A Sell-Out or a Plot?

RHODESIA —1

By SIR EDGAR WHITEHEAD

THE White Paper published by the Govern- ment after the failure of the 'Tiger' talks between Mr Wilson and Mr Smith is a most astonishing document.

Part I is a very brief account of the negotia- tions which will no doubt be expanded in view of the lengthy account issued in Salisbury, but Appendix A—an extract from the Common- wealth Prime Ministers' communiqué to which Britain subscribed in September—and Appendix B—the agreement reached on board HMS Tiger—are so violently different in tone and in content as to be utterly irreconcilable.

The proposed amendments to the 1961 Con- stitution set forth in Mr Wilson's 'working document' would, if implemented, have the effect of greatly postponing the possible date of African majority rule almost certainly beyond the end of the century, as against a probable date of about 1977 which I gave publicly in Rhodesia as a possible date during the general election campaign of 1962.

Under the 1961 Constitution, with fifteen B Roll seats where African voters were in a large majority, it was only necessary for them to win eighteen of the fifty A Roll seats to secure a bare majority in Parliament. Under the proposed amendments to the Constitution in the working document, with seventeen seats reserved for the B Roll and seventeen seats reserved for Europeans, Africans would need to win more than half the thirty-three ordinary A Roll seats to get a bare majority in Parliament.

African A Roll voters tend to be very much concentrated in particular constituencies at present. In the urban areas, partly on account of the Land Apportionment Act, they are mainly concentrated in the African townships. In rural Rhodesia, where great tracts of African trust land are combined with fairly sparsely inhabited European farming areas to form a constituency, it is probable that under the 1961 Constitution the time would not have been far-distant when African Purchase Area farmers, schoolmasters, traders and some government employees and mission staff would have been eligible for the A Roll in sufficient numbers to win quite a number of seats. In other words, they might have won eighteen seats while still without a single A Roll voter in some of the fashionable and expensive European suburbs of Salisbury and Bulawayo.

Section 4 of the working document ('De- limitation') effectively stops this process. Under the 1961 Constitution it would have been pos- sible, when one-quarter of all the voters in the country on the A Roll were Africans, that they

Sir Edgar Whitehead was Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia from 1958 to 1962, and subsequently Leader of the Opposition until nine months before UDI.

could well have won eighteen of the fifty seats with the help of the cross-voting from the B Roll. Under the 'Tiger' constitution, however, the Delimitation Commission would have ad- justed the constituencies so that Africans did not have a majority in more than one-quarter of the thirty-three A Roll seats—that is, eight seats.

In the same way, the process for entrenchment of certain clauses in the proposed constitution by means of a 'blocking quarter' and a senate is far weaker than the device of a referendum of the four races voting separately provided for in the 1961 Constitution. The chiefs are always likely to support the government and oppose any African nationalist party, and would need to get the support of only two of the twenty-five elected Africans in the two houses sitting together to prevent a 'blocking quarter.'

Lastly, paragraph 9 of the working document relegates the removal of racial discrimination to a Royal Commission and a Standing Commis- sion without any mention of their having any authority to get their recommendations trans- lated into action.

Let us now turn to the language of the Com- monwealth communiqué and note the strange contrast. Paragraph 3 proclaims: 'The Prime Ministers declared that any political system based on racial discrimination was intolerable. It diminished the freedom alike of those who imposed it and of those who suffered under it. They considered that the imposition of dis- criminatory conditions of political, social, eco- nomic and educational nature upon the majority by any minority for the benefit of a privileged few was an outrageous violation of the funda- mental principles of human rights. . .

Again, paragraph 8, subsection (c), states that the constitutional settlement negotiated between Britain and Rhodesia 'will be submitted for acceptance to the people of Rhodesia as a whole by appropriate democratic means.' In the 'Tiger' working document, however, 'appropriate demo- cratic means' is converted (clause 17) into a Royal Commission.

The 1961 Constitution provided for a referen- dum of the four races voting separately and declared, in regard to the Africans, that until 50,000 were registered on the voters' roll, all those who were citizens over twenty-one years and had passed Standard 6 of primary educa- tion should be entitled to vote. I clearly remem- ber Mr Sandys making a special visit to a Standard 6 form of an African school to assure himself of what the standard was.

Clause 8, subsection (d), of the Commonwealth communiqué says: 'The British Parliament and Government must be satisfied that the test of opinion is fair and free and would be acceptable to the general world community.' It must be obvious that a proposed constitution which will certainly postpone African majority rule to a date much later than that which would have resulted from the continuance of the 1961 Con- stitution was not likely to be acceptable to the general world community as understood in the Commonwealth agreement.

We now come to the question of why the package deal which included these proposals for the new constitution was turned down by the Rhodesian government. Mr Smith could cer- tainly have got the Europeans to accept the constitutional proposals, as he has already secured an overwhelming majority for indepen- dence on the basis of the 1961 Constitution at a referendum in 1965. The proposals in the 'Tiger' working document are much more favourable for maintaining a European majority than those of the 1961 Constitution—indeed, they may well be adopted on the terms of Mr Bowden's challenge. The snag from Salisbury's point of view is that it would have been very difficult to find the personnel for a Royal Commission which would report that the Africans considered the 1961 Constitution was much too generous to their political ambitions and that a far slower rate of progress to majority rule would be their wish.

