Douglas Reality in Rhodesia

Brown Brown
ISEE that Bishop Christopher Butler has teamed up with my old friend of South African days. Trevor Huddleston, now Anglican Bishop of Stepney, and with the emotional and race-obsessed Lord Caradon, to launch a "Justice for Rhodesia Campaign."
With the sentiment behind this campaign I am in entire agreement. It is expressed in an admirable statement by the Catholic Bishop of Umtali, Mgr. Lamont. This explains, point by point, why the projected bargain between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Mr. Ian Smith as an attempt to get Britain off the hook, is morally indefensible. For example: it does not maintain the principle of unimpeded progress towards majority rule; it does nothing to put the present racist legislation into reverse; it provides little to raise the African level of education; and it fails to safeguard fundamental human rights.
All this is perfectly true. But it is also irrelevant, because the agreement, were it ever signed, would not be worth the paper it was 'written on. This is not because Mr. Smith would cynically intend to fear it up next day. It is because no treaty between Britain and white Rhodesia can today affect the reality of the Rhodesian situation.
The reality of the Rhodesian situation is this: The tiny minority of whites in that country possess all the power and nearly all the privilege, and they have no intention whatsoever of voluntarily giving them up. This may be very wicked. as the local Catholic hierarchy, along with other church leaders, have frequently asserted. But it is also very human, for I can think of no instance in history of a ruling ethnic group willingly abdicating.
Bishop Butler and his companions believe that sane tions will force the white Rhodesians to do so. It is rather late in the day to make this claim. Of course Mr. Smith would, like to sec the end of sanctions, because they have an undoubted nuisance value, and to this end he is prepared to sign a meaningless agreement. But to imagine that the whites of Rhodesia would ever willingly merge themselves into the black majority in return for some marginal easing of trading restrictions is to take a very curious view of human motivation.
The three instigators of the Justice for Rhodesia Campaign declare that a continued policy of sanctions would "earn Britain the respect of almost the entire international community." Apart from the fact that almost the entire international community is busy circumventing sanctions at Britain's expense. this statement is little less than hypocritical. Britain gave the white Rhodesians effective independence back in 1923. If that was an unjust act, as indeed it was, it can hardly be atoned for half a century later merely by the imposition of a futile trade boycott.
Britain's one real effort to make amends for doing in Central Africa what, after her victory in the Boer War, she did with such disastrous results in South Africa was the experiment of Federation. While she still exercised control over what are now. Zambia and Malawi she encouraged those two colonies to federate with what is now Rhodesia in the genuine hope that this marriage of two future black-governed countries with a whitegoverned one would form a bridge over the great racial divide.
I was present at the Victoria Falls conference which thrashed out this idea, and in Salisbury on the night it came to fruition. I can testify to the hopeful idealism that lay behind this move. ,But it was not a success. because it, too, failed to match the reality of the local situation. The two all-black countries, once within reach of political independence. demanded to be entirely free of white settler rule.
After the break-up of the Federation Britain's influence o'er events in the region came to an end. Mr. Smith's UDI was only in a technical sense a rebellion. Essentially it was simply a statement of fact.
The signatories of the Justice for Rhodesia manifesto claim that sanctions have caused "mounting unemployment," but blithely add that they "have adversely affected the interests of white Rhodesians far more than those of Africans, who are accustomed to a subsistence standard of living and are therefore better able to endure economic 'stagnation."
This surely is vicarious and doctrinaire liberalism at its most deplorable. Why should these Africans, to satisfy the conscientious scruples of certain foreigners, be condemned to endure economic stagnation? The central truth about their plight is that economic progress alone will win them their political and social rights. White supremacy, when exercised by a mere onetwentieth of the population, will only work when the economy is at a relatively primitive stage. As industrialisation advances it will become increasingly difficult to maintain. Sanction's will delay this development.
I have the highest admiration for Bishop Lamont, who has roundly condemned the unjust society that at present exists in Rhodesia. I am only sorry that the great majority of white Catholics in that country pay so little heed to his words. But I can see no justification for mounting a political campaign six thousand miles away which at best will prove irrelevant to the local situation and at worst will postpone the desirable changes in that situation that will inevitably take place.