How to save Zimbabwe

Kan Smiley

Are white Zimbabweans still driving hellbent to self-destruction? Are Tories in Westminster unwittingly prodding them in that direction? The answer is Yes — unless they all realise that, without further constitutional changes, neither the unilateral lifting of sanctions by Britain nor the legal recognition of the Salisbury government will produce anything but a momentary halt in the downward slide of Bishop Abel Muzorewa's fortunes. Indeed, the unconditional lifting of sanctions and instant recognition could actually accelerate the bishop's downfall by easing the pace of real change, when real change is the main weapon with which the bishop can win the war.

Removing sanctions without preconditions will give the economy only an insignificant boost. It will save the Salisbury treasury at most i100m a year: peanuts. Undisputed champions in the art of clutching at straws, the whites would merely enjoy a brief psychological uplift before they finally go under. But, after visiting ZimbabweRhodesia three times in the last four months, I am certain (always, admittedly, san unwise phrase to use in Africa) that the 'mere lifting of sanctions — with or without recognition — will achieve the exact reverse of what is intended. The bishop and Mr Smith will be all the more likely to bungle their dwindling political opportunities; they will fail to end the war; they will thus precipitate a real white exodus; a totalitarian regime under Robert Mugabe will be established; and Britain will be the laughing stock both of Africa and the world.

Yet the bishop can still win. He has the ingredients for success, though he himself requires an injection of political cunning; he also needs a heavy dose of common sense to be administered to the whites; and finally — conditional upon faster political change —he needs not just the lifting of sanctions but massive economic and moral backing from the British government.

I do not believe that it is either possible or desirable for the guerrillas' political leaders to be accommodated by the bishop. But if he is to circumvent Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, he can win only if he manages to persuade a substantial number of guerrillas themselves to change sides. That is critical. As the constitution now stands, there is no other v.vay for the bishop to advance. Too many white Zimbabwean-Rhodesians and too many MPs in London fail to grasp the fact that the guerrillas, thoroughly entrenched throughout the countryside, cannot be defeated by military means alone.

Yet the bishop and whites together do not appear to know how to launch a real 'hearts and minds' campaign. But perhaps it is foolish to expect whites, who have been fighting for fifteen years to retain ultimate power, to recognise that only when blacks have acquired more (if not absolute) power can the Mugabe groups—much more important than Nkomo's — be outwitted.

It is true that the bishop needs to retain the help of enough whites to make his economic and military machinery function. But I find that many whites now understand better than Ian Smith that their future security depends more on the emergence of a Strong, moderate black government than on the ability of the whites to mitigate the blackness of the constitution. The bishop's current pandering to the old ruling Rhodesian Front helps the guerrillas to maintain their grip on the rural people and, moreover, is fast eroding the bishop's popularity in the towns. Those who argue that the constitution must not be touched insist that the bishop is already able to pass parliamentary legislation and that the additional knowledge that the British are behind him and are to lift sanctions will prompt blacks in the countryside to back the winning team: 'In Africa, might is right'. Yet it is evident to me that mere British approval and the lifting of sanctions will prove inadequate to persuade the guerrillas to switch sides.

The bishop's black ministerial colleagues are doing their best to legislate change, especially in the two key areas of land and education. Most white civil servants are not being obstructive; those who try to be so are being sacked. But while the war is raging, no high-sounding legislation in Salisbury will have the slightest effect on the rural masses, unless the guerrillas can be weaned away by both military and political skill. Here, the bishop faces an ugly chicken-and-egg problem: he can only win over the guerrillas/ people by effectively legislating in their favour; he can legislate in their favour only if the guerrillas/people allow him to. Officials in Salisbury tell you that 'British recognition and sanctions lifting' (BRISTLE, for short) will, in Smith parlance, 'bring the fence-sitters onside'. A few days in the bush tells me that such thinking is eyewash, much as I would like to believe it.

The bishop, then, needs extra political authority — presently denied him by the constitution. Even if he gets it, he still needs not just the lifting of sanctions but an enormous commitment of economic aid to the amount of 2i billion dollars, as envis aged in the Zimbabwe Development Fund mooted by Kissinger, Vance and Owen.

