COMMENT - Expect more headlines like these as the elections are coming up this year. The 'reporter' doesn't date the mass grave. It could be from the Liberation War from 1965 to 1980, when 50,000 Zimbabweans were killed by the forces of Ian Smith. The fact that it was used as a training camp for the Zimbabwean police doesn't reveal what it's previous use was. Compared to the exaggerated 20,000 number of deaths that is alleged to have taken place during the Gukurahandi affair in the mid-1980s, it is more likely that they hail from the Ian Smith period.
Mass graves found at police training camp
26/01/2012 00:00:00
by Lunga Sibanda
POLICE say they have uncovered mass graves at one of their training centers previously used for national youth service. The disclosure was made to Matabeleland North governor Thokozile Mathuthu by police chiefs while she was attending a pass-out parade at the Ntabazinduna Police Training Depot, 32km north east of Bulawayo, on Thursday.
Superintendent Ben Chabata, the second in command at the training centre, asked the governor for resources to help identify who lies in the graves. He did not say when the discovery was made.
Superintendent Chabata said they had identified two mass graves, which they had fenced off, but said police had no idea how many people were buried there. Police also had no means of determining how old the graves were.
“After the discovery of the graves, and in an effort to build relations with the local community, we invited the local chief to come and view the place after we fenced it off,” Sup. Chataba said.
“It is our wish as the Zimbabwe Republic Police to identify who lies in these graves and resources permitting we can put name tags on the graves.”
The ZRP opened the training centre in 2004, taking over the site from the Ministry of Youth Development which was using it as a base for a controversial national youth service programme.
The youth service programme was condemned by opposition parties and human rights groups who accused President Robert Mugabe’s government of brainwashing youths, training them in torture and then unleashing them to brutalise opponents during election campaigns.
[Which are not only unsubstantiated political claims, they are totally irrelevant if the graves are from the Smith period or the Gukurahandi period. - MrK]
Appearing slightly shaken, governor Mathuthu ordered the district administrator, Ennety Sithole, to chair a meeting between the police, traditional leaders and medical experts to work out a programme of exhuming and identifying the remains.
She told Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri: “I am very grateful to you and your local commanders for fencing these graves off, and providing shade. That shows an appreciation for our culture and respect for the dead.”
The Matabeleland region has hundreds of mass graves from the post-independence military crackdown by President Robert Mugabe, ostensibly to flush out a dozen armed dissident supporters of ZAPU leader, Joshua Nkomo.
[Source? Also, the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe put the number of ZAPU militants trained by South Africa (called Super ZAPU, as part of Operation Drama) at 100, not 'a dozen'. See:
REPORT ON THE 1980’s DISTURBANCES IN MATABELELAND & THE MIDLANDS - Compiled by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe, March 1997
SUMMARY
South Africa's policy of simultaneously destablising Zimbabwe by military means, while blaming ZAPU for the actions of South African agents whenever possible, helped escalate the irrevocable breakdown between ZAPU and ZANU-PF in the early 1980s. This in turn led to the decision of Zimbabwe's Government to retain the State of Emergency throughout the 1980s, and more significantly, to impose massive troop numbers and restrictive curfews on Matabeleland.
- MrK]
Human rights groups say a special army unit called the 5 Brigade, trained by North Korea and reporting directly to Mugabe, indiscriminately killed civilians between 1983 and 1987, leaving more than 20,000 people dead and thousands more wounded or displaced.
In October last year, authorities at a school in Lupane reported finding a large grave with up to 60 skeletal remains of people feared killed during the crackdown known as Gukurahundi.
Shocked pupils saw bones sticking out of the ground when a football pitch caved in. The school was used by the 5 Brigade as a detention centre during its reign of terror.
Labels: GUKURAHUNDI, IAN SMITH, MASSACRE, RHODESIA
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More human remains, ammunition found in Chinhoyi
Tuesday, 10 January 2012 23:32
Chinhoyi Bureau
MORE human remains and ammunition suspected to be from the liberation struggle have been found at Eldorado Gold Mine here. Mine workers recently stumbled upon a skull, human bones, one complete AK47 rifle, a broken AK47 rifle and one FN round, bringing to six the number of human remains discovered so far at the mine which was re-opened several years ago.
Mashonaland West police spokesperson Inspector Clemence Mabgweazara confirmed the discovery, adding that more remains were expected to surface as mine operations continue.
“We are getting human remains and ammunition from the mine and we are still carrying out investigations into the matter,” he said.
The remains were discovered about 28 metres below the surface in a mine that is believed to be about 700 metres deep.
