BLOOD FEUD IN ZIMBABWE

...Zimbabwe's dissident problem is a sociological phenomenon—some might say an unavoidable one after a long, bitter war...

...In September 1982, he took the AK-47 rifle he had carried as a guerrilla in the bush and used it to rob a movie theater...

...The second step was a proposal to remove a capital investment tax allowance the government thought overly generous, but this was deferred for a year under industry pressure...

...As a result, some 75,000 black peasants have taken matters into their own hands and illegally occupied commercial farm land...

...Their targets are symbols of government power, such as buses, trains, and construction projects...

...The growing squatter movement is active largely on the mountainous eastern border with Mozambique which has traditionally been the stronghold of Mugabe's own political support...

...The first, an increase in the minimum wage, doubled the salaries of the lowest-paid workers to $110 per month...

...No relief is in sight, and thousands more will get their final de-mob checks over the next three years...

...One day I was going home in a bus and all of a sudden these armed men boarded the bus----They checked us all and then they exchanged seats with the driver and started making the people sing...

...She took on a new name, Comrade Ropa Rin-opfuka, which is Shona for "blood demands retribution...

...Beset by dissident activity, a devastating drought, and the current world recession, Zimbabweans are facing what one legislator recently dubbed "The Year of National Survival...

...When Gazi was asked how he came to be in possession of an AK-47 rifle despite a government order to turn in all war-era weapons, he replied, "There was a general feeling of insecurity among most former ZIPRA combatants because of the mistrust that existed between the forces in this country...

...Irene Mahamba distinctly remembers the first time she saw the guerrillas...

...Among the ranks of those now roaming the bush with their AK-47s, the common criminals may well outnumber the politically motivated...

...To Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, John Gazi is one of the "dissidents"—former members of the guerrilla army led by Mugabe's long-time political rival, Joshua Nkomo, who are now fighting against the Zimbabwe government...

...The Entumbane disturbances, named for the barracks where the fighting broke out, were a watershed, signaling defections from the army by ZIPRA soldiers which ultimately grew into the "dissident" movement...

...The government estimates that dissidents have killed about 200 people and caused more than $3 mil-lien worth of property damage...

...But this policy of "pragmatism" has failed to lure investments, and a virtual capital strike has been declared by the mining companies...

...There will be a lot of shouting up front," one executive said, "but the mineral situation will be sorted out behind the scenes...

...I'm not going to end up shot dead or imprisoned for life," Mujoma says he thought to himself...

...Since independence, Gazi has been unemployed...

...Mujoma recalls that during his years of operating as a political commissar, "the land question was our major political weapon...

...Zimbabwe does not have major pollution control laws, its tax rates are fairly low, and mining rights are easily secured...

...Last year in neighboring Botswana—a country with a highly pro-business orientation— DeBeers, Anglo-American, Shell, AMAX, Falconbridge, and British Petroleum all maintained active explorafor face-saving with even the most conciliatory Nkomo supporters and ex-ZI-PRA members...

...He, too, fled to Mozambique to join the guerrillas...

...The solution lies in the redistribution of land, the creation of economic opportunities, and the restoration of political and ethnic unity, not in military counterinsur-gency tactics...

...We had contributed $50 each to buy the farms," Gazi told the judge...

...There has been a crisis of expectations among former ZIPRA guerrillas, who believe they suffered in the bush but have not won the kind of public recognition and personal advancement they see ex-ZANLA guerrillas enjoying...

...One important constraint on the government's land resettlement program is financial...

...And then I would go back to my area and shoot and kill my employer...

...When white farmers have been attacked, their employees are often questioned first about their working conditions and the farmers then are tried in "people's courts...

...The companies' loud complaints that their production costs have risen proportionately must be set against the fact that this increase simply lifted Zimbabwean mining wages to the level of those in surrounding countries, including South Africa...

...One official of a large mining multinational, when asked if his company was cutting back on exploration because of the recession, responded: "Let me be frank...

