Light on Africa

Abstract

The traditional pattern of African society has been destroyed by the impact of the West; out of the chaos, new patterns of life are emerging, painfully. Some of these are deformed; some, like Mau Mau, are abortions. Western ideas, and the example of Asia, have encouraged the rise of African nationalism; it's a strident nationalism, with all the cocksureness, the impatience, the idealism, and the capacity for mistakes of the young. Confronted by the breakdown of African tribal society and by this new national consciousness, the scattered white groups in Black Africa are striving to maintain their position. Sometimes, as in Kenya or Nyasaland, the means they use reflect little credit on them; sometimes, as in West Africa, they have made an honest attempt to establish a basis for coexistence.

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