Rampage of Protest

The black population of Rhodesia has been conspicuously silent since 1965, when the territory's white-minority government unilaterally decided to break away from British rule. Last week the blacks--whom Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith has called "the happiest Africans in the world"--went on a rampage. For three consecutive nights more than 8,000 angry Africans rioted in Gwelo, Rhodesia's fourth largest city, burning buildings and hurling stones at white-owned cars. The trouble spread to Salisbury's Harare township and to Bulawayo, Fort Victoria and Umtali, where eight blacks were killed by police gunfire. By week's end 18 persons were dead (including two white helicopter crewmen) and at least 80 wounded.

The rioting was the black population's response to Britain's 20-man Pearce Commission, which had arrived in Rhodesia a few days earlier. The task of the commission, which was headed by Lord Pearce, a retired appellate judge, was to assess whether the Rhodesian people, both black and white, would accept or reject the settlement that had been proposed by Smith and British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home (TIME, Dec. 6). In theory at least, the settlement would lead to a very gradual increase in black political power.

At the first news of the commission's visit, a group of blacks--some of whom had only recently been released from detention--formed a new organization called the African National Council, which was aimed at uniting black opposition to the proposed settlement. The council's efforts were so successful that the commission hardly managed to talk to a single large African audience last week.

The commission was also frustrated by the tactics of the Smith government, which had agreed to its presence but tried to limit its effectiveness. Smith refused to allow the commission to take a vote among the blacks. He also forbade public meetings to discuss the proposals in the tribal trust areas where most blacks live, and refused to permit a meeting between the commission and long-imprisoned African Leader Ndabaningi Sithole.

After the start of rioting, the government arrested more than 200 Africans on various charges. It also picked up Garfield Todd, the widely respected former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, and his daughter Judith, 29, and imprisoned them under the preventive-detention law. Their only offense appeared to have been their outspoken opposition to the proposed settlement.

Dream's End. The week's events were acutely embarrassing to the British government. As Britain's M.P.s know, the failure of the Pearce Commission to complete its eight-week survey in Rhodesia will surely spell an end to the Tory government's dream of a relatively painless settlement with Rhodesia.

Perhaps an even more important element, in the long run, is the fact that the long-dormant and virtually powerless Africans had stood up en masse and confronted the government, and had done so with minimal organization. If the blacks begin to stand up to it, how long can Smith's white-supremacy government hold out?

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