Gift from a Hardship Case

Zambia reopens a border as Smith goes to the U.S.

Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith flew to the U.S. last week in a last-ditch effort to promote his faltering bi-racial interim government with the American public, and even before leaving Salisbury, he got an unexpected boost for his cause from an old enemy. Faced with a grave fertilizer shortage that threatened famine and food shortages, Zambia's President Kenneth Kaunda reluctantly announced that he would reopen his country's border with Rhodesia to permit vital imports and to allow the rail shipment of Zambian copper to ports in South Africa and Mozambique.

Although dictated by economic necessity, Kaunda's decision to flout United Nations sanctions against the breakaway British colony could potentially fracture the unity of the front-line states (the others: Angola, Tanzania, Mozambique and Botswana). Their goal is to install a black majority government in Rhodesia, preferably headed by leaders of the Patriotic Front. The Front's guerrillas greeted the reopening of the railroad by blowing up tracks in southwest Rhodesia. The damage was quickly repaired.

Heavily dependent for income on one export (copper), landlocked Zambia had gone along with the U.N. sanctions at considerable cost. The 1,160-mile Tazara railway, built by the Chinese as an alternative to routes through southern Africa, never became fully operational, because of theft, widespread mismanagement and frequent breakdowns in equipment. Zambia, already suffering from falling world copper prices, found it increasingly difficult to get the metal to markets. Skyrocketing prices and continual shortages of such vital goods as soap, matches and cooking oil created popular unrest and encouraged political opposition to Kaunda's less-than-democratic regime.

Kaunda's announcement came as Smith, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, who is one of his three black colleagues on the Rhodesian Executive Council, and twelve other ranking officials in the government were en route to the U.S. Smith told a press conference in Salisbury that he hoped "to give the American people the truth. If they still think we are wrong, and they still want to condemn us, that is fair. But I don't think they will."

Smith had been invited by 27 Senators, led by conservative California Republican S.I. Hayakawa, who felt that he should have an opportunity to present his case to the U.S. public. The State Department had previously granted visas to Patriotic Front Leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. Nonetheless, State hesitated to give Smith an entry permit, on the ground that the U.S., which has honored the U.N. sanctions, considers his government illegal and has no diplomatic relations with it. After the delay raised editorial eyebrows and congressional hackles, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance ordered that Smith be given a visa "on an exceptional basis."

Meanwhile, at week's end the presidents of three of the front-line states --Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, Angola's Agostinho Neto and Mozambique's Samora Machel--convened a meeting in Zambia to talk Kaunda into changing his mind. One of the problems both Zambia and Tanzania will face as a result of Kaunda's decision is that the Tazara railroad will be plunged into financial straits, making it difficult for the two governments to pay back a $450 million Chinese loan used to build the railroad.

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