THE PRESS MONDAY, APRIL 9, 1979. Watching the Rhodesian poll

Press, 9 April 1979, Page 20

THE PRESS MONDAY, APRIL 9, 1979. Watching the Rhodesian poll

Rhodesians Oi all races go to the polls in a little more than a week in the country's first election on the basis of one man, one vote. The date has been brought forward from that first announced in an attempt to frustrate the guerrillas’ plans to disrupt the polling. Even so, voting will be spread over several days so that Rhodesia’s hardpressed security forces can be moved from place to place to protect candidates, electors, and polling booths.

Almost certainly, the guerrillas will not seriously hamper the voting, although they will probably be able to keep a considerable number of blacks from voting, either by persuasion or coercion. in the more remote tribal areas. But equally certainly, the election will not stop the war.

The new Government will have a black Prime Minister and a black majority in Parliament and the Cabinet: it will be much more than a black veneer with the same old whites holding on to power behind the scenes. For all that, to persuade his white electorate to accept the election at all, the present Prime Minister, Mr Smith, has had to build numerous safeguards for Rhodesia’s white minority into the new constitution. These safeguards provide the guerrillas with an excuse to condemn the election, which they certainly could not have won, had they agreed to participate. The continuing political power of Rhodesia’s whites also ensures that the rest of the world will hesitate, perhaps for a long time, before recognising the new Government or lifting economic sanctions against Rhodesia. If the new Government is not recognised, especially by the United States and Britain, the war will continue Indefinitely. An uneasy balance has been struck in which the two groups of guerrillas in the Patriotic Front are able to prevent effective administration from Salisbury in much of the country, but are unable to beat the Rhodesian forces in battle. After the election, black support for the Government will almost certainly increase. But the morale of the small white contingent in Rhodesia’s army, the backbone of the country’s armed forces, is likely to suffer. Already, some white Rhodesians are asking why they should risk their lives to defend a black Government which, eventually, might still turn on the country’s white settlers.

There are signs, however, that some influential politicians in Britain and the United States would welcome an opportunity to recognise the new rulers in Salisbury The American Congress has decided to send a team of 50 observers to examine how free and fair the elections really are. The move had the support of Con-

gressmen with widely divergent views. Some hope that a verdict of a "fair vote” will allow the United States to lift sanctions against Rhodesia; others hope that the vote will be so manifestly unfair that the United States will be confirmed in its policy of having nothing to do with any constitution or Government which has the approval of Rhodesia’s whites. In the end, the American observers will almost certainly be divided on the merits of what they have seen.

The British Government has condemned the Rhodesian election and the Foreign Secretary (Dr Owen) made a belated attempt to persuade all the parties to a conference instead. But Dr Owen and his Government must themselves face electors on May 3, by which time the results of the Rhodesian poll will only just be known. The British Conservative Party has already decided to send observers to Rhodesia to assess the election There must be a good chance that the Conservatives will win the election in Britain and, if they do, there will be very strong pressure within the party for recognition of the validity of the Rhodesian vote. If one major Western country accepts the Rhodesian poll as having been as fair as could be expected in the difficult circumstances, others would almost certainly follow. The attractions of open trading with Rhodesia remain very strong for, in spite of years of war, the country is still one of the most prosperous in Africa. That prosperity has enabled the Government to keep fighting for so long: it also makes the fight more bitter for the rewards of victory will be enormous. The guerrillas in Rhodesia are frequently accused of being Communists, or Communist dominated. This might be true in the sense that they have drawn much of their training and material support from the Soviet Union. But their ideology is not Communist. The “New York Times” recently quoted a white Rhodesian Left-winger as saying that “in Marxist terms, what is happening here is an attempt by the black bourgeoisie to take over from the white bourgeoisie, using the young peasants to fight for them.” Greed is hardly a sufficient motive to explain the length and bitterness of the Rhodesian war, but it needs to be kept in mind when assessing the results of next week’s attempt to hand over a substantial chunk of political power to black Rhodesians who are co-operating with the whites. Rhodesia’s white settlers have already shed a substantial part of their privileged position. The election will determine whether they have gone far enough to satisfy a majority of Rhodesia’s blacks, and to satisfy the political leaders in the West on whom the country’s fate still, finally, depends.