Dr The_Thinker

Mugabe did not permit development initiatives likely to undermine his own control. When Norman Reynolds, formerly the government’s chief economist from 1981 to 1986, drew up a financial system for the development of rural areas that involved converting villages into trust companies, his plan was adopted by all fifty-five of the country’s district councils at a national conference. When it was subsequently presented to the cabinet, Mugabe simply put the document aside as “not in the party’s interest” because “no one need vote for Zanu-PF again.” Although more than half of the cabinet had claimed to support the plan, none of them said a word. Reynolds concluded, “Mugabe has always stopped anything that enabled rural people and communities to gain an effective degree of autonomy, particularly financial, as that might reduce his ability to play patron and to use the party and the state to manipulate people and issues.” Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe

By early 1982, once the Fifth Brigade had completed its integration exercise, Mugabe felt secure enough to stage a split with Nkomo. The pretext was arms caches. On February 7 Mugabe announced that an arms cache had been discovered on Ascot Farm, twenty miles north of Bulawayo, a property belonging to a Zapu-owned company with two directors, one of whom was Nkomo. Ascot Farm was part of a portfolio of properties bought by Zapu after independence with funds mostly provided by former Zipra soldiers, who invested their demobilisation payments and pensions; the portfolio included an assortment of businesses, hotels, butcheries, and farms, which were used as resettlement schemes for ex-combatants. Among the arms found on Ascot Farm were assault rifles, mortars, missiles, anti-aircraft weapons, and land mines. Raids on several other Zapu farms turned up more arms dumps. Mugabe claimed that the arms finds were clear evidence of plans by Zapu’s leadership to instigate a military coup. “These people were planning to overthrow and take over the government,” he declared. The farms they had bought were a mere cover for hiding weapons. Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe

The greatest threat to the fair conduct of Zimbabwe's 1980 elections came from Zanla guerrillas in the eastern areas of the country. At the ceasefire large numbers of fighting men loyal to Zanu were not withdrawn into the scheduled assembly points. They stayed on in the villages they had organised on a war footing, refusing to move or to allow anyone else to campaign there. No outsider was allowed in those places, on pain of death. The people were not allowed to know that there was an alternative to voting for Zanu (PF). Exercising our democratic rights, PF (Zapu) put up candidates and tried to campaign throughout the country. Two of our candidates and eighteen of our party campaigners were killed by these adversaries. Many more were terrorised. The key figure, whose job it was to see that the elections were fairly carried out, was the governor, Lord Soames, a veteran Conservative politician (and a son-in-law of Winston Churchill). He was a friendly and genial man. Personally I always had excellent relations with him. I had the impression that his health was not good, and that his main concern was to get home. Certainly, when it came to ensuring free elections, he broke his faith with me. As the evidence accumulated of terrorism and mass intimidation in the eastern provinces of the country, Lord Soames summoned all the party leaders to Government House. He told us frankly that in certain areas intimidation was on such a scale that free and fair elections could not be conducted. I asked him to clarify this statement, and he made it clear that the offences were being committed by members of Robert Mugabe’s Zanu (PF) party. Nkomo: Story of My Life

In early March 1983, during the Matabeleland North curfew of Gukurahundi, Joshua Nkomo escaped by the skin of his teeth from being assassinated by the Fifth Brigade and CIO in Bulawayo’s high-density township of Pelandaba. About a month before that I stood at Bulawayo International Airport and watched the immigration people confiscate his passport as he was trying to leave on a flight to the UK. The police supervised the confiscation while we in the CIO stood by and watched. Nkomo created a bit of a fuss—with some of his bodyguards getting quite anxious, resulting in their arrest and detention under the emergency regulations. They were held in Stops Camp for a couple of months before being released. Nkomo was not detained and was driven off in a huff a couple of hours after his passport was seized. Under orders from Minister Herbert Ushewokunze, a month later, the police sealed off Pelindaba while the Fifth Brigade soldiers searched for Nkomo, who was well aware that his life was in great danger and frequently altered where he slept at night. As his passport had been seized a month earlier he couldn’t go anywhere, so he had to be in town. He was a very well-known man, and because of his enormous 130-kilogram frame he found it impossible to disguise himself. When the soldiers discovered that Nkomo was not at home and after searching his house, during which they destroyed as much property as they could, they went crazy, shot three people, and smashed the windows of Nkomo’s vehicles which were parked in the driveway. His chauffeur, Yona Ncube, was one of those killed. The Fifth Brigade platoon who searched Nkomo’s house said that Ncube had pulled a gun on them soon after they broke the front door down, but the driver’s blood-splattered bed in a side room told a different story. Another person, a pedestrian who was simply walking past the house and happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, was also shot dead. Pelindaba’s high-density township falls in the police area of Western Commonage. Nkomo’s house is probably two kilometres as the crow flies from Western Commonage, whose officers refused to attend the shooting and murder of the driver and his friend at Joshua Nkomo’s house that night. The Kevin Woods Story: In the Shadow of Mugabe's Gallows