Instead of Mugabe.. .
From Dr James Hargrave Sir: I feel that Stephen Goodson's letter (4 March) invites a response from a right- winger who had the pleasure of being enter- tained by Ian Smith in Harare, who likes him as an individual, but who has long harboured serious misgivings about UDI.
I do not recognise Mr Goodson's descrip- tion of 1965. Undoubtedly, some Rhodesian Front ministers were quite barmy; Mr Smith was one of the more talented. If his policy had been one of immobilism, he would have been the victim of a leadership putsch with- in the Rhodesian Front like his predecessor, Winston Field. As many pointed out at the time, the alternative to declaring UDI was not to declare UDI, to continue to operate the 1961 constitution (Southern Rhodesia had been internally self-governing since 1923), leave Britain to carry the can interna- tionally as the nominal colonial power, and take all steps necessary to keep black politi- cal leadership in the rather lethargic hands of Nkomo etc. Gradually, under the existing constitution, more black voters would have come on to the electoral registers, and a gradual shift from white rule through mixed rule to black rule would have taken place, with time for a responsible black leadership to grow into the job. No sanctions, no civil war, and black majority rule of a better flavour by, perhaps, 1980. This is at least a plausible alternative scenario. But I am clearly a United Federal party liberal; not that many in Britain would regard me or have regarded the UFP as such.
In his correspondence, the late Sir Roy Welensky (prime minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and leader of the United Federal party at the time of Mr Smith's defection to the Rhodesian Front) frequently commented upon the self-delud- ing, head-in-the-clouds attitude of much of the Southern Rhodesian electorate, before and after UDI, and even after the birth of Zimbabwe. Mr Goodson seems to make this point eloquently. Whatever may be said of the superiority of the Rhodesian army, the machinations of Western politicians or whatever, I suggest that Mr Goodson con- siders geography and demography.
James Hargrave
Banbury, Oxfordshire
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