POISED BETWEEN PEACE AND WAR
Slipping silently through woods and rolling farm lands about to explode with the new growth of the African spring, black guerrillas eluded the hard-pressed patrols along Rhodesia's frontier with Mozambique and posted crude signs on the fences of white farmers. The signs said simply: THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.
A hundred miles to the west in Salisbury, Rhodesia's pleasant, tree-lined capital, a "troopie" wearing the black beret of Prime Minister Ian Smith's security forces looked up from his post on downtown Jameson Avenue as the season's first dark rain clouds came scudding over the rooftops. "Damn," he said, scowling to his partner. "I was hoping it would hold off a bit longer. The 'terrs' [white Rhodesians' shorthand for terrorists] will be tougher than ever in the rains this year."
The high season for guerrilla warfare begins with the November rains. This year, however, the guerrillas' intentions were just one of many new uncertainties facing Rhodesia's 6.1 million blacks and 274,000 whites. Prime Minister Smith, following Henry Kissinger's dazzling diplomatic foray into southern Africa, had agreed to yield power to his country's black majority in two years time. His decision raised the possibility that Rhodesia -- as well as much of the rest of southern Africa -- might be poised on the brink of peace instead of a race war that was once thought inevitable.
The success -- or failure -- of the effort to bring about a peaceful transfer to majority rule in the last country in southern Africa ruled by a white colonial regime would directly affect the prospects for racial concord or conflict in another, much more important African tinderbox, South Africa. Already, the emotionally charged issue of the future of southern Africa's two white-ruled regimes was reflected, in varying ways, in passions and politics among the 136 million blacks in all of the 16 states in the tier of black Africa south of the equator (see box page 34).
Inevitably, in an age of global interdependence, southern Africa has emerged as a new battleground -- so far mostly verbal -- for the superpowers. All through Secretary Kissinger's mobile campaign to try to turn the momentum of race and politics in southern Africa from deepening confrontation to negotiation, the Russians were firing rhetorical broadsides from the sidelines, as if the trauma of another siege of shuttle diplomacy were almost more than they could bear. They accused the U.S. of "gimmickry" and of seeking to preserve "not only racial oppression, but the entire neocolonialist setup in Africa."
Kissinger, who just barely had time to unpack his bags in Washington following his return from his twelve-day mission in southern Africa, journeyed to Manhattan to give the U.S. answer at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly. In a solemn, hourlong address, he rejected the Soviet charges in blunt terms. Washington, he said, had become involved diplomatically in southern Africa because it was convinced that "racial injustice and the grudging retreat of colonial power" had raised the possibility that the region could become "a vicious battleground with consequences for every part of the world."
The U.S., he added, "wants no special position or sphere of influence in Africa." American interests would be "best served by an Africa seeking its own destiny free of outside intervention." Clearly referring to the Russians, who imported 13,000 Cuban troops into Angola late last year to put a client in power in the former Portuguese colony, Kissinger added: "The rivalry and interference of non-African powers would make a mockery of Africa's hard-won struggle for independence from foreign domination. It will inevitably be resisted."
Some countries, said the Secretary, may "see a chance for advantage in fueling the flames of war and racial hatred. But those countries are not motivated by concern for the peoples of Africa, or for peace. And if they succeed, they could doom opportunities that might never return."
The chance for peace in Rhodesia is still only that -- a chance. Kissinger's main accomplishment -- and it was a significant one -- was persuading Smith that he had no realistic choice but to accept a British plan, which he had earlier rejected, that would lead Rhodesia to black majority rule within two years. But a settlement that will bring an end to the guerrilla war smoldering along Rhodesia's 800-mile border with Mozambique and 400-mile border with Zambia is by no means a certainty. That war, which began in earnest in December 1972, may well continue through a fourth November-April rainy season. In four years, the fighting has taken the lives of 1,426 guerrillas, 161 Rhodesian troops, 508 black civilians and 47 whites; approximately half of these have been killed in 1976 alone.
