Transition to Majority Rule
In 1966 the United Nations Security Council passed mandatory economic sanctions against the Rhodesian regime, treated it to diplomatic isolation, and announced that the international community would endorse only a settlement that provided for majority rule. To rid itself of its Rhodesian albatross, London also attempted several diplomatic initiatives guided by the principle that legal independence required free elections and majority rule. Rhodesian settlers were prepared to concede nothing of the sort, and Britain had no leverage against this intransigence.
As the guerrilla war gathered steam in the mid-1970s, London's search for a peaceful solution grew. Western nations feared that the war would spread—perhaps involving Cuban or Soviet intervention on the side of the guerrillas and increased South African involvement on behalf of Rhodesia. (The guerrilla forces were already receiving material aid and training from the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and North Korea.) A negotiated solution might preempt any further internationalization and radicalization of the struggle. As British Foreign Secretary Anthony Crosland warned in a speech to NATO ministers: "If the issue were settled on the battlefield it would seriously lessen the chances of bringing about a moderate regime in Rhodesia and would open the way for more radical solutions and external intervention on the part of oth-
[78] Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency, pp. 220ff.; Reid Daly, Selous Scouts, p. 588.
ers."[79] Nevertheless, some British officials advised against becoming stuck in the Rhodesian quagmire. According to one account, "In 1976 the Cabinet's instinct was [to] stay well clear of Rhodesia, which several Ministers regarded as another potentially debilitating Northern Ireland crisis for Britain."[80] Yet the Crown continued to make occasional overtures toward a negotiated resolution of the problem.
Our analysis of the transitional period centers on Rhodesia's security apparatus. How did the contestants for power view repressive laws and institutions? Were reforms of these structures ever on the agenda during negotiations on the future of the country?
The position of the Smith Government during successive negotiations was that settler control over the security system was inviolate. In a meeting between Smith, South African Premier John Vorster, and United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Pretoria on 19 September 1976, Smith finally agreed to accept the principle of eventual majority rule. But he was adamant that the Cabinet portfolios of Law and Order and of Defense remain in white hands and that the white commanders of the security forces retain their posts. According to the notes on this meeting recorded by the CIO director, Kissinger agreed that the two security ministers should be white.[81]
For years, black leaders had been calling for changes in the internal security apparatus, and the leaders of ZANU and ZAPU had frequently branded Rhodesia's security apparatus "despotic" and "fascist." As early as 1963, ZANU's policy platform declared: "ZANU shall repeal the Unlawful Organizations Act, the Law and Order Maintenance Act ... and all other repressive laws enacted by the white minority SettlerGovernments."[82] In 1976 Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the leader of the reconstituted African National Congress, condemned the "crude and brutal methods" of the Rhodesian police, adding: "The people of Zimbabwe would be scared to death if these methods continued after their liberation. Police reform is high among our priorities."[83] Proposals for sweeping liberalization also came from international sources. The summit of Commonwealth leaders in June 1977 adopted a resolution calling for "not only the removal of the illegal Smith regime but also the dismantling of its apparatus of repression in order to pave the way for the
[79] Times (London), 10 December 1976.
[80] Martin and Johnson, Struggle, p. 256.
[81] Notes on meeting reprinted in Flower, Serving Secretly, p. 303.
[82] Zimbabwe African National Union, "Declaration of Policy," 21 August 1963.
[83] U.S. News and World Report, 6 December 1976, p. 35.
