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University Daily Kansan
Friday. Nov. 6, 1964
A Promising Future
The newest member of the community of nations is the Central African Republic of Zambia, which achieved independence from Great Britain Oct. 24. While this new country—roughly the size of Texas—faces the same problems of education and development as other African nations, its outlook appears uncommonly bright.
Until independence day, Zambia was known as Northern Rhodesia. The British gained control of the country in the 1890s, and declared it a protectorate in 1924. For ten years, until last January, Northern Rhodesia was joined with Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland in the Central African Federation. Nyasaland became independent last July 6, but Southern Rhodesia, governed by white supremacists much as is neighboring South Africa, is still under the British thumb while it tries to resolve its racial conflicts.
MUCH OF THE credit for Zambia's emergence must go to 39-year-old Kenneth Kaunda, the country's first president and leader of the dominant United National Independence Party. Unlike many African leaders, Kaunda is neither an out-and-out socialist nor an anti-European, pro-African racist.
Kaunda was born in a remote village, 500 miles from the "copper belt," the center of Zambia's industrial life. The son of a Presbyterian minister, Kaunda was headmaster of a boarding school at the age of 22 in Lubwa, his home village. His eyes were opened in 1947, however, when he worked as a welfare assistant at Nchanga in the copper belt. It was there that he experienced the full shock of industrialization, the color bar and discrimination.
The former teacher turned to trading old clothes, and in the meantime propagandized for the African National Congress Party of Harry Nkumbula. But even while Kaunda was arguing for freedom, he was an admirer of Gandhi, the immortalized Indian pacifist. The reading of "seditious" books such as those concerning Gandhi earned him an 11-month prison sentence in 1955—and the leadership of the United National Independence Party.
WHILE STILL united in the federal system with Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia moved rapidly toward giving its native African majority of 3,600,000 people political equality with the 74,000 European whites. The Africans first achieved political success in 1959, when a system of direct elections to the legislative council involving all races was inaugurated.
A coalition between the parties of Kaunda and Nkumbula gave Africans a majority in the legislature two years ago under a complicated new system of representation. Full internal self-government, with the one man-one vote ideal, came last January when the Central African Federation was dissolved.
Kaunda, who left the African National Congress Party in the mid-1950s because he felt it to be too compromising with the Europeans, established his party as supreme in the election which followed the breakup of the federation.
As the 36th independent African nation—and the 30th to become so in the last decade-Zambia shares in common with its neighbors the problem of education. The country has only 1,500 high school graduates, a mere .04 per cent of its African population. In addition, there are only 100
university graduates, four doctors, 10 lawyers and no engineers among the natives.
WHAT MAY provide money for this essential education is Zambia's tremendous copper reserves, approximately a fifth of those existing in the Western world. Zambia ranks third in copper production—behind the United States and Chile—and the 1963 exports of approximately $369 million accounted for about two-thirds of the gross national product.
However, Zambia's rich endowment of natural resources has created a difficult problem. Because it has no outlet to the sea, it is heavily dependent upon its neighbors for economic survival.
Except for wood and charcoal, all fuel must be imported, and most exports must go 1,600 miles by rail to Beira in Mozambique, a Portuguese territory under white domination. Electricity comes chiefly from the Kariva Dam power station across the Zambia River in Southern Rhodesia, currently following the white supremacist leadership of Sir Roy Welensky.
To diminish this dependence, Kaunda favors a federation with Uganda, Tanganyika and Kenya. He also is trying to reach agreement with Tanganyika for the construction of a new rail link to the sea which would extend from Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, 1.268 miles to the Tanganyikan port city of Dar es Salaam. Such a project may not be completed for a decade, though, and in the meantime Kaunda and Zambia are faced with the task of keeping peace with the non-African ruled neighbors.
AS MENTIONED before, Kaunda is no racist. He recognizes the need for the skilled manpower of Zambia's Europeans in developing the country. The constitution provides for equal rights for whites, an embodiment of Kaunda's statement three years ago at a public meeting of Africans:
"We assure the non-Africans of their rightful place in this country by way of adopting a bill of rights. We favor no racist party, and no oppression of one race by another will be tolerated."
On the same occasion, Kaunda spelled out his economic philosophy.
"There is room for both private industries and party controlled industries," he said. "The only thing we shall ask of private industry is to feed the profits back into Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to help develop more industry."
INTERNATIONALLY. Zambia will follow what Kaunda calls a policy of "positive neutrality." By this, he means friendship with the United States, the Soviet Union and Communist China. At his first news conference three days after independence, he was critical—but not too critical—of South Africa and neighboring Southern Rhodesia, which now is known simply as Rhodesia and which borders Zambia for hundreds of miles along the Zambezi River.
