Word: rhodesians
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Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had already decided to send three new emissaries to southern Africa. One will concentrate on the problem of Namibia (South West Africa), another will be dispatched to a number of African capitals to discuss the Rhodesian question. The third, Assistant Under Secretary Derek Day, will go to Salisbury in an effort, as Lord Carrington put it, to develop "the closest possible contacts with Bishop Muzorewa and his colleagues." This fact-finding mission will probably last until after the opening of the Commonwealth Conference in Lusaka, Zambia, in early August, thereby relieving the Thatcher government...
...wire services get these facts into most of their stories, but they don't explore the sordid details. Instead, they write amazingly sympathetic stories slanted toward the brave-whites-fighting-off-savage-hordes-in-darkest-Africa line. This spring, for instance, after the guerillas had shot down a Rhodesian Airways plane, Burns hopped the next flight and wrote about the whites gulping down the whiskey straight and nervously joking while the pilot did evasive maneuvers. Such brave folk...
That plan went awry last year when Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith made a shrewd deal with three moderate black politicians to form an interim black-white government and prepare the country for his own version of black majority rule. That version enables the country's 212,000 whites to have a disproportionately large representation in Parliament and retain control over the police, the army, the judiciary and the civil service for at least ten years. Last month's elections, though far from perfect, were successful to the extent that they produced a black Prime Minister...
Secretary of State Cyrus Vance was due to be in London for three days this week, primarily to discuss the Rhodesian problem with the new British Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington. Both men will be scratching hard for some new ideas. Indeed, one Foreign Office veteran wonders if either Carrington or Vance will say to the other, "Have you thought up any dodge that I haven't thought...
...sanctions can be delayed until after the Organization of African Unity's meeting in July and, more important from London's point of view, the Commonwealth Conference in Lusaka Zambia, in early August. Similarly, President Carter is being urged by some oi his advisers to welcome the Rhodesian elections as a step in the right direction. After that, these advisers believe, the Administration should wait three or four months before taking any action to see how things go in the new Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, both in terms of the war and majority rule...