Chronicle Editor
By Ambassador Chris Mutsvangwa
On 3 October 2024, Comrade Tshinga Judge Dube, the Hope Spring Eternal of the Permanent Zimbabwe Revolution breathed his last.
Cde Tshinga, the drinking fountain of that long gestation of the Rebirth of New Zimbabwe departed from mother earth to rejoin the many thousands of fellow freedom fighters who died in the long and arduous combat of asymmetrical warfare to defeat the well-resourced Rhodesian Army of the racist settler minority Ian Smith regime.
It had heinously and cruelly served as the cat’s paw of the British Imperial Army. The British Empire enjoyed the vaunted attribute of being the most menacing and venerable of the clutch of conquerors spawned by a depredating Europe. Riding upon the Humanity’s Law of uneven socio-economic development Europe embraced the 14-15th Century Rennaissance Revolution to master key technologies and turn them into innovations that would spawn the modern Industrial Revolution.
Portugal, then Spain, then Netherlands, then France took advantage of the Atlantic seaboard location to engage in oceanic voyages of discovery, plunder, conquest and partition of far away foreign lands that bore the bane of being laggards in the global march of modern industry.
The Atlantic Ocean island Nation of England soon snatched an absolute lead in the imperial enterprise. Half of the world map was soon painted with the red colour of the fluffing Union Jack flag of British Emperors and Empresses.
It prevailed over and defeated other European rivals in the control of the strategic southern tip of the African continent land mass. The climate was equable and the soils fertile. It proceeded to send the settler forces.
But the Iron Age Societies of Ancient African Civilizations had that relative edge in population numbers and cohesive organization compared to Native Americans. That served as a respite against untrammeled predation.
Africa thus escaped the replay of fate of unfettered European colonial settler writ. Especially the permanent scars of systematic genocidal massacres to near annihilation that was meted out to the Native North American Indian nations and races.
Still, the implanted settler colonials used their access to modern industrial capacity to impose their unchallenged rule through military superiority.
Gold, diamonds and the bountiful bonanza of other valuable minerals were rapaciously exploited by enforced labour either near slavery or paucitly rewarded.
The equable, rainy climate on fertile lands were expropriated en masse for the singular exploitation by well entrenched and well armed settler minorities of southern Africa.
Still, the wheel of the turn of history would come back to the rescue of Mother Africa. The inevitable brawling over the imperial possessions plunged Imperial Europe into a slew of successive fatricidal wars.
The fragile consensus of the 1884 Berlin Conference on the partition of hapless Africa collapsed into Two World Wars on European soil.
African young men were press ganged by both England and France as they faced off the challenge of powerful Germany even as ally supplied the weapons.
The law of unexpected consequences would return Mother Africa the favour of the rise of African Nationalism post WW2.
This is the geopolitical milieu which takes us snugly into the world of our hero, Cde Tshinga Dube.
The attainment of African independence and rebirth of nationhood was a relatively less painful affair where there were no sizable and entrenched European settler colonials.
Southern Africa turned out to be a different ball game. That which had been lost by force of superior arms had to be undone by raising an outmatching armed apparatus.
Imperial Britain lost no time in setting aside old rivalries with imperial Portugal and Afrikaner European transplants to forge an alliance to retain racist apartheid control of southern Africa.
And the North Atlantic Treat Organization-NATO was roped in to save the vestiges of the 1884 Berlin Conference.
The recently deceased Henry Kissinger, Secretary of State of the USA penned his infamous 1969 National Security Memorandum 39 to the precise effect. The racist minority apartheid regimes had to be given a permanent lease of life in its face off with the advent of militant modern African Nationalism.
Guerrilla Army Guinea Pigs
H.E. Comrade Emmerson D. Mnangagwa and the deceased Comrade Tshinga Dube shared that hallowed distinction of being pioneer guerrilla recruits into a non-existent army of the militant national liberation movement.
The two would emerge out in the victory march 16 years later. They were among the lucky survivors who can personally recount and attest to the long, arduous, painful and perilous road travelled to glory and pomp of our now vaunted Zimbabwe Defences -ZDF.
