Survival of Fittest in Zimbabwe : Mugabe, Nkomo Struggle for Own, Nation’s Future

Like two bulls vying to dominate the herd, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and opposition leader Joshua Nkomo are preparing for Zimbabwe’s first parliamentary election since independence five years ago, taunting one another, testing their strength and charging their rivals with increasing ferocity.

The election, planned for late June, should determine who will lead Zimbabwe in a critical period of post-independence political, economic and social development and thus shape the future of the young African nation of 8.5 million.

Although most political handicappers here predict that Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union will win a majority of seats, the margin of his victory is far from certain--as is his ability to eliminate Nkomo and his Zimbabwe African People’s Union from the political arena.

“You cannot have two bulls in the same kraal (corral),” explained a leading Zimbabwe journalist, using a peasant’s proverb as a political metaphor to describe the intense rivalry between Mugabe, 61, and Nkomo, 67. “As long as you do, the fighting will continue and probably grow worse. In terms of African politics, Mugabe must finish Nkomo off to win a real victory; for Nkomo to win is impossible, but his survival depends on a very strong showing.”

Referendum on Mugabe

Thus, next month’s election is shaping up as a referendum on Mugabe’s five years as prime minister and on his party’s plans for Zimbabwe’s “socialist transformation” and a one-party state.

Mugabe’s party will, of course, point to the schools, clinics, rural roads and irrigation projects built over the past five years, as well as the higher wages for industrial workers in the cities. Nkomo’s supporters will attack the government for “not delivering the goods,” as he put it recently.

The Zimbabwe African National Union will also argue, as it did five years ago, that only Mugabe can unite the nation, that a vote for him is a vote for peace and that a vote for Nkomo is a vote for continued unrest.

Maurice Nyagumbo, minister for political affairs and the third-ranking member of the Zimbabwe African National Union’s politburo, said in an interview here that the ruling party, known as ZANU, expects to win at least 65 of the 80 seats reserved for blacks in the 100-member Parliament and perhaps as many as 70. In the 1980 pre-independence election, when the country was known as Rhodesia, the party won 57 seats.

With its allies among the 20 white members of Parliament, the party can command about 80 votes, by Nyagumbo’s reckoning, giving Mugabe indisputable control. Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union, known as ZAPU, thus would be cut from its present 20 seats to 15 or even 10.

‘To Unify Our People’

But Nyagumbo, in what has become the theme of recent ZANU election statements, stressed that “even if we have a landslide victory” the party will not rush to establish a one-party state, outlawing its rivals, or to accelerate the transition to socialism.

“Our campaign is, in fact, to unify our people, to have one Zimbabwe, one nation,” Nyagumbo told a political gathering here this month. “Then we will have in practice a one-party state.”

A longtime Mugabe associate here explained: “Mugabe saw that socialism and the one-party state were losing ZANU votes, that they (these goals), rather than his leadership, were becoming the main issues of the campaign, and he decided to downplay them as much as possible short of dropping them altogether.

“Mugabe wants a broad mandate from this election . . . because the government will have to take major decisions on the country’s future, such as a new constitution, in the next five years. . . . He also wants, and it does seem possible, to resolve the place of Nkomo and ZAPU before greater damage is done to the unity of the country.”

Put another way, Mugabe is seeking what amounts in practice to a one-party system, provided he gets the majority that Nyagumbo predicts, and thus the end of Nkomo’s party as a national political force.

Nkomo Confident

“The government is trying with all its might to finish us off, but it will not be so easy,” Nkomo said in an interview at his home in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe’s second city.

“In a free and fair election, if such is possible in Zimbabwe today, the people would show what they think of the way ZANU has governed over the past five years and what they think of its plans for a one-party state and for this ‘socialist transformation.’ It would not just be a question of a reduced majority for ZANU, but I think that Mugabe would not even have enough votes to form the government.”

Although most political observers would consider it a victory for Nkomo if his party holds its present seats, mostly in western Zimbabwe’s Matabeleland, home of his 1.5-million member Ndebele tribe, Nkomo believes there is sufficient discontent in urban areas and even in Mashonaland, the home territory of Mugabe’s party, to “take perhaps half a dozen seats away from the government.”

If these were added to three seats now held by the United African National Council of Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the prime minister just before independence, and the 20 seats reserved for whites under the present constitution, then Nkomo could check many of Mugabe’s moves.

“This scenario is not so farfetched,” said John L. Nkomo, a ZAPU party secretary and former minister in the Mugabe government. “We do not regard the results of the election as a foregone conclusion--that is, if it is reasonably honest--and we certainly do not believe the government will succeed in its plans to eliminate us and all other opposition parties so that it can proceed even faster down the road to some glorious, totalitarian, socialist state.”

