admincombination of a weak signal and a dying battery muffled the sound of a female voice in distress. But modern technology was undaunted. An SMS message soon popped on my phone: Dad is dead. What do I do now Uncle? Signed: Chiedza Kambasha Mayowe.
Chiedza is the eldest daughter of Ambassador John Mayowe, a close personal and family friend, a fellow student at the then University of Rhodesia in the tumultuous 70s, a companion conspirator in sacrificing academic pursuit for the call of national redemption through the virility of the fit of arms, a lifelong revolutionary comrade and a fellow diplomat.
My heart slumped. It knew this territory already. My mind flew back to over a decade ago. The late Rejoice Kadungure, a war veteran family friend phoned me while on a business trip to Johannesburg at the dawn of the mobile cellphone era. She broke to me the heartrending news of the passing on of Willard Duri a.k.a Hapana Zororo in a terrible accident on the eve of his posting as ambassador to Cuba.
I got to know John Mayowe through Willard Duri. Victorious Samora Machel in nearby Mozambique had by 1974, successfully broken the resolve of the Portuguese imperial army to continue prosecuting a colonial war in nearby Mozambique. His FRELIMO was in league with Augustino Neto’s MPLA in Angola and PAIGC of assassinated Amilcar Cabral of Guinea Bissau. For Zimbabweans and the whole sub-region, the myth of the imperial era invincibility of the European colonials over the African subjects had suddenly been shattered. This was a by-product of the even development of human societies. Europe got an early break when it converted a millennia old Chinese gun powder technology into the gun and the bullet that revolutionised the art and science of war.
The spear, the sword, the bow and arrow were simply no match. A gun favoured army could henceforth kill from a safe distance giving it absolute advantage over any adversary not similarly armed. The infamous Berlin Conference of 1884 that partitioned Africa had one salient clause that had ominous global consequences. It quarantined access to gun out of all other non-European civilisations. That way the fate of the Red Indians and Aborigines was sealed. Africans were a shade luckier to escape genocide. They still bear deep scars of slavery, wars of conquest and colonial subjection. Hurrah to the fact that they survived to fight another day.
We owe eternal gratitude to Lenin and his Bolshevik revolutionaries for breaking out of this cartel of guns. Soviet Russia would go on to flood the world with the epominous Klashnikov assault rifle to the jubilant salvation of all oppressed peoples. The majority of humanity could still be saved from enthralment to a predatory Europe.
This historical diversion serves to put the events of the 1970s in proper context. A terrible beauty was born in the call to arms to settle national grievances that had plagued people for centuries. The message was clear: vonoroveka vapambe pfumi. We could emulate Samora Machel and his conquering FRELIMO. Yes were also perfectly capable of bringing die hard Rhodesian colonial racists to heel.
The impetus for the call to arms got a huge shot in the arm when the Rhodesian racists assassinated Herbert Chitepo in March 1975, a pioneer black lawyer of the colonial era who had turned revolutionary and founded the ZANLA guerrilla army from exile in Tanzania and Zambia. This callous murder agitated the whole country more so in the world of academia particularly at the University of Rhodesia. We organised a demonstration that found its way to the Highfields home of ZANU leader Robert Mugabe then baptised Comrade Chimurenga in underground political circles.
The Rhodesian racists responded with a stark show of naked force. Their army and security details carried undoubted intent to spill rivers of blood of the manifesting university students. This was in their vein since the Pioneer Column occupation of 1890 and the subsequent violent quelling down of wars of resistance and rebellion between 1893 and 1897. It was clear to all that non-violent confrontation was no way to face a breed of hardened racist killers who enjoyed monopoly to the means of coercion and pacification.
But there was a silver lining. It dawned on us that Mozambique was slated to be independent in June 1975. And a few weeks after our thwarted demonstration, news filtered that Comrade Chimurenga had slipped through Rhodesian security surveillance into Mozambique to take over from where Chitepo had left. For the most politically conscious among our university student ranks, academic pursuit rapidly dropped in terms of personal priorities as the bigger cause took hold of our minds.
One day Willard Duri approached me with a message. A group of university students are leaving for Mozambique to go and join the armed fight for freedom. I know you will be part of the group. His study of the human psyche was right. I knew that was it. In turn I approached fellow law student Martin Ndebele a.k.a Sobusa Gazi. He was Ndebele as his name. Politically his first inclination would probably have been to go to the ZIPRA side. But the call of Zimbabwe had no room for petty differences that were a sideshow. I soon established that there were two others in the Duri enterprise. Masimba Mwazha another St. Augustines Penhalonga alumnus and John Mayowe. I never asked how he came into the fold but he was clearly a co-recruiter.
We took the train to Mutare within 24 hours as any delay would have been fatal to our absconding plans. The Rhodesia secret service was festooned into the African college student community of the University. Some among them went on to embrace whole-hearted and loyal service in the hated racist army. Eric Matinenga, now minister and an honourable member of parliament belongs to that group. His sole basis to be elected to office today is the vote we, his class and university mates that include John Mayowe offered to pay the supreme sacrifice of life for.
Muddled thinking proffers to specious argumentation in gratitude to a gift of suffrage that dropped from heaven like manna. Post independence revisionism is even wont to give credit to the self-same colonisers who violently snatched that right away from our forefathers. The contrast cannot be more stark. For money and promise of a career as a colonial appendage, some quite smart intellectuals could not see anything amiss in hunting down former class and university mates now in the ranks of the guerrilla army fighting for the vote they would later use to get into elected office. This is the irony of ironies.
