OPINION

GOVERNMENT BY GALLOWS
THE Queen intervenes; the Pope intervenes;
but the Smith regime goes its own grisly way. More Africans are hanged, and with the latest executions the Rhodesian Government proves not only that it is a Cowboy Cabinet but that it is perfectly content to conduct its affairs by gallows diplomacy.
The executed Africans were convicted of brutal murder before the Rhodesian Government broke away from Britain. What offends civilised standards is that the hangings were carried out after the men had been kept in the condemned cells for nearly three years. And 100 more are still waiting there.
The apathy of white Rhodesians to what are political murders can only mean that as a whole they side with the regime's fascist policy or that the „regime's propaganda and massmedia censorship has convinced them that the 5 alternative to Smith would be immediate African-majority rule.
Having said this, it is also high time that we in Britain outgrew the myth embodied in the phrase "the illegal Smith regime." The Rhodesian de facto Government is, alas, effectively ruling the country, because the majority of the voters there are behind them and because the mother country is powerless to put down the "illegality." The Government is an unjust one, but it is there, and any future proposals for a settlement must recognise this fact.
Already several proposals have been put forward. One is that we could hand the problem over to the United Nations or the next nearest taker. But the history of the U.N. intervention on the African Continent gives little encouragement in this case.
Another is that we could attempt another Tiger-style settlement conference. But the prospects of satisfactory bargaining now are even more grim than they were then. Even war has been suggested. But, here again, force is no real solution.
In fact it would be dishonest to pretend that there is any one answer at present. Economic sanctions could be increased against Rhodesia if professedly democratic countries cut off the trade links which they still maintain there. Yet the history of sanctions does not inspire confidence.
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Beyond this we Can only hope and pray that somewhere in Rhodesia a vital crack will appear, and with it a new opportunity to be grasped. It would be a gospel of despair to believe that all decency has died in Rhodesian g ruling circles. We may, however, be proved `0 wrong.