by Ian Smith
I was on the flightdeck for the take-off from Windhoek and the landing next morning at Zürich. While there I was able to listen to the 6 a.m. BBC news. We made a quick connection to Geneva, there was a short press interview at the airport, and a warm welcome back to the Rhône Hotel, where they had gone out of their way to accommodate us, and always shown great kindness. Having bathed, changed and lunched, I agreed to a meeting with Richard. Frank Wisner, the latest American representative, had sent me a note that he wished to see me urgently with a message from Kissinger that he wanted me to receive before seeing Richard. The note, however, did not arrive in time, and Richard’s secretary asked if the two of us could have a private meeting before joining the rest. I went along reluctantly, because it is an overplayed practice of trying to pre-condition a person with a bit of flattery or offering ‘confidential’ information which, in fact, is dished out to all and sundry, like toffees to children. There is a case for personal discussion if two prime ministers or leaders are holding meetings — but a private discussion with Richard?
There was a surprise: Richard introduced me to his wife, who had recently arrived. She was a pleasant lady, neat and trim. Richard mentioned his concern at some of my critical remarks referring to his conduct as chairman. I reminded him that I had a reputation of thinking carefully before expressing opinions, and reluctantly I had to assure him that I meant what I had said. The successful conclusion of our conference, the reason for our presence in Geneva, was the only matter of concern to me, I said. Sensitive personalities had to be put to one side. I reminded him that my country was suffering, that innocent people were being killed every day, unlike the comfortable life that others were living in Geneva or London. We had been hanging around this so-called conference for nearly two months, and the parties were further away from agreement than when we started. I reminded him that he had assured me on my departure for Rhodesia of his determination to bring the other parties to the table and insist on an acceptance of the five principles. In fact, the others had now taken a more extreme stance, and had placed themselves publicly in an impossible position. Second, during my absence he had given way on the question of setting a date for independence. Third, after assuring me that we were working to a common objective of dividing Nkomo and Mugabe, in order to move the latter out of the way, and having the assurance reiterated in a message he asked van der Byl to pass on to me in Salisbury, I was subsequently confronted with a press photograph of Richard coming out of a meeting with his arms around Nkomo and Mugabe, boasting of his success in uniting them in their common objective. Or at least, according to views expressed to me on a number of occasions by Richard, was it not Mugabe’s objective? All of this smacked of double standards, I said, and was leading us along the road to disaster. I simply wanted to know where I stood.
While I was talking it was clear that Richard was thinking hard, and he came back at me saying that he took issue with everything I had said. ‘Let me hear your case,’ I replied. He claimed that he had kept van der Byl in the picture during my absence, and that anything to the contrary was not factual. I asked if he was insinuating that I had been misled by my representatives? He demurred. Unless he could substantiate his claim, I warned, I must take exception. Moreover, I asked, what was the reason for our meeting in private? As he had questioned in particular the veracity of messages sent to me, I wished the other members of my team to be brought in so that we could hear both sides of the story. He concurred with my request.
When the others arrived, Richard stated that it was his intention to call a meeting of all delegates the next day, Thursday 9 December, to enable me to present my proposals for consideration. I was quick to inform him that I had no proposals for submission. He knew, and everybody knew, I declared, that my proposals were the same as on the day I arrived — the formal acceptance of the agreement — and this should have been finalised within two days. Strange as it might seem to him, I continued, my proposals did not change from day to day with the prevailing circumstances. We were sick and tired of the constant prevarication. I was ready to come to a meeting to implement the first step, i.e. the appointment of a council of state as accepted in the agreement we made in Pretoria. If he was suggesting a meeting to argue the pros and cons of setting up a council of state, that was a non-starter. I suggested that we retire for the night, and I would be ready to attend a meeting tomorrow in order to do what we had come for: implement the agreement.
The following morning, I had an early visit from the American Wisner with the message from Kissinger. There was nothing new in it, however: Kissinger simply hoped that reason would prevail and that we would succeed in finalising the agreement. As Wisner was travelling to London the next day to meet Kissinger, I was happy to send a message back to him that we had been waiting almost two months to sign the agreement and had been met by provocation and obstruction from the other side. To compound matters, Richard was playing a devious game, even to the extent of openly siding with the opponents of our agreement. Rhodesians were appalled, I concluded, that he had not even got them into the starting stalls as the first step in the exercise.
Later in the morning, we went back to see Richard to ascertain if there had been any progress. He repeated his wish for me to put my plan to a meeting of all delegations. I reiterated that he was wasting our time. As he well knew, my plan was the agreed plan, and I was patiently waiting for him to do his job. He was trying to use me as a decoy to draw the fire of their attacks away from him, the chairman, who had been charged with the task of getting the agreement accepted and signed. I regretted having to accuse him of cowardly behaviour. Was he prepared to hand over to me the chairmanship of the conference? If so, I would comply with his request. He looked disillusioned and depressed — I almost felt sorry for him.
