Word: nkomo
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...frontline states (Angola, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia). The frontline Presidents told Lord Harlech that they will withhold support for Muzorewa until they are assured that the proposed reforms will be acceptable to the Patriotic Front. Chances of such acceptance are slim, since Guerrilla Leaders Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo are totally opposed to any negotiated settlement with the bishop's regime...
There was little celebration, though, even among blacks. In his first official act, Muzorewa swore in his 16-member Cabinet, composed of eleven black and five white ministers, and offered the "hand of fellowship" to the guerrillas of the Patriotic Front, led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe, asking them to lay down their arms under a government amnesty. It was an invitation not likely to be accepted...
...watching carefully to see whether the advent of a predominantly black government in Salisbury will change the strategy of the two wings of the Patriotic Front, whose guerrillas have been waging war against the Rhodesian regime for the past six years. One leader of the Front, the hulking Joshua Nkomo, who heads the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), was on a private visit to the U.S. He skipped a stopover in Washington, but dropped in at the United Nations and attended an African-American Institute conference in Houston, where he turned his gargantuan appetite loose on a Texas barbecue...
Muammar Gaddafi offered to provide training for 2,000 guerrillas of Nkomo's ZAPU. Other ZAPU soldiers are currently being trained in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Ethiopia and Angola; a few of Mugabe's ZANU troops are in Eastern Europe and Ethiopia, but most are in camps in Mozambique...
Despite the availability of all that outside help, military experts believe Nkomo's 17,000-man army is deteriorating; moreover, the long-feuding Mugabe and Nkomo groups have not yet settled on a common military strategy. That could give the Rhodesian army an important advantage, except that its morale and fighting power also seem to be declining as experienced white officers continue to leave. Thus, conclude some observers, it is not unlikely that two poorly trained, poorly equipped and poorly disciplined armies may wind up slogging away at each other for years to come...