African Describes 'Personality' of Dark Continent

In last night's double-bill, the International Seminar Forum presented the private secretary to an African king speaking on the emergence of "the African personality," and two Japanese socialists, who offered interpretations of the recent Tokyo riots.

C.N.S. Mukasa of Uganda, like a Zen master suggesting but never defining, described the African personality as "mystical and yet very tangible to us." As it emerges from colonial rule, Africa feels a compelling need to claim its own place among the world's peoples, he said. However, the Balliol-educated intellectual cautioned against "throwing away" all traces of the colonial inheritance, for Africa will develop an eclectic civilization.

On the issue of pan-Africanism, Mukasa urged a go-slow policy as new nations consider various schemes of regional and even continental union. "First," he said, "the national house must be put in order."

Answering an obviously sympathetic audience, the African dodged questions on the role of the Arab northern tier in a pan-African future, and possible tribal and regional conflicts in the developing continent. When a girl asked if Communism posed a threat to Uganda and what was being done to combat its influence, others in the audience hissed, and Mukasa smilingly said that Communism finds "no fertile ground" in his country.

In the second part of the program. Yoichi Yokoburi, journalist for the Kyoto News Bureau and a left-wing socialist, said the Tokyo riots were the result of widespread hatred of the pending security treaty, and even more perhaps, anger at the "Fascist-like actions of the Kishi regimo," which used "police force in the Diet chamber to bring about ratification." The days of rioting were not Communist-inspired, he told the audience.

The Japanese people, said the journalist, dislike the "virtual extra-territoriality" that Japan grauts for U.S. bases, plus the absence of any Japanese control over nuclear weapons stored there. As the day for ratification of the treaty grew near, millions of Japanese saw it as "not a security, but a danger treaty."

On other issues, Yokoburi attacked strongly the growing Japanese home defense force "in violation of our Constitution," and the survival in power of political leaders "most responsible for the last war, who now pose as the best friends of America."

Capitalist Exploitation

The other Japanese speaker, a rightwing socialist, urged with equal vehemence a fight against the "evils of capitalist exploitation of the workers" and against "the imperialism and violent dictatorships of the Communists." As a voice of the splinter Democratic Social Party, Koji Kemeda said that if European colonialists would get out of Asia, these nations would join the West in fighting a common enemy. Communism.

In the meantime, he warned against neutralism, which would "break down the balance of power now preserving world peace." In brief, this point distinguished Kemeda most sharply from Yokoburi, who spoke hopefully of a UN Police Force that would keep international order