A Massive Rejection

"Our analysis will be entirely impartial," said Lord Pearce, the retired British jurist, when the 20-member Pearce Commission ended its eight-week fact-finding mission in Rhodesia in March. The commission's task was to determine whether or not Rhodesians favored an agreement worked out by Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith and British Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home to end the seven-year-old dispute over independence. The agreement called for British recognition of Smith's white-supremacist government and a snail's-pace apportionment of political power to Rhodesia's 5,000,000 blacks.

Two weeks ago, the Pearce Commission turned its completed report over to Douglas-Home. Though it will not be officially released until the end of the month, the word is already out that the commission found that "the people of Rhodesia as a whole" reject the settlement, and that black Africans "massively reject" it.

The report's conclusions constitute a rebuke to Smith, whose popularity among Rhodesia's whites has been declining recently. Last week in Salisbury he called a press conference to denounce the Pearce Commission as "a complete and utter farce." The findings also present a dilemma for Britain. Conceivably, Prime Minister Edward Heath could ignore the report and go ahead with the proposed settlement--thereby risking a violent reaction from Rhodesia's black majority as well as a bitter parliamentary debate. The only alternative would be to go back to the drawing board in search of a new settlement.

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