Page 49 - Afrika Must Unite

34 AFRICA MUST UNITE
W ith the close of the Second W orld W ar there followed a
change in the official outlook on these matters. Most established
countries brought about tremendous alterations in the social
pattern of their people by clearing slums and launching vast
housing schemes for the working population. These new ideas
of popular housing, however, never reached Africa. We could
go on living as we had always lived. We knew no better. W hat
had been good enough for our great-grandparents could go on
being good enough for us and our children.
The housing situation when we took office was shocking. It
reflected what appeared to be a standard European view of the
African attitude towards domestic shelter: anything that keeps
off the rain and offers shade from the sun is good enough. The
white man, living in his stone, brick or concrete house, seemed
to think that the African ‘native5 neither wanted nor needed an
elaborate structure in which he and his family could live in
comfort. It was considered enough for a few palm fronds and
thatch to give shelter to the family living in the village and for an
improvised shack with corrugated iron roof to serve the towns­
folk. This assumption was just another facet of the contemptuous
regard of the African as a creature devoid of hum an sensibility.
In all the years that the British colonial office administered
this country, hardly any serious rural water development was
carried out. W hat this means is not easy to convey to readers who
take for granted that they have only to turn on a tap to get an
immediate supply of good drinking water. This, if it had occurred
to our rural communities, would have been their idea of heaven.
They would have been grateful for a single village well or stand­
pipe.
As it was, after a hard day's work in the hot and hum id fields,
men and women would return to their village and then have to
tram p for as long as two hours with a pail or pot in which, at the
end of their outward journey, they would be lucky to collect
some brackish germ-filled water from what may perhaps have
been little more than a swamp. Then there was the long journey
back. Four hours a day for an inadequate supply of water
for washing and drinking, water for the most part disease-
ridden !
This picture was true for almost the whole country and can be