A Bizarre Venue

Other diplomatic meetings have been held in railway cars--the signing of the World War I armistice in the Compiegne Forest, for instance, and the 1940 surrender of France, staged at the same spot and in the same car. But never has a meeting been held in a railway car straddling the border between two countries in the middle of a bridge 310 ft. above a churning river, and just downstream from one of the world's mightiest waterfalls.

The bridge in question overlooks the mile-wide Victoria Falls, whose plunge off a black basalt cliff into the Zambezi River creates a column of spray more than 1,000 ft. high that gives rise to the African name for the cascade: Mosi-oa-tunya (the smoke that thunders). A white line halfway across the 657-ft.-long bridge marks the border between Rhodesia and Zambia. Directly over that line, the Rhodesian government of Prime Minister Ian Smith and the black leaders of the country's African National Council will meet next week. Their purpose: to begin negotiations that will pave the way for black majority rule.

Vorster's Bite. It was to avoid black rule that Smith broke away from Britain and issued his Unilateral Declaration of Independence nearly ten years ago. For a while, Rhodesia managed to get along pretty well on its own. But since 1972 it has been badly hurt. A spreading guerrilla war has taken nearly 1,000 lives. The worldwide recession proved devastating to an economy already damaged by a decade of international sanctions. Despite his troubles, Smith, 56, a gentleman cattle farmer, said defiantly only six weeks ago: "I don't accept the principle of government based on color." Black nationalists replied that Rhodesia already had a government based on color: 85,000 of its 273,000 whites are able to vote, but only 7,500 of its 5.8 million blacks.

In recent months, South African Prime Minister John Vorster has tried several times to persuade Smith to come to terms with the black leadership. After a vain effort in June, one African National Council official complained: "Vorster is barking at Smith when he should be biting him."

Two weeks ago, Vorster stopped barking and bit. For over a year Vorster has been trying to achieve detente between South Africa and Black Africa. The black states, he hoped, would countenance continued white rule in South Africa in return for his country's aid and technology. With the collapse of Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique and Angola, Vorster realized that his cordon sanitaire of white-ruled states was disintegrating. He also realized that South Africa could hardly afford to prop up the Smith regime in the event of an all-out racial war in Rhodesia. Accordingly, he ordered the last of some 2,000 South African paramilitary police out of Rhodesia. He may also withdraw the South African-owned fleet of 50-odd Alouette helicopters that have played an important role in Rhodesia's struggle to hold the guerrillas at bay.

Vorster's move helped to end nine months of quibbling between Smith and the black leaders over a venue for the start of the talks. Smith insisted that they be held inside Rhodesia; the A.N.C. wanted them held elsewhere because at least two of its officials in exile, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole and James Chikerema, were subject to arrest on charges of subversion if they returned to Rhodesia. Hence the bizarre venue astride the Rhodesian-Zambian border. The South

African government helpfully offered the six-car "white train" of its state president for the meeting. The train's dining car, complete with a large table of indigenous South African stinkwood, will be parked with its midpoint on the borderline. Smith will be able to sit on the Rhodesian side of the stinkwood table and never leave his country. The mild-mannered Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa and other A.N.C. leaders can sit on the Zambian side and never set foot in Rhodesia.

Women Recruits. The meeting is coming none too soon, since the fighting is likely to step up after the rains begin in late October. Some 3,000 African guerrillas are now ranged against Rhodesia and another 5,000 are training in southern Tanzania and central Mozambique. To increase its 12,700-member armed forces, Rhodesia has scrapped college deferments, hired unknown numbers of foreign "volunteers" and last month began to recruit women for the first time.

Though the A.N.C.'s leaders are deeply divided, they are united on the principle of black majority rule. In the forthcoming talks, Smith is expected to offer a three-stage plan leading to a Rhodesian federation that would contain two black regions and one white region. "A year ago," reports TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs, "the betting among Rhodesian whites was that majority rule might not be established for 20 years. Six months ago, the betting was ten years. Only two months ago, it was five years. And now it is three years." All bets are off, naturally, if the talks aboard that luxury railway car are prematurely derailed.

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