Zimbabwe One Year After Unity

...We've heard very little from [his] government lately about implementing unilateral sanctions against South Africa...

...When he was in power both Mugabe and Nkomo were in prison...

...Virtually the entire business community and many of his soberminded ministers privately warned that Pretoria could retaliate in kind and bring Zimbabwe to its knees in a matter of weeks...

...Apparently the key component of the strategy was to strike against white farmers, the most powerful economic force in the country and the source of much rural resentment...

...At independence in 1980 there were about a quarter of a million whites living in Zimbabwe...

...The bloodshed attracted international attention when white farmers and missionaries started getting murdered...

...At age 71, in ill health, Nkomo has finally forsaken his lifelong ambition to lead Zimbabwe...

...The man who founded the nationalist resistance to white rule and spent a decade in a Rhodesian prison, only to languish in a political wilderness after independence, has now assumed the mantle of elder statesman in the government...

...Mugabe's revolutionary rhetoric notwithstanding, the regime has followed a fairly pragmatic line...

...I would not have thought that we could work together with guns," commented a black ranger with the unit, a veteran of the liberation war, "but it has come to pass after all...

...I have now met with the dissidents who have returned...

...Although Nkomo is still affectionately referred to by the people as "Father Zimbabwe, " his former comrades-in-arms prefer to call him by his traditional bush nickname, "The Old Lion...

...like so many other African nations, Zimbabwe has been turned into a one-party state...

...In this quaint and gracious capital (formerly Salisbury), dominated by a mix of government and financial buildings, a sea of exotic flowers add a touch of beauty...

...Although a handful of ZAPU dissidents remain in the bush—perhaps as insurance that the unity accord will be implemented in good faith—the white farmers are feeling secure enough these days to tote their rifles with the safeties on...

...Nestling a carvedebony walking stick—a symbol of chieftaincy—he spoke in almost a whisper and with a slight wheeze: "The unity between our peoples is something we had to bring about...

...In any case, I believe the unity agreement will bring these fellows back into society...

...Still, the country faces a host of lingering ethnic tensions, plus the usual afflictions that vex African states—rising unemployment, a skyrocketing birthrate and creeping corruption...

...Exactly a year ago Robert Mugabe, the President as well as the Prime Minister, and his erstwhile rival Joshua Nkomo concluded an uneasy truce between their two parties after years of tense negotiations accompanied by brutal attacks and reprisals in the bush...

...The bastards must be desperate to drop a young fellow with so little tusk," remarks one of the khaki-clad game wardens, his white, English-settler complexion ravaged with splotches from years in the African sun...

...At the time the accord was struck, purple-gray rainclouds suddenly appeared over Matabeleland, breaking a fiveyear drought...

...I myself did not know any of them personally...

...And it remains the white man's prerogative whether or not to initiate the ritual greetings that are a part of the pleasantry of life here...

...Bur the picture has its ominous shadows, and with good reason they are a cause of increasing concern...

...It's this damned fiction that feeds the slaughter...

...Shortly before the opening of Parliament, for instance, four supersonic aircraft made thundering tree-top sorties every morning—and the performance seems to the be sole function of the Air Force...

...While ZANU effectively retains control of the government, Nkomo and some senior ZAPU officials have been given important Cabinet and ministerial positions...

...They have lived a beastly life, alone and in pairs, hiding in the scrub brush...

...Emblematic of this state of affairs is Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia who led his country during the years it was shunned by the international community...

...Ironically enough, the drive to secure the Beira corridor is being overseen by a group of whites who came of age during the sanction-busting days of old Rhodesia...

...In addition, the country's road and rail infrastructure is unusually sound by African standards, having been overhauled since the days of the British Empire...

...More than 90 per cent of this country's imports and exports currently pass over South Africa's road and rail routes...

...Now we are together...

...After a few minutes in his waiting room, where bodyguards sat sipping the customary cups of strong tea, I was escorted in to the Ndebele leader...

...Sustained by shadowy supply networks, these bands of roving "dissidents" turned Matabeleland into a war zone, killing 10 to 12 people a month...

...We must help them to adjust again to a peaceful way of life...

...Its tusk has been severed at the base, leaving a blood-stained stump teeming with flies...

...on the other hand, the once moribund port of Beira is bustling...

...Making up less than 1 per cent of the population, Zimbabwean whites account for more than half of the country's national product...

...Most were just boys, too young to fight in the war for independence...

...Even as the ranks of the jobless swell, however, Zimbabwe's new black business class is enriching itself, in part thanks to government contracts...

...Compounding these internal challenges is South Africa's relentless effort to destabilize its neighbors...

...Nationalization has not proceeded as far or as fast as many feared, and a number of new businesses have sprung up over the past few years...

...Two years later, however, amid rumors that Nkomo was preparing a coup, Mugabe fired him and detained several of his former military chiefs...

...and Nkomo's ZAPU (Zimbabwe African People's Union), the party of the Ndebele-speaking minority (19 per cent of the population...

...In 1985, responding to feverish calls for an economic boycott of Pretoria, Mugabe publicly proclaimed that Zimbabwe would institute comprehensive punitive sanctions...

