dependence on France — the principality
uses French money, French
power. French rail transportation, the
French telephone system, relies on an
open border. If de Gaulle got really
unpleasant. Monaco would find itself
with a 25-foot quay as its only link
with the outside world, and that
would not encourage the free-spending
tourists.
In Paris last week. Monagasque officials
agreed to the French terms:
income tax for Monagasque residents,
whether individual or corporate.
Only exception so far: restaurants,
hotels and other businesses which
trade strictly inside Monaco. The
prince's negotiators are also trying to
get his 2,696 subjects off the hook
(other Monegasque residents are not
Monegasque nationals). When Prince
Rainier does slap on the taxes, he will
be in the odd position of having more
money than Monaco needs for its
meagre needs (a four-man Government
and 160 cops). But for France's
tax-dodgers, the period of Grace has
ended.

& ANDREW COHEN
NEWS/CHECK
TOM MBOYA
ARTHUR DODDS-PARKER
12 OCTOBER 1962
Britain's
MARGERY PERHAM

African Queen
GUIDE OF RULERS OLD AND NEW
TtTARGERY FREDA PERHAM.
The name means nothing to Africa's
millions, yet no woman has
influenced events on their continent
more over the past 20 years. Margery
Perham is Britain's African Queen, an
eminence grise, a mere woman whose
name never makes the headlines, but
whose views command the respect of
men who made and are making the
New Africa. She has the ear of black
presidents and white prime ministers,
of governors and professors, of nationalist
politicians and of tribal chiefs.
No woman (and few men) know more
about Africa; she has criss-crossed it
on foot, camel, horse, jeep and plane,
studied it, soaked it up, fallen in love
with it.
Power of mind. Margery Perham
holds no high post except in Britain's
intellectual life, as Senior Fellow of
Nuffield College, Oxford. She has no
power, yet she is powerful indeed, for
her thinking on Africa, her deep
understanding of its peoples, the
clarity of her mind, have influenced
two generations of British colonial
administrators, two generations of
African leaders.
The c|ueen's power is waning as Britain
progressively sheds its responsibilities
in Africa, as Africa's politicians
cut their intellectual ties with
Europe and seek their inspiration elsewhere,
or from within. Yet Margery
Perhani still stands sovereign, albeit
less powerfully. In Africa, she
receives a royal reception wherever she
goes ... a governor's car, accommodation
at Colonial Office (or state)
expense, the welcome of a thousand
friends, black and white, high and low,
who studied at her feet. In Britain, no
voice carries greater weight than hers
when speaking on African issues.
Action soon. Britain stands at a
moment of crucial decision on the
future of the largest remaining slab of
its shrinking African empire — the
Rhodesian Federation. Dr. Hastings
Banda is off to London soon to discuss
a new constitution for Nyasaland
with Central African Affairs Minister
R A Butler: he is set on secession.
In Northern Rhodesia, the power of
the black secessionists is growing. The
British Government has used every
21
tactic of delay: the Monckton Commission,
a preliminary conference, a
change of ministers, on-the-spot visits
by experts, but white Rhodesians, their
pockets hit by political uncertainty,
are now pressing as much as blacks for
a decision on their future.
At this moment there appears a letter
in The Times signed "Margery Perham"
. . . May I suggest the lines of a
possible expedient for handling the
grave impasse in the Rhodesias, especially
in Southern Rhodesia! The British
Government should call a representative
conference of Rhodesian
leaders, especially elected ones, with
representatives, perhaps from the
mining and business worlds and the
trade unions . . ."
Battle banner. Thus, as it has been
for many years, Margery Perham
has chosen, with a deadly instinct for
the right timing, to intervene in an
effective way to help shape British
policy on Africa. A Perham letter to
The Times is a portent: meaning little
in itself, it is but a public announcement
of a new Perham campaign to
influence British policy by provoking
controversy — and new thought —
among the men who rule Britain.
Few Perham letters fail to rally support
or opposition. Her opponents are invariably
courteous. "Many others who
like myself are admirers of Miss Margery
Perham ..." is the tentative opening
of another letter to The Times
from the Marquis of Salisbury, who
opposes most of what she stands for in
Africa. The battle once engaged, Margery
Perham seldom returns to the
fray until another decisive moment
arises: she wastes no words in defending
herself, for The Times letter is but
the trumpet-call of a campaign pursued
in common rooms and clubs, it
is the visible one-tenth of the iceberg.
How British policy is made. To understand
this astounding woman's capacity
to influence opinion, one must
understand the way African policy is
made in Britain. Parliament certainly
does not make it — witness the small
turn-out of MPs on "colonial days".
Even Britain's real rulers, the top civil
servants in Whitehall, are not decisive.
The truth is that no single identifiable
person or group "makes" African
policy, and when the Government
defines a new policy line (Prime Minister
Harold Macmillan's "Wind of
Change" speech at Capetown, ex-Colonial
Secretary Iain Macleod's Lancaster
House conference on Kenya) it is
LORD I,UG.'\BD
Friend, mentor, inspiration
merely reflecting powerful trends in
the thinking of the Men Who Matter
in Britain.
In a mature democratic society the
opinion-maker has a special position
of power. He is invariably more
important than an MP, and often
more so than a Cabinet minister. His
operational base varies . . . membership
of important clubs or committees,
key positions in the party machine, a
Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, or some
other key academic post, a vital position
in the Church of England.
Often radicals. Whatever their operational
base, opinion-makers have certain
things in common. They are
extremely well-informed in their particular
field. They have a capacity to
judge events rightly over a long
period. And they do so in the face
of strong, contrary, traditional views.
They are often radicals, the pacesetters
for change. But they must be
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

able to dissent from the established
view in a manner that will engage the
admiration of the The Establishment
— the holders of key posts in the
Government, the top civil servants,
the editors of serious <strong>news</strong>papers, the
men of power in the political movements,
the Archbishop of Canterbury,
a few academics — who together are
responsible for the national destiny.
The opinion-maker influences the
course of events in brief, well-argued
memoranda placed in the right hands,
in long, intimate interviews with key
ministers, by carefully-selected deputations,
and, of course, through The
Letter to The Times.
Academic queen. At 66, Margery Perham
is not only a woman historian,
but a woman of history. She was the
first woman to break out of the purdah
of the women's colleges of Oxford
and Cambridge, founding, with Lord
Lindsay and some others. Nuffield
College, Oxford — the first Oxford
college with both men and women
tutors, men and women students. As
Nuffield's Senior Fellow she is the
first woman ever to preside at Oxford
or Cambridge over the ritual of High
Table when students and tutors formally
dine together. A colleague has
described how she carries off this traditional
male role in a traditionally
male university society "as effortlessly
as if she were Catherine the Great",
passing round the port after supper.
She was the first woman to give the
BBC's Reith Lectures, and has produced
a dozen books in her long academic
career. If Margery Perham is
ever elevated to the peerage (not at
all unlikely), she would be known as
Lady Perham of Africa. For although
Oxford has been her base, Africa has
been her stamping-ground. And it all
began accidentally.
Dreamt of big game hunting. The
daughter of a well-to-do North Country
businessman, she revelled as a
child in Sir Percy Fitzpatrick's Jock of
the Bushveld (she dreamed of becoming
a big game hunter) and Rider
Haggard's She (the most hackneyed
joke about her is that she evolved
into a version of Haggard's character
— SHE-who-must-be-obeyed).
There is something of the matriarch
about her — firm, strong, self-willed,
independent, but also lovable. A physically
big, commanding woman with
a big mind, she gives an impression of
immense strength. When teaching, she
reveals a dry, analytical, almost masculine
thinking.
She has always fought for the right of
first-class women to be treated as
equals by first-class men, but is not
above using feminine wiles ("How can
you treat me like this?"). It maddens
the male dons.
She has always been a handsome
woman, with an alluring streak of
feminine vanity. She is tall, walks in
a determined manner, slightly roundshouldered.
She often wears a concentrated
look; but when she smiles
— a warm, endearing smile — her
brown eyes light up and show her
deep, human compassion.
Camel ride. Margery Perham was
educated at St. Stephen's College,
Windsor, and St Anne's School at
Abbot Bromley, read history at
Oxford, got an assistant lectureship at
Sheffield, then had a serious breakdown.
She went to recuperate in British
Somaliland, where her sister was
married to a District Officer. She
spent a year in the sand-swept land,
carrying out a camel trek along and
across the Ethiopian border.
Her romance with Africa had begun.
Unlike many British Africanists, Margery
Perham was not drawn to the
continent by moral outrage over colonialism.
Essentially she approved of
colonialism, provided it was enlightened.
She never advocated a rapid
withdrawal from Africa; she was much
more concerned with the right kind of
colonial administration, with using the
machinery and resources properly to
THE MARQUIS OP SALISBURY
Polite, but no like
train and educate people to govern
themselves well.
Better brauis, better training. She saw
the need for Britain to put its best
brains into the colonies, and to train
colonial officials to enable them to do
a first-class job. She helped inspire
the famous courses for training colonial
civil servants which still run at
Oxford.
EMPEROR HAILE SELASSIE
For her book, a banning
For 30 years she strode, rode on horseback
(her favourite riding country:
Basutoland) and drove across Africa.
And she wrote. Many great books.
Her Native Administration in Nigeria
(1937) is an Africanist's classic. A
sympathiser of the Ethiopians' cause
against the Italians, she was nevertheless
banned from the country for
many years by Emperor Haile Selassie
for The Government of Ethiopia
(1948) — still the best study in this
field. With the great Lionel Curtis she
wrote The Protectorates of Southafrica.
With Jack Simmons she
indulged her passion for African travel
by writing African Discovery. She
edited Faber's series of Colonial and
Comparative Studies and Lord
Lugard's Diaries. Her greatest work
is a 1,400-page biography of Lugard
(one of her early friends and mentors;
a colonial administrator who, in his
time, really did make African policy:
he created the modern Nigeria).
Not anti-settler. But the general reading
public knows her best for her
famous correspondence with authoress
Elspeth Huxley, first published in
1944 as Race and Politics in Kenya,
with Elspeth Huxley defending the
settlers' point of view.
Although Margery Perham was rated
as a critic by the settlers' leaders,
she was never anti-settler like a number
of British Africanists, and always
shows a lively compassion for the interests
of white and brown Africans.
In Race and Politics she writes that
the settler is "asked to put up indefinitely
with the rule of British officials;
to show angelic patience
towards backward and incomprehensible
servants; to refrain from exploiting
his highly exploitable labour, and
in general, to show a restraint never
expected of his grandfather in this
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

