Rhodesia in limbo

Xan Smiley

What now promises to become Rhodesia's 'internal settlement' is flummoxing observers and even the participants themselves. Those parties that are denouncing it most fiercely are the ones most confused and rattled by it — the Patriotic Front led by Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. For the key frontline states' — Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania — all of which have been predictably violent in condemnation, the dilemma (quite simply, will it work?) is no easier. Andy Young shouts the Mugabe line, then half-retracts it. David Owen quite sensibly wants to crawl under the bedclothes for a few months. Only 'good old Smithy' seems to have recaptured some of Ills late 'sixties jauntiness — surely the worst Sign of all.

The war, as Young dolefully and irrelevantly points out, will of course continue. It may indeed intensify. That in itself argues nothing. It has long been the AngloAmericans' most ridiculous claim that Peace can be achieved by a cease-fire and a cosy, multi-party accommodation. Peace Will be achieved by arranging for someone to win the war. Perhaps Smith is indeed setting up such an arrangement. But it seems that much of the Western press is being premature in supposing that his emergent plans look anything like good enough to function effectively.

The people who will decide are the five Million black villagers who live in the TTLs — the Tribal Trust Lands — and who are currently, out of sympathy laced with fear, sustaining the guerrillas. Nobody, least of all Salisbury's bar-tied journalists, has much Idea what they think. But it is worth recalling the shock of the 1972 Pearce Commission report, which even then diagnosed a high degree of political consciousness in the TTLs and reckoned that the overWhelming desire of the villagers to say Kwete' (No!) to the Smith-Home plan was because they rejected 'not the proposals but the Government'.

That is why it is vital for Smith to make the symbolic gesture of resigning now, or as

soon as he can hold a white referendum.

T. he internal black leaders should be given immediate executive and legislative powers

to a transitional government, with the pre sent parliament suspended. Only if Muzorewa-Sithole are seen to be sweeping away the substantial racist laws still in the rule-book is there a chance the blacks might buy the latest deal. But there are grimly comic signals from Salisbury that Smith and his colleagues still fail to understand the fundamental paradox: that they can main tain a shred of long-term power, influence and goodwill only if they are seen quite

clearly to be handing over to blacks now. But the white cabinet are seriously, wistfully talking of the joys of renewed white immigration once the settlement is done. Such pensees will not produce a settlement.

There is another dangerous misconception nurtured in the press of late. That is that Smith is militarily 'doing pretty well'. Well-organised strokes of military skill, like the punishing raids on Chimoio and Tembue in Mozambique, so demonstrate the superiority of Rhodesian expertise in the conventional field. They must also lower guerrilla morale and perhaps set back insurgent operations logistically for some months. But all that should not obscure the more important fact that Mugabe's forces are now allowed to roam almost at will throughout much of south and eastern Rhodesia, have succeeded in crippling the civil administration in a good third of the country and have established an ineradicable presence, together with Nkomo's men, in at least ninety per cent of the land. It may be too late to reverse this, even with the help of Muzorewa and Sithole.

Another risky assumption is that those two leaders 'have the massive support of blacks within the country'. It may be so, but it is no certainty. Mugabe has had by far the better chance to proselytise among the rural black majority. Maybe the villagers do merely want independence (and they may debate whether that is what Muzorewa has achieved in negotiation with Smith) rather than the radically different social order ' promised by the vakomana, the 'boys' (with the guns) under instruction from Mugabe. It

is unknown. Nor can one predict whether Muzorewa's probable inheritance of the Smith army will work entirely in his favour.

Guerrilla atrocities have been more spec tacular than those of the security forces. But it is highly likely that in many areas it is the army not the guerrillas villagers fear most.

Still, it is worth remembering that Zimbabwe's leaders and their flock both have a supreme record of fickleness. Ideology is not the main factor in the power-game, nor indeed is tribe, though they are both hugely important. Muzorewa's virtue in the public African eye is precisely his failure to look like a politician at all. He won a following because he is a man of unity, a man of the church, and a man who arrived when the professionals had discredited themselves by their ceaseless and often bloody in-fighting.

The scheming is as exotic as ever — and now (perhaps to his loss) the bishop has joined the fray. He and Sithole, not content with the prospect of Smith's army as allies, are said to be training guerrillas in Uganda, Sudan, Zaire and Libya. Mugabe and Nkomo, conversely, are both sensibly infil trating Smith's army. Meanwhile Smith himself, not to be outdone, has taken care to ensure that almost a quarter of his Selous scouts are former guerrillas who have been 'turned round'. I confess to a presumptuous smile at the reader's confusion. I merely mean to show that ideology is not strictly related to the way Zimbabwean alliances are formed or broken.

That is not to say that Owen or Young could ever conjure up an all-party alliance, so long as it is rightly considered that Smith is a necessary agent in the process of transition to a neo-colonialist black state. What ever strange political friendships can be has tily forged, Smith and Mugabe will never ride tandem. The ZANU leader has announced his allegiance to marxism leninism loudly enough to be believed, at any rate by white Rhodesians, even if the Jesuits will assure us he is still 'their man'.

If Mugabe is excluded from the Smith scheme, he will naturally attempt to wreck a poll, the sole instrument through which Muzorewa can pose his credentials to the outside world. If Muzorewa has ceded too much to Smith, in the black civilian view, then it will be easy for Mugabe to carry out his election-wrecking. Without the muchneeded evidence that Muzorewa has 'massive' popular backing, it would then be exceedingly hard for Owen to start, sheenishly, to sell the Smith scheme round the world. Perhaps, as Muzorewa and Sithole both claim, the guerrillas will give up and the civilians will give them up, once black rule is seen to have arrived.

Mozambique and Zambia, the guerrilla havens, are as integral a part of the jig-saw puzzle as any of the other awkward pieces. Machel will probably stick to Mugabe, but there's no guarantee he'll do so for ever. Zambia's Kaunda is even more likely to prod Nkomo into the internal game if it looks like succeeding. From the Western point of view, Nkomo remains the key card. If Owen is serious about pulling off a compromise with Smith, all the Foreign Secretary can do is flirt with Nkomo a little longer, pretend to flirt with Mugabe for form's sake, while coyly, watchfully staying a wallflower when Smith asks him onto the floor, until it is known how the black masses are enjoying the music. Any deal which Nkomo now joined would, on account of his military muscle and old-time nationalist status, win OAU and UN backing. Owen then could dance.

I 'know a sharp-eyed observer of the scene, a senior member of Smith's security forces. He is a liberal: he wants black rule today; he is actually (literally) a torturer: he would say, presumably, he must prevent law and order from collapse; he is by preference an Nkomo man. The `liberal torturer' whose choice is shared by the Stalinists, Lonrho, the blubbing 'humanist' Kaunda? I suppose it takes all sort to make Zimbabwe. It may be the best, if shabby, model on offer.