Word: muzorewa
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...Mugabe's top priorities is the purchase of underutilized land for the establishment of collective farms and redistribution to black peasants. He will probably begin, ironically, by dusting off an agricultural plan developed for the short-lived interim government headed by Bishop Abel Muzorewa. That program, which involved some 11 million acres of undeveloped or abandoned white farm land, would cost $165 million. The biracial Muzorewa regime never found financial backing for the resettlement scheme, a failing that contributed to its crushing electoral defeat last month. But Mugabe's government has already sought pledges of substantial aid from...
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...
...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...
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...
...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...