Rhodesia: The Desperate Mission

Blustering, threatening and reasoning, probing for weak spots and grasping at straws, the Prime Ministers of Great Britain and Rhodesia played out their desperate bluffing game last week. At the end of the game, surely not far away, would come Rhodesian independence. The immediate question was how.

Without much doubt, Rhodesia’s Ian Smith would end up seizing it, for his white supremacy regime was no more able to accept Britain’s conditions for independence than was Harold Wilson able to compromise them. The terms are the minimum Wilson feels necessary not only on moral grounds but to prevent a Labor Party revolt that could topple his government—not to mention a walkout of African nations that could wreck the Commonwealth. He insists that Rhodesia’s whites guarantee “unimpeded progress” toward majority rule by the blacks, who outnumber them 18 to 1, and that approval of independence be demonstrated by the vote of a majority of Rhodesians, both white and black.

Straw of Hope. Fearful above all of black rule, Smith has offered little more than window dressing in return. He seems willing to add to Rhodesia’s legislature a senate of twelve African chiefs, but its powers would be dubious and most chiefs are government puppets, anyway. He suggests he might grant voting rights to 1,000,000 more Africans, but will not increase the number of House seats (15 out of 65) for which they can vote. He would even sign a treaty guaranteeing the sanctity of the present constitution that in theory will give Africans control of the government—if they wait 100 years or so. As if to show where its heart lay, his regime last week arrested former Prime Minister R. S. Garfield Todd, a onetime Anglican missionary and one of the blacks’ stoutest defenders, and without either charge or trial, ordered him confined to his ranch, 250 miles from Salisbury, for a year.

Still, the consequences of Rhodesia’s long threatened “Unilateral Declaration of Independence” were so potentially grave that the game of bluff went on. In Salisbury, Smith postponed for a day his Cabinet’s decision on U.D.I. At last, he claimed it was finally made, but refused to announce what it was. Instead, he fired off a cable which, with measured stridence, told Wilson it was his last chance to avert “the implementation and consequences” of “our decision,” demanded again exactly what he had been demanding before: independence under the present constitution. But there was one thin straw of hope in the message: “We again offer you a solemn treaty to guarantee our undertaking.”

Cal I on the Queen. With alacrity, Wilson grabbed at the straw. “I cannot accept the grant of independence simply on the basis of the constitution,” he wired Smith. “You will forgive me if I say that the detention or restriction over a long period of nationalist leaders, the recent restriction of a former Prime Minister, the banning of a prominent newspaper [the pro-black Daily News] have suggested to the outside world the pattern of what might happen in the future.” All the same, he said, that part about the solemn treaty to guarantee the constitution was an “interesting proposal” that deserved further exploration. “Accordingly, I propose to fly, with the Commonwealth Secretary, to Salisbury in the next day or two in order to discuss the whole matter further with you.”

It was a startling turn of events; after all, Smith and Wilson had just completed three days of fruitless talks in London the week before. Now, the drama was heightened even further by an unexpected call by Wilson on Queen Elizabeth to inform her of his decision to fly south. Wilson made it clear to Smith that he would be visiting not only whites on his trip but black leaders as well—perhaps even black Nationalists Joshua Nkomo and the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, who are currently under detention in isolated restriction camps. Wilson wired Smith that “I shall naturally expect to have an opportunity of meeting anyone whose views I feel to be relevant to a solution of this grave problem.”

Smith scarcely batted an eyelash. “We have nothing to hide here in Rhodesia,” he told a Salisbury television audience. “He may see anyone he wishes.” Not that it would help, he implied. “We really did get to the end of negotiations in London and I see no point in reopening them.”

Not much point, at best. But for what it was worth, the Prime Minister of Great Britain had laid aside everything else to fly a quarter of the way around the world to a colony that he had never seen and where he was not wanted on the remote chance of achieving a partial compromise that at best would give him more time.