The British cannot of course contemplate such a disbursement without the Americans footing the bill — which will not happen unless the bishop is given the added room for political maneouvre that the celebrated 'constitutional modifications' entail. As Sir Ian Gilmour confessed to parliament: 'We cannot solve the Rhodesian problem on our own'. But that is not to say the British cannot lead the way. They can and must.

The war has no foregone conclusion. The strange truth is that both the bishop and the guerrillas are losing popularity. Every Zimbabwean knows that the wild electoral promises bandied about by the bishop's supporters in April are not being fulfilled. Euphoria has already given way to grumbling. At the same time, the demands of the guerrillas, now descending upon the people in extra thousands, for food, beer, women, and money, are increasingly brutal and intolerable. Even in the last three months, it is clear that the misery inflicted upon the people by both sides is growing apace. About half a million refugees, many of them destitute, have now fled from the countryside to squalid sanctuary in and around Salisbury.

The balance of political and military power is also remarkably even. Provided enough guerrillas prove susceptible to conversion, the people will now support whichever political leader can bring the war to an end. The relative ideologies and personalities of Muzorewa and Mugabe are not foremost in the minds of the rural people. Wrong as I happen to believe black Zimbabweans may be on this score, they care not a jot whether the whites stay or leave, provided the white man stops bossing the black man around. To the rural peasant, the yearning for peace is paramount. Indeed, bizarre as this may seem to the bishop's far-right international supporters such as Jesse Helms, and to a good number of British MPs, many black villagers probably admire both the bishop and Mugabe. Whoever brings peace is their man. That, above all, is why they voted in April — not, as Lords Home and Boyd would have us believe because they liked the new constitution.

The guerrillas are militarily outclassed by the Zimbabwe-Rhodesian security forces and themselves desire peace almost as keenly as the villagers. But the guerrilla will not loosen his hold over the people unless he is convinced that the minimum he has been fighting for has been achieved. Whatever the Marxist-Leninist teaching in the training camps, most guerrillas are fighting for black independence — neither more nor less. Under the present constitution, British protestations to the contrary will not alter their opinion that the goal is yet to be reached. But I strongly believe that a rigorously planned British 'package', with a cast-iron commitment by Britain to keep its side of the bargain, will elicit the required guerrilla change of heart and irrevocably tip the balance of military/political power.

White fears of a further erosion of their constitutional privileges are thoroughly understandable and are not to be dismissed. Therefore, with the American banker in the changes — will have to make a bold promise background, the British —in demanding the to give the Zimbabwean government economic and even military assistance that goes far beyond the mere lifting of sanctions.

The changes required are well-known. It goes without saying that Smith should be removed from all office and 'Rhodesia' dropped from the nation's name. But, more importantly, the commissions that determine promotion in the security forces, Judiciary and civil service must be altered, to allow rapid black advancement (presently blocked) into top jobs. Secondly, the number and, more significantly, the type of White MPs must be changed, so that some are elected on a common (i.e. predominantly black) electoral roll. Even, therefore, if whites retain a temporary blocking power over some clauses in the constitution, that Power should not be granted specifically to Smith's Rhodesian Front (as is now the case) but should be enjoyed by Whites elected by blacks. Thirdly, guerrillas must be welcomed back with honour — not, as many whites now assume on terms of surrender. Finally, there should be a new election under the altered constitution and under British supervision. Indeed, it may be advisable for Zimbabwe-Rhodesia to undergo a short period (say, three months) ander the leadership of the British crown, in the guise of a British resident commissioner, during the election run-up, to encourage as wide a guerrilla ceasefire as Possible, even in the face of possible Soviet and frontline objections. If Mugabe and Nkomo—certainly the former,probably the latter — refuse to participate, it might be clever to place their names, willy-nilly, on the ballot-papers. If by chance they did Choose to participate as a joint party, the Possibility of their winning would be a risk that Britain would have to take. The inclusion in parliament of liberal vv.. bites (most of whom are in fact conservatives divorced from the Rhodesian Front by sinVie decency and by political intellig"tee) could make a powerful impact on vbvaite thinking, which remains mesmerised mY the continuing Rhodesian Front f °n°Poly of the news media. It may be :.Oirrgotten that liberal white Kenyans, led by s n kt; —,chael Blundell, twenty years ago were a.Merically just as unrepresentative of zw,nite Kenyans as their counterparts are in Inlhabwe-Rhodesia l . e Aefct bare 20 per cent of the white Kenyan orate voted for Blundell's party in the Fi of a fies. But once engineered into a position athority thanks to the common roll, it was able to cajole whites into a realisation b:,1 Wholehearted support for a moderate w `, genuine black leadership was sensible as e:1 as right. 111 Zimbabwe ,,4te -Rhodesia, none of Smith's 1,,alciojeldleagues, with whom the bishop is funbi , has made the tiniest gesture of , ooded . support for black indepenuenc whi e. every statement is designed to allay te fears rather than to redress past wrongs, which are simply not acknowledged. Nor is there any acceptance that many blacks became guerrillas for an honourable motive — to fight for the independence denied them by peaceful means.