His criticism should have been expected. Only the day before, a racially mixed delegation from Zambia and other nations, including two Negroes from the U.S., refused to enter Rhodesia to inspect the Kariba power plant after officials demanded they be ferried across the Zambezi in separate compartments.
Former British colonies in Africa seem to fare comparatively well on their own. Zambia, with its copper, moderate leadership and friendly relations with outside powers, should be no exception.
Fred Frailey
A Slice of Cam-Pi
The Homecoming farce is slowly approaching some type of climax. This Saturday one of three KU co-eds will be crowned Homecoming Queen. It's nice that she will have something to tell her children about her college days at the Harvard on the Kaw. Also on Saturday a few living groups will be awarded prizes for long hours of fighting wood and chicken wire. Creativity should never be without recognition.
The election results are in and LBJ and the man from Minnesota will be in the White House for the next four years barring any unforeseen events.
correlation can be drawn there unless you're a hard-core Republican.
Barry Goldwater was shot down —Jim Langford
ELECTION DAY was very dark and very dreary. The weather
was lousy. Nov. 3 was very much like, as far as the weather is concerned, a day almost a year ago when three shots were fired in Dallas. I don't think much of a
Dailij Hänsan
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"He May Not Pull Through"
The People Say...
Dear Sir:
The arguments presented by the Zionist for a Jewish state are not sufficient or of such a nature as to constitute a valid justification for the creation of Israel.
The concept of a state based on religious justification and with an avowed religious purpose is, in the middle of the twentieth century, an act of retrogression for this age of ours when the world has outgrown the practice of growing people into political entities on the basis of their religious affiliations. The claim of a Jewish state is an attempt to arrest/reverse the progress of the entire world, from the medieval stage to the modern era, where national rather than religious entities constitute the units of the international scene.
The Zionist claims the Biblical and historical rights of the Jews to Palestine are, to say the least, unfounded. There is nothing in the Bible to limit the promise to those who today describe themselves as Jews, whether or not they are the actual descendants of the early Hebrews.
The actions of Great Britain, the United States, and the UN in bringing the partition about may have seemed at the time to be the resolution of an important problem, yet in actuality these actions constituted an act of force which, in essence, rested upon opportunistic grounds, and resulted in the creation of continuing problems.
The new citizens of the Jewish state have used the very methods against the Arabs which revolted the world when these methods were used by the Germans against the Jews. The Western sense of guilt for what happened to the Jews in the West and by Western hands cannot be relieved by helping the Jews in the home of the Arabs. Generosity to the Jews at the expense of the Palestinian Arabs is morally reprehensible. The Arabs should not be expected to pay for the crimes of Hitler. Jewish persecution in Europe may vest the Jews with certain rights against Germany, but surely not against the Arabs.
Israel has ignored many resolutions of the General Assembly calling upon her to withdraw from Gaza Strip, and nearly ignited a third world war. It was only when President Eisenhower threatened that economic sanctions would be imposed if Israel persisted in her refusal to comply that Israel withdrew.
No amicable solution seems to be in sight. There is, however, a ground work upon which such a solution might be built. This consists of the actions officially stipulated by the United Nations in its partition resolution and other solutions passed in order to deal with the Palestine problem.
The Arabs have informed the United Nations as early as May 12, 1949, that the Palestinian problem must be solved within the framework of the United Nations resolutions. Israel, too, consented to the implementation of the United Nations resolutions when she signed the Protocol of Lausanne on the same day.
But since then, Israel has defied the implementation of the resolutions and the Arabs have insisted that the resolutions should be implemented to bring peace to the Holy Land.
The implementation of each of the UN resolutions is of great importance if peace is to come to the Middle East. However, of particular importance and urgency is the question of the Palestine Arab refugees and their right to repatriation. It stands to reason that if Zionist Jews have not forgotten Palestine, in the last 2,000 years, then the Arab refugees, who were born and raised in Palestine, and have their homes and property in Palestine, cannot forget their homes after fourteen years. Briefly, the Arabs should not expel the Israeli, and the zionists should not drive the Arabs out of their homes. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that if the Palestine Arabs are not permitted to go home, there can be no peace in the Middle East.
Sami A. Kaloti President of the Arab-American Club Jerusalem-Jordan Graduate student
BOOK REVIEWS
ICE STATION ZEBRA, by Alistair MacLean (Crest, 60 cents)—More blood and thunder from the author of "The Guns of Navarone." MacLean has a genius for taking the reader into exciting backgrounds of adventure, and this is about the Dolphin, American nuclear sub, that goes to rescue a British meteorological team trapped on a polar ice cap. Well, that's partly what it's about. It wouldn't be nice to tell everything, but there is derring-do about Communists and the cold war to make this a combination of Ernest Gann and Eric Ambler.
. . . . .