Before announcing his regime's acceptance of black majority rule on Rhodesian radio and television two weeks ago, Smith took care to prepare his 20,000-man armed forces for the blow. He called senior commanders to Salisbury and had them briefed on the terms of the settlement; the commanders in turn told the enlisted men. It is not yet clear just how the troopies have taken the news, but morale is reported to be low (see box page 49).
The apparent success of the Kissinger mission caught most of the world by surprise. The Secretary made it clear that he regarded the deal with Smith as only the beginning of negotiations. And indeed, by last week it was obvious that there were serious misunderstandings among the various black and white governments in Africa with which Kissinger had held discussions.
The trouble started when Smith, in his TV address, spelled out his version of the terms of the agreement. In the interim government, which would pave the way for black rule, he said, there would be a four-man council of state, to be composed of two whites and two blacks, with one of the whites serving as chairman. This body would be "supreme" over a council of ministers, which was to have a black majority and a black "First Minister." However, Smith added, the key ministries of Defense and Law and Order -- the important security posts -- would be reserved for whites. The new, majority-rule constitution, he added, would be "drawn up in Rhodesia by Rhodesians" -- meaning the council of state, on which the whites will have all-important parity.
Overall, the formula seemed acceptable to most Rhodesians, blacks as well as whites. But it angered some Rhodesian black nationalists, as well as the five African "frontline" Presidents (of Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, Mozambique and Angola) with whom Kissinger had been dealing. The five leaders met in Lusaka, Zambia, and denounced the settlement as outlined by Smith.
What was going on? Had Kissinger misled one side or the other? Had Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda and Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere, to whom Kissinger had explained the formula, changed their minds? Kissinger-watchers noted that the Secretary had given Smith a written list of key points but showed nothing in writing to the African Presidents; Smith might easily have assumed that the black leaders had seen and approved the same paper, but that was not the case.
Among other things, the African leaders objected to the notion of the council of state as supreme, the allotment of the two security ministries to whites, and Smith's inference that the new constitution would be drawn up inside Rhodesia. They also wanted greater speed: "We are talking about majority rule in four to six weeks," said Julius Nyerere, "with the formation of an interim government." Nyerere also noted wryly that Smith had ended his TV speech with Churchill's famous line: "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." Said Nyerere: "If Smith says it is the end of the beginning, we are saying we will go on; we will go on for the next ten years."
Most important, the African leaders demanded that Britain, as the Rhodesians' titular colonial sovereign, convene a conference to iron out details about the makeup of the interim government, and take part in a subsequent constitutional conference as well. Snorted Salisbury's Foreign Affairs Minister P.K. van der Byl: "It simply shows the irresponsibility and unreliability of those we have to deal with."
Perhaps the greatest risk involved in the Lusaka statement was that it might give Smith a chance to back out of his agreement. Twice before -- in talks with Harold Wilson aboard the Royal Navy ships H.M.S. Tiger in 1966 and H.M.S. Fearless in 1968 -- Smith had seemingly agreed to end Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI). But then he returned to Salisbury "to consult my colleagues," and changed his mind. He actually initialed an agreement for ultimate majority rule in 1971, but a British commission went to Rhodesia in early 1972 and decided that the proposal was unacceptable to black Rhodesians. This time the pressure on Smith was far greater -- and to some extent he may have been influenced by a U.S.-British offer to provide $1.5 billion to $2 billion as a "safety net" to protect Rhodesian whites against losses incurred by a transition to black rule.
Throughout the week, Washington remained determinedly optimistic, insisting that the Rhodesian agreement was still "on the track." All parties had accepted the principle of majority rule, said U.S. officials, and were now merely engaged in preconference maneuvering. The details mentioned in Smith's speech were to be negotiated at the conference, and Smith might not even be represented. Upon hearing this, Salisbury expressed "surprise."