The Rhodesians, therefore, faced the threat that, having returned to constitutional rule, for the better part of four months, they would then be told that the constitutional proposals had been proved to be unacceptable to the great mass of the people, and that if they did a second UDI, military force would be used.

Some people in Britain will always believe that Mr Wilson intended to surrender to Mr Smith because of the grave economic problems involved and the dangers of escalation through- out Southern Africa. Some people in Rhodesia will always believe that there was a diabolical plot to trap Mr Smith into surrendering inde- pendence and that thereafter British troops would have been infiltrated into Rhodesia and a new constitution would have been imposed handing over the country to very early African rule. Perhaps neither view is strictly true. But it is utterly ridiculous when the Commonwealth communiqué and the 'Tiger' working document are read together to talk about a breakdown of negotiations on a point of procedure.

With the failure of this attempt at a settle- ment, the British government is now committed not `to submit to the British Parliament any settlement which involves independence before majority rule' (Clause 10, subsection (a), of the Commonwealth communique). This is made clear by the last sentence at the bottom of page 4 of the White Paper, which reads: 'The related consequences foreshadowed in the communiqué of the Commonwealth Prime Ministers' Meeting in London in September will now ensue.' This is the pledge that the African members of the Com- monwealth were seeking all along and have now obtained. No further negotiations with the regime in Salisbury are possible unless this, pledge is broken.

The Europeans in Rhodesia will obviously now be bound to resist to the bitter end, as there is nothing to be gained from negotiations if the British government's adherence to no indepen- dence before majority rule is to be believed. But the brutal fact is that nobody in Britain or outside believes that any British government will stick to its word through thick and thin even if it is to its own hindrance. If in three months' time Mr Smith were to announce that, in view of the danger of escalation throughout Southern Africa, he was now prepared to accept the 'Tiger' terms in their entirety, who believes that the British government would simply reply, 'No independence without majority rule'?

The mandatory sanctions proposed at the UN are certainly likely to do further damage to the Rhodesian economy, but would probably take 'I still can't taste much difference' at least two years to cause anything •like a collapse, even if they are generally enforced. Frankly, the aim teems to be, as 1 have heard from an American source, to induce so many Europeans to leave Rhodesia on account of lack of employment that a point will be reached at which the remainder will no longer be able to maintain law and order. This would obiiiously take several years.

Personally, I have never believed that sanc- tions, whether sponsored by the UN or not, are a suitable method of trying to solve political disputes. Inevitably they are bound to affect very large numbers of innocent people and even those who are in political agreement with those im- posing the sanctions. In the case of Rhodesia, the greatest losses are likely to be suffered by overseas (particularly UK) companies operating in Rhodesia, which in a number of cases have no Rhodesia shareholders at all; and, secondly, by the Africans, who have no unemployment in- surance or similar social services to fall back on. It seems unlikely that any African who sees his factory closed down and can only maintain himself and his family by returning to his tribal area or to his country of origin, and may even have his life savings endangered by the weaken- ing of the currency, can possibly be enthusiastic about those who have imposed sanctions on Rhodesia. It is much easier for the Smith regime to make arrangements to protect the small number of Europeans unemployed by finding jobs in the police, the civil service or elsewhere during the emergency.

If sanctions fail in their effect, it is unlikely they will ever be tried again. If they were to succeed, then Britain will have a long-term com- mitment to provide an administration for a bankrupt Rhodesia for a great many years before they could possibly install an African government.

Nobody seems to have any effective plans for future British policy. There is a grave danger that the whole of Southern Africa will become involved in the present struggle, despite the British government's wish to keep South Africa out of it. There seems to be little understanding of the dependence of Mozambique on Rhodesia and vice versa, and the only alternatives which seem to have been seriously considered in Britain are, on the one hand, destroying the Rhodesian economy completely without any plans for rebuilding subsequently, and, on the other hand, to escape from all further responsi- bility for events in Central Africa and leave the present regime in possession of the field. In the one case, the European and all he has built up in Rhodesia in the last seventy-five years will be destroyed. In the other case, we can expect the Zambesi to become permanently an iron curtain between areas of black and white supremacy.

What is needed is a policy which will ensure the maximum co-operation and development throughout the whole of Southern Africa, with security guaranteed for people of all races. The suggestion that Mr Wilson made for a union between Britain and Rhodesia was made for a short period pending majority rule in Rhodesia. This proposal gives no long-term security to the Europeans who have lived in Rhodesia for generations and no guarantee for long-tern- security for the African population. I still believe. as I did a year ago, that when this struggle ha,. dragged on its miserable course for a further year it will be found necessary to-revert to pro- posals for a long-term union between the two countries to secure peace and prosperity for Southern-Africa as a whole.