Party backs Muzrewa, expels dissenters

Press, 15 August 1978, Page 8

Party backs Muzrewa, expels dissenters

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury

Bishop Abel Muzorewa, a black leader of Rhodesia’s transitional Government, has stifled attacks on his leadership of the United African National Council and won a resounding vote of confidence from provincial delegates of the party. Four senior local party officials who had criticised the bishop as politically inept were expelled from the party along with Byron Hove, a former co-Minister of Law and Order who was sacked from the Government in April, and Pius Murombe, chairman of the London branch of the U.A.N.C.

A meeting of 200 delegates also rejected the call-

ing of an all-parties conference to discuss the future of Rhodesia, as proposed by Britain and the United States.

The delegates unanimously passed a motion of confidence in Bishop Muzorewa, asking him to speak for the party and the country as he saw fit. Party sources said a rally the bishop addressed on Saturday and attended by armed men and women he described as guerrillas, had probably helped him win the confidence vote.

The bishop addressed the U.A.N.C. meeting on Sunday for more than two hours. He persuaded the delegates to reject dissident demands for the party to withdraw from

the transitional Government and for the calling of a U.A.N.C. congress, at which the dissidents planned to challenge his leadership. A party spokesman said after the meeting that any U.A.N.C. member airing grievances through the press would in future receive the same treatment as those who were expelled. The meeting rejected the proposals for an all-party Rhodesian conference, which would include leaders of the Patriotic Front guerrilla alliance, on grounds that such a conference would seriously undermine the prospects of an adult suffrage election and delay the independence date of December 31 this year, a party statement said.