Zimbabwe Detentions Bring Charge of Abuse : Critics See Government Effort to Force Political Submission of Opposition Tribe and Party

Six agents of Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization came to the house of Michael Constandinos, a former mayor of Bulawayo and currently a member of its City Council, on Aug. 28. It was 4 a.m. The agents searched the house and then took Constandinos away.

For the next 17 days, neither his wife nor his lawyer were able to find out where Constandinos was, or why he had been detained. Then, as suddenly as he was taken, he reappeared, released from custody and told that he might have to stand trial for possession of “subversive literature,” a charge that a lawyer in Bulawayo said will not stand up “five minutes” in court.

Constandinos, who is 53 and has lived in Bulawayo for 28 years, is not alone. In recent weeks, eight other members of the Bulawayo City Council have been detained by the CIO, the government’s principal intelligence unit. Still another member of the council has disappeared and may have gone into hiding. No charges have been filed against any of those in custody, most of whom apparently are being held under the government’s emergency detention powers.

Harassment of Whites

Then, on Sept. 9, the police picked up four former district commissioners in Bulawayo and held them for one to four days before releasing them. Constandinos, two of the city councilmen and all four former district commissioners are white. Virtually all the other detainees here, including six of the councilmen, are black.

Although a wave of concern has spread through Bulawayo that the security agency has launched a program of harassment against whites, most observers here say that race is not a factor in the arrests. The government refuses to comment on the cases, but most people here believe they are part of a new drive by the government to force the political submission of the Ndebele tribe of southern Bulawayo, along with the political party to which most of them are loyal.

Central government pressure on the Ndebele to knuckle under and join the Zimbabwe African National Union, the party of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, goes back to independence in 1980. But the recent arrests, coming in the wake of national elections two months ago, indicate that a new government tactic is to put pressure on prominent people in the area, possibly in the hope of forcing a political accommodation from Joshua Nkomo, the dominant political figure among the Ndebele.

Misuse of Power Seen

The campaign has drawn the concern of human rights groups and Western diplomats who object to what they regard as a misuse of the government’s emergency detention powers--a holdover from the white regime of former Prime Minister Ian Smith--for reasons that have more to do with politics than with state security.

But there are some signs of progress in the dispute. On Oct. 3, Mugabe and Nkomo met for talks on a possible merger of their two parties. Sources said the proposed accord would give Nkomo the No. 3 position in the ruling party.

The government’s campaign to force an accommodation, however, is generally assumed to be headed by Enos Nkala, recently appointed minister of home affairs, though it is believed that he has Mugabe’s backing.

Nkala has recently suggested that Nkomo holds the key to ending the detentions, which have also included three Ndebele members of Parliament as well as a number of lesser known residents of the area. The exact number detained has been impossible to determine but is said to be in the hundreds.

“The onus is on him (Nkomo),” Nkala said, “to produce a program, a package deal, to settle the dissident program so that the cases of those in detention can be considered.” It is not known whether Nkomo produced such a deal when he met with Mugabe.

Attacks by Armed Gangs

The “dissidents” to whom Nkala referred are armed gangs that have intermittently attacked villages, settlers and minor government officials in the region over the last five years. The government contends that the gangs are loyal to the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, Nkomo’s political party, or are members of his forces left over from the war for independence, and suggests that he still has control over them. Nkomo denies it.

Last month, one of the gangs attacked a village and reportedly killed 21 people, including several children. Those who died were members of the Shona tribe.

Roughly 80% of Zimbabwe’s population is Shona, and virtually all the Shona are loyal to ZANU, Mugabe’s party. The Ndebele are overwhelmingly followers of Nkomo’s ZAPU. The tribal split has deep roots in the country’s history, reaching back 150 years to the time when the Ndebele peoples were dominant in the region.

Longtime observers of the strife in this area say that the dissidents may be made up of several groups with different motivations. Michael Auret, director of the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, a human rights organization, said he believes there may be five separate dissident elements.

Gun Can ‘Make Money’

One group, he said, is probably made up of bandits whose principal motivation is theft, “men who have learned that if you have a gun, you can use it to make money.”

A second group, operating in the area north of Bulawayo, Auret believes to be made up of former soldiers, Ndebeles who were thrown out of the army after independence. Among their political goals are the release of ZAPU officers held in detention and the release of one of their former guerrilla commanders arrested in connection with an arms cache the government suspected was to be used for terrorist activities.

Auret said a third group operates in southern Matabeleland. This group, he said, is “Russian-oriented, in terms of socialism,” and he believes the government reneged on promises to provide them with land after independence. In retaliation, they have attacked white farmers, killing 17 so far. But no white farmers have been killed since December, 1984.

A fourth group, Auret believes, has been backed by white-ruled South Africa, which has financed and trained Zimbabwean dissidents on its side of the border. The primary goal of this group has been “economic destabilization,” and it has concentrated on sabotage rather than on human targets. The Zimbabwe government regularly charges that the South Africans are behind at least part of the dissident activity in this region.

Defending Own People

The last group, Auret believes, is made up of Ndebele “who have access to arms and are simply fighting back” at what they perceive to be a government “overreaction” that is resulting in indiscriminate punishment of their people.

“These people are simply saying, I believe, that if they are going to kill us, we are going to fight back,” he said. “They see themselves as a sort of Ndebele defense force.”

The campaign against the dissidents is further complicated by Prime Minister Mugabe’s announced goal of creating a one-party state in Zimbabwe, a plan that is clearly unpopular with the majority of the Ndebele supporters of Nkomo’s ZAPU.

Some observers see the recent detentions as an attempt by the government to make it clear to leaders in Matabeleland that their future welfare lies in joining the ruling party.

“What is going on here is a gross abuse of power,” said Mordecai Mahlangu, a Bulawayo lawyer who has attempted to locate and free several detainees in Matabeleland with very little success.

Torture Reports Cited

“If a government minister, or senior police officer, has a case against an individual, he ought to have to bring it to court, present the evidence and allow the court to decide. That is not happening. A lot of power has been entrusted to individuals who are not worthy of that trust.”

Mahlangu said reports of beating and torture in the Bulawayo detention center, called Stops Camp, are common.

The authorities commonly deny that they have custody of arrested persons, forcing lawyers and relatives on long and often fruitless searches to find them, he said.

“I find this all thoroughly depressing,” Mahlangu said. “There is a feeling of hopelessness because you know that in spite of your training as a lawyer there is nothing you can do.”

30-Day Detentions

The emergency detention laws allow the government to detain any individual, without a court hearing, for as long as 30 days. According to the law, the detained person is entitled to consult the lawyer “as soon as practicable,” but in fact lawyers handling such cases in Bulawayo (there are at least a dozen) say that the police, intelligence and prison authorities make strenuous efforts to avoid this provision of the law, sometimes by moving the detainees from one jail to another or by steadily denying that he is in custody at all.

The arrest of Michael Constandinos seems particularly curious, since he has no political affiliation in the area at all. The Bulawayo City Council traditionally is elected on a nonpartisan basis. Constandinos is popular with both Africans and whites in town and has a reputation as one of the area’s most enthusiastic boosters and lobbyists. He and his wife, Pat, who came here from England, have reared three daughters in Bulawayo. He heads an insurance office here.

Most of Constandinos’ 17 days in custody were spent, he said, in solitary confinement at a police installation about 30 miles outside Bulawayo. During the detention, he said, he was twice interrogated, although the questions did not seem to be focused on any particular area.

The “subversive literature” seized by the CIO agents was described as a “satirical” poem, a takeoff on the 23rd Psalm. Constandinos’ passport was held by the authorities. He is scheduled to appear in court on the charge later this month.