Operations at the mine, which resumed a few years ago, had been stopped in 1914 after about 18 years of mining.
The first discovery of the human remains and weapons was made about 16 metres below the surface, while the second discovery sometime last year was made at 24 metres.
The Zimbabwe National Army had to be summoned to detonate eight TNT hand grenades and identify several rounds of ammunition.
Workers came across the human remains on December 24 when they were working underground and made a report to the police who called in the ZNA Bomb Disposal Unit.
Also discovered in the shaft were 200 FN rifle loose rounds and 400x9mm live rounds of ammunition, which could not be identified.
A butt of a suspected AK47 rifle and two rusty empty magazines, which were also suspected to be of an AK47 rifle, were recovered at the scene.
The human remains were taken to Chinhoyi Provincial Hospital, while the ammunition was taken by the ZNA Bomb Disposal Unit for further investigations.
Insp Mabgweazara said there were no results so far from the hospital to determine when the people died and the cause.
The mine is believed to have been opened by some German nationals around 1896 when the First Chimurenga started before operations ceased in 1914.
Labels: COLONIALISM, IAN SMITH, INDEPENDENCE, LIBERATION, RHODESIA, WAR CRIMES
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The
Chibondo exhumations in pictures. The site is more like a serial killer's dumpsite. This is the legacy of the illegal Smith regime of Rhodesia.
Labels: CHIMURENGA, IAN SMITH, LIBERATION, MASSACRE, RHODESIA
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COMMENT - It is outrageous for any Zimbabwean not to respect the suffering of the people under the racist regime of Ian Smith. It also shows why the MDC is unfit for government of a country that is majority Shona.
Mthwakazi trio: nothing to lose but their chains
by Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana
29/03/2011 00:00:00
“We must die as Mthwakazians,” said Mthandazo Ndema Ngwenya, “so that we may live fully and freely again.”
This was about twenty years ago at the Large City Hall in Bulawayo when Ndema was addressing a gathering of troubled Mthwakazians of the Vukani Mahlabezulu grouping. It was a few days before the Ndebele poet and novelist met his tragic death in a suspicions car accident.
As l write today, Paul Siwela, John Gazi and Charles Thomas are enduring torture, insult and injury at the infamous Khami Prison where they are being held for distributing fliers that suggested that Mthwakazians should seek freedom from Zimbabwe.
The pain and humiliation that the three Mthwakazi Liberation Front cadres are enduring is part of the “death” and the dear price of freedom that Ndema prophesied will be paid by Mthwakazi. There will be pain, sweat, tears and blood before the victims and survivors of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Zimbabwe can “live fully and freely again”.
I write in this article to observe a few hard and old lessons that Mthwakazians and all those under the sun who love freedom can learn from the doings of Robert Mugabe’s genocidal regime in Zimbabwe. The refusal by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights to represent the trio, the courage of the Abammeli lawyers, the pretences of those who claim to fight for freedom and justice in Zimbabwe are all sobering anecdotal lessons that must urgently jolt all of us into an awareness of the true condition of political orphanage and neglect that the endangered people of Mthwakazi are suffering in Zimbabwe.
I write also to observe that these many trials and tribulations of the brave Mthwakazians are just but many layers of bricks on the growing case against Mugabe and his genocidal Zanu PF government and their backers in the MDC-T and NGO sector in Zimbabwe. These pains of Mthwakazi are but the inevitable labour pains that herald the birth of a nationhood whose freedom and pride will catapult Mthwakazi to the exalted comity of the world’s brave nations.
For those among you dear readers who do not know, this is your time to understand. The mass graves and many human skeletons that Mugabe’s PR machine has been showing on TV of late, and trying to blame them on Ian Smith and the Rhodesians, are actually remains of Gukurahundi victims.
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Four truck loads of villagers were abducted from Ezinyangeni in Nkayi in December of 1984. There are also truck loads of peasants that were seized from Maphisa in Kezi and Mgodi Masili in Tsholotsho. It is known that all these Mthwakazi people who were never seen again by their loved ones are buried in various mass graves across Mashonaland and Manicaland.
To attempt to blame this evidence of manslaughter and genocide on Ian Smith and the Rhodesian regime is a ploy by Mugabe to temper with evidence of his crimes against humanity. Before Zanu PF tries to abuse skulls and skeletons for cheap propaganda purposes, Perence Shiri, alias Black Jesus, should tell the world where he buried the Mthwakazi villagers that he stole in 1984.
Mugabe and his goons can fool a few people here and there, but not all of humanity will buy into his desperate attempt to blame his own crimes on Smith and the Rhodesians.