More than many attributes that make for revolution, the mind is easily the most important. No revolution succeeds unless it is based on and continues to adhere to ideological clarity. That is why Chitepo spent so much energy to study the intellectual basis of revolutionary praxis. That is why Robert Mugabe’s stewardship of the same army saved the day when the superpower USA had focussed on Zimbabwe through Kissinger’s Détente Exercise.
For all fighters in preparation for the battlefront, taking charge of the gun was the last and final act in a long period of mind preparation for the arduous challenge of struggle with and for the people. It is in this domain that an intellectual like John Mayowe was in his full revolutionary mettle.
He was among the first to become political commissars assisting the few trained cadres who had been brought in to mould the swelling ranks of fighters into a formidable fighting force that became ZANLA. He worked hard during the day and spent nights burning the candle poring over the writings of Lenin, Mao tse Tung, Che Guevara, Amilcar Cabral on how best to shape a mind to battle an enemy with conventional military superiority. He read far and wide for ideas that would assist convert the masses of the people of Zimbabwe to the cause of an armed fight for freedom and independence.
After I returned wounded from the battle front I met a John Mayowe who was now Director of the Chitepo School of Ideology at Chimoio. He was leading a team of researchers and lecturers working on compendiums of lecture notes that covered all aspects of the theory and practice of revolution for approval of the party leadership. Thereafter it would be the ideological teaching material to tens of thousands of eager recruits. This was the glue that would make comrades stick to each other in the heat of battle and in any other war related adversity.
This wonderful intellectual endeavour worked to cleanse the budding fighters of the parochial mental tendencies that may be associated with rural cattle herd boys, city labourers, students, preachers young women given to weeding fields, fetching water and other household chores as well as other Zimbabweans in their various social calls. In its place took over a new national outlook that became a vital force of nation building. Thirty-two years down the line, the solidity of the new Zimbabwe nation state owes a lot to this sterling work.
The Mwenje II booklet is without doubt an enduring testament to the wonderful intellectual endeavours of John Mayowe and the team of political commissars that had presence in Chimoio, Chibawawa, Tembwe, Doeroi, Mgagau, Nachingwea and in every unit deployed on the war front.
Mayowe was among the pioneer diplomats of the new Zimbabwe in 1980 soon after independence. It was familiar territory to him as he had served as the party representative in Libya overseeing the training of thousands of recruits courtesy of the generous pan-African president Gaddafi. Alas imperialism neither forgets nor forgives and he recently became the latest victim.
The memory of the thousands of victims genocidal massacres by Rhodesian racists remained strong for the post-independence diplomat. He was determined to make sure posterity never losses memory of their heroic and selfless sacrifices. Going beyond the call of strict adherence to profession, Ambassador Mayowe worked hard so the two brotherly nations of Mozambique and Zimbabwe erect the Chimoio Monument to Second Chimurenga Heroes and Heroines. Suffice to say this was no easy assignment at a time Mozambique was under the debilitating destabilisation of dying racist and apartheid colonial order that had thrown the Geneva Conventions on Humane Conduct of War to the winds as it faced the inevitability and imminence of defeat in the sub-region.
Today courtesy of the monument, Chimurenga tourism is part of the vibrant interaction between the two neighbouring countries further cementing the bonds of our people. The other day I met Dr Ngwabi Bhebhe, Vice Chancellor of the Midlands State University at O.R. Tambo Airport. He broke to me the news of a riveting book about the Second Chimurenga he had finished reviewing. Most exciting was that it was in the mother language. He told me that I feature in that narrative. Being master of the curious, the good historian said, he will only reveal the author John Mayowe. He cautioned me against any reading of it after its publication. The reason: he wants my own version of the same events of this momentous period of nation building so young people and future generations can learn from a thousand flowers of thought.
I know the pain that Tendai, your dear wife from the war times is going through on your passing on. This pain is shared by your children and grandchildren. I take comfort in that a lifetime of great works serves to highlight that the prosecution of a socio-political revolution such as Chimurenga II is the highest form of intellectual pursuit a committed mind can ever engage in the life of a nation. It is even more sweet when you have been lucky to witness the victory. Go well comrade.
A revolution creates its own unique bonds of human relations precisely because it is an endeavour in the rebirth of a people and their nation akin to a mother bringing new life to earth. You cannot help but admire anyone from anywhere regardless of social post or geographical location abandoning all that is the stock in trade of mundane living to embrace fellow Zimbabweans in a collective commitment to die for the noble cause of national rebirth.
As I type I keep wiping the keyboard of streaming tears. I just cannot overcome my human frailty. This is an unpardonable act of weakness on someone who has known his fair share of the omnipresent shadow that is death. This came from the intensely personal decision to choose the path of revolution leading to victory for the just cause and the common good through subjecting oneself to excruciating pain in the land of death at no prospect of personal reward let alone one’s survival. It was a bold act of national rebirth that started as a flicker of fire in the 60s. By the 70s it morphed into a raging inferno engulfing the colonial and racist miscreants that had infested our sacred territory for nearly a century.
During that spell of revolutionary life, death was one’s shadow, ever stalking, staring you in the face to inexplicable survival in fire-fights, in hunger, in disease and in all other means that deprive of the precious and one and only gift of life. For in war and revolution these devils acquire a new abundance that only war and revolution can magnify and multiply in numerous ways.
Online Reporter