Fears Over Black Rule Fade With Peace, Prosperity : White Exiles Return Home to a New Zimbabwe

Mark H. Rocke and his family have come back to the country they fled out of fear six years ago--fear of black rule in Zimbabwe.

Like thousands of others who left what then was the British colony of Rhodesia, they had gone to South Africa, only to encounter the racial strife they feared so much here.

“This is a country of racial peace, and we did the right thing coming home,” Rocke’s wife, Denyse, said.

The Rockes and others who left when blacks took over from the white minority in Zimbabwe regret they ever left.

Symbolizes Triumph

The return of the white exiles symbolizes a triumph for Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s racial reconciliation policy after a seven-year independence war that cost 27,000 lives, mainly blacks.

It also represents mounting white disenchantment with life in South Africa, where the black majority is agitating for the kind of control the Zimbabweans won from whites who had ruled Rhodesia for nearly a century.

Godfrey Chinyama, an economist for the Rai Merchant Bank in Zimbabwe, has researched the white exodus.

He said that 251,000 whites lived in Rhodesia in 1978 and that 154,000 fled as their rule crumbled. Since independence in 1980, 30,000 whites have returned, Chinyama said.

‘Dire Predictions’

Chris Andersen, the only white in Mugabe’s Cabinet, stayed. But scores of his friends left for Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa.

“They left amid dire predictions of failure (under Mugabe),” said Andersen, minister of state for the public service. “They were scared of being involved in those failures for themselves and their children.”

But Andersen said that most emigres kept in touch with relatives and friends “and were impressed with good evidence of the positive results of reconciliation and government pragmatism.”

Mugabe pledged a policy of reconciliation, urging his country’s 8 million blacks and the remaining whites to “turn your swords into plowshares.”

Former Leader Stayed

Ian Smith, who led Rhodesia’s last white government and once vowed that black rule would not come in a thousand years, accepted Mugabe’s offer to stay.

A wealthy farmer, Smith has maintained his life style, minus the political power he had as prime minister of Rhodesia. He now holds one of the 20 seats reserved for whites in the 100-member Parliament.

“It was always a country that boasted one of the highest living standards in the world,” Anthony Eastwood, a white lawyer, said. “An artisan could have a fine house with a pool, two servants and a powerboat on the nearest lake. And he still can today.”

Rocke, a 59-year-old accountant, said the choice seemed simple enough for him and his wife in 1980 when they packed their belongings and took their two daughters to Cape Town, South Africa.

Worried About Standards

“My wife and I thought it would perhaps not be the best of situations for our daughters,” Rocke said. “We worried that health and educational standards would drop.

“We noted from Cape Town how education in Zimbabwe had improved after perhaps an initial drop. And after returning on holiday once or twice, we said to ourselves, ‘What are we doing in another country?’ ”

The Rockes’ 15-year-old daughter, Anne Michelle, returned to Zimbabwe. But an older daughter, Nicolat, 20, was married in Cape Town and remained there with her husband.

Edmund Tiran, 49, a medical technologist, also settled in Cape Town after being offered a better job there in July, 1984. He said his family was anxious about their security under Mugabe’s government.

‘Relieved’ to Be Wrong

But with the collapse of the South Africa’s currency, the rand, neither the job nor the life style was attractive, and the Tiran family was back in Harare by August, 1985.