The reason why Mugabe sent soldiers to react so violently to diamond panners in Chiadzwa in 2009 is not that the people were stealing diamonds but that some of them had began to stumble on some mass graves as they dug for the precious stones. There are several spots in Manicaland and Mashonaland where Gukurahundi victims lie buried in shallow mass-graves.
It is also known that some commercial farmers who were shot and killed during farm invasions in the year 2000 in Murehwa and Nyamandlovu were on farms with Gukurahundi mass graves. On all this land that has a wealth of evidence against him, Mugabe has settled his close and trusted army chefs and CIOs.
One of the telling lessons to be learnt from the case of the Mthwakazi trio is the conniving and conspiring nature of some civil society entities in Zimbabwe. The refusal by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights to support the defence of the Mthwakazi trio is cinematic of how most civil society organisations in Zimbabwe who claim to fight for justice and freedom are actually in the dark business of conspiring with Mugabe and perpetuating genocidal discrimination against Mthwakazians who are deserving of support.
These NGOs cry about “human rights” and the “crisis in Zimbabwe”, raising millions of dollars from donors under the pretext of championing democracy, when in actuality they exist only to abuse donor monies and secretly perpetuate Mugabe’s political agendas.
The humanitarian, political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe has provided so many jobs and so much money for these pretenders that some of them do not even wish for a solution to the Zimbabwe problem. In their project proposals applying for donor funds they are so loud about Gukurahundi, but when the dollars come they invest the money in their pockets and in other projects in support of other agendas while the survivors and victims of Gukurahundi wait for freedom, patiently.
The brave and resolute stand of the Abammeli lawyers who delinked from the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights in protest is a rich lesson for Mthwakazians and all fighters for freedom. Kucaca Phulu, Sindiso Mazibisa, Robert Ndllovu, Matshobana Ncube and advocate Lucas Nkomo have refused to endorse corruption and discrimination. It is the same spirit that was displayed by the late
Welshman Mabhena when he refused to be “buried with crooks and thieves.”
It is this spirit of rejecting nonsense and rejecting genocide and mass murder that guarantees the future for the brave and long suffering people of Mthwakazi. Wherever they are, the Mthwakazians must refuse Mugabeism and reject the demons of genocide in all their pretences and sophistications, in Zanu PF and in the corrupt and bogus NGOs that pretend to be fighting for human rights when their job is to protect Mugabe.
President Paul Kagame of Rwanda came out strong on “Why Gaddafi must be stopped.” On the other hand Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni was at sixes and sevens on the issue, complaining about the negatives of international military intervention in Africa. I agree with Kagame that world military powers must intervene and be encouraged to intervene militarily in African States where dictators butcher their own people under the pretext of phony nationalism and imaginary sovereignty.
Kagame notes that “in the course of 100 days in 1994, a million Rwandans were killed by government-backed genocidaires and the world did nothing.”
It is the same with Mthwakazians who were slaughtered in their thousands and buried in shallow mass-graves all over Zimbabwe and the world looked aside. Now that the world has shown that it can intervene with force as in Libya, Mthwakazians must weigh their options and scream out their problems knowing that never again will Mugabe unleash the army against civilians in Matabeleland without risking Libyan consequences.
The reason why Mugabe is now blaming his mass graves on Smith and trying to temper with the evidence of genocide is that he knows that his victims and survivors are back to haunt him and that his trial is beckoning in the not so distant horizons. Mthwakazians should summon up the courage and the energy, the world is no longer deaf and blind to genocide Africa.
I am only reminded of Plato, the ancient Athenian Philosopher who quotes the poet Homer who says “when you please the gods by fighting for justice and freedom, the dark earth bears wheat and barley, the trees hang heavy with fruit, the sheep steadily give birth, and the sea waters yield many fish.” The people of Mthwakazi have nothing to lose but their chains as the Apostle Paul observed.
Now that Paul Siwela and others are paying the dear price, and now that Mthwakazians throughout the world are awakening and realising that it is them and only them who will be their own liberators, the struggle of Mthwakazi must continue unabated.
The many NGOs in Zimbabwe that talk about the “crisis” and “human rights” but are just appendages of Zanu PF and MDC-T must be known for who they really are.
Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana is a Zimbabwean student based in Lesotho. E-mail: dinizulumacaphulana@yahoo.com
Labels: IAN SMITH, MASSACRE, MDC, MDC TRIBALISM, RHODESIA
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Tsvangirai and the Mt Darwin exhumations
By Psychology Maziwisa
Politics Last updated on: March 29, 2011
IF MORGAN Tsvangirai’s decision to boycott the anti-sanctions campaign was revealing, his election not to have anything to do with the mass graves unearthed in Mt Darwin was insulting.