Like Kissinger, British Prime Minister James Callaghan was convinced that the Rhodesian initiative had not been seriously damaged. The British government has been reluctant to become embroiled in the Rhodesian problem again, having been burned by it before. But London announced its willingness to convene a conference in southern Africa to discuss the formation of an interim government in Salisbury.
London's decision was greeted with enthusiasm in Gaborone, where African leaders had gathered to help celebrate Botswana's tenth anniversary of independence. "Good news," declared Zambia's President Kaunda. Rhodesian Nationalist Joshua Nkomo, a leading candidate to head a post-Smith government in Rhodesia (see box page 41), was "delighted." Added one of his rivals, Bishop Abel Muzorewa: "That's great."
With negotiation near, Rhodesian black leaders were busily conferring with each other. Both Nkomo, whose strength is in the rural areas, and Muzorewa, whose followers are mostly urban Africans, were wooing Robert Mugabe, who is influential with the guerrillas based in Mozambique. Either would like to join forces with Mugabe, thereby gaining guerrilla support. Mugabe is said to place emphasis on the need for military unity. The three are united on one point, at least: the country's name will be Zimbabwe (after an ancient African civilization that once thrived there).
For most of the eleven years since UDI, Rhodesia had survived surprisingly well as an international outcast. Dozens of international firms, as well as a number of countries, continued to do business with it despite U.N. sanctions; since the passage of the Byrd Amendment in 1972, U.S. firms had been buying Rhodesian chrome in open defiance of the U.N. ban.
But for the past 18 months, the situation had grown steadily more ominous for Ian Smith. The number of guerrillas based inside Rhodesia had quadrupled in just six months, to as many as 3,000; another 5,000 to 8,000 were based in Mozambique, and 2,500 or so in Zambia. The guerrillas are well armed -- mostly with Soviet bloc equipment -- and increasingly well trained. They have been so active even in the dry season, when army patrols are more effective, that civilian cars have had to travel in armed convoys on many roads. Road and rail links to South Africa are increasingly threatened. According to one widely accepted rubric about guerrilla warfare, a government needs 10 to 20 soldiers to defend itself against every guerrilla involved in an insurgency; white Rhodesia was in no position to bear such a burden for long.
Gradually these grim facts have taken their toll on civilian morale. The latest migration figures were particularly discouraging. During the first eight months of 1975, there was a net increase of 1,510 white Rhodesians; this year, during the same period, there was a net loss of 4,030.
A few of Smith's white countrymen hold him responsible for what is happening to Rhodesia. "There is a widespread feeling," says a local mining executive, "that, in retrospect, UDI was a waste of time, money and lives. If we had settled for a gradual transition eleven years ago and Smith had started to train black successors back then, we would not face such a problem now." But a few hardliners, like Leonard Idensohn, who heads the small, far-right Rhodesia National Party, criticize him for giving in now. "Smith and his 49 traitors in Parliament have sold us down the river," says Idensohn fiercely. "Fifty corpses hanging from ropes would be a marvelous thing."
To a great many Rhodesians, how ever, Ian Smith is still "good old Smithy," the taciturn farmer who, had he been left alone, might have been able to preserve "the Rhodesian way of life" for the country's 274,000 whites. He was not left alone, they believe, and so he had no choice.
The historic event that sealed the fate of white Rhodesia and changed the life of every white man in Africa south of the Zambezi River was the Portuguese revolution in April 1974. The military coup against the Caetano government in Lisbon led the following year to the granting of independence to Mozambique and Angola -- something the old regime vowed would never happen. Before 1975, Mozambique and Angola were Portuguese colonies that served as bulwarks against the southward march of African nationalism; after 1975, their Marxist governments became directly involved in the black struggle to overthrow the remaining white minority regimes. In time, Mozambique cut Rhodesia off from its best rail routes to the sea, forcing it to rely exclusively on South Africa for its trade -- and arms. Mozambique also granted sanctuary to more and more Rhodesian guerrillas.