creation of police and armed forces which would be responsible to the needs of the people of Zimbabwe."[84]
As the spiraling costs of the war approached untenable levels, the Smith regime entered into an Internal Settlement in March 1978 with black leaders unattached to the guerrilla forces. The new transitional Government consisted of an uneasy coalition of Smith and three black moderates, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Ndabaningi Sithole, and Chief Jeremiah Chirau, in an Executive Council. A new constitution was drafted by Rhodesian Front officials and approved by the white electorate in a referendum. Under the constitution, twenty-eight seats in the hundred-member Assembly were reserved for whites for at least ten years, which gave them veto power over changes in the constitution. White personnel would also remain in control of the police, military, civil service, and judiciary for a decade: and white-owned land would not be expropriated.[85] Clearly, this power-sharing arrangement meant only that Smith had conceded an end to exclusive settler rule and retained white control over the state's core. Tellingly, Smith privately referred to the Executive Council as a "facade" obscuring the reality of white political power.[86] Muzorewa and the other black ministers exercised nominal authority; they were excluded from the War Council and from any role in military decision making.[87] Far from being a model of settler-native accommodation, the Executive Council was racked by mutual distrust, conflicts, and secret plotting of white members against black.[88]
As a departure from rigid Rhodesian Front rule, the new regime tried to win African support by dispensing concessions. In February 1979 it enacted legislation repealing petty apartheid discrimination in education, housing, health, and public facilities; it also rescinded the contentious Land Tenure Act. Elections were held under the new constitution in April 1979, ostensibly to affirm that the new order was based on majority rule. Only those parties that had accepted Smith's constitutional plan were allowed on the ballot; ZANU and ZAPU remained banned. Muzorewa's United African National Council (UANC) won fifty-one of
[84] Quoted in Martin and Johnson, Struggle, p. 269.
[85] The constitution created commissions of public service, judicial service, police service, and defense forces service; qualifications for commission membership effectively sealed white control (Robert J. Alperin, "The Distribution of Power and the (June 1979) Zimbabwe Rhodesia Constitution,"Journal of Southern African Affairs 5, no. 1 [January 1980]: 41–54).
[86] Flower, Serving Secretly, p. 211.
[87] Cilliers, Counter-Insurgency, p. 72.
[88] Flower, Serving Secretly, pp. 207, 212.
the seventy-two seats reserved for Africans and on 31 May 1979, he became the prime minister of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.
Marking no radical departure from the past, the new regime was unable to win international or domestic legitimacy. The insurgents saw in the settlement both a ruse to perpetuate settler domination and a sign of the regime's increasing desperation. Far from creating the conditions for peace, the internal settlement galvanized the guerrilla campaign. Despite Muzorewa's earlier criticism of the security apparatus, his Government continued its predecessor's bloody campaign against civilians, putting the repressive legislation and security agencies to maximum use. New areas of the country fell under martial law, and security expenditure mushroomed. Defense spending alone absorbed 47 percent of the total budget in 1978–1979.
By 1979, the Government's position had deteriorated and the guerrillas penetrated further into the country. Of those killed during the war, one-third died in 1979 alone. By the end of the year, nearly all the country was under martial law; rural administration had broken down in many areas; the economy was bankrupt; and the war had reached a stalemate. The regime was not on the verge of collapse but was neither defeating nor containing the insurgents. Still, the balance of forces did not augur well for a decisive military victory by either side.
Finally the time seemed propitious for a lasting settlement. South Africa, which put pressure on the Rhodesians, supported a negotiated solution, as did Mozambique and Zambia, which put pressure on the insurgents (partly to end the Rhodesian military attacks they were experiencing). The new Conservative Government of Margaret Thatcher (elected on 3 May 1979) desperately wanted to recognize the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia Government but found this action politically impossible in the face of international opposition. Thatcher reluctantly announced an all-party conference at Lancaster House in London in September 1979 to address three central issues: a cease-fire, free elections, and a new constitution. Representatives of ZANU and ZAPU, the Government of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, and the British Government attended the conference. With all of the principals involved, this conference seemed to present a unique opportunity for a political solution that might perhaps include plans to reform the country's coercive order. Even at this late date, however, the Muzorewa-Smith regime believed it could maintain settler control over the security agencies. Present at the conference to protect their organizational interests were the country's highest security officials: the Police Commissioner, Commander of the Army, Secretary
for Law and Order, Air Vice-Marshall, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Organization. The Muzorewa-Smith delegation insisted that Rhodesian security forces and other state agencies remain fully intact until independence.
At Lancaster House, the Patriotic Front of ZANU and ZAPU called for reforms of internal security agencies but not basic structural changes.[89] One ZANU official claimed that the ZANU and ZAPU representatives at Lancaster House in 1979 "were all opposed to entrusting any future Government of Zimbabwe with the kind of dictatorial powers which their former oppressors had wielded."[90] Yet the paramount concern of the Patriotic Front was not the statutory and institutional foundations of the repressive order, but the question of who would control the security forces during the election of a new government.[91] The overriding fear in Rhodesia, as more recently in Namibia, was that the security forces would subvert free and fair elections. Structural change in the security sector would be left to the new regime.
