IN the last edition of the Struggle for Zimbabwe we looked at the launch of the north eastern offensive which marked the beginning of the Second Chimurenga. This week we take a closer look at the détente period, the time when the war temporarily stopped.
What we came to know as ‘The détente’ in the history of the country’s liberation struggle was a culmination of a series of Internal Peace Initiatives by the imperial powers designed to scuttle or supplant a radical approach by the nationalist movements against colonial powers.
Realising that Rhodesia’s position was becoming untenable and in an effort to circumvent the onslaught by the guerrillas, the then South African Prime Minister John Vorster began to court the Front Line States assuming that South African interests would better be served by collaborating with black governments in the neighborhood.
The initiatives, spanning from 1974 all the way to the first conference held at the Victoria Falls Bridge on August 26 1975 stretched up to the Geneva Conference in 1976.
The Détente presented a false hope for a peaceful settlement to the internal conflict in Rhodesia.
The peace plan first authored by John Vorster was to be implemented over a two-year transitional period in which political prisoners were to be released and allowed to participate in the process of the internal settlement.
The release from the jail of the likes of Cde Robert Mugabe in 1974 was part of the initiative to stop the onslaught by the radical groups largely believed to be modelled and supported by Communist Russia and China.
Communism in the eyes of the imperialists was a monster that had to be stopped by whatever means possible.
The initiative was unacceptable to the nationalist movements who had chosen to pursue a radical approach to liberate Zimbabwe.
On their part, any peace plan organised and led by puppets such as Bishop Abel Muzorewa under the banner of the UANC was simply unacceptable.
The issue of a transitional period was again considered an affront to the new radical strategy of executing an armed struggle against the colonial regime.
These were the issues that John Vorster had to deal with in his peace initiatives before he could win the support of the liberation movements and the Front Line States.
One other major stumbling block emerged over the issue of the venue for the first conference.
Liberation movements wanted a neutral venue outside Rhodesian territory while Smith maintained that the conference had to take place within Rhodesia.
Eventually, John Vorster came up with a compromise in which all parties agreed to convene the conference on a South African train halfway across the Victoria Falls Bridge on the border between Rhodesia and Zambia on August 26 1975.
Kenneth Kaunda and Vorster acted as mediators, but the conference collapsed as both sides took turns to counter-accuse the other for breaching terms of the temporary ceasefire as part of the plan.
There were further internal talks between Smith and Nkomo with the blessing of Kaunda and other Frontline leaders but these talks excluded other party leaders.
They inevitably collapsed.
In a television speech read by Ian Douglas Smith on March 20 1976, Smith dealt a severe blow to any future attempts to broker an Internal Peace Settlement.
Smith in one of his famous hallucinations said, “I do not believe in majority rule ever in Rhodesia, not in a thousand years.”
He went on to say that he believed in blacks and whites working together not in a situation where one day a white man is on top and the other day a black man is on top.
He said such a scenario did not work and was a recipe for disaster in Rhodesia. Such utterances therefore exposed the racists’ arrogance and only served to harden nationalist movements against any future attempts to initiate similar moves.
In February 1976, the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger formerly announced the US entry into the Rhodesian conflict.
Subsequently, over a period of six months following its entry into the Rhodesian conflict, the US through Henry Kissinger began a series of engagements with Britain, South Africa and the Frontlines States in what became commonly known as the Anglo-American Initiative.
The US was determined to build on the collapsed initiative by the South African Prime Minister John Vorster.
On September 18 1976 Henry Kissinger met Smith in Pretoria where he formerly proposed and pressured Ian Douglas Smith to accept the principle of majority rule again over a transitional period of two years based on one man one vote.
Although Smith was initially reluctant to accept Kissinger’s proposals, he was left with no choice when John Vorster intimated that he would cut off financial and military aid to the regime if he remained stubborn and adamant.
On September 24 1976 for the first time in the history of the liberation struggle for Zimbabwe, Smith with a pinch of salt publicly accepted the principle of ‘unconditional’ majority rule based on one man one vote.
Despite the concession by Ian Smith, the nationalist movements on their part were totally against any transitional period, therefore the Kissinger plan or the Anglo-American plan did not live to see the light of the day in Rhodesia.
Smith’s concession was, however, not without its consequences on the right wing Rhodesian Front.
In July 1977, 12 RF MPs later to be commonly known as the ‘Dirty Dozen’ defected to join the Rhodesian Action Party which was completely opposed to any conciliation with the black nationalists.
The defection followed legislative proposals by Ian Smith to remove racial criteria from the Land Tenure Act.
Realising the coming of an imminent collapse in the Henry Kissinger’s initiative, the British made another attempt to bring to the table in Geneva, all the belligerent parties for another round of talks.
In 1976 the Geneva Conference was convened and all the nationalist movements announced their willingness to participate, but again as earlier proven during a series of previous meetings, each side stuck to its guns without compromise and the meeting failed to resolve the conflict.
The stage was set for the escalation of the armed struggle and from there-on, the onslaught against the colonial regime relentlessly continued leading to the Lancaster House Constitutional Conference in 1979.
It must be noted that all internal peace initiatives under the détente were never popular with the majority of the Zimbabwean people.
Such initiatives remained a preserve for the few who organised and planned the meetings.
Even among the guerrillas themselves, there was little enthusiasm to the extent that they not only decided not to talk much about it but, equally condemned such initiatives during pungwe gatherings.
During that détente period the guerrillas as according to comrades Jekanyika Munetsi and Brooks Chinembiri suffered from starvation since the UN and other organisations were bound by the terms of the détente to desist from providing military and food supplies.
Cde Munetsi said during that period there was no war or operational activity.
“It was the most painful period of the liberation struggle because there were no food supplies and many comrades had to preserve the little ammunition they had. “The war was literally at a standstill and for many that came to the war that time had to have courage and proper orientation because they were coming from a normal life to poverty.”
While the liberation movement stuck to the terms spelt out by the ceasefire, the Rhodesians continued with their war efforts.
Cde Chinembiri also said, “The détente period had no resupply lines and there was no training. The period literally stopped the armed struggle.”
Cde Pam Pam Disaster said, “The détente period was meant to fool the liberation movements by applying cosmetic changes to the Smith regime and mobilise African support for the internal settlement.”