A Fragile Truce Takes Root

Guerrillas return in triumph, but casualties continue

It was a heroes' homecoming. In two separate shuttles on a chartered Air Botswana plane, 84 senior officers of the Patriotic Front's ZIPRA and ZANLA guerrillas landed at Salisbury airport to the cheers of some 50,000 jubilant supporters. The youthful-looking soldiers, dressed in crinkly-fresh camouflage gear, were returning from their bases in neighboring Zambia and Mozambique to begin carrying out the Zimbabwe Rhodesia cease-fire accord. Thousands of black demonstrators waited all day under a blistering African sun. They reveled in the apparent success of the guerrillas' seven-year armed struggle for black majority rule.

WATCH OUT, BISHOP, THE BOYS ARE BACK IN TOWN, proclaimed one hand-painted poster, in a gibe at the biracial former government's Prime Minister, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who will be the Front's main rival in the February elections. The raucous demonstration was both a sign of the guerrillas' broad-based popular support and a reminder of the volatile emotions that still threaten the fragile truce. "Zimbabwe out of the gun," rang an aggressive cheer.

Indeed no one expected Rhodesia's savage civil war to fade away quietly. In the first week following the signing of the cease-fire agreement, 80 Rhodesians were killed in continuing clashes and sporadic skirmishes between guerrillas and Salisbury security forces. Three Royal Air Force troops, members of the Commonwealth monitoring force, also died when their Puma helicopter crashed after accidentally striking a power line; they were the first casualties of Britain's sponsorship of the truce. In other provocations, guerrilla supporters were regularly abused by hostile blacks as well as by whites. On several occasions white police harassed marchers at newly legal Patriotic Front rallies and, in one case, fired tear gas on a crowd carrying flowers to the airport welcome. More ominously and mysteriously, two nephews of Patriotic Front Co-Leader Robert Mugabe were wounded in a hit-and-run shooting attack against his sister's house in Salisbury. From Mozambique, Mugabe reacted with deadpan menace: "Such assailants must remember that whatever they do, we can do better."

Potentially the worst blow to the tenuous cease-fire was the sudden death of General Josiah Tongogara, military commander of Mugabe's ZANLA forces, who was killed when his car crashed head-on into a truck while he was driving to his base camp in Mozambique. Officials there, as well as diplomats, judged the death accidental, but among some of his followers there was speculation that he might have run afoul of rivalries inside the guerrilla movement. A magnetic, ruthless soldier, Tongogara, 41, had played a key role in favor of a settlement, and British officials fear it might be jeopardized without him to help hold it together.

Nevertheless, for all the uncertainties, the all-parties agreement reached in London was showing signs of resilience. On the international front, the settlement continued to gain acceptance following the United Nations Security Council vote ending the economic sanctions it had imposed against Rhodesia in 1966. Last week the guerrillas' allies in the frontline African states (Zambia, Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania and Botswana) underscored their own commitment to a durable peace. In quick succession, each of them ended its sanctions and reopened its borders to the embattled neighbor.

In Rhodesia, meanwhile, ceasefire arrangements were successfully taking root. Under the overall authority of Lord Soames, the British-appointed Governor, the 1,200 Commonwealth observers completed their deployment to monitoring posts throughout the country. After the cease-fire officially took effect at midnight last Friday, Rhodesian security forces began to retreat to their 42 military bases. Simultaneously, the guerrillas are supposed to come out of the bush and --under Commonwealth escort--complete their movement to 16 camps by the Jan. 4 assembly deadline. There, alongside Commonwealth troops, they will be housed until the establishment of an independent Zimbabwe government after the elections. The outcome of that vote, in which a 100-member Parliament will be divided into 80 black and 20 white seats, will determine the composition of the independent Zimbabwe government. If all goes according to plan, that is.

Even the best intentions on the guerrillas' side could not hide misgivings among their own senior military commanders. Several officers admitted they were having problems persuading the rank and file to accept the cease-fire order. One top ZANLA officer who returned to Rhodesia last week told TIME Johannesburg Bureau Chief William McWhirter. "Our boys live in the field. You have to get to them. The leaders and the boys have to meet face to face. The war has created a lot of doubts and fear in everybody's mind. We are concerned that the British want to leave Rhodesia, like they left Israel and Cyprus, where the fighting continued after they left." Mugabe contributed to the confusion by sending conflicting signals: though he has radioed repeated messages ordering his troops to assemble at the cease-fire stations, he was also threatening not to comply with the truce plan until he received assurances that all of the 1,000 South African troops in Rhodesia had departed.

Another uncertainty within the Patriotic Front was the apparent inability of the two key figures, Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, to agree on a political alliance for waging the electoral campaign. The pragmatic Nkomo, who represents the minority Ndebele tribal groups, is seeking total unity among the guerrilla factions. The left-leaning Mugabe, backed by the far more numerous Shona, sees a chance of winning outright a parliamentary majority and is reluctant to commit himself to any power-sharing scheme. In fact some observers believe this very issue caused a recent falling out between Mugabe and Tongogara, who had been a staunch advocate of guerrilla unity. The British sponsors of the settlement could only hope that such rivalries would not frustrate the prevailing desire of a long-suffering people. Said Dr. Edward Chitate, a black physician near the farming town of Gatooma: "The people don't give a damn which party gets in. All they want is a cessation of hostilities." -

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