Word: smiths
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...hundred miles to the west in Salisbury, Rhodesia's pleasant, tree-lined capital, a "troopie" wearing the black beret of Prime Minister Ian Smith's security forces looked up from his post on downtown Jameson Avenue as the season's first dark rain clouds came scudding over the rooftops. "Damn," he said, scowling to his partner. "I was hoping it would hold off a bit longer. The 'terrs' [white Rhodesians' shorthand for terrorists] will be tougher than ever in the rains this year...
...high season for guerrilla warfare begins with the November rains. This year, however, the guerrillas' intentions were just one of many new uncertainties facing Rhodesia's 6.1 million blacks and 274,000 whites. Prime Minister Smith, following Henry Kissinger's dazzling diplomatic foray into southern Africa, had agreed to yield power to his country's black majority in two years time. His decision raised the possibility that Rhodesia ? as well as much of the rest of southern Africa ? might be poised on the brink of peace instead of a race war that was once thought inevitable...
...Smith's capitulation in Salisbury may have bought Pretoria's whites sometime, as Vorster plainly hopes, but it may also have presented him with a time limit. It is conceivable that Vorster and his fellow Afrikaners have just two good years in which to set their besieged house in order. If they fail to do so, they may one day discover, as Ian Douglas Smith and his colleagues recently did, that events can simply brush them aside...
...chance for peace in Rhodesia is still only that ? a chance. Kissinger's main accomplishment ? and it was a significant one ? was persuading Smith that he had no realistic choice but to accept a British plan, which he had earlier rejected, that would lead Rhodesia to black majority rule within two years. But a settlement that will bring an end to the guerrilla war smoldering along Rhodesia's 800-mile border with Mozambique and 400-mile border with Zambia is by no means a certainty. That war, which began in earnest in December 1972, may well continue...
Before announcing his regime's acceptance of black majority rule on Rhodesian radio and television two weeks ago, Smith took care to prepare his 20,000-man armed forces for the blow. He called senior commanders to Salisbury and had them briefed on the terms of the settlement; the commanders in turn told the enlisted men. It is not yet clear just how the troopies have taken the news, but morale is reported to be low (see box page...