adminFreedom Mutanda
NOVEMBER 23, 1977 will forever be known as the day innocent Zimbabweans were attacked at a refugee camp in Mozambique at Chimoio by Rhodesian forces. On Monday this week, the day passed almost quietly to those unaware of the dogs of war Ian Smith unleashed on the very young and old who ran away from the concentration camps masquerading as protected villages that were sprouted in Zimbabwe at the instigation of the security chiefs headed by General Peter Walls. A collective memory of a people’s struggle can be done through orature and those who forget to remember a people’s struggle and the ups and downs of it will remain in the periphery of consciousness. Chimoio resembles a people’s resilience. Coming as it did after the deadly Nyadzonia conflagration, the Chimoio massacre signified a significant shift in the way the Rhodesians fought their war; it marked a phase of fighting dirty, hitting below the belt as it were.
Finding that containment in Zimbabwe was not bearing fruit, the defence strategists felt that the cancer must be cured at the place of origin and in that regard, refugee camps such as Mkushi and Freedom in Zambia and Nyadzonia and Chimoio in Mozambique, ought to be targeted as they were bombarded with ferocious fire-power.
The freedom fighters had been accused of committing atrocities against fellow blacks thus they had to be exterminated as their communism might end up destroying civilisation as they knew it.
Those who went to Chimoio lived to tell the tale but we must interrogate the motives of the whites as they indiscriminately killed people in those camps where the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees rightly identified them as political refugees. Colonial Zimbabwe had become too hot for the blacks who had to be frog-marched to the mines and estates to work for the white man who treated them like rabid dogs.
Seeing that Africans were adamant, Smith had to change tact. He attacked the refugee camps in neighbouring countries in order to sap morale among the cadres. Containment of the ‘insurgency’ was uppermost in his mind and he never followed international statutes in his dealings with the ZANLA and ZIPRA forces.
Way back on 11 November 1965, Ian Smith had claimed the reason he had declared UDI was to preserve justice, civilisation and Christianity. Justice! My foot. When you see a regime kill hundreds if not thousands of Africans in refugee camps ostensibly to preserve justice and civilisation, then one can see how myopic the regime was.
How can you talk of justice when defenceless children died as they tried to run away? All is fair in love and war? One sees a spiritual dimension to this war on the side of the whites although missionaries such as Father Lamont never stopped supporting the downtrodden.
Eddison Zvobgo, the late Deputy Spokesperson of ZANU aptly summed it up, “the Smith regime lost this war largely because they did not have a political argument. Militarily, they were far superior to us, but they just did not conjure up effective political arguments.’’
Where reasoning ends, war begins. In fury at failing to defeat the militants whom they looked upon as baboons and terrorists, the regime hit below the belt. Without any shame, they claimed they had killed the ‘terrs’ after the Nyadzonia, Freedom, Chimoio and Mkushi mass destruction.
This week, we remember the atrocities. Mr PK van der Byl saw the attack on Chimoio as a defensive operation designed to prevent invading groups from bringing violence and brutality into Rhodesia, perpetrated mainly against black civilians.
It is ironic that the black civilians who were reportedly murdered were actually happy to see the comrades in their areas thus the song, ‘zvamauya mauya comrade’ was met with happiness by the multitudes of people in Zimbabwe.
When a country’s defence forces travels over 150 kilometres from Lusaka in Zambia to attack a Freedom camp, it shows that it doesn’t have any form of respect for international conventions but it had the audacity to say ZIPRA and ZANLA forces were terrorists, we had often heard about the axiom, one’s terrorist is the other’s terrorist.
Professor Emmanuel Ngara wrote a moving poem about a child who survived the Nyadzonia massacre. Yes, legs flew from a falling person while eyes stared at the sky lifeless. The victims’ only crime was that they had dared leave Rhodesia to stay in the bush away from the marauding Selous Scouts. For that, they paid the supreme price of sacrifice.
A Cde Zeppelin, quoted in ‘None but ourselves’(1982:174) says the Rhodesian forces bombed Chimoio and for two days, the regime soldiers moved about while the comrades regrouped. Female refugees with their children ran helter-skelter and the soldiers left poisoned biscuits which were eaten by one of the children who died on the spot.
Here was a war that bordered on the satanic where rules of engagements were thrown out through the window but the white propagandists said it was a just war to preserve mankind as if God was on the side of the oppressors. Did the comrades get demoralised in the face of terrorism disguised as defending civilization? No. Word has it that as some comrades at Chimoio fell, they exhorted their fellow comrades to carry on the struggle.
This week, we should pause and think about the selflessness of the people who abandoned the comforts of their homes and go to liberate themselves and every other Zimbabwean. Those bombings may have forced people to think twice before going to war. Did people stop enlisting to serve their country? A big No. For the next two years, they went from strength to strength until victory beckoned.
Chimoio, by the way is a stone’s throw away from Zimbabwe in Manica province in Mozambique. At the end of it all, Mozambique counted her losses but she never abandoned the Zimbabweans in their hour of need. Today, the two countries ought to forge an economic friendship that will withstand buffeting from all angles.
While political freedom is abundant, economic freedom needs more strengthening. African brotherhood dictates that in abundance and want, we ought to be together shoulder to shoulder. Economic integration between the two nations is a must if we take the highs and lows the two countries have endured since they fought together against the Portuguese and Rhodesians.
What will it make of their friendship when they don’t have equal economic growth? Food for thought for economic and political leaders. Chimoio massacres will never be forgotten. It must not make us dejected but it is part of our history. History strengthens us as a people.
Online Reporter