Service as usual in the war zone

Press, 26 December 1979, Page 11

Service as usual in the war zone

.1L.4.V COWELL. an i\ZPA-Reuters correspondent, has been travelling around Zimbabwe Rhodesia as a possible settlement of the guerrilla uar approaches. Here are some excerpts from his dispatches:

Zimbabwe ruins Black knuckles tapped politely on a door of one of the world’s more offbeat hostelries. With a deferential “'Morning. Boss,” the waiter delivered early morning coffee to ' the establishment’s only guest, a white man. Outside the isolated, oddly-named Zimbabwe Ruins Hotel, the sun, already hot, warmed up the swimming pool and bathed the distant, jagged hills in soft shimmering light. The surrounding thick bush was quiet. A tranquil moment from the past: master-servant relationship firmly in its place, a scene at peace in an old British colonial doze. A few moments later, a jolting . lurch forward in time as Patriotic Front guerrillas began firing So-viet-style AK-47 automatic rifles from the bush at the concrete pill boxes behind the electrified wire fence surrounding the hotel. The peacocks, strutting in the forecourt, squawked wildly as the black hotel guards in the pill boxes replied with their own automatic rifles, West German G-3s. Nine minutes of shooting, one more encounter in the seven-year bush war. with its death toll of 20.000 people, most of them Africans. (The old hotel had mor* than 400

guests a week in the old days. Now it has three or four a week). The stubborn resistance of the guerrillas* black and white opponents is evident at the isolated hotel here, 26km from the early pioneer settlement of Fort Victoria, along a single-track road. Part of the road is nicknamed “Ambush Alley.’’ Thick bush and huge anthills provide cover for attackers. Hundreds of guerrillas are believed to roam through the unmapped bush, around the group of thatched rooms forming the 65-year-old hotel. (The towering Zimbabwe Ruins, shrine of African nationalism, is guarded by the hotel. Both the bi-racial Government and Patriotic Front trace their claim to the country back to the ruins). The guests come heavily armed. The bar is a a little like the Hollywood “Wild West” cliche, with the men bellying up for a snifter, bolstered pistols on their hips. Certainly somewhere there must be some tourists. monied and perverse, willing to put up here at this courageous inn. where colonial memories seasoned heavily with gunfire are frequently on the menu. Salisbury interlude In the streets of the capital, the Christmas

fairy lights have gone up, a huge Santa Claus figure, white-faced, adorns one of the main stores in the broiling heat, and Christmas crackers and turkeys are being eagerly bought by white housewives. “This is Alice in Wonderland,” a foreign visitor said in wonderment at the dream-like atmosphere of normality in Salisbury . . . the prize contested in the bitter conflict, it seems far from harsh realities. The bougainvillaea-lined streets of mainly white suburbs resound to the steady thwack of tennis games on private courts, the swimming pools glisten in gardens tended by black servants. Dump-people You crawl out of the sacking-covered skeleton of a wrecked car that is home, march through pools Of clinging black mud and rummage in the mounds of garbage delivered by municipal trucks. A kilogram of malodorous old bones, or the same amount of waste paper, will earn you one cent. The abandoned rubbish tip cars are home for some of Zimbabwe-Rho-desia’s refugees. Not far away, Salisbury’ office blocks are framed against the sky. Christmas shoppers. mainly white, are making their way through the glitter.

The wrapping paper is all that is likely to find its way to the 300 or so people living in squalor a few kilometres away, amid the city’s fly-blown jetsam. (Dump-people are the worst off of hundreds of thousands of refugees both inside and outside the country). "All I want is some sadza,” a 22'-year-old man named Elias told a visitor. Sadza is the maize meal porridge that provides the staple diet of ZimbabweRhodesia’s 6.8 M Africans. A wizened 56-year-old, who called himself Petrus, said: “I am coming from the T.T.L. (Tribal Trust Land) because there is too much war. “I am too old to play at war. I am too old to carry the gun. So I come here." Standing beside him. outside the ruins of an American limousine that provided his home, stood his wife, and between them they ran a small stall of selected garbage. “The clothes pegs are for those who want to make furniture.” Petrus explained. “The piece of pipe is a handle for a bag. The chain is for anyone who wants metal.” Business was not good; he had not made a sale for days. Bubbly celebration The day the Patriotic Front accepted Britain s terms for a settlement of v

the gruelling bush war in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, a new discotheque opened in Salisbury. Some 350 guests crammed into the slickly-deco-rated cellar, sipping free champagne and devouring a cold buffet of chicken, beef, and lamb prepared by Swiss chefs. Waitresses in clinging, leopard skin-like dresses wove between the tables. Inland navian (Both Rhodesia and Zambia have navies on Lake Kariba, 280 km long and 32km across at its widest point. Rhodesian forces try hard to keep the lake from becoming an easy passageway for returning guerrillas). The lakeside harbour here provides a berth for Zimbabwe-Rhodesias small but potent navy — a fleet of high-powered speedboats equipped with armaments ranging from .50 calibre machine-guns to 20mm cannon. Unofficial sources here say naval activity has been stepped up since the London talks opened more than three months ago. Few of the fast patrol boats can be seen in the harbour because most are out on the lake A local businessman who owns power boats for charter has been called up in the past few weeks, and his vessels used to augment the official patrols. (Patriotic Front groups

have increased attempts td get home across the lake, moving across the water at night). Their landfall is in wild tribal trust land on th* , craggy Zambezi escarpment. These underpopulated areas must first ' be traversed by the guerrillas before they can seek sanctuary in the more numerous African villages further south. The aim of the infiltration seems to be to place as many guerrilla* as possible inside tn* country before a ceasefire, bolstering Joshua Nkomo’s position when, and if, th* guns fall silent, and preparing for any breakdown in the ceasefire. (Sometimes, naval patrols let the guerrillas land, then call in helicopters or ground troops. Helicopter gunships are stationed at Kariba, and an armed spotter plane can be seen sweeping low over the lake. Little is known ef the other side’s patrol boats; local fishermen stay away from that part of the lake). But for much of the time in Kariba. one of Zimbabwe-Rhodesia's main resorts, the war on th* lake seems remote. At evening, tiny fishing boats bob out on to the waters to catch Kapenta, a freshwater sardine originally introduced on the Zambian side of the lake. During the day, wat*rskiers chum through the wave*.