In spite of “all these troubles we were heir to when we took over” the country’s prestige today stood high, both among its fellow African states and in the rest of the world, and, what was more important, the people could see their hopes taking shape in daily life. Africanization was going ahead. In the civil service, nearly half the customs officials were now African. African Provincial Officers had replaced all white District Commissioners. Sixteen African magistrates had been appointed. The command of the police force was in the hands of an African — a reflection of the unity and loyalty of the country that he did not think any other new state could match. In two or three years, even the commander of the army would be “one of our own people.”
A new Apprenticeship Bill would see that the private sector of industry played its part in training youth as artisans. Of course the biggest step forward had already been taken — in two years, under the training scheme that had been put into operation immediately with the cooperation of the mining companies, all labour in the mines up to the level of Mine Captain would be African. He was happy to be able to announce for the first time, to this Congress, that he had just been told that the Minister of Education and the Minister of Development and Planning had made successful arrangements for the International Labour Organization to set up a management — training project in the capital. The specific aim would be to train Africans to bridge managerial gaps in commerce and industry, and take over middle — level and senior jobs now held almost exclusively by foreigners. A further aim would be to help expand the economy by motivating more Africans into business. The project would last five years, at the end of which time the United Nations experts would have phased themselves out. The United Nations Special Fund would bear eighty — five per cent of the costs, and the government the remaining fifteen per cent.
He had a way of waiting patiently for applause to end, his mind apparently already moved on ahead to what he was going to tell his audience next; but he gave a quick, wide smile of acknowledgement before he began to speak again. It was education now— “the whole position of education is being urgently reviewed with the object not only of making a full ten years’ schooling available to all children, but also of finding a new approach that will cut through the psychological barriers that colonial schools created in the education of our children by relating the learning process only to foreign cultures and putting the idea into their heads that they were being offered a smattering of something that didn’t really belong to them.” Then he turned to the development of natural resources — the successful negotiations for the vast hydro — electric scheme meant that “our children will know a life of plenty while we ourselves are still alive.” It also meant, since it was the joint project of two African states, that the country had taken the first important initiative in Pan — African cooperation, the building of a third world of African achievement, by Africans, for Africans, in Africa. In industry, the foreign mining companies’ investment over the next five years would be between thirty — five and forty million pounds. This was the answer to those people, still thinking in terms of dreams before independence became a concrete reality, who “talked nationalization” at this stage. There could be no talk of nationalization in an underdeveloped nation.
He raised both palms to stem applause. This first Congress since the Party had come to power was perhaps the most important one in the Party’s history. PIP had become, in effect, the government, and was itself responsible for carrying out the mandate it had been given by the people — it was no longer in the position of putting pressure upon others to do this or that. This called for certain changes. The Party could no longer be set to perform the old functions, the old activities of the struggle for freedom — these had become outdated and wasteful in some instances. It must realign itself in accordance with the functions and activities of a party firmly in power, a party that was not not only the inspiration of the people, but the consolidation and backbone of the government it had put in power. This was the spirit in which, as President, as leader of the People’s Independence Party, he had called for this Congress so soon after Independence, sooner than the Presidents of most countries would have cared to report back. He knew that now, just as in the early days of the struggle for freedom, he would find the Congress vigorously adaptable, and ready to offer “the courage and collective wisdom of a truly African leadership gathered from every corner of the country.”
The general applause first swamped the different currents of reaction. Then, as the various forms of applause became distinguishable from the general, they also became indicative of the differing forms of the reaction itself, as the instruments of an orchestra are indistinguishable in the crescendo in which they all are sounded, but can be identified when it dies down and some fall silent, while others sustain a theme or variation in which they at once become recognizable: the voice of the oboe, the collective plaint of the strings. Part of the hullabaloo was simply polite — everyone’s hands must be seen to move when the President has spoken — and died out, leaving the hard palms of a large section of enthusiasts to keep a heavy brass going, getting louder, backed by the muffled regular stamping of feet on the cinema carpet. This deafening, obliterating racket stirred the dust of an unrest in other sections; men who had been sitting merely resisting any show of accord since they had given their token acknowledgement of the speech, began to move about in their seats, to twist their heads around them, to surge subterraneously towards another solidarity, in opposition.
Bray rested his neck back against his seat for a moment. The air — conditioned spaces were filled with turmoil like the wheeling and counterwheeling of birds. He had the impulse to make contact; to spin a filament between himself and Roly Dando, sitting up there on the stage with his arms akimbo and his ankles crossed under the conference table, the position he had taken up in unconscious defensiveness at the moment when Mweta had referred to his powers as Attorney — General. (Like a member of a private bodyguard, a thug; little Dando.) — Or to catch Mweta himself, straight in the eyes, believing for a moment that Mweta could make him, Bray, out, from that distance. The few remarks about an education plan were almost word for word what he had written to Mweta; they came back to him from the public rostrum, an oblique claim on his anonymous presence there in the crowd. The Secretary — General — Justin Chekwe was Secretary — General of PIP as well as Minister of Justice — was beginning the interminable business of welcoming and introducing representatives of political parties who had come from other countries as observers. Spatters and squalls of applause followed the names: enthusiasm for the TANU man from Tanzania, the UNIP man from Zambia; a half — hearted acknowledgement for the Nasser delegation with their cropped crinkly shining hair, pleasant smiles and trancelike squinting gaze — the country people did not know quite who they were and for many of the others who did, they were too Left to be given the accolade. In the usual way, Mweta was elected President of the Congress and it was moved that the election of the Party President, office bearers and committees would be held at the final session.