Online Reporter
For CDE JOHN GAZI, whose nom de guerre was Alfred Dube, joining the fight for independence was not a matter of persuasion; it was a deeply personal decision. Driven by an unreserved loathing for white imperialists and their oppressive systems, he crossed the border to join the countless sons and daughters of Zimbabwe fighting for freedom. This week, Cde Gazi recounts to our Society Editor PRINCE MUSHAVEVATO how he rejected multiple university education offers, choosing instead to dedicate his life to the liberation of his motherland.
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Q: Could you begin by introducing yourself and providing a brief overview of your background?
A: My name is John Gazi, although during the liberation struggle I was known by my war name, Alfred Dube.
I come from a family of four boys born to my mother and father. My father also had daughters from other relationships, though I am not certain how many.
I was the only one in my immediate family who joined the liberation struggle.
For my education, I attended Mpumelelo Primary School and later Mambo Primary School in Gweru, before proceeding to Fletcher High School. After completing high school, I joined the liberation struggle, travelling through Botswana on my way to Zambia.
Shortly after my arrival, I was transferred to Tanzania and later posted to the Soviet Union for advanced military training.
Two of my brothers and I attended Fletcher High School. Gaining admission was no small feat — it was highly competitive at the time, with the school accepting only the top two learners from each feeder school.
The brother who comes directly after me became a medical doctor, having trained in Liverpool, the United Kingdom, where our mother had also received her training.
My other brother has lived in the UK for the past 54 years and currently works as a lecturer at Cambridge University.
Q: How were you introduced to African nationalism?
A: When I arrived at the liberation camps, some of the senior fighters encouraged me to pursue university education. However, I declined. I chose the path of the armed struggle instead. It was a deeply personal decision.
University opportunities had been available to me, both back home and even after I reached the camps. But my resolve to fight the oppressive regime ran deep.
It was not something anyone had to convince me to do; I had a strong, instinctive hatred for the white colonialists and everything they represented. I needed no further motivation to take up arms.
Even today, I still carry resentment towards those who continue to uphold white supremacy, particularly in the way some behave in South Africa and how certain former Rhodesians cling to the delusion that they will one day reclaim farms in Zimbabwe.
The mere thought that they still believe those farms belong to them is a profound insult to our struggle. They only took the land after colonising us and we fought hard to liberate ourselves and correct that anomaly.
I trained at Morogoro.
Our instructors included Dubhu, Godfrey, Jack Mpofu, Goronga and PV (Philip Valerio) Sibanda, who is the current Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces.
When PV arrived, I had just returned from the Soviet Union and we met in Dar es Salaam. They — PV Sibanda, Godfrey, the late Stanley Gagisa, the late Skoke Gashious Moya and Assaf — were coming from Lebanon, where they had completed their commando training. They were the commando group.
The chiefs and camp commanders we found in Tanzania, who trained and groomed us, included Brigadier-General Ambrose Mutinhiri (Retired), who was the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) chief of staff; and Ackim Ndlovu, who was the first ZIPRA commander. Our representatives in Tanzania were Cde Albert Nxele and Cde Swazi; they are all national heroes.
Q: Can you take us through the training process?
A: We had commissars and the training was tough. Our camp commissar at that time was Colonel Richard Dube (Retired).
The first thing at the training camp was the political aspect. This was so you understood why you joined the struggle and which political line you would follow; it was essentially an orientation. We were taught the ideology that united us, which, at that time, was Marxist-Leninist. So, before any physical training, we went through mental conditioning.
We were also made to understand that while we had friends in Tanzania, they had their own ideologies, just as we had ours. We learnt that our true friends, who genuinely looked after our interests, were in the eastern bloc, countries like Cuba. It was clear that the Socialist countries were our allies.
From there, we moved to physical training: tactics, long marches, judo, bayonet combat and march and meeting engagements, among other things. Here, we were basically focusing on the strategy and tactics of war, including shooting range practice and so on.
It was tough. At times, you would feel it would have been better to have continued with school. But we soldiered on and got toughened with the art of guerrilla warfare at Morogoro, Tanzania. We gained the basics of guerrilla warfare there. After that, I was selected to be part of the first group of battalion soldiers to be trained in the Soviet Union.
This was in 1976 and the group was made up of 20 fighters.
Q: You can carry on.
A: We travelled with uMkhonto weSizwe fighters. In Dar es Salaam, the leadership was actually joint, comprising leaders from ZIPRA and uMkhonto weSizwe.
Joe Modise and Ackim Ndlovu were working under the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) Liberation Committee.
That organisation was responsible for securing armaments since it could not be done randomly. The person in charge of the camp then was the late General (Hashim) Mbita, a Tanzanian army leader.
We (the 20 from Morogoro) mixed with our colleagues from uMkhonto.
At that time, the Tanzanian government had clamped down on our movements and had even disarmed some of our camps. However, we managed to manoeuvre out of the camps and were picked up some distance away.
We received “fixed” travel documents; we were listed as students, yet they knew we were fighters. We travelled to what was, at the time, the highest military academy in the Soviet Union, which exclusively offered senior officers’ courses.
There, we met Angolan, Cuban, Vietnamese and Palestinian teams, all specialising in motorised infantry battalion command.
Q: Was this training preparing you to be field fighters or commanders?
A: The training was more like a semi-commando drill, focusing heavily on endurance.
Every morning, we would do a short march for 30 kilometres and perform toi-toi (a rhythmic protest chant and dance) between 4am and 5am. Following the release of Joshua Nkomo, the number of people coming for training increased significantly. That is why they opted for larger unit training, specifically as battalion commanders.
The expectation was to advance from advanced guerrilla warfare training to regular warfare — a more sophisticated system.
Guerrilla fighters typically operated in small units, mainly armed with machine guns.
But when you graduate to regular warfare, which our motorised infantry training prepared us for, you would now have artillery cover, rockets, tanks, Katyushas (multiple rocket launchers) and armoured personnel carriers, among other weapons, all part of our syllabus.
We were also taught how to command troops with air cover. It was a comprehensive training programme.
That is when we also started training pilots.
We reached a point where the enemy could not bomb our units without encountering our own air force. It was an all-arms commanders course, Group 107.
Q: Can you explain the logic behind advancing from guerrilla warfare tactics to regular warfare?
A: The plan was always to advance our training. We moved from smaller numbers to larger numbers as a way to match, or even surpass, the enemy.
We had to devise strategies that were consistently better than those of the Rhodesians.
The Rhodesians had an advanced army and ZIPRA was developing step by step, from simple guerrilla warfare (hit-and-run tactics) to advanced guerrilla warfare.
Comrades who trained over the years had to go through all these steps to ensure they could defeat the enemy and, crucially, defend the country once liberation was achieved.
You simply cannot win and control a country using only hit-and-run tactics.
The commanders planned everything meticulously, always aiming for us to be one step ahead.
Next week, Cde John Gazi will continue his narration, highlighting how they improved their fighting strategies in their quest to end colonial rule.
Online Reporter