Brief Encounters in a Hopeless War

An antiaircraft battery was suddenly rolled into place on a golf course near Lusaka International Airport last week. Zambian armed forces went on alert, leaves were canceled, and President Kenneth Kaunda issued orders to "shoot on sight" any Rhodesian aircraft that violated his country's airspace. Responding to a warning from Prime Minister Ian Smith that Zambian support for black nationalist guerrillas might lead to pre-emptive strikes, Kaunda dramatically announced that ua state of war" existed between his country and Rhodesia. To prove the point, the Zambians lobbed several mortar shells at the resort town of Victoria Falls--an attack that did not prove serious enough to cancel the nightly sundowner cruise for tourists along the Zambezi River.

Rhodesian officials shrugged off Kaunda's declaration as the diplomatic equivalent of a mosquito bite, but the brutal civil war in the runaway British colony continues--and it is the innocent who suffer most. Caught in the political crossfire, terrorized black villagers are beaten, tortured or murdered by guerrillas if they refuse to help the cause, jailed and sometimes hanged by Rhodesian government forces if they do. Earlier this month, a 15-man security-force patrol tracked a team of guerrillas through the Ndanga Tribal Trust Land to Dabwe Kraal. When darkness fell, the troops climbed over a fence and heard the guerrillas addressing a crowd of villagers. The two sides exchanged fire before the guerrillas slipped away. The dead and wounded lay on the ground for nine hours before help arrived. When evacuation forces finally showed up, they found 17 women, twelve children and seven men dead, and 31 others wounded, all villagers. The toll among the combatants: one guerrilla killed.

White civilians, particularly farmers in the border area, have also been caught in the war's crossfire. Last week a white couple, their black servant and an eight-year-old child were murdered by terrorists who fled across the border into Botswana. Such incidents are taking their toll on the daily lives of the country's whites. During a 1,200-mile tour of Rhodesia, TIME'S Johannesburg bureau chief William McWhirter stopped at missions and family farms, many of them along the guerrilla-infested border with Mozambique. He found that while many whites still believe they can hold their own in the war, it has become a futile effort, delaying and making more difficult the possibility of a settlement with the black majority, which they now accept as inevitable. Some vignettes from his brief encounters:

THE MOTHER. She sat, looking youthful and fresh, at the head of the long breakfast table spread with racks of toast, poached eggs, steaming coffee, British marmalade (a rare luxury) and linen napkins. The sun poured through the tall windows onto the polished wood and the overstuffed armchairs. She was flanked by her teen-age sons. Otherwise, she is alone these days. Her husband--who. like her, emigrated to Rhodesia from Britain 20 years ago--has gone abroad to drum up business as a tobacco growers' consultant.

The 250-acre farm is only 20 miles outside Salisbury, but in the past six months one small band of terrorists was spotted crossing the fields, and the farm store was held up by another group. A farm only a mile away was attacked. Why are certain farms chosen as targets? The boys speculate it is because some farmers have a reputation for being mean. "That's true, Mom, I know it," one of them insists. She is not so sure. "There was a farmer," she says as calmly as if she were talking of the crops, "who paid his manager European wages and everything. He was cut to pieces in his grating shed."

She admits there was a time when she became so frightened walking outside alone that she would run home, dash in the front door with her dogs and then upstairs to lock herself in her room. She no longer does that. Nor does she allow herself to become alarmed by the future, even now. The changes, she says, will have to come, and she only hopes they will come soon and peacefully. "You get used to things, you know," she says. "One always does, don't you think?"

THE REFORMER. He is active in the Rhodesia National Farmer's Union and has just returned from a visit to Kenya. Like many white Rhodesians, he believes Kenya's form of benevolent black capitalism is about the best model Rhodesia can hope for. He is zealous in his belief that the sooner the war ends, the less bitterness there will be on both sides. His neighbors grumble that he is too optimistic, but his Rhodesian-born wife has become one of his converts. "It was a glorious life," she says. "It was a wonderful life. It will never be repeated. But $18 a month [for black wages] isn't enough. I don't think my cook knows anything about my family, and I don't know how many children he has in his. And all this is bad."

Her husband, who also serves in his area's army reserve patrol, talks of the strains and abuses. "The security forces are stretched and often inexperienced. You have an awful lot of amateurs who are inclined to throw their ruddy weight about. The terrorists are still recruiting. Forty students--the brightest boys--went from our local mission school. The facts are that we're not winning the war, that it's increasing in every direction. Youngsters cannot get on with their lives; there are the economic hardships, and more and more time is spent in your blinking reserve outfits. All of which has done nothing to change the chances that we're going to get by without African rule. I've met very few farmers who haven't accepted majority rule, and I've met very few who haven't said they're prepared to stay. That's why it's so important to involve ourselves as closely as we can. We've got to go right along with [the blacks] when they come fto power]."

THE MISSIONARY. He has he is

black youths coming night have to say. "They sometimes remind me of Shakespeare," he says, "like listening to the first soldier, then the second soldier, all chiming in with catch phrases. Schoolboys cross over the border because to them it's all like a film --to come back like Robin Hood with a gun and a bazooka.

"But there is also a hardness that is stunning to hear in a boy of 14.1 thought they still had an affection for white missionaries and mission schools. But in Umtali prison every night, they sing songs about recapturing their land with the power of their guns and meeting one day in Zimbabwe. There is a self-delusion among the whites that things will somehow work out in their favor. It has gone on for too long already, with too many people killed, too many mistakes and lost opportunities. They haven't the faintest idea of what a deal means. They think it means giving a melon patch to the garden boy."

THE SOLDIER. A 21-year-old lieutenant, he is in civilian clothes, going off on weekend leave in one of the army-escorted motor convoys that sail like caravan clubs along the highways in the border areas. His rifle is still beside him in the car as he points to an article on the front page of the morning's Rhodesia Herald. Two teen-age boys alone on a farm in a remote operational area had held off a terrorist raid the night before. "That's my brother," he says. It was the second attack in six months. Two other brothers and his father were away serving their military duty.

His family has been farming since his grandfather arrived with one of the first waves of settlers in 1895. And they are staying. "There isn't a debate about it," says the lieutenant. "Black government's going to be done. The average guy's prepared to live under majority rule." Would the family fight in an army to defend a black government? Yes, says the lieutenant. "Unless they kick us in the teeth."

THE HOLDOUTS. It is a Sunday evening. The night outside is cold and dark, empty of almost everything but space and stars and the sounds of dogs barking in the distance. The front room of the cottage is open and mellow, with high-beamed, sloping ceilings and high shelves filled with books' They are a serene, almost dignified couple. She is Rhodesian-born, he is a British emigrant, and they farmed in Zambia before it became independent. They are not emotional, not haters, but articulate believers in maintaining this society as they have known it.

"Black Africa doesn't have a hope in hell," he says. "The Africans themselves will only be left to the mercy of their conflicting parties here. I think I lost a lot of my self-respect when I left Zambia. Then I had somewhere to go. I still have somewhere else to go, but I won't lose another bit of my self-respect. The rest of the world is asking us to lie down and be run over." His wife asks if she may comment. "I have no papers," she says. "I have nowhere else to go. You're talking about Rhodesia becoming a black-ruled country called Zimbabwe, with a new flag. If that happens, I just hope I hit the next land mine and it's quick." She leaves no doubt that she knows what she is saying and that she means it.

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