"Whoever Says We're Safe Lies"

Of those killed in the fighting, 97% have been blacks

Even as the election proceeded, Rhodesia's blacks were painfully aware of one grim fact of their country's life that would not soon be changed by the transition to majority government: it is they who have suffered most during the civil war, and their suffering will go on. Of those killed in the six years and four months of fighting so far, 97% have been blacks. They continue to die at a rate of 30 a day, double the casualty rate of a year ago when the "internal settlement" agreement was signed. Caught between the government forces, the guerrillas and the militias loyal to the internal leaders, most blacks have been too fearful of recrimination to talk about their anguish openly. But TIME'S William McWhirter persuaded a cross section of blacks to speak about their plight:

The Refugee. He is 56, but looks far older; he has wounded, watery eyes, hanging layers of skin and raw, untended leg sores from "night bugs" and the cold ground he sleeps on. Around him throbs the busy black life of Salisbury's Harari Township depot, with its battered public buses straining under loads of passengers, suitcases, food crates and chicken baskets. Hawkers, vendors and shoppers mill about, and an outdoor loudspeaker, as shrill as an air raid siren, blares steel-drum music from a nearby record shop. Far from his country home 120 miles away near the Mozambique border and with no place else to go, the refugee scarcely notices.

In 1976 he led his wife and five children from their village to escape the fighting. "First the guerrillas came," he explains. "A spy told the police, who came with machine guns and killed 18 of our people. When the guerrillas saw what had happened, they opened fire and more people were killed. We left the next day with only our blankets."

Blacks fleeing the fighting were pouring into Salisbury at the rate of 400 a day. This refugee's family lives in a world of 6 sq. ft. next to the depot. Mango crates hold their few plates and pots and double as furniture. Dusty black rubber sheeting covers the ground by day and at night serves as roof.

His wife and his children, who range in age from six to 15, walk miles through Salisbury each day selling vegetables. He guards the living space and grows bitter. "They come around now telling us to go back home, we are free, the country belongs to the Africans. But the guerrillas still have guns. The war will never stop, and whoever says we're safe is a liar."

The Girl. She is 20, with a smiling, seemingly untroubled face, a saleswoman in a Salisbury shop catering to whites. Five years ago, she was one of 86 students jammed aboard a school bus near the Mozambique border. The bus was blown apart by a mine; 80 died. The girl was hospitalized for two months with multiple fractures and a puncture wound near her heart. She had been back in her boarding school only a week when ZANIA guerrillas entered the dormitories one night as the pupils were undressing for bed. Three hundred children--some naked, others in nightdress--were marched off in one of the first abductions of the war.

The students walked two days without water. They were told they were going to Mozambique to become nurses, doctors or teachers for the struggle. The second night the girl and two companions slipped away. "We kept running the whole night and the next day. We were afraid they would come after us and kill us." They walked for two weeks until they arrived in Salisbury, still in pajamas. "People were laughing at me because they thought I was crazy. A European [white] woman stopped me and asked why I was wearing a nightie in town. That was the first time I cried. She gave me her shirt."

A year ago, while visiting friends in a tribal trust land only 20 miles from Salisbury, the girl was confronted once again by four ZANIA guerrillas. They threatened her for supporting the interim government "like all the blacks in Salisbury." She has not left the capital since.

The Headman. For 50 years, his father was headman of a village of 47 families who share common grazing land for their prized livestock. Having inherited that position of respect, he now rotates cattle guard among the families, collects taxes, presides over quarrels, grants divorces and mediates disputes. He is entitled to eight acres of land, two more than the six other members of his kraal (family group).

It is harder for him to be a headman than it was for his father. Local leaders have become assassination targets. Even though he was jailed by the government for four years as a nationalist sympathizer, he can no longer be sure how his political record will be judged. He rarely sleeps at home; he rubs his long, thin fingers together to ease the stress as he talks. What "frightens me," he says, is the way harm can come from any quarter. If there is fighting in his area, he flees. "If the soldiers come, they might think I am the troublemaker. And if someone doesn't like you, he can go to the guerrillas and tell them something which isn't true and they become your enemy." Though he is a Muzorewa supporter, he was once beaten so badly by black militiamen loyal to the bishop that he had to be hospitalized; the militiamen accused him of not informing on Patriotic Front guerrillas.

Yet he still has faith that black rule will eventually mean more land for blacks, who can no longer support themselves on their inherited parcels of worn-out acreage. "When I was born, the land was still good," he says. "There were trees and grass. Now there are just a few trees. We have used them for houses and firewood. We used to feed a family from one acre and sell what we grew on the other five acres in the market. Now it takes five acres to feed a family, and the remaining land does not produce enough to buy clothing. There are many places that are empty. If we have our own country, we can spread people everywhere instead of heaping them together."

The Guerrilla. He is a "Mugabe man," a contact between the military units of ZANIA and political branches of the nationalist leader's Zimbabwe African National Union inside Rhodesia. He is seriously committed to the long struggle for African liberation, but at times he is simply fascinated by his dizzy world.

"We go quietly, we act," he says, reciting the creed of the world of small cells, aliases and coded contacts in which he operates as a contact man between political and military units. He is impressed by the heavy arms he now sees coming into the country and by the openness with which freedom fighters walk about, even in the urban townships. He boasts: "There is no doubt that we are winning. The people think we are winning. The army thinks we are winning."

But at times he does have doubts. The movement, he has discovered, is riddled with personal rivalries. Black nationalism's deadliest virus is also spreading: "Tribalism is a disease that is growing within us." He worries about the divisions within families: What will happen to the cousins and brothers of guerrillas who are serving in the police or the security forces? "Why did there have to be a power struggle at all? Why wasn't power handed over as it was in Kenya, Zambia and Tanzania? Now the situation is pathetic. We are almost at the point of a bloodbath. The guerrillas are everywhere. We come in and stay. We are already bolder than the Mau Mau."

The Headmaster. Until last July, war had never intruded into the headmaster's district on the Zambian border. There had been no infiltration by guerrillas, no injuries, no abductions, no heavy penetration by the army. He ran the school as he had for a peaceful decade. But then "surveyors" of Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) arrived to inspect the area. They were followed by assassination squads and finally soldiers in units of 80 to 100. In two months they controlled the district completely. The school was closed down, along with transport services and business centers. Soon, the killing started.

"The first meeting with the guerrillas was very threatening," he recalls. "Later they would relax and sit down and talk. Your relations with them depended on whether they had found out anything bad about you. If they had, you would be shot. The first killings were private. Then they called in the whole village. Sometimes they would torture somebody in public; they had very long knives at the end of their guns. One day the guerrillas heard that someone had informed on a neighbor 14 years ago for stealing cattle from a European farm. The informant, an old man, was killed along with his wife and first-born child. A chief had his eyes punched out, then he was pulled into his grass hut and burned alive with one of his sons. A businessman readily gave them $400 to $500 at a time, but one day they stopped his car and blew his head away. They had 'information' that he was not a good person. Later they found out they were misinformed. So they went back to the informant and shot him.

"In my case they found nothing wrong, so they told me I could leave with my wife, four children and two suitcases. I have seen how many people are dying and how many others are living in fear. I know people in town talk politics. But they don't see politics."

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