The Lancaster accord did not touch the most vital branch of the Rhodesian state: "The pre-independence period should not be concerned with the remodelling of the institutions of government."[92] Existing laws would also be left intact: "It will be for the Parliament to be chosen in free elections to decide which laws shall be continued and which shall be changed."[93] Lord Soames, the interim governor of Rhodesia, praised "the humanity and efficiency which resides in the system of government of which Zimbabwe is the heir" (referring apparently to the Westminster model), a system based on "law, order, justice and impartial administration."[94]
The status quo was to remain in other areas vital to settler interests: the new constitution (1) provided for disproportionate white representa-
[89] Martin and Johnson, Struggle, p. 273. See also the earlier Anglo-American proposals, Rhodesia: Proposals for a Settlement, Cmnd. 6919 (London: HMSO, September 1977).
[90] Simbi Mubako, address to the National Affairs Association of Zimbabwe, reprinted as a governmental press statement, 23 May 1980.
[91] See the Patriotic Front's submissions to the conference: Lancaster House Conference Papers, "Patriotic Front Proposals," CC(79)16, 18 September 1979, and "Patriotic Front Response to British Proposals for Zimbabwe,' CC(79)23, 8 October 1979.
[92] Government of Southern Rhodesia, Report of the Constitutional Conference, Lancaster House, September-December 1979, Cmnd. 7802 (London: HMSO, 1980), para. 2.
[93] Ibid., para. 15. The tripartite agreement on southwestern Africa between Angola, Cuba, and South Africa, signed 22 December 1988, gives an elected constituent assembly in Namibia power to draft a new constitution.
[94] Lord Soames, "From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe," International Affairs 56 (Summer 1980): 418.
tion in Parliament for seven years after independence (4 percent of the population, whites received 20 percent of Assembly seats and 25 percent of Senate seats); (2) included a declaration of rights that in effect institutionalized a multiparty system for ten years; and (3) stipulated that land could be purchased only when the property owner agreed. Whites were thus greatly overrepresented in Parliament and their land was protected against expropriation. An additional assurance to the settlers was the amnesty declared by the interim British governor in December 1979, which prohibited legal proceedings against anyone previously involved in the war.[95] Those guilty of atrocities on either side were thus absolved.
Indicative of Britain's dominant role in the negotiated transition, the final draft of the accepted constitution was essentially a carbon copy of the original Foreign Office proposals.[96] In sharp contrast to the reformist initiatives made during the Ulster crisis of 1969–1972, the British Government's actions at Lancaster House had a decidedly conservative effect on existing security structures. During the months preceding the March 1980 election, some Commonwealth nations and Amnesty International called on the governor to repeal the security laws and release all persons detained under emergency powers; but British officials held steadfast to their commitment not to tamper with existing security arrangements. London's principal aims were to prevent the conflict from becoming internationalized, to restore stability in southern Africa, to reopen Zimbabwe's economic lines to the West, to install a moderate government based on majority rule, and then to disengage from the country as quickly as possible.[97] The particulars of the accord were of much less concern. Britain's priorities help to explain the reluctance to tackle reforms, a task that could be left to the coming majoritarian government—as the Lancaster agreement stated. When London assumed control over the state in Ulster in 1972, no such alternative government was waiting; hence the British themselves had to begin the task of institutional reform.
Other practical considerations militated against the metropole's involvement in modernizing Rhodesia's repressive order. The Foreign Office was convinced that the settler delegation at Lancaster would reject
[95] Amnesty Ordinance 1979 (3/79).
[96] See Lancaster House Conference Papers, "Independence Constitution," CC(79)4, 12 September 1979 and "British Government Proposals for Independence Constitution," CC(79)19, 3 October 1979.
