State of Siege

At night the floodlights shine from rural houses while watchmen peer through barred windows for a glimpse of intruders. During the day, gun-bearing farmers vary the routine of their chores so that no sniper can plan an ambush. Though only twelve civilians have been killed so far, the six-month-old black insurgency in northeastern Rhodesia has already raised serious doubts about the future of Ian Smith's white supremacist government.

The Rhodesian army has set up scores of its barbed-wire-encrusted bunkers to protect vulnerable airstrips and command posts, and light planes scour the rough terrain to search for suspicious activity. To make their search easier, the government is evicting 15,000 resident blacks and creating a ten-mile-wide cordon sanitaire along Rhodesia's 800-mile frontier with the Portuguese colony of Mozambique, the springboard for most of the guerrilla activity.

There apparently are only about 150 guerrillas operating in the northeast, but they are well trained, well armed and well motivated, and they find willing part-time recruits in the local villages. A year ago most Africans would have informed on the guerrillas. As a result of Smith's repression--which includes beatings and fines for collaboration with the guerrillas--many Africans now cooperate with the insurgents or actively help them.

The troubles have created a siege mentality even in Salisbury, the country's booming modern capital. After surviving the United Nations economic sanctions, imposed because of the country's break from Great Britain, the city is awakening to an unexpected threat from the black majority. "If the government hasn't the bloody sense to seek a realistic agreement with the Africans, terrorism will get worse and so will race relations generally," predicts Sir Roy Welensky, last Prime Minister (1956-63) of the old British-dominated federation of Rhodesia, Zambia and Malawi. "Change is coming, and the government cannot stop it. It is up to Smith whether it comes peacefully--or whether we get our throats cut."

Guerrilla Fighters. The alternative to the guerrillas seems to lie in the African National Council, a moderate group headed by a bespectacled Methodist churchman, Bishop Abel Muzorewa. "We are not pressing for majority rule right away," says Muzorewa. "Majority rule after a reasonable time is perfectly acceptable." Muzorewa's "reasonable time" does not stretch, however, to 2033, the date cited by whites as the earliest possibility for black majority rule. "Everything depends on the good will of the present regime," Muzorewa adds, "but, sadly, good will is not now apparent." Indeed, the regime has not only broken off talks with Muzorewa, but moved even closer to a South African type of racial apartheid. South Africa has already sent 700 of its own police to help Smith fight the guerrillas, and Smith reportedly has asked for even more. As a reflection of Smith's tough policy, three blacks who had brought weapons into Rhodesia were hanged in Salisbury last week.

With a white population of only 267,000 and a black majority of 5,500,000, Rhodesia will find it harder than South Africa to cow its militant blacks. And many whites, like Welensky, are beginning to realize the dangers of repression. Since the fighting began, white opponents of the regime have formed their own party, the Rhodesia Party, to counter Smith's Rhodesian Front. In its first electoral test last May, the new party made a surprisingly good showing with a third of the votes in a rural district by-election. Last week Rhodesia's five Catholic bishops, all of them white, openly joined the opposition. They said that they would not obey laws requiring priests to receive government permission before going to churches on territory restricted to Africans. "No Christian can pay homage to an un-Christian law," said Father Richard Randolph, the bishops' spokesman.

A majority of whites still support Smith--the Rhodesian Parliament last week renewed his state-of-emergency powers for another year--but the guerrillas and their sympathizers may yet persuade them to settle--or find a new Prime Minister.

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