Did Britain bring a dictator to power in Zimbabwe

Although he declared Tanzania a one party state soon after becoming head of state,  nationalised his country’s main industries and commercial activities and left it bankrupt when he finally stepped down from power, Julius Nyerere has been acclaimed by many as a  knight in democratic armour, an  example of what is good and noble and really worthwhile in Africa.
But in an article published in The Times (April 6), Lord Carrington – Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Minister and one of the chief architects of a peaceful outcome to the 1979 Lancaster House Conference, painted another picture of Nyerere. And it will come as a shock to many an admirer of the man Tanzanians were advised to call Mwalimu (KiSwahili for teacher).
Questioning whether Britain had helped put a tyrant into power in Zimbabwe in 1980, Peter Carrington says that he remains convinced that the Thatcher Government did the right thing by masterminding an agreement that led to the first one person-one vote elections in Southern Rhodesia’s history. “There can be no doubt that the election of Mugabe in 1980 reflected the majority opinion in Zimbabwe,” he writes.
But Carrington also explains that Robert Mugabe was reluctant to sign the Lancaster House Agreement because he felt convinced that he could take power -not through the ballot box – but through reliance on his guerrillas.
Bishop Muzorewa wanted peace and so did Joshua Nkomo.  But not Mugabe.  “He thought that since they (Zanu) were found to win power elections or no, success would be theirs without an election.”
Then Carrington drops a bombshell:
“President Nyerere made it clear to me,” writes the political aristocrat who later fell out with Thatcher over her invasion of the Falklands,” that he would not accept the result of any post-settlement election, unless Mugabe won it.” ( author’s italics)
So had Joshua Nkomo won 57 seats in 1980 instead of 20, the big question is: Would Britain have backed down in face of opposition from Nyerere, the African kingmaker who in his time hosted just about every African liberation movement worthy of an acronym?
The other is what sort of democrat was Julius Nyerere? But this was a dilemma Britain never had to face.
Writes the former foreign secretary, who hardly makes mention of what happened after 1980 in his book  “Reflections on Things Past” (published in London, 1988): “In the event, as was wholly predictable, Mugabe won the election in 1980 easily.”
Neither does Carrington’s article make  mention of the fact that Rhodesia’s  last governor, Christopher Soames, was fully aware of Mugabe’s mass intimidation of voters in the rural areas during the run-up to the 1980 election but he writes only of  the  friendship the portly ex-Etonian formed with Mugabe, seen by Whitehall  then as a Marxist terrorist leader.
“For all that has followed we did the right thing, the only thing that could be done back then,” writes the peer under a headline of “Did we help bring a tyrant to power?” – African Forum News Services