Former detainee speaks on war experience

Freedom Mutanda
COLONIAL governments used legal instruments to control the lives of Africans, for those Africans opposed to the legislation, detentions were the order of the day.

Henry Hanyani Hlahla, born in 1932, at Tuzuka, in the Musikavanhu area, has a story to tell about the vicissitudes of the colonial era.

He came from those families that were given farms by the predominant religious group in Gazaland district, American Board Mission (UCCZ).

These are the privileged groups who are referred to as ‘‘makorwa’’ who acted as landlords to the many squatters in the area. One can equate Henry Hlahla to Friedrick Engels who came from a privileged background, but decided to attack the system that created classes.

Similarly, Moses decided to shun his being a prince in the king’s house to become a leader of a condemned class who were used as slaves. Hlahla, thus, is seen as a man who decided to be on the side of the oppressed, the voiceless.

My colleague, Sifelani Tonje and I visited the veteran nationalist at his home in Chibuwe where he shared with us aspects of his life from 1957 to 1979.

His story is laced with terrifying incidents and it is good to know that at the end of the narrative he triumphs as he taught in a new Zimbabwe without discrimination whatsoever. Here he goes. I was born in the Tuzuka under Chief Musikavanhu’s area of jurisdiction and I went to school when I was a teenager. In those days, our parents required us to go to school when we had proved adept at herding livestock and doing other manly duties at home.

I went to Mount Selinda Central Primary School for my Standard Four to Six as I was quite brilliant. At that time, one could not proceed to Standard Four if one had not done very well at Standard Three.

There are those academics who talk about the bottleneck system of education after the 1966 Education Act where students had to be forced to stop attending school after Grade Seven, but the same thing happened after Standard Three when students could not continue with education after they had done badly at Standard Three.

Among some of the sports we learnt at Mount Selinda, was boxing where I excelled beyond measure. Of course, as I grew up herding cattle, fighting became second nature to me. However, one of the white staffers taught us boxing including ducking and hitting the pressure points.

School authorities suspended me in 1955 when I expressed my reservations about colonial laws that were not good for us who lived in the communal lands. For example, the Land Husbandry Act of 1951 restricted the number of cattle Africans must have per household ostensibly to stem the soil erosion menace, but in reality it was to disenfranchise Africans for them to be unwilling workers of white capital.

A family had to have a maximum of five cattle and for those people who had more than the stipulated number they sold their cattle for a song lest the whites would destroy the animals without compensation.

While at Mount Selinda, I met Samora Machel and Alfonso Dhlakama who had been sent to learn English at Mount Selinda, Bad Simango from Gogoyo had facilitated the two’s acceptance at the school.

Samora Machel was known as Samuel Muchero at that time. I later heard that he headed FRELIMO and led Mozambique to independence.

Mount Selinda was the place to be in those bygone days. Chikore, of course, offered Standard Six, but there was an added incentive of going to Mount Selinda-the institution trained teachers and one could be accepted at the nurse training college there at Willis F Pierce Memorial Hospital that the people called ‘‘chibhedhlera.’’

Having been trained as a primary school teacher at Mount Selinda, I joined Chibuwe School as a teacher in 1959 soon after the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress had been banned. As the Land Husbandry Act effects bit the Africans, I became effective in defying those laws.

Dip tanks were symbols of oppression. It is ironical that while dip tanks prevented the deaths of cattle, people hated dip tanks with a passion.

I joined a group of young men who destroyed bridges in Mutema, Musikavanhu, Mapungwana and Gwenzi areas. We destroyed those bridges so that the white man could not come and collect tax in our areas. They harassed villagers as they collected the levies. We felt that it was not in the white man’s place to collect those taxes since we had not accepted him as our conqueror.

During the time of ZAPU, I was an active member of the sabotage team. We knew the white man was armed to the teeth, but we felt in our small way that we were sending a message to Ian Smith and his acolytes that we could not continue countenancing the evil among us. We believed that we were all made in the image of God.

Rhodesian Special Branch operatives noted my sabotage activities that included throwing petrol bombs at installations and I realized I was in trouble and may be arrested or detained any time. I took a bold decision to skip the border.

Zambia had recently obtained independence in 1964 under the leadership of Kenneth Kaunda with his trademark white handkerchief.

I fled to Zambia via Kanyemba Pools in Sipolilo in October 1965. To cross over, I used a banana trunk and swam to safety, but what I thought would happen after my arrival did not materialise. Soon after the split in ZAPU, things were not always in black and white. It appeared as those cadres who wanted to join the nationalist struggle on the side of ZANU did not get a comfortable reception in Zambia. Because of that, I returned home.

William Ndangana who came from Chikore was one of the famed Crocodile Gang members and my hope was to emulate him, but it was not to be. Perhaps, I was at the wrong place at the wrong time because Cde Robert Mugabe, a teacher was among the leaders of ZANU.

As a teacher, I returned to Rhodesia and looked for employment. I returned to teach at Chironga Mission near Ruya River in Mount Darwin.

There, I had my first stint as a collaborator in the prosecution of the liberation war. Teachers were highly regarded and whatever they said was accepted by the community.

The Mount Darwin community understood the pain inflicted by the white through their laws that made Africans passive and poor.

I had a young man who helped me in my garden while I paid his fees. He established contact with the guerrillas on my behalf. As the war took a decisive stage, Mount Darwin became hot. I continued to feed the guerrillas in spite of the ever presence of the Special Branch.

In 1973 liberation war fighters burnt Chironga Mission in Mount Darwin. Colonial authorities pinned the arson attack on me. I could not stay there any minute longer. All the way from Mount Darwin, there were road blocks manned by the police, but plain clothed Special Branch men were there including those from Military Intelligence. I fled at night. Coming from Chipinge, it would take time for them to identify me as I wasn’t a local resident. Actually, they were shooting in the dark.

With my heart in my mouth, I navigated the mines thrown at me by the colonial authorities on my way home.

I took two days to get to Chibuwe where I had built a homestead for myself and my family. Immediately thereafter, I began teaching at Chibuwe School. During those days, there was always a vacant post for a teacher to get employed. Remember, the authorities’ bottleneck education system made it difficult to satisfy the teacher demand.

My family had been with me in all these constant transfers and I felt that now was the time to concentrate my political activities in a place closer home.

I could not allow tyranny to continue unabated in Rhodesia and let Ian Smith and Du Pont run away with murder on my watch. For me, the war of liberation, now in its most decisive phase, had to end with the Africans emerging victorious.

This is Henry Hanyani Hlahla’s account up to 1973 when he had to flee from Mount Darwin.

Next week, he talks about his detention at Hwahwa and how he rubbed shoulders with some of the icons of Zimbabwean nationalists. Don’t miss a copy of The Manica Post.

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