Someone Wishes to Speak to You (44 page)

e) 29 August; grand-scale terror came to Rhodesia with the downing of Viscount passenger plane by a SAM-7 missile. Of the fifty-six who started the flight from Kariba, only eighteen survived. Twelve ZIPRA insurgents soon arrived at the scene and shot and bayoneted the majority of the survivors, with the commander shouting, ‘You have stolen our land, you are white, now you must die’. While the country mourned, another mortar and rocket attack took place on the eastern border town of Umtali.

f) P.W. Botha replaced John Vorster as South Africa’s prime minister. At the same time, Rhodesia’s CIO arrested three American CIA agents accused of counter-intelligence activities and of undermining Bishop Muzorewa.

1979
– a) January; a ‘bug’ was discovered on the phone of the officer commander of the Selous Scouts.

b) Eighty-five per cent of the white electorate approved Rhodesia’s new constitution.

c) 12 February; a second Viscount was shot down after leaving Victoria Falls. Joshua Nkomo triumphantly accepted responsibility.

d) 12 April; a company of the Rhodesian SAS drove brazenly into Lusaka and attacked Nkomo’s home, which caused considerable embarrassment to Kenneth Kaunda who was hosting an OAU conference in Lusaka at the time.

e) 26 February; Rhodesian Air Force Hawker Hunters carried out a retaliatory strike on a ZIPRA base near Livingstone. At the same time four Canberra bombers hit a garrison of ZIPRA forces in Angola.

f) Soon after the raids, Abel Muzorewa was elected in a seventy per cent turnout.

g) 31 May; Ian Smith finished his last day in office.

h) 1 June; Bishop Muzorewa became prime minister in Rhodesia’s Government of National Unity, but only South Africa was to recognise the new government.

i) 10 September; the Lancaster House Conference took place in London under the chairmanship of Lord Carrington, with the Rhodesian delegation led by Bishop Muzorewa and a delegation from ZANU/ZAPU headed by Robert Mugabe.

j) 12 December; Lord Soames was installed as governor, with the
British Government still technically referring to Rhodesia as the Colony of Southern Rhodesia.

1980
– a) 27 February; voting (one man, one vote) commenced.

b) 4 March; after an election marred by gross intimidation, Robert Mugabe was declared winner.

c) 17 April; Zimbabwe became an independent state with Mugabe as prime minister and Canaan Banana as president.

1982
– a) July; South African Special Forces raided Zimbabwe’s Thornhill Air Base in Gweru. Thirty Zimbabwe white air force officers were immediately arrested on suspicion of conspiring. All were brutally treated while in detention.

b) December; Mugabe formally presented Colonel Perence Shiri with the colours of the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade with the task of resolving the ‘Ndebele problem’, which resulted in the deaths of 20,000-25,000 tribespeople in rural Matabeleland. (A record of this ethnic cleansing was to be later recorded at the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre, Rwanda.)

c) Joshua Nkomo fled the country and two former ZIPRA generals were both arrested and detained without trial.

1987 –
Unity Agreement to merge ZANU and ZAPU, and Zimbabwe effectively became a one-party state with Nkomo as Mubabe’s vice president.

1989
– 18 January; F.W. de Klerk became President of South Africa.

1990
– Nelson Mandela was released from prison on Robben Island and the journey to majority rule in South Africa commenced.

1993 –
The dreaded process of eviction of white farmers began. At the same time, a parliamentary report indicated that ‘corruption was so pervasive and civil servants so venal’ that virtually no service was now provided without a bribe.

1994
– 10 May; Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa.

2000
– Robert Mugabe lost a referendum that would have given him dictatorial powers. Furious at its failure, he played his political trump card and commenced the seizure of 4,000 commercial white-owned farms that had provided the economic mainstay of the country. The Zimbabwean economy became the fastest collapsing
in history with at least four million citizens fleeing the country. Those that remain seem to be condemned to a life of abject poverty, with the country being effectively a failed state.

