Our special bond with London(4), by Eric Teniola

This is the concluding part of the piece which from last week continues the narrative of how Nigeria, just five years after independence, was asked to host the Commonwealth Conference to find a solution to the Rhodesian leadership crisis which Britain itself could not solve. 

Twenty-two Commonwealth leaders accepted to attend the conference. 

The January 1966 Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference focused on the Rhodesian crisis and was chaired by Nigerian Prime Minister Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa. Key attendees included British Prime Minister Harold Wilson, Archbishop Makarios of Cyprus, Milton Obote (Uganda), Lee Kuan Yew (Singapore) and Sir Albert Margai(Sierra Leone). 

Others included Borg Oliver of Malta, Dr. E. E. Williams(Trinidad and Tobago), Zambia’s Vice-President R.C. Kamanga, Jamaica’s Acting Prime Minister, Malaysia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Commonwealth Secretariat’s Secretary-General, Arnold Smith. 

This was the first Commonwealth conference held outside London. The conference opened on 11 January. At that time there was fresh communal crisis in Ilesha, Osun State. Alhaji Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa and Mr. Harold Wilson led the delegates into the ballroom, accompanied by Mr. Arthur Bottomley. After two minutes silence in memory of Mr Shastri, the Nigerian Prime Minister welcomed his guests, gathered ‘to discuss a major problem which has not only assumed global proportions, but is threatening to create a division within our cherished commonwealth organisation…Although a few friends and colleagues are not at the meeting, everybody nonetheless has one objective, the speedy solution of the Rhodesian crisis’. 

Thereafter he controlled the conference with the unforced dignity of a man in a customary role, rather than as the first African ever to preside over such a gathering’, to quote an onlooker. He was followed by Mr. Lester Pearson, Canada being the oldest dominion of the commonwealth, whom many regarded as an obvious mediator, and Mr. Lee Kuan Yew speaking for the newest member state. Sir Abubakar then delivered a keynote speech, pointing out in a review of the present situation that their task was not only to find a way of crushing the illegal regime but also more emphatically to consider the right long-term solution for the future of the territory. 

Although the desire of the African people, the Commonwealth and the United Nations was to ensure an African majority rule in Southern Rhodesia, it would be unwise to neglect the fear of the white majority in the country; the earlier the racists were made to know about their future, the sooner would the rebellion end. 

After Smith’s defeat, the release of all nationalists and a conference, the 1961 constitution should be abrogated and give way to a period of direct rule under which the police, armed forces, judiciary and civil service should, to a large measure, revert to control by the British, with appointed executive and legislative councils, of all races, presided over by the governor. His present skills and his vision of a Rhodesian future had both been acquired in the old council of ministers’ chamber, observing two Scots governors. 

Wilson stated Britain’s position in a massive review of his policy to bring down the Smith regime. He insisted that the problem was Britain’s responsibility alone, not a matter for other organisations, that economic sanctions had already cut Rhodesia’s inward and outward trade by half, that the oil embargo was proving more successful than he could have hoped, and that given time sanctions would work. Further than that, he would not go and sit down to hear the same predictable messages of condemnation in the restricted session confined to the leaders (who were supported by three colleagues each from Britain, Nigeria and Zambia, and two each from the others), uttered from Asia, the Carribean and Cyprus. The Africans, in particular, he later wrote, sought one after another ‘to prove how much more African each was than his neighbours’. 

Zambia thought there would be no resistance. Canada suggested that if sanctions failed, the UN should be invited to step in and impose mandatory world sanctions. Wilson felt that Britain was again, as before the United Nation a month before, ‘in the dock’, with the difference that most of the Lagos prosecution were their countries’ principals, rather than remote plenipotentiaries voicing other persons’ opinions. He was impressed, if not encouraged, by the sophisticated quality of a 40-minute extempore speech by Lee Kuan Yew, equal in substance to any world leader’s that he had heard and displaying an awareness of ‘what the modern world was really about’. 

At the end of the Conference, the Prime Ministers decided on the following measures of commonwealth action: To appoint two continuing committee, composed of representatives of all commonwealth countries, to meet with the Secretary-General in London.  

The first would review regularly the effect of sanctions, and also the special needs which might from time to time arise in honouring the Commonwealth’s undertaking to come to the support of Zambia as required; the second would co-ordinate a special commonwealth programme of assistance in training Rhodesians. The sanctions committee would recommend the reconvening of the Prime Ministers’ meeting when they judged that this was necessary. 

In any case, the Prime Ministers agreed to meet again in July 1966 if the rebellion had not been ended before then. The sanctions committee would advise the Prime Ministers if it considered that action by the United Nations was called for.

Some Prime Ministers indicated that they reserved the right, if need arose, to propose mandatory United Nations action under articles 41 or 42 of chapter VII of the charter. 

Twenty-four hours after the Conference ended in Lagos, Alhaji Tafawa Balewa was assassinated. Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, became independent on April 18, 1980.

I hate to think that the best that has happened to my country, in foreign affairs, occured only in the past. 

Concluded

Eric Teniola, a former director at the Presidency wrote from Lagos.

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