The Next Step in Southern Africa

...Certainly that was the view in London...

...and the Reverand Ndabaninghi Sithole, whose earlier resistance movement formed the core of zipa...

...It also appears less and less likely that Cuba will act in Zimbabwe—as it did in Angola—to put a small Marxist group in power by crushing a more popular political force...

...Conscious of this threat, Smith announced last January 27 that he was extending the draft to all healthy Europeans, Eurafricaris and Asians up to the age of 50...

...Rhodesia, while smaller in population, is more modern and industrialized than Kenya: It might well support, say, 50,-000 whites indefinitely, of whom probably no more than 5,000?about 0.06 per cent of the population—would be "permanent...

...And finally, the issue of South Africa remains, stark and unlovely, with Vorster inexorably resisting all but cosmetic change...

...Headed by lawyer Tom Shannon, it is expected to plead on the Hill for Smith's "multiracial government" to be "given a chance...

...So Vorster is advising patience, and there may be more to that advice than he realizes...

...position...

...The story can be told in numbers...

...Smith clearly had himself in mind for the Council position and thought this consistent with the U.S...

...The breakdown in negotiations has come at at time when the impact of the guerrilla Zimbabwe People's Army (zipa) has been temporarily reduced by internecine bickering, resulting from the limited role its leader, Rex Mutiswa Nhongo, accepted at Geneva...

...Yet Smith's intransigence is making it very difficult for any compromise to be reached...

...After all, Kissinger and President Ford had stressed "majority rule with minority rights," and had promised a huge, American-led, international financial aid plan to compensate the dispossessed and persuade key settlers to remain...

...He has singled out Andrew Young, our new UN ambassador, as the person to whom he owes the most politically...

...Last September, with the impressive Kissinger in the ring beside him, he could afford to come out for majority rule...

...uneasiness about the influence of Communist instructors on resistance leaders like Mutiswa, but on the basis of past precedent he believes Pretoria can get along with almost any regime in landlocked Zimbabwe...

...What is worse, it would stimulate the guerrillas to move out of the countryside into Salisbury and Bulawayo...

...it now sets the figure at 265,000 despite a well-documented exodus of Europeans (mostly to South Africa), especially in the past year...

...And since Carter's stress on cost-cutting makes the implementation of minority-oriented domestic policies a near-impossibility, an attention-getting victory in the modern international equivalent of the old slaving South would be extremely helpful...

...That country, with a population of 14 million, had 60,000 whites before independence and has some 40,000 now...

...Using Rhodesia's own classified statistics on immigration, emigration, voter registration, and the draft, British government experts put the colony's white population at about 160,000 in 1965 and at something like 200,-000 today...

...The refusal of the Rhodesian settlers to adjust to this reality has led to the more immediate source of controversy: a semantic conflict over the terms of the agreement reached by Kissinger and the various parties last September...

...This man spent two years in a penitentiary during World War II for Nazi activities, and his oppression of Africans has been infinitely worse than Smith's...

...Vorster clearly delights in his new-found legitimacy, and would like to make it last as long as possible...

...And following the latest meeting of the two men in Cape Town on February 9, the Rhodesian Prime Minister declared he would continue to "work for a settlement both internally and externally...

...Unfortunately, the Rhodesian conflict is locked in a dispute that is unlikely to be resolved very soon, Young's efforts in that direction during his recent 10-day Africa trip notwithstanding...

...All except 5,000, though, are new expatriates on short- or relatively short-term contracts...

...Moreover, eventually an international compensation fund will no doubt reimburse those whose homes and businesses are taken over by Mutiswa's warriors...

...He still half-believes, with old plantation-settler obstinacy, that somehow the tides of fortune will change and he will win—and he is entitled to his showdown...

...Smith, too, could more easily make concessions "unwillingly" by being able to point to U.S.-South African demands...

...Perhaps more important, by allowing things to take their course just now the United States could extract itself from its curious dependence on Premier Vorster...

...Smith himself has already acquired a retirement home in South Africa's Cape Province...

...But according to sources close to the former Secretary of State, he was aware that few nationalists in Zimbabwe would accept Smith as their leader...

...He has now committed himself to forming a government with "moderate" blacks who are not in any way "linked to the guerrillas...

...This would seem to be precisely the right moments, then, to give Smith enough rope to dangle from...

...What Smith envisages is a puppet government (similar to the one that failed in preindependence Kenya) that would never be internationally recognized as representative...

...The regime gave a suspiciously round figure of 5 million for the African population in 1965 and currently gives an equally suspicious one of 6 million...

...Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Ambassador Young and Chairman Dick Clark (D.-Iowa) of the Senate Africa subcommittee have been urging South African Premier Balthazar Johannes Vorster—a key figure in the embroglio—to use his influence to get the talks between Britain, Smith and the nationalists resumed...

...Vorster shares the U.S...

...In any event, flight is the predominant thought in most Rhodesian settlers' minds today...

...The fact that their fate will probably not be much different, whatever is decided or not decided now, is something both Salisbury and, apparently, Washington still resist believing...

...Nkomo's "foreign minister" Josiah Chinamano...

