Word: shona
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe joined hands in 1980 to fight a guerrilla war against their country's white-minority government. But soon after Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, the longtime rivals parted acrimoniously. Mugabe ruled the country as Prime Minister with the support of his ethnic group, the Shona, who make up about 80% of the population. Nkomo headed the main opposition party, composed of the Ndebele people. He was accused by the government of being behind Ndebele freedom fighters in the area of southwestern Zimbabwe known as Matabeleland. Since 1982 the rebels and the Shonas have waged a war that...
Mugabe's chief rival, Joshua Nkomo, fared well only in Matabeleland, the western homeland of his Ndebele tribe, where resentment of Mugabe's predominant Shona tribe runs high. Although Nkomo's party, the Zimbabwe African People's Union, won all 15 of the Matabeleland constituencies, redistricting had eliminated five seats that ZAPU held in the previous Parliament. Elsewhere, Mugabe's victory removed from Parliament three minority opposition parties, including pre-independence Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa's United African National Council, which had held three seats...
However, the political feud between the two leaders continues, reinforced by the rivalry between Mugabe's 7 million-strong Shona tribe and Nkomo's 1.5 million-member Ndebele tribe. It flared again last week. More than 4,000 policemen and soldiers, including the Zimbabwean army's North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade, sealed off Matabeleland's main city, Bulawayo, and systematically flushed out so-called political agitators, criminals and dissidents. The soldiers arrested more than 1,300 people in house-to-house searches and at roadblocks...
...Zimbabwe, some of them encamped at bus stations and marketplaces and in fields. The Marymount Mission near Rushinga in northeastern Zimbabwe is serving a daily ration of beans and soup to refugees. Although local Zimbabweans have been generous to the Mozambicans, who are of the same tribe, the Shona, their country is also stricken by drought and there is little food available. However, the U.N.'s World Food Program has agreed to supply Zimbabwe with foodstuffs worth $1 million to feed the refugees. Prime Minister Robert Mugabe's government and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees have...
...shared leadership of the seven-year guerrilla war that in 1980 ended white rule of the country, then known as Rhodesia. Since that time, however, Mugabe has systematically undermined his former partner's power. Earlier this year, government troops, most of them members of Mugabe's dominant Shona tribe, killed hundreds of Nkomo's Ndebele tribesmen in what was billed as a campaign against dissenters...