Each time Zanu PF does something right, some moron in the MDC has to say that it was staged. Has the time not come for everyone who truly cares about Zimbabwe and its history to get angry and concerned?
For a party that whines about supposed rights abuses and the imaginary erosion of fundamental freedoms to shy away from the site of real and gross human rights violations is the biggest contradiction of the century. Endless and uncorroborated lies have been told about the state of human rights in Zimbabwe yet when genuine and tangible evidence of sickening cruelty is presented for all to see- it is ignored and dismissed as ‘amateur propaganda antics’.
The MDC cannot keep playing politics even with matters that ought to go beyond political persuasion and each time get away with it. We are Zimbabweans first before we are either MDC or Zanu PF and that is the beginning and end of it. Is doing what’s right for one’s country asking for too much? The Government of National Unity provided this country with the best opportunity in 28 years to move forward in unity of purpose and to speak with one voice. Alas, that chance has been missed. The future is not on its way- it has been delayed.
No country can constantly dwell on the past and expect to make progressive inroads into the future. But, then, the past and the future are also inextricably linked. The former informs the latter. It’s a delicate balance. Make no mistake about it, the war of liberation still evokes a great deal of emotion in Zimbabwe- and damn right it should! Tell the Americans to forget about the American war of independence. Tell the South Africans that apartheid was a non-event and that Nelson Mandela’s 27 years in prison were not such a big deal after all. Of course these events matter to them. In many ways they are what make America, America and South Africa, South Africa.
To arrive in Mt Darwin recently was to be greeted by air thick with the stench of death. It was to see SABC’s Thulasizwe Simelane overcome by emotion. About the only thing to save Saviour Kasukuwere, an honourable man blessed with rare virtues and a politician of substance, from succumbing to emotion was the fact that Mt Darwin is his constituency and so he needed to stay strong. Even so he barely could conceal his heartache.
One of the remaining white farmers in the area, Tani as he is locally known, confessed that he had been shocked by the dreadfulness of it all. Put it this way- the place is not one for the feeble hearted.
Suffice it to say over 10 000 ordinary Zimbabweans have, of their own free will, since visited the shrine. Yet Morgan Richard Tsvangirai has refused to pay tribute to our fallen heroes and he is supposed to be the Rt. Honourable Prime Minister of this country? The same politician who will be running for high office come next election? Is he the President of the party whose officials have questioned the authenticity of the entire discovery- insultingly describing the dead comrades as donkeys? Are you kidding me? It’s a bit more than some of us can stomach.
Driving along the Beitbridge-Harare road umpteen times has made me come across donkeys of all shapes and sizes. I know one when I see one and what I saw in Mt Darwin were remains of human beings, brutally murdered by an iniquitous regime- a regime the MDC has time after time said is preferable to President Robert Mugabe’s government. Surely, if this is not symptomatic of clinical madness then nothing is. Whatever it is, Zimbabwe deserves better.
Mt Darwin provided Tsvangirai with a golden opportunity to mend broken ties not just with the departed but also with several of his supporters who had waited on him to correct his past mistakes. He did not take that opportunity, opting instead to embark on a regional tour and ringing false alarm bells about a fictitious crisis. Tsvangirai’s is the tale of a politician unable to prove himself when it really matters. Very seldom has a man with a functioning mind been given so many chances and squandered them all. Come next election he will have only himself to blame.
Meanwhile, Peter Godwin, a Zimbabwe-born but New York-based writer who, therefore, has no clue whatsoever about the situation obtaining on the ground here save for the one time he sneaked into the country in 2008 under the doomed hope of ‘dancing on Mugabe’s political grave’ – describes President Mugabe in his latest offering, The Fear: Robert Mugabe and the Martyrdom of Zimbabwe as “an African Robespierre – highly educated and utterly ruthless.” Well, if the shutting down of a so-called independent newspaper that had not adhered to registration formalities is a sign of utter ruthlessness then every other government urging conformity with the law is guilty of it.
If President Mugabe’s determination to empower his people by righting past wrongs is a form of utter ruthlessness and if that includes ‘trampling on property rights’ as Peter Godwin and Martin Meredith expediently call it, then so be it. At least President Mugabe does not invade and bombard vulnerable nations- robbing them in broad day light and in the full glare of the world of their lives and resources under false pretences. Mugabe gives his people what legitimately belongs to them. Nor is he a hypocrite. Quite the contrary, he is a man of principle and, sadly, that’s his only crime. The rest is blather.