country. He is asked to remain acquiescent,
while those whom he regards
as savages are protected and educated;
taught, maybe, to question his position;
to compete with his grandchildren,
and be allowed perhaps, in the
end — this is his nightmare — to
surge like a great dark flood over the
little island of privilege and Western
way of life to which he is clinging."
Deep-seated fears. She went on: "I
understand his fear and resentment
and the difficulty he finds in calmly
discussing on a cold, detached, historical
plane the conditions and possibilities
of his survival. I realize why
some 95 or even 99 per cent of decent,
kindly, even highly intelligent and
public-spirited Englishmen, many of
them retired servants of the Crown,
adopt the settler policy almost as soon
as they set up house in the country.
"I believe that the position in which
they find themselves, and the deepseated
fears it arouses, almost force
this general attitude upon them. As
in Southafrica. only a small percentage
of exceptionally thoughtful and unworldly
individuals have rejected or
are ever likely to reject the majority
attitude. For that reason, I should
never advise a friend of mine
to put himself and his children into a
position that seems almost morally
untenable at present, and in all probability,
physically untenable in the
future."
At another time she said: "I can
understand the resentment shown
against myself and others . . . There
are. of course, some doctrinaire and
reckless critics in Britain . . . But
there are more serious critics. It is
important for the psychology of the
settlers that they should realize there
BASDTOLAND . . . HER FAVOURITE RIDI NG COUNTRY
Not for Southafrica, says Perham
is much understanding for them in this
country, even among some of those
who have felt obliged to oppose their
drive for political supremacy."
Great suffering. She has never been
afraid of saying she can think of no
solutions for awkward problems.
About Kenya, for example, she says:
"The people will just have to live
together and work together at the cost
of great suffering — and here I'm
talking mainly about the Africans."
Many of her ideas derive from Lord
Lugard, whom she first met in 1928.
He was already in his seventies. For
her, he was the ideal enlightened colonial
administrator. It was from this
great African pro-consul who was at
the centre of policy-making for half a
century that she learned much of the
art of influencing officials, governments
and public opinion.
With Lugard, Dr Randall Davidson
and J. H. Oldham (two powers in the
Church of England in the Thirties)
she campaigned successfully in 1931
to stop a white-dominated East African
Federation being foisted on
Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika.
Later, she was prominent in arguing
against General J. B. M. Hertzog's
proposal that Southafrica should incorporate
the High Commission territories,
which she knows well.
During the Second World War she
served on committees, swung through
the US lecturing on British colonial
policy to strengthen Allied friendship.
Secrets about the future. Although
she was respected, and sometimes
listened to, prestige and recognition
only came to her in real measure after
the war, when the Labour Government
came to power. She was put on a
secret committee to study the future
MARGISRY PERHAM IN HER YOUTH
With a camel ride, a romance
of Britain's smaller colonial territories.
Her ideas gained greater acceptance in
the post-war world. The word
"empire" had become slightly dirty.
New men were in power in the Cabinet
and at the Colonial Office — men
who were her friends, or old students.
She helped Arthur Creech Jones
(Labour's best Colonial Secretary) to
establish the Fabian Colonial Bureau.
Chuter Ede, the influential Home
Secretary, was an intimate friend. So
was Herbert (now Lord) Morrison. So
was the young "King of the Africa
Department" at the Colonial Office
—Sir Andrew Cohen. "Cohen," she
recalls, "threw open the windows of
the whole place."
Great discrimination. The Colonial
Office had always kept a wary
eye on her. They trusted her knowledge,
but disliked her letters to The
Times and her influence with important
people.
Although she had easy access to those
in power, she used her position with
great discrimination. She was, in any
case, never a great one for confronting
people in their offices. "I've never
believed in working over a desk—a
man will listen and then do nothing,
or even ask you not to say something.
Much better to write to The Times
first."
Her one real battle with the Labour
Government was over the banning of
Seretse and Tshekedi Khama. She
stood by the Khamas throughout,
although it was Tshekedi, not his
nephew, who was her great friend.
Tory friends. Although she has a
repugnance to voting Tory (she is a
natural Labour voter, although today
she might be tempted to vote Liberal)
she has maintained close ties with
several of the younger Tories. When
Macleod became Colonial Secretary,
one of his first acts was to send for
Margery Perham. The acting chairman
of the Conservative Commonwealth
Council, Douglas Dodds-
Parker, whom she first met when he
was a colonial official in the Sudan,
is a close friend.
Her influence has been particularly
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 S

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BUSINESS
TELEVISION
The kindly one-eyed monster
Roy Thomson, the Canadian-Scottish
Press millionaire, said when he was
awarded the contract to run Scottish
Television: "It's like being given a
licence to print money." It was, too.
He paid R440,000 for the licence:
within a year or two, he was raking
in a net profit of R280,000 a month.
Rhodesians, as fond as most of turning
a fast buck, therefore flocked to the
share market like ants to a jampot
when their television system was
launched two years ago. Clerks, shop
assistants, railwaymen, people who
had never bought a share before in
their lives filled in the tear-out forms
thoughtfully provided in the <strong>news</strong>papers
by the firm handling the share
issue, popped them into the post. The
forms were picked "out of the hat,"
and for every lucky applicant who got
his lOO-or-so shares at 20c apiece,
there were half-a-dozen who were disappointed.
In one minute after the
lists were opened the 400,000 shares
were over-subscribed more than fourteen
times, despite their carrying no
voting rights.
From loss to profit. Although Rhodesians
did not strike it as rich as some
of their British counterparts — who
bought commercial TV shares at 50c,
saw them go to R24—they have had
no cause for complaint. Within days
of issue, Rhodesian television shares
were quoted at 60 to 70 cents on the
Rhodesian Stock Exchange. Since
then, they have soared to 195c apiece.
Reason: RTV's impressive financial
record. During its first 16 months of
life, the company's R300,000 revenue
yielded a R80,000 loss: in the year
ending June 30, RTV transformed the
picture, making a R 130,000 net profit
(after tax) out of a R935,000 revenue,
according to the latest annual report.
Not surprisingly, in this profitable picture,
Roy Thomson has a hand. He
has a substantial holding of the company's
voting shares, which have never
been offered to the public. Other big
shareholders are Rhodesian Printing
and Publishing (part of the Argus
group: it has more than one-third of
the voting stock); International Television
RTV's commercial managers);
and Philips Rhodesia.
Beaming ahead. By the time it has
finished with extending its Salisbury
and Bulawayo studios, RTV will have
spent a cool million on buildings and
equipment. First transmitter was
erected at Salisbury, the capital, in
November, 1960. Bulawayo first tuned
in to the one-eyed monster in June
last year—six months ahead of
schedule. The Copperbelt transmitter
at Kitwe started beaming last December—a
year ahead of schedule.
Advertisers on Rhodesian television
have no control over the programmes
presented to viewers. They pay from
R9 for a 20-second "spot" at a lesspopular
viewing time to R52 for a
minute's spiel at peak viewing time
(6 to 9.30 p.m. on Sundays). The
"spots" are slipped into the service
during "natural" breaks in the programmes,
although viewers grouse that
too often the breaks are mighty unnatural.
RTV STUDIOS, SALISBURY
Drawing the ads
Evading Dr Hertzog. Advertisers
clamour for time on what has been
called the most powerful advertising
medium of all, and Southafrican firms,
denied TV in the Republic, have been
prominent in the rush.
When the "telly" arrived, both <strong>news</strong>papers
and cinemas were hard hit, the
one by a fall-off in advertising revenue,
the other by severe drops in attendances.
Now, with the novelty of TV
waning slightly, both the <strong>news</strong>papers
and cinemas are happier, but, says
RTV chairman Sir Andrew Strachan:
"TV has, in its short span of existence,
become part of the everyday pattern
of living throughout the wide areas
of the Rhodesias which it serves."
Latest reports show that there are more
than 20,000 sets receiving from Salisbury,
a further 17,000 tuned to the
Bulawayo and Kitwe transmitters. 75
per cent of the Rhodesias' whites are
in areas capable of receiving the TV
programmes, as well as IJ million
Africans. The Native viewing public
is increasing rapidly.
Easy money. The only gloomy patch
in the bright picture is provided by
the Southern Rhodesia Government.
Last year the Government decided
that a nifty way of raising the money
to pay for expanding African educational
facilities, and the police
force, would be to slap a special
entertainments tax on prosperous
RTV, The proposed tax would have
hit RTV for R 124,000 a year, left
it virtually profitless. Fumed RTV
director Richard Mayer: " Had I
known that it would be possible for
the Government to slap on this tax,
I, as a catalyst of the group, would
never have gone in for this TV ven-
ture." Public opinion, sensing a
threat to its flickering idol, swung
behind RTV and the Government
backed down, "suspending" the tax
till January next.
Rhodesia being what it is, the temporary
respite is likely to fossilise into
a permanency, but RTV is still nervous
about the whole business. It is
no use minting money if the Government
collects the cash.
SHIPPING
Coasting towards a million
Britain, an island nation, based its
early industrial power on transport by
barge and coastal vessel. Southafrica,
a land power whose major industrial
complex, the Witwatersrand, is far
from the sea, entered its period of
Industrial Revolution with the railroads
as the veins and arteries of its
economic system. Yet for the Republic,
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 25

ONE STOP
TO PARIS
8-20
A.M.
1205
P.M.
7-30
P.M.
PIRIS
the service is JET the difference is FRENCH
DC-8 Jetliner—fastest ever to Paris.
Weekly Daytime FHght, or choice of
our Night Flight via Nice.
FRENCH AIRLINES
Consult your Travel Agent
SOUTHAPBICAN COASTER
Gaining ground
too, coastal shipping has a growing
role to play, linking four great cities^
Durban, East London, Port Elizabeth
and Capetown — three of which are
already centres of heavy industry.
Southafrican coastal shipping companies
are almost a hundred years old:
they have had to fight the railways
for trade every inch of the way, yet
never before has so much tonnage
been plying the sea lanes between
Table Bay and The Bluflf.
Bigger and better. Three companies—
Thesen's*, Smith's Coasters and
African Coasters, pioneered coastal
traffic, and until recent times, the flag
of Southafrica's merchant marine was
borne wholly by the coasters.
By 1939, Southafrica had 16 coasters
afloat, totalling 7,000 tons. As recently
as 1954, the coaster fleet amounted to
only 9,000 tons. Today it is up to
30,000 tons, with four new vessels
added during the past few months. The
fleet hopes to hit the record soon of
one million tons of freight carried in
a year.
Southafrican coasters have the best
navigational equipment available—
radar, auto pilot, gyro compass linked
with direction-finding gear. They are
more than coasters. They are ready
for voyages to other lands, if needed.
A naughty word. Coaster men are
confident about the future, but still
bristle when someone mentions "railways."
One big grouse is that the
Southafrican Railways & Harbours
Administration levies the same wharf-
*Founded by Captain Mathias Thesen and
his brotlier Leonard, who were driven into
Table Bay by a violent storm while en
route from Norway to New Zealand In
1869. They fell In love with the Cape and
stayed to settle, found a steamship line.
26 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOUR 1962