...Some were mentally ill...

...Nkomo's quarters were quiet...

...As a result of the merger there is virtually no formal opposition in Parliament...

...All told, nearly 70 whites were killed in the 1982-87 period...

...In fact, the 199-mile road and rail corridor is now functioning, but the link is precarious to say the least: Owing to a combination of misguided Socialist policies and a ruthless internal insurgency, Mozambique hovers close to complete collapse...

...In the Orient, the powder ground from the tusk is believed to possess aphrodisiac properties...

...I hope they never have to go up against the South Africans...

...Last December's unity agreement between Mugabe and Nkomo was designed to put an end to escalating tribal friction in Zimbabwe...

...As the civil strife inside South Africa mounts, so too, it is feared, will Pretoria's belligerence toward its neighbors...

...This is a Marxist-Leninist slate...

...For all of Smith's strictures, he is a free man in (he country he once said would be ruled by white Rhodesians for a thousand years...

...In contrast to many of its neighbors, Zimbabwe also has a thriving agricultural sector, despite recurrent drought conditions since independence...

...No matter how careful Mugabe is to confine his antiaparlheid gestures to the rhetorical level, the mere possibility of a functioning multiracial, multiethnic society to Pretoria's north seems to be incitement enough for it to attempt to destabilize Zimbabwe...

...Worse yet, Zimbabwe is afflicted with an exceptionally high unemployment rate...

...Smith is a fierce critic of what he sees as the Mugabe government's shortcomings...

...Zimbabwe has both a Politburo and a Parliament, and I leave it to you to decide which is the sham and which wields the power...

...On my visit there to see him, the wing along the bougainvillaea-lined courtyard occupied by Mugabe—who first entered politics as Nkomo's young aide—was humming with activity...

...We as farmers have never had it so good," remarked David Hasluck, the director of the Commercial Farmers Union...

...One military official said that "there are clear telltale signs of South African support—signature ammunition and uniforms—and indications of a clear but camouflaged chain of command inside this country...

...This is said to have had a significant positive impact on the Ndebeles: It is their custom to pray to their ancestors to ask God for rain, and during the last several years many had come to believe that the Ndebele forefathers were angry about the quarrel with the Shonas and were refusing to put in a good word...

...The West worries that someday suddenly Zimbabwe will turn into a firebreathing Marxist state," observed one former member of Parliament...

...Members of Zimbabwe's élite new National Parks patrol close carefully on the scene of death in armored jeeps caked with the rust-red dirt of the Zambezi River valley...

...They manage to fly over our heads without crashing," one Eastern bloc military attaché wryly noted, "but that's the end of their repertoire...

...With birthrates going up exponentially and school enrollments rising almost as fast, Zimbabwe faces an acute crisisof unfulfilled expectations among the young...

...That white South Africa could be plausibly linked to the targeting of Zimbabwe's white farmers underscores the perversity of Pretoria's regional policies...

...The poachers cross the Zambezi River from Zambia after dusk on rafts with some food and their AK rifles...

...He is devoting his remaining energies to mending the rift that he himself admits he had a role in exacerbating...

...Nkomo's picture of a ragtag group of disorganized marauders is at odds with the composite that has emerged from intelligence debriefings of the returning rebels...

...Perhaps the single most disturbing problem confronting Zimbabwe is its almost total reliance on South Africa for transport and trade lines...

...When Mugabe first assumed power in 1980 after his post-independence electoral triumph, the coalition government he formed included Nkomo and a number of his followers...

...As a senior Cabinet minister, he is entitled to a small office in the bone-white Presidential building in downtown Harare...

...Only when Nkomo agreed to Mugabe's terms for unity did the violence abate...

...There were brutalities committed on both sides during the Matabeleland uprising, make no mistake," he said...

...Wheat, maize and coffee production are all up and we've had record harvests for cotton, tobacco and soybeans...

...Kurt M. Campbell, assistant director of Harvard's Center for Science and International Affairs, is the author of Soviet Policy Towards South Africa...

...The agricultural forecast for Zimbabwe's immediate future is bright...

...In the goldwhite grass lies the carcass of a rare black rhinoceros...

...The result was "tribal genocide" according to Father Hebron Wilson, a Catholic priest in the region...

...Zimbabwe has deployed 6,000-8,000 troops in the former Portuguese colony to secure the Beira corridor against the Pretoria-based Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) guerrillas...

...The old scars of the war have been slow to fade among the whites...

...Mugabe has a reputation for reconciliation—perhaps a legacy of his Jesuit training—but it was Nkomo who initiated the negotiations that ultimately led to last December's unity accord...

...What you should rather worry about is the rise of greedy capitalists...

...Yet Mugabe has not been ignoring Zimbabwe's predicament...

...One minister joked, "We've got all the food and tobacco that we need, we just don't have the money to pay for them...

...Nkomo's voice rose slightly when he began to discuss the "dissidents" in Matabeleland, who have been granted a general amnesty in exchange for coming in from the bush and surrendering their weapons...

