The stupid federation wasn’t that stupid

Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda did not mince words about the Central African Federation, which sought to bring together the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland. He dismissed it as “the stupid federation”. In his characteristically flowery and ornamental Chichewa, John Msonthi would render this as “chitaganya chonunkha” — literally, a stinky federation.

The Federation was being championed by the white minority rather than by the indigenous population. This was a source of deep resentment for Kamuzu and other educated Nyasas. Some 40 years earlier, having been ejected from an examination hall by Cullen Young because he had stood up to obtain a clear view of the questions displayed on the chalkboard, an act misconstrued as cheating, the youthful Kamuzu had resolved to trek southwards to South Africa in search of education.

He walked as far as Southern Rhodesia, stopping at Hartley, where he found temporary employment in a hospital. Whatever little respect remained in Kamuzu after his humiliating encounter with Young must surely have evaporated when he witnessed the appalling manner in which white doctors treated black patients there. The mistreatment of Africans by white Rhodesian settlers left an indelible impression upon his mind and would colour his attitude towards the proposed Federation for years to come.

He was later to say, in connection with the Southern Rhodesia-dominated Federation: “……..of all the Europeans in Central Africa, those in Southern Rhodesia have the worst antipathy towards Africans. They are against giving the Africans any rights whether civil, political, industrial, commercial or cultural. They look upon Africans as inferior beings, with no right to a dignified and refined existence and fit only as hewers of wood and drawers of water for Europeans…..”

It is against this background that his outspoken opposition to the Federation should be understood. In essence, those who opposed it feared that we, the indigenous Africans, would be reduced to “hewers of wood and drawers of water” for European settlers, condemned to serve rather than to shape our own destiny.

Welensky’s “stupid” Central African Federation notwithstanding, the indigenous peoples of the Rhodesias — Southern and Northern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe and Zambia respectively — and Nyasaland may well have missed out on benefits that could have accrued to them had the Federation been implemented in good faith.

The combined population of the three territories would have constituted a sufficiently large market for a range of products and industries. Motor-vehicle assembly, for instance, may not be viable in Malawi because its domestic market is too small; but the three territories together would probably have provided a sufficiently substantial market to make such an enterprise commercially attractive.

Market size is one of the factors that draws investors to a country, or indeed keeps them away. The combined population of Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe is roughly 63 million — way above that of the world’s most populous city, Jakarta — and, therefore, large enough to sustain a reasonable range of medium-sized industries. I am convinced that, had the three territories remained one country, we might still have BAT manufacturing cigarettes, Unilever producing a range of soaps and perhaps Nzeru Radio Company producing sophisticated hi-fi equipment to this day.

Events such as the Lake of Stars festival would also have assumed an altogether different scale, attracting patrons not merely from Blantyre, Lilongwe and Mzuzu, but from Bulawayo, Lusaka, Harare, Kitwe, Gweru and other Central African cities. At primary school, I learnt a poem that wen: “If all the seas were one sea, what a great sea that would be!” Indeed, if all the Central African countries were one country, what a great country that would be!

As the world steadily shrinks into one global village, regional integration and the free movement of people and goods ought to occupy a prominent place in our thinking. I remember waking up in Germany one morning to the realisation that I could buy a current copy of the daily British newspaper, The Sun. This was before Brexit. Europe was rapidly becoming one vast, interconnected territory. The degree of integration achieved there was and remains, remarkable. One could, for example, drive from Brussels in Belgium to Paris in France, London in England or Amsterdam in the Netherlands without undergoing immigration formalities. Despite Britain’s departure from the European Union, much of that integration has endured.

There is no reason Africa cannot pursue regional integration with equal determination. The benefits are there for all and sundry to reap. We need to honestly search within our history, culture, aspirations, politics and ask ourselves what must be done to transform the long-cherished dream of a great Central African state into a practical and enduring reality.

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