The World: POISED BETWEEN PEACE AND WAR

(10 of 10)

The prospects for white-ruled Rhodesia after it becomes black Zimbabwe rest squarely on the ability of the nationalist factions to unite around a responsible leader. A decade ago, white settlers all over Africa shuddered at the thought of "another Congo" in their midst. Today, African observers wonder if in the splintered makeup of the Rhodesian nationalists there could be the seeds of another Angola. As always in Africa, the qualities of the man who emerges as leader will be all-important — in determining whether the country will undergo an orderly transition, and whether enough whites will remain to help run the civil service, the ranches, the stores and industries. If this sequence of events occurs, Zimbabwe could become a showcase African state. If it does not, the situation could breed disaster not only for Zimbabwe's own citizens but for its neighbors as well.

South Africa's future is no less uncertain. By the end of 1978, when black governments are supposed to be in place in both Zimbabwe and Namibia, South Africa will be surrounded by black-ruled independent states, whose politics and willingness to coexist with white power in Pretoria are still to be determined. How much can Vorster salvage of the South African way of life? The right to remain in Africa, certainly: all parties acknowledge that, with their 300-year tradition in southern Africa, the Afrikaners and their latter-day countrymen, the English-speaking South Africans, have as much right to the land as the Bantu peoples who migrated down from the north.

Can Vorster also preserve apartheid — or "plural democracy," as some of his colleagues have taken to calling it? Over the long run, can he preserve minority rule? That seems unlikely: it would be, in fact, an open invitation to interference from his neighbors or from any foreign power that happened to fancy a little low-risk mischiefmaking. Geopolitical predictions in Africa have always been risky; now the realities have all but reached the Cape of Good Hope. If, by the end of 1978, Vorster has failed to make a significant step toward ending his country's discrimination against the non-white 83%, he may well face for the first time the threat of invasion.

Ian Smith's capitulation in Salisbury may have bought Pretoria's whites sometime, as Vorster plainly hopes, but it may also have presented him with a time limit. It is conceivable that Vorster and his fellow Afrikaners have just two good years in which to set their besieged house in order. If they fail to do so, they may one day discover, as Ian Douglas Smith and his colleagues recently did, that events can simply brush them aside.