PERSONAL COLUMN
A tale of human folly
NORMAN LINDLEY
The Rhodesian problem is not exactly the most burning topic in the election; there are few votes in it, if any, but it is one on which the winners will have to produce some sort of policy when they are in power. Even a Labour government could scarcely continue the futile masquerade which passes for a policy at present. The first thing for any British Cabinet to recognise is that sanctions have not produced, are not producing, and will not in the foreseeable future produce the effect which they are intended to produce. That is to say, they will not persuade the Rhodesian government to change its course or the Rhodesian electorate to change its government.
The Rhodesia Front government has shown no serious sign of repentance during the last four and a half years. Whether 'Fearless' and 'Tiger' brought it at all near to rapprochement only those in the know can tell. What is certain is that the Rhodesian government is now set on a course which is taking it further and further away from the six principles or anything even remotely like them. Nor have sanctions in any way affected the government's popularity. In 1965 the Rhodesia Front won every single A Roll seat, i.e. fifty out of a total of sixty-five seats in the Legislature, with a popular vote of about 80 per cent. In 1970, under a new constitution the performance was repeated and the Front won all the fifty European seats with a similar majority of the popular vote. Mr Smith looks about as safe as any Prime Minister could be.
Sanctions do of course have some effect. The country is certainly not enjoying the rate of growth which it had before urn. The economy is relatively stagnant, the shops are sparsely stocked, there are periodic irritating shortages, and there is much grumbling about the price of petrol (which is in fact ratter lower than it is in Britain). But these are minor inconveniences. The European Rhodesian enjoyed such a high standard of living before sanctions that he can afford to drop a good deal and still be very comfortably off by any objective comparison. Whatever hardship there is falls on the Africans, but it is not at all obvious. The economy is more threatened by drought —both this year and in 1967-68 the rainfall was exceptionally low—than it is by sanc- tions, which a great many countries openly flout and which are unenforceable without South African assistance.
The puzzle is that anyone should ever have thought that they could be enforced. Surely Mr Wilson's advisers in 1965 cannot have been so foolish as to suppose that South Africa would cooperate. It is no doubt true that the South African government advised against um. From the standpoint of calculating realpolitik urn was nothing but a nuisance to those engaged in the long- drawn-out battle to preserve the white laager in Southern Africa. But once it had happened Pretoria could not afford to allow Salisbury to succumb to economic pressure. After all Mr Vorster has an elec- torate to consider. Whatever the possessors of 'the fashionable conscience' may like to think, South Africa is not a totalitarian
power like Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Russia. A volte-face such as the Nazi-Soviet past of August 1939 is a move only open to an absolute dictator, and the Prime Minister of South Africa is a long way from being that.
The South African government would probably have done nothing to help Mr Smith if Britain had used force. The illegali- ties and dangers of a counter-move across the Limpopo would have been obvious to the electorate and too great to risk. Luckily for the Rhodesian government Mr Wilson decided against force—and even more luckily was so idiotic as to announce the fact in advance. Mr Vorster was now in a position to help the Rhodesian regime merely by inaction—by refusal to enforce sanctions— and he had no option but to do so. He would never have survived the last general election if he had pursued any other policy. If this obvious fact was not seen in Whitehall, the officials concerned should have been sacked long ago. If it was, how can we account for Mr Wilson, even in his most Walter Mittyish and cloud-cuckoo-landish frame of mind, declaring that the defeat of Rhodesia would be a matter of 'weeks rather than months'? His only consolation must be Mr Ian Smith's equally fatuous prediction, 'a nine days wonder'.
However, folly has been all too often the order of the day in matters concerning Rhodesia. What, after all, can rival the folly of urn itself? No one has ever given an intelligible answer to the question why they did it—least of all the actors themselves. Under the conventions which had governed Anglo-Rhodesian relations since 1923, there was nothing that any British government could have done to expedite the achieve- ment of any of the six principles. Of course it could have cajoled, pleaded, importuned, but the Rhodesians had only to say no; and they are quite good at doing that. It is true
that the British government could have vetoed positively reactionary moves like the establishment of the new racialist consti- tution, but the authors of UDI, in theory at
least, disclaimed at the time any intention to move towards a system of apartheid. The Europeans were securely in the saddle in 1965 and could have preserved the status quo almost indefinitely by simply doing nothing. It is probable that the historian of the future will have to explain urn as the result of a rush of blood to the collective head, apoplectic rage at the sight of Zambia and Malawi obtaining independence while the Rhodesian government was still tied to Britain by leading strings, however tenuous.
But all this is' in the past. Rhodesia is now a republic, though an illegal one. Sanc- tions have been tried and have failed. What should we do next? It should be said straight away that a settlement is out of the question. Those Conservatives who think in terms of further talks with Mr Smith are pursuing a mirage. Such conversations would be unwelcome in Salisbury and would lead nowhere. They would only encourage false hopes and end in renewed bitterness. Even the most right-wing Tory government would find it impossible to agree to the minimum terms which are regarded as acceptable in Salisbury.
What is needed now is realism. Whichever party wins the election should recognise that Britain's writ no longer runs anywhere in Southern Africa. The pass was sold long ago as far as the Union was concerned; more recently but no less decisively with regard to Rhodesia when in 1923 the Euro- pean population was allowed to choose between a curious hybrid form of colonial representative government and incorporation as a fifth province of South Africa. (It is to be regretted that the electorate did not opt for the latter. Much trouble would have been saved for Britain if they had.)
Realism does not necessarily mean a volte-face, but it does mean a cold-blooded calculation of Britain's economic and strategic interests. Is the loss of trade with 'Black Africa', which might result from abandonment of sanctions, reckoned to be more or less than the loss which is certainly resulting from the imposition of sanctions? If a realistic assessment on these lines came down clearly in favour of sanctions, despite their total futility on all other counts, then perhaps they should be maintained. But if not—and this seems much more likely— then the Government should at least aim at dropping them. It is not easy to do so, given the folly of referring the matter to the United Nations, one of Mr Wilson's worst errors. But if the British government ceased to regard its objective as the replacement of the Smith regime by some imaginary liberal alternative, and substituted the objective of disengagement and resumption of trade rela- tions, this would be a step in the direction of commonsense. A beginning could be a dis- creet hint to embassies all over the world to stop being officious in the matter of sanc- tions. If Britain has referred the matter to the United Nations as being beyond her con- trol, let Britain act like any other member of the United Nations and cease to regard Rhodesia as her particular problem. With sanctions, as with some other things, the motto should be taken from Clough's 'The Latest Decalogue':
Thou shalt no kill; but needst not strive Officiously to keep alive.
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