Out of the blue, he stated that, because of my stand, he would be flying back to London that afternoon for consultation with Callaghan and Kissinger. This came as a relief. I thought maybe some sanity would be restored to our scene. As a parting shot I told him that all along it had been clear to us that he was operating on a tight rein from London which never worked. I added he should either have the courage to get on and do his job properly, or get out. I hoped he would put that message over clearly in London. He shuffled a bit, but did not disagree. When we departed he shook my hand warmly and said: ‘I hope we manage to work something out.’ I sometimes felt he agreed with me, but that the politicians in London were controlling events. And they were scared stiff of doing anything contrary to the wishes of the black delegations, as this would put them in the bad books of the OAU. We were surrounded by the press as we walked out, but I deliberately avoided saying anything which might make it more difficult for Richard in London.
While I waited for the British response, I had a very interesting meeting on Saturday 11 December with a Kenyan, Washington Nkulu, who was working for UN and had degrees from Cambridge and Yale. He had been persecuted on a number of occasions and had spent periods in prison for expressing views contrary to those of his government. His experience had been that he was treated well by his white prison supervisors, badly by the black. He was in touch with Nyerere, the real leader in that part of Africa, who was trying to help find a solution to the Rhodesian problem. I queried whether that solution would not be biased in favour of the black nationalists. He agreed, but added that the black governments in our part of the world desired to end the fighting and associated economic problems and therefore would not go too far in supporting the extremists. He said that the story which was being propagated in black circles was that I was untrustworthy and looked down on blacks, while his white friends told him the opposite. Especially of interest to him were some black professional people from Rhodesia who had informed him of their concern that we might go the same way as the rest of Africa around us, into bankruptcy and chaos and a one-party state with its denial of freedom. They tended to side with me and my philosophy of gradualism. He was pleased to meet me to try to make his own assessment. Spe
aking as a black African, he had to concede the inadequacies of his own people. They lacked compassion, maturity, balance, those important ingredients of civilised man, and the politicians were easy prey to corruption and power hunger. He explained that the northern presidents, chiefly Nyerere and Kaunda, believed that Nkomo, as the father of African nationalism in our country, was the best man to support as leader, working together with Muzorewa. I pointed out that they had missed the boat at the Victoria Falls Bridge conference, again at the talks I had with Nkomo at the beginning of the following year in Salisbury, and now they had once again missed an opportunity. I said that Richard would not have attempted to bring together Nkomo and Mugabe, to the exclusion of Muzorewa, as he only the last week had done, without the concurrence of Kaunda and Nyerere. I hoped that I did not appear arrogant when I said that, if these people had only listened to me, our problem would have been settled years ago. Sad to say that they had even taken John Vorster for a ride on more than one occasion, and we were about to witness a repeat of this now. What was particularly galling to Rhodesians, I said, was that we were being used as a pawn in the game, and on each occasion history had proved that we had been right in our assessment, and our so-called friends had been wrong. My visitor thanked me for giving him a refreshing and interesting view of the African scene. He said he would be visiting Nyerere the following week, and would pass my views on to him.
On Sunday 12 December, we received a message from the British saying that it seemed Richard would not be receiving prompt answers to his problems, so I informed them that we could not go on waiting indefinitely for something which might or might not happen, so we would return home. Moreover, our delegation had now been in Geneva for over two months, and with Christmas approaching it was time for them to rejoin their families. I met Richard that afternoon and was told that the new British Foreign Secretary, Anthony Crosland, would announce in the British Parliament on Tuesday 14 December that the conference would be adjourned for a short while. It was never reconvened.
Even the press corps was beginning to lose interest, and so were happy to hold an ‘end of conference’ meeting with me. It turned out to be a rip-roaring affair, with no punches pulled. I went through a brief history of the whole sordid affair, and how Rhodesia had been conned into going along with it. I was not expecting anything from London because of the change of leadership in America: the disaster of Carter. This enabled the British socialist government to sidetrack Kissinger and thus placate the OAU. I emphasised that Rhodesia, in keeping with our past record, would honestly adhere to the agreement. In spite of the fact that the other parties had broken the agreement, we would not use this as a pretext to wriggle out of it. As soon as the British were prepared to call together all parties and place the agreement on the table, we would be there. My parting comment: this conference is about to make history by adjourning before it has actually commenced!
On my way out that night, I met Frank Wisner at Geneva Airport. He expressed Kissinger’s regrets at the way things had gone. It was interesting for us to speculate on what assistance we might receive from South Africa in our predicament, a situation which had been forced on us by Vorster. It was no use looking to Kissinger — he had been sidetracked through no fault of his own. From the British socialists we could expect little, in fact only obstruction. Although officially the agreement had been made with Vorster and Kissinger, everybody knew that the substance had been formulated by the British government. Kissinger confirmed this to me, so they were the third leg to the agreement. Geneva had proved conclusively that there would be no finality without the approval of the OAU. Any thought of decent, straightforward honesty and adherence to a contract was wishful thinking.
