Word: bulawayo
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...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...
...fighting centered on Bulawayo, the country's second largest city. It is also one of the main locations where the government has been trying to fuse a national army by integrating the two rival guerrilla forces that fought for independence as the Patriotic Front: the ZANLA forces that were led by Mugabe and are composed mostly of Shona tribesmen; and the ZIPRA guerrillas, mostly Ndebele, who remain loyal to Joshua Nkomo. As last week's clashes intensified, ZIPRA and ZANLA units grabbed weapons from the camp's armory and summoned other former guerrillas to come help them...
...five days, mortar and rifle fire thundered all around Bulawayo (derived from a Ndebele word and broadly meaning "place of killing"). Scores of homes near the camps were damaged by rocket fire. Streams of civilians fled from the confused battle into the nearby bush or to the city center. Shops and schools remained closed in the deserted downtown areas...
Among them, ironically, was a battalion of the former Rhodesian African Rifles, a 3,000-man brigade commanded by white officers and once the scourge of Zimbabwean guerrilla fighters. By week's end the national army troops had regained control of Bulawayo. Up to 1,000 dissident ZIPRA troops disappeared into the bush. Many carried their machine guns and grenade launchers with them, auguring more strife...
...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...