2008 –
Results of the country’s general election were subsequently found by the team of election monitors to not represent the wishes of the people. ZANU/PF intimidation was rife, with over 200 murders having taken place. Although after the disputed results of the election, a coalition between ZANU/PF and the MDC was established with MDC’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, becoming Zimbabwe’s prime minister. During the following years there have been many incidences of political corruption, human tragedies and economic catastrophes.

2013 –
a) April; Britain’s Ambassador to Zimbabwe reported that there were now some general grounds for optimism, with the coalition government having had in some instances achieved success. For since 2008, when life expectancy was less than forty years, it had now risen to an average of forty-eight, and the coalition has established a Commission on Human Rights. Also, it announced that free and fair elections were soon to take place on a referendum for a new constitution, which both ZANU/PF and MDC have agreed upon.

b) 27 May; South Africa’s
Sunday Independent
recorded that Robert Mugabe considered that Nelson Mandela had been ‘Too soft on whites’ and had been ‘Too saintly, too good, and too much of a saint’. It was also reported that at a rally, he had referred to Mandela as a ‘coward and an idiot’.

c) 15 June; President Robert Mugabe unilaterally set 31 July as the date of the general election, a move which directly violated the new constitution and a requirement of the Global Political Agreement.

d) 8 August; eighty-nine year-old Robert Mugabe hailed his reelection as Zimbabwe’s president as a victory over the ‘British and their Allies’, although the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission admitted that 350,000 voters had been turned away from polling stations apparently because their names had not appeared on the roll. It also disclosed that 207,000 people had been ‘assisted’ to cast their votes – which represented another mechanism for rigging the final outcome of the election.

e) 10 August; the leader of the opposition, Morgan Tsvangirai, and his MDC party, filed a legal challenge urging the Constitutional Court in Harare to overturn Mugabe’s victory and to order a re-run.
As all the judges had been appointed by Robert Mugabe, few people expected the judges to defy him, regardless of the evidence presented.

f) 16 August; Morgan Tsvangirai, who was no longer the country’s prime minister, and the MDC withdrew their legal action against the results of the election. For Tsvangirai had concluded that the outcome of the proceedings would be sufficiently biased not to come out in its favour.

On 7 December 2013, the ninety-five year-old Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first democratically elected black president, and one of the world’s greatest statesmen, the symbol of forgiveness and reconciliation, died at his home in Johannesburg. World leaders were quick to send their condolences to the government and people of South Africa, with Barack Obama saying, ‘We have lost one of the most influential, courageous and profoundly good human beings that any of us could share time with on this earth,’ and that, ‘He no longer belongs to us, he belongs to the ages, and he will be remembered as the last great liberator of the twentieth century.’

Well after the news of Nelson Mandela’s death had been announced, Robert Mugabe issued a written statement which, in comparison to some of his previously reported negative comments about Mandela, represented a politically correct and positive appraisal of his lifetime achievements. For Mugabe’s statement described him as, ‘A champion of the oppressed whose commitment to liberation would always be cherished by Zimbabwe,’ and that he was, ‘Not only a great champion of the emancipation of the oppressed, but also a humble and compassionate leader who had showed selfless dedication to the service of his people.’

On 10 December, ninety-one heads of state and world leaders gathered to celebrate the life of Nelson Mandela at a memorial service held at the 95,000-seater FNB Stadium in Soweto. Barack Obama was introduced as ‘A son of the African soil’ and in his impressive speech he praised Mandela as the embodiment of the African ideal of unity, ‘
Ubuntu
’. He was also inspired to lecture some of the other world leaders sitting around him (viz. China, Iran, Zimbabwe – Robert Mugabe) by stating, ‘There are too many leaders who claim solidarity with Nelson Mandela’s struggle for freedom, but do not tolerate dissent from their own people,’ and ‘It took a man like Mandela to liberate not only the prisoner, but the jailer as well.’