African Dilemmas

Abstract

Two moons contest the tide of British policy in Africa. One is our need for a new world to cultivate, if not to conquer: a need sharpened by withdrawal from the East and by the pinch of dollar famine. That moon pulls up the African shore a tide of British interest, money, skill, expectation. Its rival sucks African hope and effort away from British mastery, as from all European hegemony. It gathers a tide of self-determination, of nationalism, which we ourselves blow forward with ever greater force to bring about se)f-rule, and with it our own impotence. So one tide drives us hard towards the continent and the other repels us. Are we going forward or pulling back? In the same year we have launched the groundnut scheme in Tanganyika and brought into being in Nigeria a constitution that gives Africans a majority in the legislature. Both are acclaimed as examples of progress, and each point in an opposite direction.