On 25 July this year, a dusk-to-dawn curfew was imposed by the Rhodesian regime along 500 km of Rhodesia's eastern border with Mozambique, from the Ruenya River in the north to the Sabi River in the south. Between 6pm in the evening and 5am in the morning, no person may move more than 50 metres from his or her house or hut within a one-kilometre strip inside Rhodesia along the length of the border. Offenders run the risk of being shot on sight by the security forces, a jail sentence of up to two years or a substantial fine. The curfew has also been applied to 23 missions and schools in Manicaland, and is explicitly intended to prevent young people crossing the border into Mozambique as well as to tighten the security screw on guerrilla fighters. Over the four weeks leading up to the imposition of the curfew, more than 400 teenagers disappeared from schools in the eastern area and were presumed to have left for training with the freedom fighters.
On 6 August, the curfew was extended to Rhodesia's western border with Botswana, along a 400 km strip from the Limpopo river at the border with South Africa up to the southern boundary of the Wankie national park. The curfew, which excludes the road and rail links between Rhodesia and Botswana where they cross the border at Plumtree, is being enforced between 6pm and 6am and extends over a strip 5 km deep. With the addition of a 220 km strip of the border with Zambia, from Kariba to the Chewore game park, declared a "protected area" in July, the Smith regime has surrounded itself with a defence ring more than 1,100 km long. Besides these recently introduced curfews are those declared in certain Tribal Trust Lands and Purchase areas in the north eastern operational area in June 1974. The measures have been imposed under the Emergency Powers (Maintenance of Law and Order) regulations and within a fortnight of their inception, had been drastically enforced through the murder of four Africans by the security police. Two of the young men, who were shot on 4 August near the Mozambique border 125 km north of Umtali, were later identified as 15-year old Raymond Kunaka and 16-year old George Gunda. Both were students at the Mazoe Secondary School near Salisbury and had travelled 220 km in their attempt to reach Mozambique, before they met their deaths.
SECURITY CLAMPDOWN
Over the last few months, the Smith regime has been stepping up its programme of mass population removals for security reasons in the Tribal Trust Lands (TTLs). "Consolidated villages", a concept put into operation in June this year with the removal of 7,500 people in the Maramba TTL, Mrewa district, are intended as a second line of defence to the notorious protected villages in areas of "incipient insurrection". Like the protected villages, they are formed by moving villagers into compact groups of kraals so that, according to official propaganda, they gain safety in numbers against terrorist attacks. Consolidated villages, however, are not ringed by wire security fences or lights and do not carry armed detachments. The decision to impose a curfew and to restrict movement in and out is taken at the discretion of the security forces. Their purpose is to minimise contact between local villagers and freedom fighters, making it correspondingly more difficult for the latter to operate, at lower administrative cost.
An increasingly hard line attitude towards security in the Tribal Trust Lands is becoming evident. At the beginning of August, the Minister of Law and Order Mr. Lardner-Burke, issued an order under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act making it illegal to hold any meeting in a TTL without the permission of a district commissioner. Previously, political meetings of fewer than twelve people had been permissible in the TTLS, and according to the Minister, had been taking place on a wide scale as an alternative to fewer, larger meetings. Even such small gatherings are now illegal if, in the opinion of the authorities, they are of a political nature. The growing political consciousness of African villagers in the rural areas is evidently worrying members of the while establishment: Mr. Des Frost, speaking at the annual congress of the Rhodesian Front at the end of September, called for a "more ruthless" approach towards tribesmen who aided guerrillas in the operational areas. Innocent people would have to be sacrificed, Mr. Frost said, "if we wish to reassert our control and authority in the north east".
NUMBER OF DETAINEES MOUNTS
Christian Care, an organization in Rhodesia that helps the families and dependents of people imprisoned or detained for political offences, stated recently that it had a total of 664 detainees on its books. This figure is considerably higher than the 432 names known to the organization towards the end of 1974. In December 1974 a number of leading detainees, including Joshua Nkomo and Rev Ndabaningi Thole, were released by the regime to take part in the Lusaka talks. One of the undertakings subsequently made by Smith's representatives in Lusaka was to secure the immediate release of all political detainees and restrictees.
It is quite clear that this promise has been disregarded and that the regime is continuing to make full use of detention without trial as a way of suppressing its political opponents. Christian Care has pointed out that even its latest figure of 664 does not necessarily represent the total number of detainees, as an unknown number of people are being held incommunicado, often in remote police stations. Britain's Minister of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, Mr. David Ennals, speaking in parliament in the debate on continuation of the Sanc-tions Order on 31 October, stated that 800 Africans were known to be in detention in Rhodesia. In addition to these figures, it must be remembered that an unknown number of people, probably at least 400, are serving prison sentences in Rhodesia having been convicted of political offences under the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act, the Unlawful Organizations Act and other security legislation.
