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A Weekly Digest Of African Affairs ZIMBABWE Repatriation Exercise Disappointing MAPUTO AN At least 100,000 citizens of Zimbabwe living in Mozambique refugee camps hope to begin retur ning home this week following the completion . of the British-controlled election. Prior to the voting, the j repatriation operations j from Mozambique, Zam bia and Botswana were much less successful than many refugees and of ficials had hoped. Accor ding to figures compiled by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 10,938 Zimbabweans went home from Mozambique between February 4, when the repatriation began, and February 24, when the border was closed preceding the election. Approximately 6,000 were repatriated from Zambia, and another 14,000 from Botswana. At largest refugee camp in Mozambique, Tronga, on the final day of repatriation, about 5 a.m., nearly 600 residents of the camp piled into ten buses for the two-hour trip to the border post at Machipanda.' Eager to ' return home, they had spent the previous night in tents beside the main road, since the buses could not travel the two-mile dirt road into the camp. Throughout the area there are signs of the at tack which occurred on December 4 during the -London negotiations. Where fairly substantial ' bamboo houses once stood, there lay empty 15 x 30oot dirt pits covered , with ashes. Some 60-70 per cent of the dwellings were burned to the ground The - attackers- "350 " Rhodesian soldiers, were dropped by helicopter during the night, they marched up and surround ed the camp about five in the morning, but their presence was somehow . discovered, and the refugees were apparently evacuated. Five residents ' were killed, probably while they were out collec ting wood. Mozambique soldiers killed three of the Rhodesians. The destroyed dwellings have been replaced with less permanent-looking! structures. Residents still i have to carry their water1 up steep banks of a nearby river, and a nurse there said were many water borne diseases among the sick. Most of the families who lived in Tronga were repatriated. Those re maining are mostly or phans and young men who come to Mozambique to join the ZANU Patriotic Front guerrilla army. The ZANU leadership had to tell several thou sand youths that there were no more places in the army. "We explained that getting trained to help run the country is also part of the struggle," one teacher' said. . Approximately 650 Tronga residents a day departed for Machipanda , during each of the twenty days of the repatriation operation. Along with ' refugees from other camps , in Mozambique, however, imany of them were refus ed entry into their homeland. . "We had hoped to repatriate more, and the capacity on the Mozambi que side was high enough , to handle a thousand a day," says Thor Stedne, UNHCR officer in )Maputo who worked with a team of six interna tionally recruited officials at Machipanda. . At first, Stedne said, the reasons for the slower reception were understan dable. The Rhodesians Wanted to see how long it took to screen, medically examine and transport the refugees, before overloading their facilities. "After that," the UN worker recalled, "they brought a variety of reasons water problems, bus shortages, which were later proved untrue, medical excuses. Then in the last two weeks they set . a quota on accepting males. Since the majority of the people in the camps are men. . . .this was a serious problem. They took all the children and women we had, which in dicates the problems were . not logistical ones." Officials from both wings of the Patriotic Front have accused the British and Rhodesians of deliberately slowing the repatriation process to reduce the number of pro PF voters in the country at election time. Soames Guards His Options SALIBURY AN As some 3000 guerrillas at assembly point Delta were converging on an open field near the northeastern Mozambican border, the hum of a helicopter was heard over the stomping of combat boots. The sound grew louder and the guerrillas paused to watch the chopper land by the abandoned, looted mis sion that serves as head quarters for the 37 Com monwealth troops assign ed to monitor Delta camp. The top guerrilla com mander was called out of parade formation and in troduced to the visitors, shaking hands with one the Rhodesian soldiers who had just flown in. The meeting marked the : first time that this par ticular group of Patriotic Front guerrillas and Rhodesian Security Forces met face to face in the , field. It was one of a series r of encounters out in the bush betwen the soldiers who have bbeen fighting each other for the past decade, the first pOhase of a program aimed at in-; tegrating Rhodesia's three t - Representatives of the-Cease-fire Commission, which is chaired by Bri tain's Major General John Acland and includes top officers of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabe African National Libera tion Army (ZANLA), Joshua Nkomo's Zim babwe People's Revolu tionary Army (ZIPRA) and thhe Rhodesian Security Forces, with Commonwealth supervi sion, have been jointly touring the sixteen assembly points around the country, where 22,000 guerrillas are confined. They have been discussing what is rather noncommit tally referred to as "resettlement." On the eve of the elec tions, General Acland an nounced what he describ ed as "the fjrst psychological step in merging the gap between the armies," the opening of a guerrilla retraining camp supervised by Com monwealth troops and staffed with instructors of the all-black Rhodesian African Rifles. This initial ' exercise involved a bat talion of 650 ZIPRA guer rillas, moved out of an all-, ZIPRA assembly point into- a Rhodesian military battle school near the Botswana border. ZANLA sources said they had understood that the programs for in- : tegrating the armies were to include a contingent of approximate 