Black turn-out buoys Govt

Press, 19 April 1979, Page 8

Black turn-out buoys Govt

NZPA-Reuter Salisbury

Rhodesian Ministers are delighted after 70 per cent of voters turned out to cast their ballots on the first day of the election, but signs of dissatisfaction among blacks emerged as hundreds of students demonstrated at Salisbury University against the poll and blacks of some tribes abstained from voting. J *We are going to stun the world with this election,” the Rhodesian Foreign Minister (Mr P. K, van der Byl) said. The voting, spread over five days, is the final stage of a transition of Parliamentary power from the minority whites, rulers for 88 years, to the blacks who will hold 72 seats in the 100-member Parliament. In Washington, American officials said that a high turn-out would not necessarily reflect enthusiasm. The United States had no assurances that Rhodesian blacks would not be coerced into voting, they added. But according to observers from the Australian Parliament, one group among dozens from the United States, Britain, Europe, and elsewhere looking at the poll, the election seems “quite above board.” The team of three members of Parliament and two aides spent the first day of the one-man, one-vote elections travelling through the guerrilla-infiltrated area between the eastern city of Umtali and the Mozambique border — one of the hottest areas of the bush war, A spokesman for the Government’s Election Directorate said 568,382 of the country’s estimated 2.8 million black and 140,000 white electorate had voted yesterday. Under the new power balance, the whites will retain control of the security forces, judiciary,. and Civil' Service for at least five years. Reporters who visited Mount Darwin in the north were told by the police that four blacks had been killed and seven wounded in two incidents when guerrillas fired on local people in their campaign to disrupt the voting. The police said guerrillas also abducted about 300 people last month. Two polling stations in the eastern border region with Mozambique were attacked on Monday night, but little damage was caused. A civilian lorry loaded with black voters hit a landmine in the north, but details of casualties were not immediately available. The officials in Washington said the United States was thinking of recommending another Anglo-American

peace mission to Rhodesia after the election. But they added that, no decision had yet been made on the matter partly because United States policymakers are awaiting the outcome of the British General Election on May 3. The Labour Party does not recognise the Rhodesian poll, but Mrs Margaret Thatcher’s Tory Opposition has observers in Rhodesia and if the poll meets their standards and Mrs Thatcher becomes Prime Minister she may recognise the new RhodesianZimbabwe Government.

Almost 1000 young black students demonstrated at the University of Rhodesia in Salisbury in support of the Patriotic Front, calling the elections fraudulent and decrying the black leaders involved as Smith stooges. They were prevented from marching into the streets of the capital by squads of heavily armed riot police. Reporters who visited four polling stations in the Midlands region of Fort Victoria on a Government sponsored trip said only 140 people out of a possible 40,000 had cast ballots. “That must be either because of intimidation by the terrorists as else the locals had got the day wrong,” said a military spokesman. “I suggest we wait and see what happens. There are certain areas where intimidation is rife.” The tribal division of the black population of Rhodesia became increasingly apparent in Bulawayo where widespread absentions by the Ndebele ethnic minority were reported.