Moreover, if the death of 200 people in 2008 allegedly at the hands of Zanu PF (bear in mind that the MDC itself has assumed a dreadfully violent complexion in the recent past) was a kind of utter ruthlessness, certainly Peter Godwin would have a tough time describing the genocide that took place in Mt Darwin.
To debate Zimbabwe’s political situation with him in South Africa recently was to be left convinced of a sensible chap, a citizen genuinely concerned about the goings on in his country of birth. After reading his book, however, I’m not so sure anymore. He quite easily belongs to that group of regime change proponents who have unashamedly ventured into the business of fattening their pockets through fact-fabrication. It’s an unfortunate tendency.
As far as Tsvangirai and company are concerned (Peter Godwin and Martin Meredith included), it’s unacceptable for President Mugabe to shut down a supposedly independent newspaper for want of compliance with the law yet it is perfectly acceptable that Ian Smith butchered our people- some of them young children and powerless women- put grenades in their mouths, shoved bottles containing lethal poison down their throats and planted them in drums filled with acid before indecently burying them in mass graves! And these are the same impostors that want to be put in charge of running this country? Sweet dreams!
Labels: IAN SMITH, MASSACRE, MDC, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, RHODESIA
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COMMENT - When 280 bodies are recovered, and there may be 400 more, why does the writer of this article put atrocities in quotation marks?
Rhodesian 'atrocities' cited as 280 bodies exhumed from mine
by Staff Reporter
14/03/2011 00:00:00
AT LEAST 280 bodies have been exhumed from a disused mine in Mt Darwin – all of them victims of “atrocities” committed by the white minority government of Ian Smith prior to Zimbabwe’s independence, state media reported.
There could be as many as 400 more bodies in the mine in Ruya Village, a spokesman for the Fallen Heroes of Zimbabwe Trust told the ZBC on Sunday.
“A number of prominent politicians and ordinary people disappeared during the liberation struggle and it is hoped that the exhumation may help solve the mystery of their whereabouts,” reported the ZBC, citing the Fallen Heroes of Zimbabwe Trust’s chief exhumer, Jimmy Motsi.
The ZBC said the mine where the remains were recovered used to be owned by a German company.
The discovery of the skeletal remains provided “evidence of massive human rights atrocities” committed by the Ian Smith led government, it added.
Zimbabwe War Veterans Association secretary general for Manicaland Province Godfrey Chitakira said: “The existence of the remains shows that the Rhodesian government committed genocide.”
The Trust said it hoped scientific testing of the skeletal remains would reunite families with loved ones whose disappearances during the 1970s war of independence remained unexplained.
Zimbabwe became independent from colonial rule in 1980 after a protracted bush war in which thousands of people died, and many disappeared.
A post-independence reconcilliation programme ensured no prosecutions were made for war crimes.
Labels: GENOCIDE, IAN SMITH, RHODESIA
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Hundreds of bodies from Smith era exhumed
By: Our reporter
Posted: Sunday, March 13, 2011 11:43 pm
HUNDREDS of bodies have been exhumed from a disused mine in Zimbabwe which were mass-buried by the racist, apartheid Government of Ian Douglas Smith, then leader of the Rhodesian Front and Rhodesian prime minister.
The Fallen Heroes of Zimbabwe Trust exhumed more than 280 bodies from a disused mine in Mt Darwin, a town in Mashonaland Central province in Zimbabwe named after the biologist Charles Darwin.
These bodies provide evidence of massive human rights atrocities committed by the Smith led government in pre-independence Zimbabwe.
The disused mine belonged to a Germany company in Ruya village which is under Chief Kandeya in Mt Darwin.
A number of prominent politicians and ordinary people disappeared during the liberation struggle and it is hoped that the exhumation may help solve the mystery of their whereabouts.
The Chief Exhumer of the trust, Jimmy Motsi said there are still more than 400 bodies in the mine shaft.
War veterans, war collaborators and ordinary people from various provinces are in the area to assist in the exhumation.
Zimbabwe War Veterans Association Secretary General for Manicaland Province, Godfrey Chitakira said the existence of the remains show that the Rhodesian government committed genocide.
It is believed that there are more than 70 such mass graves emanating from that era, meaning that over 28,000 people are unaccounted for.
This is in addition to at least 50,000 people who are believed to have been killed during the Second Chimurenga - the National Liberation Struggle.
Thousands also perished after heavy shelling by Smith's soldiers and the Notorious Selous Scouts at Zanu bases in Mozambique cities of Chimoio and Nyadzonia.
