Seeds of Political Destruction

A new crisis follows a secret meeting and a massacre

It was a genuine horror story, calculated to make the most alarming of Rhodesian doomsday prophecies seem true. As a blood-red sun was sinking behind the thorn trees on the Zambezi escarpment, a lumbering Air Rhodesia Viscount airliner took off from Kariba on a flight to Salisbury. Ten minutes later the pilot, John Hood, 36, reported that he had lost control of his starboard engines. "We're going in," he radioed. In a few moments, his craft crashed into the thick bushland of the Whamira Hills.

Of the 56 people on board, 38 died in the crash. Five of the 18 survivors struggled free and left immediately in search of water. Three of the remaining 13 were miraculously spared by hiding when, half an hour later, nine armed guerrilla soldiers arrived. "It's only because I know a terrorist when I see one that I'm still alive," recalled Anthony Hill, 39, an army reservist. He hid in the bush. At first the guerrillas, clad in jungle green uniforms, seemed friendly, promising help. But then they herded together the ten people at the wreckage, robbed them of their valuables, and finally cut them down with automatic weapons fire. From another hiding place, businessman Hans Hansen and his wife Diana could hear the victims crying, "Please don't shoot us!" as the firing began. Dazed by the ordeal, Hansen said later: "I'll never be able to get that moment out of my mind."

From his headquarters in neighboring Zambia, Joshua Nkomo, co-leader of the Patriotic Front guerrillas, denied that his troops had slain the ten survivors of the crash, but proudly boasted that his men had indeed shot down the plane. Such civilian craft, he claimed, were sometimes used by the Salisbury government for military missions. Rhodesian authorities at first denied that the plane had been shot down, but after four days of investigation confirmed that it had been hit by a heat-seeking missile, presumably an SA-7 of the kind the Soviet Union has been supplying the guerrillas.

The incident turned the tense mood of Salisbury uglier than ever. Middle-aged businessmen talked of taking up arms. A group of whites in a mixed Salisbury bar, fingering the triggers of rifles, ordered blacks who sat beside them to get out. The blacks did not tarry. Rumors circulated that two young whites, after hearing of the massacre, stopped their car and shot the first black man they saw. In Parliament, a backbencher called for martial law and general mobilization, and blustered that Africa was about to see "its first race of really angry white men." Almost certainly there would be acts of vengeance by the Rhodesian armed forces, probably in the form of retaliatory raids against guerrilla camps in Zambia and Mozambique. Even many whites who had begun to seem receptive to the idea of eventual black rule in Rhodesia wondered, after hearing Nkomo claim responsibility for the air crash in a BBC interview, wondered anew whether there could be a political agreement with him.

Ironically, such an agreement was exactly what Prime Minister Ian Smith had been seeking when he met secretly with Nkomo in Lusaka, Zambia, last month. Convinced that his "internal settlement" with three moderate black leaders had failed because it had not brought an end to the fighting, Smith had flown to the Zambian capital to see Nkomo on Aug. 14. Smith urged Nkomo to join the Salisbury government and thereby, in effect, dump his Marxist co-leader of the Patriotic Front, Robert Mugabe. In return, Smith promised to help Nkomo become the first President of an independent Zimbabwe, as the country will be known, and at that time Nkomo's guerrillas would merge with the existing security forces.

The meeting was a risky undertaking for all concerned. Smith was acting without the consent of his partners on the Executive Council, notably Bishop Abel Muzorewa and the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, who had joined the interim government last March. Nkomo was acting without the support of his colleague, Mugabe. And Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda was hosting the meeting without the express approval of his fellow "frontline" Presidents (Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Samora Machel of Mozambique, Agostinho Neto of Angola and Seretse Khama of Botswana), with whom he has been jointly seeking a Rhodesian settlement.

There were several sticking points, notably the question of the makeup of the future army. Smith wanted his Rhodesian security forces to remain in control during the transition period, which could last several months and perhaps a year. Nkomo insisted that the guerrillas should be in charge. Mugabe arrived in Lusaka several days later, was briefed on the Smith meeting by Nigerian officials involved in the negotiations, and then sought the advice of several other African leaders. Both Nyerere and Machel argued that Smith was not really prepared to withdraw in favor of a Patriotic Front-dominated government, and that the price of the Front's cooperation should be a letter of resignation by Smith. It was Nyerere who revealed to the press on Sept. 1 that the secret meeting had taken place. Nkomo at first denied the report as "a load of rubbish." Later he reluctantly confirmed it.

The showdown came when the five front-line Presidents and the Patriotic Front leaders assembled in Lusaka. Kaunda and Angolan President Neto defended Nkomo's action in meeting with Smith, reasoning that any contacts that could end the war and bring the Front to power should be encouraged. Nyerere and Machel accused Nkomo of trying to reach a private agreement with Smith at the expense of Mugabe, and insisted that any negotiation should be conducted through the British government as the legal colonial power in Rhodesia. At one point during the acrimonious nine-hour meeting, Nkomo shouted: "I haven't come here to be attacked!"

The summit ended the next day, with bitter denunciations. When Nyerere announced that the front-line states had agreed not to arrange any further direct contacts with Smith, Nkomo angrily retorted: "Nyerere is not the final authority on what may happen in Zimbabwe. He can't tell us what to do." Under "certain conditions," added Nkomo, he would talk with Smith again.

But Smith's ability to engage in such negotiations was seriously compromised by increasing Rhodesian anger over the air-crash massacre. When he and his wife arrived at the Anglican Cathedral in Salisbury to attend a memorial service for the victims, two men in the crowd of whites outside held banners reading: "Prime Minister, give Nkomo a message from us when you meet him secretly next time: 'Go to hell, you murdering bastard.' "

Responding to the popular mood, Smith told his Parliament that he would soon take "positive and firm" measures that would not be popular with the outside world; presumably he meant attacks on guerrilla bases in Zambia and Mozambique. His government also announced that because of the security situation, elections that were supposed to be held by Dec. 31 would have to be postponed for two or three months.

The week's events left every significant political alliance in the Rhodesian crisis under serious strain. Smith has angered his Executive Council colleagues, one of whose aides called him a traitor. After such a split, he may find it difficult to count on their future support. One danger, in fact, is that an angry Muzorewa might one day decide to bolt to the Patriotic Front. As for Nkomo and Mugabe, they are more suspicious of each other than ever before. Even their mentors, the leaders of the front-line states, are now divided by a serious dispute.

One of the more troubling aspects of the latest crisis was the light it threw on Joshua Nkomo. Until now, it had been assumed by many that the pragmatic and ambitious Nkomo was the strongest candidate to lead an independent Zimbabwe --even though, as a member of the minority Matabele tribe, he would lack the wholehearted support of the powerful Mashona peoples, who form about 80% of the country's population. But Nkomo's performance last week, in the aftermath of the crash and the massacre, raised new doubts about his qualifications for national leadership.

Britain's Foreign Secretary David Owen put the best light on a sorry situation when he observed that even as the Rhodesians "now have the seeds of their future prosperity within their grasp, so they also have the seeds of their destruction." The problem was that, with every alliance weakened by the latest events, it was hard to imagine which individual or group would be strong enough to make the next move toward a settlement. .

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