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Pathisa Nyathi
Monday the 18th of April 2016 marks the 36th anniversary of our independence.
It is time to reflect on the arduous road to independence and what that freedom has meant to us.
In 1960 I was a young boy living at Sankonjana in Matobo District. I knew very little about the political goings on in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), let alone those in foreign countries.
I do remember though that in 1964 when my sister’s marriage ceremony was held my mother wore a fur hat. I knew it to be some insignia for the political party whose name was a household name.
In 1963 on my way to Tudi 1 Primary School I met Tommy Ndebele from Mhlonhlweni, a man that would later play a prominent role in the armed liberation struggle that led to independence on April 18 1980.
Between then and now I have come to glean some political insight relating to our struggle for independence.
I learnt about British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s famous 1960 speech made in South Africa relating to the wind of change that was blowing across the continent of Africa.
Ghana under Kwame Nkrumah led the way by gaining independence in 1957. More countries followed suit.
However, the wind of change did not sweep down to the Cape. Portuguese colonies, namely Mozambique and Angola did not gain independence in the sixties. The same was true of Namibia, Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Initially, the struggle took the form of trade unionism in which persons such as Masotsha Ndlovu, Joshua Nkomo, Jasper Savanhu, Jason Ziyapapa Moyo, Edward Silonda Ndlovu and Grey Mabhalane Bango, among several others, played an important role.
The wind of change was effectively blocked and there was no uhuru for some countries in central and southern Africa. Then followed nationalist agitation by the very same trade unionists, whose ranks were swelled by newcomers.
The first national movement, the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) was formed on September 12, 1957 at the Mai Musodzi Hall in Harare Township (now Mbare).
After the proscription of each nationalist party another party was formed. Once the SRANC was banned by the Edgar Whitehead regime in February 1959 the National Democratic Party (NDP) was formed on January 1, 1960 only to be banned in December 1961.
The Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was formed in the same month of the same year, only to be banned in September 1962.
The next stage was that of sabotage when petrol bombs were used to destroy colonial infrastructure and some cadres went for military training in friendly countries notably China and North Korea.
In Africa Ghana and Egypt provided military training to some cadres. With effect from 1962 cadres who included Charles Chikerema, John Maluzo Ndlovu, Amen Chikwakwata, Luke Mhlanga, Charles Dauramanzi, Clerk Mpofu, and several others underwent military training and came back to undertake sabotage missions.
The first weapons had been brought into the country by Misheck Velaphi Ncube, Abraham Nkiwane and Kenneth Mlalazi. The weapons were left at Lupanda in Lupane while consultations went on.
Nkomo who was under house arrest at Bidi was consulted. Findo Mpofu was also consulted and the weapons were received by the ‘arms people’ in Bulawayo who included Dumiso Dabengwa, Abel Siwela, Ethan Dube, Thomas Ngwenya and Akim Ndlovu, inter alia.
The year 1964 marked a turning point. Bullets were fired for the first time by cadres from both ZAPU and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which broke away from ZAPU in August 1963.
Moffat Hadebe Elliot Ngwabi and group engaged the enemy at Zidube Ranch in Mambale in September 1964.
In the same year ZANU cadres who included incumbent Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa and William Ndangana among others (in what was termed the Crocodile Gang), killed the first white person to die in the armed liberation struggle.
The armed struggle soon thereafter escalated when ZAPU sent its trainees to the Soviet Union. In this group were young cadres such as Dabengwa, Akim Ndlovu, Report Mphoko (now Vice President of Zimbabwe), Ambrose Mutinhiri and Robson Manyika. ZANU was also sending cadres for training in Nanking in China.
The armed struggle had started in earnest. It was a struggle that would rage on till the ceasefire that was brokered in December 1979 following the successful conclusion of the Lancaster House Talks which had started in September of the same year.
Battle stories have been recounted. Stories about the establishment of training camps, provision of arms, deployment of cadres, and reconnaissance have all been told.
Names of military instructors, camp commanders, commissars, intelligence officers and many others have been mentioned.
The former Rhodesians have also told their stories, from their point of view of course. In all this, there is a serious omission.
The war of liberation has been reduced to a localised struggle, a struggle being waged by guerrillas against the Rhodesians on the local war theatre.
This is a rather simplistic approach which skirts the real political and economic issues at stake.
A mechanical rendition of the war fails to bring out the wider scope of the struggle, one with a bearing on the divided nations of the world-the Eastern Bloc (Warsaw Pact led by the Soviet Union) and the Western Bloc (NATO led by the United States of America).
In other words, any analysis and interpretation of the war of liberation which does not take into cognisance the hot Cold War is both puerile and ill-informed.
It is my argument that our struggle was a mirror of the bigger struggle that pitted the West against the East.
We have to go back to MacMillan’s wind of change and investigate what stopped the wind and why. For that, we have to move back several centuries to the slave trade and slavery which started in the 16th Century.
Racism was the excuse and economic interest the motive. Slave trade went on for centuries till its ban in the 19th Century.
Enslaved Africans provided the requisite labour that drove the wheels of primary industry in the United States, the Caribbean and South America.
No sooner had slave trade and slavery been proscribed did colonialism ensue. The African continent was partitioned. The question is why? Once again, it was the recurring theme of economic interests.
A conference was held in Berlin from the end of 1884 to the beginning of 1885. African resources were looted, in particular gold.
Her good soils were exploited through agriculture that saw the Africans being evicted from the rich soils to marginal areas.
Once again, racism was an excuse while wealth creation was the driving force. Following the cessation of hostilities in 1945 the nations of the world belonged to two camps as pointed out above.
It was that political and economic dichotomy that would have a strong bearing on our own armed liberation struggle.
With trade unionism and nationalism having failed, it was time to take up arms. It would turn out that the weapons were provided by the East.
Training facilities, military trainers, weapons, ammunition and logistics were provided by the East. This is to say the Soviet Union and her allies in the Warsaw Pact gave all the necessary support to the liberation movements.
ZAPU was supported by the Soviet Union, Cuba, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Libya and many others. ZANU got support largely from China and North Korea and other countries especially towards the end of the war.
Meanwhile, the West was not an onlooker in all this. The Communists were posing a threat to their interests in southern Africa, a region that was and still is geopolitically important.
The war cry was the fight against Communism. The fear of Communism provided the justification for reluctance to give independence to ‘communist insurgents.’ Meanwhile, economic interests remained the main motive behind efforts and campaigns to eliminate the Soviet Union and her allies from southern Africa.
It is my well considered opinion that the Lancaster House Talks were convened primarily to checkmate the Soviet Union and her allies and secondarily to hammer out the modalities for the granting of political independence.
In the next article we shall unpack the broader cold war context within the narrower and localised struggle for independence in Zimbabwe. The West decided that there was to be no outright military victory in Zimbabwe and indeed there was none.
Online Reporter