Mugabe slashes defence budget

Press, 26 July 1980, Page 9

Mugabe slashes defence budget

! NZPA-Reuter Salisbury Zimbabwe slashed defence spending by 19 per cent in the new African nation's first, peace-time Budget yesterday. In estimates submitted to Parliament, over-ail Government spending increased 1.6.4 per cent compared to last year’s Budget because of step-ped-up expenditure on education and health by the social-ist-leaning Government of

Robert Mugabe. The estimates provide for! military expenditure of $233.31 million. 19 per cent down on I last year when the former!, Rhodesia spent 40 per cent! of its Budget on defence ini l the closing days of the seven-u year bush war. Defence remained, how- ■ ever, the largest single item in b the new estimates largely be-li cause of a need to feed, clothe j and pay some 35,000 national-1 i ist guerrillas in cease-fire as-4 sembly camps. I The estimates were the ‘ first to be presented in the I new nation, which became < independent from Britain last 1 1 April 18, and were the first it in peace-time for many years, i The second largest item I was education at $184.7 mil-J lion, an increase of 53 petit

cent over last year mainly intended to improve primary education and provide free .tuition in Government primary schools. In third place came spending on the police, 12.5 per cent up on last year at $88.7 million with health expenditure at $83.7 million, up more than 50 per cent on last year. About. 40 shots were fired at the Salisbury home of one

'of Joshua Nkomo’s aides duriing Wednesday night, the poljice have said. I They said the house, in I Salisbury’s mainly white I Northwood suburb, was unioccupied at the time of the j attack by unknown assailants who used automatic rifles. I The house was only recently taken over by Ariiston Chambati, the administrative secretary of .Mr I Nkomo’s Patriotic Front , party. I The incident apparently stemmed from the uneasy relations between Zimbabwe’s coalition partners — the Patriotic Front of Mr Nkomo, now Home Affairs Minister, and the Zimbabwe African National Union — Patriotic Front led by the Prime Minister (Mr Robert Mugabe).