Online Reporter
THE Zimbabwe Defence Forces were only formally formed soon after independence in a major training and organisational effort to integrate the two liberation forces and acceptable elements from the former regime into a modern national army and air force.
But the roots go back considerably further well into the Liberation War and the vital recognition that besides good training and adequate equipment, it was essential to have the trust and active support of the general population. Forces that ignored the people were doomed to failure.
Today, as we celebrate Defence Forces Day, we remember that critical link and central to the celebrations is the need to maintain and reinforce the link. Professionalism, skills, modern equipment and innovation have to be created and retained, but the core is still mutual support of forces and the whole nation.
The major reason for the success of the liberation forces against a far-better equipped enemy is that the liberation forces had the support of the people, active support, while the settler forces, despite their air power and heavy weapons, did not.
The new forces of the newly independent nation were all veterans of the Liberation War and were automatically imbued with those core beliefs since they had survived and knew why they won.
Since then many more, most born after independence, have joined to replace those retiring until by now there is only a very thin layer of Liberation War veterans left and they, within a few years, will be enjoying their pensions.
But all the post-independence recruits were imbued with the need to maintain that tradition that they were a people’s army and air force and were not some sort of different caste or group separated from the people they served and who they hoped would support them.
Early decisions, such as ensuring all barracks were spread across the country, ensured that all military personal lived in and were part of civilian communities, not separated from them.
This even goes as far as having the schools erected near barracks for the children of soldiers and air personnel also assigning places to the children from the local communities.
This is reinforced by the Community Assistance Week each year when the Defence Forces in each area assign skilled personnel to help the local community.
In many cases this has gone further, with the military able to assign highly skilled talent to local communities wanting to build new classrooms, clinics and other infrastructure. The detachments bring in skills that may well be in short supply in many areas.
Early emergencies facing independent Zimbabwe as the dying apartheid regime in South Africa lashed out in the region quickly pinpointed the critical need for maximum levels of training and, more interestingly, that the assorted foreign assistance in this regard was not always effective in many respects and missed several crucial issues, which in itself caused problems and errors.
That in turn saw the Defence Forces determined to use its own experienced personnel to do the training and to build up the training infrastructure that was required, all the way from troops and air personnel and in the leadership from junior non-commissioned officers to the highest ranks.
So training was seriously upgraded, culminating in recent years with the Zimbabwe National Defence University, staffed by Defence Forces members with advanced academic qualifications.
This is addition to the graduates recruited from, or sponsored at, other universities.
This stress on maximum levels of training is seen when friendly foreign countries like to assign promising members of their defence forces to Zimbabwean training courses, now considered routine.
In the recent troubles in the extreme northeast of Mozambique, when SADC needed to offer support, everyone thought the obvious and best Zimbabwean contribution was to enhance training of Mozambican units.
The general and exceptional upgrade in the Zimbabwean education system after independence also ensured that the new post-independence recruits joining the Defence Forces were far better prepared for higher level training, professional and technical, and this is important in the ever more complex technical environment of modern warfare.
