Downing Street Years - Margaret Thatcher [45]
That evening we all attended a Commonwealth service in Lusaka Cathedral, where we had the benefit of a long polemical sermon from the Archbishop. I had been told already that the press knew the substance of what had been decided. Sonny Ramphal and I were sitting together; he was to read the first lesson, and I the second. After he had read his I showed him a note I had received from Peter Carrington about Malcolm Fraser’s intervention, suggesting that we must now brief the British press on what had taken place, subject to the Secretary-General’s approval. On the back of my hymn sheet, while I was reading the second lesson, Mr Ramphal wrote an alternative suggestion. The heads of government had been invited to a barbecue that evening at Malcolm Fraser’s conference villa: we could hold a meeting there and settle a communiqué to be issued at once. This seemed to me an excellent idea. I agreed to telephone Kenneth Kaunda immediately after the service to warn him of what we had in mind. And so the meeting came about. It took an hour and there were some very pointed comments. I was none too pleased with Malcolm Fraser myself. But the conclusion was satisfactory. Indeed, most of us were relieved that it had all been so amicable and that our proceedings could therefore end a day early.
I returned home on Wednesday morning. I was well pleased with what had been achieved, so much of it by Peter Carrington and Tony Duff. Many had believed that we could not come out of Lusaka with an agreement on the lines we wanted. We had proved them wrong. We had incidentally proved the Zambian press wrong too: they had so convinced themselves beforehand of the truth of their own propaganda about me that it was clearly a shock to find that they were dealing with a real person rather than a colonial cardboard cut-out. I had no illusions about the scale of the task ahead: it was never going to be easy to steer Rhodesia to independence, legitimacy and stability. But after Lusaka I believed that it could be done, and that we had won the African good will to carry it through successfully.
Britain accordingly called a Constitutional Conference for the interested parties at Lancaster House in London in September. Its purpose was emphasized as being not just to talk but to reach a settlement. Peter Carrington arranged the agenda to take the most difficult questions last, so that the first item to be agreed was the new constitution; only then would come the question of the transitional arrangements; and finally the calling of a cease-fire. We calculated that the longer the conference continued, the less any of the interested parties would be willing to take responsibility for breaking it up. We reserved to ourselves the task of putting forward final proposals in each phase and we required the parties to respond, even if these proposals did not meet all their objectives. At each stage we had to exert pressure — direct and indirect — on the two sides to reach a satisfactory compromise. Peter Carrington chaired the conference with great skill and took charge of its day-to-day work. My role lay outside it. The heads of the ‘front line’ states came to London in person or sent in High Commissioners to see me for a progress report. President Machel of Mozambique was especially helpful in putting pressure on Robert Mugabe. I also gave dinner for President Nyerere, another strong backer of Mr Mugabe. His concern was how to blend the three separate armies — the two guerilla armies and the Rhodesian army — into one, a task which in fact would fall to the British army to achieve. The Lancaster House proposals