Chronicle Editor
Pathisa Nyathi
When we scan what took place in the years preceding 1962 and those soon thereafter, we cannot help but realise that 1962 marked an important turning point in the struggle for Zimbabwe’s independence.
This is true in terms of both action and reaction on the part of both black and white political actors in Southern Rhodesia. It is generally agreed that during the days of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) formed on 12 September 1957 (Occupation Day) at the Mai Musodzi Hall in Harare (now Mbare) Township, did not embrace violent means to unseat the colonial settler regime in Salisbury.
However, by February 1959 the SRANC was banned and had its leaders incarcerated at various prisons in Southern Rhodesia. Would-be President of Malawi, Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda was detained in Gwelo (now Gweru). His would-be cabinet minister after independence, Aleke Banda, a student at Inyathi Mission, served at the newly constructed Khami Prison before deportation back to Nyasaland (now Malawi).
Many leaders of the SRANC were detained at Khami Prison outside Bulawayo. Some were taken to Lupanda Native Purchase Area in Lupane. Maurice Nyagumbo and Bernard Mutuma from Makokoba were among those at Lupanda. Initially arrested nationalists were detained under Emergency (Temporary Detention) Regulations and later they were detained under the Preventative Detention (Temporary Provisions) Act of 1959. James Chikerema, George Nyandoro and others were detained in Gokwe where they languished for a long time. By January 1963 they were out as in that month Chikerema accompanied Nkomo to Zambia.
For the rest of 1959 there was no political party for blacks in Southern Rhodesia. The next political party came into being on 1 January 1960 when the National Democratic Party (NDP) was created under the leadership of Michael Mawema a member of the Rhodesia Railways African Workers Union. It is worth noting that the proscribed SRANC drew most of its urban membership from members of various labour unions in the commercial, industrial and other sectors. Joshua Nkomo who was leader of the SRANC, did not return home when the party was banned in February 1959. Instead, he proceeded to London in the United Kingdom and only returned home in October 1960 to assume the presidency of the NDP when elections were held. His deputy was Morton Malianga while George Silundika was elected Secretary General. Jason Moyo emerged as Treasurer and Francis Nehwati from the City Council workers’ union was a committee member.
The year 1960 witnessed Zhi-i riots which started on the 19th of July in Highfield Township in Salisbury (now Harare). Among leaders who took part in the demonstrations in Highfield Township were Sketchely Samkange, Enos Nkala, Leopold Takawira, George Silundika, Herbert Chitepo and many others. On the 24th of July 1960 riots shifted to Bulawayo where Zhi-i started from the Stanley Hall in Makokoba Township. The intention had been to march to the Central Police Station along Fife Street. However, police stopped people from entering the venue of meeting until after the intervention of Dumiso Dabengwa.
When the meeting ended, Benjamin Madlela led in the singing of the national anthem, “Nkosi Sikelel’ i-Afrika.” Hell broke loose when marchers were stopped from marching to the Central Police Station. Rioting erupted.
There were some revellers who were drinking beer at the Big Bar in Makokoba Township. They were attacked for drinking beer when others were fighting for independence. The metallic beer mugs in use at the time were used to beat them up. Municipal property such as bulldozers, trucks and offices were burnt. Grocery shops and business premises were burnt. Looters took advantage of the chaotic situation and forced their way into grocery shops and butcheries where whole carcasses were looted and hidden in beds and covered under blankets. Unrest lasted four days before the army and other security agents quelled the disturbances.
Zhi-i, a Ndebele war cry, marked an important break with the past. For the first time in the history of the struggle for independence, violence as a means to unseat the white settle regime in Southern Rhodesia was embraced. That new form of campaigning came at a time when Africa was decolonising. There was political instability in Congo where UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjöld died in a plane crash. That was the year when the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act was promulgated. It was a piece of legislation that was to remain a pillar of repression to the end of the war and beyond. In 1961 there were constitutional talks in which Nkomo, Nkala, Ndabaningi Sithole and Chitepo took part.
The Duncan Sandy’s-led constitution was used as the basis for the general elections held in 1962. African nationalists boycotted the plebiscite and instead conducted their own referendum. The elections were a whites-only affair. The United Federal Party (UFP) which had been in power from 1934 lost the elections. Their election manifesto had promised integration and advancement of blacks.
A new party, the Dominion Party (DP) won the elections on the ticket of opposition to majority rule, no forced integration, retention of segregatory measures such as the Land Apportionment Act of 1930. Winston Joseph Field led the radical farmers-supported political party. Ian Douglas Smith, a pilot in World War II, took over the leadership of the party on 14 April 1964. In August 1964 Smith declared a state of emergency and threw the nationalists into detention and restriction camps. It was clear there was renewed vigour to crush opposition to the white regime. The white regime had the advantage of access to coercive state apparatus.