Labels: IAN SMITH, MASSACRE, RHODESIA
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Lt-Gen Walls gave Zim a torrid time
By: By Alfred Mulenga
Posted: Monday, August 16, 2010 6:18 pm
IF THERE was any man, apart from rebel Rhodesian leader Ian Douglas Smith himself who gave black Zimbabwean freedom fighters operating from Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia a torrid time, it was Lieutenant-General Peter Walls, then commander of the Rhodesian security forces.
General Walls was so unrelenting in his determination to "search-and-destroy" Joshua Nkomo's and Robert Mugabe's Zipra and Zanla bases that he would unleash his ruthless troops in "hot pursuit" of the Soviet and Chinese trained guerrillas in the Frontline states.
I remember an incident in 1979 when white Rhodesian troops invaded Lusaka. We were at the Evelyn Hone College in Church Road, attending a journalism workshop when someone said "the Rhodesians are here, look!"
There they were in helicopters circling Lusaka with machine guns at the ready. Later that night they pounded a house, near State House, where Nkomo was staying in exile, but he had received intelligence and was not at home at the time.
In another blitz, the white Rhodesian troops raided Chikumbi military camp in Mkushi district, deep in central Zambia, killing hundreds of Zimbabwean freedom fighters and one of Zambia's foremost broadcasters and musicians Alick Nkhata.
The daring Rhodesian commandos were acting on strict orders from General Peter Walls who recently died in South Africa aged 83. In the spirit of reconciliation, Mugabe had retained Gen Walls after independence in 1980.
But according to information gleaned from Britain's Daily Telegraph, Mugabe was soon perturbed by reports that Walls was plotting a coup against him and his new regime. When he confronted Walls the general denied the reports, saying if such reports were true "you would be dead".
However the mood of suspicion in Harare prevailed and Walls found his position in black ruled Zimbabwe untenable and fled into exile in South Africa, where he found disgruntled former Rhodesian security forces openly accusing him of having thwarted "two attempts by special forces to assassinate Mugabe" shortly after elections.
A further bitter blow was the revelation that Smith, the man he had supported in the lead up to the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) blamed Walls for many of the failures of the transition and had actually accused him of "traitorous activities". Walls was born in Rhodesia in 1927 into a military family.
His father, George, had been a pioneer pilot in the colony and had volunteered for service with the Royal Air Force shortly after its formation. When Peter left Plumtree School, he already had his sights set on the army.
He volunteered for the British Army during the Second World War and attended the Staff College at Camberley. When the war ended he joined the Black Watch and was appointed Assistant Adjutant in the Highland Brigade Training Centre.
He resigned his commission when the Army transferred him, choosing, in his own words, "to return to my beloved Rhodesia rather than serve in any regiment other than the Black Watch". He later joined the Southern Rhodesian Staff Corps in the rank of corporal.
He went to Malaya during the military operations against the communist insurgency from 1951-1953 as a commander of "The Far Eastern Volunteer Group". It was composed of Rhodesian officers, who gained valuable experience in fighting a guerrilla war in hostile terrain.
Walls continued to shine, and in 1964 assumed command of the 1st Battalion, the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), a unit of tough young professional soldiers, which became famous in the bush war.
The sentiment in favour of UDI was growing among whites, alarmed by what they perceived as determination by the colonial power to hand over power to black majorities throughout its African territories.
Walls shared the mood, and allowed his men to wear paper hats inscribed with the words "RLI for UDI" on them, an act which won him a rare reproach from his commander at the time.
The move made him more popular among the politicians of the newly elected Rhodesian Front party led by Ian Smith. In 1972 Ian Smith approved the appointment of Walls as General Officer Commanding of the Rhodesian army.
Smith liked Walls and since he was preparing for his momentous declaration of independence he needed an army commander he could trust to support him.
Walls was quick to realise that UDI would mean an intensification of the guerrilla war from neighbouring countries, specifically Zambia and Botswana by Joshua Nkomo's largely Ndebele Zipra, and from Tanzania and Mozambique by Zanla, drawn from the majority Shona people.
Walls was made head of Joint Operations Command (JOC) in 1977 and assumed command of more than 45,000 men.
For a time, Rhodesian Special Forces attempted to take and hold key areas of Mozambique to halt the unceasing flow of guerrillas into Rhodesia.
Ian Smith and his Rhodesian Front (PF) party also realised that their only hope of survival rested in political negotiations. With the Tories' Margaret Thatcher in power anxious to rid herself of "this tiresome Rhodesian problem", Smith sought British mediation in the hope of political salvation.
