Chimurenga and the Chicken Run

The leathery-faced Rhodesian tobacco farmer who sat sipping tea in the spacious lobby of Salisbury's Meikles Hotel had an automatic rifle slung incongruously across his lap. "If it comes to it," he told friends loudly, "I'll give up the farm, retreat here and pick off the buggers as they come through that door." Though still maintaining a confident front, reports TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs after a visit to Salisbury, white Rhodesia is becoming deeply demoralized. Last week's vote by the U.S. Congress to repeal the Byrd Amendment, under which the U.S. has been importing Rhodesian chrome since 1972 in violation of U.N. sanctions, will have little effect on the Rhodesian economy, since U.N. sanctions are being violated clandestinely by dozens of countries, including the Soviet Union. As a symbol, however, the U.S. action was the latest in a series of jolts to the Rhodesians' battered morale. Griggs' report:

Salisbury and other Rhodesian cities are still secure. But much of the countryside--particularly in the eastern districts that face Mozambique--is subject to attack from increasingly well-armed guerrillas who terrorize black villages, assault sandbagged and floodlit white farmhouses with rockets and mortars, sabotage the two rail lines to South Africa, and plant mines on paved as well as dirt roads. Traffic moves in armed convoys on many main highways, and it is a rare farmer in Rhodesia today who does not carry in his car an automatic rifle or even a "rhogun," the local adaptation of Israel's Uzi submachine gun. Very little moves after dark, aside from guerrilla and security-force patrols engaged in their deadly game of hide and seek.

The insurgency, which the guerrillas call chimurenga (liberation war in Shona, the principal Bantu language in Rhodesia) is now in its fifth year. It is spreading like a malignancy. "It's worse this week than last," an off-duty "troopie" (soldier) declared in a Salisbury bar, "and worse this year than last." Nearly 2,600 guerrillas have been killed since the war began, but at least 2,000 remain active inside Rhodesia, 3,000 are based just outside the borders and thousands more are undergoing training in neighboring countries. The government's defense effort has benefited from the performance of several predominantly black counterinsurgency units, like the Selous Scouts, a Rhodesian version of the Green Berets. Nonetheless, the "kill ratio" of the Rhodesian forces over the guerrillas has dropped in recent months from 10 to 1 to about 5 to 1, and the Rhodesians are losing men at three times the rate of a year ago. Says a security officer somberly: "We simply cannot afford to take casualties at the current rate for very long."

Dads' Army. To strengthen its forces, which are now about two-thirds black, Rhodesia has abolished virtually all deferments and started calling up a "dads' army" in the 38-to-50 age group. It has also recruited about 1,000 "volunteers" from foreign countries. The largest foreign contingent is British, and there are at least 100 Americans, most of them Viet Nam veterans. Since they face possible loss of their U.S. citizenship for fighting in Rhodesia, the Americans are reluctant to disclose their real names. One, who calls himself Jimmy Smith, praises his fellow fighting men, both black and white, but adds, "It's like swatting mosquitoes. You kill a bunch and hold off another bunch, but there are so many around that a few always get through and bite you."

Meanwhile, the government's efforts to achieve a political settlement remain stalemated. Prime Minister Ian Smith is still committed, under the "Kissinger plan," to a transition to African majority rule by September 1978--but largely on his own terms. His plan is to bypass the guerrilla organizations, notably the Patriotic Front headed by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, and make a deal with black moderates. To improve the climate of negotiation, he recently pushed through Rhodesia's Parliament a bill to reduce discrimination. Under the new law, racial restrictions in hotels and restaurants are theoretically abolished, and the country's 6.2 million blacks are now allowed to buy millions of acres of prime farm land formerly reserved for the 270,000 whites. One catch: few blacks (who earn an average income of $565 per year, v. $8,200 for the average white) can afford the land.

Ideally, Smith would like to deal with Bishop Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council. So far, Muzorewa (who is currently in Europe, presumably on a fund-raising trip) has refused to negotiate, though he might be willing to do so if he could avoid being branded a traitor by the Patriotic Front. Muzorewa has no guerrilla organization and practically no support from neighboring African states, but he is undeniably popular in Rhodesia and is hailed at rallies in Salisbury's huge Highfield township as "the black Moses." In the event of a broadly based plebiscite, Muzorewa might well win out over other nationalist leaders, including Nkomo and Mugabe. The problem is that his election would not bring an end to the guerrilla war; in fact, it might very well intensify the fighting.

Growing Outflow. So the war goes on. To cover the rising costs, the government has just raised taxes again. "If the future is to be meaningful," says Finance and Posts Minister David Smith, "all sectors will have to make sacrifices." Yet more and more white Rhodesians seem to feel they have sacrificed enough. Last year the white population declined officially by 7,000 through emigration, but the real exodus was considerably larger. In recent months, thousands of whites have left the country, ostensibly on vacation or business trips, and simply failed to return. They have abandoned homes, jobs and most of their belongings as the price of getting out without red tape or without having to serve in the security forces before being allowed to emigrate legally. The growing outflow through Salisbury Airport has become known throughout Rhodesia as the "Chicken Run."

Confiding that he plans to "do a bugout" soon, a Salisbury executive says: "The family's already in South Africa on holiday, and I'll go out on a business trip. And we'll never come back. Rhodesia was a wonderful place for many years, but now the good life here is over." The T shirts for sale in Salisbury still say "Rhodesia is super," but a secretary who wears one on weekends observes: "Two years ago, I believed in Rhodesia. A year ago, I could still hope without fooling myself. But now I'm a candidate for the Chicken Run."

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