Chronicle Editor
Pathisa Nyathi
THIS is the final installment on the visit to the Frontline states and the Zimbabwean liberation movements by Gorge M Houser.
What we have been seeking to understand are the reasons for their timely missions.
We cannot help but find some commonalities in their visits and discussions with various players within the liberation movements, from their mentors and sponsors to the leaders of the movements themselves.
The two were not primarily about investigating the areas where relief work was needed the most. Of course that they did to a lesser extent as it provided safe landing for them and was more than a thick veneer in concealing the more deep-seated intentions underpinning their visits.
One aspect that emerges quite clearly is their interest in the operations of the Patriotic Front (PF) that had been established in 1976 following the demise of the Zimbabwe People’s Army(ZIPA) whose collapse was acrimonious and did inform, to a large extent relations between the two liberation movements in the post-independence era.
These were efforts at uniting the liberation movements which were engineered by the Frontline states who were keen to avoid conflict after independence. They were right as that was precisely what happened when Gukurahundi was ushered resulting in a conflict that continues to vex Zimbabweans to this day.
The challenge was that the efforts at unity were not seriously taken by the liberation movements themselves. Instead, they were an imposition from the Frontline states. Previously there had been the Mbeya Agreement of 1972.
Later there was the African National Council created after the Lusaka Agreement on 1974 when the nationalists were released from detention and rallied behind the leadership of Bishop Abel Muzorewa. It was a stillbirth.
ZIPA was to follow two years later and now the PF. The last came at a time when it was clear independence was about to become a reality. The winner takes all mentality was haunting the partners. That position was fuelled by Western countries who just could not countenance the two partners fighting the 1980 elections as a block.
Their economic interests were not going to be served by that arrangement. Certainly, the arrangement would have led to the avoidance of Gukurahundi.
Gukurahundi from a Western perspective was a perfect formula to safeguard their economic interests. All manner of covert and overt political shenanigans were engaged in to ensure there was no possibility of a united front when it came to general elections. Beelines were maintained by all manner of visitor undercover agents to keep their tabs on the political developments and, where possible, throw the spanner into the works.
That they did successfully. On the part of PF-ZAPU who still harboured some hope that there was some outside chance of a united front had their hopes shattered when they got the news that Josiah Magama Tongogara, the ZANLA commander, had been involved in a fatal road accident on the eve of independence. To them he was the pillar of hope to avoid post-independence discord, disunity and the resulting political mayhem.
Further, in Maputo there were new arrivals from various locations in the world, some of whom were involved with academic work. Some of them got involved in muddying the political waters so as to open up spaces for themselves and maximise their chances of benefitting big time when all along they had been having it nice away from the theatre of war.
Houser wrote in his report, “When I was in Maputo at ZANU headquarters I met an old friend of mine who had taught in the US. He was spending at least a year while on sabbatical from his teaching post working on whatever he was asked to do with ZANU.
He said to me in private conversation, ‘George, I had no idea of the size and the strength of the movement before I came here.’ Since he was one of the founding members of the movement back in 1963 but had been in the US for quite a few years, this was a comment to make note of.”
The role of the intelligentsia is important to take note of in the struggle for independence. It has been noted that the intelligentsia, known in the IsiNdebele language as onteletsha, led to the intensity of conflict within the nationalist movements.
The Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) formed on 12 September 1957 at the Mai Musodzi Hall in Harare Township (Mbare), witnessed a period when there were fewer in the category of the intelligentsia.
Then in February 1959 Edgar Whitehead’s government threw the promulgation of the Emergency Regulations ACT and the Unlawful Organisations Act when the SRANC leadership in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was thrown into prisons and their party proscribed.
The following year a successor party, the National Democratic Party (NDP) was formed on 1 January 1960. This time the vacuum created through the incarceration of the nationalist leadership was filled partly by elements in the intelligentsia. Observations were that that period ushered political conflict within the nationalist movement culminating in the 1963 split.
The educated had links with the Western world where they received their education. During their tenure some of them were approached by secret agents in those countries with messages calculated to foment division within the movement and drive a wedge into it. Houser did pose the question, “What about the relationship between ZAPU and ZANU within the Patriotic Front?”
“It is impossible within a short space to deal with this in any fundamental way. There are strains and stresses without doubt. Some of the tensions which caused ZANU to split from ZAPU fifteen years ago are still present. Yet there is a new situation at the present time. The movements need one another. Neither one of them wishes to be responsible for destroying the Patriotic Front. They have a certain degree of coordination but their contacts are limited.”
Houser noted the secret talks at State House in Lusaka between PF-ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo and Ian Douglas Smith, the Rhodesian Prime Minister. The secret meeting had taken place without the knowledge of the ZANU leader, Robert Gabriel Mugabe and the Presidents of the Frontline states with the exception of Dr Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia.
Houser acknowledged that the incident was an embarrassing revelation. The secret encounters came to naught because Nkomo refused to engage in further talks in the absence of Robert Mugabe. Besides, the ZANU Central Committee had turned down the idea of these talks. Be that as it may, the fact that contact had been made did not auger well in terms of good relations between the two liberation movements.
To observers, including ZANU itself, it was a repeat of the 1975 unilateral talks between the ANC-Zimbabwe, led by Joshua Nkomo, and the Rhodesian government. It caused great embarrassment to the armed wing of ZAPU and ridicule from ZANU.
In retrospect the Patriotic Front was shaken beyond repair. The two parties still mistrusted each other to a point where they fought the 1980 general elections as separate political parties. PF-ZAPU, after putting so much effort towards the struggle for independence found itself as a loser who was invited to play second fiddle to ZANU(PF) and being invited to take part in the emerging independence government.
There was looming political disaster on an unprecedented scale.
Online Reporter