Mugabe Takes Charge

But the revolutionary talks of reconciliation

The tension hung heavy over Zimbabwe Rhodesia early last week, almost as if the bloody seven-year civil war were still raging. In Salisbury, armored personnel carriers rolled through the streets and clusters of armed Rhodesian soldiers gathered nervously on the corners as helicopter gunships swooped low over the city. Out in the bush, at the Alpha cease-fire camp, Sergeant Roy Rowley of the Rhodesian African Rifles noted grimly: "Now I know what it's like to be waiting for the end of the world."

For many of the 212,000 white citizens of the breakaway British colony, the election results announced last week indeed marked the end of their world. Robert Gabriel Mugabe, 56, the implacable, ascetic revolutionary and guerrilla leader, had won by a landslide. In three days of balloting for 80 black seats in the 100-member House of Assembly, Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) had swept up 57 seats and 63% of the popular vote. Mugabe thereby became the first revolutionary elected by popular vote in Africa's postcolonial history. Lord Soames, the British-appointed Governor, immediately asked him to form a government as Prime Minister-designate. The news sent thousands of jubilant blacks streaming into the streets, singing, dancing, crowing and wildly flapping their arms in emulation of Jongwe --the Shona word for Mugabe's campaign symbol, a rooster.

But there was little rejoicing among the whites. For them, Mugabe's victory marked the end of nine decades of privilege and dominion, dating back to the arrival of Cecil Rhodes and the British pioneers in the 1890s. Said a Salisbury secretary: "How can we accept what we have fought against for so long?" Some white Rhodesians talked bitterly of "gapping it"--their Rugby-derived term for emigrating.

Belying his image among whites as a fanatical Marxist, Mugabe issued an eloquent call for peace and reconciliation in his first address to the nation. "It is time to beat our swords into plowshares," he declared. "There is room for everyone in a new society. Today, white or black, we are all Zimbabweans." Mugabe pledged not to impose any sweeping nationalization of private property and promised to bring members of other parties into a broad-based government.

One of his initial moves was to reforge his old links with Joshua Nkomo, 62, his former co-leader in the Patriotic Front guerrilla alliance. Running on a separate platform, the bulky, jovial Nkomo had won only 20 seats, mostly in his Matabele tribal stronghold. He accepted Mugabe's invitation to join forces with him in a "national front" coalition. Nkomo was reportedly offered Zimbabwe's figurehead presidency, but he may hold out for a Cabinet post.

Mugabe next held out the olive branch to former Prime Minister Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front, which had won all 20 of the white parliamentary seats in separate elections last month. Smith, who illegally declared Rhodesia independent in 1965 to avoid majority rule, responded by urging fellow whites to stay and support the new regime. Though a portfolio seemed unlikely for Smith, Mugabe reportedly wanted to include some whites in his Cabinet. One probable candidate: the present Finance Minister David Smith, a politically moderate technocrat.

One vitally important white official who immediately announced his support of the new regime was Lieut. General Peter Walls, 53, who led Rhodesia's bloody seven-year war against the guerrillas. At Mugabe's request, Walls agreed to retain the supreme military command and preside over the integration of Rhodesian forces with the guerrillas in the new national army.

Almost completely out of keeping with the conciliatory public mood was the bitter reaction of Bishop Abel T. Muzorewa, who won only three seats despite an active and well-financed campaign. (Candidates of the other six black parties were shut out completely.) Favored by the whites because of his moderate politics, the Methodist prelate had become Rhodesia's first black Prime Minister last June after he won 51 of the 72 black seats in "internal" elections boycotted by the guerrillas. Last week's vote, he declared in an emotional press conference, had been "absolutely unfree and unfair" because of intimidation by Mugabe supporters.

Most of the official and unofficial foreign observers, including British Election Commissioner Sir John Boynton, concluded that the elections had been surprisingly free and fair. That judgment was shared by the Presidents of the so-called frontline African states (Zambia, Mozambique, Botswana, Angola, Tanzania), who gave the guerrillas crucial support during the war. Tanzania's President Julius Nyerere had earlier suggested that the British had rigged the vote in favor of Muzorewa. Celebrating Mugabe's victory with a champagne toast, Nyerere declared: "This is not the first time I have been proved wrong, and it is not the first time I'm very pleased that I'm wrong."

Signs of a ZANU victory were visible from the first day of the voting. About 64% of the 2.9 million eligible blacks voted in last year's internal election; this time, with the guerrilla leaders participating, the turnout was an astounding 93%. The long election lines at polling stations were filled with proud, determined voters whose sentiments were not hard to guess. "They have walked miles to come here," said a Rhodesian voting officer in one midlands village. "They're all ages, disabled, crippled, blind. They say straight away who they want."

To some degree, the blacks were voting for a cause and a symbol rather than a candidate. Mugabe has little personal magnetism. He lacks the easy humor and earthiness of Nkomo, and seems temperamentally unsuited to the rough and tumble of African politics. His personal regimen is ascetic: he sleeps only three or four hours a night, does a daily 45-minute workout of yoga and calisthenics, eats monastically light meals, neither smokes nor drinks. Shy and contemplative, he is not a rousing platform speaker, and in fact did less active campaigning than any other major candidate.

