Smith is seeking to set up a government representing Southern Rhodesia's 110,000 voters, mainly whites, which would exercise dictatorial power over the country's some 3,000, 000 Africans. .To build up a pretense that he is backed by the popular will, Smith: has staged a referendum of the voters on November 5, For the rest of the population he has rigged a gathering-of chiefs and -headmen, The seclusion and secrecy in which this meeting is being held is so great that not a | Single. representative of the press has been able to get in.
The new Labour government in Bigland stated that whatever the outcome of the meeting of chiefs, it would not be considered a fair test of what the majority of Africans feel about independence under present conditions. Prime Minister Wilson invited Smith to come to London for talks. Smith turned this down, stating that ft was "a little premature..."
. . The London Sunday Times confessed editorially [October 25], "Rarely do volcanoes, natural or political, give such plain forewarning of eruption as has been given by the constitutional Krakatoa in Rhodesia."
ZAMBIA GAINS POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE
After seventy-five years of British colonial rule, Zambia gained