Zimbabwe — starvation and murder

Press, 9 March 1984, Page 16

Zimbabwe — starvation and murder

From the “Economist,’ London

The news from Zimbabwe’s ravaged western province, Matabeleland, has an air of grim familiarity.

A month ago the Government sealed off the province’s southern half and sent in troops to root out insurgent guerrillas. It has said only that “a number” of so-called dissidents have been killed, but, whatever the success of the operation, the 450,000 civilians trapped in the sealed-off zone are now under the heel of a brutal occupation.

Just a year ago, shock troops of the Zimbabwe army’s Fifth Brigade were engaged in a bloody sweep through northern Matabeleland. Apparently moved by tribal antagonism towards the area’s Ndebele population, the soldiers,

who were mainly Shona, went berserk. Church sources estimate that they • killed more than 2000 people. News about what is happening in southern Matabeleland is hard to obtain. No unofficial traffic is allowed in or out. Military roadblocks ensure that people cannot leave. Journalists cannot enter.

But it appears that the soldiers are beating up villagers at random. Witnesses say that in many cases there is no attempt to interrogate, only to intimidate. Treatment centres have been inundated with fracture cases caused by assaults with heavy sticks. On February 14 Mr Joshua Nkomo, the opposition leader whose Zapu party represents Matabeleland constituencies, named six men who he said had been

murdered by soldiers 10 days earlier.

The dead included a worker for an organisation which had been involved in distributing drought relief. There are other unconfirmed reports of killings. Starvation, however, is the main threat to the people of the area. Those crops that had survived the third successive year of drought are exhausted.

The army has closed all stores, and reliable sources say that it is blocking supplies of food — notwithstanding the official assurances that food is getting in. Doctors say widespread starvation is imminent.

The troubles have soured relations with neighbouring Botswana, where guerrillas are said to be seeking sanctuary, and have also opened the way for exploitation by South Africa. South Africa has stoked the fire by supplying arms to the guerrillas, but Zimbabwe’s

claims that the guerrillas are now directly under South African control are treated sceptically by independent observers. The Government clearly has a serious if sporadic security problem in Matabeleland. After last year’s massacres guerrilla activity dropped off. In the weeks before Christmas, however, six whites on Matabeleland farms and an Austrian priest were killed. Morale was already low among the area’s white farmers, who have seen 38 of their number killed, and one ranching area, Kezi, was virtually abandoned.

However, the insurgency is still at a comparatively low level of intensity. Although there are thousands of embittered young men outside the country, independent estimates of the number of guerrillas active in Zimbabwe at any one time vary between 300 and 1000. Many are bandits rather than rebels. According to Government

statistics, they killed 75 people and carried out 284 armed robberies in the second half of 1983. As for the victims of the massacre in February last year, the official version is that they died at the hands of “dissidents.” Last year, however, the Government appointed a committee, consisting of two lawyers and a respected retired white army officer, to investigate the alleged army atrocities. For a week in January the committee took evidence from witnesses to killings, and it is due to hear further testimony this month.

Sources in Matabeleland reckon that most of the guerrillas have now slipped out of the sealed-off area, escaping either to the north and east or across the border into Botswana. But the suffering of the civilian population, which remains confined by the military cordon, is likely to increase if food is not allowed in soon.

Copyright — the “Economist.