Word: rhodesian
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...contest comes to a merciful close this week with the election of 80 black members to the 100-seat House of Assembly. Voting separately, the country's 212,000 whites have already chosen their 20 representatives-all of them members of former Prime Minister Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front Party...
Former Prime Minister Bishop Abel Muzorewa, the leading black moderate, was still gamely electioneering around the country in a red-and-white-striped helicopter, accompanied by a dozen armed bodyguards. Generously financed by South African and Rhodesian corporations, Muzorewa runs by far the richest and best organized of all the major parties. Despite offers of free drinks and gifts, however, his crowds remained small and glumly suspicious of the proceedings. Muzorewa charged last week that he had attended "only one meeting where there was no evidence of intimidation...
...campaign looked, it was still peace by Rhodesian standards: the average daily death toll was seven-down from 40 before the settlement. Privately, many black nationalists admitted that Soames' firmness had helped hold the cease-fire on course. But Soames has also been severely criticized by the nationalists and their African sympathizers for his seeming partiality toward the white Rhodesians, whom he has allowed to control the country's civil service, government apparatus, security forces and pro-Muzorewa auxiliaries...
...this surveillance, he contended, was "authorized directly" by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Foreign Secretary Lord Carrington, who won wide acclaim for his deft performance as conference chairman. Though all delegations were monitored, Campbell wrote, particular attention was paid to Patriotic Front Co-Leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe; Rhodesian security personnel were even employed to interpret African languages and dialects. Campbell further claimed that U.S. agents had bugged "critical meetings" attended by the Front's delegates to last September's Nonaligned Conference in Havana and passed the information on to Britain...
Leaders of the Rhodesian security forces, who technically retain authority over the auxiliaries, defend them as a disciplined and apolitical force for "national reconstruction." But Muzorewa's rivals argue that they represent a threat to free and fair elections. One irate black leader, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, last week called on the other opposition parties to join him in boycotting the election unless the Governor asserted more control over the auxiliaries. Said he: "We have law-protected lawlessness, and Lord Soames doesn't appear to have the imagination or the capacity to deal with the situation...