It all depends on Smith
Xan Smiley
Salisbury An aura of unreality and disbelief is now beginning to encroach on the plastic bourgeois charm of orderly, sunny Salisbury. Policemen still dawdle in the streets unarmed. There hasn't been a whiff of urban unrest. Anglo-Saxon nostrils will not scent the violence and fear that stalk the tribal trust lands (the Reserves) only half an hour's drive from the city centre. But life for white Rhodesia's suburban ninety per cent is materially so pleasant that most find it simply impossible to believe that the foundations of that affluence could start to crumble in a little over a year. Dr David Owen's visit to Rhodesia was a remarkable success but it did of course provoke a confusing wealth of reaction, ranging from scepticism and straw-clutching optimism to panic, mesmerisation, anger and sometimes a blind determination that things simply cannot and will not change. Television and newspapers express a medley of faith and doubt.
Government tourist advertisements proclaim Rhodesia is 'super' while property firms announce the sale of cheap plots in Durban and Cape Town. Some farmers tell you the sooner black rule the better, while others promise they will poison their boreholes and level their houses to the ground rather than hand over to the black devil. A company commander writes to the Rhodesian Herald to appeal to wives, fiancees and girls to be mote faithful to the troopies, the best guys in the world. Another correspondent suggests that the last diseased branch of the English oak, Rhodesia, would be a fitting home to which Sir Winston's
widow, impoverished by British taxes, could retire.
The government's recent cautious reforms designed as a gesture of goodwill to the blacks have met an equally confused response. A vociferous minority of the ruling Rhodesian Front demanded that party principles (i.e. racial segregation in education, health, housing, farming and voting) should be put into cold storage. Strangest of all is the spectacle of the man, who only a year ago soothed the whites with 'Not in a thousand years' and his party chairman, who said 'Never,' are now both trying to nudge their electorate to
wards black rule, with 1978 not so far ruled out as the independence date. Yet only can such bizarre hiccuping developments, with Ian Smith delicately enacting a one-stepback -two-steps-forward formula, save Rhodesia from the holocaust that could erupt—perhaps as long away as three years —if the political impasse remains.
Owen has already injected some reality Into the crazy situation by tacitly recognising that Britain made two basic errors at Geneva. The first was to think that so rambling a range of factions and opinions could somehow be accommodated inside one tidy binding agreement. The second was to ignore the sensibilities and underestimate the resilience (some would say myopia) of Mr Smith. 'Don't worry about Smith—he's in the bag,' was one injudicious assurance that Ivor Richard repeated to Muzorewa's men. By contrast, white Rhodesians feel that Richard pandered to the whims of the Patriotic Front, the men with the guns, forgetting that the man with the most accurate and most numerous guns was still Ian Smith. There was also a smack of perfidy—la white Rhodesian eyes—about the manner In which Britain has upbraided Smith for refusing black men a proper vote while at the same time she paid undue heed to black leaders whose power stemmed not from anY would-be popularity at the polls but from growing piles of Soviet armoury.
Dr Owen came to Rhodesia to cajole Mr Smith and the whites gently without at the same time appearing weak or mealymouthed. It's a measure of his diplomatic skill that he seems to have succeeded. Owen has resisted the temptation to tbr°w., another grand Geneva-style jamboree unto he has done the spadework through laborious discussion with the various factions one by one. He reckons it will be easier to work out a tentative constitution and electoral system first—before trying to jostle the various conflicting movements into an 101happy coalition drawn together without a common factor. While Geneva saw anta.gonistic partners bickering over trivialities like dates, it seems that Owen will c00. centrate on working out a charter in solve detail before any constitutional conference. He'll then say to all the factions: take it or leave it. As for the guerrillas, Owen certainly does not expect them to cease fighting until a constitution and electoral system clearly about to be acted upon. At that pont! the hard core Marxists will probably inter's, ify the war rather than risk humiliation a; the polls. With luck, several crucial factore should come into play. Many of guerrilla rank and file ostensibly fightln,f, under Marxist leadership hail from tribal homelands of Bishop Muzorewa the Revd Sithole. They would probably_ accept a moderate solution under those tvf leaders. The Rhodesian Supreme C°11:4 rnander is also said to enthuse over Genet Templer's Malayan surrender policy, vv. bew by guerrillas were offered cash incentives t_o_ lay down arms. Above all,
if a black goverfd ment was clearly in the offing, the sullen a"
disaffected rural masses will be readier to co-operate against Marxist insurgents.
It is now up to the municipalities to grope the way towards the new order by re classifying some or—if they wish—all their residential areas as multiracial. Bulawayo is opening up the whole city, while rumours from Salisbury town hall suggest that only Ochinvar—and a slice of the northern Perimeter—may turn multiracial. It so hapPens that the former is a poor white railway workers' deserted suburb bordering on an !glorious black quarter: the northern slice is wasteland.
The scale of values in a society whose moral code is under attack remains defiantly toPsY-turvy. A white farmer gets off with a 300-dollar fine for killing one of his labourers (the magistrate took into account that the victim had a weak spleen and had sorely Provoked the farmer by planting maize in a crooked line). Some white soldiers fighting the war near the Zambesi River had to pay Up exactly twice that amount for shooting a h!PPopotamus that had been damaging Villagers crops. It is only fair to add to this array of oddities that black soldiers and Policemen—over half the security forces— are Proving loyal to the government. Race relations in the forces are remarkably good. But at the same time Owen has made it clear that no election can be held until Mr Smith has first vacated his throne. A fragile caretaker government (whose composition still faces the same thorny problems that !oiled Geneva) would have to lead Rhodesia 1nt0 an election without Mr Smith in charge. That hat is the prerequisite if any guerrillas are t,,,e contemplate defection. And that is why ur Owen took the trouble to come to Rhodesia. He offered several carrots. He said whites should have some special form of representation in Parliament. He hoped there would be white ministers in the black cabinet. He praised Mr Smith's negotiating !net hods and added that it was not an noble objective to seek maximum protection for the white community. Owen also made Play of his blunt warning to Robert ; t!gahe; spokesman for the guerrilla radicals, that no faction had a right of veto. Above all, Owen implied by omission that With Smith out of the government, the bulk °,f i the present highly efficient Rhodesian army would be required to maintain law and order before (and probably after) the electoral Period. The extraordinarily optimistic Plan Put forward by Richard—the incorporation of the guerrillas in the whiteort1manded army—was not mentioned. So far Owen has tried to create. mood rather than grapple with matters of substance. Once he has formulated a detailed Ian the rest will depend on timing. Time "'self is horribly short. The longer the war ‘2,,orktinues, the weaker becomes not only but also the relatively moderate tizorewa, on whom hopes for a peaceful !„.ansition are pinned. It is important that trilth. should hand over when he is still in a spositton of some strength, so that the inautions he leaves behind and the army and
administration remain firm enough to slot into their new roles under black leadership' with minimum dislocation.
But Owen cannot move too fast either. He wants to give the Patriotic Front a last chance to contemplate participation in elections. At the worst, Owen must split the Marxists from the less ideological nationalists. Above all, Owen wants to give Smith a last chance to groom his electorate into accepting traumatic changes which they naturally cannot face.
It is unhappily true that white Rhodesia is a deeply racialist society. Yet Smith was still able to win almost universal approval last December when he presented the Kissinger plan which was in itself a body blow to white supremacy. Owen knows that his prime task—if there is any chance of a peaceful handover—is to cultivate Ian Smith. He is the only man capable of carrying his electorate in a direction they do not wish to travel. But I confess that I remain doubtful whether Mr Smith has the will or the foresight to do it—or whether the talents of Dr Owen can persuade him.
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