A Soldier Faces His Critics

General Walls talks about his country's future

Prime Minister Robert Mugabe confronted a tough diplomatic task as he arrived in the U.S. last week for Zimbabwe's formal admission into the United Nations and a meeting with President Carter. Mugabe was seeking support in the international arena at a time when his four-month-old majority-rule government has hit some embarrassing snags at home. His Minister of Manpower, Planning and Development, Edgar Tekere, awaits trial on a murder charge. His former military commander, Lieut. General Peter Walls, faces possible prosecution as a result of a BBC interview critical of the government. Anxious whites, meanwhile, continue to leave the country at record rates of up to 2,000 a month in the face of sporadic lawlessness and the increasingly Marxist tone of official commentary and TV programming.

Whites were hardly reassured last week when Tekere walked out of Salisbury's Chikurubi Prison, where he had been held for 14 days on charges of murdering a 68-year-old white farm manager. Tekere, who is also secretary-general ol Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) party, was released on $75,000 bail after a white judge accepted the Prime Minister's personal pledge that Tekere would stand trial.

The court ordered Tekere to surrender his passport, remain in the Salisbury area, and avoid communication with state witnesses or the press. The self-proclaimed revolutionary, who enjoys loyal following among the estimated 25,000 guerrillas still under arms, was allowed to resume his ministerial duties--a fact that led many Mugabe critics to charge that the judiciary was being politically manipulated.

Perhaps nothing has alarmed whites and heightened racial tensions more than he controversy surrounding General Walls. He resigned his command last month in the midst of a crucial effort to fuse the white-officered Rhodesian forces with the two guerrilla armies that had opposed them during the seven-year civil war, Mugabe's ZANLA and Home Affairs Minister Joshua Nkomo's ZIPRA. When Mugabe asked Walls to head the new integrated army in March, the Rhodesian-born soldier, 54, accepted the assignment with apparent enthusiasm; but he suddenly quit after less than four months and went on preretirement leave.

While visiting South Africa, Walls caused a stir with some frank talk to the press. He told a BBC interviewer tie had sent British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher a message in March requesting that Mugabe's election be invalidated because of widespread intimidation by ZANU supporters. Walls also gave an ambivalent answer to a question about reports that he had considered a military coup in the event of an inconclusive election.

Zimbabwe ministers angrily accused the general of doing "incalculable harm" to Mugabe's efforts to achieve postwar reconciliation at home and win aid and confidence abroad. In a blistering parliamentary attack on Walls, Minister of Information Nathan Shamuyarira declared that the government "will not be held ransom by racial misfits" and invited "all those Europeans [whites] who do not accept the new order to pack their bags." Citing a story about the alleged coup plan in the London Daily Express, Shamuyarira said that the government was considering "legal or administrative action" against Walls. Added Mugabe, on his way to New York City: "One thing is quite clear--we are not going to have disloyal characters in our society."

Walls returned to Zimbabwe last week to face the gathering storm. "To stay away at this time would have appeared like an admission of guilt," he told TIME'S Peter Hawthorne. Other points made by Walls during an hour-long interview in the garden of his Salisbury home:

On the alleged coup and other charges against him: I know nothing about a planned coup. It was mostly bar talk and talk among certain irresponsible politicians and their hangers-on. There is nothing, nothing, nothing that I know of on paper about any sort of coup. It was wild, irresponsible talk if there was anything at all. I've never claimed to be perfect, but I don't believe that anything I've said, if one takes the unedited record of it, was careless or irresponsible.

On his decision to retire: I stayed on because I decided that if we [white officers] all bailed out there would be a collapse. I had made no definite time period, and Prime Minister Mugabe had mentioned no definite time period. But I don't think a chap should be at the top too long, and I also thought I'd had a pretty long innings. Perhaps I could have achieved far more and would have been prepared to stay if I had been given more authority.

On his anti-Marxism: A lot of people in Zimbabwe are either putting their heads in the sand and saying, 'If we don't look, Marxism won't come here,' or else they are thinking it is much easier to lie down and accept it. Well, I can't do that. I'm not even saying that Marxism is definitely coming here. I'm just saying that I see the danger signs and am trying to thwart it.

On the new Zimbabwe army: I think the fact that we are obviously beginning to make big strides in the integration exercise has diminished the chance of civil war. As far as ZANLA was concerned, I didn't have any problems working with them, but I wouldn't have any real respect for them as a disciplined fighting force. ZIPRA, however, had the same outlook on discipline [as the former Rhodesian forces], so there was instant obedience and intelligent implementation of orders.

The integrated army can work. It's going to depend on who's running it. [My successor] has got to be somebody who has been declared acceptable to all the groups involved, and it has got to be a person with the experience and qualifications to do it. You can't get a civil servant to do it. You can't get a politician. It's got to be a soldier.

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