age, shipping and landing dues on the
coasters as it does on cargo received
from or despatched to foreign ports:
in most other countries charges for
"local" cargo are much lower than for
foreign shipments, or are waived altogettier.
Coaster men are quick to point out
that if they are given a break, they
will be able to afford to buy ships
turned out by the shipbuilding industry
the Government is anxious to
establish. That sort of argument goes
home in Pretoria. The SAR&H may
yet be persuaded to be friends with
its private enterprise competitors.
MARKETING
Lumping it, liking it
Watch for it. Madam — from next
month you will be able to buy lump
sugar with a difference. The sugar
will not be the kind you attack
with tongs; it will be the wrapped, cube
variety you had on airliners, at every
boulevard cafe, with early morning
croissants and coffee last time you
visited Europe. From next month it
will be right there on your pantry shelf,
by courtesy of a former Berliner,
named Klaus Peter Nieckau.
Gestation. Wrapped sugar cubes are
old hat in Europe and America, but
nobody had got around to marketing
them in Southafrica. Textile manufacturer
Nieckau went on a heimwee
trip to Germany in 1957; there the idea
struck him, but it took five years of
gestation before he was delivered of his
brainchild. He first tried to peddle the
idea to the Huletts and Umfolosi sugar
enterprises here. Wrapped cube sugar?
"No go," said the sugar barons of
NINA CUBE'S NIECKAU
One Edward, or two?
Natal, considering that the product
would not be a big enough hit with
Southafricans to make the expenditure
on special machinery worth while.
See-saw. Sugarbowler Nieckau was
undeterred. "I'll import the wrapped
sugar," he said—and did. But importing
sugar to a sugar-producing Southafrica
was a bit thick. Pretoria granted
an import permit only on his undertaking
to export an equal volume of
naked, unwrapped sugar to the French
refinery, which would supply the
dressed product back to him. This he
arranged, the French company was
only too pleased to comply. Nevertheless
Nieckau was later to receive irate
complaints from sugar farmers who
thought that the cubed sugar was not
Southafrican. The sugar came back
after its long journey to France, and
made an impact. Not the least impacted
was Harvey Winship, managing
director of Refined Sugars and Syrups
which is a wholly-owned subsidiary of
Huletts.
The wrapped cube came, was seen,
conquered. By June of this past winter,
Huletts were churning out the
cubes for sole distributor, Nina Cubes
(of Parklands, Johannesburg) bossed
by Nieckau. Its output, in the past
three months: 60,000 pounds of cubes
—sold mainly to hotels.
Wax—or wane. "It was not the mere
spending of R70,000 on equipment,"
says Nieckau: thousands of rand, and
four months of precious time, were
spent on improving the texture of the
cubes. If sugar is packed too tightly,
it dissolves too slowly. If too loose,
the cube crumbles: it might as well
be granulated sugar. Furthermore,
if the paper wrapping is not correctly
waxed, it sticks to the sugar or the
sugar sticks to it. Wax—or wane—is
the slogan of the wrapped cube-sugar
entrepreneur. Slowly (or quickly, depends
on how you think of it) things
came right for Huletts, Nina Cubes—
and Nieckau.
Cubed Root. By next month, when
the cubes go onto supermarket shelves,
the Nieckau enterprise should begin to
kick in profits to the extent that cubed
sugar kicks in profits overseas. First
firms to flaunt the peeled advertising
available on cubed-sugar wrappers
were Pitco. Ellis-Brown, Joko, and the
hotel group comprising Luthjes Langham.
Marine and Edward. Southafrican
Airways are a new taker and
new machinery is being imported to
boost production to 80-100,000 pounds
a month. Companies like the fingertip
focus of their names on those
wrapping papers. Nieckau has got
things moving.
LIVING • -
HOBBIES
Endearing lunacies
Louis XVI tinkered with clocks,
Cleopatra less pleasantly experimented
with poisons, and Catherine the Great
collected lovers like George V
collected stamps. Public dignity
reveals itself in its hobbies, and last
week part of Southafrica showed its
private face at the Johannesburg
Hobbies Fair, one of several similar
yearly events held in most of Southafrica's
big cities.
Oddball. The solid core of Hobbies
Fairs are tropical fish, patchwork
PICTURE AT HOBBIES FAIR
Public display . . .
quilts, models, stamps and cigarette
cards. Even these normal relaxations
have their inbuilt bizarreries—
biggest model train, smallest model
ship—but they are merely staple diet
for the true hobby addict, tedious
beside glass chess sets, portraits of
national heroes in burnt matches, the
Union Buildings constructed of toothpicks.
Among the by-products of
esoteric pursuits to be seen last week
was a complete orchestra of silver
paper, real ladies shoes (but 5"
long), a Tretchikoff carried out in
petit point, pictures of dancing girls
(see cut) whose clothes are made of
butterfly's wings.
Mice and box cameras. Some hobbies
demand considerable technical skill: a
radio-controlled boat, 14 months in
the making, which lowers its lifeboats,
toots a Lilliputian siren; scaled
down rooms furnished in carved and
carpentered ball-and-claw and twotone
upholstered three-piece suites; a
Western dude's saddle (see cut) and
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 W

holster in elaborately worked leather.
But the real pleasure of a Hobbies
Fair is a sense of wonder and amazement.
There are exhibits before
which the belief in human rationality
falters: trays of powdered fruit and
vegetables (bearing such legends as
"Guava—C what I mean?"), model
flying saucers which, although powered
by petrol, must be sustained by faith,
collections of birds eggs, mice bred
for exotic colouring, snakes and
lizards. And what makes anyone
exhibit a 1912 box camera (still in
use) and a cradle-to-grave scrapbook
of the English Royal Family?
SAUDLE AT HOBBIES KAIK
. . . private pursuits
Endless process. Much of the show
is involved with the therapeutic value
of hobbies. Puppetry and scouts,
miniature railway systems and first aid,
help to assuage the lonely, reform the
juvenile delinquent. But though these
are interesting (even macabre: a puppet
Liberace exercises a repellent
fascination), the real interest is in the
offbeat use of scrap materials for improbable
ends. And, of course, sometimes
hobbies become profitable
occupations. According to the Fair
organisers, when this happens, the
hobby addict, robbed of his kicks—
takes up another hobby.
AFTER DARK
Family nights out
October used to be the month when
Cairo society returned limp from its
exertions on the Riviera and the
Greek islands. But the new puritanism
of Nasser's Egypt has cut down the
Mediterranean summer migrations.
Summer life in Egypt's capital is
sternly cultural. A floating theatre
(Ibsen), Son et Lumiere at the Pyramids
and the Citadel of Salah ed-Din
(the past glories of Egypt) and Shakespeare
on TV, set the note of the Best
that Has Been Said and Thought. But
the ordinary Egyptian is not crazy for
culture and persists in choosing good
old-fashioned stuff for a night out.
Respectability. Favourite haunts are
the riverside casinos. Mostly open air
cafes looking over the Nile, they are
small estabhshments with small bands,
small stages. Drinking is respectable:
the lemonade they have drunk
since the Koran hit Cairo and on a
real bender, light Egyptian beer.
(Ancient Egyptians with no Muslim
ban on liquor were inveterate beerdrinkers,
strong stufO- Present-day
Cairenes tend to go to the casinos en
famille, the atmosphere is relaxed and
informal, and despite the entertainments,
the neon lights and the microphones,
the atmosphere is decorous,
even middle class.
Like Piaf. The casinos, apart from
adding violins and accordeons to their
orchestras, make few concessions to
the West: the orchestras still centre
around the classic combination of
kanoon, oud and darabukkeh (cymbal,
lute and small drum). The songs are
long, passionless, sentimental Arab
ballads, which are followed with the
attention and the participation of the
Paris cellar audiences when Piaf was
making her name. There is no hurry
and the audience will listen for hours
to their favourite singers.
Like the days of the Paris Boites, too,
is the small reputation and following
each singer builds up, and a successful
mannerism spreads rapidly among Che
others. Current favourite prop is the
chiffon handkerchief associated with
the singers of Noel Coward's heyday,
which has just hit the Arab singers
since the most famous of them, Om
Qulsum, discovered it and made it
popular.
Reproofs. But older modes prevail
still: Egyptian comedian Shukuku
draws the crowds with a modernised
version of Karagoz, the Turkish
puppet corresponding to Punch; and
the Danseuse du ventre, strange lady
for family entertainment, flourishes.
Her art is with difficulty being given
a gloss of respectability. Sniffs the
Arab Observer: "The too-well publicised
undulations and wriggles distract
attention from what is the most
beautiful element of these dances: the
lifted arms and their softly waving
hands which hold a sequined scarf or
tinkle with a pair of miniature
cymbals." The Ministry of Culture
feels that there are other forms of
national choreography more respectable
than the belly dance.
Early to bed. The casinos preserve
something of the bazaars that have
characterised the East since ancient
times, and add a note of the sidewalk
cafe. They are a curious mixture of
sentimentality, tradition, folk art and
stodginess. When the gaudier night
clubs of Cairo are beginning to swing,
the famihes gather up their children,
the singers and dancers pack away
their sequins, and the casino pulls
down its shutters. By midnight the
street is as empty as Bloemfontein
when the bios have come out.
GROWING UP
Man's estate
At Winchester, the boy speaks a language
in which words do not have
their face value ("I am incontinent"
merely means "I am unwell"). In the
initiation schools of the Pedi tribes of
the Northern Transvaal objects are
also given "school" names. In American
and Southafrican universities,
initiation ceremonies are practised
which involve suffering; in the Pedi
schools the boys are circumcised. At
the laying on of hands in the Christian
Church and at Barmitzvah the youth
enters his religion fully; the Pedi
similarly learn sacred songs.
First ever. In most societies the passing
from boyhood into manhood is
marked with special ceremony and
mystery, but in primitive tribes the
initiation is an all-purpose job: innuring
to pain, teaching of moral lessons,
establishing respect for the elders'
authority. An outsider has great difficulties
in finding out what goes on
in these ceremonies. But Norman
Lamport, an Englishman farming at
Tzaneen, patching up and doctoring
the labourers on his farm, gained such
respect that the local Pedi chief asked
him to go to the initiation schools and
tend the circumcision wounds of the
initiates. From this came his film
Murudruni (first showing: Johannesburg
last week), one of the few about
secret ceremonials among the Bantu.
It has all the truth, and more of actuality,
than an anthropologist's description.
Loss of identity. The schools are held
every four years, and though the
youngest entrants are about eight
years old, there is no upper age limit.
They are not compulsory, but social
pressure (any initiate can insult a noninitiate
without fear of retaliation, the
uninitiated may not join in tribal
administration, may not marry)
usually overcomes the fear of what
will happen. Once in, the initiate is
there for three months, is detached
. from the tribe, breaks all his patterns
of living: he wears no clothes, does
not wash, even changes his colour,
smearing himself with white clay.
Everything emphasises that he is a
28 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

new person. If he dies, he is buried
and his parents are not told, nor is his
name mentioned. His mother is
informed by the breaking of a plate
before her. She may not mourn: her
son is not dead, he is obliterated —
and so effectively, that deaths in the
initiation school are not revealed to
the police.
Tests and teachings. The circumcision
(these days done with a razor blade
instead of an assegai or flint as
before) is the first shock and the initiate's
great test. He may not shout or
cry out, and his elders may clout him
if he wriggles too much. The wounds
take anything up to a month to heal,
depending on the efficiency of the
induna who performs the operation,
but rarely become dangerously infectious.
The initiate must endure it.
And he must endure daylong labour,
interrupted sleep, and lying down only
in one position. He must learn elaborate
songs, must pluck a reed full of
boiling water from a fire, must walk
a short distance with a pointed stick
bridging his thighs, must eat all he is
given. Some of this enforces social
lessons and tribal taboos: the pointed
stick is to teach him never to relieve
himself near the huts in his kraal;
eating all that he is offered, that he
must not waste food. He plays games
(climbing a smooth 60-foot pole to
touch a bunch of grass, called the Old
Man's Beard, atop it), and at the end
of the initiation, dances in masks and
skirts of sisal, though even then he
carries a stick before his face to show
that he is unrecognisable. Finally, coppery
with red ochre and oil, he returns
to the kraal, his face buried in his
hands, for his parents to recognise and
reclaim. (His mother may still not see
his face, and for a time he lives on his
own.) He has the right to beg for
gifts and beer: he is a man in the
tribe.
UGANDA GAME
Not so expensive, much more to bag
Universal. Urbanisation, says Lamport,
has not ended the relevance of
the initiation schools for the Bantu;
there are records of boys being sent
from the Cape to attend them. Part
social ritual, part psychological necessity,
they are an integral part of the
Southafrican scene, perhaps of the
human male subconscious. At the
men only showing at Wits University
(cut out the circumcision scenes or
show to men only, said the Censor),
one member of the audience commented
: "Now I know what four years
public school was all about."
GAME
White hunters, bargain prices
Determined to pick up some of the
gravy from Kenya's safari business,
Uganda has sponsored a new company,
Uganda Wildlife Development
Limited, to provide safaris at submillionaire
prices.
The old-fashioned safari, embellished
with such mod. cons, as white hunters,
iced cocktails at sundown, Kilimanjaro
in the background, and the ghost of
Papa Hemingway over the hill, costs
anything up to R6,000 and can last
for three months. It centres around
Nairobi and is a project for patricians.
Uganda feels that the proletariat should
be given a chance.
Well-stocked. The new company
offers a safari for R900, with practically
unlimited game to be shot at.
Kenya has been the traditional safari
country for so long that game has to
be allocated and protected: Uganda,
too many miles from the safari centre,
Nairobi, may have missed out on the
safari business in recent years, but has
not been shot out to the same extent
as Kenya. Much more than Kenya,
Uganda is hunting country just now.
Satisfied customers. The first of the
new company's safaris went ofif with a
bang. Seven Americans — one from
"MCRUDBUM" INITIATE
And at Winchester
Hawaii—recently returned after three
weeks with a bag of eighty trophies
including the biggest pair of buffalo
horns since the Second World War.
Not surprisingly, they were highly
delighted with the trip. In a talk with
Uganda's Minister of Information,
Broadcasting and Tourism, Adoko
Nekyon, they told him it was the best
organised, best-value-for-money safari
they had ever been on. Nekyon's
"Come again" is already answered:
three of the seven Americans will be
back as soon as they can make it, and
two of them will be bringing their own
parties next time.
With Uganda becoming independent
this month, the day of the White
Bwana is gone for ever. But for the
White Hunter, a boom seems to be on
the way.
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 29

