Aid Rhodesia Movement Replies To Leading Article

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 31881, 8 January 1969, Page 6

Aid Rhodesia Movement Replies To Leading Article

The president of the Aid Rhodesia Movement (N.Z.), Lieutenant-Colonel A. C. R. Elderton, has issued the following statement in reply to a leading article in “The Press” on December 26: “The editorial on Mr lan Smith, Prime Minister of Rhodesia, in The Press’ of December 26, shows no change from the wishful thinking that has been the dominant note in every utterance in ‘The Press’ on Rhodesian affairs since U.D.I. ‘The true facts are simple. The British Government wants one man-one vote, and the ■ power to interfere in Rhodesian matters. The Rhodesians, bar a few score soapbox orators, insist on having complete control of their own

affairs, and as and when the black Rhodesians have obtained the necessary education, political morality, and integrity to manage their own estate, the right to decide the best policy should white leadership no longer be acceptable. ‘‘What justification has Mr Wilson to think he is a better judge of how to run Rhodesia for the benefit of all the people who live there than those people who have the actual task of running Rhodesia? Dictation Refused

“For 10 years there has not been one single correct decision concerning Africa made by the British Government. How many constitutions for African countries have been drawn up in London

over this period? Almost too many to count. How many have proved to be workable and have survived African independence? Not a single one!

“The white Rhodesians who have governed Rhodesia for the last 40 years, and have financed themselves through their own elected Parliament, are now stigmatised as racists and rebels, although Rhodesia is the most peaceful country in Africa, and the standard of living for the black Rhodesians the highest in Africa. Certainly compared to standards in Africanruled countries, to the black man Rhodesia is paradise! “All this is because the Rhodesians refuse dictation from a British Parliament to extend their present franchise—a limited but multiracial one, not dissimilar to that which prevailed in England until 1918. \ “To give absolute power to an African majority which is still only a generation away from the stone age is politi-

cal madness. This power if! given before the gradual pro-, cess of civilisation can be! completed, the white Rho-i desians believe, with every reason would result in the extinction of what is meant as democracy and liberty, as has occurred in every African country north of the Zambesi. “Ideological Zealots”

“It is incredible that rather than accept a sensible settlement, that would allow a multi-racial society to progress steadily and without violence towards a higher level of prosperity and civilisation for all its races than as yet exists anywhere in Africa, there are these ideological zealots in Westminister and elsewhere, insisting on a rigid and unrealistic formula that can only result in apartheid or a civil war which would entail death and ruin to a whole generation of men, women and children, black, white and coloured, who are now living together in peace; “Mr Wilson cannot possibly have any thought for the black Rhodesians, but only the appeasement of the AfroAsian bloc, which same bloc is behind most of the procommunist activities of the United Nations. Mr lan Smith, on the other hand, is thinking of Rhodesia and that country’s destiny. He is not interested in having his homeland being used in as the joker in a British political pack of cards. 'Threatens No-one” “Rhodesia is called a threat to the Commonwealth; in fact, Rhodesia threatens no-one. She is, however, the victim of the malice and envy of African rulers, most of whose regimes are a form of smallpox on the face of Africa.

“If Mr Wilson has trouble with the United Nations, it is his look out. Rhodesia did not ask him to run there in the first place. Mr Wilson has tied himself up in knots in his relations with black members of the Commonwealth on the issue tof Rhodesia, through

[the dogma of ‘No Indepen1 dence before African majority [rule.*

| “Anyone who knew Africa and the Africans foresaw three years ago that this same dogma was an elephant pit into which Mr Wilson must inevitably fall. The Rhodesians refuse to see why they should be used as a scapegoat for Wilson's ignorance and folly! C “To Mr Wilson, Rhodesia is* a parochial matter to be ranged alongside a host of other considerations. To every Rhodesian, whatever he may be, the right to decide their own destiny is the most vital consideration in his or her existence today! That is why Rhodesia will never surrender basic principles which are fundamental to her survival.”