In hindsight, their venture invokes shades of day-dreaming recklessness and quixotic gamble on one’s only given life.
The odds to pull it off let alone emerge the victor were just so daunting.
A sprinkling of youths from colonial Angola, Guinea Bissau, Mozambique and settler apartheid South Africa as peers heartened their sense of military adventure as they gathered in host Tanzania.
Together they bonded in the common and shared enterprise of restoring the military virility of Africa lost for decades and centuries to Imperial European powers.
Surmounting the Odds.
On paper, the arraignment of military forces did not look that favourable to these military novices.
They were a motley collection seeking to be moulded into a potent fighting force. Their main backer, the Africa Union (then Organization of African Unity) was being cobbled from diverse recently freed colonies.
Tanzania ‘s Nyerere and Zambia’s Kaunda offered to be host military countries.
The geopolitical landscape saw them seeking support from Russia (then Soviet Union) and its Socialist Nation allies, New China, Cuba and the Democratic Republic of Korea.
All these countries were minion economic players lagging behind in military technology and capabilities.
On the other hand was the classical military tradition of the West and the commanding global gross domestic products feeding into the cruelly spirited armies of racist and apartheid settler minority regimes.
Their governments had no qualms in defying their justice and freedom living populaces who did not want to keep track of the discredited imperial past.
Enarmoured to rapacious corporate greed, the likes of Henry Kissinger, the Secretary of State, threw furtiveness to the wind. His notorious Memorandum 39 of 1969 openly championed the permanence of white minority regimes of Southern Africa as the lynchpin of Washington’s Policy on Africa.
The human spirit has a knack for setting evil as it inexorably marches on.
Those early guerrilla pioneers were undaunted. Taking on the instinct of toddlers, they braved to crawl, walk and eventually run.
The paces consumed lives who fell in battle.
They egged on the rising consciousness of a majority population that embraced the clarion call to the just war of national rejuvenation.
Beyond material support of “Vakomana” fighters, there was mounting replenishment of fighters.
An epic Goliath versus David tussle saw nimble and reactive guerrillas pound a defensive settler colonial apparatus starved of invaluable military intelligence by a hostile population.
First Blood and the Collapse of Imperial Portugal.
1974 was a game changer. The Portuguese Imperial Army collapsed to a coup of the Revolutionary Red Carnation Colonels in Lisbon.
Amilcar Cabral’s PAIGC of Guinea Bissau, Augustino Neto’ MPLA of Angola and Samora Machel’s FRELIMO had delivered on the impossible. A modern European power had suffered colonial defeat at the hands of Africans.
This was a vindication of the pioneer spirit of the founding guerrillas of the kindred of Tshinga Dube.
Their years of sacrifice now unleashed a new mood of inevitable victory. There would be a deluge of young people abandoning the prospect of the paucity returns of a segregated servitude under racist colonial rule.
Zimbabwe delivered a formidable Military Inclined Diaspora to the global stage.
In no time, the military asymmetry started reversing.
By 1979 British imperial perfidy had caved in. It forced its beleaguered cat’s paw, the Rhodesian Army into the Lancaster House Armstice.
Elections ensued. The first time ever for an ascendant revolutionary national liberation movement to accept the plebiscite vote as midwife to freedom, democracy and independence.
Pioneer guerrilla Comrade Tshinga was there to witness Independence 1980 with legions of fellow comrades and throngs of a jubilant population celebrating final victory.
Comrade Tshinga Dube lost no time in assuming a new role as a strong advocate of national unity on the political level.
Concurrently he hurled his energy into the vigilant defence of the new State.
He played a pivotal role in the integration of once on and off of feuding ZANLA and ZIPRA as well as willing remnants of the Rhodesian Army.
Presto, the efforts paid into our professional and dependable homegrown Zimbabwe Defence Forces. Indeed a Pride of the Nation of Zimbabwe, of Africa and of the Africa Diaspora.
A strong army relies in the choice and quality of its equipment. This quest saw Comrade Tshinga Dube set up the Zimbabwe Defence Industry (ZDI). His goal was to blunt sanctions in arms procurement imposed by the resurgent hostility of the West after our 2000 Land Reform and Resource Restitution Drive.
