White Paper best-seller

Press, Volume CXI, Issue 32776, 29 November 1971, Page 15

White Paper best-seller

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

SALISBURY, November 28.

The White Paper on the settlement plan between Britain and Rhodesia has become a best-seller in Rhodesia.

Thousands of copies were distributed to towns, cities and tribal kraals throughout the country when it became available on Friday.

At one office in Salisbury, 50,000 copies were distributed within two hours of their becoming available. Rhodesian aircraft helped deliver the White Paper to 49 other towns and villages in Rhodesia. Many of Salisbury’s unemployed Africans, usually found lounging in the city’s parks, were intently studying the White Paper in the shade of trees. In rural areas, there were queues outside the offices of the district commissioners as Rhodesians waited for their copies. “BACK TO NORMAL” Most white Rhodesians re-

gard the settlement agreement as marking the end of a wearying six-year conflict with Britain and a sign of a return to normal living. A white woman said: “MiSmith is a wonderful man and we’ve got to thank him for all he’s done. All this seems to mean that the whites will be able to stay in power for a long time to come. “Anyway, by the time African rule does arrive. I’ll be long gone.” The more politically aware African nationalists were . disappointed that the agreement provided for onlv slow progress to political parity and then indefinite progress to possible majority rule. The ordinary African, however, saw the settlement as a prospect of more African employment and better education for his children. AID PROGRAMME The British Government says in the White Paper that a settlement of the Rhodesian independence dispute will open the way, to a comprehensive aid and technical assistance programme directed towards expanding African opportunities in employment and education. The White Paper says that

the British Government recognised that while sanctions and international ostracism were having some effect on the Rhodesian economy, the measures had not brought about, nor had seemed likely (to bring about, the political changes that were confidently expected at the outset. It was evident that the prospects for the African population as a whole could only deteriorate if the present situation remained unchanged. The economic, social and political advance of the Africans could take place onlv after a return to a normal economic situation and the restoration of conditions in which orderly change would be possible, the White Paper says.

NO TROOPS AVAILABLE A former Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs, Mr Arthur Bottomley, commenting on the agreement, said in London today that Britain had no troops “immediately available” to send to Rhodesia at the time of the white Rhodesians’ seizure of independence six years ago.

The only units which could have been deployed were those in Malaysia, and using them would have meant leaving the Malaysians to their fate, he said in a radio interview. There was also the fear that the Prime Minister of Rhodesia (Mr lan Smith) would have retaliated against any British military move by cutting the Kariba Dam electricity supplies to' Zambia, and by flooding the Zambian copper mines.

Britain’s economy at the time was in dire straits and large-scale unemployment could have resulted from a prolonged military operation against Rhodesia, Mr Bottomley said.

“OUTRIGHT SELL-OUT” In. a statement released in Addis Ababa, the Organisation of African Unity has described the Rhodesian independence settlement as an outright sell-out of five million Africans to 243,000 white Rhodesians for generations to come.

The O.A.U. said: “The socalled settlement on Rhodesia’s independence reached between the British Conservative Government and Mr Smith’s illegal racist minority regime can not delude anyone.

“It is an outright sell-out for generations to come of five million Africans to 243,000 white Rhodesians committed to white rule and apartheid.”