Lancaster House Talks: Timing, Cold War and Joshua Nkomo

Abstract

Pathisa Nyathi’s chapter complements Moyo’s analysis, and it specifically brings to the fore how the negotiations that took place at Lancaster House in 1979 were not only underpinned by Cold War coloniality manoeuvring but also messed up Nkomo’s grand military plan of takeover Zimbabwe through outright military onslaught on the white settler colonial state using regular ZIPRA military units. Nyathi builds his analysis from the fact that ZAPU and ZIPRA under Nkomo’s leadership and command and with the support of the Soviet Union and Cuba had developed a grand military strategy of using regular and well-trained and well-equipped mechanized ZIPRA battalions to storm Rhodesia and execute a clear military takeover. Nyathi postulates that leakage of this grand military strategy might have contributed to the convening of the Lancaster House Conference itself to prevent a black liberation army backed by the Soviets militarily defeating a white settler colonial army and the colonial state.