The Land of Opportunity

New immigrants try to cash in on the country's plight

In Salisbury, the balmy, slumberous capital of Rhodesia, the question these days is not whether the blacks will take over, but when. The bitter guerrilla war against black nationalist soldiers drags on, and Salisbury has begun to take on a Belfast look: bags are searched, windows are taped, and bomb posters are everywhere. For Rhodesia's white minority, the latest Anglo-American peace initiatives--even if successful--will lead only to the inevitability of black rule. Thus thousands of whites are packing up, selling their houses and cars (at huge losses), and emigrating to South Africa and beyond on the "chicken run" (TIME, Aug. 1).

Surprisingly enough, there are still buyers for some of those abandoned houses. Every day, about 15 to 20 whites arrive at Salisbury's airport to make Rhodesia their home--perhaps only for a few months, perhaps longer if their luck holds. Hundreds more show up every month to look around, but are rejected as immigrants because of their lack of job skills. "It's a crazy world," admits one Rhodesian immigration official.

Some of the newcomers are ideologues bent on saving white Rhodesia in its last hours of peril. The country now has embryonic chapters of both the John Birch Society and the American Nazi party. There is a bearded ex-Minuteman who claims he is still "on the lam from the feds" in the U.S. Another is an American peddler who spent months trying unsuccessfully to sell bulletproof vests. "Let's face it," says a longtime American res ident, "if they're losers in the States, they're going to be double losers out here. They all figure that because of the pressure the country's under they'll recoup their losses in an eleventh-hour windfall."

Few of the new arrivals seem motivated by the challenge of building a new, multiracial Zimbabwe; on the contrary, they seem to relish the fading trappings of white supremacy. Says a recently arrived young Englishman: "I'm sick of the situation in Britain, the unions, the high taxes, the lack of opportunity." William McBurnie, 32, a diesel fitter from the Protestant town of Ballymena in Northern Ireland, began work last week in Bindura, a farming community 40 miles from Salisbury. "I have a great respect for [Prime Minister] Ian Smith and the way the government stands up for the army and the Europeans here," he says. "The soldier is a lot better treated here than he is in Ulster. I hope to join up myself. It's a great way to see the country."

Rhodesia's bottomed-out economy has also enticed a band of bargain hunters seeking a cheap way to live in a style they could not afford anywhere else. Despite the disruptions brought on by the war, they find Rhodesia disarmingly serene--no more troubled than other countries with rural insurgencies, including Viet Nam in the early '60s. Rhodesian products, notably the excellent $1.50 steaks, remain cheap by world standards. Houses and rich farm property are available at fire-sale prices. One foreign resident in Salisbury just paid $42,000 for a six-bedroom house on two acres, complete with pool, tennis court and sauna.

At these prices, aided by last week's 6% devaluation, Rhodesia's carpetbaggers can pocket half their paychecks of $1,200 to $1,500 monthly earned in such critically labor-short industries as mining and engineering. Mining jobs are available to immigrants who can produce proof of having worked only 200 shaft hours. Such alien adventurers are often as undesirable as redneck mercenaries. Says one supervisor at a Rhodesian iron mine: "It's easy work. The niggers dig all the holes. You just stand over them."

None of the new immigrants, however, are as likely to succeed as the more farsighted speculators who are willing to bet on a black-inspired boom to come. The logic is fairly simple: if there is a peaceful transition to nationalist government, then the country's long economic drought under United Nations' sanctions will come abruptly to an end. Real estate, agriculture, tobacco, mining, even tourism--all should experience a quick revival. Companies from Stuttgart to Nagasaki have been sending semisecret scouting missions to Salisbury. "Zimbabwe is going to be the biggest boom country you've ever seen," burbles one enthusiastic investor. "The nationalists seem to feel it too. They don't want to drive the white man out. They just want to be part of the action."

Perhaps the best-known new Rhodesian is Robin Moore, author of The Green Berets and French Connection. He became an ardent defender of the white Rhodesian cause when he bought a house in Salisbury last year, and has cast himself in the role of "unofficial ambassador" for the American community. "I don't doubt that a lot of these types are the wrong people coming in for the wrong reasons," Moore said last week. "But some of them will permanently affect what happens to this place."

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