Peace Between Black and White?

The stalemate that has held southern Africa in black-white deadlock for more than a decade is beginning to break up at last. Last week Prime Minister Ian Smith of Rhodesia, the bastion of white-settler power that broke free of British rule in 1965, announced that he had agreed to attend a constitutional conference that could lead to a settlement with Britain--and, eventually, to black-majority rule in Britain's breakaway colony. Smith also told his startled countrymen in a televised speech that the African independence movements that have waged a sporadic terrorist campaign against Rhodesia for the past nine years have agreed to a ceasefire. In return, Smith declared, he had ordered the release of all political prisoners, estimated at more than 300 black leaders, held by his regime.

Lost Buffer. This sequence of events would have seemed unthinkable as recently as nine or ten months ago. Smith's concession--and the whole process of rapprochement that is underway in southern Africa--stems directly from the coup d'etat in Lisbon last April and the subsequent decision by the new Portuguese government to grant independence to Mozambique next year and to Angola not long thereafter. Faced with the loss of the Portuguese colonies as buffer states, South African Prime Minister John Vorster pressed forward with a plan to achieve a detente between black-and white-ruled Africa. In this effort he was joined, though with quite different motives, by one of black Africa's most responsible leaders, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda.

Last October Kaunda sent a truce offer to Pretoria. His terms: that Vorster pressure Smith into holding a new constitutional conference aimed at obtaining African majority rule in Rhodesia; and that South Africa itself accept majority (meaning black) rule in South West Africa (Namibia), the U.N. territory South Africa has run since 1920. Kaunda wants aid and more trade with South Africa, and wants South African grain not only for Zambia but for other Central African states that currently suffer from a serious food shortage.

Kaunda did not go so far as to ask South Africa to abandon its own racist policies. In fact, Vorster has begun to smooth down some of the rough edges of apartheid--by easing the job restrictions on nonwhites, for instance --thereby making his policies somewhat less objectionable to his black neighbors. Though South Africa was voted out of the U.N. General Assembly last month, Vorster vowed at the time that South Africa's critics would be surprised "at where the country will stand in six to twelve months." In the meantime, according to diplomatic observers, Vorst laid it on the line to Ian Smith: unless Smith would work actively toward achieving a Rhodesian settlement South Africa would consider withdrawing its antiguerrilla police, who help the Rhodesians maintain order along the Zambezi River boundary between Rhodesia and Zambia.

Secret Talks. Then, in what a British diplomat describes as "one of the most amazing turnabouts in history Ian Smith, who once declared that the blacks would not come to power in Rhodesia within his lifetime, sent a seen message to Kaunda conceding the chance of majority rule within three to five years and agreeing to negotiation in Lusaka, the Zambian capital. He stipulated only that the transfer of power should take place according to a carefully calculated timetable and that the position of the 273,000 whites within black-ruled Rhodesia (total pop. 5.8 million) should be subject to international guarantee. He also agreed to release several black Rhodesian leaders, including, Joshua Nkomo and the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, so they too could attend the Lusaka talks.

The most important preliminary development at Lusaka was that the four separate black-nationalist groups in Rhodesia agreed for the first time to adopt a common policy. In seeking to outbid each other, however, the Africans demanded that the Smith government accept the principle of majority rule for Rhodesia's blacks before any constitutional conference could be held. The white Rhodesians flatly rejected the demand, and the talks initially seemed to have ended in failure. As it turned out, discussions continued in secret in Lusaka, finally leading to Smith's announcement of a tentative agreement.

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