...But in Zimbabwe, the ministry of mines announced that not a single mineral exploration license had been issued for the year...

...If the sorting is done to their liking, the corporations may begin pouring investments into Zimbabwe, but in the process, Zimbabwe's nationalist economic policy would take a beating...

...It was so exciting...

...Unfortunately for Zimbabwe, it seems likely that many more former guerrillas will follow the path of John Gazi...

...You see," he continues, "in the northeast, where I was operating, many people were far away from the good farming areas...

...The industry is dominated by eight multinational mining firms of South African, British, and American origin...

...A few months later, ZIPRA's high command submitted a more urgent memo, alerting the government to the potentially explosive situation posed by the demobilization of thousands of former guerrillas who had hoped to find employment in the Zimbabwe National Army...

...But though the government considers land redistribution a top priority, Zimbabwe's military budget is almost five times greater than that of the Ministry of Lands...

...In this conflict pitting guerrilla against guerrilla, Prime Minister Mugabe's government has responded with tactics and rhetoric reminiscent of former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith's "anti-terrorist" campaign...

...In early 1981, the rift widened into open conflict when former ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas began attacking each other with heavy weapons, killing some 300 before the violence was quelled by "counterinsurgency units" led by former Rhodesian army officers...

...The South African government appears to be fueling the conflict by broadcasting shrill, anti-Mugabe propaganda twice daily on a station called "Radio Truth...

...It is not only ex-guerrillas whose expectations have not been met...

...Three years after colonial Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe, they are all working for Prime Minister Mugabe's government...

...These producers have threatened to close rather than pay the minimum wage...

...Gazi is now serving a twelve-year prison sentence...

...A 1981 U.S...

...The leaders of the ruling party cover the ideological spectrum, from such socialist nationalists as Minister of Home Affairs Herbert Ushewokunze, through such "pragmatic" socialists as Mugabe, to such bank-oriented technocrats as Finance Minister Bernard Chidzero...

...By the time the bus reached Maham-ba's village, she had been recruited...

...Eban Goodstein (Eban Goodstein, a geologist, recently spent a year in southern Africa studying the mining industry as a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellow...

...The judge agreed, but told Gazi, "The whole country suffers most if the courts are to be lenient with people who commit armed robberies because they are dissatisfied with the political events in this country...

...ZAN-LA's Mozambique-based force was the larger army, composed mainly of Shonas, the ethnic group that makes up three-quarters of Zimbabwe's black population, while ZIPRA's Zambian-based guerrillas tended to come from the minority Nde-bele ethnic group...

...Mining contributes only 6 per cent to the gross domestic product, although it does earn the country a considerable proportion of its foreign exchange—34 per cent in 1981...

...a month later she was in Mozambique...

...The oppression she experienced in Rhodesia, she explains, "really demanded that blood be spilled, otherwise it could never be rectified...

...So we would tell them, 'It's you, the Julie Frederikse, based in Harare, Zimbabwe, is author of "None But Ourselves: Masses vs...

...Trained in guerrilla warfare in Zambia, Tanzania, and the Soviet Union, Gazi fought as a battalion officer in the Rhodesian countryside...

...I would rather be shot dead while in the process of fighting for the people of Zimbabwe...

...There has been no recognition of what motivates the Ndebele population to support the dissidents, and just as the Rhodesian regime targeted "terrorist collaborators" as well as "terrorists" in its counterinsurgency war, Mugabe's military warned that civilians suspected of assisting dissidents would be fair game...

...When John Gazi stood before the court for sentencing, at the end of his trial for armed robbery, his lawyer argued in mitigation that his client was "no ordinary gangster or criminal...

...One of its most formidable tasks is to take control of the mining sector, which produces gold, chrome, asbestos, coal, copper, nickel, and lithium...

...The trial of John Gazi brought out the dissatisfaction and frustration among former ZIPRA combatants over the confiscation of their properties...

