In most countries ordinary people do not appreciate the sheer guile of their
political leaders. Rhodesia is no exception. The dealings between the government
and the African National Council confirm it. The government interrupted its
dialogue with the ANC by detaining thirty-three senior ANC officials without
trial, effectively destroying the cohesion of the only black political
organization in the country. To the white voter, who sees no further than the
surface of events, the detentions represented a simple exercise of executive
power. In fact the government could not act in as sudden and arbitrary a fashion
as that. It had to choose the time for its action with care, and to some extent it
had to prepare the white electorate to accept what happened without question. The
government also had to conceal its true intentions from the ANC without resorting
to outright falsehood. Finally, it had to leave itself free to make a flexible
response to the sort of unpredictable events which inevitably occur in political
life and which often wreck the most carefully drafted plans. Formulating a policy
to meet these contradictory objectives without giving the appearance of bad faith
required much guile. The outcome, in the short term at least, was
success.
Self-coding: A method to assess semantic validity and bias when coding open-ended responses
