ABROAD

HARARE White MPs, Adieu

Zimbabwe will celebrate its seventh birthday in April by eliminating the seats reserved for whites in the House of Assembly. That is when, under the terms of the 1979 agreement that gave the country independence, Parliament will be able to change its own composition, and Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s government has promised that the twenty statutory white seats will be the first thing to go. This would mean the end of the political activity of Zimbabwe’s most famous white, Ian Smith. Smith, the premier of the country when it was called Rhodesia and subject to British responsibility, set up an independent government in 1965 and survived 15 years of boycotts and sanctions before bowing to the creation of a black-African state. Smith’s recent advice to South Africans to resist world opinion in the same way brought a storm of criticism here; observers say this incident will hasten the total elimination of white representation in the government. There are also ten white senators in Zimbabwe’s consultative upper house. Mugabe is said to have decided to do away with the senate completely, and also with the titular and ceremonial presidency.

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HARARE White MPs, Adieu

Zimbabwe will celebrate its seventh birthday in April by eliminating the seats reserved for whites in the House of Assembly. That is when, under the terms of the 1979 agreement that gave the country independence, Parliament will be able to change its own composition, and Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s government has promised that the twenty statutory white seats will be the first thing to go. This would mean the end of the political activity of Zimbabwe’s most famous white, Ian Smith. Smith, the premier of the country when it was called Rhodesia and subject to British responsibility, set up an independent government in 1965 and survived 15 years of boycotts and sanctions before bowing to the creation of a black-African state. Smith’s recent advice to South Africans to resist world opinion in the same way brought a storm of criticism here; observers say this incident will hasten the total elimination of white representation in the government. There are also ten white senators in Zimbabwe’s consultative upper house. Mugabe is said to have decided to do away with the senate completely, and also with the titular and ceremonial presidency.