The hearts and minds of guerrillas can never be captured by those who created and enforced the conditions for the present terr ible war of independence. They can only be won by fellow blacks, assisted perhaps by white Zimbabwean liberals and perhaps by a temporary British resident, Such liberal whites may also be better placed than the bishop to tell their pale-skinned compatriots a few home truths badly in need of telling and to explain why some aspects of the new constitution infuriate blacks.

In Umtali, for instance, never a bastion of liberalism but nonetheless the third largest town in the country, a few middle-class blacks, among them a doctor of philosophy, have moved into the former whites-only zone, yet they cannot send their children to any of the area's former government schools, secondary or primary, without the consent of the white parents' clubs, which have been allowed by the constitution to buy up all the schools at suspiciously low prices and can exclude any black student from attending. How can any middle-class black, likely to sympathise with the bishop, enthuse about that sort of independence? How can such white attitudes, embodied in such a constitution, win the guerrillas' and the people's hearts and minds?

A few weeks ago I went on a delightful tour with a professional hunter. One evening we stayed at a remote outpost in the heart of country where Nkomo's guerrillas roam, more or less, at will. The supplies of food for the black work force have been rising steeply, presumably because the guerrillas think it better to use the place as a supply dump rather than to blot it out. Yet one of the handful of young whites on the out-station saw nothing odd about wearing a T-shirt upon which was emblazoned the picture of a gaping black face shattered by a bullethole in the forehead. Underneath, the caption read, 'CHEERS, GOOK r It simply does not occur to the wearer — nor to thousands of young whites like him — that he is a gratuitous walking insult to the blacits around him, upon whose goodwill his very life depends. Even today, off-duty white ltroopies' saunter 'shoulder to multi-racial shoulder' through Salisbury, wearing T-shirts declaring:

JOIN THE RHODESIAN ARMY GO TO EXOTIC PLACES MEET INTERESTING NEW PEOPLE AND KILL THEM

`The Af doesn't really buy our sense of humour,' I was once told. Amazing! Is it surprising the guerrillas aren't quite `coming onside', when there is no white politician in a position of any authority to drag his brethren into black Africa? That is just one reason why the constitution needs changing. But the Daily Telegraph editorialist has already complained about `the weakness of this approach . . . There will be no solid ground on which the British government can stand and firmly declare: "Thus far, and no farther". ' The demand for constitutional amendment is dismissed as `appeasement'. It is noteworthy, how ever, that similar charges were made against British policy-makers in Malaya 25 years ago, when the date of independence was hurried forward, when defecting guerrillas were given handsome rewards and when they were granted remarkable respon sibilities within the new system. The analogies are not exact, but Templar and Thompson were convinced that only by fighting for clearcut independence could the appeal of communism be neutralised. Were they `appeasers'?

I am not arguing for an accommodation with Mugabe and Nkomo. But I know it is essential for Muzorewa that a substantial body of guerrillas be 'turned'. Recent visits to the war zones of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia show that, under the present constitution, the momentum of supposed change is already proving insufficient to produce such a switch, largely because of the inviolability of Smith's old political machine and the bishop's pandering to it. Constitutional changes demanded by Britain and resultant economic support from the West — a big stick but an even bigger carrot — are vital if Zimbabwe is not to become a totalitarian, anti-Western, Marxist dictatorship.