"We Are Going Home"

The guerrillas accept a cease-fire and prepare for elections "

This is an important day for Rhodesia," declared a jubilant Sir Ian Gilmour, Britain's Deputy Foreign Secretary. "It means the end of the war." So it seemed. Moments earlier, Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, co-leaders of the Patriotic Front guerrilla alliance, had entered a gilded room in London's Foreign Office to add their signatures to a twelve-page protocol that had already been initialed by representatives of Britain and the now defunct Salisbury government of Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa. The document: a three-sided agreement for a complete cease-fire in Zimbabwe Rhodesia's increasingly bloody seven-year civil war.

The fruit of 15 weeks of painstaking negotiations at the stately Lancaster House in London, the accord carried with it the Front's previous acceptance of a majority-rule constitution and parliamentary elections. It thus appeared to pave the way for the peaceful creation of an independent republic of Zimbabwe by early next spring, as the British plan envisages. More immediately, it called for all combatants to lay down their arms within two weeks and for thousands of exiled guerrillas to return to Rhodesia, outlaws no longer. Declared a smiling Nkomo with some emotion: "We are going home." For all the hopeful statements, however, even some British officials conceded that they remained skeptical about the long-term prospects for real peace.

The Patriotic Front's acceptance of the cease-fire terms came at the eleventh hour. Two days earlier, in fact, the Lancaster House conference had formally ended with no comprehensive settlement. In the face of a stern ultimatum from British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, who had conducted the talks, Nkomo and Mugabe had flatly rejected a British scheme by which the guerrillas would assemble at 15 widely dispersed camps, which they felt would be too isolated and vulnerable. Their agreement was extracted by a British concession in a numbers game. It gave the Front forces a 16th camp in the Rhodesian heartland and empowered the newly arrived British Governor, Lord Soames, to designate additional concentrations, if the guerrillas report in the large numbers that they claim. The current British estimate is 20,000 men; the Front says it has some 35,000.

The so-called frontline states (Mozambique, Zambia, Angola, Tanzania and Botswana), whose support is crucial to the guerrillas, were given much of the credit for breaking the deadlock. Anxious for an end to the costly struggle, their leaders had been instrumental ever since they helped bring the Front to the conference table last September. With strong diplomatic encouragement from Whitehall and Washington, the frontline Presidents had sent a senior representative to London to tell the guerrilla leaders--particularly the recalcitrant Mugabe--that they must settle with the British. That arm twisting, and the additional assembly points, did the trick.

The settlement was a long awaited triumph for British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as well as for Carrington, both of whom were on an official visit in the U.S. when the news came. Clearly savoring the moment, Thatcher responded to President Carter's congratulations on this "magnificent achievement" with thanks "for the forceful and timely support we received throughout the negotiations from the United States Government and from President Carter personally." Carrington, who was credited with brilliant negotiating tactics during the conference, was quick to note that the U.S. had also played a role in winning the final agreement, most of all by following Britain's lead last week and promptly lifting its own economic sanctions against Rhodesia.

Within days similar action had been taken by a number of countries, including Canada, Australia, West Germany, New Zealand, Switzerland, France and Mauritius. At first, the U.N. General Assembly, by an overwhelming 107-to-16 vote, passed an African-sponsored resolution deploring such unilateral lifting of sanctions. The Security Council, however, was expected to end its own international boycott against Rhodesia following the formal signing of the peace treaty.

In Salisbury, meanwhile, long isolated Rhodesians were anticipating an economic boom. British businessmen and other European entrepreneurs began arriving in search of commercial deals. Imported luxury goods--from automobiles to whisky--began appearing in showrooms and shop windows just in time for Christmas. Without the sanctions, economists expected a 15% to 20% jump in the country's foreign exchange earnings. Beamed one Salisbury trader: "Things are as they used to be."

By far the toughest task facing the British on the ground in Rhodesia was the policing of the ceasefire, which was to take full effect after 14 days. Within that period, the Salisbury security forces were to return to their 42 military bases while the guerrillas assembled at their 16 assigned camps. One possible sign of early trouble: Mugabe's stubborn insistence that it will take up to eight weeks to get word of the truce to all his fighters in the bush.

At week's end the erstwhile adversaries sat down with Carrington to sign the final peace settlement in a brief ceremony at Lancaster House. General Josiah Tongogara, Mugabe's military commander, returned to Africa announcing that he was ready to "tell our boys in the bush to stop shooting." At the same time, the first contingents of the 1,200-man Commonwealth monitoring force --drawn from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, Kenya and Fiji--started arriving to take up their truce-supervision posts. Since this lightly armed unit has no real enforcement powers, however, it was obvious to all that the British Governor would have to rely mainly on his own arbitration and persuasion to deal with cease-fire breaches.

Soames had cautiously saved his first major act for the day of the signing: a general amnesty for all "rebels," white and black. A bluff-mannered Tory with a taste for fine wines and fast horses, he seemed mainly intent on getting his job done on time and then pulling out, leaving the rival factions behind to settle their own differences after the election and independence. Some observers were skeptical that anything more could be asked of the Governor, in fact, and were pessimistic about the chances of a durable truce. Said one British official soberly last week: "I don't think anyone is going to play it fair. Intimidation seems to be a way of life here."

In London, however, Whitehall officials expressed cautious hope that the cease-fire will prevail and that the factions will feel constrained to abide by the results of the March elections. Whitehall reasons that the Rhodesians' supporters--the front-line Africans in the case of the guerrillas and the South Africans in the case of the Rhodesian security forces--want the peace settlement to work because they are determined to avoid a resumption of the long-running civil war. qed

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