Carver's prospects
Xan Smiley
It may be worth dazzling followers of the Carver safari with an assortment of more or less relevant Rhodesian statistics. For instance, last year the total black contribution to income tax exceeded the one per cent mark for the first time. (Standard white response: 'Nice of us to let them pay so little, hey?. . .and look at their schools — the best in Africa — who builds them, then?. . .and they've got five-and-a-half times as many hospital beds per head as Nigeria.. .and look at that oil pouring out of their ears. . .'). And another figure: Since UDI there have been 133,000 white immigrants to Rhodesia — yes, since UDI. (Max. white population before the exodus: 278,000).
But it's the military statistical rundown that might seem a shade more topical to Carver-watchers. Rhodesian casualty figures are probably fairly accurate: it's the sort of honesty ('no cheating with the scorecard') that whites take rather seriously. Subjects like The Causes of the War are not always quite so meticulously examined ('Well, if you want to know my Opinion, my gardenboy thinks he's going to get My car' etc).
Statistically, however, white civilian deaths since December '72 — the start of the guerrilla offensive — have only just passed the hundred mark, a tiny figure in view of the isolation and vulnerability of rural and travelling whites. Total security force deaths, including people in the Internal Affairs ministry: under 400. Those figures compare interestingly with deaths caused by guerrilla-planted landmines: just on 200. There is also the chilling section for 'terrorist accomplices killed', which includes 'Africans running with the terrorists' (the phrase would also cover villagers simply fleeing from the scene of a guerrilla-security force 'contact'): over 400. And curfewbreakers: heading for 300.
But the really interesting comparisons are with figures for Rhodesian guerrillas estimated (through admittedly less reliable sources) to have died in factional fighting. Rev Ndabaningi Sithole says that in January alone, this year, 372 guerrillas died in Tanzanian camp fighting. Most informed Observers in Lusaka reckon at least two hundred ZANU cadres were killed during the mutinies and infighting in Zambia that accompanied the car-bomb assassination of Party chairman Herbert Chitepo in early 75. The man held responsible and imprisoned by the Zambian authorities, Josiah Tongogara, is now back as Mugabe's guerrilla commander. He was himself hospitalised in August after a car accident in Mozambique: eyebrows were raised but foul play is not at present discernible. Joshua Nkomo himself accused ZANU guerrillas of killing 20 of his men in Tanzanian camps last year. His own chief military linkman, Jason Z Moyo, was blown to bits by a parcel-bomb early this year.
All very messy. But with that sort of history — making the white frontier farmers look cosily safe — it is not surprising that the Patriotic Front (the guerrilla-backed Nkomo-Mugabe alliance) looks a bit rickety from time to time. Just now, Mugabe is convinced — probably rightly — that Nkomo knew distinctly more than he confessed about Ian Smith's astonishing September 25 flit up to Zambia to call on President Kenneth Kaunda Ian, long time no see'.) Certainly Smith and `KK' would have touched on the question of Kaunda's protégé Nkomo and his possible interest in the Owen proposals — or in any other relatively bloodless scheme that could hoist Nkomo to power. Certainly, Mugabe would be furious.
The Western press generally write that if the Patriotic Front collapses 'things will become even more difficult'. I suhni it that that is the only way a solution could be found — and a long shot it would have to be, at that. For it cannot be overstressed that there can never be an arrangement to accommodate everyone. To be sure, it is not even certain that Smith and his even blinder colleagues can yet face the prospect of black men actually running Zimbabwe (not just as decorative 'faces' with Smith pulling the strings backstage); but there is even less doubt that some guerrillas in the Mugabe camp would rather ride to total power in chaos and large-scale bloodshed than accept the slightest compromise (as proposed by Owen) with the present system.
On the other hand despite the primitive yells of Blackpool Tories — it is absurd to expect guerrillas, who have been fighting (and dying in thousands) for five years, simply to put their faith in the man —Ian Smith — they took up arms against, merely on the basis of (1) a white promise to relinquish political but not military power and (2) a UN force that cannot be expected to fight to enforce the handover. A substantial portion of the guerrillas must, as Owen's plan says, help form a 'new Zimbabwean Army'. The question then is, which guerrillas?
There are indeed reasons why Nkomo — whatever his relations with Mugabe — should fight on, in the hope of reaching the pinnacle in a 'winner takes all' denouement, with Smith and Mugabe both exhausted. It is indeed significant that Nkomo is still holding back the bulk of his trained guerrillas from the fray (for what?) His men are better fighters than Mugabe's, better disciplined, and — though predominantly Ndebele — they have a slightly broader tribal mix. Politically, though lagging in popularity behind Muzorewa, Nkomo has a well-organised trans-tribal network and 80 per cent of his national executive do not hail from his own Ndebele-Kalanga grouping. Given the radical, inflexible posture of many Mugabe men; and given Mugabe's own position (gaining strength vis-a-vis his own guerrillas, but still weak); and given the factionalism in the ZANU camps (several hundred men, including Mugabe's own brother-in-law, have been detained in Mozambique this year), Nkomo's troops would fit Carver's bill far more neatly. What is additionally important is that not only Kaunda might acquiesce in such schemes; despite his strident outpourings from Maputo, Mozambique's Machel is a pragmatic roughneck and might well be persuaded to ditch ZANU and close down the camps.
Perhaps over a fifth of the Selous Scouts — named after an eccentric Victorian explorer who admired Darwin and Cromwell and co-habited with a black woman (a relation of Mugabe? What would Mrs Smith say?) — are ex-guerrillas who have been 'turned', That highlights a series of bright omens in Carver's favour. He himself knows how Kenyan allegiances subtly and dramatically altered during and after Mau Mau — among blacks and even more sharply than among whites. More recently, the Sudan has witnessed an extraordinary experiment: after 17 years' civil war, two armies have merged reasonably well. And as the Field Marshal fondly reflects, General Monck managed to reconcile the Blues with the Life Guards.
Of course those cavalrymen had more in common than do 19-year-old white `troopies' bent on 'slotting floppies' (killing blacks) with young guerrillas trying to 'exterminate fascist hyenas'. But Carver has his eyes on Smith's black soldiers who make up half the regular army: they could conceivably co-operate with some of Nkomo's troops and perhaps with disenchanted ZANU cadres who want Zimbabwe rather than revolution.
Carver's Dar es Salaam trip may have been barren because the Patriotic Front was not yet ripe for splitting. But I suspect he may have more fruitful exchanges with Smith's commanders in Salisbury, who are more sensible than the politicians.
Alas, such conjecture looks less pretty in the light of Carver's own feeble military muscle. If the hardcore who will oppose compromise are to be crushed, it is not encouraging to hear tacit Foreign Office admissions that the UN Force will not tight 'except in self-defence' — whatever that means. 'Nigerians cannot be expected to shoot fellow Africans'. But the Finns, the British tell me are 'splendid chaps, quite first-rate'. In the end, all Carver has is diplomacy. It is a pity he cannot be given a sharper knife.
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