Mugabe and Nkomo rejected the settlement.
Nevertheless, there were elections and Muzorewa
won them. Smith hoped he had split the African
opposition and won over the majority of blacks
who were longing for peace. But the guerrilla war
waged by the loosely aligned Patriotic Front only
intensified.
In an effort to contain the guerrillas, who now
numbered several thousand, the Smith–Muzorewa
regime herded villagers into so-called ‘protected
villages’ which, in fact, were usually unsanitary
compounds with totally inadequate facilities. The
Rhodesian armed forces, meanwhile, attacked the
guerrilla base camps across the borders in Zambia
and Mozambique, killing combatants, women and
children indiscriminately. Unexpectedly, the fight-
ing was nearly over.
Under Margaret Thatcher’s new Conservative
government the transfer of power to black major-
ity rule was finally arranged at a conference called
at Lancaster House and presided over by Lord
Carrington, the foreign secretary. Starting in
September the Lancaster House Conference did
not end until just before Christmas 1979.
Carrington, Commonwealth leaders and the
president of Mozambique played a positive role
in bringing all the African leaders, Muzorewa,
Mugabe and Nkomo, together. Mugabe was the
most reluctant to accept compromise, especially
the stipulation that one-fifth of the seats of the
parliament of the independent state should be
reserved for whites. The armed conflict continued
even while the negotiations were taking place
around the conference table. A ceasefire, it was
agreed, would come into force only after a settle-
ment had been reached in London. Then elec-
tions would be held in Rhodesia-Zimbabwe.
Meanwhile, an interim government would func-
tion under a British governor until an elected
government could be installed in Salisbury.
Almost to the end Mugabe refused his consent,
but on 21 December agreement was reached and
a week later a ceasefire came into force. The
settlement guaranteed the whites twenty seats in
a multi-party parliament and gave undertakings
that their property could not be expropriated
without full compensation and that the constitu-
tion could not be changed without a two-thirds
majority in parliament which would give the
unitedwhite MPs a veto.
The transition in January and February of
1980 was truly remarkable. Britain and the
Commonwealth played a crucial supervisory and
policing role: 122,000 guerrillas assembled in
some eighteen areas and were reassured by the
presence of the Commonwealth Observer Group.
The election, too, was hazardous. Supervised by
British observers and 500 British policemen, the
election was held in February 1980 amid recrim-
inations and accusations of intimidation. The
outcome gave an overwhelming majority not to
Bishop Muzorewa but to Robert Mugabe and the
ZANU wing of the Patriotic Front. Nkomo’s
ZAPU, which had borne far less of the fighting,
lost out to Mugabe. Muzorewa, who had shared
power with Smith, was humiliatingly defeated.
The independence of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe, now
renamed simply Zimbabwe, was internationally
recognised in April 1980.
After all the bloodshed and conflict, and faced
with what at the time seemed to be insuperable
difficulties, the transfer to black majority rule and
a reasonably stable state was a remarkable event
in modern history.
The dominant personality of Zimbabwe’s early
years of independence was Robert Mugabe. He
deserved much credit. His leadership during this
period turned out very differently to what might
have been expected after he returned to Rhodesia
in January 1980 to participate in the election,
after sixteen years spent in detention or exile. The
white settlers had good grounds to fear the
coming to power of this most uncompromising
of the guerrilla nationalist leaders. Mugabe had
made his admiration for Marxism clear during the
struggle against the settlers, whom he had con-
demned as ‘white exploiters’. Ian Smith, in
Mugabe’s view, was no more than a criminal who
deserved to be shot.
The results of the election and Mugabe’s suc-
cess were announced on 4 March 1980. They
came as a shock to the settlers. But Mugabe’s first
address on television that evening was almost as
much of a surprise. He was conciliatory, called for
reconciliation and unity, and promised to uphold
the law and private property. Deeds followed