SFUKT III
Soccer planners
up the stairs of the Freemasons'
Tavern in London's Great Queen
Street clattered the sporting types in
their deerstalker caps, Inverness capes
and fashionable elastic-sided boots.
And there in a private room, sitting
over the beer, brandy and cigars, on
an October afternoon in 1863, they
changed the face of the game of football.
Out of that meeting came the
London Football Association and the
first codified set of rules in the history
of an ancient game. Out and
away the most important ruling was
the ban on handling the ball, thus
sharply dividing the kickers from
those who, like William Webb Ellis,
the Rugby schoolboy of famous
memory, believed that the great glory
of the game was to pick up the ball
and run with it. About 40 schools,
colleges and amateur clubs joined the
London FA, and, naturally enough,
played "Association" which, transformed
by Victorian slang, became
"Soccie", and, finally, "soccer."
Shin-sore. Down the last 100 years,
the pattern of soccer has changed. Increasingly,
the accent has been put on
skill: with the pretty pattern-weaving
of the professionals, and, through the
influence of the Continentals and the
South Americans, less emphasis on
body contact. And if any game is to
live it must develop and use new
methods and ideas: soccer is no
exception. Thus, from the haphazard
kick-and-rush play of a century ago,
it has evolved into an exact science at
the highest level, and, much in the
manner of American grid-iron football,
is tending more and more to be
master-minded by off-the-field strategists.
Battle of wits. The new ideas tumble
out, one after the other. Move and
counter-move, but never <strong>check</strong> and
mate. For this is certain: in big football,
as in war, there is no ultimate
weapon; the antidote is always found
sooner or later. Such is the fascination
of modem soccer; a statement that is
underlined right here in Southafrica
as the Castle Cup final, showpiece of
the professional National Football
League's season, becomes due for
playing in Johannesburg's 36,000seater
Rand Stadium next week.
Plan Eighty-seven. Big talking-point
among the football faithful is the
mysterious Eighty-Seven Plan which
ex-Springbok, ex-Liverpool professional
Doug Rudham and Lubbe
Snoyman, ex-team-manager of Johannesburg
Rangers, threaten to spring
PLANNER SNOYMAN
Riddle from the Sphinx
in the Rand Stadium game on October
20. Now manager of Ramblers, the
Johannesburg club that is in the Castle
Cup final for the second time in two
years, Rudham called in Snoyman to
help find an answer to the swirling,
whirling all-out attack of Durban
City, bidding for the trophy for the
third successive season. With a background
of 25 years of soccer (15 of
them as an amateur goalkeeper),
Snoyman is rated Southafrica's closest
student of the game. A motor trader,
he is wealthy enough to make pilgrimages
overseas to get close-up views of
the top British and Continental
teams, and what he sees he remembers.
Out of his memory has come the
Eighty-Seven Plan, which, he hints, is
based partly on the tactics of Real
Madrid, European ex-champions, and
on talks he has had with top-ranking
managers and trainers.
Time, plus. "The Eighty-Seven Plan is
laughably simple ... when you know
it," said the Sphinx-like Snoyman. "I
would be several sizes of a fool if I
were to reveal it before the big game,
but this I'll say: it is based on the
time factor, the split-second needed to
get the ball, win it, and mount an
attack. And I know it will win the
Cup for Ramblers." To this end, the
National Football League club, so
poorly placed in the log that it is in
danger of relegation to the Second
Division, is training in secret for the
duel with champion-challenging Durban
City. Meanwhile, their rivals are
not exactly losing any sleep over the
Eighty-Seven Plan, though, says team-
manager Alf Boyd, ex-Dundee United
captain, the Rudham - Snoyman
threat is not being ignored.
Crowd magic. Whatever the Eighty-
Seven Plan is, or is not, it has become
the gimmick that is almost certain to
send 30,000 and more customers to
the Rand Stadium to see the final; a
repeat of the 1960 Castle Cup affair,
though, say Ramblers, not a repeat of
the result — 4-2 in Durban City's
favour. Authoritative opinion is that,
without the appeal of the Eighty-
Seven Plan, the game would have little
magic in it for the crowd. Reason:
until Rudham and Snoyman conjured
up their packet of mystery. Ramblers
were given no chance at all of beating
the star-studded Durban City team.
One-man club. Behind Durban City
is the genius of Alf Boyd, a seasoned
Scottish professional, and the driving
force of Norman Elliott, one-time
shipping clerk but now the big boss of
South Coast soccer. Grey haired,
spectacled, volatile Norman Elliott
gambled on founding the City in 1959
as a one-man club, collected eight
Natal Springboks around him, and
got cracking. At first, the players
travelled to and from games on the
Rand in a second-hand bus (cost
R800) that reached its destination by
guess and by God. Often, says Elliott,
the players had to get out and push,
but. until a switch was made to air
travel, that bus covered 20,000 miles
and helped put City on the soccer
map. Today, as head of a private
company running the club. Big Boss
Elliott is bang in the money; has
opened up the Durban City garage and
parking station, talks of one day
building his own ground.
Beer here. If soccer began 100 years
ago in the Freemasons' Tavern with
beer, brandy and 'baccy, it has strung
along with beer in Southafrica. For
proof, it was Southafrican Breweries
who put up the Castle Cup for the
knock-out competition that gave pro
football such a boost in its early
days. Behind it all was burly, darkhaired
E. J. H. "Ted" Sceales, the
breweries' managing - director. A
Rugby man ("I was a three-quarter
for Rondebosch Boys' High, Cape
Town University under-19's. and a
Villagers' .regular, weighing 185 lb
and clocking just over lO's for the
100 yards," says the now 200-odd lb.
Sceales) he implemented his company's
sport-promoting policy by donating
the Castle Cup to the NFL and he will
be there at the Rand Stadium next
week-end to see the fun. So, too, will
the fans of Ramblers and Durban
City . . . plus the connoisseurs who
want to savour the much-discussed
Eighty-Seven — and find the answer.
30 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

ENTERTAINMENT
SOMETIME STRIP QUEEN KEETON
Lady with python, gentlemen with wigs
FOLK ART
A peel of belles
Recently up on the Rand were lastfling
promoters of the Striptease,
hoping to pull a few G-strings for
Durban's fast-dying popular art. For
the benefit of tired businessmen back
at the beach, they were trying to uncover
girls who would drop their
clothes like hints. But word had got
around that the police were not in
favour, and the Strip promoters
found no takers for their offers. The
subject of succulent Sunday <strong>news</strong>
reporting had folded for good.
Rise and fall. Great Goddess of the
art was Kathy Keeton. When she
began in Durban, the locals' eyes
popped like Pekinese pups', and at a
rand a look, Kathie Keeton began to
average R150 a night, and realised
that she had struck oil. She quickly
organised a sorority of strippers
whom she loaned out to Lourenco
Marques, Port Elizabeth, East London,
Capetown, the Rhodesias, Mbabane
and Benoni. At this point of the strike
other prospectors started in. There
were several Bantu—Zana (nee Ivy
Williams), Dotty Tiyo — and as time
wore on, the takers became more and
more recherch6, their numbers including
a 44-year-old widow, a matronmother
with a yen for pythons, and
gentlemen with wigs (at R80 a week).
At this stage of desperation, the fad
began to fold, and the enthusiasm of
•he performers waned as the police began
picking them up for no gauze whatever,
even though they could not pin
anything on them. The party was over.
KK packed her costume in her purse,
took off, this time for Lourenco Marques
(and R1200 a week). Even there
her reception was lethargic. Quipped
a club owner burning for a new gimmick:
"Maybe we'll have a girl in the
centre of the floor stark naked who
will slowly dress. After all, there's no
law against dressing . . ."
THEATRE
No peanut brittle
A Man for All Seasons is a play of
ideas. Trouble is, author Robert Bolt
has too many ideas. Seasons is about
Sir Thomas More, Henry VIII's best
civil servant, who on a matter of
conscience refused privately to acquiesce
in Henry's divorce and second
marriage, on a matter of prudence
refused publicly to express disagreement.
A European figure, his silence
spoke louder than eloquence, and
though he put his trust in the belief
that in law silence cannot be evidence
of guilt, he was up against men whose
situation would not allow them to be
hindered by law. With the sophistry
of politicians ("this hurts me more
than you, but it is necessary for the
safety of the realm") they sent him to
the block on perjured evidence. The
play is on one level a recounting of
this history, on a second an examination
of how a man who believes in
law conducts himself when it is
threatened. Below that it is a meditation
on conscience, and deeper still
a new version of Everyman (where
Friendship. Family, Worldly Ambition
desert Everyman on his road to
death, Norfolk, Lady More, Cromwell
try to prevent More from treading it).
Bolt cannot juggle all these concepts
at the same time: each character
switches abruptly through historical
personage, idea, symbolic figure; the
dialogue ranges from meaty argument
to plain plum guff, from poetry to
purple patchery. Still, where most
plays have no point, this is as pointful
as the fretful porpentine, and is almost
continually a delight to the mind.
The Johannesburg Civic Theatre production
by Margaret Webster: decor
good, costume better than that,
general effect throttled by deadening
acoustics (improved since the first performances),
marred by walk-on acting
in minor parts. It has four performances
which equal the play's potenti­
alities. William Roderick as More has
the voice and presence to fill a big
stage, intelligence enough almost to
give coherence to Bolt's split-level role.
Hugh Rouse's Cromwell contains all
the pushing anxiety of the vulgarian
climbing to success fingerhold by
fingerhold. Olive Wright as Lady Alice
More exactly encompasses the dilemmas
of a woman who loves above her
intellectual station. Bolt's Common
Man, (who acts as chorus, scene
shifter, commentator; a coy device and
a silly part), is given weight and small
BOLT'S COMMON MAN (STUART BROWN)
Four-decker sandwich
dignity by Stuart Brown who achieves
a triumph of theatrical intelligence
over misguided playwriting. Though
this play is fractured, it is fractured
rock, quite unlike Southafrican
theatre's usual fractured peanut
brittle.
MUSIC
No Hon tamer
Pierre Foumier, after Casals the
world's greatest cellist, is in Southafrica
on his fourth tour. His instrument
sings with a voice of great
nobility, even when sotto voce, and as
Fournier handles it, the voice is as
velvety as the accents of an ante bellum
Southern gennulman. Yet the instrument
lacks concert appeal in Europe,
though not, thanks to Fournier. in
Southafrica. In a world addicted to
musical kicks (fidgetty fiddles, hysterical
pianists and pressure cooker wind
instruments), the cello's combination
of romantic sweep and sanity are
remnants of a statelier period than this.
In his first concert (Wits Great Hall,
Johannesburg), Foumier brought out
all these qualities, achieving a relaxed,
almost knightly bel canto, like a Golden
Age Italian singer turned aristocrat.
Fournier performs with a purity
which is absolute, and if an audience
is a wild animal that must be coaxed
into quiescence and attentiveness,
Fournier's is the mesmerist's technique
rather than the lion tamer's.
NEWS/CHICK 12 OCTOBER 1962 31

