Nkomo’s Party Fears Extinction : Abductions in Zimbabwe: Tribal Strife, New Tactics

The tan Land Rovers, their lights off and license plates missing, roll to a stop by the side of the road in the dead of night. Half a dozen men, some armed, emerge from each and follow a trail off through the dense bush to a village.

There, they quickly, almost silently find the home of their quarry. As his wife protests, his children cry and neighbors rush out to help, half the squad hurries him down the trail to the parked Land Rovers as the others retreat more slowly, their assault rifles ready to repel any who might try to follow.

The little drama--a political kidnaping from which only two or three victims have ever returned--is repeated almost nightly now in Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland province, where the government and its longtime rival, the ethnic majority Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) of Joshua Nkomo, are locked in a bitter struggle.

The political violence has historic roots--Nkomo’s Ndebele tribe, a minority nationwide, controls much of Matabeleland, where it is the majority. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and his colleagues, Shona tribesmen, run the country but only prevail in parts of Matabeleland by the overwhelming use of army force.

At least 80, and perhaps as many as 400, such kidnapings have occurred in Matabeleland over the last 2 1/2 months, and each side says the other is to blame for the growing political violence in the country’s southwestern region.

‘Not Abductions, Murder’

“We are not really talking about abductions--we are talking about murder, at least 370 or 380 of them,” Nkomo said. “By killing our people, they are trying to kill ZAPU.”

The principal targets for the abductions have been local party chairmen, organizers and other party officials, Nkomo said in an interview, but village headmen, school teachers, hospital administrators, church pastors and district officials have also been kidnaped.

The apparent purpose, he continued, is to destroy the party’s organizational structure before parliamentary elections planned for June, and thus ensure a larger majority for Mugabe’s governing Zimbabwe African National Union.

“This is not some dark novel, a macabre piece of fiction,” said John Nkomo, the administrative secretary of Joshua Nkomo’s party, who is not closely related to his leader. “It is life and politics in Zimbabwe today.”

Maurice Nyagumbo, the government’s minister for political affairs and a ranking member of his party Politburo, vigorously denied the opposition charges. “That’s rubbish--it is absolutely not true,” he said in an interview in the capital, Harare.

Accuses Dissidents

“Who has been abducted? ZAPU, in fact, is doing a lot (of abductions) through its dissidents in Matabeleland,” Nyagumbo said. “They have been abducting and killing our people and are still doing so.”

According to Mugabe’s ruling party, more than 10 of its officials, who have been trying to win converts in Matabeleland, have been killed or kidnaped by guerrillas who fought for Joshua Nkomo before Zimbabwe’s independence and have since refused to accept government authority, returning to the bush.

“There may have been abductions of ZAPU’s people, and they may have been murdered,” another government official said in Harare, “but this is a war that ZAPU itself launched. . . . We want to end this violence. We do not believe in politics by murder and abduction, but some in ZAPU apparently do.”

However, the case against Mugabe’s party and against the government is very strong, according to clergymen, farmers and businessmen in Bulawayo and outlying areas of Matabeleland.

Missionary’s Comments

“The abductions are a fact, and it is also a fact that the majority of them are Ndebele who support ZAPU and Joshua Nkomo,” a missionary who has worked in Matabeleland for most of the last two decades said. “The documented cases--names, details, sometimes accounts of eyewitnesses--number nearly 100, and the only reason there are not more is that it takes time to do a proper investigation.

“What is still a bit fuzzy is exactly who is carrying these abductions out and why. The evidence--people who have been recognized leading the abduction squads, Land Rovers seen during the day with license plates and then again at night without them, the uniforms that had been worn and the type of weapons carried, a few of these kidnapers who themselves have been killed--all points to members of (pro-government) youth brigades, led by people from the army and the central intelligence organization and using government equipment and vehicles.

“This may be circumstantial, but it seems conclusive.”

Mass Grave Found

Also circumstantial but perhaps conclusive was the mass grave, estimated to contain 50 bodies--the victims apparently executed with their hands tied behind their backs with wire-- that was partially excavated by ruling party officials and filmed by a British television crew in February.

The government denied any involvement and strongly protested that the film was misleading since only one body was shown and the charge of a mass grave therefore could not be substantiated.

