Online Reporter
Isdore Guvamombe
IN Kanyemba, the Zambezi River is a worthy benevolent mistress, its water providing the much-needed life, comfort and business in a vast wrap of arid land, hard for human habitat.
Unbearable heat, poor and unreliable rainfall patterns, malaria, tsetse fly, lack of infrastructure, roaming wildlife; all brought many challenges to the people in Rhodesia.
Where the land meets the water, in swash and back-wash, silky white coves hem in the azure bays and the Kanyemba community that lives on the south bank loves it. Lives on it. And, at times, dies from it.
At this point after some 2 500km from it source, Zambezi River crawls on its final stretch to Cahora Bassa, after a long energy-sapping journey through eight countries; the water must be tired.
On the northern bank of the river is the Luangwa community of Zambia, anchoring Lusaka about 100km to the north. Lusaka housed Zanu and Zapu headquarters.
On the eastern side of Kanyemba is Zumbo in Mozambique, whose border with Zimbabwe is superfluous, marked mutual respect, trees and stones. Nothing more.
During the liberation struggle, Kanyemba was a major crossing point for freedom fighters and a critical resupply route for weaponry and other war trinkets.
The footprints are still there for all and sundry to see.
Here, geography and history rendered the land inhabitable and in Rhodesia, it required tough people to survive.
Footprints of war
Moonlight slants down through the leaves and blossoms of the thicket, making whimsical coloured patterns that flicker on the ground.
On a normal night, the moon would have been magnificently crescent, but it was somehow humble and soft. Shy!
Three off-duty police officers are walking from a binge at Chapoto village to Kanyemba Police Station in Mbire, and tree leaves crack under their heavy boots.
They are not particularly worried about the creepy-crawls, for the high-cut boots give them some comfort.
It is silly cold. A faint warm breeze stirs the sleepy leaves from the Zambezi River, bringing with it the fragrance of flowering grass and trees, and a breath of something languidly inducing idleness and strangeness.
The night is unique, eerie and profound.
As they walk on a footpath and recount the day’s activities in low voices, they cast eyes on the forest, scanning for predators, and suddenly there is a ghostly figure of a man and it blocks their way.
Startled, they cast their eyes on the forest again and again, and to their surprise the ghostly figures increase in number.
Their movements are strangely omnipresent.
Everything becomes superfluous! For almost 10 minutes, the officers fight to go past these figures, but they continue to block their way.
Suddenly, the ghosts start shoving, kicking and punching again and again.
With sudden sluggishness, they disappear into the night, but the officers are unable to tell if they have disappeared underground, into the bush, skyrocketed or morphed into air.
This is not fiction and it is not a script for a horror movie. It is a daily occurrence to many who dare pass through this spot, “The Ghost Point” — a spitting distance from Kanyemba Police Station.
Many freedom fighters were ambushed and killed by Rhodesian forces as they crossed from Zambia and Mozambique.
Zanla and Zipra forces used Kanyemba as a crossing point, taking advantage of the river and the vast uninhabitable lands, before spreading into Zimbabwe.
The Ghost Point is a mass grave for liberation fighters and villagers murdered by the Rhodesian secret services and stashed into one huge pit.
Anyone at the police station today will testify that this still happens.
The mass grave is just outside the perimeter fence of the police station.
Built in Rhodesia, the police station is on the bank of Zambezi River, less than 2km west of the confluence of Zambezi and Luangwa rivers and about 4km north of the confluence of Zambezi and Mwanzamutanda rivers.
There is another mass grave south of the police station, on a valley floor, as one branches off the road to the new immigration offices.
A small concrete block stands in that valley as a mark of those who died in the struggle.
The mark at the “Ghost Point”, as locals call it, and another on the southern valley, stand guarding the police station.
The dead there must be turning and twisting in their graves, demanding decent reburial.
Liberation war and geography
Kanyemba’s geographical location is important. Here, Zimbabwe Zambia and Mozambique meet on the northernmost part of Zimbabwe.
Luangwa in Zambia and Zumbo in Mozambique have long been established as towns, and recently, the Government of Zimbabwe has moved to build Kanyemba town.
Suffice to say, located upstream of the Cahora Bassa Dam, Kanyemba has since the slave trade been a transit point to the Indian Ocean.
Today, a stone structure used as a holding camp for captured slaves, still stands, albeit in dilapidated state, as a stark reminder of the contribution this part of the world made to human trade.
Kanyemba was a crossing point by hand-made canoes between Zimbabwe and Zambia since time immemorial. It still is a crossing point and will be a much bigger crossing point now that the Government is building a town.
During the liberation struggle, fighters from Zipra, the military wing of Zapu and Zanla, the military wing of Zanu, (now Zanu PF) used this point.
Some were captured by Rhodesian soldiers, murdered and buried in mass graves. Villagers too were captured and killed for supporting the struggle and stashed in the same graves.
The same burial method was used again and again. There are also several single graves dotted around Kanyemba Police Station, itself a murder chamber.
There is need to mark all the grave sites, entomb and enshrine them.
There is need to properly document what happened in Kanyemba.
There is also need for a cleansing ceremony to pacify the spirits of the dead.
The ghosts should be interpreted as a signal that they want to say something. It is a signal. Let us read the signal.
Even in world-class cities, it is a norm to erect a statues or tombs for the harbingers or the autochthons.
Those who died at Kanyemba might as well have a symbolic tomb or statue that stands imposingly as reminder of the new town’s history.
daniel chigunwe