Maravi

(HERALD) Mujuru: His courage in the struggle for independence

Mujuru: His courage in the struggle for independence
Thursday, 18 August 2011 10:28

Man of the people . . . General Solomon Mujuru (front left) related to all levels of people, here he trains with players of the Defences Forces football team
ON more than one occasion in history, the future of Zimbabwe rested on the courage of Solomon Mujuru, whose Chimurenga name was Rex Nhongo. The most obvious occasion was in late 1979, just days after the Lancaster House agreement was signed on 21 December, leading to a ceasefire a week later.

At 7pm on 26 December 1979, Rex Nhongo and 41 Zanla commanders flew into Salisbury (now Harare) in a chartered Air Botswana Viscount. Many thousands of delirious supporters jammed the airport, oblivious to the teargas and police dogs.

Rhodesian sharpshooters were deployed around the airfield and soldiers had to be ordered by the British governor to remove a vehicle mounted with a machinegun from the runway.

Dumiso Dabengwa, Lookout Mafela and a similar number of Zipra commanders had arrived a little earlier from Lusaka.

None were aware that the man they all respected and expected to be their overall commander in a new national army, Josiah Magama Tongogara, had died in a car accident in Mozambique hours earlier.

Nhongo heard the news on the radio at lunchtime the following day and immediately went to see the British Governor, Lord Soames, head of the transitional administration, who already had a message from the British embassy in Maputo.

The confidential message from his President, Robert Mugabe, that should have gone first to Nhongo as the senior Zanu-PF man in Salisbury and the new acting commander of Zanla, had been leaked to the media by a British official or by Rhodesian monitoring of their communications.

The transition to independence could have collapsed due to Tongogara's untimely death, except for the courage and conviction of Nhongo and the young men (and a few young women including Joice Mujuru "Teurai Ropa Nhongo") who made up the High Command and General Staff, and the provincial and sectoral command in the field.
Their loyalty and dedication under his leadership, and their vision for the future, kept them moving into assembly points for the ceasefire, elections and independence.
Nhongo continued to play a key role in the delicate task of unification with the former Rhodesian army post-independence, drawing grudging respect and even admiration from his former enemies.

On a previous occasion, in a similar crisis following the assassination of the party chairman, Herbert Chitepo, in Lusaka and the detention of most of the Zanla High Command by the Zambian government, Rex Nhongo slipped out through Malawi to Tanzania, and was the top ranking commander outside of prison.

He rebuilt a temporary command structure, maintained close contact with the imprisoned leaders, and put his signature to the document that emerged from the Zambian prison and the training camps in Tanzania, known as the Mgagao Declaration, that announced the support of the young freedom fighters for Robert Mugabe as leader of the armed struggle for independence.

The leaders of the War Council (Dare reChimurenga) in Zambia's Mpima prison subsequently issued a "Declaration formally pledging support to Comrade Robert Mugabe's leadership of the Zimbabwe African National African National Union (Zanu)", which was distributed to the guerrilla camps and party branches.

They had all heard the interview with Mugabe on BBC radio in which he supported the guerrillas in the camps in Mozambique and spoke about the need to restructure the party.

This took place against the backdrop of what Rhodesian security officers later said was their most successful operation of the war, that was, their assassination of Chitepo and the spreading of false rumours in Lusaka that the chairman's death was internal to the party

Mujuru's leadership and loyalty in all these cases when others wavered, and his dedication to the goal of independence, was single-minded.

And there was yet another case in which his courage moved through a precarious moment in history.

This was his leadership of the Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA) military committee as the Commander of a joint guerrilla army formed by Zanu and Zapu from their military wings to advance the liberation war while the leaders of the Zanu war council, the DARE, remained imprisoned in Zambia.

The leadership of the military committee was appointed by both parties on 12 November 1975, and lasted until 1977, after the Geneva conference when the leaders had been released from prison.

When Zipa was formed in Maputo, Nhongo took four other members of the Zanla High Command who were at liberty, and he chose four other Zanla commanders for the 18-member military committee, with the other nine appointed from Zipra.
Some of the young Zipa commanders from Zanla began to think of themselves as a separate military force, and to credit the advances of that period to themselves without considering what had gone before and the support of the Front Line States, until they were told by Mozambique's President Samora Machel that they were unlikely to get to State House even through the backdoor. Nhongo, as the senior commander, however, respected his military command structure, carrying out the decisions of the imprisoned DARE leaders and the military High Command. Under his command, the war resumed.

Following the assassination of Chitepo by Rhodesia intelligence operatives, Nhongo had been sent to Mozambique to make contact with the guerrillas in Tembwe camp in Tete province, and to ascertain the attitude of the new Mozambique government formed by Frelimo at independence on 25 June 1975.

He found Mozambique sympathetic and mainly concerned about availability of armaments.
Nhongo was able to tell them that Tanzania was holding arms for 2 500 guerrillas, which had arrived from China at the beginning of the year.

When Nhongo returned to Dar es Salaam to discuss with the OAU Liberation Committee, he was told there must be a joint guerrilla force of Zanu and Zapu.

His characteristic response was: "There's no problem. We can start talking about it."
l Substance taken from The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War by David Martin and Phyllis Johnson, published in 1981; and from interviews conducted with Rex Nhongo in 1980 in Zimbabwe.

Labels: ARMED FORCES, LIBERATION

posted by MrK @ 6:43 PM