Word: macmillan
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...took all of Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's urbane skill at talking through, past and around any subject to make his way through the capitals of British Africa. He had from the first conceived his mission as a journey to "look and learn," but people everywhere expected to hear something about their problems and prospects from the first British Prime Minister ever to visit them. The London Spectator, watching the P.M. straddle one controversial subject after another, began to call the Mr. Macwonder of yore by a new nickname, MacJanus...
Think of It!" True to his original premise that the real fact finding in the federation would have to be done later by a special commission headed by Lord Monckton, Macmillan departed from a thoroughly confused Nyasaland for the Union of South Africa, where a few Africans in the streets tried to attract his attention with homemade placards: MONTY CLOSED HIS EYES OPEN YOURS, MAC! Asked whether he would see any "non-white leaders," he blandly declared that this would be up to "my hosts." Finally, at a reception given by the mayor of Johannesburg, Macmillan found something...
...Union of South Africa are wholly so-he could be no more than a senior member of what he delights in calling "the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Club." But London still exerts power over the troubled Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Federal Prime Minister Sir Roy Welensky hoped that Macmillan might promise more independence soon for his white-dominated government. The Africans wanted him to hold firm while encouraging them in their own search for independence outside the federation...
What's It All About? In his first public statement in the Southern Rhodesia capital of Salisbury, a busy modern city (pop. 260,000) that boasts of racial "partnership" while practicing a segregation almost as complete as South Africa's, Macmillan did a quick knee bend in the direction of the Africans. Britain, he said, would not remove its "protection" until all the people had a chance to say whether they wanted federation or not. Sir Roy Welensky was visibly disgruntled. But during his entire stay in Southern Rhodesia, Macmillan did not interview a single African leader...
...time Macmillan got to Nyasaland, where the blacks outnumber the whites 485 to 1, the Africans were getting disgruntled too. Macmillan made no attempt to see, let alone to set free, the imprisoned black "Messiah," Dr. Hastings Banda. Orton Chirwa, the territory's only black barrister, bluntly demanded to know why Britain was so afraid of Sir Roy. Macmillan testily replied: "Britain has never been frightened of anyone - not even Hitler." Finally, at the Ryalls Hotel in Blantyre, Macmillan ran into his first hostile crowd...