Two more suspected mass graves have now been found, according to church officials here, but the government has barred their excavation. Similarly, local police refused, church officials say, to investigate reports of abductions, even when they involved district officials, health administrators and other local officials.

The opposition is now gathering detailed evidence, John Nkomo said, in the hope of forcing legal action. It has traced the mysterious Land Rovers to a military purchase of 138 vehicles for “special operations.” It has documented their presence in districts on the days when abductions took place. It has collected sworn accounts from family members and other witnesses.

And it is now investigating members of the kidnap squads, who apparently are drawn from ruling-party youth groups in other provinces and led by security police and soldiers from the army’s North Korean-trained 5th Brigade.

Now, No Traces Left

“This is different from both 1983, when the 5th Brigade invaded and occupied Matabeleland like a hostile army and killed many, many thousands,” John Nkomo said, “and also from 1984, when the police came to southern Matabeleland and brutally beat all (our) supporters they could find.

“The evidence of what the government (was) doing was there to see--our people were in the hospital, beaten within an inch of their lives, or they had been executed and their bodies dumped in the village so that all could see what happens to (us).”

This year, he continued, it is leaving no trace. “Dead men tell no tales, as they say. Only two or three people we know have been abducted and returned; they managed to jump off the Land Rovers and get away in the bush.”

The violence appears, John Nkomo suggested, to be a continuation of earlier attempts to subdue Matabeleland, whose 1.5 million Ndebele people have remained loyal to Joshua Nkomo. The Ndebele resent domination of the government by Mugabe’s Shona, who make up almost 80% of Zimbabwe’s 8.7 million people.

Long Tribal Hostility

This hostility goes back well past the recent regional fighting, in which perhaps as many as 3,000 died, past the Rhodesian civil war, when the two tribal groups were uncomfortably allied against white rule but still clashed frequently. Its root is in tribal wars between the Ndebele and the Shona that have gone on for decades.

In the last two months, the abductions have become so widespread that virtually everyone has a friend or relative who has disappeared, and Bulawayo is now filled with refugees--district councilors, teachers, medical workers, local officials and Nkomo party members--who have fled outlying areas to avoid abduction.

From a prominent white businessman in Bulawayo comes an account of how a dozen of his employees have been taken from areas around the city, from a Catholic priest a detailed story of how a cousin barely escaped kidnaping at a lumber camp he runs and is afraid now to return, from a doctor a report on the abduction of seven men from villages around his clinic northeast of the city.

“It was nearly midnight when they came, pounding on the door, trying to force their way in windows and threatening to burn the house with all of us inside unless my husband came out,” the wife of a school headmaster recalled here.

Climate of Fear

“He went out because he was afraid for our boys and for me. They did not even ask his name but just marched him off. . . . We have not seen him since. That was in early February.”

The abductions have created such a climate of fear that few people are willing to be quoted by name in discussing the political violence.

“We have seen people go to the police to complain and then disappear themselves a few days later,” a nurse from a missionary clinic northwest of Bulawayo said.

“If you are a community leader, if you seem troublesome, if you ask (the government) for help, then you get on the list, on the hit list, and the Land Rovers come and take you away. . . . This terrifies people, simply terrifies them.”

The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, Zimbabwe’s leading human rights organization, has given a detailed confidential report to Mugabe, hoping this will persuade him to have the abductions halted.

Previous commission reports, along with international pressure, brought an end to the army’s sweeps through northern Matabeleland for Nkomo “dissidents” and to the police curfew that brought 600,000 people to the brink of starvation in southern Matabeleland last year.

Talk of Retaliation

Meanwhile, talk of retaliation has begun. Clergymen and farmers warn, in the words of a medical missionary, “If this continues, not one (government) official, even Cabinet ministers, will be safe in Matabeleland.”

With admiration, they tell the story of how one village, warned by the army not to feed or house any “dissidents or bandits,” attacked a group of 12 men who came one night, pretending to be dissidents, but were trying to abduct a local leader.

As the kidnapers attempted to take him away, he blew a sports whistle as a distress signal, and the other men rushed out of their homes with spears, machetes and other weapons and killed six, including the gang’s leader. Five others were taken prisoner and handed over to police--who released them two days later.

“Next time, no prisoners,” said the head man who told the story.