Rhodesia: White Hot

Turned down flatly by Britain, condemned by an almost unanimous resolution (107 to 2) in the U.N., threatened with sanctions that could wreck Rhodesia’s prosperity, Prime Minister Ian Smith flew home from London last week apparently more determined than ever to issue the “unilateral declaration of independence” that would turn the fury of the world upon his racist regime.

“I don’t think it will take us very long to reach a decision,” Smith told a press conference before he left. “We believe the dangers attached to doing nothing are worse than the dangers attached to U.D.I. If we have to get out of our country, we would rather go out fighting than crawling on our hands and knees.” Then he went off to pay his last call on the man he blames for it all, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson. There was little left to say. “Mind how you go,” said Wilson, putting a special point on the cliché, as he bade his visitor farewell.

Talk & Talk. Had the message got through? Greeted at Salisbury airport by a mob of 1,500 whites roaring “U.D.I. Now!” and “Good old Smithy!”, Rhodesia’s leader would say only that it was a “better than even bet” that Rhodesia would be independent before Christmas. Then, after calling in his Cabinet for a series of marathon sessions on U.D.I., he appeared on television. “I have impressed on my colleagues that this is the most important decision that I think they will ever have to make in their lifetime,” he said. “I want them to talk and talk until they can talk no more, so that we can be sure when we take a decision we have taken the right one.”

That was an opening for U.D.I.’s opponents, and they made the most of it. The Rhodesia Herald demanded a plebiscite. Three former Prime Ministers spoke out publicly to urge caution. The Tobacco Trade Association and the Chamber of Commerce warned that U.D.I, would bring “catastrophe,” and a delegation of business and farm leaders went to Smith to argue against it. In prominent newspaper ads calling on all who opposed U.D.I, to send in their names to be counted, the Rhodesian Constitutional Association observed acidly that “no evidence has been given to the electorate that failure to get independence at once will result in an immediate black racialist government.”

“We Would Be Mad.” While Smith and his ministers talked on through the week, government radio and television stations were firing up the fervor for U.D.I, to a white heat. When Harold Wilson came up with a last-ditch proposal to send in a peace-keeping mission of “senior Commonwealth Prime Ministers,” Smith’s answer was that some of them might be black and that “we would be mad” to listen to “this sort of people.” As telegrams from thousands of supporters poured in, there was little doubt that the overwhelming majority of Rhodesia’s 250,000 whites wanted independence at any price—except allowing the 4,000,000 blacks a larger voice in their government. They probably would get it soon enough. At week’s end, as Salisbury citizens noticed a sudden increase in army vehicles on the roads, Smith announced that the final decision would be made at the Cabinet’s first meeting this week.