Make Peace or Face War

The war drums and possibly the death rattle may be sounding for Prime Minister Ian Smith's white racist regime in Rhodesia. From London, Washington, Pretoria and several capitals of black Africa, the message to Salisbury last week was the same: make a peaceful settlement now for early black majority rule or face a bitter "war of liberation" by blacks that could engulf all of southern Africa.

London dispatched a special emissary to Salisbury--Lord Greenhill, 62, former Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs. Presidents Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Seretse Khama of Botswana and Samora Machel of Mozambique warned that unless real progress was made "within weeks, not months," they would remove restraints from black Rhodesian guerrillas anxious to use their territories as a base for operations. Even South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster, a longtime backer of Smith, urged Salisbury to grant majority rule to Rhodesia's 5.8 million blacks (v. 273,000 whites); the alternative, he said, would be "too ghastly to contemplate."

Smith, 56, who came to power twelve years ago and then led Rhodesia's breakaway from Britain in 1965, has repeatedly pledged that "there will be no majority rule in my lifetime." He reiterated that hard-line stance last week, declaring "there can be no question of capitulating to demands for early black rule." But British Foreign Secretary James Callaghan has said that Smith must go "much further" toward majority rule in the British colony.

The most Smith has offered in talks currently under way between his government and the moderate African nationalist Joshua Nkomo is political parity at some definite future date through equal representation in Parliament, which now contains 50 whites and 16 blacks. The fear is that if the talks fail, Nkomo, in the words of one observer, will become "irrelevant." Then the militant black nationalists, who broke away from Nkomo's group last August, would almost certainly launch an all-out guerrilla invasion by the self-styled Zimbabwe Liberation Army. That army now has an estimated 10,000 guerrillas in Mozambique alone.

Since the first of the year, guerrilla activity against Smith's regime has been on the rise. Last week Rhodesia announced that its security forces had killed 24 guerrillas in "hot pursuit" along the Mozambique border, presumably meaning that the Rhodesians had entered Mozambican territory. The incident occurred twelve days after Mozambican President Machel had warned that he would invade Rhodesia if Mozambique's borders were violated.

Strained Economy. The hot pursuit of guerrillas into Mozambique seemed an almost suicidal provocation, since Smith's government, primarily for economic reasons, cannot afford to alienate Mozambique. Landlocked Rhodesia sends more than half its exports (principally tobacco, asbestos and nickel) through Mozambique to the Indian Ocean ports of Beira and Maputo (formerly Lourenc,o Marques); Machel could cut off those lifelines. Indeed, at week's end Mozambique authorities arrested 16 Rhodesian railwaymen at the border station of Malvernia, forcing Rhodesia to close the line to Maputo in protest (the Beira line was unaffected).

Salisbury has already been forced to raise its defense budget fourfold in the past three years, to $80 million--a big bite for a country already suffering from United Nations-sponsored economic sanctions. Calling up reservists to beef up Rhodesia's 4,500-man army and 1,500-man air force would further strain an unstable economy.

Smith is not likely to get much help from his old friend, South Africa's Vorster. After its unhappy intervention in Angola, which endangered its detente efforts with black Africa, the Pretoria government is not about to send troops into Rhodesia. "If it comes to that," a South African general recently told TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs, "there will certainly be some volunteers to go and fight, but we won't cross the Limpopo River [the South African-Rhodesian border]."

Smith remained adamant last week, and Lord Greenhill returned to London after only two days, evidently emptyhanded. Said one exasperated British expert: "The Rhodesians will give way to reason only when they become truly frightened, and that's a long way off."

Nonetheless, the British government was trying to enlist Washington and Pretoria in a joint diplomatic offensive to put pressure on Smith to yield--or resign. The message: the only way Soviet influence in black Africa can be contained is to satisfy the legitimate aspirations of Africa's black majorities.

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