A Cash Price for Peace?

RHODESIA IS SUPER, the signs around Salisbury still proclaim, but the billboard bravado sounds ever more hollow. Last week, for the first time since guerrilla fighting broke out against the white-minority regime 44 months ago, a major terrorist attack touched the capital itself. The attackers, presumably black insurgents, hurled grenades into a crowded downtown restaurant and at a nightclub, injuring at least two whites and throwing the city and its police into a brief but telling panic.

Almost as shocking to the country's 276,000 whites--outnumbered 25 to 1 by Rhodesia's blacks--were some new signs of the cost of their effort to hang on to minority rule. The budget tabled by Prime Minister Ian Smith's government last week earmarked about $200 million for defense and security--up 40% over last year and 300% since the fighting began in 1972. At the same time the Smith regime chopped the amount of money emigrants are allowed to take out of the country, from $8,000 to $1,600 --an effort to stem a growing white flight that has cut the settler population by nearly 1% in just six months.

"The accelerating exodus of whites," reports TIME Correspondent Lee Griggs, "reflects the shattered confidence and mounting hardships in their community. For example, near the 800-mile border with Mozambique, across which black insurgents have been infiltrating, curfews have been imposed, and road convoys move under armed guards. In Salisbury, FOR SALE signs keep sprouting on houses everywhere, and there is a run on such portable investments as diamonds and rare stamps. A young Rhodesian, preparing to slip out of the country illegally, explained, 'I have to leave almost everything behind, but it will be worth it. This country is doomed. I'll take my chances elsewhere.' Of those remaining, many are doing so only because they have no choice. One resident of the capital pointed to his modest bungalow and told me, 'This is all we have in the world, but I couldn't give it away right now. For better or worse, we are stuck here.' "

So desperate is the regime for manpower that it has been recruiting heavily in the U.S., Britain, France and West Germany for volunteers for its armed forces and now admits having "several hundred" of them in uniform. Salisbury needs these new recruits, for the rebels have been growing bolder. Increasingly, they are directly tackling defense units, firing on military convoys and attacking border posts. To make matters worse for Smith's forces, Zambia has decided to let guerrillas operate along its own 400-mile border with Rhodesia.

Transition Plan. Although some senior Rhodesian security-force officers privately concede the war is unwinnable and urge Smith to negotiate with moderate black leaders like Joshua Nkomo, the Prime Minister's sole concession to the blacks has been the appointment of a commission to explore ways of reducing "unnecessary" racial discrimination. Smith, however, last week rejected most of the commission's recommendations, such as allowing blacks to buy land in white farming areas and permitting them to set up businesses in white urban areas. Among the few proposals he accepts is one that would repeal laws that prevent blacks from drinking in white urban areas after 7 p.m.

Fearful that Smith's stubbornness will result in a violent showdown with the overwhelming black majority, U.S. and British diplomats are working on a plan to purchase, in effect, white acceptance of an early peaceful transition to black rule. Still in the drafting stage, the scheme might seek to commit Britain, other members of the Common Market, the U.S. and states neighboring on Rhodesia legally, financially and even militarily to guarantee a bloodless solution to the Rhodesian problem. Rhodesia's whites and black tribal minorities might be offered a "safety net" composed of a floor price for their farm land, safeguards for their pensions and financial assistance if they emigrate.

This safety net would certainly be among the issues discussed by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and South African Prime Minister John Vorster if the two decide to continue the talks they began in West Germany in June. They could possibly meet again in early August while Kissinger is visiting Iran. But would the safety net work if adopted?

There is a successful precedent. In the early 1960s the British helped head off a prolonged civil war in Kenya by promising to compensate the white settlers who wanted to leave for the loss of their unsalable homes and farms. That program so far has cost Britain about $50 million, and a Rhodesian version could prove even more expensive.

But such a financial net would probably be welcomed by many Rhodesian whites, not only those who would want to take the money and run but also those who would want to stay but would be fearful of what would happen to their property under black rule. Chief among the stayers might be many of Rhodesia's 6,000 white farmers, who have consistently blocked movement toward majority rule. One of them, the owner of a 10,000-acre corn and cattle spread near Selukwe in the Rhodesian midlands, happens to be Ian Smith.

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