Word: muzorewas
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...voting went surprisingly smoothly. To counter the threat by the Patriotic Front to disrupt the proceedings, the government mobilized 90,000 troops and in many cases transported voters to the polls. Muzorewa and other campaigners were accompanied by armed militiamen. Mobile voting units were trucked, under army escort, to about 1,500 of the country's 2,000 designated polling places...
...most important issue by far was peace. The candidates concentrated on the ways in which they would end the war, bring majority rule, open new schools and clinics, and help blacks find jobs. Muzorewa's top vote puller was a promise of free education for every child up to the seventh grade. Another important issue: ways to help enable blacks to buy their own farms. The average white in Rhodesia has 75 acres, while the average black has five. As Joshua Nkomo, one of the Patriotic Front leaders, has said, "This is the source of all our bitterness...
...outside observers give Muzorewa much chance of succeeding, however. Says a ranking Western diplomat in neighboring Zambia: "This next period is going to be violent, and the dimension of the violence is far greater than anybody has imagined." Joshua Nkomo's Zambia-based branch of the Patriotic Front currently has about 25,000 men under arms, including some 2,000 inside Rhodesia. The Mozambique-based branch, under Robert Mugabe, also has about 25,000 guerrillas, with 8,600 of them inside Rhodesia. The Rhodesian security forces' incursions into Mozambique and Zambia, where Nkomo's headquarters in Lusaka was raided...
...Anglo-American initiative has fallen apart. At present, nobody is pressing for an all-parties conference. Muzorewa and his colleagues do not want one because they expect to be running the show in Salisbury. The guerrillas do not want one because they expect to win everything through force. The result, as Mugabe once put it: "The real conference will be in the bush...
...meantime, the Callaghan government has fallen and if Margaret Thatcher and her Conservatives win Britain's May 3 election, they will undoubtedly alter British policy in the direction of support for Muzorewa and Smith. Some Tory advisers have pointed out that Britain's relations with its African allies, notably Nigeria, could be jeopardized by an abrupt change in policy on Rhodesia. The Commonwealth Prime Ministers are scheduled to meet in Zambia later this year. If the African members should still be angry with Mrs. Thatcher at that time, they could embarrass her greatly by deciding upon some kind of retaliation...