Tribal factors had much to do with his victory. Mugabe, like Muzorewa, is a member of the dominant Shona, who make up about 80% of the black population. But Muzorewa was so discredited by his association with the whites and his failure to deliver on campaign promises that most of the Shonas voted for Mugabe. Another reason for his success: Mugabe's guerrillas did the brunt of the fighting that, in the eyes of most Africans, forced the whites to accept majority rule.

Mugabe's victory was the climax of 20 years of struggle in the nationalist movement. The son of a poor laborer, he was born in the village of Kutama, just west of Salisbury, and educated in Roman Catholic mission schools. After earning degrees from two South African universities, he began his career as a schoolteacher, but ultimately immersed himself in Rhodesian nationalist politics during the 1960s. He was repeatedly arrested for his political activities and spent, all told, more than a decade in jail; as a prisoner, he completed three more university degrees by correspondence.

Released in 1974, Mugabe went into exile in Mozambique. There, harbored by Marxist President Samora Machel and armed largely by Peking, he organized his Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) and launched a full-scale guerrilla war against the Smith regime.

In October 1976, Mugabe formed the Patriotic Front alliance with Nkomo, whose smaller, Soviet-armed Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) was operating out of bases in Zambia. Last fall, the Patriotic Front co-leaders met with representatives of the biracial Muzorewa government for an all-parties peace conference at London's Lancaster House. Chaired by British Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, the 15-week talks produced a majority-rule constitution, a cease-fire accord and a transitional plan that temporarily returned the country to British colonial rule.

Despite his revolutionary ideology, Mugabe said he would conduct a nonaligned foreign policy. He indicated that Zimbabwe would seek membership in the Commonwealth after the country becomes formally independent (probably next month). He also promised not to harbor or arm South African nationalist guerrillas. Pretoria accepted the election results, but leaders of its apartheid government could not hide their misgivings over the inspiration that Mugabe's victory may give to South Africa's black nationalists.

In an interview with TIME (see box), Mugabe also vowed not to disrupt the potentially prosperous capitalist economy he will inherit. Many local businessmen feel that the coming of peace and stable government could spark an unprecedented boom in Zimbabwe. With the country's main agricultural, mining and manufacturing industries freed from the shackles of the international sanctions imposed after the unilateral declaration of independence, economists expect a 3% rise in the gross domestic product this year and a 15% increase in exports.

For that to happen, Mugabe must win the confidence of the whites, whose capital and know-how will remain essential to Zimbabwe's economy for years to come. Yet as a nationalist leader with an avowed commitment to socialism, he must also begin to satisfy black demands for a greater share of the national wealth. In addition, he may soon face mounting pressures for radical change from impatient hard-liners within his own party, who are anxious to reap the immediate benefits of their newly won power.

One immediate test of Mugabe's leadership will be the success of efforts to integrate the guerrillas and the white-led Rhodesian military forces into a single army. The guerrillas have already begun intensive training programs with Rhodesian and British instructors. The initial results were encouraging. At Papa Base, the largest of the cease-fire assembly points for Nkomo's forces, Commander Todd Msipa told TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter: "If our orders are to work with the Rhodesians, we can do it, just like we killed under orders." The instructors, for their part, have been generally enthusiastic over the military potential of the new recruits. At Rathgar Camp, where drilling troops were raising clouds of dust on the parade ground, a British officer remarked, with unconscious irony, "These guys have a natural talent for marching. Give me one week with these blokes and they'll be great."

At Alpha Camp the night before the election results were announced, a group of ZANLA guerrilla leaders and Rhodesian officers sat together on camp beds, sipping Rhodesian Burgundy from cracked coffee cups, trading jokes and war tales. Said Lieut. John Steele, the Rhodesian base commander: "This has not happened before. I think we have made a promising beginning." The next morning, the raggedly dressed ZANLA men formed up into perfect ranks as Comrade Morgan, a senior guerrilla officer, strode back and forth before them. "ZANLA has won the elections," he barked. "But no one is allowed to boast because he was a freedom fighter. Our revolution is a national revolution, for all races, whites, blacks and Asians. We will cooperate with the security forces and forget all our past differences." Then Steele, with some strain showing in his face, told the new recruits: "Mugabe is our leader now. We are all fighting for one government." Behind him a ZANLA man sang the opening bars of the guerrillas' Zimbabwe national anthem and the blacks broke into a traditional Shona dance of celebration.

On a grassy hill near the southwestern town of Bulawayo lies the tomb of Cecil Rhodes, the English diamond millionaire who took the white man's burden to southern Africa and founded the colony that bore his name. Rhodes, even with his ambitious vision, could never have contemplated a black-ruled Rhodesia with a Shona tribesman at its head. Yet the two leaders had at least one thing in common: each had an almost mystical belief that his personal destiny was intertwined with that of this hauntingly beautiful country. As Robert Mugabe took on the burden of governing and rebuilding that war-torn land last week, he might well have repeated the founder's dying words: "So little done, so much to do."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.