The Lancaster House conference resulted in a British interregnum in Rhodesia, with Lord Soames as governor.
Walls, as head of the highly trained and experienced Rhodesian forces, found himself drawn inexorably into the political process. Contingency plans for the elections, which resulted from the Lancaster House agreement, were drawn up by the military in consultation with the Lord Soames.
The hope was that Bishop Muzorewa, the moderate Shona politician who had surprisingly won a previous election, would be able to hold Mashonaland while Joshua Nkomo, the moderate leader of the Ndebele, would comfortably hold his homeland in the west of the country.
The officially approved safety net beneath this hastily-arranged scheme was that Robert Mugabe would be "eliminated" should he win the election. But the contingency plan was never implemented in the confusion that arose after Mugabe's Zanu party swept the board with a convincing majority.
Walls immediately wrote to Thatcher calling for a new election, claiming that the imperfect "assembly point" plan for guerrillas to gather and hand in their weapons had not worked and that the insurgents had infiltrated most rural areas. His plea was in vain.
Thatcher wanted the long-running issue solved quickly, and Lord Soames was instructed to embrace a new black leader.
Lt-Gen Peter Walls settled in exile at Plettenburg Bay, on South Africa's Western Cape coast.
He died on July 20 and is survived by his wife and by four children from his first marriage.
(Sila Press Agency) Source: Daily Telegraph (UK)
Labels: IAN SMITH, LIBERATION, RHODESIA
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Memories of sobbing shadows at Nyadzonia
By: By Alexander Kanengoni
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 6:12 am
(Article reproduced from The Sunday Mail, 08 August 2004)
LAST week, I wrote in The Sunday Mail a story about my bizarre experience with a VOLVO at Nyadzonia a day after the grisly 1976 massacre. A young woman phoned and requested me to write a story about the massacre. I told her I had already written one that appeared in the Press nearly 20 years ago but she said she had not seen it because she was still very young then; please, Mr. Kanengoni, please. Suddenly, it was no longer a mere request; it was a plea. I felt trapped and wretchedly treacherous. It was as if I was refusing with something that did not belong to me but to the entire nation.
At Nyadzonia, it took us over a week to bury the nearly 2 000 people who had perished in the horrendous incident. And as we walked away from the horrible place, I was afraid to turn back and see the thousand or more sobbing shadows with their heads bowed, following us, refusing to be left behind and got forgotten.
To most of us, Heroes' Day has become synonymous with the National Heroes' Acre. Each year on the solemn day, thousands of us gather on the sacred national shrine to remember those who shed their blood for the liberation of the country. Here, we laid to rest Herbert Chitepo. There, we laid to rest Jason Moyo. And over there, Sally Mugabe. And beyond and slightly secluded and mounted on a granite plinth is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. And even if we might no longer have any flowers left, let us spare a moment, walk over and pause. The effortless tears tumbling out of our eyes and collecting around the pedestal are the flowers. Because the huddled shadows with bowed heads and ashen faces are still sobbing silently at Nyadzonia.
I was not at Nyadzonia when the Rhodesians attacked it. I was at Chimoio. But I was among the platoon of 30 that was dispatched to the camp soon after the news of the attack was received. Thus, I will tell the story of the massacre not as a survivor but as one of the first people who got to the scene immediately after the massacre. I am making the prompt clarification because it can only be a survivor who will be able to capture and translate into words the horror, the agony and the hopelessness of that gigantic historical misfortune.
Nyadzonia was attacked on the morning of 9 August 1976 but the news only reached Chimoio in the afternoon because the Rhodesians had blown up the bridge over the Pungwe which was the link with Chimoio. We were sent not as a relief but a security measure ahead of any help that would come to Nyadzonia.
So armed with AKs , light machine-guns and bazookas, we raced to Nyadzonia in four Land-Rovers and an armoured personnel carrier. And at the devastated bridge, we met the first survivors. Among them was the camp commander, the late Moses Mvenge, the politician from Mutare. There was no need to ask him any questions because the tragic story was everywhere for everyone to see. The survivors' torn clothes, their lacerated bodies, the terror in their eyes and the ghosts that their faces had become told the grim story. There had been a total disaster.
We abandoned the vehicles and searched for a place to cross the angry and roaring river. It took us over an hour to cross and unfortunately during the arduous process, Nyika was swept away down the leaping treacherous river. We watched helplessly as his desperate and muted cry finally drowned and suffocated in the cascading fury. No one among us knew his home name or the part of the country where he came from. He could be anyone's son or brother. At the National Heroes Acre, his memory is embodied in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We proceeded to Nyadzonia.