[97] Gregory, "Rhodesia," p. 84. These aims were almost identical to Britain's objectives twenty years earlier during the Lancaster House conference on Kenya.
any plan for the sweeping transformation of state institutions. The three-month interval between the signing of the agreement and the elections for the new government also seemed to disallow any restructuring of security agencies, although legislation might have been repealed. In addition, premature tampering with security arrangements might undermine law and order during the unstable transitional period.[98] And the Crown was averse to becoming involved in another experiment with state building; Northern Ireland was enough of a problem. The British delegation, therefore, had adequate reasons to tread lightly on the statutory and institutional terrain.[99]
What about the other delegations? Both ZANU and ZAPU were confident that they would win the proposed election and, as noted above, did not insist on changes in security structures at the conference. The Muzorewa-Smith coalition believed that the incumbent regime would retain power, that existing security agencies would remain intact, and that white control over these agencies would continue for the foreseeable future.[100] For their part, the settlers in Rhodesia hoped that the Lancaster accord would end the devastating war and international economic sanctions and preserve the old order as much as possible. They expected that a victory by Muzorewa's UANC would make continued, albeit diluted, white supremacy more palatable to the black population.
The Lancaster talks were successful in part because each delegation—the incumbent regime, ZANU, and ZAPU—was convinced that its party would win the proposed election. Had there been real doubt in the ranks of one of the delegations, the entire settlement would have been doomed. This expectation also helps to explain the lack of concern with existing security legislation and institutions. Believing that it alone would inherit the political kingdom, no domestic party had an incentive to demand change. In addition, each contender expected that the losing parties would have difficulty accepting electoral defeat; in this scenario, after the transfer of power the repressive machinery might prove essen-
[98] Only 850 soldiers of the Commonwealth Monitoring Force were stationed in Zimbabwe before the election, to oversee the return of guerrillas and defuse tensions (see the article by the force's deputy commander, J. H. Learmont, "Reflections from Rhodesia,' Royal United Services Institute Journal 125, no. 4 [December 1980]: 47–55).
[99] See my article comparing decolonization in Zimbabwe and Mozambique ("In Search of Regime Security: Zimbabwe since Independence,' Journal of Modern African Studies 22, no. 4 [December 1984]). On Namibia and Zimbabwe see David Gordon ("Conflict Resolution in Southern Africa: Why Namibia Is Not Another Zimbabwe," Issue 12, no. 3–4 [Fall-Winter 1982]: 37–45).
[100] Jeffrey Davidow, A Peace in Southern Africa: The Lancaster House Conference on Rhodesia (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1984), p. 70.
tial to subdue political foes, consolidate the new government's position, and maintain order.
Taking almost everyone by complete surprise, ZANU won a decisive victory in the March election—62.9 percent of the vote and fifty-seven of the eighty black seats in the new Assembly. The election results sent shock waves through the white community but no violent backlash like the rampage of Portuguese settlers in Mozambique at independence in 1975. Zimbabwe's independence was finally proclaimed on 18 April 1980 and a new ZANU regime installed.
This particular transition away from settler rule conditioned the new order in several respects. First, the legacy of the war shaped the new state elite's political culture and regard for opponents. The authoritarian and commandist practices of the guerrilla forces did not wither away once ZANU assumed state power, and the experience of fighting a long, bitter war made the new elite highly suspicious of enemies. Second, the new regime inherited the repressive apparatus of the settler state—its agencies, legal powers, and many of its personnel. Third, ZANU's electoral victory left politically marginal two black political parties, ZAPU and UANC, that had been key actors during the transition. They entered the new order decidedly disgruntled over the electoral outcome. Fourth, Rhodesian settlers were able to put their stamp on the new constitution, including reserved white seats in Parliament, a multiparty system, and land security.
But unlike many other transitions away from authoritarian rule—including that in Northern Ireland—in Zimbabwe the power structure of the old elite rapidly became a relic of the past: the settler community has little political role in the new order. This fact is particularly remarkable since the white community retains its economic dominance, which does not translate into leverage on extraeconomic matters.
The literature on transitions to democracy suggests that the displacement of a former authoritarian elite is a precondition for genuine democratization. This may be necessary, but by no means sufficient, for liberalization of structures of law and order, as exemplified in postsettler Zimbabwe. Other key variables remain to be examined in Chapter 6.