...that's not the only reason...

...There are no winners in this face-off in Zimbabwe—not Prime Minister Mugabe if he succeeds in creating a one-party state, nor the dissidents if they continue to harass the government...

...After a decade of guerrilla war, these former guerrillas know the power of the gun as a means of procuring money or food—or of rectifying a political grievance...

...The new agency was established to eliminate allegedly widespread trading and pricing manipulations by the mining corporations (including shipping gold off as copper, as well as underpricing sales to subsidiaries), and to give Zimbabweans some control over the destination of their mineral resources...

...The British-supervised integration exercise favored even former Rhodesian army members over those who had been ZIPRA combatants...

...The only beneficiary is South Africa, where government, press, and military decry the "tribal war" that they had forecast as the outcome of black majority rule...

...I was very much embarrassed and humiliated...

...The foreign corporations are hoping the hard-line socialists will lose sway in the government...

...Blood Feud in Zimbabwe BY JULIE FREDERJKSE One afternoon in 1976, Chris Mu-tangabende made the decision to leave home and join the guerrilla army fighting for majority rule in the country then known as Rhodesia...

...And Mugabe has repeatedly charged the South Africans with training anti-Zimbabwe forces...

...Experiences like Mahamba's bus ride were more valuable to the guerrillas than any number of battlefield skirmishes, for it was a psychological war that transformed Rhodesia into Zimbabwe...

...When he was brought before the High Court, Gazi maintained he had staged the hold-up to get enough money to leave the country because he was opposed to the "apolitical stance" of the government...

...This crack unit of 5,000 Shona, ex-ZANLA guerrillas was deployed against a Ndebele population that supported ZIPRA during the war...

...Mugabe's Chinese-backed ZANLA forces and Nko-mo's Soviet-supported Zimbabwe Peoples Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) operated in a tenuous alliance during the 1970s...

...Mineral investment worldwide has tailed off with the current recession, but the total lack of activity in Zimbabwe suggests that more than economic factors are involved...

...Within days, reports began flooding into international aid agencies and rural missions of hundreds of civilians killed in the Fifth Brigade's "anti-dissident" campaign...

...When they were taken by the government, coupled with the fact that we could not get jobs and other opportunities, we felt that there was no other option but to leave this country...

...As early as July 1980, ZIPRA's leaders complained to Mugabe in a confidential memo that the treatment of their cadres was out of step with the Prime Minister's much-vaunted "spirit of reconciliation," citing political diatribes against ZIPRA by government ministers and the virtual ban on ZIPRA songs on the state broadcasting service...

...Even after Nkomo himself fled Zimbabwe, claiming that the Fifth Brigade had tried to kill him, Mugabe and his cabinet ministers continued to rail against his party as a front for dissidents, leaving little room Buried Treasure tion operations...

...At the end of this year, the monthly stipend for the first wave of demobilized combatants runs out, and some 10,000 young people, with few skills and little training outside the realm of guerrilla warfare, may find themselves without any means of support in an already limited job market...

...Everybody was singing as the bus was driving...

...Relations between veterans of the two guerrilla armies continued to deteriorate as it became apparent that the new Zimbabwe National Army was being formed mainly from Mugabe's former ZANLA cadres...

...They were outraged when the government expropriated their land and properties without compensation...

...Unlike many developing countries, Zimbabwe is not totally dependent on its mineral exports...

...When Mugabe's government announced the formation of a national military force of42,000 soldiers out of an original pool of ex-combatants numbering more than 60,000, it was inevitable that thousands would have to be demobilized...

...She just jumped up and pushed me away as if I was something dirty...

...That was when I decided to go to Mozambique to take up the gun and fight the whites...

...Yet if Mugabe's government is to halt the wave of banditry, murders, and abductions in Matabeleland, it must be through political rather than military means...

...Union Carbide still subcontracts some of its chrome production to operators who pay their miners by the ton...