Like all other European settlers in Africa in years past, the Rhodesian whites, by reason of their numbers alone, had always been vulnerable. Of the estimated 313 million people who live in Africa south of the Sahara, 61 million are in southern Africa (including Angola, Zambia and Mozambique). Of these 61 million, only about 5 million are white -- and of these, 4.3 million live in South Africa. Before the independence of Angola and Mozambique changed the power balance in southern Africa, it was just conceivable that 274,000 Rhodesian whites could maintain their position indefinitely over the country's 6.1 million blacks, even though the whites were outnumbered 22 to 1. Thereafter it became a preposterous sham.
The Angolan civil war had an additional effect on southern Africa: it brought Soviet power and influence, partly in the form of Cuban troops, into the area in strength. Inevitably, Washington became concerned about the region's vulnerability to foreign influence. Kissinger wanted to prevent the whole of southern Africa from falling -- eventually, and almost by default -- into the Soviet orbit; he wanted to head off what appeared to be inevitable race war; and he wanted to create circumstances in which moderate black regimes would have a chance to endure. With these motives in mind, he met John Vorster twice this summer in Europe.
The South African Prime Minister, too, had been concerned about the drift toward conflict in southern Africa. He had previously tried, with some success, to establish trade and even diplomatic ties with black Africa. In time, he believed, black African countries would cease to regard South Africa as a pariah and would recognize that it had much in wealth and expertise to offer the black countries in return for detente. Like Rhodesia, South Africa has a white minority government; but while Rhodesia has 274,000 whites, South Africa has 4.3 million (as well as 18 million blacks, 2.4 million "coloreds" of mixed race and 800,000 Asians). Moreover, the whites of South Africa have been on the continent for more than 300 years and have no other homeland.
But Vorster's tentative efforts at detente with black Africa have been stalled by his unwillingness -- or inability -- to pursue a domestic detente with the blacks in his own country. This year black Africa was shocked by the rioting that broke out in Johannesburg's Soweto township in June and has continued sporadically in South Africa's black and colored townships ever since. At last count, 380 people have been killed in the violence since June, all but three of them nonwhite.
More than that, South Africa has been criticized for its close ties with Rhodesia and Namibia (or South West Africa), the onetime League of Nations-mandated territory that South Africa has ruled since 1920. In fact, the U.N. threatened to impose economic sanctions on South Africa this year unless Pretoria produced an independence plan for Namibia in a hurry. Vorster reluctantly concluded some time ago that he should bow to the inevitable and press for black majority rule in both Rhodesia and Namibia. Together, Vorster and Kissinger convinced Ian Smith during their meetings that he must give up his hopeless fight for his country's good.
Vorster had previously withdrawn helicopter pilots from Rhodesia; for several months, South African railways had been unable to handle Rhodesian exports on schedule. The next turn of the screw, if Pretoria deemed it necessary, could be a squeeze on the flow of imports, including arms. Smith understood that if Pretoria felt strongly that he must capitulate, he was finished.
On Namibia, Kissinger's job was to try to get South Africa and SWAPO (South West African People's Organization), the Namibian guerrilla organization that is recognized by the U.N., to sit down at the same conference table, perhaps in Geneva, and work out their differences. Though such a meeting is not yet scheduled, Kissinger believes it will take place soon.
Most of Vorster's acquaintances would agree that the dour Afrikaner is a strange leader for an age of reform. Says Chief Gatsha Buthelezi of the Zulus, South Africa's largest tribe: "When I'm in church and I'm singing, 1 love not to see the distant scene: one step enough for me,' I think of John Vorster. He's not prepared to go far enough." Adds one of Vorster's own Cabinet ministers: "John's heart has always been in the ox-wagon wing of the party. His head told him it was time to be more liberal, but the heart still rules him." A year ago, Vorster was regarded as belonging to the verligte (enlightened, or moderate) wing of the party; but since the Soweto rioting began, the center of the ruling National Party has shown a greater willingness to compromise; Vorster has hardly budged at all.
