‘The past week has marked one of the most difficult and potentially dangerous phases of the settlement in Rhodesia. Great forbearance – the more difficult after years of war – was called for from all sides.’ With these words, the interim Governor, Christopher Soames, opened a broadcast to the nation on the evening of 6 January 1980. In somewhat florid language, he continued by describing progress so far in dramatic terms as three acts: the withdrawal of the Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF); the dispersal of members of the Commonwealth Monitoring Force (CMF) ‘in small isolated groups scattered among the hills and in the middle of the veldt’; and finally the arrival at the Rendezvous Points and Assembly Places (APs), ‘in a trickle which has become a flood’, of thousands of members of the Patriotic Front (PF).