Chronicle Editor
Lenox Lizwi Mhlanga
ON 1 July, we commemorated the 20th anniversary of the passing of national hero, Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, Father Zimbabwe, Chibwechitedza.
For me it seems like yesterday that I was part of the Radio One team led by Phathu Manala to cover his emotional burial at the National Heroes’ Acre in Harare.
It has given me the opportunity to reflect on the struggle for Zimbabwe. If we all were to quantify and put a price to the contributions made towards the liberation of Zimbabwe it would open up a Pandora’s Box.
It then makes it absurd, if not arrogant, for a specific group of people to “claim” that it is their sacrifice alone that led to our independence. We are not taking away anything from what some of our compatriots went through. Liberation was not for “one-body”, it was for “all-body,” so said Tshuks.
The problem has been that of entitlement, the impression that we all have to continue to pay homage to certain people.
I believe I paid my price through lost time and privileges. Instead, my father spent time and money driving around the countryside supplying freedom fighters with food and clothing under the guise of running his business. So did both my late grandmothers in Lower Gweru and kwaMutasa.
My late father took it as an obligation to support the struggle in the best way that he could. And for that, he did not expect any payment in return, except that of seeing Zimbabwe free.
Do not get me wrong. You have seen how my siblings and I grew up in an environment where the source of our next meal was never in question. Yet we were never oblivious of the crisis that was fast paralysing the country in those days.
The signs were there around the city where we grew up; the military presence and the cooked-up reports and stage-managed capture of “terrorists” for propaganda purposes.
Yes, the Rhodesian media really played it up in the white regime’s favour of course! I would not have appreciated the direction the war was going if I had not been to boarding school at Fletcher in Gweru. There were occasional raids on beerhalls as the white army dredged for involuntary cannon fodder. No one in his right mind would have agreed to fight on their side against their own brothers and sisters.
In schools around the countryside, many were press-ganged into the war effort in that infamous and much detested practice called “call-up”. The arrests were relentless. Joshua Nkomo, Father Zimbabwe, whom I had the privilege to meet so many times and my father’s erstwhile friends, the late Sydney Malunga, John Nkomo and Lazarus Dlakama among others were routinely arrested, detained or “restricted”.
My father escaped arrest, but the danger was ever looming. The hushed tones in which him and others of his political inclination spoke about impi (war) and abafana (guerrillas), were a clear indication of the dangers that lurked outside walls that had eyes and ears.
The Rhodesians glorified war and everything revolved around what they called the “war effort”. It was patriotic for everyone to pull together, or be condemned for aiding and abetting Marxism and terrorism.
For us black people, there was a thin line between being a traitor and a supporter. People who supported the “terrs” as they colloquially put it, were dealt with decisively and viciously.
Then there were curfews at designed tribal trust lands, intended to stifle supplies and control movement of both people and livestock.
While we didn’t have “protected villages” in Lower Gweru like in Mukumbura, near Dotito in Mashonaland Central, the trips to see gogoMaNkiwane were getting far and few between because of the security situation.
Protected villages were glorified mass prisons where whole villages were barricaded to prevent the fish (the guerrillas) from getting to the water (the people) as Chairman Mao once postulated.
GogoMaNkiwane was my late paternal grandmother who would regale us with tales of war. She was the funniest person I have ever known. My late mother was the other, so we have a funny bone running on both sides of our family.
The guerrillas who were still able made it a habit to leave their wish (shopping) lists with our rural relatives for my father to pick up and supply. It would be the popular “farmer shoes” or veldskoens, khaki outfits or medical supplies.
By the time I moved to boarding school in 1978, the war had reached fever pitch. We got first-hand reports of the war from various parts of the country through schoolmates. We even learnt Chimurenga songs sung at pungwes (all night rallies). The camaraderie across political lines was contagious.
Such revolutionary fires were stocked by the external radio stations that pumped up the ante from Zambia and Mozambique. Some of our schoolmates lived double lives as innocent looking schoolboys during the term and as daring mujibhas or informers during the holidays.
Others never came back to school after either having been absorbed into the bush armies or worse, death, caught in the crossfire. What was obvious even at this time was that the war affected everyone in different ways and that we all contributed in one way or the other.
The modest man he still was, my father welcomed all manner of political activists to his doorstep when we eventually won our freedom which explains why he kept clear of party politics until his death in 2016.
Online Reporter