Aura of power
Richard West
Salisbury The white Rhodesians have not lost their love of self-dramatisation. When I was last here in 1964, even before Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence, 1 watched a party of grown men in a pub singing 'Goodbye' — the marching song of an Abyssinian French Division' from the White Horse Inn. This time I had not been in the country for five minutes when I was given a patriotic speech by the bank clerk at Salisbury Airport: 'I'm telling you, if you corner a rat it will turn and bite. If the world turns on us, it will explode. The first world war began the shores of Lake Victoria, and that war will finish here in Africa. We've had two truces, two cease-fires, but the war has never stopped.'
As the day wore on the talk of the whites grew ever more blustering and more bloodcurdling: 'Dr Owen? Of course he's communist. Peregrine Worsthorne — that wayout pinko. Ian Smith? I always knew he was left-wing. . .Don't call me a Fascist, man — I'm a Nazi.' Now or course only a small part of this was intended seriously and the rest was a tease on the visiting English journalist, but the fact remains that some of the white Rhodesians (and some of the blacks for that matter) sound not quite right in the head.
The war that is going on all over the country is real enough, but something rings false in the patriotic rhetoric. How can one not laugh when the band at a night club plays by special request a tune called 'Machine Gun'? Salisbury has been invaded by strange public relations men, from the King of Albania to Ralph Moss, a black American and contributor to the popular gramophone record 'It's Rhodesia', whose worthy promoters no doubt found it difficult to find a black Rhodesian for the part. Another public relations group last week put out a gramophone record called 'Harmony' with the purpose, even at this late date, of fostering racial friendship. Rhodesian beer-mugs and Tm backing Rhodesia' T-shirts sell well to those with a taste for kitsch.
Twelve years of sanctions and fighting appear to have done good things for white morale in Rhodesia. The lazy and timid have left the country, while those who remain have rediscovered a kind of 'Battle of Britain' spirit, albeit the foes they now face are not the Nazis but rather thesightful inhabitants of their own African country. Those British politicians like Wilson and Heath who thought that sanctions would 'bite' might learn from Rhodesia that most people welcome the challenge of self-help and austerity.
British apologists for the Smith regime are wont to point out that the young Rhodesian men, because they do national service, are not inclined like the British to race riots and soccer hooliganism. It is my impression that while some of the young enjoy their military service, they enjoy it less than do their fathers who serve parttime in a 'Dads Arm},' or paramilitary bodies like the police. (Salisbury is the last town in the world where you do not always remark that policemen look very young these days). Men in their forties, whose British equivalents can be heard regretting the days of their national service, are enabled, indeed obliged, to find out whether they really enjoyed the rifle range and the barrack square.
In spite of the war, the murders and the atrocities (by both sides), race relations in Salisbury remain better than almost anywhere in Africa. This is in part explained by the fact that what is Rhodesia was scarcely touched by the slave trade that caused such havoc and bitterness to the North and East. Since there is no mining or industry comparable with Johannesburg's, there is not either a large disgruntled or unemployed black proletariat. When I was last in Salisbury, the black population was terrorised by the bully boys of the two rival political parties, but that feud has been ended by Bishop Muzorewa, whose popularity now is largely due to thaveace-making act. Although Muzorewa and his rival cleric, Mr Sithole, pay lip-service praise to •the 'Freedom fighters', 'Guerrillas' or 'Terrorists' in the bush, both in fact want to replace Smith as president of a 'moderate' or conservative Zimbabwe. Most blacks that one talks to think that the Bishop would easily win a free election, and the whites because they do not distrust Muzorewa, do not feel to the blacks in general the kind of , hatred that prevailed in Kenya during the Mau Mau emergency. The Fecent bomb outrage in Salisbury that killed more blacks than it did whites has only increased racial unity in the face of the men of vicience.
The relaxation of segregationary laws has passed with so little trouble or even attention that one is puzzled to know why it was ever thought necessary. The hotel where I stay is largely patronised by the blacks, while even in Meikles, that bastion of the settlers, one sees black faces, and even a black hotelier ticking off a white barman. Such things were unheard of even a few months ago. Indeed there are signs that the shift of power to the blacks has gone much farther than most Rhodesians realise.
With desegregation already a fact, if not yet legal, in Salisbury property, there is a boom in houses ad furniture for the black middle class. Not only will banks give generous credits and mortgages to the blacks but they now often refuse such facilities to the whites, whose future is uncertain. At least one car company refuses all credit for whites, who have been known to decamp to South Africa. Black politicians and businessmen, the future rulers, are seen every lunch-time at the expensive restaurants, gobbling through the expense accounts of foreign entrepreneurs. I have several times been in a former colony on the eve of its independence and noticed how the aura of power descends on its leaders some time before the trappings of office. The same process is evident now in Salisbury.
Few people, black or white, believe that the new Zimbabwe will be either richer or more efficient than old Rhodesia, only that the Zimbabweans will feel that they rule their own country. At a press conference held by that sinister windbag Sithole, it was a black reporter who asked how long opposition parties would last in Zimbabwe: 'Two years? One year? Six months? Remember, we are Africans'. ' The choice for Rhodesia has always been clear: either democracy for the whites only, or some kind of autocracy acceptable to the blacks. It is all very well for the right wing Europeans to say that 'one man one vote means one vote once', But intelligent Afri cans know this well. 'Whoever is the first president', I was told by a black reporter 'is President for life. That's why they're fighting so hard for the job'. One of the four main contenders is likely to get the job soon, and black Zimbabwe, if it is lucky will fade into a more or less uneventful obscurity. In that case, we shall have to ask ourselves why the whites held on for as long as they did in the face of opposition from not only their black population, the neighbouring black states, Britain, America, 'the Communist bloc and United Nations but even from its apparent ally South Africa, Even South Africa's former Prime Minister, the dour and fanatic Dr Verwoerd, opposed the idea of UDI and said that he preferred a black government for Rohodesia.
The present Prime Minister, Mr Vorster, has never concealed his annoyance at Mr Smith's obstinacy, while a senior Cabinet colleague was heard a few weeks ago questioning the Rhodesian leader's sanity. Although Smith is now popular with the South African public (witness the cheers he got at a Rugby match in Pretoria) the national party fears the Rhodesians as heirs of the English intruders — personified in Cecil Rhodes, whom the Boers both loathed and feared, The National Party fears, probably groundlessly, that if black revolutionaries took Rhodesia the white refugees to South Africa would vote for the Opposition parties. Far more seriously, South Africa fears that if Smith tries to stay Oil in power, the war in Rhodesia will get worse and then spread south of the border.
It is saddening to think that Smith has kept power in Rhodesia for fourteen years, thanks largely to the incompetence of British governments. It was the spectacle of Wilson's sanctimonious posturing that united the white Rhodesians at the time of UDI, the more so as they soon realised that behind his bluster, Wilson was unwilling or unable to exercise force. By internationalising the Rhodesian question, by bringing in not only America but quite irrelevant 'Front Line States' like Mozambique and Tanzania, the British have made It impossible for the white Rhodesians to settle for peace with honour. This is why the White Rhodesians voted for Smith at last month's elections, a result that was quite predictable in Rhodesia, but came apparently as a shock to our new Foreign Secretary, Dr Owen, Believing as firmly as ever that UDI was a wicked folly, I cannot resist some sympathy for the white Rhodesians in their contempt for recent British governments. While feeble and hypocritical at home, the last few governments have succeeded in wishing on this unhappy continent mass starvation in Biafra, the arming of and toadying to General Amin, and a civil war in Rhodesia.
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