FOUR WHO MIGHT LEAD

Assuming Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith makes good on his promise to cede power to his country's black majority, a number of Africans will be in line for the leadership. The four main contenders:

JOSHUA NKOMO, 59, is president of the domestic faction of the African National Council (A.N.C.), the most moderate of Rhodesia's black nationalist organizations. He is the grand old man of black politics in Rhodesia. A relaxed, friendly politician of the flesh-pressing school, Nkomo is the only one of the four who has lived in the country during the past year. Says he: "It is very hard to win an election from the outside."

The least militant of the black leaders, Nkomo has friendly ties with white Rhodesian businessmen and occasionally travels aboard corporate jets owned by Western firms.

Nkomo has actively pursued majority rule in Rhodesia for a quarter-century. A former union leader (he has been a carpenter and a railway worker), he spent eleven years in various forms of detention. He was a founding member in 1952 of the once significant African National Congress and became its president; when it was banned in 1959, he resurfaced as founder of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), which soon became the focus of activism for Rhodesia's black liberationists. Nkomo has been the primary spokesman for Rhodesia's blacks, traveling often to Britain and once to the U.N. as an unofficial foreign minister to plead for majority rule.

Nkomo has strong support in the rural tribal regions and a tightly organized core of followers elsewhere. He is a friend of Zambia's Kenneth Kaunda, Tanzania's Julius Nyerere and Botswana's Seretse Khama, and he is at least on speaking terms with the front-line five's two Marxist firebrands, Samora Machel of Mozambique and Agostinho Neto of Angola. With ties to both the minority Matabele and majority Mashona tribes and a solid political organization all over Rhodesia, Nkomo seems well placed.

ROBERT MUGABE, 51, is the least known, the most radical and potentially the most powerful of the contenders. A publicity-shy former schoolteacher, he has influence among the 8,000 or so freedom fighters of the Mozambique-based Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA), spearhead of the Rhodesian guerrilla movement. Mugabe has the strong backing of Mozambique's Machel and Angola's Neto because he vows to continue the war until majority rule actually becomes fact.

Mugabe was once a deputy to Joshua Nkomo, but in 1963 he broke with Nkomo and ZAPU to help found the rival and more extreme Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), under the leadership of the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole.

Mugabe is the only one of the contenders who has actually spent time with guerrillas in the field and, reportedly, has even taken part in cross-border raids. But Mugabe is not necessarily the dominant figure in the guerrilla movement. Guerrilla military operations are apparently planned and executed by a largely anonymous 18-member high command that sticks close to the base camps in Mozambique.

BISHOP ABEL MUZOREWA, 51, is leader of the African National Council's exile faction and the first black Methodist Bishop of Rhodesia. With ZANU and ZAPU both banned, the mild-mannered Muzorewa became chairman of the council upon its formation in 1971 as the sole legal, black political group in Rhodesia. He had little opposition, since most other nationalists were in jail. Muzorewa is the only major nationalist leader to have escaped a prison term, but he went into voluntary exile 15 months ago, after the failure of a summit conference between Ian Smith and black leaders that was aimed at producing majority rule. During Muzorewa's absence he lost leadership of one faction of the A.N.C. to Joshua Nkomo. Muzorewa returned to Rhodesia last week to rally his forces for a showdown with Nkomo. Muzorewa is popular among urban blacks, particularly in Salisbury, but his nationwide support is probably not so great as Nkomo's.

THE REV. NDABANINGI SITHOLE, 56, is a Methodist minister who joined Nkomo's ZAPU in 1962 but soon broke away with Mugabe to found ZANU. Reportedly diabetic and epileptic, Sithole's star now seems to be waning. Yet he remains a factor in the calculus of Rhodesia's future.

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