Rhodesia’s hopes fade after four months

Press, 3 July 1978, Page 13

Rhodesia’s hopes fade after four months

From the “Economist,” London

Rhodesia’s multiracial Government, born on March 3, faces a serious crisis of public confidence. The hopes aroused among whites and blacks that it could persuade the Patriotic Front guerrillas to lay down their arms, oblige the front’s leaders to join the Government, and so bring the country to genuine independence by the end of the year are fading fast.

The executive council and the lower-level ministerial council have become bogged down in a morass Of committees and constitutional niceties which have left the public both cold and mystified.

There have been few spectacular pronouncements. Several hundred detainees have been freed (but several hundred more remain in detention without trial): the ban on outlawed political parties has been lifted (but they were anyhow operating under different names); curfew hours in certain tribal areas have been reduced or lifted, and a few white suburbs have been declared multiracial. None of this fulfils the expectations of March.

The blacks, for instance, had expected to see all official racial discrimination swept away more or less immediately. But the Land Tenure Act, cornerstone of the legislative discrimination that segregates most suburban residential areas, remains.

One of the black ministers predicted that Parliament would abolish the act next month; but at the opening of Parliament recently, Rhodesia’s President, Mr John Wrathall, could say only that “serious consideration” was being given to the removal of discrimination.

An ominous silence, too, about the hoped-for increase in job and promotion prospects for blacks in the civil service. When one of the black ministers, Mr Byron Hove, said that this was essential, he was sacked.

Black faces are rarely seen on television screens. An official of Bishop Muzorewa’s United African National Council complained: “Africans have got to be shown not just as servants and gardeners as at present, but as full members of Rhodesian society.” The blacks also object to the fact that “white man’s sport” — rugby and cricket — dominates radio and television sports coverage, whereas soccer, which commands a vast following among blacks, is virtually ignored. And they are urging that news bulletins stop referring to “terrorists” when reporting the war and use the word “guerrillas” instead. The white news services have taken no notice, but on the vernacular radio bulletins the term gandanga (terrorists) has been replaced by varwi remusango (fighters in the bush). The biggest disappointment for the whites is that in spite of the appeal for a ceasefire on May 2, followed by assurances from ministers that the fighting was diminishing, there are no signs that this is true. Indeed, the almost daily war communiques issued by combined operations headquarters in Salisbury appear to tell the opposite story as they continue to list the grim toll of deaths. Since the war began in late 1972, more than 10,000 people have died. Last year was the bloodiest of all,

costing just over 3000 lives inside Rhodesia, or about eight people a day.

This year more than 1700 people have died already; since the cease fire call the average has been more than 13 a day. The victims include 32 members of the security forces, 199 civilians (21 of them whites), 223 guerrillas and 203 people killed by the security forces and classified variously as “terrorist recruits,” “collaborators” or “cross-fire victims.”

Mr John Graham, of the British Foreign Office, and the American Ambassador to Zambia, Mr Stephen Low, returned to Salisbury this month to continue their efforts to persuade Mr Smith and his black allies to accept the Anglo-American plan and to join in new allparty talks.

But they seem to be getting nowhere slowly. And this time it is not just Mr Smith who is the immovable object: his black colleagues, now that they are in the driving seat, remain confident, outwardly at least, that they can get the March settlement to work, bring about a ceasefire, and remain in control after the election.

If they are to have the remotest chance of pulling off their plans, they will have to do something dramatic to raise morale. As the U.A.N.C.’s publicity secretary, Mr David Mukome, said this month: “It should be borne in mind that for this transitional Government to fall, it is not necessary that anyone undermines it from within or without. It is enough that it appears to achieve nothing.’'