Word: smiths
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Every audience had felt the devastating effect of the last six years of active guerrilla war. At the Sports Club in the farming area of Centenary where Smith spoke, the man who should have been the chairman, Gert Muller, had died in a rocket attack on his farm on New Year's Day. One woman told Smith that she had lost five relatives within six months. She was supporting him in this election, not out of enthusiasm so much as out of a grim and grudging acceptance of the inevitable...
Some of the sharpest criticism of Smith's policies came in the cities and towns, where terrorism is increasing. In Salisbury the Prime Minister was heckled by a group of ex-servicemen still committed to the idea of a military solution. Some critics called the referendum a "mandate for disaster," and one young veteran taunted Smith with the words of another current song: "Will someone tell us why we fight?/ Why what once was wrong is now what's right?" Nobody tried to explain that, by fighting off political change for so many years, the Smith government...
...Smith's immediate problems is to maintain some kind of unity in his interim government, in which he shares power with three moderate black leaders: Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Jeremiah Chirau. Many black supporters of these leaders have already expressed their displeasure over the amount of power that the whites will retain after a new government takes office following the April elections. The whites will still hold 28 of the 100 seats in Parliament and one-quarter of the Cabinet portfolios, and will retain a strong voice over the judiciary, the civil service...
...proposed name of the country under the new constitution reflects the continuing white influence. Until now, it has been assumed that, when Rhodesia passes to black rule, the country would become "Zimbabwe." But the present plan is that it will merely become "Zimbabwe-Rhodesia," a hyphenated abomination that angers Smith's black partners in the interim government and many of their supporters. A few cynics in Salisbury have suggested renaming the country Amnesia, after all the promises that have been forgotten along...
...Smith's hope is that the elections in Rhodesia may persuade the U.S., Britain and other Western governments to take the lead in ending the 13-year U.N. economic sanctions against his country. Once a new black government is accepted as legitimate by other nations, it might then be able to gain some military support, if only from South Africa and a few others, in fending off the guerrillas. A likelier prospect is that the guerrilla war will turn into a broader civil war as the various black factions, separated by tribal, personality and ideological divisions, battle each other...