In "Civilized"Hands

At the Long Bar of Meikle's Hotel in Salisbury, white Rhodesians were clinking bottles and roaring the merry refrain of Land of Hope and Glory. From the African bar at the other corner of the building came a throaty Nkosi Si-kelele Afrika (God Bless Africa). "There you have it," said a Rhodesian businessman as he listened to both. "Take a man from one of those bars, push him into the other, and it would be like throwing in a hand grenade. Britain and the rest of the world can do what they like, but this is what Rhodesia has to face up to."

Facing that reality, Britain last week reached a compromise agreement with the breakaway white-supremacist government of Rhodesia. After six years of coaxing and outright pressure, including an economic embargo, London agreed to permit Rhodesia's return to colonial status just long enough to be granted official independence. It was the issue of independence, which Britain refused to grant until provision was made for some form of black majority rule, that led Premier Ian Smith to cut Rhodesia loose from its ties to Crown and Commonwealth six years ago with his unilateral declaration of independence.

Giving Ground. Twice since then, former Labor Prime Minister Harold Wilson met Smith to try to bring Rhodesia back into the fold. Each lime, the talks failed to bring satisfactory agreement either in Britain or in Rhodesia, where blacks outnumber the 250,000 whites by 20 to 1. Preliminary negotiations for a third attempt were launched by Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath's government one year ago.

Two weeks ago, British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home arrived in Salisbury with 25 aides. Sir Alec set up headquarters at Mirimba House, a verdant, 16-acre British government estate that was scrubbed up and reopened for his stay, and began holding talks with black and white Rhodesians alike. Though there was a time when it appeared that he would fly back to London emptyhanded, both he and Smith finally gave enough ground to make an agreement possible. It appeared, however, that Douglas-Home gave considerably more than Smith did.

Since 1964, when Sir Alec was Prime Minister, the British had insisted that Britain would readily grant independence to Rhodesia if five basic conditions were met: 1) assurances of unimpeded progress toward majority rule for Rhodesia's 5,000,000 blacks; 2) guarantees against retrogressive amendmens of the constitution once independence was achieved; 3) an immediate improvement in the political status of blacks, especially advanced education, that would enable more of them to become qualified voters; 4) some sign of progress toward ending racial discrimination; and 5) proof that any basis for proposed independence was acceptable to black as well as white Rhodesians.

By the time agreement was reached last week, Britain had diluted its demands. Sir Alec, for example, dropped his insistence on a privy council to guarantee against retrogressive changes in the constitution. He wanted the council despite the existing strong Declaration of Rights enforceable by the Rhodesian High Court.

For his part. Smith relinquished the voting provisions designed to keep Africans from ever obtaining a majority in Parliament. Currently, 16 members of Parliament are black, v. 50 whites. Any increase in black participation hinged on their contributing more to the national income tax, not on how many black voters there were. Now, increases will be based not on tax payments but on the number of registered black voters, until there are 50 white and 50 black M.P.s. Because of educational and property requirements, that may not come until the 21st century.

Progress toward majority rule is not exactly "unimpeded," rather it is a remote possibility. The procedure agreed to by Smith and Douglas-Home gives the whites an effective veto at the crucial final stage.

Downright Sellout. The relatively tame reaction to the pact among Britain's Laborites indicated that, while the agreement was far from ideal, it was the best that London could expect. Without it, Sir Alec believed that Rhodesia would become "irrevocably apartheid." In Black Africa, comment was predictably critical. Nairobi's Sunday Post said that Britain had sanctioned "existing while domination," and Tanzania's President

Julius Nyerere predicted that Rhodesia would become "a second South Africa." African Nationalist Edson Sithole, a Rhodesian lawyer who was once detained for his political activity, called the agreement "a downright sellout." On the other hand, Chris Phillips, leader of the reactionary white Republican Alliance, complained that it "will put bus drivers and barrow boys on the voters' roll."

Smith, speaking to Parliament over a public address system that also carried his message to blacks packed in the streets outside, reassured his fellow whites that "control of Rhodesia [has been] retained in civilized hands," and indicated that it would remain that way for a long time to come. "No European," he said, "need harbor any anxiety about the security of his future in Rhodesia." It remains to be seen whether the blacks feel quite so sanguine --or how they define civilized.

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