Scratching the Surface

Blacks and whites may now swim--but not yet live--together

At Spud Murphy's, Salisbury's newest nightclub, young white Rhodesian soldiers lurched onto the dance floor last week and joined in a beery war dance to a current hit song, Sweet Banana. The song is a tribute to troopies like themselves "who fight with bravery--and win." A white businessman, surveying the scene, remarked, "Right now the only black man who could survive in this place would have to be at least a sergeant major --with a citation for valor in the Rhodesian army." A few miles away, in the black township of Harari, a well-known black entertainer named Thomas Mapfumo mimicked the marching style of the Rhodesian soldiers. Then he brought down the house with a rendition of Send Your Children to War, a song clearly sympathetic to the guerrillas who are waging war against the Salisbury regime.

In this atmosphere of racial polarity, Rhodesia's ruling Executive Council met last week to announce a new program for abolishing race discrimination. While Rhodesia has accepted the principle of black majority rule, there is still statutory as well as social apartheid. Under the new program, this discrimination would be abolished in hotels, restaurants, nightclubs, swimming pools and moviehouses, in trading areas and in local elections.

Chief supporter of the plan was Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the most influential of the three blacks on the four-man council. He pressed the council to adopt the new program, which he hailed as "a tremendous breakthrough."

In truth, the council action was far less than that--and it was immediately attacked by other black leaders. "What do people in the tribal trust lands know about these changes while the war rages around them?" demanded John Maposa, an independent M.P. "What do they know about swimming pools and theaters?" Even the publicity secretary of Muzorewa's own United African National Council, David Mukome, argued that the new program had "just scratched the surface of the problem of discrimination."

His point was that the new measures failed to extend integration in the fields of land ownership, education and medical care. Hospitals and schools remain segregated; last year the government spent $493 per capita on white schooling, but only $46 for black education. In 1977 the 48-year-old land-tenure laws, which divided the country between whites and blacks, were amended to allow blacks to buy some white-designated land. But so far only 25 blacks have had both the cash and the inclination to do so.

In the meantime, the fighting is getting worse. Of the 9,500 Rhodesians who have been killed since 1972, 2,700 have died since Jan. 1.

Thus the pressure is increasing on the Executive Council to come to some kind of terms with the Patriotic Front. There is also pressure from London and Washington for all parties involved in the Rhodesian dispute to attend a conference to be held under Anglo-American sponsorship somewhere outside the country.

Muzorewa opposes such a move, but in the end he may be obliged to go along with it. Several members of his party have criticized him for "political ineptitude" and called for his resignation. Six months ago, he drew nearly 200,000 people at a rally near Salisbury; nowadays his meetings rarely attract more than 500. His colleague on the Executive Council, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, is doing even worse. Last week he scheduled a political rally at a football stadium in northeastern Rhodesia. Only 15 people showed up.

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