Zimbabweans queue to vote

Press, 3 July 1985, Page 10

Zimbabweans queue to vote

NZPA-Reuter Harare Zimbabwe’s black electors have swamped pollingstations on the first day of voting in the General Election and caused the Government to extend the two-day ballot for another two days. Government officials said that only 500,000 of the 2.9 million registered voters had managed to cast their ballots yesterday in the country’s first general elections since independence in 1980. Voting was due to end

today. But officials said that legislation to extend the poll was being urgently enacted. The President, the Rev. Canaan Banana, has the power to extend the poll on the Government’s advice. Thousands of voters queued for hours in unseasonably cold and rainy weather at 1800 polling places as election officials rigorously scrutinised voting slips and registration papers. The Government had ordered all employers to give workers half a day off to allow them to vote, but

many told reporters at stations around the country that they had stood for hours without reaching the polling-booth. The voting is for 79 of 80 black seats in the 100-mem-ber House of Assembly. Whites voted on Thursday for seats reserved for them under the 1980 independence Constitution. The former rebel Rhodesian leader, lan Smith, won 15 out of 20. The white result angered many blacks who still hate Mr Smith as leader of a regime that killed thousands

of guerrillas during the bitter seven-year war that preceded independence. The Prime Minister, Mr Robert Mugabe, said at a campaign rally on Monday that Zimbabwe’s whites were still racists. He vowed to scrap the 20 separate seats as soon as possible. Mr Mugabe is widely expected to win another fiveyear term and he predicted in a television interview aired on the the eve of the poll that his party would take 65 to 70 seats. His Z.A.N.U.-P.F. party held 58 in the outgoing

parliament to 19 for Joshua Nkomo's P.F.-Z.A.P.U. party and three for the minority United African National Council. Voting has been deferred in one seat because of the death of a candidate. After voting in his southwestern powerbase of Bulawayo yesterday, Mr Nkomo said, “It’s going to take about six months for people to vote the way things are going”. Correspondents reported a mood of frustration and anger in the long queues at many polling-stations, but no incidents were reported.