The murky underworld of Zimbabwe politics

Press, 30 May 1987, Page 20

The murky underworld of Zimbabwe politics

From the “Economist,” London

Zimbabwe’s former guerrillas live in a murky underworld with plenty of guns, plenty of discontents and little leadership. The gunmen who murdered four white Saturday-night darts players in the Settlers’ Country Club at Somabhula recently had certainly fought against Mr lan Smith’s regime in the guerrilla army organised by Mr Joshua Nkomo’s Z.A.P.U. party. But Mr Nkomo is embarrassed by the atrocity; and one of the murdered farmers had lately (with Government support) evicted some armed squatters from his land. This particular tragedy was a local quarrel, not a political assassination.

It does, though, give Zimbabwe’s Prime Minister, Mr Robert Mugabe, another stick to beat Mr Nkomo with. Mr Nkomo is 69, and unwell. He would like to lead his Z.A.P.U. party into unity with Mr Mugabe’s Z.A.N.U., accepting some grand-sounding public office under the new single-party Constitution that Mr Mugabe wants. But the Nkomo party is based on the country’s 20 per cent

minority of Ndebele-speaking people, and Mr Nkomo must take them with him. Most of his senior party colleagues refuse Mr Mugabe’s uncompromising terms, which are in effect that they join the bigger party as junior, individual members, not as a block in its own right.

The greatest difficulty arises in the refugee camps across the Botswana border. There, a few of the people who formerly followed Mr Nkomo have accepted guns and training from the South Africans, who this week once more claimed that Mr Mugabe provides bases for attacks across their border. Mr Mugabe will offer no compromise to bring Mr Nkomo back into the fold with dignity. The Prime Minister chose the celebration of the country’s seventh birthday, on April 17, to announce that the lingering Z.A.N.U.-Z.A.P.U. merger talks had broken down once again. Why so tough? Probably because his own party leaders, who bitterly remember their old quarrels with Mr Nkomo, insist

on it. They are preoccupied with their own regional and tribal differences, whose latest manifestation came with the dismissal of a recalcitrant Z.A.N.U. regional chairman, Mr Edgar Tekere.

Mr Tekere is impulsive and unreliable, and was implicated in the killing of a white farmer in 1985. But Mr Mugabe has gone to great lengths to avoid a quarrel with him.

Mr Tekere’s home language is a Zulu dialect similar to that of Mr Nkomo’s Ndebele people, and his home province of Manicaland lies along the border with Mozambique, most of whose rulers speak another similar language. A Nkomo-Tekere alliance would be dangerous to Mr Mugabe; the Prime Minister therefore needs to please the rest of his colleagues, which he has done by breaking off the talks with Mr Nkomo.

Mr Mugabe is often described as Zimbabwe’s absolute ruler. But his authority depends on looking after his allies.

Copyright — The Economist.