Rhodesia: The Hanging of Hopes

"I have been hanging people for years, but I have never had all this fuss before."

Called to do the honors from the roadside restaurant he owns, Edward ("Lofty") Milton, 54, Rhodesia's part-time public executioner, was professionally incapable of understanding the commotion. While African women clustered outside Salisbury's Central Prison and uttered the mournful wail of the Shona tribe, "Wayehe, wayehe" ("Please, God"), Milton sprang the traps on the prison's gallows last week and sent three Rhodesian blacks spinning into eternity. Then, returning to the pleased white patrons of his Zambezi Valley café, he sent off a postcard to a friend: "Three in one this time." He signed it "The Dropper."

The world did not look on with such equanimity. The executions were not only Rhodesia's first since its breakaway from Britain 28 months ago, but were made in open defiance of British authority and in disregard of a royal reprieve for the three men. No doubt existed about the guilt of the men, two of whom, James Dhlamini and Victor Mlambo, had murdered a white farmer in a Mau Mau-style ambush and the third of whom, Duly Shadrack, had axed a native chief to death in the bush. But by blatantly ignoring the mercy move of Queen Elizabeth, to whom they still claimed to profess fealty, the leaders of the runaway colony also applied the hangman's noose to the few fragile hopes that still remained for a reconciliation with Britain,

"Essentially Evil." Under a stringent new Law and Order Maintenance Act that makes even the possession of terrorist weapons a capital offense, the number of Africans awaiting execution in Rhodesia has risen to 115 since se cession (v. only twelve before). Prime Minister Ian Smith's white minority regime, unsure of its authority and fearful of casting itself in the role of judicial murderer, had refrained from carrying out the sentences. Then, two weeks ago, Rhodesia's high court ruled that the noose could be used, since the Smith regime was a de facto government. British Prime Minister Harold Wilson's Labor government thereupon asked the Queen to intercede, but her plea was rejected by the Rhodesian high court. "Her Majesty is quite powerless in this matter," said Rhodesian Chief Justice Sir Hugh Beadle, who had hitherto been known as a "Queen's man" for arguing that Rhodesia must maintain residual links with the Crown.

The executions caused a wave of revulsion. In the British Parliament, Smith and his government were condemned as "traitors" and "gangsters," and demands were made that they be punished. Prime Minister Wilson bitterly assailed the Rhodesian leaders as "essentially evil," and in Rome Pope Paul VI deplored their indifference to "reasons of humanity." At the United Nations, the U.S., which had just denied Smith a visitor's visa, called the executions an "outrageous act." Black African nations unleashed an oratorical storm, calling on Britain and the U.N. Security Council to use force if necessary to prevent more executions.