Tinaye Agere
This week CDE Patrick Chinamasa concludes recounting the riveting story of a fallen freedom fighter buried in a mass grave in Mashonaland Central province, who reached out to his relatives in Buhera in a bid to get a decent burial at his family home.
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THERE was a surprise enemy attack that killed three of the freedom fighters on the spot.
Edson Chikwata (Cde Silver Mutomba) was shot in the leg.
He was then captured the following day.
While still in that injured state, Chikwata was tied and made to dangle, while hoisted from underneath a helicopter, and flown low over the length and breadth of the area of his command. The aircraft was equipped with a loud hailer and a voice was shouting that Chikwata had been captured and that all guerrilla fighters under his command should give up fighting and surrender forthwith.
The Rhodesian enemy forces took Chikwata first to Mt Darwin and then had him treated at Harare Central Hospital (now Sally Mugabe Central Hospital).
After treatment, they took him back to Mt Darwin with the motive of recruiting Chikwata as a member of the Selous Scouts (a unit of the Rhodesian army specialising in counter-insurgency warfare, pseudo-operations and reconnaissance).
Chikwata, however, refused to sell out the revolution. Following a helicopter crash near the scene where Chikwata was imprisoned, killing all nine white soldiers on board, including the pilot, the Rhodesian forces suspected fighters loyal to him had downed the aircraft.
As later narrated by Amis, who had been imprisoned for refusing to join the Rhodesian army when served with call-up papers, a flock of guinea fowls on the wing were sucked into the helicopter engine, causing the helicopter to crash, killing all the nine on board.
Amis, together with his friend Chikwata, had witnessed the helicopter crash.
Oblivious to this fact, the Smith regime soldiers took revenge.
They put Chikwata in a plastic bag and poured acid or some corrosive liquid inside. They then tied the bag at its mouth and proceeded to throw it into a mass grave.
Amis did not know where the Rhodesians put the plastic bag in which they had placed his friend, Chikwata.
The fact of the matter is that Chikwata was buried alive.
He died a slow and painful death.
Only the perpetrators of the heinous crime knew the site of the mass grave.
The year was 1977. After getting these details, the Buhera team bade farewell and returned home. Their intention was to recharge and reinforce the team, with a view to going back to Rushinga and ask the Chikwata daughter to identify the site of the mass grave where her father lay buried.
Back in Buhera, William, a ZANU PF Member of Parliament for Buhera North Constituency (2005-2023), assembled a formidable team comprising Chief Chimombe, Headman Nemhare, Sabhuku Soro, then ZANU PF Buhera District Coordinating Chairperson Cde Machokoto, all ZANU PF district chairpersons in Buhera North, and close relatives and friends. William put the assembled group into three hired buses and returned to Mukonde, Rushinga. The Buhera team asked the Chikwata daughter whether she was in a position to show them Chikwata’s grave.
While possessed, she said she would.
William was made to pay the customary damages to Sekuru Mugweni for the mhosva committed by Chikwata in making Rosemary pregnant outside traditional laws and customs.
That settled, and under the guidance of the Chikwata daughter, who became possessed, they set out to find out where her father had been buried. Under the spell of Chikwata’s spirit, the daughter revealed that he was buried in a mass grave in Mt Darwin and that there were more than 160 bodies in this grave.
Now in the Mt Darwin area, the Chikwata daughter was leading.
When she got nearer the burial site, her pace increased, at first trotting, then sprinting and outrunning everybody.
The rest followed. A big crowd had gathered and was following out of curiosity.
She then fell to the ground amidst the overgrown vegetation, comprising grass and huge trees. She said Chikwata was buried there, and that they should start digging where she lay prostrate, with the face down and arms spread-eagled.
The crowd was in a state of disbelief, seeing that there were no observable features to suggest that this was the site of a grave, let alone a mass grave. She insisted this was the site. She said it was on this spot that they should start digging.
After driving pegs (hoko) into the ground for easy identification of the site where she lay prostrate, the digging started in earnest using picks and shovels. The scene eventually more or less resembled archaeological diggings by anthropologists, so carefully and meticulously done as not to damage what may be of value below the surface.
The mass grave was layered.
To understand this, you need to know that the Rhodesian criminal forces were accustomed to using caterpillars or excavators or prisoners to dig huge pits whenever and wherever they wanted to establish mass graves.
Following a battle or massacre of civilians suspected of collaborating with ZANLA guerrilla forces, they would first collect their dead for decent burials and would dump into these huge pits what they termed “the day’s killings”, being the dead bodies of guerrilla fighters and civilians.
After the dumping, they would cover “the day’s killings” with soil.
