Bigger Share of the Blanket

Deep in the African bush, between the Zambesi River and a vast game reserve where 2,000 elephants have been counted, firmness and fair play won a victory that force could never achieve. Last week 10,000 African miners were back at work and a nationwide general strike was averted because a British Prime Minister whom they trusted coupled a warning ("Mob rule will not be permitted") with a rare promise: "The gap between black and white standards of living must be narrowed as quickly as possible."

The strike had been called at Wankie colliery, a forest-girt slum that taps Southern Rhodesia's massive coal reserves --more than 4 billion tons, mined in a 40-ft. seam. Owned by Sir Ernest Oppenheimer, whose vast copper mines in Northern Rhodesia are fueled by Southern Rhodesian coal, Wankie pays white miners at least $250 a month and its Negro miners an average in cash of $6.60 a month. Recently, the Negro union demanded a raise in their minimum rate (from 21-c- to 50-c-? a day), and when it made no headway, downed tools. Only 20 out of 10,000 African miners stayed on the job, and these the strikers called "whitelegs."

No coal from Wankie meant crisis for all Rhodesia. The copper mines had nine days' supply, railroads and power stations only enough for a week. Southern Rhodesia's newly elected Prime Minister Garfield Todd acted drastically. Six hundred white soldiers raced to Wankie. P: With one eye on Kenya's Mau Mau, many white Rhodesians were quick to cry "Native rising." Jasper Savanhu, a Negro M.P., accused the government of "using ruthless methods, including starvation and intimidation, to break the Negro strike." Attacked from both sides, Garfield Todd kept his head, and by so doing, saved many others. He ordered an impartial inquiry into the miners' complaints. Last week his African Labor Board put pressure on the Oppenheimers to give the Negroes a worthwhile raise.

The results of such rare good sense were little short of electrifying. Overnight, the Negro leaders called off the strike. Jasper Savanhu apologized: "I have now discovered that the white troops behaved correctly, and I unreservedly withdraw my allegation." Said another Negro: "Here in Rhodesia, the white man and the black man lie in the same bed. But the white man has kept the blanket, and the black man has tossed all night. Now we are getting a share of the blanket . . ."

There were other signs, all over Africa, of a fairer share of the blanket. Items: P: In blossoming Uganda, where Baganda tribesmen still mourn the loss of their exiled Kabaka (TIME, Dec. 14), Governor Sir Andrew Cohen took a plane for London to discuss "social and economic re forms" with British Colonial Secretary Oliver Lyttelton. Said Cohen before takeoff: "There must be no color bar in Uganda; this evil thing will never be permitted in this country."

P: In Mau Mau-ridden Kenya, Michael Blundell, Parliamentary Leader of the white settlers, shocked his diehard followers by summoning a conference of Africans, Indians and Britons to blueprint a new Kenya government, "to include all races."

P: In British Central Africa (both Rho-desias and Nyasaland), Federal Prime Minister Sir Godfrey Huggins banned the word "native" ( to describe "Africans") in all public documents. Huggins also forbade the color bar in public buildings, thereby enabling Africans to post their letters at the same counters as the whites. The order miffed Rhodesia's immigrant Boers, most of whom had trekked north in search of cheap land and cheaper African labor. Overwhelmingly defeated by Huggins in Central Africa's first federal election (TIME, Dec. 28) and angry at his creed of racial partnership, many Rhodesian Boers last week were trekking back to the Union of South Africa.

P: In South Africa, history was made at a Presbyterian church in Port Elizabeth. For the first time, a Negro moderator solemnly inducted a white clergyman of Boer descent to holy office. Seven hundred miles upcountry, in rowdy Johannesburg, Father Leo Rakale (the Negro priest who was the real-life model of Alan Paton's fictional priest, Msimangu, in Cry, the Beloved Country) became head of an Anglican mission, with three white priests serving under him.

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