One Step Closer to Black Rule

The danger is that the fighting may turn into all-out civil war

We 're trying to put things right, but the battle carries on. What a time, what a time it's been.

What a time, indeed. The current ballad by Rhodesian Singer Clem Tholet reflected the country's mood as Tholet's father-in-law, who happens to be Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith, led his white countrymen one step closer to black majority rule. Last week, at Smith's urging, white Rhodesians went to the polls to approve by a wide margin a new constitution under which rule is to pass from the country's 240,000 whites to its 6.4 million blacks. The transition will take place after the whites, along with 2.8 million black voters, approve a new government in another election scheduled for April 20.

Smith, who had spent two weeks touring the embattled country, professed to be delighted that 85% of the 67,000 voters had supported his position in the referendum. "I had faith in the Rhodesian people to face up to the realities of life," he declared. "The result is even better than expected."

In truth, however, it had been a somber campaign. Smith's audiences no longer expected the speeches about preserving the "Rhodesian way of life" that had once characterized his campaign style. As he traveled through guerrilla-hit cities, towns and farming areas, his message was unadorned: "We have no other choice. This constitution is the best deal we can hope for. I'd rate our chances of success at a little more than 50%."

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 had helped to bring Rhodesia to its present impasse.

One of 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, the police and army for at least ten years. Though they will obviously have far less power than in the days when they ran the whole show, they will not be doing too badly for a group that presently constitutes less than 4% of the Rhodesian population.

Even the 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 the way.

The gravest problem, however, is that Rhodesia is still wracked by guerrilla war, and there is no end in sight. Twelve thousand black and white Rhodesians have been killed in six years of fighting; of those, 500 died last month alone, making January the third worst month for casualties since the war began. Almost 90% of the country is under one form or another of martial law; most people travel by convoy, with or without military escort, and most are armed. The Patriotic Front, headed by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, has 12,000 guerrillas inside Rhodesia and thousands more in neighboring Mozambique and Zambia. The prospect is that it will fight on as long as it thinks it has a chance of coming to power in Salisbury. Western governments and several other interested parties made overtures last year to coax Nkomo into abandoning Mugabe and joining the interim Rhodesian regime. The efforts failed. Dismissing last week's results and the April election as well, Nkomo scathingly told TIME: "The people will have won the war by April."

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 for power. Small wonder, then, that more than 13,000 of Rhodesia's dwindling number of whites chose to emigrate last year, and that between now and the April elections another 10,000 are expected to leave.

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