ART
rfie art market
Art, traditionally, is a better business
for a dead artist than for a live one.
Rembrandt, who died in poverty,
could have supported half his native
city of Amsterdam on the recent proceeds
of one work, Aristotle Contemplating
the Bust of Homer,
bought by New York's Metropolitan
Museum for Rl^ million, highest price
ever paid for any picture. Cezanne,
whose wife used to rescue his paintings
from the roadside where he left them,
would have been bewildered to see his
Boy in a Red Waistcoat realise
R440,000 at Sotheby's in 1958.
Posthumous success. Southafrica —
Uke America — has not produced any
artists of comparable dimension, and
the pickings for late and great Southafrican
artists do not reach astronomical
figures. Nevertheless, just
prior to the fifth anniversary of J. H.
Pierneef's death last week, a new
owner parted happily with 550 guineas
to acquire his Valley of a Thousand
Hills, and this was only shortly after
the Transvaal Provincial Administration
had shelled out 600 guineas for
another of the Transvaal master's
works. The Cape landscapes of Tinus
de Jongh, who died in 1942, are very
much in demand, and a steady
market exists for such pioneers of the
Southafrican school as Volschenk and
Wenning.
Alive and thriving. Increasingly, art is
providing a healthy living for numbers
of Southafrican artists who are still
alive and able to enjoy the fruits of
their creative efforts. Painters with
established reputati®ns command
sizeable sums for their canvases, and
can rely upon the support of a faithful
following.
Gabriel de Jongh, son of Tinus. rarely
shows a picture in the cities, but is
said to earn something in the vicinity
of R40,000 a year from painting. And
he is not alone. W. H. Coetzer, expert
in the realist style and depictor of
Southafrican historical events, also
avoids dealers, but is rewarded very
handsomely.
Not fast enough. Some artists have, in
turn, been made by a city gallery.
Thornley-Stewart (NEWS/CHECK September
14) lives a couple of hours by
car from Durban, but finds little
market for the paintings there. On the
other hand, he cannot produce them
fast enough to supply the demand, at
anything from 150-500 guineas of Johannesburg's
Pieter Wenning Gallery.
Other artists, too, have reason to
appreciate the talents of Everard
••THE WHITE CLOWN"—VAN ESSCHE
Teaching supplements
Read, Wenning's owner, as a dealer:
Clement Serneels, who fled the Congo
following the Independence upheavals,
feeds his viridian-and-umber-toned
nudes and flowerpieces to Read as fast
as he paints them, and during two
recent days five were sold for sums
between 125 and 300 guineas. Simon
Hodge, who concentrates on the fauna
of the Southafrican bush, has sold out
his exhibitions repeatedly in this
gallery, and he rarely asks less than 80
guineas for a water-colour, averages
150 guineas for an oil.
Marketable "moderns". These painters
represent the more conservative field.
Of those who use the contemporary
idiom, internationally-renowned Maud
Sumner, whose latter work borders on
the abstract, has fans all over the
Republic. She sold more than fifty
canvases, at around the 150 guinea
mark, during her visit home this
year. Long-established expressionist
Irma Stern parted with 3,000
guineas worth of pictures at her
last show, which opened the new
Adler-Fielding Galleries in Johannesburg;
top price: 360 guineas. Jean
Welz, superlative craftsman, lauded as
the doyen of contemporary art in
Southafrica, produces slowly and
shows seldom, but his most recent
exhibition in the above gallery realised
4,000 guineas in 24 hours, and many
buyers would not hesitate to pay 750
guineas for a Welz.
Alongside these top sellers are a
number of artists of quality who receive
steady incomes from their work.
Few of these rely entirely upon paint­
ing for their living: Maurice van
Essche and Walter Battiss both teach,
but neither ever sells for less than
R2,000 at a one-man exhibition, and
both can usually ask, and receive,
sums averaging R180-R200 for a
picture. Alexis Preller is another
artist who shows infrequently, but the
demand for his work is constant, and
he has sold more than one canvas for
over R400.
Transvaal buyers. Best market for
abstract painting is provided in the
Transvaal, but taste on the highveld
is catholic, and the public buys the
work it enjoys. Buyers exist there for
both the most conservative and the
most avant garde. Gxegoire Boonzaaier,
who in company with many
Cape painters remains true to descriptive
impressionism, exhibited in Johannesburg
last month, and within four
days had realised R3,000 on sales. In
contrast, the total abstractions of
Douglas Portway fared extremely well
in August. Of 16 large canvases for
sale, 11 were sold for a total of R 1,600
— probably a record for an abstract
exhibition in the Republic.
Biggest art surprise in recent months
occurred in Durban, traditional graveyard
of the arts. Maggie Laubser, an
old and well-loved name in Southafrican
painting, exhibited at the
Lidchi Gallery. The usually reticent
public flocked to see her work: 400
people turned up at the opening alone,
and a record sale for Durban of
R2,400 was recorded.
Collecting trends. Southafricans have
long been interested in collecting
Africana; work by such painters as
Bowler and Baines of the 19th century,
though infrequently of any great
artistic value, are difficult to come by
"THE ARTIST'S WIPE"—SEBNEELS
A profitable move
32 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

and expensive to purchase. Earlier
painters of this century have a steady
following among collectors; there is
always a ready buyer for a Wenning,
a good Naude or Amshewitz. Among
living artists, the Cape is loyal to Cecil
Higgs, May Hillhouse and Terence
McCaw, the Transvaal is less predictable;
but of late dealers have made an
effort to promote younger artists, and
many of these who prefer the abstract
idiom are on their way to solvency
through art.
On the whole, the up-and-coming
painters do not ask very high prices
for their work — where they do,
they have often to be satisfied
with good notices and small sales,
and rarely is an abstract show a
success outside Johannesburg or Pretoria.
Young abstractionist George
Boys experienced a total sell-out in his
first one-man show in Johannesburg
earlier his year, but his highest price
was R80.
Demand for "originals". As an artist
acquires recognition and reputation,
so his work naturally rises in price.
The public is beginning to accept that
the artist is a professional earning his
keep, and is thus prepared to give
value for value received. But while
there are growing numbers who regularly
visit the commercial art galleries
to look, compare, and possibly to buy,
there are many who have no basis for
their choice except the need for an
attractive, uncomplicated decoration
for their walls. These also provide a
living for a certain class of painter.
There are innumerable manufacturers
of pictures, producing what are known
in the profession as "pot-boilers" to
cater for public demand for
"originals". Among these are a number
of skilled Italian exPOWs, who
draw a very comfortable income
churning out nostalgic views of a
Venice that they have not seen for 20
years. Others hand their product over
by the yard to dealers who travel the
country, hawking their wares to
beauty-hungry but unselective homeowners,
and do very well out of this
mass-production.
The people's choice. Then there is
"Tretchie" — Vladimir Tretchikoff,
Russian-born Cape Town painter.
Darling of the populace, anathema to
critics, his success is legend. Though
he receives more brick-bats than
bouquets from fellow-artists, his name
is often on their lips—for the good
reason that he possesses one faculty
rarely found in the profession: business
acumen. He will not reveal his earnings,
though he revels in his luxury.
But he provides a cheering reminder
to struggling artists that painting can
be a very profitable activity.
Food for thought
Sitting in his second floor office at
174 Main Street, Johannesburg, Rand
Daily Mail editor Laurence Gandar
was paging through the Race Relations
Journal when his eye fell on a
heading: SORRY STORY OF NEG­
LECT. He read it through, immediately
called in his African Affairs
reporter, Benjamin Pogrund. "Malnutrition,"
he said. "Find out everything
you can about it." Thus started
one of the biggest campaigns against a
social evil ever launched by a Southafrican
<strong>news</strong>paper.
Startling facts. Pogrund, released from
all other assignments, spent two solid
weeks reading up every available piece
RDM'S LAURENCE GANDAR
Unfavourable and distorted?
of literature on malnutrition. Soon it
was obvious that the extent of the problem
was far bigger than even Gandar
had realised. Experts were called in
for advice, other reporters put on the
"campaign" trail. Pretoria staffman,
Keith Abendroth, was sent on a weekend
visit to lonely Shiluvane in the
North-eastern Transvaal, came up with
two strong <strong>news</strong> items. The Mail was
not quite ready to launch its campaign
but Abendroth's <strong>news</strong> items were too
good to waste time. On Monday last
week, the <strong>news</strong>paper's readers were
startled with a full page double-column
box on the front page with two boxed
headings: STARVATION, A
NATIONAL SCANDAL. And for
the last week and a half, the Mail has
carried front page boxes with the same
heading. Shock photographs of Bantu
children suffering from malnutrition
iiliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiililiiliiliiiiiiiliililllillllliiliililiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiililii
have been used liberally. Pogrund, in
his intensive reading, interviews with
doctors, nutrition experts and other
specialists in the malnutrition field
came up with some facts that shook
the public. They also stung Bantu
Affairs Minister Daan Nel into a categoric
denial that the Bantu of the
Northern Transvaal were starving. He
accused the Mail of "unfavourable and
distorted reporting". On the Wednesday,
the Mail offices received a number
of threatening telephone calls from the
public. Since then, as the Mail's story
of starvation and misery has unfolded,
there has also been a flood of congratulatory
calls and letters, plus hundreds
of rand from the public asking
for their donations to be channelled to
the needy.
The dying hungry. These are some
of the points made by the Mail: Thousands
die in Southafrica each year
from either direct malnutrition —
kwashiorkor and pellagra—or from
allied diseases. There are 10,000 nonwhite
deaths a year from gastro-enteritis
in the urban areas alone, 10,000
Bantu deaths a year from tuberculosis.
Up to 800 children a year are admitted
to Johannesburg's Baragwanath Bantu
Hospital with kwashiorkor.
Mass starvation, alleged the Mail, has
driven Bantu in parts of the Eastern
Transvaal back to Stone Age conditions,
and they are living on wild fruit
picked from bushes. Minister Nel's
reply: "Tested against reports made by
officials of various Government Departments,
these allegations are entirely
without foundation. All official
reports indicate that there is not starvation
in the area. There is a degree
of malnutrition due to traditionally
wrong eating habits of the Bantu.
Sufficient food supplies are available.
There are adequate employment facilities
for everybody willing to work, men
and women. Children and individuals
who are unable to work are being supplied
with food by the Department of
Bantu Administration and Development.
All children and other persons
suffering from malnutrition are receiving
specially enriched foods and free
medical attention." The Mail stood by
what it had said, replied with a statement
by the Nutrition Corporation,
saying that the position was at least as
serious as had been stated in the Mail
—it could be worse.
Gandar and the Rand Daily Mail have
ended their intensive anti-malnutrition
campaign, but they intend continuing
to publish articles on it from time to
time. The Mail says the position is
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 33