Back to the year 1962 on the black side of the equation. With heightened repression at both administrative and legislative levels, the Sabotage Campaign (uMtshetshaphansi/Zhanda) was intensified. That followed military training by pioneers of the armed struggle who trained in Egypt, China and Cuba. In the same year, they completed military training and some of them returned home and took part in smuggling the first weapons into the country. That was during the time of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Movement within the Federation then was easily facilitated.
The first weapons were brought into Southern Rhodesia in 1962 and temporarily left at Lupanda in the custody of Abraham Nkiwane’s father who owned a plot there. Nkiwane drove the car, Zephyr Zodiac that had been availed by the United National Independence Party (UNIP) of Zambia. Subsequently, the weapons were driven to Bulawayo before being cached in the Matobo Hills. From there Tobias Bobbylock Manyonga, himself already militarily trained in Egypt, tried to ferry them to Salisbury. Manyonga sought to avoid the Bulawayo-Salisbury road hoping, by so doing, he would avoid detection by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)’s officers. He was arrested near Shabanie (now Zvishavane).
In the same year of 1962, in the month of December, Misheck Velaphi Ncube and Amon Ndukwana Ncube were arrested outside Wankie when the CID officers intercepted their car and upon searching it, found a large consignment of plastic explosives, hand grenades and revolvers. The duo stood trial in in January 1963 and were found guilty and incarcerated at Khami Maximum Security Prison.
In the same year, the youths who had been engaging in sabotage work became disillusioned with that struggle modus operandi and decided to approach JZ Moyo to appeal that they be allowed to go for military training outside the country and come back to fight white Rhodesians. The nationalists were still harbouring the idea that the way to go in the struggle for independence was through sabotage which was seen to have worked in Algeria. At the end, the senior party leadership bought into the idea and from 1962 onwards, youths left Southern Rhodesia to undergo military training. The action-reaction cycle had started in earnest.
Clark Mpofu was in the group behind appeal to transform the struggle. Before the end of the year, he and others went to Salisbury (now Harare) where they were taken through their paces, training to operate as saboteurs. Once in Salisbury, they met some liberal whites at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland who included Terence Ranger, Roger Moore and John Reed.
Upon return to Bulawayo in the same year, 1962, they engaged in sabotage activities. Just before the end of the year they were sent to Northern Rhodesia where they were received by Sikhwili Khohli Moyo who was already outside the country. He handed them over to John Makhiwane of the ANC’s MK who took them to the bush where their sabotage skills were polished and sharpened. They were back in Southern Rhodesia where they targeted rail lines, factories and government buildings, the Post Office, Tredgold being some of them.
Once the Rhodesian Front (RF), which replaced the DP, was in power, it sought to apply brakes to the struggle which was picking up pace. In that year, leaders of the struggle were slapped with three-months restrictions within their rural home areas. Leaders such as George Silundika, Jason Moyo and many others served their terms in rural areas. The idea was to cut them off from the masses who the authorities thought would be fed on a diet of political sedition. Joshua Nkomo, who at the time was outside the country came back to Southern Rhodesia. He was restricted to Bidi within Sihle Nkomo’s homestead. Upon release in December 1962, he travelled with James Chikerema to Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) to make arrangements for the opening of Zapu offices in Lusaka. There they met with Gore Brown and when Zambia became independent in the following year, external leaders moved down from Dar-es-Salaam to establish bases in Lusaka, nearer home.
It was the 18th of August 1962 when Zimbabwe’s first black medical doctor, Samuel Tichafa Parirenyatwa was killed in a traffic accident on a level crossing at Heaney Junction near Ntabazinduna. He was on his way to Nkayi to brief party faithful on a decision taken by Zapu at Edward Pswarayi’s house at the Beatrice Cottages that they were not going to form another political party in the event Zapu was banned, which it was just the following month of the same year, 1962. His death was shrouded in mystery and conspiracy theories abounded.
Even before the Cold Comfort Farm meeting resolutions, among which were to send some cadres outside the country to facilitate the armed struggle, many youths had already left the country. Their move was occasioned by the vicious clampdown by the Rhodesian Front government. Sabotage was then punishable by death or long sentences behind bars. For example, Dickson Netsha Sibanda escaped in 1962 when the security net was closing in on him. Following the Zhi-i disturbances one person who took part in them as a member of the NDP youths was Charles Bhayana Nyathi. At the time of Zhi-i, he was working at Dunlop, the giant tyre manufacturing firm in Bulawayo. Charles, then living at Block 73 in Mpopoma Township, did not go to work at the time of Zhi-i. As a result, he lost his job and became a hunted and hounded man, prompting him to jump the border and live at Ndola in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia).
Indications in 1962 were that the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland’s demise was in the offing. Whites were agitating for their own independence from Britain. With Zapu having settled for recourse to violence as a means of attaining uhuru, and the Rhodesians on the other hand vowing never to allow black majority rule, it became clear the road to independence was going to be bloody, protracted and costly to the nation in human lives, economic resources and all.
Online Reporter