Zimbabwe’s Ruling Party Swept Back Into Power With Landslide Election Victory

Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s ruling Zimbabwe African National Union party scored a landslide victory in Zimbabwe’s first post-independence parliamentary elections, taking 57 of 79 seats at stake, according to partial results announced early today.

Mugabe, 60, who has governed Zimbabwe since it gained independence in 1980, easily won the suburban Harare seat of Highfields, polling 33,548 votes to 3,885 for his nearest challenger.

The main opposition party of Joshua Nkomo, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), won all 12 seats declared so far in its stronghold of Matabeleland and looked like it might well win the remaining four seats.

Contest Postponed

Six other results were expected from provinces where Mugabe’s party was running strong, and the contest for one seat was postponed because of a candidate’s sudden death.

Mugabe had claimed that a landslide victory for his socialist ZANU party would pave the way for introduction of one-party rule in Zimbabwe. Late Friday night he called on opposition parties to join the government.

Mugabe, who had predicted that his party would return to power with 65 to 70 seats, saw his party sweep to victory in the Shona-speaking provinces of Midlands, Mashonaland and Manicaland, where minority opposition parties received as few as 300 votes in some constituencies.

However, Mugabe failed to win the votes of the minority Ndebele people in southern Matabeleland province, which has been the scene of continual bloodshed during the past 2 1/2 years as rebels sympathetic to Nkomo have clashed with government troops. Thousands have died in the violence.

Minister Badly Beaten

In one Matabeleland contest, Mines Minister Callistus Ndlovu, who defected to Mugabe’s party last year, was beaten by 30,411 votes by a candidate from Nkomo’s party.

More than 3 million black citizens voted from Monday through Thursday for 79 seats designated for blacks in the 100-member National Assembly.

In separate elections on June 27, the winners of 20 seats reserved for whites under the British-drafted constitution were elected by 34,000 white voters. Elections for one seat were postponed after a candidate died.

Mugabe’s party won 57 of the 80 black assembly seats in 1980 and Nkomo’s party won 20.

Among the losers was Bishop Abel Muzorewa, a black who served as prime minister in a white-backed government from June, 1979, to April, 1980. He was badly beaten in Harare’s Glen View constituency. The election board said he polled only 2,876 votes, while an candidate supporting Mugabe racked up 31,506.

Muzorewa Defeated

Muzorewa, 60, whose party won three seats in the 1980 elections, flew to Malawi last Monday. The bishop, Zimbabwe’s head of the U.S.-based United Methodist Church, was held for nine months last year on alleged charges of plotting a coup.

In the voting for white seats last week, 15 went to conservatives led by Ian Smith, the last white prime minister in the country formerly called Rhodesia. The other five went to independents pledged to work with Mugabe’s government.

Nkomo claims that the military crackdowns against the rebels in Matabeleland province are intended to intimidate his followers. Several residents of the province told reporters that they had received death threats because of their support for Nkomo.

Some missionaries and foreign aid workers have backed Nkomo’s allegations that hundreds of Ndebele peasants have been killed by troops from Mugabe’s Shona tribe. Mugabe has denied the charges and claims Nkomo gives orders to the rebels who have killed scores of officials and supporters of his ruling party.

Many of the rebels are former members of Nkomo’s guerrilla army and fought in the seven-year war against white rule.

They took to the bush once again when Mugabe fired Nkomo from his coalition Cabinet in March, 1982, accusing his one-time ally of plotting a coup.