ad. The Government says it is not.
They can't both be right. And they
can't both be wrong.
Anniversaries
Parties for the fourth estate
With minimal whoop-de-doo, three of
Johannesburg's <strong>news</strong>papers celebrate
important birthdays in this particular
year. Baby of the group is Die Transvaler,
tough, pro-Government, Verwoerd-led
morning Afrikaans daily.
It turned 25 the week-end before last,
took a theatre-full of black-tied friends
for an evening's entertainment by
Southafrican operatic star Mimi
Coertse, then settled down to
business as usual. Second in seniority
is the campaigning. Progressive-pushing,
anti-Government Rand Daily Mail,
celebrating its 60th anniversary.
Grandaddy of them all, and biggest in
Southafrica is The Star, treading a path
of middle-of-the-road conservatism
that seems calculated to bolster the
United Party but fights shy of being
branded extremist anti-Government.
The English afternoon daily turns 75
next week, has hired the Carlton
Hotel ballroom for a dance to which
its entire staff are bidden guests.
Rising the hard way. All three papers
have lived through troubled times,
have frequently taken it on their
respective chins when their policies
displeased. Of the three. The Star has
shone down through most turbulence.
It was founded, oddly enough, not in
Johannesburg at all, but in quiet,
cultural Grahamstown, from which it
was trundled up, press and all, by rail
and ox-wagon to the old-time mining
camp in 1877 by its original owners,
the Sheffield brothers, Thomas and
George. The site was the old Market
Square and the first edition of the triweekly
enterprise was brought out on
October 17, 1887, still under the old
Grahamstown masthead of the Eastern
Star. The mining community read it
avidly, but they were so starved for
anything to read they would have read
a phone book with avidity, supposing
there had been a phone book to read.
Merger, Fkre, Intrigue. Up to Johannesburg
to give it a look came dynamic
Francis Dormer of the Cape Argus at
about this time. The Sheffield
brothers had a word with Dormer,
merged their enterprise with his, 1,000
miles away, and "The Argus Printing
and Publishing Company" was
founded with a capital of R140,000,
with both Dormer and Thomas Sheffield
on the board.
The name was changed to The Star.
But bad luck struck when a fire broke
out early one morning in 1890.
Dormer was called from his bed. saw
the R30,000 damage going on, decided
on swift intrigue. He raced up to
Hospital Hill where he knew a man
named W. Y. Campbell would be
taking a morning stroll. Campbell
had recently offered Dormer the
printing equipment of a rival paper.
The Golden Age, which was no longer
publishing. Dormer needed no equipment;
declined the offer. Having
EX-EDITOB FLATHBR THE STAI.
Put it in orbit
located Campbell, he fell into step,
innocently brought up the question of
the printing equipment again, wrote
out a cheque there and then for
R7,000 to Campbell (who knew
nothing about the fire still raging down
at The Star)—and managed to bring
out the paper without loss of a day in
publication.
More trouble. Those were tough
days, days of free-swinging fists. One
old editor, William Monypenny, had
his specs knocked to fragments
(while still on his face) by an angered
Boer. The Star itself did some knocking,
calling people "this cad," "proven
libeller" and "big bully".
Champagne names. Illustrious are
the names of those who have been
associated with The Star. One was
Percy Fitzpatrick, later knighted, of
"Jock of the Bushveld" fame. Patrick
Duncan, later to be a Governor-
General, was a leader-writer. Albert
Lindberg was a junior there, later
founding the mammoth Central News
Agency. Most famous of all was
George Geoffrey Robinson, socialite,
intellectual, Eton-and-Oxford educated
member of Lord Milner's
"kindergarten", who later changed his
name to Dawson when he inherited
the family estate in Yorkshire; became
famous as Dawson of the
London Times, when he edited that
illustrious paper in the between-wars
period. Distinguished, too, is the
recently-retired Horace Flather, who
swung The Star into contemporary
orbit by moving <strong>news</strong>, instead of ads,
on to Page One, streamlining the paper
into line with other world greats by
modernising types, presentation,
pictures.
Transvaal's Transvaler. Making its
debut just after the Smuts-Hertzog
fusion move. Die Transvaler was
formed in 1936 (capital R300,000),
printed its first edition on October 1,
1937.
A future Prime Minister, Hans Strijdom
was its first chairman; another
future Prime Minister, Dr Hendrik
Verwoerd, gave up a professorship in
Psychology at Stellenbosch, to become
its first editor-in-chief. Object of the
<strong>news</strong>paper was to help the rising
cause of Afrikaner nationalism, and
its National Party to get into power.
The Transvaler had many years of
struggle for its existence. On occasions
salaries had to be cut; staff and directors
had to stand surety in their personal
capacities for various sums; the
original building had to be sold to pay
off the mortgage. Today the Transvaler
boasts a R2,514,900 turnover,
pays a dividend of eight per cent, is
regarded by its opponents as a political
pamphlet, by its supporters as the embodiment
of true Afrikaner feeling.
Birth of a "Mail". A Johannesburg
pub served as labour ward for the
birth, in 1902, of the Rand Daily Mail
when, over a drink, the Rand gold
pioneer Freeman Cohen bought the
presses and machinery of the old
Standard and Diggers' News, that
<strong>news</strong>paper having just then gone bung.
By coincidence, a young war correspondent
walked into the pub (Heath's
Hotel) at that very moment. His
name: Edgar Wallace. Freeman Cohen
looked the youngster over, offered
Wallace the job, got himself an editor
who was to lose Cohen a fortune in
money. Wallace paid plenty for scoops
(perhaps the first and last Southafrican
editor to be so liberal), appointed correspondents
all over the world; ran up
bills for <strong>news</strong> cabled in at Rl a word
sometimes, finally aggravated poor
Freeman Cohen to the point where
Cohen packed him back to Fleet Street,
and sold the whole enterprise to Sir
Abe Bailey. The knight ran a solid,
sedate <strong>news</strong>paper from then onwards
under a succession of strong, talented
editors, prone to probe, keen to
campaign, quick to kick where a kick
could do most good, of whom the
present occupant of the top swivelchair,
Laurence Gandar is as illustrious
an example as any.
34 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

MEDICINE
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Domestic hazard
In Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia,
Saturdays and Mondays are the danger
days for Africans—the days they are
most likely to be involved in a domestic
accident. It could be a bicycle
mishap. It could be a car collision.
Or it could be a human bite.
In Bulawayo, African women seem to
prefer biting the hands that feed them
as a way of showing their displeasure.
A recent survey by W. V. James, a
surgeon at the city's Mpilo Hospital,
showed that of 345 domestic injuries
examined, 30 were the result of human
bites. James says in the Central
African Medical Journal that of the
bitten, 21 out of 30 were men. Of
the biters, 28 out of 30 were women.
Safest time for possible bite victims,
the survey showed, is the first week
of the month. The women are too
busy getting their teeth into their menfolk's
pay packets.
Heroine of the laboratory
For thirty years Xenopus laevis, an
ugly, slippery toad found only in the
Western Province, has been performing
an invaluable service helping
doctors decide whether women are
pregnant. But today, the platanna,
common name for Xenopus laevis, is
preparing for retirement. Soon the
famous frog test may give way to
a new development relying on a
chemical reaction rather than a biological
one. If the new test proves
successful frogs will no longer be
needed in pathological laboratories.
Frog Test. Few realise that the frog
test was developed at the University
of Capetown by two Southafricans,
Hillel Shapiro and Harry Zwarenstein.
Their attention was drawn to the curious
reproductive habits of the platanna
by Professor Lancelot Hogben, who
later became famous as the author of
Mathematics for the Million.
The two young students discovered
that Xenopus laevis was extremely
suitable for pregnancy tests because
the female did not ovulate or lay eggs
spontaneously under laboratory conditions.
In other words, the captured
platanna, whether ready to lay her
eggs or not, could not continue the
process once she was removed from
the vlei in which she lived.
Shapiro and Zwarenstein extracted
certain hormones from the urine of
pregnant women, injected them into the
laboratory frogs and discovered that
the platanna laid her eggs within 18
hours. If a woman is not pregnant,
her urine does not normally contain
the hormones (chorionic gonadotropin)
which stimulate ovulation in the frog.
The frog test was as simple as that.
Export market. Because the platanna
was found only in the Western Province,
Southafrica had a new export.
Attempts were made to breed Xenopus
XENOPUS LAEVIS UNDER TEST
On the way out?
laevis abroad, but the platanna soon
showed that it preferred the Western
Province vleis. As a result medical
laboratories came to rely on shipments
of the frog from Southafrica. Dr.
Douglas Hey, Director of the Jonkershoek
Hatcheries at Stellenbosch,
proved that under certain conditions
the toads would breed away from the
vleis. Today the toads are found in
hatcheries at medical laboratories
around the world.
Reaction. The new test relies upon
an antigen-antibody reaction in the
detection of human chorionic gonadotropin
in urine. An antigen is any
chemical substance which stimulates
the production of antibodies in a
human being. This antibody sets up
a reaction when mixed with chorionic
gonadotropin, the same hormone used
by Shapiro and Zwarenstein in their
frog tests. Although some laboratories
are reported to be using the new test,
the Southafrican Institute for Medical
Research is awaiting further proof of
its effectiveness and reliability. In the
meantime it is continuing to use
Xenopus laevis. The frog has not yet
had its day.
RELIGION
Solemn journey
The Second Vatican Council (first:
1869/70) opens in Rome in a few
days' time. Leaving or already left
are Southafrica's twenty Roman
Catholic bishops and five archbishops
(Durban, Capetown, Bloemfontein,
Pretoria and Maseru). The Council
will be preoccupied with matters that
affect all Catholics. It will aim at
loosening the structure and the
strictures which often tend to stiffen
the Church's muscles. But it must do
so without cancelling or contradicting
the age-old authority which is
Catholicism's chief asset. Two matters
to be discussed will be of major interest
to Southafrica. One, the use of the
vernacular in services supplementing
the traditional Latin (NEWS/CHECK,
September 28); the other, the infallibility
of bishops in matters of faith
and morals. If this is granted, within
their own dioceses, Southafrican, like
all bishops, will be vastly increased in
power.
One for all
Southafrica has always been a land of
strong views, deep passions, and the
causes have often been imported: ideas
which have captured the support of
one section of the people, provoke
opposition from another section. Thus
it was exactly one hundred years ago,
when dominees from the quiet villages
of the Cape, ministers weary from
long journeys by horseback or by sea
from the scattered farming conmiunities
of the distant Transvaal, Free
State, Natal, converged on Capetown
for the synod of the Nederduits Gereformeerde
Kerk.
1862 was a year of hard feelings.
Young ministers trained in the
Netherlands had brought back new,
"liberal" ideas with them to the Cape.
Mindful of the orthodox views held
by the clergy of the Boer repubUcs,
yet determined to push for changes,
the "liberals" resolved to block orthodox
voting power at the synod.
Not wanted. Ministers and elders
from the Transvaal, Free State and
Natal, including Sarel Cilliers — who
made the Covenant with God on the
eve of the Battle of Blood River, in
1838—arrived at the synod after surviving
a shipwreck off Cape Agulhas
to find their entry to the meeting
barred. The delegates from the north
had their credentials challenged by
Elder Loedolff of Malmesbury on the
grounds that an 1843 Cape ordinance
recognised the NG Kerk as being a
Church within the borders of the Cape
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 ss

