Armed take-over plot in Rhodesia reported

Press, 19 October 1976, Page 8

Armed take-over plot in Rhodesia reported

NZPA-Reut Nairobi The Rhodesian nationalist leader, Mr Joshua Nkomo, has brushed aside British press reports that one of his colleagues is plotting an armed take-over of Rhodesia. Mr Nkomo, the leader of a moderate faction of the African National Council, was commenting on a report in the “Sunday Times” alleged to be based on a secret tape-recording of a meeting in Lusaka attended by the guerrilla leader, Mr Robert Mugabe. The “Sunday Times” had quoted Mr Mugabe as saying: “Even if the British-American proposals on Rhodesia gave 100 per cent black membership of Parliament, we would not accept it unless there was a total destruction of Smith’s army and its immediate replacement by Z.A.N.U. forces. “When Smith’s army is tired, he will come and say, ‘Gentlemen, let’s talk about the transfer of power’.”

Mr Mugabe, who is considered to be the political spokesman of the Zimbabwe African National Union’s guerrilla army, has formed a Patriotic Front with Mr Nkomo.

Mr Nkomo, questioned at an airport press conference, said: “This so-called secret tape-recording — who says it is Mugabe’s voice?” He declined to make further comment.

Mr Nkomo, who had arrived in Nairobi from Salisbury, having travelled via South Africa, will leave for Mogadishu on Tuesday to attend Somalia’s October Revolution Day celebrations next Thursday, Mr Mugabe has also been invited. Mr Nkomo said that he hoped to meet President Kenyatta and have discussions with Kenyan Government leaders before leaving. From Mogadishu he would fly with his delegation of eight meh to Geneva to attend the British-sponsored talks on Rhodesia due to begin* on October 28.

Asked to comment on the request by the black African “front-line” Presidents (of Tanzania, Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique, and Angola) that the veteran nationalist, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, be invited to Geneva, Mr Nkomo said: “Sithole is a Z.A.N.U. problem. If Z.A.N.U. takes him on in the Patriotic Front, that is fine.”

Mr Sithole’s claim to leadership of the Z.A.N.U. is disputed by Mr Mugabe. (The Z.A.N.U. is the political rival of Mr Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union. President Nyerere of Tanzania, President Kaunda of Zambia, President Machel of Mozambique, and President Sir Seretse Khama of Botswana, who hold an Organisation of African Unity brief to work for the end of white rule in Rhodesia, talked for three hours yesterday, and then met leading Rhodesian nationalists, including the senior guerrilla commanders. President Nyerere insisted that Britain must take responsibility as a colonial

Power at the Geneva conference, and not merely be a neutral chairman, to discuss the transfer of power from Rhodesia’s 270,000 whites to its 6 million blacks.

“We do not expect the British to act as umpires — they have never acted as umpires in any other colony,” President Nyerere told reporters. “If the African extremists are not prepared to make a useful contribution to the coming conference on the basis of what has been agreed with the American Secretary of State (Dr Henry Kissinger) then the conference should continue without them.

“If the West gives in to the African extremists and it becomes impossible for the white Rhodesians to remain in their own country, the West will merely obtain a piece of real estate already mortgaged to Russia and the squatter’s rights will not last very long, either. “The consequences are evident: bloodshed, poverty, desolation, and chaos. The

example of Angola is before our eyes. The victory of the Communists would be assured.”

According to President Kaunda of Zambia, the Black African leaders never saw the details of the American-initiated Rhodesian peace plan before it was accepted by Mr Smith, and, Dr Kaunda is quoted as saying in an interview with the American magazine. “Newsweek,” neither he nor black leaders in southern Africa were, therefore, committed to details of the package which Mr Smith accepted. “Dr Kissinger did not tell us (before he went to see the South African Prime Minister, Mr Vorster) what he was going to discuss with lan Smith,” Dr Kaunda said. “He told us in broad terms that his idea was to get Smith to accept majority rule, and in effect, he went as far as to say that he had not come here to fail, that he would see that Smith accepted majority rule.

“But at no time . . . did Kissinger tell-us the details of what he was going to tell Smith. He went there and discussed these matters with Vorster and Smith, and on his way back he stopped here and told us what Smith had accepted — that is, a State Council and a Council of Ministers.

“And immediately we registered reservations." Asked what would be the minimum concessions Mr Smith should make at the Geneva conference now. Dr Kaunda replied: “Who is Smith? Smith is a rebel, not only against the British Crown, but against humanity as a whole.”