Nkomo returns home

Press, 17 August 1983, Page 6

Nkomo returns home

NZPA-Reuter Harare The Zimbabwean Opposition leader, Joshua Nkomo, returned to Harare yesterday ending five months of self-imposed exile in Britain.

Mr Nkomo, who slipped across Zimbabwe’s southwestern border into Botswana in March on his way to london, went through long Customs and immigration formalities at Harare Airport. He arrived aboard an Air Zimbabwe flight from London on which Zimbabwe’s Home Affairs Minister, Dr Herbert Ushewokunze, was also a passenger. Fellow passengers said that the two men did not speak to each other during the flight. Mr Nkomo was met at the airport by the acting president of his Zimbabwe African People’s Union party and a small crowd of well-wishers. Mr Nkomo, aged 66, fled Zimbabwe on March 8, saying that the Prime Minister, Mr Robert Mugabe, had ordered him killed.

Mr Mugabe, his ally in the pre-independence war against white rule in the former Rhodesia, denied that and said that Mr Nkomo was safe to return. But his place in a political order dominated by Mr Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front remains uncertain.

Mr Nkomo, often referred to as the father of Zimbabwe beause of his 30-year career in black nationalist politics, will face his first big hurdle tomorrow when he is due to appear in Parliament to argue against being expelled. Under the Constitution any member who misses 21 consecutive sittings of the House of Assembly can lose his seat. Mr Nkomo’s deadline fell on August 2.

For the last two weeks the Government has been unable to muster the 51 votes required in the 100seat House to push the motion through against the combined opposition of Mr Nkomo’s Z.A.P.U. with 20 seats, the all-white Republic Front with 10, white Independents with 10, and the United African National Council with three.

Some political analysts said that some of Z.A.N.U.P.F.’s 57 members seemed markedly unenthusiastic about expelling Mr Nkomo, mainly out of respect for his contribution to the creation of a black-governed Zimbabwe. Others said that Mr Nkomo and the Government may; have done a secret deal to secure his return and that the adjournment of the expulsion debate to tomorrow was deliberate.