FACING REALITY IN RHODESIA TODAY

rr HE Justice for Rhodesia Campaign, sponsored by Lord Caradon, Lord RitchieCalder, Bishop Butler and Bishop Huddleston, has done a good deal in this country to help people realise what is at stake in Rhodesia today, why the settlement arranged by Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Mr. Smith is an unjust and disgraceful one, and what people in Britain can still do about it. I am sorry that my friend Douglas Brown should have written so critically of it and its sponsors (Feb. 4). This seems particularly odd as he completely agrees that the settlement is indefensible and greatly admires Bishop Lamont for condemning it. But "Justice for Rhodesia" is in fact only doing what Bishop Lamont has himself asked BritWI people to do.and even the quotation from its manifesto which Douglas considers so deplorable is actually taken from Lamont himself!
His basic criticism, if I understand it aright, is as follows: Britain can in fact do nothing to help justice in Rhodesia. She has no power. Sanctions have been a failure. The whites are firmly in control and nothing can move them. Moreover the settlement will in fact be followed by economic progress and that is bound to bring a big African advance. By opposing the settlement we are opposing the only thing which really can improve the situation for Africans.
Is this really so? Is Smith really so indifferent to getting it or not? Has British policy since UDI really been so completely without effect? I am sure the answer is no, Of course sanctions have never had the effect which Wilson once thought they would. But equally they have had far more than nuisance value. They have held up large scale investment in Rhodesia and the replacement of basic stock. The British position has blocked a single country from giving diplomatic recognition to the Smith regime in six long years.
Most important of all. it has prevented any large scale white immigration into Rhodesia and encouraged emigration from that country. The white population has hardly risen since UDI while the black population has grown steadily. Young' white Rhodesians tend to leave the country when they grow up —they at least have been able to realise that their future is very uncertain there.
All this Smith knows and it really worries him, though he does not let on about it. It has been the chief guarantee that his regime cannot last, that justice will prevail. The black Rhodesians, for their part, overwhelmingly prefer present austerity to signing away their future indefinitely.
If the settlement goes through, all that will change. Already Rhodesia is busy advertising for immigrants—even in British papers. What Smith is looking for is a big rise in the white population, from the present quarter million up to as near a million as they can get. His long term future entirely depends upon that. If it happens. and it is the most likely effect of diplomatic recognition. the removal of sanctions and the pouring in of capital, then there may be a little more employment for Africans at the bottom but next to none in the higher levels of society.
At the same time there will inevitably be steadily more apartheid: this is wanted by the Rhodesia Front now, but a wide range of segregated facilities are simply not practicable with 200.000 whites. With three quarters of a million they would be.
As a matter of fact economists are becoming more and more sceptical as to the value for African development of white controlled industrial growth: it gets all the priorities wrong and can produce remarkably little extra employment.
So it is not true that we are powerless to influence Rhodesia any more, and it is not true that this settlement is really hound to benefit the Africans. These are the argu
ments people are using to try to stampede us into a thoroughly bad settlement which most Rhodesians appear to be completely against.
To abdicate our final responsibility when the great majority do not want us to do so, and on such terms—quite abandoning the five principles our government has proclaimed time after time --would be disgracefully irresponsible. While the settlement and diplomatic recognition are both refused Rhodesia remains on the world's agenda. black Rhodesians know they have not been forgotten. white Rhodesians go on feeling uncertain, while their rulers know only too well that time may be against them.
There have been so many white voices, both in this country and in Rhodesia. trying to convince the Africans that they ought to accept these terms, that they are foolish not to do so. All the Justice for Rhodesia Campaign has 'been trying to do, with pitifully small resources, is slightly to redress the balance of noise : to say to the Africans: "Your reasons are sound and we over here are doing our best to make your case known and to go on supporting you."
Is such a position either irrelevant or deplorable?
(Fr.) Adrian Hastings Cambridge.