International Guerrillas strike on eve of poll

Press, 18 April 1979, Page 8

International Guerrillas strike on eve of poll

NZPA-Reuter Five days of voting began yesterday in Rhodesia's first! majority-rule election, al-h ready marred by guerrilla, attacks on polling booths, a! fuel storage depot, and a Sa-1 iisbury bus station. I The Rhodesian armed! forces have mounted their| biggest operation to prevent; Patriotic Front nationalist) guerrillas disrupting the vot-i ing, considered in Salisbury the key to international recognition and the lifting of | trade sanctions. The government, helped; I by the armed forces, the! ; media, and local adminis-l i trators, has spent months] ; urging the 2.8 million eh-j igible blacks to defy the! iguerrillas and vote. Critics of the election say. I it is only a way of securing! 1 apparent, approval within the; 'electorate for the con-; ■ stitution worked out by thei white Prime Minister (Mr Ilan Smith) and three black, (leaders last year. Under it. white control of .the security forces, Judiciary, and Civil Service i will be maintained for at i least five more years. An estimated 100,000 i troops have been mobilised ’ to face any challenge by more than ”12,000 guerrillas in the country. But on the eve of polling, I guerrilla mortar fire hit a ’bus station only Bkm from the centre of' Salisbury. The i police reported minor dam- : age to one building and five I buses but said no-one was ; injured in the raid late on I Monday night. Earlier on Monday Brigadier Peter Rich, military representative on the Election Directorate, told a press conference that guerrillas had attacked five voting stations on Sunday night. One suffered minor damage. Two of the attackers were'

(followed and killed by ; (troops and Brigadier Rich] ’said: “All the booths will be I open for business tomorrow (morning.” ] Late on Sunday night a ! group of five or six guer-l | rillas set fire to an oil stor- ■ age depot in the south-east-j ern town of Fort Victoria with a rocket, destroying an ' estimated one million litres (of fuel. ( The attack, in which the (group penetrated the town’s (patrolled and curfewed I industrial area, prompted I tighter security and raised (the fear of increased urban (attacks during the election. ■ One million litres of fuel ; represents a cost of about I $250,000 to Rhodesia’s i strained treasury of foreign exchange. Four months ago, | in one of their most successful attacks of the seven-year I war, guerrillas destroyed I abut 80 million litres of fuel (at a Salisbury storage depot. Fuel is taken into Rho- ; desia clandestinely, mostly through South African ports. Bishop Abel Muzorewa, president of the United African National Council, is expected to win the election and become his country’s first black Prime Minister. Three other main parties are challenging him. This week’s election is for the 70 common-roll seats reserved for blacks in the 100seat Parliament. The other seats are reserved for whites and all have been secured by Mr Smith’s Rhodesian Front. The Government is setting up 445 fixed polling stations and 241 mobile booths throughout the country’s eight districts. The Election Directorate is hoping to have the results in from all eight by Wednesday or Thursday of next week. By Monday night 43 observers had arrived to moniItor the poll from the United 'States, Britain, Australia,

Canada, and Western Europe. Most governments have boycotted the elections, considering no real settlement can. end the war unless it involves the Patriotic Front leaders. The observers who came represent church and civil rights groups, business organisations, and a spectrum of political parties. They will be ferried around the country with an estimated 300 foreign journalists during the election. In Lusaka, the Zambian President (Mr Kenneth jKaunda), reacting to a series of Rhodesian attacks on his country in the last week, has imposed a daily 10-hour curfew on the capital and nearly all other towns in southern Zambia. Anyone on the streets during the curfew — from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m. — would be prosecuted, said a Presidential statement. Workers in essentia] services would receive special passes. The order was made after a pr e-dawn raid last Friday when Rhodesian commandos destroyed the Lusaka residence of the Rhodesian nationalist leader, Joshua Nkomo, and offices used by southern African liberation movements. The raid, by the Rhodesian troops in a fleet of Land-Rovers painted in Zambian Army colours, carried the Salisbury Government’s counter-offensive against nationalists based in Zambia and Mozambique to the centre of the Zambian capital.