...In the months to come, Rhodesian settlers will surely continue to take advantage of the fact that, unlike their counterparts in Algeria or Kenya, they have an easy escape route by car, plus the promise—for a while, at least—of a subsidized existence in an amicable neighbor-state...

...The overwhelming black majority suggests that Rhodesia will follow the example of Kenya...

...The South African premier probably approves of the idea of limited and discreet settler involvement in the interim government: Such a role would tend to perpetuate itself, as it did in Kenya, whereas a heavy-handed white presence would spark counterracism that could spread to his own country...

...Whatever the Congressional reaction to Shannon's entreaties, it is clear that the Carter Administration, with its commitments to human rights and American blacks, has very different thoughts in mind...

...Of the latter, approximately 100,000 arrived after 1965, the majority from Britain and Portuguese Africa...

...Using him to pressure Rhodesia is a little like allying ourselves with Hitler to topple Mussolini...

...The truth is that Smith will fall in any case, and Pretoria's government-by-terror is the larger evil that should concern us...

...But as Vorster knows, pressure, like everything else in the game of tribal politics, requires good timing...

...The President has said, publicly and often, that he is indebted to the black electorate...

...For Vorster to assume a strong stance again, he must be able to prove to his own white electorate that he is acting on pain of alienating the U.S.—not from opportunism and even less from racial disloyalty...

...At that time, Smith accepted Rhodesia's becoming independent Zimbabwe (the African name for the country) under a predominantly black government in 1978...

...Thus Kissinger welcomed the inexplicitness of the agreement's wording, correctly foreseeing that the Africans would insist "European" meant a nonpolitical, non-ambitious British civil servant...

...Now, when he is reluctant—for political reasons that are hard to fault—to tell Smith what to do, is a good time to cut any ties of initimacy...

...True, some press reports say that Cuban advisors are serving with guerrilla units, but in Zimbabwe there is no equivalent to Angola's MPLA (created out of whole cloth by the KGB in 1964), and it appears too late for Moscow or Havana to do anything more than "influence" the zipa command...

...Except for Bishop Abel Muzorewa—a popular nonviolent Salisbury figure who himself has so far rejected Smith's latest ploy?this excludes all the participants in the Geneva talks: Mutiswa, primus inter pares in the zipa command unit and a possible future head of government...

...Washington would like to see the sybaritic, 400-pound Nkomo as the effective leader of the new government rather than merely in the ceremonial role of head of state...

...Now conditions have changed, and having Vance in one's corner is as yet a good deal more formal than formidable...

...At the very least, the White House, the State Department and Ambassador Young had hoped to prove as efficient as Henry Kissinger on southern Africa—particularly Rhodesia—and are therefore understandably reluctant to accept any counsel of wait-and-see...

...In addition, the immediate issue of the United Nations territory of Namibia—on which Vorster deviously feints and weaves to obstruct the will of the international community—can hardly be pushed while Washington is treating the South African as a needed friend...

...governments), since the regime and international agencies agree that the Africans have an annual growth rate of 3.1 per cent, their number would have jumped nearly 50 per cent in the last 12 years...

...Indeed, letting guerrilla activities and the middle-age draft spur the white retreat to South Africa may be simpler than trying to negotiate minority rights that few will need—and that recent African history indicates will be worthless...

...Consequently, English envoy Ivor Richard's insistence on this point was the crucial bone of contention in the Geneva talks...

...He should remember, though, that time is the guerrillas' strong suit as well...

...This—along with Salisbury's endearing requests for America to "mediate"-—is part of Smith's strategy of gaining time...

...Nevertheless, Vorster told his Parliament on January 28 that he would not attempt to influence Smith further...

...The Geneva talks that just a few months ago seemed so promising have broken down primarily because of a genuine misunderstanding about the future of Rhodesia's white settler minority...

...Rhodesian currency export controls can merely slow, not stop, the present white exodus to the "last plantation": Not everyone has substantial property to liquidate, and money is easy to smuggle out...

...When the settlers broke away from London in 1965, Premier Ian Smith's regime claimed a white population of just over 200,000...

...He successfully held out, however, for a two-tier interim policy: The mainly black Cabinet?headed by an African, but with the defense and security posts "in European hands"—was to leave the writing of a constitution to a racially-equal Council of State, headed by a "European...

...As far back as last summer, it planned to put Britons in charge of Rhodesian internal security in the interim period between Smith's capitulation and independence...

...In Washington, meanwhile, the Rhodesian lobby will undoubtedly move into high gear...

...This would put the present black population at around 9 million, for a black-white ratio of 45:1 (90:1 if the white newcomers are disregarded...

...But even if Rhodesia's true African population in '65 were only 20 per cent higher (6 million) than the Salisbury estimate (making Smith's one of the more accurate colonial Russell Warren Howe, a frequent New Leader contributor, is a veteran African affairs correspondent...

...elder nationalist Joshua Nkomo, a probable future head of state...

...The expressed ideals of the Carter Administration, as well as its debt to American blacks, would be better served by pressuring Vorster, plain and simple, not by pressuring him to do our work in Salisbury...

...All colonial censuses of natives in Africa have been gross underestimates, as subsequent counts by UN experts have shown...