In fact, Vorster seems to have decided to sacrifice the Smith regime in Rhodesia and accept independence for Namibia in a gamble that these moves will buy time for him to put into effect Pretoria's own strategy for survival. This does not involve greater integration of the blacks in the country's economic and political life; on the contrary, Vorster's strategy seems to be to complete the original South African blueprint for "separate development" of the races known as apartheid (Afrikaans for "separateness"). Hoping to perpetuate the political power of the whites, who form only 17% of the South African population, the regime plans to convert nine tribal homelands within South Africa's borders into "independent states." South Africa's blacks will be assigned citizenship -- including the 10 million who live not in the homelands but in "white" South Africa. Simultaneously, they would be stripped of their South African citizenship.
On Oct. 26, the Transkei (pronounced tran-sky), ancestral home of 3.3 million Xhosa tribesmen, will become the first of these homelands to be granted "full and free" independence. But South Africa will still control its security, its telecommunications and immigration. Forty-five percent of all Transkeians, and 80% of its adult males, will continue to work "abroad" in South Africa, which is just as well, because there are few jobs at home. After independence, the state's ruler, Paramount Chief Kaiser Matanzima, will ask South Africa to give the Transkei more land to ease overcrowding (together, the nine homelands have only 13% of South Africa's land area). Pretoria is expected to refuse, on the rather arch grounds that such a request would amount to interference by a foreign state in South Africa's internal affairs.
The Transkei is lucky, in a way, because it is divided into only two parts. The homeland of Boputha Tswana consists of 19 scattered parcels of land, though these will eventually be consolidated into six pieces. The Zulu homeland of KwaZulu was originally in 188 parcels, is now in 29, and will ultimately be consolidated to ten. Scoffs Buthelezi, who is also the Chief Minister of KwaZulu: "A state in ten separate pieces? The very notion is nonsensical." Buthelezi has flatly refused independence for KwaZulu, explaining: "It is meaningless political freedom combined with effective economic slavery." Adds Hudson Ntsanwisi, Chief Minister of poverty-ridden Gazankulu: "We are nothing but a staging ground for South Africa's migratory labor, and a dumping ground for her dispossessed."
While Vorster intends to pursue basic apartheid, including the homelands plan, the system of regulations that South Africans call "petty apartheid" is slowly flaking away. Park benches are now integrated in most cities, and elevator apartheid has almost disappeared; interracial sports are permitted on a limited basis. Blacks are moving into jobs formerly reserved for whites (computer technicians, bank tellers, railroad switchmen), but equal pay for equal work is still a rarity. The average white salary remains twelve times the average black one, and the government spends 17 times as much to educate a white child as a black one. The government has made a few business concessions to coloreds and Asians -- the right to equal opportunity with whites in the civil service, for instance, and to serve on racially mixed union boards -- but these did not apply to blacks.
Given the rising anger among South Africa's black population, the long-term outlook for the Vorster regime's strategy for survival is uncertain, to say the least. An American official, after talking last month with the Chief Ministers of some of the homelands, whom he had presumed to be moderates, exclaimed: "If these are the moderates, I hope I never meet the radicals; there was blood in their eyes."
Even if the homelands policy works as a device for deflecting future claims by blacks to power in Pretoria, it will do nothing to ameliorate a more immediate problem for the regime: growing anti-white rage among the urban blacks needed to run the South African economy. In Soweto (pop. 1 million), near Johannesburg, less than a third of the blacks' dwellings have electric lights; less than a tenth have running water. In the slum sections, robbery and rape are commonplace; says a woman from the Naledi section of Soweto: "I pray we could have daylight for all 24 hours; people die here when it gets dark."
"I used to be able to take white friends there," a black reporter told a white colleague recently, "and they would be welcome. But if I smuggled you in now, there would be trouble." Last month, when a white commission went to Soweto to investigate the rioting, its members got some straight talk from Tolica J. Makhaya, the council chairman (or mayor). "You are facing the last generation of blacks who are willing to negotiate," Makhaya declared. "The younger generation is calling us fools because we achieve nothing. You must meet with black leaders the government has detained, and talk with them, because black people now regard these men as their leaders."
