Word: rhodesia
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AFTER SEVERAL MONTHS of negotiations, Ian Smith and the three black leaders who agreed to talk with him have apparently reached a settlement, which is supposed to be the beginning of a slow transition to majority rule in Rhodesia...
Many details, particularly on the makeup of a transition government, remain to be worked out. Moreover, the plan must be ratified in a referendum by Rhodesia's white voters. The proposal does, however, lay out the basic blueprint for a constitution, offering both new voting rights to the country's 6.4 million blacks and strong guarantees to its 268,000 whites. Chief among the stipulations is a new 100-seat Parliament, in which 28 seats would be reserved for whites for ten years, most to be elected under a formula that ensures domination by Smith...
...three black leaders-Bishop Abel Muzorewa, 52; the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, 57; and Senator Jeremiah Chirau, 54-are generally conceded to command a broad following among Rhodesia's blacks. Muzorewa, an American-educated Methodist minister and leader of the United African National Council, was welcomed back by a crowd of 200,000 in Salisbury last year, when he decided to return from his self-imposed exile to help work out a settlement. Sithole (who was traveling and thus was represented at last week's talks by a colleague, Elliot Gabella) does not enjoy Muzorewa's popularity...
...settlement may pose a sticky dilemma for the U.S. and Britain, which have been trying to negotiate a transfer of power in Rhodesia that would include Nkomo and Mugabe. British Foreign Secretary David Owen, for example, has been sharply critical of the talks between Salisbury and the moderate black nationalists. But last week he responded to a barrage of Tory questions in the House of Commons by conceding that the agreement is "a significant step toward majority rule...
...five years since Rhodesia declared that it was officially at war, the army has changed greatly. In many respects, the struggle resembles a World War II campaign in an African setting. There are battered green Dakota aircraft, ration packs, small base camps of whitewashed canteens and dusty beer halls, tin-roofed headquarters rooms with map-covered walls and the whine of heavy trucks stripping their gears in the red clay sludge that passes for roads. Rhodesia's 9,000-man army is less than a U.S. Army division in strength, and its war is still mainly fought...