Word: bulawayo
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Mugabe weighs moving against Nkomo as violence increases With no warning, the shots were fired from the thick bush at the nine tourists traveling by truck from Victoria Falls, the most spectacular waterfall in Africa, to Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city. Armed men ran to the vehicle, took the six male tourists as hostages and gave the tour guide a ransom note addressed to Prime Minister Robert Mugabe. The message said that the kidnapers would "blast these kids" by week's end unless Mugabe released from jail two former leaders in the guerrilla army of his rival...
...occasion for Nkomo's ejection from the Cabinet was the alleged discovery of arms caches on property owned or controlled by Nkomo and ZAPU in the Bulawayo area, in the southwestern part of the country. Government security forces unearthed other buried weapons and military equipment near Gwelo in central Zimbabwe and Umtali in the east. The arsenal included 25 SA-7 missiles, more than 7,000 Soviet-made automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, machine guns and more than 2 million rounds of ammunition. Said Mugabe: "The arms were being hoarded to try to overthrow my government...
...when ZAPU insurgents, who had fought grudgingly alongside ZANU forces during their seven-year guerrilla war against the white-dominated, government of what was formerly Rhodesia, did not turn over all their arms as required when the strife ended in 1979. After a series of armed robberies in the Bulawayo area last year, police arrested a number of former ZAPU guerrillas and persuaded them to reveal the location of the caches...
...five days, mortar and rifle fire thundered all around Bulawayo (derived from a Ndebele word and broadly meaning "place of killing"). Scores of homes near the camps were damaged by rocket fire. Streams of civilians fled from the confused battle into the nearby bush or to the city center. Shops and schools remained closed in the deserted downtown areas...
Among them, ironically, was a battalion of the former Rhodesian African Rifles, a 3,000-man brigade commanded by white officers and once the scourge of Zimbabwean guerrilla fighters. By week's end the national army troops had regained control of Bulawayo. Up to 1,000 dissident ZIPRA troops disappeared into the bush. Many carried their machine guns and grenade launchers with them, auguring more strife...