Mugabe Takes Oath, Assumes Powers to Lead Zimbabwe Into Socialism

HARARE, Zimbabwe — Prime Minister Robert G. Mugabe, the schoolteacher-turned-guerrilla who led Zimbabwe to independence eight years ago, was sworn in Thursday as the country’s new president, a post that gives him wide-ranging powers to turn it into a one-party socialist state.

Mugabe pledged to use his broadened authority as Zimbabwe’s first executive president to accelerate its “socialist transformation,” completing the fight that he and other black nationalists began more than two decades ago against minority white rule in the old British colony of Rhodesia.

Until the political power they won is matched by economic power, Mugabe said, their victory will remain incomplete.

“Political power without economic means is hollow and deceptive,” he said.

Moderate Impression

But Mugabe, 63, outlined no new political, economic or social programs and left the impression that the government will pursue gradual change, continuing its moderate policies of the first eight years under majority rule rather than embarking on a new and radical course.

Mugabe’s installation as Zimbabwe’s executive president was described by government officials as the start of a “new era” for the country--a break with the British style of Cabinet government, led by a prime minister, that the country inherited at the time of independence and a step toward the Marxist-Leninist system he has long advocated as better for developing countries.

In making this and other political changes, Mugabe told a crowd of 60,000 that the government had assembled at a sports stadium for his inauguration, “We have done nothing more than act in accordance with the true wishes of our people.”

‘One Nation, One Party’

Banners around the Chinese-built stadium proclaimed, “Forward With Socialism Under President Mugabe!” and “One Nation, One Party, One Leader.”

Despite the strong anti-colonial, anti-imperialist rhetoric of the speeches, many of the trappings of British rule remained. Zimbabwe’s chief justice, wearing a white wig and red robes, administered the oath of office. Mugabe, Jesuit-educated but now an avowed Marxist, swore, “So help me God.”

What Mugabe so vigorously opposed were not those bits and pieces of tradition, which give Zimbabwe a certain quaintness as a former British colony, but the constitutional and legal barriers erected against socialism during the negotiations that ended the 13-year guerrilla war against the Rhodesian government of Prime Minister Ian D. Smith.

The British-mediated agreement brought majority rule to Zimbabwe but contained many compromises that blacks accepted as the price of power--and peace--but can no longer live with, Mugabe said.

‘Immorality and Injustice’

“Political victory at that stage was not total,” Mugabe said of the negotiations in London. “What emerged was a constitution that seriously compromised and variously derogated from our sovereignty as a nation. . . . Surely, we could not, as human beings, have been expected to continue to bear the indignity of this immorality and injustice for too long.”

Mugabe’s installation as president thus marked an important political transition for Zimbabwe, where the goal of a one-party socialist state draws broad support. It also marked the recent consolidation of Mugabe’s power and that of his Zimbabwe African National Union.

“We have arrived maybe midway in our long journey to the promised land,” said the Rev. Canaan S. Banana, the outgoing president, who has been titular head of state since April, 1980. “And we have all decided in the party that the time has now come for the establishment of a second republic . . . the establishment of an executive president.”

Mugabe’s first move in this transition was to abolish the 20 seats reserved for whites in the 100-member Parliament, which had given them an effective veto on the most far-reaching government moves, notably constitutional changes, for the past seven years.

Policy Obstacle

Those seats--and the residual power they represented--were an important concession in the negotiations, but they were regarded, even by many of the 100,000 whites here, as an anachronism and an obstacle to the government’s policy of racial reconciliation.

After the reserved white seats, which had been guaranteed for seven years, were finally abolished, Mugabe’s party promptly included a number of prominent whites, including former members of Parliament, among its nominees to fill the resulting vacancies.

The next step was a constitutional amendment abolishing the office of prime minister and giving Zimbabwe a president as chief executive, as most African countries have.

Seen as Symbolic Change

Although most Zimbabweans saw that change as largely symbolic, since Mugabe had held not only an overwhelming majority in Parliament but also emergency powers dating from the war, some liberal critics expressed concern about the concentration of so much authority without adequate political checks through the Cabinet and Parliament.

“Executive power can never rightly be one man’s show,” Mugabe said, assuring critics that he would not establish one-man rule but asserting that, under the new system, he will be answerable to the party.

“Ours is, and must always remain, a people-oriented revolutionary path guided by socialist principles,” he declared. “It is the people as a whole who are our concern and to whose collective interest any individual interest must subject itself.”

Mugabe’s most important political move, however, came in mid-December when his party concluded long and difficult negotiations to absorb its principal rival, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, led by Joshua Nkomo, also a guerrilla chief in the independence war.

Their often bitter rivalry had kept the country’s nearly 9 million blacks politically divided, largely along tribal lines, and had contributed to a small, pro-Nkomo insurgency in the southwest of the country where dissidents last year killed 30 white farmers and their families.

Banned Meetings

Accusing the opposition of supporting the insurgency in an attempt to undermine the government, Mugabe had closed the party’s offices, prohibited its meetings and detained some of its officials.

The next action might have been an outright ban on the party, although it held 14 seats in Parliament and won 20% of the vote in the last election in 1985, and Nkomo was seen as having little choice but to accept Mugabe’s terms.

The merger assured Mugabe’s unopposed election as president by Parliament this week for a six-year term.

In a conciliatory move, however, Mugabe on Thursday appointed Nkomo as one of the two vice presidents of the merged party.

Nkomo supporters are also expected to get some posts in the Cabinet when it is reshuffled early this month, although this could become a contentious issue.

‘Hope for Future’

Nkomo was warmly cheered when he entered the stadium--in contrast to the jeers he received there earlier in the year.

Mugabe said the merger agreement had “created new hope for the future,” and he described the agreement as the second phase of the policy of national reconciliation undertaken after he came to power in 1980.

“I wish to appeal to all Zimbabweans, whatever their tribe, race, color, region or religion, to stand behind this unity accord and promote it in word and deed,” he said.

The heads of state of Botswana, Zambia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda came to witness Mugabe’s installation as president and praised him for his leadership.