As such, layers upon layers were formed from the bottom of the pit up to the top until the pit was filled. When the diggers got to the first top layer, marked by several human skeletons, confirming that this was indeed a mass grave, Cde Motsi became possessed and interrogated the Chikwata daughter: “Cde Edson Chikwata, tell us on which layer to find you.”
The Chikwata daughter, lying prostrate on the ground, face down, arms spread-eagled, shot back: “I am on level three from the top in the mass grave.”
Intrigue
As they dug to get to level two, the diggers got stuck. For some inexplicable reason, the picks were unable to penetrate the earth surface above layer two. There followed a cacophony of discordant, unharmonious verbal exchanges among the persons present who got possessed. The situation was getting too complicated and complex to unravel.
Someone suggested to Cdes Rutanhire and Motsi to fetch Mai Mhende, a reputed svikiro (spirit medium) based at the Mt Darwin war veterans’ office but living some four kilometres from Mt Darwin. Mai Mhende was known to have assisted in the exhumation and identification of deceased ex-combatants.
When Mai Mhende arrived at the scene, further verbal exchanges followed among Mai Mhende, Cde Gumbeze and Cde Motsi, all now possessed.
What followed puzzled everybody, especially William. Cde Motsi fixed his eyes on William and said: “You have a sekuru back in Buhera by the name of Magumbate.
“Magumbate is a ‘Musoni’.
“Magumbate’s nephew, a Musoni, also from Buhera, is in this mass grave and is the one protesting. He, too, wants to be exhumed and reburied back home in Buhera.”
William confirmed that indeed Magumbate, his sekuru, was a Musoni and that he lived near St John’s in Buhera.
William was exceedingly overwhelmed by the fact that strangers were telling him about Sekuru Magumbate and correctly identifying him as a Musoni.
“Musoni” is a totem of the descendants of the Katerere people of Nyanga North, with the Betas of Chimanimani district, the vaRembas of Mberengwa district and Musonis of Buhera and Gutu districts being offshoots.
The Musonis practise circumcision and do not eat the meat of animals slaughtered without following their cultural and religious prescriptions.
After this confirmation, Cde Motsi, who clearly had taken firm charge of the proceedings at the mass grave, ordered Cde Rutanhire, himself a Musoni, to make an appeal to the spirit of the Musoni in the mass grave and to chant after him the following, which Cde Rutanhire did: “Tazviona Musoni kuti muzukuru wako arere pano. Tazviona kuti muri vamwe chete. Tazviona kuti muri kuda kuti anochengetwe kumusha kuBuhera. Tava kuchikumbira kuti mubvumidze shef ari pano (referring to William) kuti aende kumusha kuBuhera kundoviga Cde Chikwata. Tichaita urongwa kuti Sekuru Magumbate vazouye vachikutorai kuenda kumusha.”
After this ritual chant, Cde Motsi, still possessed, harangued and appealed to the Musoni in the mass grave that the process to exhume Chikwata be permitted to go ahead as planned.
Cde Motsi seems to have succeeded in pacifying the Musoni in the mass grave by suggesting that every effort would be made to subsequently retrieve his body for reburial. In the spiritual world, it would appear a truce was reached and the digging thereafter proceeded unimpeded.
They dug through level two and thereafter reached level three. At this point, Cde Motsi, while possessed, interrogated the Chikwata daughter: “Edson Chikwata, tell us how to identify you among all these comrades?”
The Chikwata daughter, lying prostrate a distance from the scene, face down with arms spread-eagled, replied: “I am wearing a blue shirt ine mitsetse yeyellow, trouser regreen rechisoja. I am wearing one boot and green socks on both feet.”
Cde Motsi further asked: “Anything else that you can tell us to help us identify you?”
The reply from the Chikwata daughter, still lying prostrate, was: “Yes, I have on me, in my pocket, a plastic bag containing fodya yebute (snuff), shinda (cotton thread for sewing shoes), tsono yebhutsu (shoe needle) and a razor blade.”
She continued: “For confirmation about what I was wearing on the date the Rhodesian forces killed me, you can ask my friend Amis, who was a prisoner with me. Amis was a mujibha and war collaborator, and had brought to my ZANLA unit the boots, one of which I was wearing on the day that I was killed.
“When the Rhodesian soldiers abducted me to kill me, I was wearing one boot and mending the other. Amis knows everything that happened on the day the Rhodesian army soldiers killed me.”
Amis, originally from Malawi, was arrested for refusing to join the Rhodesian army following a call-up and was a prisoner in Mt Darwin, together with Chikwata, now wearing one boot and mending the other.
