On the Road to Zimbabwe

...Smith's goal now is to play an influential role for as long as he can...

...They called themselves the Zimbabwe People's Army (zipa), and President Nyerere accurately dubbed them the Third Force...

...Nkomo has also had a series of talks with Bishop Muzorewa, who a few weeks ago received a tumultuous greeting at Salisbury's airport, but who doesn't pose much of a political threat...

...Shortly afterward, NkomO, Sithole and other nationalist politicians were released from detention...

...Thus Nkomo was down yet far from out two years ago when the current negotiations over Rhodesia first became a real possibility...

...Mugabe seeks leverage for zipa and, through it, for himself...

...It rejects sharing power with Ian Smith's Rhodesia Front in an interim government and demands that the Rhodesian Armed Forces be disbanded, with zipa assuming police powers during the transition period...

...A few hours later a Zambian jet whisked Nkomo to Lusaka...

...The Nkomos, Sitholes and Muzorewas were continually jetting around the world, bickering among themselves, while the guerrillas often lacked food or equipment...

...More than anything he wants to bask in the spotlight of political power and prestige—to be the Leopold Senghor or Jomo Ken-yatta of his country...

...He is said to have secretly suggested to multinational giants such as Lonrho (London Rhodesia Company) that they would fare better with him than with Bishop Abel Muzorewa or Ndabaningi Sithole?or, for that matter, Ian Smith, whose clinging to white supremacy has kept the constricting trade sanctions against Rhodesia intact...

...They were triggered by the collapse of Portuguese colonialism...

...Rather, the Africans had gotten the impression from Kissinger that in the proposed interim government they would share power with respectable, moderate whites such as former Prime Minister Garfield Todd or Sir Roy Welensky, head of the Federation of Central Africa until it broke up in 1961...

...Mugabe and zipa pose the most serious threat to Nkomo's dream of heading a new majority government in Rhodesia...

...Initial changes are expected to occur in such areas as health and education...

...Indeed, after 28 years of maneuvering, he probably could give his neighbors a lesson or two in the art of survival...

...His precise military role is unclear—except that alongside the publicity-shy Nhongo, the 51-year-old Mugabe is usually referred to as zipa's "political spokesman...

...Robert Mugabe, split off to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (zanu...

...If he can reach a firm accord with Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo is likely to become Prime Minister...

...A year ago President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia warned that if the negotiations Nkomo was about to begin with Rhodesia's Prime Minister Ian Smith failed, the huge man would become "irrelevant" to the future of Zimbabwe, the African name for Rhodesia...

...Meanwhile competition within the Zimbabwean nationalist movement, long fierce, further intensified...

...Unlike their neighbors in the former Portuguese territories, too, many of them have gone into business...

...Before any of the frontline nations had achieved independence, he was addressing the United Nations in New York...

...For the time being, zipa has vowed to continue the guerrilla war until black majority rule is realized...

...The remaining skirmishes will simply be efforts by the parties to extract the best deal possible...

...But there is still a long way to travel on the road to Zimbabwe...

...The 59-year-old former social worker and labor leader, who founded this country's liberation movement, needs little guidance...

...The Zambian and others are reportedly grooming Nkomo to become Rhodesia's first black Prime Minister...

...These black middle-class businessmen and farmers want independence and majority rule, but they are afraid of what they are told is Socialism...

...When his foot touched the pavement he sighed, still smiling broadly, "Home at last...

...On the other hand, Nkomo is no ideologue...

...He was similarly the sole nationalist to hold talks with Henry Kissinger during the Secretary of State's recent shuttle diplomacy in Southern Africa...

...Nkomo is in the difficult position of not being able to oppose these demands: To do so would leave him open to accusations of selling out to the whites, a charge that has haunted him over the years...

...Of course, disputes over details of the talks are essentially unimportant, for the central issue was conceded when the white government agreed to independence under majority rule...

...The next year Nkomo suffered another blow when Ian Smith sent him to the Gonakudzingwa Detention Camp...

...Many of their fellow Shona tribesmen—who make up 80 per cent of Rhodesia's population?followed them, leaving zapu a minority voice...

...The zapu cadres subsequently withdrew from the People's Army and are now thought to be loyal to Nkomo, but they number only 2,000-3,000 men...

...The one element of the Rhodesian situation that has so far eluded Nkomo's designs is the military...

...Nkomo wants to do whatever is necessary to insure he comes out on top...

...While Muzorewa was out of the country, Nkomo oalled a meeting of the ANC that elected him its new chairman...

...The soldiers disavowed the politicians and established their own hierarchy, with Rex Nhongo as commander-in-chief...

...The party he created, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (zapu) was officially banned in 1962...

...Nkomo's greatest strength at the moment may be Mugabe's weak constituency within the country...

...NATIONALIST MANEUVERS On the Road to Zimbabwe BY ROGER MANN Salisbury Beaming from ear to ear, the 300-pound Buddha of a man stepped out of the plane and waved to the several thousand enthusiastic supporters who came to the airport here last September 25 to welcome him...