...The Mugabe government has introduced three significant changes affecting the mining industry...

...Though they had spent five to ten years of their lives fighting in the bush, the ZIPRA members were bounced out of secure employment in the military...

...It was like all that I had ever heard about being with the comrades but never thought would finally happen to me...

...In spite of such problems, the government is moving toward a socialist transformation of the economy...

...ZIPRA complained that it was mostly ZIPRA cadres who were forcibly "de-mobed...

...Another government move that may have swelled the ranks of the dissidents was the confiscation of properties cooperatively held by former ZIPRA guerrillas...

...The Mugabe government has always been divided on its attitude toward the private mining sector in particular, and foreign investment in general...

...Under the Rhodesian government, the most fertile half of the land went to approximately 5,000 white commercial farmers, leaving the less arable half to more than 750,000 black peasants...

...With scant education and few skills, they found little to do besides making the monthly trip to collect their $200 "de-mob paycheck...

...John Gazi's motivations for leaving Rhodesia to fight for an independent Zimbabwe were much the same as theirs...

...We are also not happy with the political situation...

...He promised no nationalization, and even praised Union Carbide...

...My friend and I were looking at things in a shop and I thought she was behind me, so I reached out to touch her...

...Since the independence elections that gave Mugabe's party almost three times as many Parliamentary seats as Nkomo's, the government has steadily moved to isolate and discredit ZIPRA...

...As a result of absence of facilities and means of livelihood for these comrades, many have resorted to a number of antisocial activities, like armed robbery," warned the document...

...people of Zimbabwe, of this area, who should have been in the areas where there are those farmers who are getting a lot from the rich land...

...When dissidents killed fourteen people in attacks on buses, trains, and rural stores last New Year's, the government sent in the controversial, North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade to the southwestern Mata-beleland province where dissident activity has been centered...

...I thought I was touching my friend when actually I was touching a European girl...

...The British-negotiated Lancaster House Agreement that led to Zimbabwe's independence proscribes any expropriation of land except on a "willing buyer, willing seller" basis...

...The tactics of the dissidents parallel those used by the guerrillas during the war years...

...Shortly after independence in 1980, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, initiated a policy of "pragmatism"—particularly with regard to the mining industry...

...I had to keep the AK rifle for my personal defense...

...My imagination was that as soon as I got to Mozambique I would be trained to use a gun," Mujoma says...

...Bureau of Mines report favorably concluded: "The climate for mineral production created by the government thus far remains relatively hospitable...

...They've thrown you out of the rich land so that you don't get anything...

...The government's inability to satisfy the peasants' land demands—compounded by the worst drought in this century-has given rise to a squatter movement that, like the dissidents, represents a potentially volatile antigovernment force...

...Chris Mutangabende, Tendai Mujoma, and Irene Mahamba fought in the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), headed by Robert Mugabe...

...No one should know better than Robert Mugabe that when people decide that "blood demands retribution," mere bullets will not stop them...

...Since independence, the peasants have been waiting impatiently for the fulfillment of the guerrillas' promises of "land to the landless," but so far the Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rural Development has only managed to place about 20,000 families on communal farms on land formerly owned by whites...

...Media in the Making of Zimbabwe...

...Tendai Mujoma was working for the Rhodesian government as a clerk when his boss accused him of "supporting terrorism" and threatened to have him jailed...

...The final change, and the one drawing heaviest fire from the corporations, was the creation of a government-run Minerals Marketing Corporation, which this year will take over all international sales of Zimbabwe's minerals...

...He also concluded that the situation in white-ruled Rhodesia could not be rectified without spilling blood...

...The government further inflamed the situation by using rhetoric charging Nkomo and his party with support for the dissidents and equating former ZIPRA members—whether they had deserted or been demobilized—with the dissidents...

...More than a thousand had pooled their demob pay to buy farms and small businesses and had begun running them on a collective basis...