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CAPE SYNOD HALL
After 100 years of division, same gathering place
Colony, and therefore delegates from
without its borders were not admissible.
When the High Court ruled in his
favour, churchmen in the Transvaal,
Free State and Natal set about forming
autonomous groups of the NG
Kerk; in fact, separate Churches.
Plan. Attempts were made to reunify
the Church, firstly after the Southafrican
War, again in 1910; but breakthrough
did not come until 1955, when
the Federale Raad linking the five
synods voted in favour. In 1957, the PR
asked the synods' administrative secretaries
to draw up a general Church
charter. In 1959, the five communities
of the NG Kerk were asked to
adopt the charter. This was done,
and last year Parliament repealed the
1843 Cape law placing a geographical
restriction on the NG Kerk.
Together again. The stage was set,
and in the same Capetown synod hall
where the Church broke apart a century
ago, 450 delegates gathered this
weekend to make it one again.
Reunification brings with it readjustments
in the Church hierarchy and
leadership. Instead of five Church
moderators on equal footing, there will
now be one, who will be chosen from
among 20 members of the five synodal
executive committees and a number
of high-ranking theologians. He will
speak for 1,600,000 white, many hundreds
of thousands of Bantu and
Coloured Christians. The five formerly
autonomous provincial synods
will continue as regional assemblies.
No doubt the Church will have its
controversies in the future. But it
intends keeping them in the family.
Veiled threats
Opening the new headquarters of the
Israeli-sponsored Co-operative Supply
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Association of Tanganyika last week,
Tanganyika strongman lulius Nyerere
said it "should bring many blessings
to the people." Blessings it may bring,
but it is not getting any from Sheikh
Yahya Hussein, representative in East
Africa of the World Muslim Congress.
According to Hussein, the Koran
declares "the lews to be the most
vehement enemies of the Believers,"
and he sticks by the Koranic authority.
He has a 27-stage master plan
to drive the Infidel out of East Africa.
Stage One (so secret and obscure that
it has vanished into Yesterday's Seven
Thousand Years) obviously fell flat.
Stage Two: an appeal to Kenya political
bosses lomo Kenyatta and
Ronald Ngala, and Tanganyika and
Uganda premiers Rashidi Kawawa
and Milton Obote (none of them
Believers) to break off relations with
Israel. So far Hussein's master plan
has shown no result. Israel is moving
into Africa with as much aid as it
can afford, and Africa's modern
leaders are more interested in a place
in the sun than a place in Paradise.
Action against infiltration. Sheikh
Hussein, however, still has 25 stages
to go. From his small, fly-ridden
headquarters in the African section
of Dar es Salaam, he issues warnings
to East Africa's two million Muslims
that if Israeli infiltration continues,
Islam will be wiped out in East Africa
in ten years' time. He tells political
leaders that if they ignore his appeals
for anti-Iewish action, the Muslims
will know that their religion is being
ignored, and he will be forced to take
"further steps".
Tanganyika is a land of many religions,
and has avoided religious strife
so far. Tanganyikans of all faiths are
banking on the local Muslims' good
sense not to let this tradition be destroyed.
EDUCATION
In' for Teutons
Back to school last week went longlegged,
blonde Barbel Biittner. A
Standard Six pupil at the German
School in lohannesburg (five years in
Southafrica) she spoke to her German
friend — in English. At the same
school — discussing the policies that
affect her education — the thirteenth
annual conference of the Deutsche
Lehrerverein (German Teachers Union)
met last week. Striking point of Southafrican
German schools is that they are
not really German. In the primary
schools German is the medium of
instruction; in the secondary schools
one of the Southafrican official
languages is used — mainly English.
Significant fact is that in nearly all
cases a Southafrican language (again
usually English) is the lingua franca
of pupils themselves. Principals aver
that early mother-tongue education in
fact only eases immigrant pupils into
Southafrlca's official languages. Said
one headmaster: "We have no intention
of making Reichsdeutsche out of
children."
Apple for the teacher (he needs it)
The fact must be faced: teachers are
rottenly paid, their final salaries are
beggarly, their ambition ceiling miserably
low. Each year they put in a
gentlemanly hint that something should
be done; each year they are reminded
what a noble profession theirs is and
how proud they should be to belong
to it. Little else is done.
Go be an engine driver. Coming out
tough about the inequity of pay is
Hugo Minnaar, president of the Transvaal
Teachers' Association. Last week
at the annual conference of the TTA
he pointed out that teachers would
be better off if they left school at 16,
went into the railways and became
engine drivers. (Basic wage: R210 a
month, plus overtime. Basic qualifications:
Standard VI education, two official
languages). After four years of
study, and at the absolute top of his
wage scale the teacher, on the other
hand, draws R250 a month, R310 if
he is a Primary School Headmaster,
R330 if he is head of the largest High
School permitted. As for women
teachers, equality of pay is not
for them, despite equality of qualifications.
Top teaching pay: R210 a
month. Top pay as headmistress:
R270, R60 less than her male equivalent.
And all this takes years of work,
so the engine driver is enjoying affluence
long before the teacher.
AH very well, but . . . Reminders
of the nobility of the profession came
36 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

from Director of Education Dr du
Preez van Wyk (salary R500 a month).
Professional status, lauded van Wyk,
carried with it authority, power, privilege
and responsibility. Teachers, he
chuffed, should not be expected to be
accorded standing unless they could
demonstrate their full appreciation of
their abilities. Which is nice, but does
little, for example, for one young
teacher now working in a primary
school, and studying for a higher
degree. Without his wife's earnings,
they and their two children could not
manage.
We can't have that. Reasons for not
raising salaries are plain mealymouthed.
Rationale is that better
salaries for teachers would drain off
aspirants to the Civil Service, raise
EDUCATION DIRECTOR VAN VVYK
Status is fine, but how about a rise?
CS pay, eventually raise costs all
round. That it would attract better
teachers, allow finer applicant screening,
and raise the country's standard
of education seems not to be considered
advantageous. Nor is the
stinginess of the profession's paymasters
equated with facts which
came out in a recent survey. Facts
hke these: only 57 per cent of posts
in high schools are permanently filled,
29 per cent of the balance filled by
teachers not qualified ever to fill their
posts permanently; at a recent interviewing
of applicants in Johannesburg,
many aspirants could not do Standard
V arithmetic.
If that's what we want . . . Everyone
knows how noble teachers are: trouble
is, few appreciate that nobility gets to
be tiring. The teachers leave, discourage
others from joining the profession,
and education begins a long
slow downward slide. Ultimately a
nation gets the teachers (and the education,
and the future) it cares to pay
for.
SCIENCE
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Missing out on the atom
When Lord Rutherford and his team
of Cambridge scientists announced in
1931 that they had split the atom, the
event passed unnoticed in most of
Africa. The population was, in any
case, largely iUiterate, and those who
could read were unable to grasp the
significance of the event. Even the
historic atom-blast over Hiroshima did
not stir Africa overmuch.
Today it is different. The atom is
synonymous with progress and prosperity
and more and more countries in
Africa are seeking guidance on how
best to exploit the wonders of nuclear
physics. Just published is the report
of a five-man team from the International
Atomic Energy Agency which
surveyed the nuclear prospects of nine
countries in Africa—Kenya, Tanganyika,
Uganda, Cameroon, Gabon,
Togo, the Congo, Ethiopia and Madagascar.
Their findings? All these
territories are missing out on the atom.
River water, not heavy water. One
phase of nuclear energy will not be
needed—yet. Africa's rivers ensure an
adequate amount of electric power to
meet demands in the foreseeable
future. In most territories huge hydroelectric
schemes are being considered.
Only two countries—Tanganyika and
Cameroon—that have very little water
that can be harnessed, are likely to
need nuclear power stations. Although
the main commercial centres of Tanganyika—Tanga
and Dar-es-Salaam—
will be well supplied with hydropower
within two years, certain other
regions are suffering because of the
need to transport coal over long distances.
In five years' time the position
will be reviewed and a small-sized
nuclear plant considered. Edea and
Douala in Cameroon are well catered
for by the Sanaga River hydro-electric
scheme. However the northern part
of the country could well do with a
nuclear plant, according to the IAEA
team.
Atoms against cancer. It is in the
field of medicine that these countries
can benefit most. None of the nine
countries visited had adequate deeptherapy
units, some did not even have
proper X-ray equipment. Kenya is
discussing getting a cobalt "bomb"
for the Aga Khan Hospital and a 250
kilovolt machine has still to be put
into operation in Cameroon. Deep
therapy units are important to help
tumour victims. Most patients are
treated with drugs—not too reliable
a method—and those who can afford
it, travel to France, England or
Southafrica for cobalt "bomb"
therapy. Radio-isotopes, used chiefly
in medicine for diagnostic purposes,
are also not used extensively. Ethiopia
and Madagascar have not yet
used these nuclear "tracers" in medicine.
Reactor reaction. Science students in
these territories are also handicapped
by the lack of atomic facilities. East
Africa should benefit by the establishment
of the University of East Africa,
incorporating colleges in Kampala,
Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam. It may
get a research reactor in the future.
For the moment, only the Congo has
such a reactor—at Lovanium University—but
the IAEA mission thought
that more use should be made of it.
Throughout the territories, not enough
attention was paid to the basic and
technical sciences. Even in the field
of agriculture, so vital to the progress
of Africa, the potentialities of nuclear
energy are being missed.
Now that the IAEA report has been
published, it is expected that African
territories will start seeking financial
and technical aid in the nuclear
field. If the report has accomplished
one thing it is to focus attention
on Africa's urgent need to use
nuclear science more extensively. One
thing is certain: far more Africans
know about Rutherford's historic experiments
today than in the past.
And, in the near future, the masses
will also begin to reap the benefits of
that important event in nuclear
physics which took place at Cambridge
University in 1931.
New HARP for the angels
They called them cranks six years ago.
Who else would rise at three in the
morning and motor ten miles to a
little-used Port Elizabeth airstrip just
to launch a rocket? Led by schoolboy
Alan Bowman, of Walmer, they
hustled round the slim stream-lined
missile on the launching pad. The
count-down was brief. Within hours
the connections had been made and
the spectators retired to the blockhouse.
Seconds later a voice intoned
.... "five, four, three, two, one . . .
GO." Few were ready for what happened
next. A spurt of orange flame,
a billow of white smoke, and the
gleaming projectile was soaring thousands
of feet into the morning sky. To
almost everybody's surprise, the
launching had been a success. Cranks?
But then all this took place before
October 4, 1957, when Sputnik set
men talking of weekend flips to the
moon.
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962 37

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Stainless steel monster. Brian Evans
and Brian Hook, now in their early
twenties, were onlookers at that first
successful blast-off by the Port Elizabeth
Astronautical Research and Experimental
Group: today they are the
guiding lights of rocket research in the
Eastern Cape. For years they have
been devoting their spare time and
R600 of their savings on planning and
building the HARP Mark III—a 900
lb, 20' long stainless steel monster,
one of the most ambitious rockets
built by space buffs anywhere in the
world.
For months the rocket rested on steel
trestles in a makeshift workshop at
Evans' home in Heugh Road, Walmer.
Last week the Government Explosives
Inspector, P. Cruywagen, okayed the
rocket and its secret launching pad
near Evans' home, told the young
scientists their missile was a fine piece
of work. With further blessing from
Dr Meiring Naude, President of the
Council for Scientific and Industrial
Reasearch, who saw the rocket on a
recent visit to Port Elizabeth, and said
he hoped to see it launched, Evans and
Hook got the blast-off preparations
under way. Their aim: a shot 50 miles
up, a world record for amateur rocket
men (standing record—11 miles).
Dickory Dickory Rock. HARP (High
Altitude Research Programme) Mark
III is the product of a series of successes
and failures. Worst failure was
Project Mickey Mouse—a rocket containing
a mouse. The rocket blew up.
The mouse was parachuted back to
earth, but was found to have died of
fright.
Mark Ill's task: to carry up a slice of
human tissue provided by the Southafrican
Institute for Medical Research
to test radiation effects in nearspace,
bring the tissue back to earth.
To carry the rocket aloft, the young
scientists decided on a main sustainer
motor using liquid oxygen-ethyl alcohol
and two solid-fuelled boosters
strapped to its silver sides, providing a
4,600 lb thrust at take-off (compared
with the 1,500,000 lb thrust of the US's
Saturn rocket). Planned speeds: 1,000
miles an hour by the first stage, then
up to 3,000 miles an hour by the solid
fuel second stage.
Amateur alliance. Under design at
Durban is a bigger, yet more powerful
rocket, the brainchild of Natal University's
Rocket Research Group,
which is co-operating with the Aero
Space Research Centre in New York.
The Durban group is led by Gregory
"Grog" Roberts. It plans to send its
rocket to the US for bench tests, and
on return the missile will be launched
to a height of 75 miles.
The Durban group was two years be-
SOUTHAFBICAN SPACE ROCKET
Cranks yesterday, heroes tomorrow
hind the Port Elizabeth missile fans in
getting started. They were less ambitious,
too, starting with a ballpoint
pen crammed with the heads of two
dozen matches. The heat melted the
plastic and the "rocket" fizzled into
failure. But they stuck with rockets
and heights of more than 12,000 feet
have since been attained. Now comes
the collaboration with the American
group and a suggestion that the amateurs
of both countries combine to
place the first amateur satellite in
orbit. While Roberts welcomes the
idea of co-operation, he feels the
satellite project is too advanced to
think about seriously at this stage.
Warheads next for eggheads. Both
the Port Elizabeth and Durban groups
are excited at the announcement that
the CSIR is inviting applications from
BSc graduates interested in rocket
research. Defence Minister Jim
Fouche said at Rouxville recently that
he was aiming at a research programme
on rockets capable of carrying
ordinary bombs.
Details of the plans are still very
hush-hush, but Dr Louis le Roux,
CSIR Vice-President in charge of
military research, is going overseas
soon and has promised to make a
full statement when he returns.
When Southafrica does start rocket
research in earnest the experience of
the two rocket groups will almost
certainly be called upon. Dr Walter
von Braun, the US's German-born
rocket expert, was placed in charge of
Germany's rocket research programipe
when he was only a teenage amateur.
The "cranks" of yesterday could turn
out to be the top scientists of tomorrow.
38 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

