On 30 January this year, Hilary Squires, 43 years old and the MP for Salisbury Central, was sworn in as Rhodesia's new Minister of Justice, Law and Order. Compared with the unforeseen move of his predecessor, the uncompromising Mr Lardner-Burke, to the Commerce and Industry portfolio, Squires' appointment was a predictable one. In June 1975 he had paid a low profile visit to Zambia as part of a team of six Rhodesian Front MPs led by the then Minister of Information, Immigration and Tourism, Wickus de Kock. As an element in the detente offensive, the visit amounted to the first direct contact between Kenneth Kaunda and a Rhodesian Minister since Zambia's independence in December 1963. The members of the Rhodesian delegation, all under the age of 45 and in no case involved directly in UDI, were subsequently tipped for quick promotion in the Smith cabinet.
Hilary Squires brings a lawyer's training to the Law and Order Ministry. Born in South Africa, he completed his early schooling in Bulawayo and returned to Rhodesia for good in 1956. Following three years in the Department of Justice he went into private practice. He is an advocate of the High Court of Rhodesia and of the Supreme Court of South Africa, has been Senior Counsel since May 1974 and is Chairman of the Bar Council. Squires joined the Rhodesian Front in 1970, and in September last year, at the time of the party's annual congress, was reported to be among a number of hardline Rhodesian Front MPs supporting the idea of "confederation" as a solution to Rhodesia's constitutional crisis. The plan, modelled on South Africa's Bantustans, envisages one white state and two black, tribally-defined "homelands".
Interviewed shortly after his appointment, Squires spoke forcefully in favour of retaining the detention system:
"I don't see how any government can manage without it"... "The sad fact of the matter is that our legal processes are just unequal to the strains the situation of African nationalist politics thrust them into". He "question(ed) whether it was really necessary to make it a punishable offence for someone to go to prison for contravening a number of prevailing statutory offences". At the present time, between 800 and 1,000 Africans are being held without charge or trial in Rhodesian prisons.
