SOUTHERN RHODESIA: Rough Weather

"No one in Southern Rhodesia need be afraid that what has happened in the Congo could possibly happen here." So said Southern Rhodesia's Prime Minister Sir Edgar Whitehead at the height of the Congo crisis. Whitehead was no prophet.

Last week, riots left eleven Africans dead in Bulawayo, the second largest city in Southern Rhodesia.

The trouble began in the capital city of Salisbury. Swooping down on the offices of the African National Democratic Party, Whitehead's security police raided the party's files, later arrested three of the party's top leaders. Explained Whitehead: "The policies of the N.D.P. are blatantly militant and anti-European." Whitehead's action needed no explanation. His United Federal Party holds only a shaky two-vote majority in the Southern Rhodesian Parliament over the extreme rightist Dominion Party,' which has been urging that Southern Rhodesia break up the Central African Federation by abandoning its ties to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. With the chaos in the Congo seemingly confirming the worst fears of white settlers in both major parties, Whitehead knew that any softness toward the Africans could topple his government. He apparently decided to get tough.

Place of Slaughter. But Whitehead's get-tough policy did not silence Salisbury's 175,000 Africans. From the black ghetto of Highfield, 5,000 Africans marched on the police station demanding that they be arrested as were the N.D.P. leaders. Next day a mass strike crippled Salisbury as 20,000 Africans descended on Whitehead's office in the city center. When the mob refused to disperse, the police lobbed tear-gas shells into their midst, scattering them in all directions.

An uneasy quiet returned to Salisbury. But in Bulawayo, which means Place of Slaughter, trouble still seethed. Government officials banned an N.D.P. meeting. Next day nearly three-quarters of the labor force went out on strike in protest and gangs of hooligans beat up Africans who refused to lay down their tools. In a drunken orgy of looting and burning, African thugs smashed into banks, post offices and welfare buildings, attacked even African-owned beerhalls and shops.

Brave Notion. As the flames of the burning African townships lit the sky around Bulawayo, police and Southern Rhodesian soldiers with fixed bayonets sealed off the African settlements, slowly began to close in. For three days the riots raged. Finally, as liquor supplies in the African quarters began to give out, order was restored. The eleven dead were the first Africans killed by white troops in Southern Rhodesia since the Mashona Rebellion was quelled in 1897.

Whitehead, hoping to prevent a repetition of the rioting, banned all political meetings for the next three months. But even some of Whitehead's own supporters admitted that he had badly miscalculated the mood and temper of Southern Rhodesia's Africans. From London, ex-Prime Minister Garfield Todd demanded that Britain suspend Southern Rhodesia's constitution, send in troops to enforce a change toward more liberal government. But this appeal outraged even Todd's own Central African Party, which promptly ousted him from leadership, probably ending the political effectiveness of the one major Southern Rhodesian leader who advocates real racial partnership.