As we trudged forward with the setting sun on our back, we came upon the first dead bodies and they increased dramatically as we got closer and closer to the camp. And then at last, we were confronted with an endless sea of dead bodies stretching in all directions and I shook my head in disbelief. There were corpses here, corpses there, corpses everywhere. There were corpses of babies strapped on their mothers' backs, there were corpses of small boys and girls. There were corpses of young men and women, there were corpses of old men and women. And the corpses had all sorts of mutilations: decapitated heads, shattered jaws, crushed or missing limbs, disemboweled entrails, scattered brains, gouged eyes, everything.
The highest concentration of the corpses was around the open space they used for their morning assembly. We would later learn from the survivors that the Rhodesians had come with their faces painted black and with camouflage, weapons and vehicles similar to those used by Frelimo, the Mozambican army. That was how the 15 000 or so refugees at Nyadzonia had mistaken them for Frelimo. And so when one of the Rhodesians stood on the pedestal at the centre of the square and blew the emergency whistle, everyone had stampeded to the square, anxious for any good news. And with everyone around the pedestal still gasping for breath, Nyathi, a recently defected guerilla commander, gave the orders to shoot. There was nothing to understand.
Then there were the flies. Swarms of swarming heavy, green bombers. They hovered from corpse to corpse, their laden stomachs bulging to bursting point. In two days' time, the worms would begin to appear on the corpses decomposing in the sun but for now, it was just the nauseating green flies. Yes, in two days' time, the fat, wriggling lethargic worms would begin to appear.
And then there was the stench of the decomposing corpses that filled the air. But like all the other things, the stench would slowly disappear from our noses and by the third day, it would have completely disappeared. And it would be left to the new arrivals to tell us that our eyes looked unfocused and that we also looked frightening and that the smell of death followed us wherever we went. Of course, that was before they too had stayed long enough to also acquire the unfocused look and to have the smell of death following them wherever they went.
And there was fire and smoke everywhere. Virtually every building in the camp had been gutted and only their charred hulks remained. The shell of the makeshift clinic run by the Red Cross across the drift stood looking up like an old woman wailing at a funeral. There were corpses strewn all over the smouldering logs and others burnt beyond recognition.
And a short distance away to the east, the Nyadzonia River writhed and cried, heaving under the weight of hundreds of bloated, floating bodies.
And then there were the injured, hundreds of them, writhing and crying like the river. Some had been shot and left for dead. Others had their limbs crushed by the rumbling steel-belted wheels of the pursuing armoured vehicles. And providing hope and assurance to some of them was one of the most difficult tasks that I had ever done.
A small girl of not more than eight whose chest had been ripped open by a machine-gun with part of her lung now exposed asked me as she calmly sat in a donga: "Do you think I will survive comrade?"
Strangely, all through that nightmare, I had not cried, not a single tear. I stood up, looked away and wept for something that was much, much more than the tragedy of the little girl. Why had I ever joined this war? Why, why, why, I kept asking myself. When I at last turned, the little girl had died. And then something inside me went out like a flame in the wind. It was as if she was waiting for someone to be close by to die. And not far way, the river continued to cry. The war would never be the same again.
Help started coming in the following morning and because the bridge over the Pungwe River had been blown up, the injured could only be ferried by helicopter to either Chimoio or Beira. And for four days, we battled to bury the dead in mass graves that a caterpillar that had been brought in from Tete was digging.
Then the skins of the decomposing corpses began to peel in our bare hands and we had no choice but to leave the work to the bulldozer. The bulldozer moved the decomposed corpses into the huge graves that it had dug and covered them up. On the seventh day, we finished writing the traumatic chapter of our chequered history but the stench of death that followed us remained. For nearly a month, people everywhere we went told us our eyes were unfocused and frightening and that we carried the stench of a decomposing death.
In the new camp outside Chimoio, the survivors sang and danced, stamping the ground: "Zimbabwe ndeye ropa baba: Zimbabwe ndeye ropa redu nemadzibaba" and then the anger and determination: "Ndati ndiudzei baba, mamboaona kupi mabhunu tinobayana."
Therefore, even if we no longer have any flowers, we should always remember to pause at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and let the tears collect around the pedestal.
They are to the memory of the small girl who I failed to give any hope to at Nyadzonia. She is our heroine. And there are thousands of others like her whose places of death have been forgotten. I have painful memories, rolling out with the tears from my eyes.
They are memories of the sobbing shadows at Nyadzonia and many more others who failed to arrive.
Labels: IAN SMITH, MASSACRE, NYADZONIA, REFUGEES, RHODESIA, WAR VETERANS
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