Spiro Approves Policy in Africa

American newspapers have painted an inaccurate and unduly pessimistic picture of the current situation in Africa, Herbert J. Spiro '50, assistant professor of Government, stated yesterday at the Union Coffee Hour.

Spiro, who spent last year in Rhodesia and the Central African Republic, described American foreign policy in Africa as essentially "very good."

Statements alleging a disastrous decline of American prestige have no basis in fact, Spiro declared. Although many uneducated Africans tend to identify the United States with European colonialism, he encountered no hatred of America or the white man per se.

Predicting a revolution in the Union of South Africa within the next ten years, Spiro called the country "the only place south of the Sahara where things really look gloomy." He doubted whether the Afrikaners would ever voluntarily renounce apartheid.

Tensions between the Union and the rest of South Africa will increase steadily during the next few years, according to Spiro. He described the dominant elements of the Union as strongly isolationist. Leaders of several neighboring countries, he noted, have developed a systematic plan of attack involving boycotts and other economic sanctions.

Intense opposition to the Union by Nkrumah's pan-Africanist bloe could possible provoke an international war, Spiro suggested, calling this threat the major obstacle to the establishment of political stability in South Africa.