Preparing to Live with History

Beginning the countdown to a fateful election

You should have no fear. Our security forces will protect you before, during and after you have voted.

With that grim radio appeal to Rhodesia's 2.8 million black voters, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, one of the three black moderate leaders of the country's interim government, focused on the regime's most immediate problem. That problem is how, in a country torn by guerrilla war, to get a convincing number of blacks to turn out for the April 12 to 24 election period, which is intended to establish Salisbury's version of black majority rule.

Muzorewa and his two black associates, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole and Tribal Chief Jeremiah Chirau, need a large voter turnout in order to lend credibility to the election. Along with their white colleague, Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith, architect of the country's "internal settlement," they are anxious to counter the intense resistance to the poll being mounted by more than 10,500 guerrillas of the Patriotic Front.

Two weeks ago, the white-dominated, 66-seat Parliament that had been a symbol of minority rule for years closed for the last time. If all proceeds as planned, next month's election will return a new, 100-member Assembly that will have 72 black and 28 white members. Though Smith will run for a seat and hopes for a Cabinet post, the next Prime Minister of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, as the country is to be known, will almost certainly be Muzorewa, who leads the largest of the black nationalist parties. Even so, only South Africa has agreed to recognize the majority regime after the April vote. Neither the U.S. nor Britain is likely to support the new entity.

In Washington last week Assistant Secretary of State Richard Moose explained the Administration's position to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in response to a proposal by two Senators that the U.S. send observers to monitor the Rhodesian vote. Moose said that the U.S. opposed the election because the Patriotic Front was excluded from it and the new government might not be supported by black Rhodesians or international opinion. In fact, under the new constitution, whites will still dominate the army, judiciary and civil service. Moose feared that the election might lead to an escalation of the guerrilla war and direct involvement by "outside powers," meaning Cuba and the Soviet Union.

Ironically, the war has expanded since the internal settlement was signed in March 1978. At that time Smith's black nationalist colleagues promised that it would end within weeks. Military and civilian casualties have mounted from 13 a day then to nearly 50 a day now. Last week, for the first time, a park area in Salisbury itself was under a dusk-to-dawn curfew. In the eastern highlands on the Mozambique border, fleeing white farmers have abandoned some 160,000 acres of farm land, or about 10% of the acreage under cultivation; the 6,500 who remain tend their acres from within fortress-like arrays of fences, and travel through the bush in vehicles built to withstand mine explosions. Increasingly, the Rhodesian military has resorted to sending its jets on bombing raids on guerrilla camps in Zambia and Angola. Last week one such raid into Angola, according to the Patriotic Front, killed 192 and wounded nearly 1,000 guerrillas and civilians.

Rhodesian officials claim that their troops can prevent the guerrillas from seriously threatening the government for a long time. They say that the guerrillas lack adequate arms and food inside Rhodesia and suffer from the harassing tactics of black antiguerrilla "auxiliary armies" recruited by Muzorewa and Sithole. Another factor is the growing rivalry between the two Patriotic Front leaders, Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe.

Still, the problems that the Patriotic Front faces are minor compared with Salisbury's plight. The war, which is costing the government more than $1 million a day, has bled the country's once healthy treasury and devastated the countryside. The white population, now down to 240,000, continues to shrink at the rate of 1,000 a month, as more settlers pack up and leave. Virtually ruined is Rhodesia's tourist industry, as a result of the shooting down of two Viscount airliners within six months by SA-7 missiles.

In the face of such perils, Rhodesia's black nationalists and whites find themselves drawing closer together. A prominent white leader in Salisbury told TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter that most remaining whites were still living in "cloud-cuckooland," but that they had at last begun to focus on politics and survival. Finally, he said, the whites "have reached a situation where they have got to find a way to make this country work." To ensure maximum security, a general mobilization of white military-age Rhodesian men (18-60) has been announced for the period April 12 to 24. Voting booths will be airlifted by helicopter out into remote areas.

Smith aims to get at least 50% of the eligible blacks to vote. He evidently wants to point to a substantial turnout as proof that the new government is no sham. This, he reckons, might make it harder for Washington and London to continue to withhold recognition and maintain economic sanctions against the regime.

Smith also says that he is ready to discuss Rhodesia's future at an all-party conference even if it means calling off the April election. That is a safe offer, since both Nkomo and Mugabe have already refused to take part in such a meeting. But to TIME'S McWhirter, Smith insisted: "If the British and American governments suddenly jumped out of bed today or tomorrow and said 'Stop it! Stop it! We'll call a conference,' then maybe something could be done. But now time is running out and we will soon come to a stage where there is no going back, when you've just got to live with history." For both blacks and whites in Rhodesia, that cohabitation is likely to be turbulent.

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