Strategy Involves Whites

Ironically, the Nkomo party strategy allies it with white conservatives, including former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith, now 66, whose convictions have changed little since his unilateral declaration of independence in 1965 to preserve white rule in the British colony.

The present constitution requires unanimous parliamentary agreement, including the support of Smith and other white members, for any change in Zimbabwe’s political system, including one-party rule and full socialism, before 1990.

“If we go on like this, drifting towards communism, we are heading for bankruptcy,” Smith said recently. “I hope we can get the government to recant communism. It is insane--it robs the industrious and the intelligent to subsidize the lazy and the poor. If we can restore some sanity, whites will stop leaving and return. That is my goal now.”

However, Smith’s Conservative Alliance of Zimbabwe will probably have difficulty retaining its present seven seats in Parliament against a new white party that largely supports Mugabe and wants to use its resulting influence to moderate his move toward socialism.

Political violence, including frequent beatings, abductions and murders, has raised serious questions about the fairness of the elections. Nkomo has accused the ruling party and the government of attacking, kidnaping and killing hundreds of his party’s local officials in Matabeleland in an effort to break down its organization and intimidate its members.

More Violence Feared

Ruling party officials, while acknowledging that some members of the party’s youth brigade have engaged in assaults, blame Nkomo’s disgruntled supporters, mostly former guerrilla fighters who have returned to the bush to oppose the government, for most of the violence, including the deaths of 29 party officials this year.

Many fear that the elections will bring a sharp upsurge in violence, particularly in Matabeleland, noting that political murders and abductions increased early this year when a March or April election was expected.

No date has been set for the elections, and speculation is growing that the government will have to postpone them again to allow more time for preparations.

Delay does not favor Mugabe’s party, political observers here said, because it allows the opposition to focus on numerous but generally small grievances--rising prices, urban unemployment, corruption, limited programs and land reform--and to build support among the country’s 7 million Shonas.

Mugabe is also determined, officials say, to demonstrate Zimbabwe’s adherence to constitutional democracy and political fair play.

“These elections will be a political watershed for us in many ways,” said Willie Muzuruwa, editor of the Sunday Mail, Zimbabwe’s largest newspaper, and a former ZAPU information secretary. “They are, of course, the first elections we have run ourselves, and the importance of that in the country’s political development should not be minimized.

“Moreover, the government that is elected will be the one that works out our long-term economic development, drafts a new constitution and creates Zimbabwe’s own form of socialism. And, finally, we hope that this election will put behind us the most divisive aspects of the rivalry between ZANU and ZAPU because, if they are not, some people fear that they could fester into a civil war and an attempt at secession in Matabeleland.”

That rivalry dates to the Mugabe party’s break in 1963 from Nkomo’s group over his leadership of the liberation struggle. Hostility continued intermittently through the war against the white Rhodesian government.

The divisions are accentuated by old tribal enmities between the majority Shonas, the basis of Mugabe’s strength, and the Ndebeles, who support Nkomo’s party.

These go back more than 150 years to the thrust northward of 20,000 Ndebele warriors, who had broken away from Zulu domination in what is now South Africa. They arrived without women, without cattle, with only their arms and martial tradition, and they raided the Shonas and other tribes for what they wanted, terrorizing much of central Africa until British troops stopped the raids in order to protect white settlements in the region.

“Nothing has been forgotten,” said a Shona academic who considers himself “detribalized.”

“The raids, the murders, the rapes are all remembered by our people as if they occurred only last year, and revenge is exacted whenever there is a chance,” he said. “For the Ndebeles, the Shonas are still a tribe that can be kicked about and subjugated, and it is humiliating (for Ndebeles) to be ruled by them, whether or not they are the majority in the country.”

Because of these tensions, the government’s “deep gut fear” has been a civil war or attempted secession by the Ndebeles, John Tsimba, Zimbabwe’s information director, said.

“Despite all the recent problems in Matabeleland, there is less of a danger now than before,” Tsimba commented, “and we hope that the election will reduce it further. A lot depends on how the elections are conducted and on whether Nkomo and his party accept the results.”

The reference to accepting the results runs through most political discussions here. In the government’s view, it means that Nkomo must accept Mugabe’s leadership and the ruling party’s blueprint for the future.

But to Nkomo it means that the ruling party must cooperate with other political parties. “Robert Mugabe will not be able to proceed with this one-party system of his,” Nkomo said. “If he does, it will destroy him and much of this country.”