Vusumuzi Dube
Pathisa Nyathi
MEKI Edward Mafu lives at Mbembeswana in Matobo District, Matabeleland South province. For very long he desired to get in touch with me so that his story could be recorded. He is a keen follower of the programme, “Amafa Ethu,” that Luke Mnkandla and I run on Skyz Metro FM. Through his son Innocent, who works for the Bulawayo City Council (BCC), he has been communicating with us.
Mbembeswana is no less than 120 kilometres away from Bulawayo, quite a prohibitive distance.
I went to attend a burial for Percy Bhebhe who was a close friend from several years back in the early 1970s. I knew I was going to get in touch with Mafu and his long-standing wish was going to be fulfilled. Indeed, Mafu was there among a large crowd of mourners who thronged his homestead. Wherever I go, I never leave behind a pen and paper. While others were attending a Salvation Army-run burial service, Mafu and I stealthily sneaked away and ensconced ourselves behind a house where we conducted our interview on 23 February 2023.
Mafu was born on 3 January 1929 in Mbembeswana. The area was part of the Shashane Reserve set aside for the African people who were being evicted from the lands to the north that white colonists were taking over nearer Bulawayo. Some of the people who settled at Mbembeswana and adjacent areas arrived in 1912 under the leadership of Chief Mdilizelwa Fuyana, son of Maphisa, an Imbizo man credited with killing Major Allan Wilson at the Battle of Pupu on the morning of 24th December 1893.
The people he led belonged to Isizinda Village located near Centenary area not very far from Figtree.
Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo in his book, “Joshua Nkomo: The Story of My Life,” chronicles how his parents were evicted from Tjimali close to the Matobo Hills to be resettled at the parched and hot Mbembeswana before relocating to Bidi where his father, Thomas Nyongolo Nkomo was a diptank attendant. Nkomo was later to become a trade unionist and nationalist whose influence was vast and led to political consciousness in the broad areas associated with his rural home. No wonder there were many political activists in the area who included the following: Misheck Velaphi, Roger Matshimini Ncube, Tayima Tshelanyemba Ndlovu, Peter Njini Sibanda, Simon Bhebhe and Fanti Bhebhe, inter alia.
Also active in the Semokwe area was David Mongwa “Hunter” Moyo who passed on recently and sadly, his liberation story was not comprehensively captured, resulting in the national hero status that he undoubtedly deserved eluding him. He was a fearless and tactful saboteur and activist who participated in the sabotage campaign during a road and concealed it. A Land Rover belonging to the police fell into the pit. A police post beyond Sigangatsha, David Camp, was named after him. When “Hunter” became the hunted and the hounded, he jumped the border into Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) from where he proceeded to North Korea to undergo military training prior to being infiltrated into Rhodesia as part of a reconnaissance group in 1966 in preparation for a scheduled incursion in 1967, the Luthuli Detachment led by John Dube (JD). Their 1966 group was commanded by Roger Matshimini Ncube who had been involved in the attack on Zidube Ranch in September 1964. Retired Col. Tshinga Dube was also in the same 1966 group.
Mafu attended the Salvation Army’s Mbembeswana Primary School in 1941, There he did First Year, Sub-standards A and B and remained there until he completed Standard 6. The school head at the time was Major Nhari who was a commissioned Salvation Army officer who had trained at Howard Officers’ Training Institute. After impregnating a pupil and accepting responsibility, he left for Johannesburg in South Africa. In 1956, after a short working stint in Cape Town, Mafu came back home and married a Mpofu woman.
The political animal in him was getting more mature. He got involved in politics from the time of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) established on September 12 1957 at the Mai Musodzi Hall in Harare (now Mbare) Township, Salisbury (now Harare). The SRANC’s national leader was Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, a trade unionist and nationalist. However, Mafu was already familiar with the trade union movement that Masotsha Ndlovu established. It was Southern Rhodesia’s first trade union movement for blacks in the British colony in 1928.
Mafu served as the organising secretary for a branch under which he served. When ZPRA guerrillas first arrived at the Mbembeswana area he was in the forefront in meeting up with them and making sure they were well supplied with logistics and intelligence. He introduced them to the active members of Zapu in the area. Maqhageni and Mbambo were among the pioneering five ZPRA guerrillas in Mbembeswana. At the time, the Southern Front (SF) had been opened and ZPRA guerrillas were infiltrating Matabeleland South and parts of the Midlands through the new front that was less challenging in comparison to the Northern Front (NF) across the treacherous Zambezi River.
The net was closing in on Mafu. It was time to escape the wrath and terror of the oppressive Rhodesian security apparatus. Mafu and others crossed the Shashe River and travelled beyond Bobonong to Selebi Phikwe where there was a holding camp for refugees who awaited transfer to Francistown and flying out to Lusaka Airport.
From there lorries took them to Nampundwe Transit Camp. However, Mafu and group were not lucky to fly out of Francistown bound for Lusaka. The year was 1978 and the struggle had ratcheted. There were many from Rhodesia who availed themselves for conscription into the armed struggle forces at a time when Angola was also providing military training camps such as one at Boma
However, Mafu and group proceeded to Dukwe Camp where there were refugees in a camp run by Unicef, an organ of the United Nations (UN). Mafu remembers that their camp commander was one Makepesi. His next in command was Elleck Tshabangu from Gwanda. The inmates did some physical training that included the Algerian-originated toyi-toyi military exercises cum chanting. There were no weapons of war in the camp that were used during physical training.
About six plots housed the refugees: Plots 1, 2, 3 (the one nearest to the camp), 4, 4B, 5, and 5B. These various plots were located east of Dukwe Camp. The refugees were engaged in clearing bushes in some of the agricultural plots in readiness for growing vegetables and crops.
At independence, buses and lorries met returning refugees, among them Mafu, at the border between Zimbabwe, Rhodesia and Botswana. Availed transport ferried them to Thekwane High School and beyond to camps in Tsholotsho. Mafu did not enter any Assembly Point (AP) where guerrillas assembled following ceasefire in December 1979. Instead, Mafu headed home and by February 1980, he was back at Mbembeswana where he not only engaged in agricultural chores but also in campaigning for his party, PF-Zapu. He resumed his earlier role as Organising Secretary but this time at branch level.
Mafu reminds me before we exchange parting niceties that he is a poet and a wood carver. I gave him my book on the Babirwa people to whom he is related in exchange for a wooden stool that he had exquisitely carved.
Bongani Ndlovu