Whites 'must accept defeat’

Press, 7 October 1980, Page 8

Whites 'must accept defeat’

1 NZPA-Reuter ( Dendenyore, Zimbabwe : The Zimbabwe Prime Min- : ister (Mr Robert Mugabe), 1 renewing appeals for nat- • ional reconciliation, has ■ given his bluntest warning I to date to Zimbabwe’s white minority that they must . accept defeat. . He was addressing two week-end rallies where con- , tinuing divisions 0 between , blacks and whites and between rival black groups were evident. Mr Mugabe told 250 black students at the University of Zimbabwe in Salisbury: “The vanquished (whites) must sincerely accept defeat if reconciliation is to be realised, but the victor must also act fairly and justly in relation to the defeated,” he said. “Reconciliation is not appeasement.’’ His speech, the toughest line he has taken towards the whites since independence last April 18, was seen as aimed at heading off pressure from radicals in his Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front party who complain that the Prime Minister is “going soft on the whites.” But his speech left some students dissatisfied. In questions to Mr Mugabe they complained that econ-

omic improvement was coming to blacks too slowly and said white privileges still existed in housing and education. He repeated his comments later at an open air rally of Z.A.N.U.-P.F. followers . at Dendenyore I2okm south of Salisbury. The Prime Minister also renewed accusations that South Africa was training 5000 dissident black Zimbabweans in a secret army south of the Limpopo River border. He said he had asked Pretoria for an explanation but

had received none. Mr Mugabe said the men had all been members of the Zimbabvze Rhodesia auxiliaries — a force loyal to the former Prime Minister. Bishop Abel Muzorewa. It has now been disbanded. Mr Mugabe said the army was being trained in the Transvaal. He compared the men to South African-backed dissidents in Angola, Mozambique, and Zambia whose aim was to “destabilise the region and dissuade the just struggle being waged by the black majority” in South Africa. Members of the 8.8. C. TV team arrested in Zimbabwe last week have arrived back in London after being deported, and said that they had been verbally abused and threatened with violence by the Zimbabwe police.