In an effort to revive the conference, on 1 January 1977, Richard and his team flew into Salisbury. His original message indicated that he would arrive in the following week after visiting the northern presidents, but I advised him to see me first in order to ensure that he would not be sponsoring proposals unacceptable to Rhodesia. He explained that he had failed to sell the original agreement to the blacks in Geneva, and therefore was presenting a new proposal which incorporated a British appointee as chairman of the transitional government as opposed to one of the black representatives, and the Rhodesian government representation would be reduced from a half to one third of the members. I accused him of attempting to breach the solemn agreement to which his government was party, and told him this clearly indicated lack of integrity and courage on his part.
I could not believe that he was serious in making such a proposal. Did this new proposal carry the endorsement of Kissinger, whom he had recently met in London? There was no reply. Hilary Squires pointed out that he was recommending that we should place our destiny in the hands of the British government, which for more than a decade had been our deadly enemy, and had resorted to every tactic, mainly foul, to bring us down. Even worse, I added, they were now conniving with communist terrorists in their unscrupulous plan to achieve their evil objective. Each one of my team joined in giving him the lambasting he deserved. I was wondering how he was going to extricate himself from the fix in which he had been landed. He fell into the trap of losing his temper and shouting at us. There is an effective means of dealing with such a situation — I smiled at him and replied in a cool and quiet voice: ‘We seem to have touched you on a very tender spot! ’The meeting was not prolonged, and it ended with the message that we would be happy to join in a conference when he was ready to put the agreement with the five principles on the table.
17
The Internal Settlement
of 4 March 1978
Over the next few weeks, in early 1977, there were many discussions with my cabinet and the security chiefs. Regrettably, there were signs that our white community, for the first time, was beginning to have doubts about our future. It was sad that these wonderful people, who had shown such incredible strength and loyalty from the commencement of our constitutional problems with the British government, dating back to the early 1960s, were beginning to have doubts. Their doubts were not about the British, Americans, Europeans or the communist-inspired Commonwealth, whom we had known all along we could not trust. Instead, they were about the South Africans, whom we had believed would stand together with us.
Our joint position was a lonely one, as we strove to persevere with our Western civilisation on the southern corner of the African continent. Our philosophy and manner of dealing with the problem differed from that of the South Africans, and only time would tell who was right. But at least we understood Africa and its problems — we were after all Africans, albeit white Africans. Our history was interlocked, going back to 1890 when Cecil John Rhodes’s pioneer column set out from Mafeking. In 1914 our men had fought on the same side in the First World War. Once again in 1939, our men had stood together, fighting for freedom in the Second World War. There were other links which bound us closely together, such as a customs union under which we enjoyed preferential trading conditions, and many of the big companies drew no distinction between their operations on either side of the border, transferring people at will. In the field of sport we were virtually a fifth province, participating in all the major provincial competitions, with many Rhodesians gaining Springbok colours and representing South Africa in international competition.
A large number of Rhodesians had family contacts in South Africa. When Smuts, the South African Prime Minister and great wartime leader, was defeated in 1948 in the first post-war election, Rhodesians were greatly shocked. They consoled themselves by saying that the British electorate had done likewise to their great wartime leader and hero, Winston Churchill. It was part of the fluctuations of politics, which occasionally reached unpredictably irrational proportions.One had to live with these things, and ride the punches. The South African electorate would come to their senses in time, the Rhodesians believed.
In fact, things turned out quite the reverse. The National Party received more and more support with each election. Th
ere was no change in relations between our two countries, and things continued exactly the same as before — after all, the internal affairs of South Africa were their business, and Rhodesia had always strongly supported that founding principle of the UN which says: ‘Thou shalt not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries’. So we continued our normal lives, and our sadness over what happened to our old friend General Smuts was gradually lost in the mists of time. We were busy developing our own young, growing country, and building our own lives.
Bearing in mind the events up to early 1977, it is useful to review what had happened to Rhodesians and how they came to rely on their neighbours and not the British. With the passage of time, after 1945, we had gradually become more conscious of the changes taking place in our relations with the British government, and although these were still distant from us, any intelligent observer could not help detecting certain trends which seemed to be in conflict with previous understandings. The democratic system of government with elections bringing different parties into power adds confusion and destabilisation. A Conservative government by nature believes in maintaining the status quo as far as possible, and that any change should be evolutionary. A socialist government believes in bigger and quicker change, of a revolutionary nature, necessary to make up for lost time, because socialism is a comparatively new philosophy. Moreover, when governments are dealing with their own local affairs, they think twice and take great care to ensure that they are not acting against popular opinion and thus losing votes. But when they are dealing with affairs which affect the lives of people in another country, that is different. Rhodesians had found themselves confronted by this kind of situation more and more. The granting of independence became the fashion — first Ghana, and then Nigeria — the principle was never in doubt, it was merely a question of timing. Our Rhodesian prime ministers attended all the meetings of Commonwealth leaders (in those days there were only half a dozen representatives) and so we were kept fully in the picture as to what was going on. It was always conceded that Britain’s presence in the colonies took the the form of that of a protector, a guardian, until such time as the locals were able to take over and govern themselves.
