Online Reporter
Africa Moyo in KABWE, Zambia
VICE President Kembo Mohadi yesterday took his tour of shrines located in Zambia to Mkushi Girls Training Camp, where over 1 000 combatants, including his blood brother, were brutally killed by the racist Smith regime.
The attack was launched on October 19, 1978 at about 8am.
The Smith regime appeared to have coordinated its attacks on bases housing the freedom fighters given that on the same day, Freedom Camp, which is also known as Chikuti, was attacked at about 11am.
At Freedom Camp, over 400 freedom fighters were killed in air and ground attacks.
The Mkushi Girls Camp is still fresh in the minds of most local people and immediately after word spread that a senior Government official was coming, they started arriving at the shrine.
Some came on foot, others on bicycles and some on motorcycles.
A decent crowd of about 100 locals had congregated at the shrine by the time VP Mohadi arrived.
As he got out of his car, the women broke into song and dance.
Both males and females got closer to the car to catch a glimpse of him while others pulled out their smartphones to take pictures and record videos for their memories.
The tour started with National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe director Mr Lovemore Mandima explaining what happened on the day of the brutal massacres and the significance of the Mkushi Girls Camp.
Afterwards, VP Mohadi was led on a tour of the 11 mass graves at the shrine.
He was also shown some bullet cartridges at the shrine, which are thought to have been used by the Rhodesian Ground forces on the day.
VP Mohadi’s brother killed on the day, was one of the trainers at the camp.
Six Dakotas with 120 paratroopers, two Canberra bombers, two Hawker hunter fighter aircraft and an unknown number of helicopters with 45 heliborne troops and an 81 millimetre mortar team, are understood to have been unleashed on the combatants on the day of the massacre.
At its peak, the Mkushi Girls Camp, located about 130km north east of Kabwe town, housed about 3 000 combatants, who were mainly from Zapu.
There are some mass graves where people who lost relatives on the day always pray when they visit the shrine, said a local Mr Charles Mpabanga, who was born in Zambia, but can speak fluent Shona and Ndebele since his father was from Gokwe.
Yesterday was no exception, and VP Mohadi asked Deputy Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet responsible for Social Services Reverend Paul Damasane, to pray.
In an interview after the tour of the shrine, VP Mohadi challenged youths to champion economic freedom to fulfil the political freedom brought by the current leaders on April 18, 1980.
“I am reliving my olden days. I feel younger and I feel like going on to fight again. This time fighting the Bretton Woods institutions; that is economic independence, which those boys and girls that lie there did not have the chance to,” he said.
“They fought for political emancipation and we got it, that’s fine. But we still have got a very, very, very long fight, long haul. That’s economic freedom, economic emancipation.
“Some of us are getting of age now. We are no longer as young as we were when we were here. So, you need to take up the mantle, you need to run with the baton until we get where we want to get Zimbabwe to,” he said.
VP Mohadi said Zimbabwe has everything, from mineral resources to the skills, and there is no reason for failure.
Asked about the loss of his brother, VP Mohadi said: “Oh yes, yes, yes, my brother, the one I come after. He was training these girls here and he died defending them. I don’t know what you mean by closure, but the thing is that we have forgiven those that committed those atrocities on us, but we haven’t forgotten.
“That’s why we want to memorialise these places, that each and every one of you, or people that come after us, get to know what happened here. And as was rightly said by Mandima, we can turn this into a site museum, which will even bring a lot of income from the tourists that will be coming here to visit the place.”
VP Mohadi was accompanied by Deputy Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Dr Ompile Marupi, Deputy Home Affairs and Cultural Heritage Minister Chido Sanyatwe, Zimbabwe’s Ambassador to Zambia Charity Charamba, Institute of African Knowledge chief executive officer Ambassador Kwame Muzawazi and other senior Government officials.
Online Reporter