Carrot and stick in Rhodesia
)Kan Smiley
Nothing is easier to mock than Rhodesia's internal settlement plan. Indeed, however things turn out, Zimbabwe will provide those with a taste for the macabre with Plenty of sick jokes. Already, a number of
White ministers seem hellbent on making the internal plan look a foolish failure. But What is most weird of all is the eagerness With which black ministers in the transitional government are exposing the hollowness of past nationalist rhetoric by adopting wholeheartedly, and without a flicker of self-parody, the jargon of the White Rhodesian Front. It seems like yesterday when Bishop Muzorewa, in Geneva, angrily charged the Selous Scouts with killing the old German Bishop Schmitt, who had died scarcely a few hours before. Now these mixed-race tracker units are proving Militarily rather useful to the black bishop. ( Now those guerrillas who do not support the interim government are 'intimidating' the people, as the RF has been saying for ten years. Young guerrilla recruits are being forcibly 'abducted across the border'. Even the `protected villages' (the bishop's followers no longer seem to call them concentration camps) now have their advantages, especially as they could serve as havens in which people may find it safe to vote, come elections. Even the segregationist Land Tenure Act has its merits: 'They're not so keen on Woolworth's buying up their uncle's stores' say old RF hands With satisfaction. There may, of course, always have been a grain of truth in all those i colonial adages. But the haste with which ' their latent wisdom has now been perceived 4Ppears a little indecent. Byron Hove was not quite sensible at all', one of the bishop's Ministers assured me.
A month ago, when I had not visited Rhodesia for half a year, I tried to argue in favour of Owen's refusal to assist the internal settlement openly. It seemed to give too Inuch to whites in the shape of parliamentary blocking powers etc. It also seemed a number of white ministers, includ
g Smith, were telling friends they would 'ceep control behind the scenes — nothing tnuch would change. There seemed a real clanger that whites might try a last trick. In addition, it appeared foolish to assume that the guerrilla-backed Patriotic Front lacked Popular support, when — so I guessed — it Was in fact eroding Muzorewa's and Sithole's backing by the day.
Now those objections, though soundly !_lased, begin to fall away. As the guns oecome bigger, newer and more numerous, the question of popular support (and I think lt still possible that the Patriotic Front might even win a 'fair election' outright), becomes
increasingly irrelevant. What is far more important is that in Africa power per se acquires a sort of moral quality of its own: `there must be good in Amin because he is so powerful'. Any party or leader powerful enough to impose its own pattern of peace by force is `good' too. Power is the key to popularity, not, as Westerners like to have it, vice versa.
But the sharpest adjustment to my former tactical outlook is that, whatever Smith 'may have boasted just after the 3 March accord, there has now been an overwhelming, drastic and demoralising change in the white psyche: come what may there will be a black government on 1 January. The disproportionately large parliamentary privileges and so on matter not a fig to the whites. They know in their hearts that as the momentum of change swells, all the softeners (the ten-year breather, their grip on civil service and army appointments and so on) will be politely forgotten, as in the other few successful neo-colonial ,states that have achieved a gentle transition. The Rhodesian Light Infantry wags have resigned themselves to the lament: `We'll be drowning our sorrows on Wogmanay'. A few talk brashly of `turning terrorist themselves', but, as a white coffee-farming friend of mine puts it: 'If old Smithy tells them to dance down First Street starkers, they'll do it'.
So whites have emotionally resigned themselves to black rule. But Owen won't accept their scheme because, as he rightly points out, the plan won't function without guerrilla cooperation, which at present is hardly forthcoming; and without the guerrillas it will be hard to organise a `test of acceptability' which the high-minded British have long since demanded before a new state can win recognition.
But it is looking more and more obvious that Owen has little real alternative, save one that would hand the country to the guerrillas on a plate, send the whites packing, destroy the country's infrastructure, and open a vacuum to be filled by warring factions of the guerrilla armies. Despite their bigotry and folly, Zimbabwe dearly needs to keep whites. Inadequate as the internal plan is and laughable if not despicable as some of the participants may be, it is still conceivable that it could marshal enough support inside the country to work better than anything else. It is time, belatedly; for Owen to offer more carrot to the internal men, more stick to Mugabe and Nkomo. His attitude should be: `The internal plan may look shoddy, but good luck to it if it works'. He should now give it more tacit encouragement, even if he refuses to abandon his own AngloAmerican proposals. His steadfast failure to assist has certainly, by default, given the PF the fillip,to pursue its military goal. If Owen had placed a top-level British representative in Salisbury three months ago, events there could have been vastly different: there would have been constant needling of the foot-dragging whites and vacillating bishop in order to prompt the changes that have been so pitifully slow to come. Above all, the most inept diplomatist would have knocked heads together to avoid the fiasco of the Hove affair. Again, with Nkomo so obviously still the x-factor in every power equation you try to work out, Owen should have used the IMF loan to bankrupt Zambia to squeeze Kaunda into nudging Nkomo back to Rhodesia. Yet again, Owen should state far more loudly what he said in Westminster: that, despite guerrilla threats, if the internal parties do manage to register a healthy vote at elections, the British will recognise the new government. Mugabe and Nkomo must both, incidentally, be placed on the voting lists whether they like it or not. Despite the failure of the ceasefire to date, guerrillas are still wavering, waiting for evidence of the will for real change, waiting for approval from outside.
But to return to the internal plan and to the eternal nub of the matter, which is the military rather than political handover: there are a few factors in the homespun plan's favour. As a framework for a new Zimbabwean army, the -old Rhodesian set-up does have advantages over the guerrilla armies. It is highly unpopular in the rural reserves where the war is mainly fought. In black eyes it has been thoroughly identified with the cause of white supremacy, however much the white generals insist they are `unpolitical'. But it is a militarily highly efficient and disciplined force, which the guerrillas, in conventional terms, are quite definitely not; and despite its past — perhaps because of it — the Rhodesian army has no overt political allegiance. Put another way, its allegiances are more suited to fickleness, whereas rigid politicisation in the guerrilla camps has far outweighed military training. The key difference of all, however, is that — among the black 80 per cent or so of the Rhodesian army, all units are completely integrated in tribal terms, whereas the two Zimbabwean guerrilla forces, by the nature of their recruitment, are almost `pure' tribal armies.
Whatever his mastery of geography, it is beginning to look as if Owen's endless caution and his waiting in vain for a grandiose multi-party accommodation is leading to nowhere except humiliation for Britain and degradation for Zimbabwe. If he cannot achieve an all-party conference which falls short of a handover to guerrillas, he should be humble and bold enough to look at the internal plan more seriously. There is a danger of overkilling Smith, who, whatever his past sins, must remain the key agent of change towards civilisation in Zimbabwe.
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