Charges against 370 Bulawayo schoolteachers who took part in demonstrations against low pay were withdrawn when they appeared before a magistrates court in the Bulawayo Drill Hall on 3 August.
The teaches had been charged with obstructing traffic after demonstrating outside the offices of the Ministry of Education. (RH 4.8.79; see FOCUS 24, p.13)
According to ZANU (Patriotic Front) there were over 150,000 Zimbabwean refugees in Mozambique by the middle of November 1979. 30,000 had arrived since the installation of Bishop Muzorewa's government on 1 June. (BBC 14.11.79 reporting Maputo "Voice of Zimbabwe" radio)
The Zambian representative to the United Nations stated at the end of October that there were now 90,000 refugees in Zambia from Rhodesia and Namibia. (BBC 29.10.79)
According to the President of the Zimbabwe National Farmers Union, only 23 Africans had managed to buy land in areas previously reserved for Europeans in Rhodesia, by the end of September 1979. (BBC 1.10.79)
This is 2½ years after the passing by the regime of the 1977 Land Tenure Amendment Act. Under this legislation, heralded as part of a wide-ranging programme on the part of the regime to abolish racial discrimination, Africans with the requisite cash and resources were enabled to purchase and occupy land in the European Rural Area, previously reserved for white farmers, or land set aside for commerce and industry in urban areas. The same principle of replacing discrimination on the basis of race by discrimination on the basis of ability to pay underlies further reforms introduced since the internal settlement agreement, including the February 1979 Land Tenure Amendment Act. Due to the lack of capital and resources on the part of the vast majority of Africans, these reforms in themselves are incapable of precipitating significant redistribution of land.
The regime's security force headquarters announced on 8 October that more than 18,000 people had been killed in the war since the onset of the current phase of the armed struggle in December 1972.
These figures broke down, according to the statement, into: "Terrorists" - 9,660 Security Forces - 1,094 Civilians killed by "terrorists" - 4,004 "Terrorist collaborators", cattle thieves, "terrorists recruits" and persons caught in crossfire, killed by security forces - 3,300 (BBC 10.10.79)
These figures do not include refugees and others killed by the security forces in raids into the frontline states.
