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Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu, Correspondent
A former stalwart of the Zimbabwe armed liberation struggle, 90 – year – old Enock Thaka, who died at his Burnside residence in Bulawayo on March 22, 2019 will be buried at the city’s Lady Stanley Cemetery this morning.
Thaka died after a rather long illness during which he was in and out of hospital several times.
He was a typical political product of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. While he was about 10 years old, the Southern Rhodesia white minority settler regime forcefully removed his entire community from the fertile and healthy Mananda region of the then Bulilimamangwe District and dumped them at Malalume, also known as kaSenganyundo, some 100km or so to the west.
The Mananda area had been declared a “white only” commercial farming area in accordance with the 1930 Land Apportionment Act.
That traumatic experience formed and shaped Enock Thaka’s political future which he reflected practically by joining first the National Democratic Party’s (NDP’s) youth league in 1960, and later that of the NDP’s successor, the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) in 1961 after the NDP was outlawed by the Rhodesian administration.
He was at that time employed by the Rhodesia Railways, and was transferred to the then Northern Rhodesia, later Zambia. When ZAPU was also prescribed in September 1962, it decided to go underground and to wage an armed liberation struggle, with Zambia as its rear base.
Thaka’s house at Choma, in Zambia’s Southern Province, became an (if not the) important base on which ZAPU guerrillas relied for suppliers for the Choma – Kariba – Livingstone – Chirundu sector.
So committed to the struggle was Thaka and his wife, another staunch ZAPU member, that many ZAPU guerrilla commanders including P.V. Sibanda, who is now the head of Zimbabwe’s Defence Forces (ZDF),
regularly utilized the couple’s material support.
The ZAPU armed wing known as the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (Zipra) had divided its Zambian operational area into several regions in which the Signal Department played a vital role. The Choma sector was under Scotch (actual name Bulukani Timothy Masola). He worked most closely with the Thakas.
On many occasions, he would leave his Land/ Rover at the Thaka’s residence and take one of the Thaka’s vehicles to use in that extremely dangerous operational area. It was in that very area, incidentally, that the celebrated Zipra commander, Rogers Nikita Mangena, together with quite a number of gallant young patriots met their deaths.
Another hero who worked intimately with the Thakas is Nyamupingidza, now a Retired Colonel and Victoria Falls resident.
After his vehicle was seriously damaged by Smith’s forces, Thaka gave him his truck, and he used it for three months! Thaka later gave Zipra an old Land/Rover body on which ZAPU mounted an engine and other parts to make it usable. That vehicle survived the armed struggle and was brought to Zimbabwe as a Zipra asset in 1980.
Thaka was very, very committed to the liberation of Zimbabwe, and would never hesitate to give the last drop of his blood to have that achieved, a fact he showed by his selfless commitment in practical material terms.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo – based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]
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