The first Zimbabwean Election according to Joshua Nkomo

Below is an excerpt from my current read “The Story of my Life” written by Joshua Nkomo and first published in 1984. The excerpt is taken from pages 208 to 210. The text has been extracted with no alterations.

Voting took place on three days: 27, 28 and 29 February, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The counting took place on the Sunday and Monday; there results were announced on the Tuesday. During that period the following things happened. On the Saturday, President Julius Nyerere publicly announced that the elections had not been free and fair. About the same time Robert Mugabe left Zimbabwe and later met General Walls, the commander of the former Rhodesian army. The two men went to Maputo in Mozambique, where they met General Malan, the top man in the South African army.

Mugabe went on to Dar es Salaam. On his arrival there he stated – before the result was announced- that his party, Zanu (PF), was going to win fifty –six out of the one hundred seats in the new parliament of Zimbabwe. (He was out by one: they won fifty- seven seats). Mugabe then visited President Nyerere, and at once Nyerere made a statement that the elections had been free and fair. Nyerere had reason to be glad. Robert had not been his first choice as leader of Zanu: Julius originally preferred Ndabaningi Sithole, and only switched his support to Mugabe when Ndabaningi was definitively rejected by the commanders of his Zanla army. Mugabe’s great virtue in Nyerere’s eyes was that he was not Nkomo.

The British role in the election I do not pretend to understand, up to the end, the governor’s staff  were still predicting that no party would get an outright majority; they certainly very much overestimated the support that Bishop Muzorewa’s discredited party would receive. But one thing makes me very suspicious. After the count, the used ballot papers were flown specially to Britain, not to be stored as historic documents, but to be burned. It is hard to believe that that would have been done if there were nothing to hide.

On the Monday after the vote, at midnight I received a phone call from the governor’s spokesman, Nicholas Fenn: ‘I am very sorry, but you have lost the election.’ Zanu (PF), he said, had won. With the count still not complete, Robert Mugabe’s party had already got more than the fifty seats needed for an overall majority in parliament. The bishop’s people had been knocked out. Mugabe would therefore be asked to form a government.

I could not believe it. But the official results confirmed the information. Leaving aside the twenty white seats, all won by Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front, Zanu (PF) had fifty seven seats, PF (ZAPU) twenty seats, the bishops’ UANC three. It was beyond belief. I was deeply depressed. I desperately needed to talk to the one person who could comfort me, and who would surely need comfort.

I telephoned maFuyana in East Berlin. She had already heard the forecast of the results on the BBC, gradually becoming firmer all evening in the view that me party had done very badly, Ma Fuyana was very emotional in her disappointment. So far away, we could not come to terms with the thing until we had spoken. I calmed her down, and she took part of the load from me. We had lived for so many long years, sometimes together, more often apart, but always waiting and working for this moment when the people of Zimbabwe would speak with their won clear voice. Now we heard this muddled sound. But it was easier to bear once we had spoken.

That my party should have won not a single seat in Salisbury, and only 20 seats in the whole western strip from Kariba right down to Beit Bridge, I could not believe and still do not believe . Even the known and massive campaign of intimidation could not have achieved that. That the first elections in the free Zimbabwe failed to reflect the people’s will is something of which I am sure.