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It is just eleven years since Tan Smith's ruling Rhodesian Front Party made its Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain in order to avoid making any commitment to black majority rule. One after another, the other previous African colonies, despite their continued economic domination by Western imperialist countries. have achieved of self-determination. some measure For eleven years, the Rhodesian white minority, together with the racist apartheid regime in South Africa and the colonial regimes of fascist Portugal held the line against any devolution of power to the black majority.
Today, things are changing. Victorious liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau have brought about the downfall of Caetano in Portugal, secured their national independence and embarked upon farreaching programmes of social reform. In Rhodesia, the Zimbabwean freedom fighters of the ZAPU and ZANU factions of the African National Congress (ANC) have continued to step up their guerrilla activities. Out of the 170odd Rhodesian soldiers and police killed in action since 1972, more than half have met their deaths in the last nine months. What is more, with the level of white emigration now topping 800 a month, the military staying power of the Smith regime is being increasingly drained. Even in South Africa, massive demonstrations in the African townships have begun to show up the potential powder-keg on which Mr. Vorster's apartheid regime is perched.
This is the background to Henry Kissinger's attempt to bring "shuttlestop diplomacy" to Southern Africa to grasp "the last chance of negotiated settlement" • It also lies behind Mr. Vorster's sudden and belated conversion to the principle of majority rule in Rhodesia — but not in South Africa itself! An extension of the guerilla successes in the previous
Portuguese colonies into Zimbabwe (to use the African majority's name for the country the white settlers call Rhodesia) would give a massive boost to the armed struggle in South Africa itself. For Vorster, this would spell the end of the whole social, political and economic structure which his apartheid regime is built on. For the US government, and indeed the British government, it would threaten the vast profits of some 360 American and 500 British firms with investments in the mineral-rich, starvation-wage economy of South Africa.
It was, no doubt, the combination of the military pressure of the Zimbabwe freedom fighters and the diplomatic pressure of Kissinger, Vorster and Callaghan to which lan Smith was referring when he announced Rhodesian TV that "We" (the white minority) have go to face up to the realities and that some form of transfer to majority rule (but not necessarily black majority rule) was inevitable.
These harsh realities particularly the implicit threat that there will be no more support from South Africa will make it much more difficult for Smith to break off negotiations today in the way he did with Harold Wilson after the talks on HMS Tiger and Fearless in 1966 and 1968 or with ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo carlier this year. Despite the pledges of all guerrilla factions to keep on fighting at present, the greatest threat to the aspirations of the black majority in Zimbabwe for full democratic rights, political emancipation and economic equality may well come from a deal between Kissinger and Vorster and some of the ANC leaders politically closest to the overtly neo-colonialist regimes of black Africa, which sells out their final victory and that of their brothers and sisters in South Africa at the final hurdle.
STEVE KENNEDY