SHOWDOWN
LOOMING IN SOUTHERN RHODESIA
LONDON, April 18 -- Southern Rhodesia is on the verge of a ~ showdown crisis between the new extreme racist White govermment and the black majority of the country, according to all reports arriving here this week end, One of the first acts of the government of Prime Minister Ian Smith, who last week replaced the "moderate" racist — Winston Field ina * further shift to the right forced by the extrem-_ ists, was to arrest the African leader Joshua Nkomo and several of his associates, ‘this has been taken by the people as the signal for a coming proclamation of “independence" from the British Commonwealth and the establishment of a regime approximating Apartheid as practiced in Verwoerd's South Africa.
Hundreds of Negro women took to the streets Friday in a singing, dancing, chanting protest demonstration that stirred the center of Salisbury. (the capital) to a sense of crisis, The racist police arrested many and gave displays of the kind of brutality common to ~ these sadists everywhere. On Saturday, what has been described as ~ “black commandos" retorted by raids on one of Salisbury's biggest department stores,
Arrests were made only after.the city center was 5 virtually turned into an armed police camp.:. "Wild disorder" is reported from Bulawayo ~- Nkomo's hometown -- and the African township in Salis-~ bury, with hundreds of shop windows broken and dozens of cars stoned and overturned,
In Northern Rhodesia, the new African majority government of Kenneth Kaunda has pledged all aid short of military to the significantly named "People's Caretaker Council" headed by Nkomo, Similar action is expected from the African government of Nyasaland, the third of the territories which constituted the now dissolved Central African Federation by means of which British financial and: commercial interests had hoped to maintain a bastion of white rule on the continent.
The Tory government, in all its wings, hopes that the Smith government will be forced by the storm to quickly give way to a "broadly based center government" headed by the notorious Sir Roy Welensky, who left politics after the dissolution of the Federation, claiming he was double-crossed by the British, The Tories hope that: they can thus. get’ about five years in which slowly to give way to a government of the African majority by the institution of a few soncessional reforms,
Whether this will actually come about and work is now apparently going to be settled in the streets of Southern Rhodesian towns, The outcome may have a considerable influence on developments in South Africa which borders Rhodesia.
lB.