Salisbury: The Power Passes

Africa's newest black-led nation, Zimbabwe Rhodesia, officially came into being last week, and 88 years of white rule ended. At midnight on May 31, power passed quietly and without fanfare from outgoing Prime Minister Ian Smith, who had guided Rhodesia's white minority regime for more than 15 years, to Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who will lead a black majority government in which whites have retained substantial powers.

There was little celebration, though, even among blacks. In his first official act, Muzorewa swore in his 16-member Cabinet, composed of eleven black and five white ministers, and offered the "hand of fellowship" to the guerrillas of the Patriotic Front, led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, asking them to lay down their arms under a government amnesty. It was an invitation not likely to be accepted.

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