Salisbury hopeful about 'Iron Lady’s’ plan

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 12

Salisbury hopeful about 'Iron Lady’s’ plan

By

CHRISTOPHER MUNNION

in the

“Daily Telegraph,” London

Bombshells from Zambia are commonplace south of the Zambesi these days but Mrs Thatcher’s Commonwealth package for yet another constitution, still more talks and a second election had a greater impact on morale in Zimbabwe Rhodesia than TNT. Zimbabwe Rhodesia had begun to believe that the Iron Lady was the Fairy Godmother who would emerge dishevelled but determined from the Lusaka lair to wave a brave wand and at least remove sanctions, if not bestow recognition.

There is something airyfairy about Mrs Thatcher’s plan, but it is not what Bishop Muzorewa was expecting. Disappointment and dismay give way to a sinking sense of deja vu as it was realised that the new proposals were nothing more than a diluted version of the vintage Anglo-American proposals. The all-party talks in London later this year are certain to be haunted by the insults, empty rhetoric and absurd posturing that wrecked the Geneva conference in 1976. The plot may have changed, but the cast is the same. Note, for instance, Mr Robert Mugabe’s immediate screech for those old conditions — the resignation of the Government, the total disbandment of the security forces and their replacement by his ragged regiments of Kalash - nikov - wielding youths.

Or Mr Joshua Nkomo’s blustering insistence that the British Government is not impartial enough to supervise fresh elections. Mr Nkomo’s

recurring nightmare, apart from being caught in a Rhodesian air raid, is that he will one day be obliged to participate in a free and fair election in his country. By contrast, Bishop Muzorewa’s reaction was cautious and controlled. While awaiting “substantial clarification” of the details, he chose to find some positive elements in Mrs Thatcher’s plan. One was that the 39 Commonwealth leaders had unanimously accepted that substantial changes had taken place in Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Another was that no mention was made of the role of Patriotic Front guerrillas in the pre-election period, unlike the old AngloAmerican stipulation that they should be amalgamated with the existing security forces.

The bishop failed to mask his bitterness over the fact that another election was deemed to be necessary. He pointed out that Mrs Thatcher's own observers, Lord Boyd and his team, had determined that last April’s elections were free and fair and it was insulting to suggest they meant nothing.

This moderate initial response was not merely a product of Bishop Muzorewa’s own demeanour. Mr Derek Day, Britain’s special envoy in Salisbury, had sped to the Prime Minister’s office to urge him to keep a cool head in the wake of the Lusaka announcement.

The white man-in-the-street was inclined yet again to cry “perfidious Albion.” But there was more than passing interest in the suggestion by President Nyerere of Tanzania that Europeans who

chose to leave Zimbabwe Rhodesia should be handsomely compensated. Not that anyone believes the Tanzanian leader is in any position to contribute to his own good idea. It is commonly held in Salisbury that his moderate stance at the Commonwealth Conference was influenced by his desperate need for funds to cover his Ugandan adventure.

In Milton Buildings, Salisbury’s Whitehall, officials seethed with rage at what they considered, initially at least, to be a total capitulation by Mrs Thatcher to black Commonwealth threats in general and Nigeria’s oily blackmail in particular. They tended to blame the unchanged “Old Guard” at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office —■ whose petty vindictiveness against Rhodesia has, in their view, bedevilled 15 years of settlement efforts — for inducing metal fatigue in the Iron Lady. Surely the British Government was now adding another principle to the original six which had been complied with — that any solution in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia should be acceptable to the Commonwealth.

The sense of outrage and betrayal was compounded by the fact that during Bishop Muzorewa’s visit to London last month, the possibility of another all-party conference or another election had not been raised. The bishop had merely been asked to make a “few cosmetic changes” — and that was the phrase used.

Details of the proposals are eagerly awaited as there are aspects of the plan which, on

the surface,- appear totally impractical.'« Mrs Thatcher had, for example, made it clear that British supervision of the. new election would extend only to administrative and not security responsibility. If the assumption is that the Zimbabwe Rhodesians would be prepared, once again, to risk their necks in their thousands to protect black voters in guerrillainfested rural areas there must be some serious rethinking in London. On the other hand, if Mrs Thatcher is assuming that a ceasefire'can be brought into effect before an election, polling is unlikely to take place for several years. Zimbabwe Rhodesia’s war is hydraheaded, ugly and pervasive. Even in the unlikely event

of Mr Mugabe and Mr Nkomo calling on their men to lay down their arms there is such a lack of control and illdiscipline to ensure the countryside would remain highly dangerous for some time. Even if the front-line States cut guerrilla supplies there are hidden arsenals inside the country to sustain a protracted war.

The superficial improbabilities of the Thatcher package have given birth to a growing suspicion in Salisbury that British duplicity, for once, may be working in favour of the “new reality” in Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

This theory holds that Mr Mugabe and Mr Nkomo will persist in demanding preposterous conditions for attending the London conference. That one or both may not

even attend and that, if they do, their bluff will be finally called, leaving the Bishop as the sole voice of reason. Would Britain then be obliged, With full Commonwealth backing, to swing solidly behind Bishop Muzorewa and the internal dispensation? Fanciful as it may appear, hope persists in Salisbury that the transitional agony of the past year has not been in vain and that wands will be waved in favour of Zimbabwe Rhodesia. The Lusaka decision has already given the country’s white emigration figures a jolt and if the already taut threat to morale snaps there will be no need for a new constitution, a conference or an election. It will be another victory for ballistics.