Rhodesia: Wishes & Reality

• Share

The message came from Sir Humphrey Gibbs, who for five months has lived in virtual isolation as the British Governor of rebel Rhodesia. It was directed to Harold Wilson, and its contents were secret, but it sent Wilson's personal envoy Oliver Wright flying into Salisbury for talks with Prime Minister Ian Smith. What were the talks all about? "To see whether a basis for negotiations genuinely exists" was all that Wilson would tell the British Parliament last week, and Smith was equally evasive. "We are always prepared to take part in constructive discussions with anybody," he announced in Salisbury.

The mere fact that talks on any level had been resumed between Britain and its rebellious colony set off waves of wishful speculation. In London, Wilson claimed that the British oil blockade was finally bringing the Smith regime to its knees, adding that "there could be no negotiations if those negotiations meant accepting the illegal regime." In Salisbury, Smith intimated just the opposite: the British had finally realized that their economic sanctions were doomed to failure and were prepared to listen to the rebel whites' terms. "In no circumstances will we deviate from our principles," he said.

Amid all the unrealities, the Rhodesian crisis did enter a new phase last week. Smith's white security forces, led by helicopters, trapped a small band of guerrillas in the hills 85 miles northwest of Salisbury. Seven of the guerrillas were killed. Smith's government charged that they had all crossed the border from Zambia the week before. What ever their point of origin, the significance of the encounter was clear. For the first time since Smith seized inde pendence last November, Rhodesia's blacks were beginning to fight.