Word: smiths
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...deny that Rhodesians are united," said jubilant Prime Minister Ian Smith. Presumably he meant white Rhodesians only-and if so, his victory statement was right on. In what may be the last election under Rhodesia's present constitution, Smith's ruling Rhodesian Front Party won all 50 parliamentary seats reserved for the country's 268,000 whites (the 6.4 million blacks have 16) and 86% of the popular vote. The right-wing Rhodesian Action Party, which had accused Smith of preparing a "capitulation" to some sort of black participation in government, drew only 9% of the vote...
There was good news and bad news in Smith's unexpectedly sweeping triumph. The good news is that the vast majority of whites now seem to agree that only a settlement, and not an intensification of the five-year-old guerrilla war, can solve the crisis. The bad news is that, with his impressive mandate, Smith will be free to seek the kind of settlement he wants-a settlement that Britain and the U.S. are convinced cannot work because it ignores the nationalist factions that are waging war against the white regime...
Alarmed as never before (see box next page), the whites closed ranks behind the man they call "good old Smithy." "Let's face it," says Asbestos Mineworker Henry O'Hara, who emigrated from Ireland 31 years ago at the age of seven, "Smith's done a damn good job for twelve years. I don't see why he shouldn't have another twelve-long enough for my kids to grow up." O'Hara approves of Smith's concept of "power sharing" between whites and moderate blacks. But who would be in the driver...
...course. But heads of the "frontline" African states that support the guerrillas have made it clear that 1) no settlement in Rhodesia is possible with Smith in charge, and 2) the war will go on if leaders of the militant Patriotic Front are excluded from the transition process. Another, and more immediate problem is whether any moderate black leaders will agree to discuss Smith's plan. Already both Bishop Abel Muzorewa and the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, the most important nationalist leaders inside the country, have said that they will refuse to join the "broader based" Cabinet that Smith...
That gloomy prospect was clearly in the minds of two roving envoys who landed in Salisbury the morning after the ballots were counted: Britain's Foreign Secretary, Dr. David Owen, and Washington's Ambassador to the United Nations, Andrew Young. Their mission was to present Smith with a new Anglo-American proposal for a Rhodesian settlement-and from the beginning they had little hope that he would heed...