Black and white learning to coexist in Zimbabwe

Press, 22 October 1980, Page 23

Black and white learning to coexist in Zimbabwe

By

XAN SMILEY,

“Observer,” London

Six months after independence the Zimbabwe honeymoon is over. Even so, the marriage between the rump of the old white establishment which still runs most of the new nation’s day-to-day affairs, and the new leaders, remains not only convenient but even harmonious. Much trickier are relationships within Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s own political family — the younger generation represented by the guerrillas, and with the followers of Joshua Nkomo. Bishop Abel Muzorewa has already been forgotten, and when the urban and district council elections are over by the end of next month his party will probably die. There has, however, been a wave of tension over the past month, particularly as at least 20,000 guerrillas are now moving from camps deep in the i bush into makeshift bar- ■ racks behind wire fences ' on the edges of Salisbury and Bulawayo.

In some rural areas ' thuggery by guerrillas,

who are now disclaimed by the central authorities but are nonetheless the same fighters who dragged white Rhodesia to Lancaster House, have brought both blacks and whites back into the shadows of the seven-year war. Police believe that at least 180 people have died through more or less politically motivated violence since independence. Although blacks are especially fearful of political (and perhaps military’) confrontation between Mugabe’s and Nkomo’s disciplines, whites are the most vocal in decrying the recent lawlessness. Most of them sit tight, adopting the grim wait-and-see attitude they have understandably perfected over

the years. There is a bizarre duality in white thinking. On the one hand they hope that “Muggers," as Mugabe is affectionately known and on whom they pin almost as high hopes as they once placed on lan Smith, will somehow sort matters out so they can “get on with .it without being mucked around.” On the other hand, there is the smirk of satisfaction over the possible fulfilment of the age-old white Rhodesian prophecy that “if we give them their so-called freedom, they will soon make a mess of it and tear each other to pieces in the process.”

More sober whites reflect, however, that a year ago as many as 1500 people a month were dying in the war, with perhaps five times as many wounded. By comparison, today’s violence is a drop in the ocean. The present tensions were bound, in any case, to arise. Had there been no clear-cut electoral result, the whites would have been in far more danger. It is remarkable that the guerrillas, accustomed for so long to making their own laws in the countryside, have been as amenable as they have been. There has been no sudden upsurge of multi-racial enthusiasm.' After work there is almost no social mixing, barely a token

black even at white liberal parties. The black elite, that has returned from Europe and North America appears to have become just another caste.

The new leaders have given a handful of eager, white, Left-wing exiles some projects to experiment with, but the liberal white 10 per cent who stayed to throw brickbats at Smith have been politely ignored by the new black elite.

Expensive, white-domi-nated private schools are

easily accommodating an inflow of black students, including the children of President • Canaan Banana and various Ministers. Virtually all the 36 Ministers and deputy Ministers have moved into chic houses in the leafy, former white suburbs, far from the rough black townships where 95 per cent of the urban people still live.

That, again, prompts a mixed white reaction — of race-tinted contempt because “it’s good .to see these Marxists selling their principles for swimming pools,” and optimism that the acquisition by blacks of privileges previously confined to whites will guarantee the continuation of capitalism.

On the whole, there have been astonishingly few instances of blacks asserting their new theoretical equality with aggressive social gestures. The Health Minister, Herbert Ushewokunze, momentarily stirred the pot by accusing white nurses of maltreating black patients. Among hospital staff there is a new jocularly termed “head wagging syndrome”: before a white staff member makes a derogatory comment about a black compatriot, there is a quick cautiona-

ry glance down the corridor to left and right.

The ruling party has, to be sure, been blunt in its eagerness to “reflect the character of the country as a whole” — the standard euphemism for making blacks a little more equal than whites. This is especially true in radio and television, where the propaganda is cruder than in lan Smith’s day, with lengthy eulogies in Marxist jargon of Rumania, North Korea, Tanzania, to name but a few, punctuated with songs in praise of the party. The whites, repelled but fascinated, try to convince themselves that the blacks are merely “letting off steam," playing with symbols while leaving the

substance of society unchanged. “Let them pull down Rhodes’s statue if they must,” is the white attitude. And when Watts’s sculptured image of Energy was similarly purged, there were some ribald white comments about that too.

So far, not a single white civil servant has been sacked, although highly qualified black Zimbabweans from New York and London are slotting nicely into top positions rapidly being vacated. The mighty multinationals are notably un-

scathed. Harry Oppenheimer has rapidly discovered the virtues of Mugabe. .

Radicals are already worrying that the party which promised to take over the multinationals is doing the exact opposite.

Extraordinarily gentle though the transition has been so far, the whites at last realise they have become politically irrelevant whatever the entrenched clauses of the constitution. Far more important, the remnants of the white army, the last repository of a possible white backlash, are evaporating far more quickly than expected. In economic terms, those whites with the most to lose are naturally keenest to make the new order stick. Even so. the emigration rate is rising again. Within three years the majority of whites will probably have gone but the economic continuity may have been preserved.

Much more problematical is Mugabe’s relations with the blacks. The coalition with Nkomo is fragile, and mistrust between the two guerrilla armies deep, although the 130strong British military team is slowly welding them together, hoping anxiously that neither the political mudslinging between the parties nor the pockets of violence (now that both armies are sharing the same patch of

Salisbury), will trigger wider factional discord.

Mugabe is equally hardpressed to assure his own guerrillas that he has no intention of victimising Edgar Tekere, the Manpower Minister, Party Sec-retary-General, and leader of the “heavies,” who faces a murder trial early next month. Even if Tekere is convicted, there will probably not be an uncontainable rebellion of guerrillas, confused although many of them are by the party’s “volte face” from promises of revolution to appeals for reconciliation and gradual reform.

Nkomo’s men are still hostile to Mugabe, despite the alliance; guerrillas from all factions are restless; the whites are nervous. However, all of that was always unavoidable.

The massive benefits of peace — especially rural reconstruction — should keep the bulk of the people behind Mugabe at least for a couple of years of party entrenchment, gradual reform, and tentative coexistence rather than cosy reconciliation. It is later that Mugabe will decide upon the shape in which he means to mould the social system and economy. Ideological debate on future economic models is already raging in the Party’s Central Committee. Nobody yet predicts the outcome. Copyright, London Observer Service.