A search for Amis was conducted and he confirmed that on the day Chikwata was brutally murdered, he was wearing one boot while he was mending the other one.
Chikwata was placed into a plastic bag wearing one boot.
Yes, on the human remains on level three, from the top, the team identified a blue shirt with yellow stripes; green army trouser; skeleton feet with green socks on them, with one of the skeleton feet wearing a boot; and indeed a plastic bag containing the items mentioned: fodya yebute, tsono and a razor blade.
The clothing items were badly eaten, no doubt by the acid. However, of what remained of the clothing, the yellow and green colours were identifiable.
The shinda was totally eaten up.
With the Chikwata daughter lying prostrate, face down, with arms spread-eagled, when Cde Motsi lifted a part of the skeleton, say a leg or arm, the daughter would raise a corresponding part of her body, indicating that the part of the skeleton picked up was that of Silver Edson Chikwata Sebastian Mutomba.
Through this positive identification, Cde Motsi proceeded to recover the human remains of Edson Chikwata part by part, piece by piece.
Finally, when Cde Motsi picked up the corresponding skull, the Chikwata daughter, who, all along, was lying prostrate, face down, with arms spread-eagled, rose up suddenly and went into a dance, mimicking how ZANLA guerrilla fighter Edson Chikwata used to aim and shoot down Rhodesian enemy helicopters.
She maintained the dance and went straight to William’s car with personalised number plates shouting: “Baba ndava kuenda kumusha.”
After the identification of Silver Sebastian Edson Chikwata Mutomba’s remains, the journey to take his remains to Buhera began and was equally eventful.
The Buhera team now included Silver’s friend Amis; the Chikwata daughter and her mother Rosemary Mugweni, now married to Mulavima; Cdes Rutanhire, Motsi and Gumbeze, Sekuru Mugweni and others from the Mugweni family.
When the team reached number 50 Twickenham Street, Mount Pleasant, William’s residence, they found the place swarmed with mourners, mostly from Buhera district.
The Chikwata daughter became possessed and fixing her eyes on one of the mourners, now a sabhuku (village head), she identified him by name: “Soro uri mbwende; wakatiza kuhondo (Soro, you are a coward. You deserted the armed struggle).”
Soro’s full name is Rombai Ignatius Soro, one of the many boys from Buhera, who, it turned out, teamed up with Silver in Umtali (Mutare) on the trek to Mozambique to join ZANLA forces but later deserted and returned home to Buhera. Soro was, at the time of the recruitment, in 1972, working in
Umtali.
Soro is now the sabhuku of Soro village.
To get to Buhera, the funeral cortege used the Hwedza Road. When it got to Save River, the Chikwata daughter became possessed and ordered everybody to stop for five to 10 minutes before and after crossing the river.
The team with Silver’s remains eventually reached the Mutomba home in Soro village, under Sabhuku Soro, the one exposed by the Chikwata daughter as a coward.
The reburial of Silver was accorded the usual liberation war hero status, complete with a gun salute from a contingent of the Zimbabwe National Army.
At the graveyard, to everyone’s surprise, if not shock, a brown chicken flew from nowhere, it seemed, and rested on top of the coffin, oblivious of the occasion or its surroundings, “ichibva yavumbama” as a laying chicken would do over its eggs to get them to hatch.
Unfazed, Cde Motsi took away the chicken and gave it to Amis, who carried it live back to Mt Darwin to slaughter and eat it with his family back home.
No one had an explanation for this brown chicken phenomenon, save to say it was a mystery, one that could not be explained in human terms.
Subsequent to the burial, William relocated the Chikwata daughter and her husband to Buhera to become part of the extended Mutomba family.
In a conversation with the Mutomba family, Rosemary Mulavima, née Mugweni, said when she became aware she had been made pregnant by Cde Edson Chikwata, she confronted him and told him about this development and wanted to know his true identity and where he came from.
Cde Chikwata declined to disclose his true identity or where he came from.
He told Rosemary: “Iwe wobereka mwana, ini ndobereka pfuti, tozosangana hondo yapera.”
When Rosemary gave birth to the Chikwata daughter, she named her Faina. Incidentally, this is also the name of William’s mother.
The name Faina was given to the Chikwata daughter by her father, Cde Chikwata, in honour of his mother.
Cde Chikwata saw his daughter after her birth.
This is the amazing story of Silver Sebastian Mutomba, a ZANLA cadre and freedom fighter whose nom de guerre was Edson Chikwata.
May his dear soul rest in eternal peace!
Those who have eyes, let them “eye” and those who have ears, let them “ear”, nokuti hatigoni kurega kutaura zvatakaona nezvatakanzwa.
Online Reporter
Bongani Ndlovu