BOOKS
Best seller
Last week the latest of Lawrence G.
Green's twenty odd books fell into the
lap of the Southafrican public. If
Something Rich and Strange runs true
to form, it wUl be snapped up hke an
ant egg in a bowl of hungry goldfish.
Lawrence Green is a rare bird, a
Southafrican writer who is a best seller
on the strength of his sales in this
country — perhaps on those terms the
best seller of Southafrica, although Joy
Packer runs him close. Since 1945,
when he began publishing with Capetown's
Howard Timmins, sales have
been in the near region of 400,000,
and most of the books are still selling.
Something Rich falls well within the
Green formula: the place, Southafrica;
the subject, treasures and treasure
hunting from the wrecked Portuguese
treasure ships through the Grosvenor
wreck, the Kruger millions, the "other
half" of the Cullinan diamond. The
style is Sunday <strong>news</strong>paper journalese,
aimed at those whose idea of a satisfactory
weekend begins with Ripley's
Believe It or Not column and ends
with Pear's Encyclopaedia. Basic
equipment for the Green addict is a
deckchair, cigarettes, a bowl of peanuts
and a high curiosity quotient. He
is the kind of writer one can give to
maiden aunts, young nieces and
nephews and new immigrants.
No timidity by Timmins. Green published
his first book thirty years ago.
but it took time to hit the best-seller
lists. Once there, he stayed. First
success was Great African Mysteries.
Other scores: Where Men Still Dream
(1945), sales 2,500; Tavern of the Seas
which brought Green R 10,000; and
Lords of the Last Frontier, a best
seller on SWA, recently re-issued as a
result of the C a r p i o imbroglio.
Howard Timmins have a dead cert in
Green. And they know it: they have
never had a Green flop, and sometimes
set up 20,000 copies of a first
edition.
Method. Someone once commented
that the books give the impression
that Green spends his time reading old
and yellowed <strong>news</strong>papers and talking
to toothless characters who buried gold
with Kruger. An inspired guess.
Green's decision to write was sparked
off when he crystallised a vague feeling
that a mass of information accumulated
since 1920 should be put into
a book. Additions to the filing system,
the haunting of libraries, yarning
around, have stocked his mind with a
greater quantity and more accurate
information than Munchausen's, and
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962
enough material for a dozen more
books, (three futures already planned).
Once the idea of the book is formed,
he hunts out people who can tell him
stories connected with it, and takes
down their conversation in shorthand.
These conversations lead to others, and
it is only when he has exhausted this
field that he begins the intensive
research in libraries, museums,
archives, and private records. A main
AUTHOR LAWRENCE GREEN
Heir to the ages—and Ripley
reason for Southafrica's appetite for
Greens is this contact with the living
past.
Getting the work done. At 62. Green
is a bachelor and lives in Capetown
near the sea— always an absorbing
interest. (By the time he was 14 he
had already made several trips, and
still prefers boats to planes for long
journeys.) He employs no secretary,
and writes all the books in longhand.
He has travelled all his life and still
goes every year to England, although
the journey is often a busman's holiday:
much of the Grosvenor material
in Something Rich was researched at
the British Museum. He is a connoisseur
of wine and food, his hobby is
walking, and his passion, Africa.
Though often approached to do books
for which others will dig the material,
he always refuses. His instinct for the
manipulation of his technique of interviewing,
cross-reference and sourcefinding
is fired by his own curiosity.
Reason for success. Basic to Green's
success is the human longing for a
past. In older civilisations an ordi­
nary village may have more history
than a Southafrican city, and the longing
is continuously satisfied, hardly
ever reaches the conscious mind. But
in Africa, history is a matter of minutiae
and tradition, gossip rather than
records or monuments. Such history
is best flavoured by oral tradition, and
Green with his flat style, his digressions
and eager pursuit of small fact
is the ideal writer for a country with
a short and fragmented history. As
an example of style and form. Green
is hardly a writer at all, but at his
best he is something different, and in
his context, often better: a yarn-spinner,
a campfire man. He can communicate
the sense of oddity and strangeness
so that his reader begins to
believe: Something Rich will convince
readers that they can pick up
diamonds, buy a cheap (and valid)
treasure chart. And he often gives
more of a sense of the Southafrican
past than its historians and propagandists
: there is more immediacy in
Green on Hildagonda Duckett* than in
Theal on the Kaffir Wars. It might
not be a bad idea if for new immigrants
and old dogmatists. Green were
made required bedside reading.
Alexander Memoirs 1940-45: by Field-
Marshall Alexander of Tunis. (Cassell,
London).
The battlefields of North Africa are
vanishing into the sand: eighteen years
after, when Alexander visited them,
traces were only visible from the air.
In Italy, ancient stones dragged from
river beds had been used to rebuild the
bombed bridges, and the monastery of
Monte Cassino had been exactly
restored.
The substance of the wartime headlines
has faded quickly, and their
heroes seem a little faded too. Only
the Bomb and Hiroshima have not lost
their sinister bloom. It is symptomatic
that Alexander mentions neither.
The tone of the book is bland and
urbane, as if the planner of the Allied
victories were presenting a company
report. To a world where Red China
hardly blinks at the thought of losing
a hundred million people to achieve
victory (old bloodluster Stalin baulked
when he had lost only four), where
military tactics have moved into outer
space, the punctilio of top brass which
could be concerned whether or not to
shake a surrending German general's
hand sounds strange.
Comrades-in-arms. Chief pleasures of
this book are portraits of the men
involved. Samples:
•Authoress of Hilda's Where Is in, first Cape
cookbook—a kind of Southafrican Mrs. Beeton's
Household Guide.

ALEXANDER'S INFANTRY AT ALAMEIN
And Dunkirk, Anz'o, Berlin
f Of Montgomery: "I always like him
best when I am with him. Yet he is
unwise, 1 think, to take all the credit
for his great success as a commander,
to himself. His prestige, which is
very high, could be higher still if he
had given a little credit to those who
made his victories possible;"
fOf Hisenhower: "In warfare today a
Supreme Allied Commander finds
himself entangled with strategic and
political problems, with international
relations, and with many other complicated
issues far divorced from the
front line. Judging General Eisenhower
against this background, I
think his was an excellent appointment
and that he carried out his
assignment wtih great distinction;"
flOf Patton: "No one could fail to
recognise him as a colourful character,
this fine looking man who carried
a pearl-handled pistol on each
hip;"
fOf Churchill: "What really frightened
me (when Churchill visited the Italian
Front) was that we were going over
ground which hadn't been swept for
mines . . . shells and bullets were
whizzing around. But I got him safely
to a farmhouse." When Alexander
was bogged down in Anzio, Churchill
sent him a message "I expected to
see a wildcat roaring into the mountains—and
what do I find? A whale
wallowing on the beaches."
A second great Alexander. The book
covers the battles from Dunkirk to
Berlin five years after, and is amply
illustrated. Alexander was the chief
strategist of the Allies: it is not his
fault that the sands of time and indifference
as well as of the desert have
drifted over and obscured the outlines.
LEHERS
Judgement noted
Sir,—Your spelling of "Southafrican"
is quaint, but is it necessary to continue
your attack on the English
language by repeatedly writing "judgment"
as "judgement"? (NEWS/CHECK
September 28 Page 9 Col 3).
G. Meyerowitz,
Bethlehem.
The Concise Oxford Dictionary:
"judgement, -gment". We wouldn't
lay a finger on the English language.
Ed.
Dilemma
Sir,—Reviewing the new Penguin African
Library, you fail to point out that
as Portugal in Africa and A Short
History of Africa have prefaces by
On-the-Listman (as you would say)
Segal, they are banned, as well as his
African Profiles.
Index Watcher,
East London.
True. Booksellers are in a fix: to
tear out the prefaces and sell, or return
their copies. Ed.
American view
Sir,—In "America" (NEWS/CHECK September
28) you have criticized for the
sake of criticism and made ridiculous
statements, e.g. ". . . teaching the
backward to read so that they can
scan the flood of Communist literaure
. . .". Is this all education does?
Has NEWS/CHECK not considered
where these countries would be if it
were not for foreign aid? A senator
once explained to a group of foreign
students that if a country needed help
and the US could help it, it should,
despite the country's political leanings.
The US is trying to contain Communism
and promote Democracy throughout
the world. If NEWS/CHECK has a
better plan I am sure the Kennedy
Administration would welcome it.
Barry Wood,
Johannesburg.
NEWS/CHECK reports facts, opinions.
It does not necessarily agree with them.
Ed.
New fact
Sir,—You are wrong in giving the
date of the origin of the old fashioned
Bioscope Cafe as 1925. As a very
small boy I can remember one in
Johannesburg about 1911 in Pritchard
Street opposite Stuttafords. It was
built in the shape of a railway coach
and specialised in travel films.
Eric Rosenthal,
Capetown.
NEWS/CHECK thanks reader Rosenthal
for the correction. Ed.
Somebody loves us . . .
Sir,—To the European, the <strong>news</strong> these
days from Africa is much more vital
than that from the USA and, to be
quite candid, people outside the US
are getting a bit bored with American
politics. The result is that from one
copy of NEWS/CHECK I can learn far
more on African and world politics
than I can from other similar publications.
T. K. Parsons,
West Wickham,
England.
. . . somebody don't . . .
Sir,—Naturally everyone is for integration,
especially if it is another country.
But your piece about the Williamson
Diamond Mine (NEWS/CHECK 28 September)
laid it on a bit thick. And it
is nothing but naive to assume that
when the time comes they (the Africans)
will take up golf, swimming,
bridge and pink gin. They have rather
other ideas in mind. When your magazine
writes like this, it sounds like the
Christmas number of Contact.
C. Robinson,
Port Elizabeth.
Sir,—Your magazine obviously believes
that Southafrican magazines
"must be bland or banned".
F. Colhns,
Johannesburg.
Would Reader Collins prefer us to be
rude and misconstrued! Ed.
. . . and somebody sees our point
Sir,—NEWS/CHECK is a lively, provocative,
interesting magazine. Its back
sections are lively enough (though
where are the reviews, or are the
three in ENTERTAINMENT a signpost of
things to come?) Its AFRICA and
WORLD sections are good. Fair enough.
But all Southafrican magazines are
judged by what they say about Southafrica.
My assessment — good on lack
of favouritism, good on skipping the
more boring party skirmishes, good on
being indignant (without fuming) when
necessary, like the City Centre story
(NEWS/CHECK September 14) and
Elandskloof (NEWS/CHECK September
28); but poor on over-interest in the
movement of ministers, bad balance
between national and local affairs, not
enough reporting on the politics of
Bantu, Coloureds and Indians.
L. Greyling,
Johannesburg.
All political matter in this issue by Otto Krause,
42 Marshall Street, Johannesburg.
40 NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1962

NEWS/CHECK
Design • Advertising • Sill

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Wherever you go, wherever life is gay,
elegant, exciting, you meet Peter Stuyvesant.
Distinctive, international.
Peter Stuyvesant. Rich choice
tobaccos plus the miracle filter.
King Size. Light up . . . enjoy . . .
Peter Stuyvesant—choice of
happy, active, modern people.
Everywhere!
NEWS/CHECK 12 OCTOBER 1952