350 troops each from ZANLA, ZIPRA and the Rhodesian . forces, with an aim toward developing joint patrols. ZANLA com mander v Rex Nhongo privately interpreted the ZIPRA-only debut exer cise as a political move to favor Joshua Nkomo, who has 6,000 guerrillas in the assembly points as compared with Mugabe's 16,000. Nhongo has been lobbying vigorously for an assimilation of the armies before the numbers game becomes a factor in the. formation of a govern ment. The British maintain that the alleged pro ZIPRA bias was instead a matter of unfortunate tim ing, and it hey quickly in itialed an alalagous joint training program involv ing ZANLA ' guerrillas from an assembly point in the east at a Rhodesian military base near the Mozambican border. W ho War ts.A Fight? Perhaps the single most important factor in the ef fort to diminish the poten tial for civil war or a military coup is the Com monwealth Monitoring Force. Numbering just 1200, these British, Australians, New Zealanders, Kenyans and Fijians have played a vital peace-keeping role, and British officials have refused for . weeks to discuss the controversial issue of their withdrawal. Authorities have, however, commenced a kind of exchange pro gram, in which the guer rilla troops that leave camp for regular army training are replaced by Rhodesian police and soldiers. This develop ment, accompanied by stepped-up joint patrols, is the most significant sign of military cooperation. It serves to reassure the Rhodesians, who fear guerrilla attacks, and the ZANLA and ZIPRA cadres, who remember too well the bombings of their camps during the war. Recent efforts to solidify the cease-fire ex tend beyond Rhodesia's border. In response to concern over possible foreign intervention, a message was sent from London to Pretoria, warn ing the South Africans not to interfere militarily with the affairs of their, nor thern neighbor. In addition, there was a visit to Maputo, Mozam bique, on February 24 by a Rhodesian military man who many longtime political observers here now feel has replaced Ian Smith as chief negotiator for the country's small, white minority. General Peter Walls traveled with the head of the Rhodesian Intelligence Agency to confer with Mozambi que's top military officers in an apparently suc cessful effort to avert renewed border conflict. Although the flurry of conciliatory activity has taken center stage this past week, these encouraging developments have un-, folded against a sober backdrop the largest visible military mobiliza tion the country has ever seen. By the first day of voting the Rhodesian military call-up . has resulted in the deployment of an estimated 100,000 Rhodesian regular forces, reserves, auxiliaries and police. The Rhodesian' Herald dramatized the military show of strength with a photo of convoys of tanks, captioned "AH right, who wants a fight?" Dirty Tricks The . military developments on the eve of the elections nearly eclipsed the final stages of the two-month-lqng elec tion campaign. Under the supreme powers accorded to the British interim governing authority in the Londo peace accord. Lord Soames could have an nounced the banning of certain parties, or even the disenfrancisement of cer tain election districts as a means of nullifying the mass intimidation of voters that ook place dur ing the election campaign, Jbut he did not. The party most relieved about that decision was Robert . Mugabe's wing of the Patriotic Front, for it was his party members and stray guerrillas that the governor had held respon sible for most of the in timidation. Mugabe argued throughout the campaign that the principal in timidation eme from the auxiliary wees of the Rhodesian Army, which Lord Soames had deployed throughout the country. Many observers believe that aH parties, and their military forces, were attempting to in timidate vcoters. The governor summon ed the leaders of both wings of the Patriotic Fron separately to Government House on the SAT., MARCH B, 1333 day before the voting began, and by all accounts the tension that characterized earlier meetings betwen Lord Soames and Mugabe was gone. The end of the cam paign also found Mugabe especially conciliatory toward the other wing of the Front. At his final campaign press con ference, Mugabe pledged, "Whatever the size of our vote, we'll uphold the principle that we are allies with Nkomo and strive to achieve a coalition." Joshua Nkomo, mean while, has downplayed the Patriotic Front alliance, played up the integration of his guerrilla forces into the Rhodesian Army, and kept his post-election op tions open. The least conciliatory of the main contenders on election eve was Bishop TKECA88UMAT!S-13 Abel Muzorewa, who even refused to say he would ' abide by the outcome of the elections. Muzorcwa's 'campaign climaxed with a four-day long celebration in Salisbury's largest black township, Highfieid. The fathering featured free food and drink, musk, and exhortations to the crowd to shun the "communist" Patriotic Front parties, which, it was alleged, .would organize mass executions and steal people's children annd cattle if elected. The final week of the election campaign was also characterized by what can only be described as 'dirty tricks.' A fake ver sion of Mofo, a Catholic Church-funded newspaper that editorially supports Mugabe's ZANU, was distributed throughout the Continued on Page 16 t - 4 ! 'tfi&'l 01 ( Si J V LEARNING ABOUT ANOTHER CULTURE - N. C. Museum of History docent, Mrs. Sharon Keirter, holds up a gourd which Indians used for a kitchen utensil. Mrs. Keister is delivering a museum "touch talk" on the daily life of the Cherokee, to a second grade class from Durham's R.N. Harris Elementary School. 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The Carolina Times (Durham, N.C.)
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March 8, 1980, edition 1
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