...To anyone who has traveled through Africa and witnessed its many experiments in inefficiency and scenes of decay, Zimbabwe certainly looks like an oasis of order...

...We have not quite finished our"—he searched for the right word—"merging process, but we've come very far...

...Through the sights of their automatic weapons they scan the distant horizon for poachers, whom they are authorized to shoot on sight...

...The tranquil atmosphere is disturbed only by the occasional overflights of Zimbabwe's recently arrived Chinese fighter planes...

...I fought for land but still I have none," complained one middle-aged farmer working a communal plot near the village of Mtoko...

...Just like so many times in the past, Mugabe walked right out to the precipice, looked over the edge and then backed away," commented an official at the U.S...

...These onetime mortal enemies are today allies in a new battle to save Zimbabwe's endangered wildlife...

...This story of rupture and reconciliation is being played out time and again inside Zimbabwe as the nation approaches the end of its first decade of black majority rule...

...There is no denying, of course, that Zimbabwe suffers from political distortions and economic growing pains...

...Zimbabwe may have survived the difficult early years of nation-building, but il will have to show unaccustomed deftness in handling the threat from the south...

...They go back with tusks that are then smuggled to Asia...

...Meanwhile, the slow pace of land redistribution from wealthy white farmers to poor peasants has spurred dissatisfaction among the Mugabe regime's rural supporters...

...As a senior military man in Harare pui it, "South Africa is the mad rhino of the region—face him head on and the bugger will gore you every lime...

...When Zimbabwe's National Parks authority created the antipoacher units, it turned to the men who best knew the Zambian marchlands from Victoria Falls to Lake Kariba—white soldiers who formerly served in the Rhodesian Army and black guerrillas from the national liberation struggle...

...The government responded to the terror in Matabeleland by sending in a North Korean-trained battalion made up entirely of Shonas...

...As I approached the farm's gate after a day's drive from Harare, I could make out his still ramrod-straight figure striding purposefully through a field with walking stick in hand and dogs behind...

...They committed terrible crimes, but they acted alone, without external support or higher command...

...today there are barely 100,000...

...Zimbabwe is situated in a volatile, violent region, and we need to face the future united...

...estimated at 18 per cent this year, it is predicted to hit 25 per cent by the early 1990s...

...Low commodity prices, acute shortages of foreign currency, heavy debt-servicing obligations, and a lack of foreign investment are all taking a toll on Zimbabwe's financial well-being...

...Nkomo's desk was empty, save for one loose-leaf folder...

...Banished from Parliament by Mugabe for openly urging the South Africans to stand firm in the face of international sanctions, Smith now spends much of his time on the family farm in the dry and dusty midlands around Gweru...

...State Department's African bureau...

...Recently a group of while Zimbabweans were arrested for their involvement in a spate of bombing attacks last year...

...Mugabe himself is believed to have a penchant for austerity, but some of his ministers and party comrades have grown conspicuously wealthy since joining the government...

...Subsequently many soldiers loyal to Nkomo deserted the Army and fled into the bush of Matabeleland, the Ndebele-dominated savannah in western Zimbabwe...

...Last year Mugabe abolished the 20 seats constitutionally reserved for whites in Parliament (he later had eight white members reappointed...

...These were not roving bands of bandits—these were terrorists with a clear military strategy...

...Indeed, keeping RENAMO at bay and maintaining the line has proved to be a daunting task...

...The war-ravaged strip of land is littered with sabotaged railroad track, bullet-riddled train cars and bazooka-blasted locomotives...

...The nightmare of a Marxist people's paradise has not come to pass in Zimbabwe...

...We could look around the region and see how South Africa has played on our weaknesses...

...In the most gruesome incident, which occurred in November 1986 at a Christian school, 16 missionaries and their children were hacked to death with axes...

...The government's security establishment has reportedly been surprised at their level of commitment and organization...

...Nevertheless, they have retained a large share of their former wealth and privileges...

...Central to the accord was a merger of the two main political parties: Mugabe's ZANU (Zimbabwe African National Union), which draws its support from the country's Shona-speaking majority (77 per cent of the population...

...Harare's relative prosperity illustrates how wrong those Rhodesiane were who predicted imminent economic collapse with the advent of black rule...

...Not that he appears very leonine—indeed, with his 300 pounds of girth, "elephantine" seems a more appropriate description...

...The nation's greatest trial, though, is likely to be coping with the white regime in South Africa...

...Even some of my white friends who were among the bravest soldiers during the war now cower at the thought of speaking out against injustices...

...Noting that the movie Wall Street was playing in Harare, he added, "For every true Communist ideologue in the country there are a thousand Gordon Geckos...

...On the contrary, to lessen its commercial reliance on South Africa he has launched an ambitious plan for developing an alternative trade route through Mozambique to the port of Beira on the Indian Ocean...

...On the way to their trial—at which they were linked conclusively to South Africa—Pretoria staged a rescue attempt that was aborted only at the last minute, leaving guns and equipment behind in Zimbabwe...

...What troubles me most about the country's direction,' he said, "is the growing fear among many people of speaking out about abuses of power...