Moonshine in Malta

Xan Smiley

Valletta Perhaps, to give Dr Owen his due, the fact that all the key actors in the Rhodesian Yawn have spurned him with the same lack of sportsmanship suggests a sort of decent, old-fashioned British evenhandedness in the increasingly macabre affair. 'Parity of disesteem means you're on the right track', goes the soothing adage of one British statesman who couldn't quite cope with Welensky, Kaunda and Banda almost twenty years ago — when the problem was essentially the same as today's — but when

had a trifle more power. An earnest, linPotent fairmindedness was, I suppose, the best that Owen hoped to achieve. No one in his right mind can long have entertained the thought ' that Mugabe and Smith could ever call it a day, shake hands, shuffle jobs around, and let the guerrilla boss settle down in that smug 'suburb Without the urb', as Salisbury once was called.

Owen is no fool. So what was he doing in Malta? And Mugabe is a busy man. Besides, Why Malta? Well, it was different from Geneva, a far cry from the cosmopolitan, coldly aggressive neutrality that gleams from the harsh symmetry of the Palais des Nations. Malta, as the FO man courteously explained, was, well, nearer Africa, almost halfway between England and Rhobabwe really, and the people were rather easygoing and, sort of, halfway between black and white, and it was a good place for a quiet chat, which was what we were here for: not a real conferepce, not the whole bag of tricks like Geneva. And of course Mr Mintoff is a bit of a freedom fighter in his ?wn way, too, even though his wife is English. The delegates had come to share an °Pportunity of 'getting to know one another' of 'defining differences', 'working !round problems' or, as Andy Young put it, more a seminar than a bargaining session'.

One of the most-heard catch-phrases in he Mugabe camp, along with sightings of inherent contradictions' and 'correct analYses', is 'are the British serious about decolonisation?' For once in the last thirteen Rhodesian years, we should plead guilty to frivolity. Nor, of course, were Mugabe and Nkomo 'serious'. They came because the frontline presidents are getting bored with Rhodesia and Zimbabwe and the war and the internal fighting. They, and the Nigerians too, are becoming less opposed to the concept, still taboo to Mugabe, of compromise with Smith.

The 'internal plan' does look shabby, but, after an inevitable continuation and Perhaps increase in bloodshed, it might conceivably 'work' . . . who knows what

brand of independence the suffering, battered blacks really want? The frontline states want the Patriotic Front to keep its options open, so that the guerrillas are not seen to be slamming the door on all chances of settlement except through the gun.

For Owen it was a trickier publicity stunt, with the consolation that it was cheap and mercifully brief after Geneva. It was a stunt with some point to it, even though it would once have been thought demeaning for a foreign minister to be closeted in a hotel room for three days pretending to be holding 'serious' discussions with two men almost chuckling aloud.

In a nutshell, Owen was required to pay ill-feigned attention to the demands of the PF, reiterated with relentless consistency, that they should take over the Rhodesian army and people lock, stock and barrel, so that in the event of the British winking an eye at the 'internal settlement' Dr Owen will not be accused of conniving at it all along, in order to jilt the guerrillas. Later he might be able to go to rally OAU /frontline support for the Smith-engineered black government 'with a clear conscience'. That is, if such a government ever arrives and is able to pass laws that encroach in any way upon fundamental white privileges.

The Americans were more frightening than our own doctor because there was a chance they believed in what they were saying: that the meeting was indeed 'meaningful'. They appeared to believe that Mugabe, given a few messages of Baptist guidance, might be interested in love, peace and elections, along with his much-vaunted Catholicism and 'Marxism-Leninism-Mao 't'se-Tung-thought' (sic) which was confirmed by the new, Zanu central committee after the September congress as the party's official ideology. 'And in this regard, . . . taking full account of the objective and subjective political, economic and social realities of Zimbabwe's national milieu . . . all capitalists, imperialists and reactionaries can go jump in the sea.'

In Africa, the instincts of the Americans, true sons of the Carter dawn, are, it seems, activated more by Vietnam, Harlem and Alabama than by Uganda, Angola or by other more representative black states.

There is an almost obsessive desire to be 'on the side of liberation at all costs' enhanced by a tendency to smell out an Uncle Tom in any Muzorewa whose gunplay is somewhat unfrisky. It is strange to contrast the black American anger in the face of unlegislated, less overt oppression inside the US with the extraordinary tolerance of Africans bound down by far more blatant, sweeping 'legal' abuses.

There is a further erroneous belief that the guerrillas are on the brink of outright milit ary victory and must therefore be humoured. In addition, there is the selfinjected conviction, a legacy perhaps of McCarthy and of Vietnam, that Zanu's Marxism is merely the overspill of nationalism which, if channelled and moulded by American 'aid' and goodwill, should carry Zimbabwe down the path of tolerance and prosperity.

'The immediate enemy is imperialism,' runs the latest issue of the party magazine, 'represented in Zimbabwe by British and American interests. The long-term enemy is the African petit bourgeoisie that has been produced by colonial capitalism, and uses tribalism, sexism, religion, and even nationalism to perpetuate capitalism in Zimbabwe.' You cannot always take such assertions for empty rhetoric.

The Anglo-American team's most wishful thinking is that South Africa, owing to its desire to see an internationally recognised settlement in Rhodesia, might yet tie the strangling cord round Smith's neck once the British and the guerrillas have agreed how to orchestrate the total demise of white Rhodesian power. But a no less off-beam observation that Andy Young and David Owen have stressed is that Smith's settlement plan 'won't bring peace to Rhodesia. In fact it could make it worse'. Young added 'If we recognised that settlement we'd virtually be involving America in a war on the African continent'.

Of course they are right. But the shrieking truth is that no, positively no 'solution' in Rhodesia will bring peace if the Western powers persist in attempting the impossible task of accommodating every party in their schemes. The wooing of Mugabe can merely lead to the brutal suppression of unarmed millions inside Rhodesia. Forget the fate of Smith. The only relevant test of a settlement plan is whether — after a period of bloodshed perhaps even worse than the present one — it can be implemented.

The ultimate tragedy is that Smith has success within his grasp, yet all the age-old symptoms of Rhodesian Front lunacy and deep-grained racial bigotry are bursting forth. Smith still cannot face up to the fact that his plan will succeed, paradoxically, only if he concedes almost all power to Muzorewa-Sithole, shelves his plot for an obstructive, racially-elected white voting bloc and allows the Bishop to become a fullblooded leader. Only then can the black multitude rally to their elected leaders and grant the whites, in passing, a measure of tolerance. I guess that rural support for Mugabe is already much stronger than generally estimated by Salisbury pundits. If Smith, in foolish delight, wins all he wants from the internal nationalists, I predict Mugabe as victor after a long, vicious war of attrition, black against black.

For those who wish fortune to smile on Mugabe, the latest Zanu document makes a request for generosity. There is a list of badly-needed books (for mobile libraries, presumably) including self-help manuals such as Food from Windmills and Smoking Fish in a Cardboard Smokehouse and there is a list of vital supplies for the war effort, including 6,000 gum boats (sic) — 'all adult sizes please' — and no less than 120,000 hot waterbottles.