...In the Sino-Soviet African rivalry zapu had previously aligned with Moscow and zanu with Peking, so Nkomo embarked on a subtle public-relations campaign aimed at winning Western sympathy without alienating his Communist support...

...Under strong pressure from Kaunda and Nyerere, they formally disbanded zapu and zanu, which had been operatng in exile, and the two groups were joined together beneath the umbrella of Bishop Abel Muzorewa's African National Council (ANC...

...Realizing he would need powerful external backers as well as a strong internal political machine, Nkomo last year began his naked bid for power in earnest...

...His welcome-home party was brief, however...

...For it was in the wake of the withdrawal from the continent of the last European power with sizable African holdings that Kaunda and Tanzania's President Julius K. Nyerere, supported by South Africa's Prime Minister John Vorster, convinced Ian Smith to accept the inevitability of black majority rule...

...The talks did fail, but as Rhodesian blacks prepared this month to enter British-sponsored negotiations aimed at ending white rule, Kaunda was widely considered one of Nkomo's strongest foreign backers...

...In fact, the ANC quickly became little more than a repackaged zapu...

...One possible solution is a transitional arrangement that would have Nkomo as nominal chief of state and leave ideological matters to Mugabe...

...And once in the top position, there is little doubt that his shrewdness will keep him there...

...In 1963, a militant faction of zapu led by Reverend Ndaba-ningi Sithole and his lieutenant, Roger Mann has spent the last three rents reporting from Alriea...

...others caution that consummation of a marriage between the radical Mugabe and the single-minded Nkomo won't be easy...

...In any event, the two men or their representatives have been meeting almost continually during the last month in both Lusaka and Maputo...

...This unity was short-lived, though...

...Since Sithole has been reduced to sulking in Dar es Salaam and giving press conferences in Lusaka, Robert Mugabe, formerly zanu's Secretary-General, is the faction's most influential leader...

...Although he was not popular among the young, urbanized Shona, their conservative parents, living on white farms or in the Tribal Trust Lands and fearful of radicalism, continued to see him as the logical head of Rhodesia's 6 million Africans...

...In the process, he appears to have managed to refurbish his image as the most moderate and conciliatory of the prominent Rhodesian nationalists...

...In Bulawayo, his home town as well as the traaitional capital of the Nde-bele tribe's territory, he also remained king...

...For majority rule is expected to bring a boom to the country, enabling it to quickly absorb the foreign capital kept in abeyance by sanctions...

...For five months Joshua Nkomo had been traveling from London to Moscow, Berlin to Belgrade, Luanda to Dar es Salaam—visiting 26 countries altogether in search of international backing for majority rule in Rhodesia...

...the lesson of Mozambique has not been lost here...

...He languished there for a decade, turning grey, but never giving up his dream of majority rule, always believing that when the victory came he would be Prime Minister...

...Given these circumstances, independent Zimbabwe is likely to prove a moderate country with the best developed infrastructure in black Africa...

...Though economic reforms are sure to be instituted when a new black government takes over—there will have to be some sort of land redistribution, for instance—they will probably not come overnight...

...About a year ago, the Zimbabwean guerrillas training in Mozambique and Tanzania became fed up with their political leaders...

...The events of the next few weeks will no doubt be marked by the confusion and emotion that are part of this competition...

...The mood is not motivated by simple racial antagonism...

...Yet Mugabe has said he is willing to form an alliance with Nkomo if the zapu troops return to the People's Army, and that would make all of the other nationalist groups extraneous...

...The remaining force is virtually a zanu army...

...And despite his dwindling support, Nkomo managed to retain a significant national constituency...

...As Rhodesian blacks enter the stage of face-to-face negotiations with the whites, they continue to express intense hostility toward Smith's participation...

...The Presidents of five black African nations—Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana, and Angola—were convening one of their frequent skull sessions on Southern Africa in the Zambian capital, and Nkomo was the only Rhodesian nationalist leader being asked to join the heads of the so-called frontline countries...

...His radicalism is unrepresentative of most blacks in Rhodesia, who tend to be conservative by African standards and are strongly influenced by the church...

...The vast mining operations should expand rapidly as well...

...In addition, it will have the most productive agricultural sector and an industrial base that has developed spectacularly in response to the economic sanctions...

...Some observers here view as a first step in this direction the declaration early this month by the two leaders that they will send a joint delegation to the British-sponsored conference on Rhodesia...

...For good reason, just the thought of having to deal with Smith on a day-to-day basis gives them an uneasy feeling...

...Nkomo's tenacity is perhaps best reflected in his fluctuating political fortunes...

...Mugabe is the potential spoiler, and the father of Zimbabwe's liberation struggle can be counted on to use his considerable charms in an effort to bring about a compromise that might ultimately be agreeable to all the parties involved...