Photographer Neil Libbert documented Zimbabwe’s first election since the end of white minority rule for the Observer. Robert Mugabe won a landslide victory in the historic poll.

This is an edited extract from a report, Soames could still pull it off by William Millinship, published in the Observer on 2 March 1980.

Twelve black Rhodesian policemen last week moved, lightly armed and without flags or trumpets, into the Delta guerrilla assembly place, 130 miles north-east of Salisbury, led by their red-haired, liberally freckled section officer, Lance Lucas.

Tomorrow they take over the administration of the camp and the 2,700 men and women of Robert Mugabe’s ZANLA guerilla army, as 34 Australians of the Commonwealth ceasefire monitoring force set off on a four-day journey back to Perth. Continuity at Delta will be provided for a week or so by Royal Engineers Captain Stephen Pearce and two British corporals.

The meeting of former enemies was carefully low key. The only sign of nervousness was betrayed by a middle-aged, white police reservist, called up for the election period, who went to the camp “just for a look”. His jaw muscles and his grip on his rifle tightened, as guerrillas, draped with automatic weapons and ammunition, strolled past him, two of them hand-in-hand, to watch the policemen put their tents up.

The Delta take-over, repeated in all the other assembly camps, coincided with further steps towards integrating guerrilla and Rhodesian forces and followed a meeting over drinks on Tuesday between Mugabe and Lt-Gen Peter Walls, the Rhodesian Commander of Combined Operations and the most important white in the country.

The emerging pattern of wary reconciliation was another sign that Lord Soames could yet manage to extricate himself, his staff and the British contingent of the monitoring force in something like good order from independent Zimbabwe before the end of this month.

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