90 years of white rule end today in Rhodesia

Press, 18 April 1980, Page 6

90 years of white rule end today in Rhodesia

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury Nine decades of white supremacy in Rhodesia will come to an end today as Britain withdraws from its last, war-torn African colony, and the new State of Zimbabwe is born.

The lowering of the Union lack at Salisbury’s floodlit flufaro stadium in the prestnce of Prince Charles, heir to the British Throne, will nark the culmination of a bitter, seven-year bush war for majority rule, and the final withering of Rhodesia’s 15-year white rebellion. In 1890, a pioneer column of mainly British settlers struck north from South Africa, battling hostile African tribes and crippling disease to raise the Union Jack in Salisbury and establish Rhodesia.

The country was named after Cecil John Rhodes, Britain’s arch-colonist, who tent the column north of the timpopo River as part of is vision of unbroken British rule from the Cape, to Cairo.

When the new red, gold, green and black-striped Zimbabwe flag is hoisted aloft today that dream — and those of many other defiant whites who clung to power despite pressure for black rule — will finally have (rumbled. The new nation will be led by the Prime Minister (Mr. Robert Mugabe), head of the biggest guerrilla army in the War that was spawned by the white minority’s unilateral declaration of independence rebellion against the British Crown on November 11, 1965. • .

The war cost well over 20,000 lives and convulsed southern Africa before, in a final and hazardous peace bid, Britain finally reasserted authority in its wayward colony last December.

Under a peace agreement drawn up at a conference in Lancaster House, London, Lord Soames had to supervise this year’s February 2729 independence elections in which Mr Mugabe swept to power with 57 of the 10G seats in the new Zimbabwe Parliament.

His wartime ally, Mr Joshua Nkomo, won only 20 seats, and is now ' a junior coalition partner with the Home Affairs portfolio. .. Both men will be present in Rufaro. But their main political foe, Mr Jan Smith, will not attend the celebrations, just as he has stayed away from every other big event held under British auspices since Lord Soames arrived. He is at present in South Africa.

Africa’s fiftieth independent State will come into being on a knife-edge of uncertainty with the three armies that fought the war far from united, and blacls-white tensions persisting under the fragile calm Mr Mugabe has managed to achieve. Mr Mugabe has taken a moderate, conciliatory stance towards the 200,000 whites, who have been tutored by

war propaganda to see the articulate 54-year-old Prime Minister as a Marxist revolutionary who will, wreak vengeance on them. At today’s ceremony Mr Mugabe will be flanked by General Peter Walls, once the white military supremo, now appointed Zimbabwe’s military overlord by Mr Mugabe in a further effort to forge national unity. Economically, Mr Mugabe faces a vast reconstruction and resettlement programme: up to a million people have been uprooted by the war; clinics, schools, cattle-dips, and crops have been ruined; and blacks now want, a bigger share of the country’s (riches. ' .

As the existing colonial Power, Britain has drawn up a three-year, $l5O million aid package for the new nation, and has urged others to folsuit. More than 100 foreign delegations have been invited to attend the ceremonies, and several world leaders are expected to attend. Pakistan’s President (General Zia-Ul-Haq), the Commonwealth SecretaryGeneral (Sir Shridath Ramphal), the Australian Prime Minister (Mr Malcolm Fraser), and Mr Andrew Young, the former United States ambassador at the United Nations, have already arrived. The U.N. SecretaryGeneral (Dr Kurt Waldheim) and the Indian Prime Minister (Mrs Indira Gandhi) were expected. The Zambian President (Mr Kenneth Kaunda) and the Botswana President (Sir Seretse Khama) also plan to attend: Prince Charles will visit a military barracks in Bulawayo, Rhodesia’s southwestern second city before a state banquet in the evening; At the Rufaro ceremonies he will formally hand over the instruments of independence, allowing Britain finally to shed its most troublesome and persistent foreign-policy problem-