Word: nkomo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
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...
Mugabe also claimed that Nkomo held two secret meetings shortly after the 1980 elections with South African officials to seek Pretoria's support for a coup attempt against Mugabe. The South Africans, charged Mugabe, refused Nkomo's request at both meetings. The Prime Minister also maintained that Nkomo had met with "other parties" to plan a strategy to overthrow his government. Among them: Member of Parliament Wally Stuttaford, 64, who has been detained by the Mugabe government since December on suspicion of having approached ZAPU to plot a joint coup attempt...
Mugabe said ominously that "the law will now take its course" against Nkomo and dismissed three other key ZAPU party members, though he stopped short of firing four others. The apparent attempt to confine the sackings to a few ZAPU leaders for the moment undercut increasingly vocal complaints from opposition critics, especially among Zimbabwe's 210,000 whites, that Mugabe is moving to establish a one-party state...
...news of Nkomo's dismissal circulated, security around Salisbury was noticeably tightened and crowds of pro-Mugabe demonstrators took to the streets to hail the Prime Minister's decisive action, Nkomo was denying knowledge of the buried weapons or any coup plotting. "It's a political vendetta," he told TIME at his home outside Salisbury. "This young man Mugabe is trying to hide two years of failure. He can come here and shoot me if he likes. I will survive, and he will see me creating history in this country." Indeed, after two decades of struggle...