Fighting to the Finish Line

Violence, brutality and intimidation mar a gory electoral contest

It is an election that Africa will long remember. It has been marked by political violence, brutality and intimidation, perhaps the worst in the history of the continent's turbulent independence movements. During the two-month campaign in Zimbabwe Rhodesia, there have been 250 deaths and more than 207 declared violations of the cease-fire agreement painstakingly hammered out at London's Lancaster House conference last fall.

The gory contest comes to a merciful close this week with the election of 80 black members to the 100-seat House of Assembly. Voting separately, the country's 212,000 whites have already chosen their 20 representatives--all of them members of former Prime Minister Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front Party.

The election, which will determine the government of a future Zimbabwe, seemed in danger of disintegrating during the final days. The last full week of campaigning was marred by hundreds of scattered incidents, including the murder of a Roman Catholic priest and the abduction of four campaign workers for Joshua Nkomo's Patriotic Front Party by armed supporters of his erstwhile ally Robert Mugabe.

Violence reached such an alarming level that Lord Soames, the British caretaker Governor, issued a map showing "red" and "blue" zones in which he adjudged that it was "impossible" or "difficult" for parties other than Mugabe's to campaign because of intimidation by his guerrilla forces (acronymically called ZANLA). At least 2,000 of Mugabe's men have refused to enter the 14 cease-fire assembly points set aside for guerrillas returning to Zimbabwe Rhodesia from camps in neighboring states.

Former Prime Minister Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the leading black moderate, was still gamely electioneering around the country in a red-and-white-striped helicopter, accompanied by a dozen armed bodyguards. Generously financed by South African and Rhodesian corporations, Muzorewa runs by far the richest and best organized of all the major parties. Despite offers of free drinks and gifts, however, his crowds remained small and glumly suspicious of the proceedings. Muzorewa charged last week that he had attended "only one meeting where there was no evidence of intimidation."

Nkomo aides also complained of heavy intimidation--from both the Mugabe forces and some 20,000 armed "auxiliaries" loyal to Muzorewa. Nor was Mugabe himself exempt from intimidation: as the election neared, he had all but withdrawn from active campaigning following a grenade attack on his new suburban Salisbury home and a remote-controlled land-mine explosion that just missed his car.

As bad as the campaign looked, it was still peace by Rhodesian standards: the average daily death toll was seven--down from 40 before the settlement. Privately, many black nationalists admitted that Soames' firmness had helped hold the cease-fire on course. But Soames has also been severely criticized by the nationalists and their African sympathizers for his seeming partiality toward the white Rhodesians, whom he has allowed to control the country's civil service, government apparatus, security forces and pro-Muzorewa auxiliaries.

Muzorewa's party won 51 of the 72 black seats in last April's "internal" elections, which were boycotted by the guerrilla factions. The bishop appears to be headed for a setback this time. Despite his lavish campaigning, many blacks have not forgiven him for failing to produce the peace and economic benefits he had promised and for allying himself too closely with the whites. The silver-haired Nkomo, 62, has campaigned successfully with his earthy, jovial style and a slick poster campaign. But he is still limited by his minority tribal base among the Ndebele, who comprise only 15% of the country's 7 million blacks. The apparent front-runner remains the left-leaning Mugabe, who seems likely to win a plurality of the black seats.

Whatever the result, Rhodesia's nationalist leaders were talking more in terms of compromise than of power last week. Soft-pedaling much of their earlier fiery propaganda, both Mugabe and Nkomo tried to calm white fears by promising government participation rather than full-scale nationalization of the industries and huge commercial farms that are the backbone of the country's economy. Such conciliatory talk has done little to reassure the whites; many of them were reportedly packing up to leave even before the first black vote was cast. And there were even grimmer rumblings of a white military coup or a return to all-out civil war.

Traveling through one of the blue zones last week, TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter noted that the pro-Muzorewa forces could be as heavy-handed as Mugabe's followers. McWhirter's report:

"The casualties in this one tribal trust area in Midlands province have already filled one small mission hospital--21 beatings and three rapes. The apparent perpetrators: uniformed members of Muzorewa's auxiliaries who have moved in to enforce the bishop's political claim to the area, which was vacated by the guerrillas during the ceasefire. Local men have been picked up after Sunday Mass and taken away in trucks to be interrogated. The villagers no longer regard this as an election, but as an invasion. If this intimidation strategy does succeed in depriving the guerrillas of support in an area that was once their political stronghold, it will not only distort the results of Rhodesia's election; it will separate the people from their own leaders, and those leaders from any hope of a moderate solution."

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