{"id":456687,"date":"2010-03-21T21:21:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-22T01:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16711557.post-4784381068583749511"},"modified":"2010-03-21T21:21:13","modified_gmt":"2010-03-22T01:21:13","slug":"zimbabwe-1980-the-shortest-campaign-in-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/456687","title":{"rendered":"Zimbabwe 1980: The Shortest Campaign in History"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Robert Mugabe in 1979 outside the Zimbabwe African National Union-PF headquarters in Mozambique. Mugabe has led the his nation since independence in 1980.<\/a>
Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

\u20181980: The shortest campaign in history\u2019<\/p>\n

Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Sunday Mail<\/p>\n

This is a continuation of a series of aticles in the countdown to Zimbabwe\u2019s 30th Anniversary of Independence.<\/p>\n

This is an open forum and we encourage Zimbweans to share their experiences. The following is a speech by the late Cde Eddison Zvobgo after the 1980 landslide election victory by Zanu-PF.<\/p>\n

THE strategy we decided on was a kind of Israeli military model: where you see everyone besieged, you don\u2019t station troops at the border, but gather your few resources into a swift mailed punch.<\/p>\n

We put most of our resources into the launching rally in Highfield and when Cde Mugabe finally arrived, it was the largest rally ever seen in the country.<\/p>\n

Psychologically, that was devastating; the enemy went straight to the drawing boards.<\/p>\n

It was at that point that the enemy launched the stop-Mugabe campaign.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, they decided, if you can\u2019t stop him, kill him.<\/p>\n

So I had to cancel our Bulawayo and Umtali (Mutare) rallies, out of that fear of more assassination attempts.<\/p>\n

In total, Cde Mugabe addressed three rallies.<\/p>\n

It was the shortest campaign in history. It would be like Ronald Reagan (former US president) addressing three meetings and then sitting at home.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, (Bishop Abel) Muzorewa was criss-crossing the country, with Cde Mugabe sitting at home and me coming to brief him.
It was really a very scientific election campaign on our part, though the outside world could not understand.<\/p>\n

If we had revealed our strategy and our confidence, the enemy would have done even more dastardly things and we would never have been allowed to win.<\/p>\n

The regime was hoist by its own petard.<\/p>\n

Having lied over the years, trying to project these \u201cterrorists\u201d as having no support, all hated by the people, as just a bunch of power-hungry malcontents who could never win a free and fair election, they couldn\u2019t turn around and say, \u201cthese people are popular, let\u2019s work hard\u201d.<\/p>\n

That would have been contradicting their propaganda.<\/p>\n

The white population had been so thoroughly brainwashed \u2014 brainwashed by the radio, TV and the Press \u2014 that everybody went to bed cosy and comfortable, knowing that the pro-Western, pro-multinational Muzorewa would walk it.<\/p>\n

And that was, I think, to our advantage because when they woke up and found that not only had we won, but we had walked it, they were stunned.<\/p>\n

They felt they had been betrayed. That is the danger of muzzling the Press.<\/p>\n

The Press here had been muzzled for the duration of the war and had been forced into lying to the people.<\/p>\n

When these people woke up and realised they had been lied to over the years, the anger, shock and horror was manifest.<\/p>\n

–This speech was made by the late Cde Eddison Zvobgo soon after Zanu-PF registered an emphatic victory over other political parties in the 1980 elections that brought independence.<\/p>\n

Cde Zvobgo was speaking as the party\u2019s Deputy Secretary for Information and Publicity.<\/p>\n

The speech was extracted from Julie Frederikse\u2019s book: \u201cNone But Ourselves, Masses Versus Media in the Making of Zimbabwe\u201d.
<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Robert Mugabe in 1979 outside the Zimbabwe African National Union-PF headquarters in Mozambique. Mugabe has led the his nation since independence in 1980.Originally uploaded by Pan-African News Wire File Photos \u20181980: The shortest campaign in history\u2019 Courtesy of the Zimbabwe Sunday Mail This is a continuation of a series of aticles in the countdown to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=456687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/456687\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=456687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=456687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=456687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}