Maravi

(SUNDAY MAIL ZW) Account of a forgotten revolution: The psychology of war

Account of a forgotten revolution: The psychology of war
Friday, 19 October 2012 19:58
Tjenesani Ntungakwa

My early encounters with Abel Mazinyane and Rodwell Moyo could not have been pro­ductive.

Although Edgar Nkiwane had introduced me to people who knew their work well, my search, on the other hand, had somewhat started from the middle. Anyway, every mis­take I made shaped my approach for the future in ways that were to bear fruit. My impression of Moyo (aka Collin Nyika) and Mazinyane was that the two would have thrown me into a mud pit, “egodini”, for fail­ing to explain my objectives.

It turned out that Mazinyane had been trained at Morogoro together with Elisha Gagisa (Stanely Nlyeya) between 1968 and 1970. Gagisa became one of Zpra’s hard-headed instructors, hence his nickname, “Dhoko”. In Kalanga, “Dhoko” simply means a lump of faeces. Having been assigned to Zpra’s military intelligence hierarchy, Mazinyane proceeded to the Soviet Union and was sent on a brigade commanders’ course in Yugoslavia leading a delegation that featured the late Chief Charles Bango and others.

Translated from Ndebele, “egodini” loosely means “in the pit”. In the host countries like Zambia, Zpra had their own method of enforcing discipline and reining in the rene­gades. At times, Rhodesian agents came mas­querading as enthusiastic recruits in the fight for freedom.

In the event that informers were caught, the common practice was to dig a pit, fill it with mud up to knee height and place an individual in there. In reality, the facility was like a dungeon. Inmates ate, slept and proba­bly relieved themselves there. In the end, the muddy mixture of everything created a very uncomfortable existence.

According to one former PF-Zapu National Security Organisation (NSO) oper­ative, at Mboroma in Zambia Zpra once held about 200 prisoners. Such had become the norm.

However, not all of the suspects were spies — usually referred to in Zpra lingua as “Selous Scouts”. Some had merely failed to give a convincing narration of one’s personal history.

Those who openly declared to have worked for the Rhodesian security apparatus as sol­diers in the Rhodesia African Rifles (RAR), the British South Africa Police (BSAP) or the Special Branch found themselves in serious trouble.

Guerillas scrutinise everything

Experience was beginning to teach me that the people who had a guerilla background expected coherent answers to instantaneous questions.

My progressive conclusion was that the undeclared objective of guerilla training was to ensure that one was constantly on the lookout for danger.

In the Zpra modus operandi, failure to give a proper account of events resulted in one being pushed into an awkward situation, “edakeni”. Edakeni, in this lexicon, can be interpreted as “in the mud”, Zpra’s euphe­mism for trouble.

Inevitably my interest in the story of Zpra would require convincing arguments for some. Others felt that a comprehensive dis­course of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle could only be perused by somebody who had participated in the process.

Personally, I was not bothered. After all, Zpra fought for the independence of my country.

On a conciliatory note, there were others like Aaron Ndabambi and John Mzimela who were of a different feeling. Mzimela’s remarks gave me a useful vision for my work after I had spent an afternoon with him.

“I look forward to die and rest in peace, if youngsters like you are now searching for this history”.

Part of his political career had been spent at Gonakudzingwa prison, the unregistered university of Zimbabwean nationalism. In fact, the settler colonial government detained Zapu and Zanu nationalists sepa­rately, possibly alienating them further from each other.

Zapu leaders, among them Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, were confined to Gonakudzingwa while Zanu stalwarts were detained at Sikombela.
The late Ndabambi, one of the railway trade unionists who worked with Nkomo, kept on referring to me as his “young brother” when I visited his Kensington plot, just outside Bulawayo.

posted by MrK @ 5:51 AM