If black unrest continues to mount, as seems likely, the Vorster regime could face problems within its own constituency. White business, deep in recession, depends heavily on black labor (90% of total employment in both agriculture and mining, 68% in service industries). But because of the slump, black unemployment is approaching 2 million. Even the Afrikaans press is calling for reform, attacking the tough pass laws (requiring every black over 16 to carry a passbook at all times) as "unjust humiliation." In the meantime, however, South Africans have taken out more than 200,000 new firearms licenses in the past year, bringing the total to nearly 1.2 million for the 4.3 million whites. "If I had them," boasts a Johannesburg gunsmith, "I could sell 1,000 pistols today."
The specter is a somber one: of frightened individuals preparing for a racial Armageddon. In Rhodesia, no group has been more willful and less realistic than the whites, who refused throughout the 1960s to consider the alternative path of an orderly transition to majority rule. It is good for them, for the Rhodesian blacks, and for just about everybody else that the wrongheaded rebellion is at an end, and the financial "safety net" will certainly ease the blow. Yet, as members of Kissinger's flying squad of negotiators acknowledged, there was something poignant about the way Smith finally bowed to the inevitable -- and to the unknown.
One U.S. diplomat present reflected that these events were taking place on such alien soil: in a Western democracy the rights of a minority are protected, and a minority usually has a chance of becoming a majority; in an African setting, where parties and governments and dynasties are determined by race (or even tribe), a decision taken today by a Smith or a Vorster is irrevocable. Obviously, the Rhodesian white minority had no right to think that it could rule indefinitely. Yet, as the whites well knew, there are precious few black-ruled states in Africa where the whites who stayed behind have been able to retain their full rights of citizenship.
The prospects for white-ruled Rhodesia after it becomes black Zimbabwe rest squarely on the ability of the nationalist factions to unite around a responsible leader. A decade ago, white settlers all over Africa shuddered at the thought of "another Congo" in their midst. Today, African observers wonder if in the splintered makeup of the Rhodesian nationalists there could be the seeds of another Angola. As always in Africa, the qualities of the man who emerges as leader will be all-important -- in determining whether the country will undergo an orderly transition, and whether enough whites will remain to help run the civil service, the ranches, the stores and industries. If this sequence of events occurs, Zimbabwe could become a showcase African state. If it does not, the situation could breed disaster not only for Zimbabwe's own citizens but for its neighbors as well.
South Africa's future is no less uncertain. By the end of 1978, when black governments are supposed to be in place in both Zimbabwe and Namibia, South Africa will be surrounded by black-ruled independent states, whose politics and willingness to coexist with white power in Pretoria are still to be determined. How much can Vorster salvage of the South African way of life? The right to remain in Africa, certainly: all parties acknowledge that, with their 300-year tradition in southern Africa, the Afrikaners and their latter-day countrymen, the English-speaking South Africans, have as much right to the land as the Bantu peoples who migrated down from the north.
Can Vorster also preserve apartheid -- or "plural democracy," as some of his colleagues have taken to calling it? Over the long run, can he preserve minority rule? That seems unlikely: it would be, in fact, an open invitation to interference from his neighbors or from any foreign power that happened to fancy a little low-risk mischiefmaking. Geopolitical predictions in Africa have always been risky; now the realities have all but reached the Cape of Good Hope. If, by the end of 1978, Vorster has failed to make a significant step toward ending his country's discrimination against the non-white 83%, he may well face for the first time the threat of invasion.
Ian Smith's capitulation in Salisbury may have bought Pretoria's whites sometime, as Vorster plainly hopes, but it may also have presented him with a time limit. It is conceivable that Vorster and his fellow Afrikaners have just two good years in which to set their besieged house in order. If they fail to do so, they may one day discover, as Ian Douglas Smith and his colleagues recently did, that events can simply brush them aside.
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