This armaments manufacturing assignment gave me a fortututous chance to get to know of this long running living legend of the Permanent Zimbabwe Revolution.
I had by then been entrusted with a copy cat anti-sanctions assignment as Ambassador to Beijing China.
I had to deliver on the economic, finance and technology aspects of the Look East Policy.
My revolutionary senior, Tshinga Dube was now a comrade in arms as we wage the economic survival battlle of a dominant and strangling West.
Entrapping Simon Mann
I had the opportunity to savour a master revolutionary outplay an outfit of English Simon Mann mercenaries misled by Mark Thatcher, the son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
In July 2024 I was hosting a Zimbabwe Defence Industries General Manager Tshinga Dube on one of his frequent visits to China.
I notice the just arrived comrade repeatedly step out to answer incessant phone calls from Harare.
He was clearly unsettled. Something worrying was afoot.
Afterwards I had an uncharacteritic outburst of exultation.
Simon Mann and his band of English mercenaries had been caught at Harare International Airport.
All because the unobtrusive Tshinga Dube had furtively worked on a trap in league with then Vice President E.D. Mnangagwa.
An intelligence operative of global level ingenuity had worked hard to foul a coup against the brother African Govt of Equatorial Guinea.
This bold act helped close an era of wayward mercenary depredations against fragile African governments.
Hollywood was henceforth deprived of the script of the films like ‘Wild Geese’ and the profane escapades of mercenaries “Mad” Mike Hoare and Bob Denard.
The Rise of the Phoenix: Tshunga Dube and the Manhize Steel Plant
No shared project bonded me to the departed hero as much as the Manhize DISCO Steel Plant.
I found ardent advocacy for the revival of Zimbabwe steel industry. He sorely needed the product for his Defence Industry. After steel is the staple of the armaments industry.
We worked on a common apporoach during his Beijing visits. We factored in the emerging steel technology suoremacy of China.
The prospect of the revival of the Steel Industry of Zimbabwe led me to pass the post of Ambassador to Germany in 2007. Cde Tshinga Dube stood four square with me.
We got our shot in the arm with the support of then Vice President Mnangagwa.
By 2012, we ensnared Tsingshan Global to enter the Zimbabwe chrome smelting sector. This was the prelude which would eventually lead us to Hwange Dinson Coke Oven Batteries and Manhize DISCO Steel.
We suffered reversals and brick bats were hurled at us on our shared road to 2024 Manhize DISCO Steel launch.
G40s who had ensconsed themselves around President Mugabe proved a debilitating bane.
In 2014, Grace Mugabe as First Lady stymied the steel project initiative at Diuoyutai State Guest in Beijing.
Tshinga and I were aghast and dumb-founded as she waved away billionaire investor Chairman Xiang Guangda of Tsingshan. She was unimpressed even as she knew of the support of President Xi Jinping.
Fate conspired in our entrepreneurial favour when we teamed as a duo running the newly established Ministry of War Veterans Affairs in 2015.
We worked hard to revive Tsingshan interest in the Steel Project.
We went in to despatch our Permanent Secretary, Retired General Walter Tapfumaneyi to Shanghai Tsingshan Headquarters in 2015.
It was to no avail. G40s surreptitiously countermanded with an insupportable demand of 60 per cent shareholding on the project under the then Indigenization.
My remedial Cabinet trip to China was capriciously cancelled at the last minute. President Mugabe who still mistakenly believed in my regionalist loyalty to him unguardedly gloated at wishing the falure of the China trip of his Deputy President Mnangagwa.
Soon after, we had an unwritten compact as Minister and Deputy Minister of War Veterans Affairs.
The clueless G40s had to be stopped to save the Zimbabwe Revolution.
No surprise Cde Tshinga Dube spitted on the offer to succeed me when I was fired as Minister in 2016.
Operation Restore Legacy later corrected the revolutionary anomaly in 2017.
His Excellency New President ED Mnangagwa had a State Visit to China in 2018. He lost no time to revive the stalled Tsingshan Steel Project investment.
What a colourful and rich tapestry of a well lived life of a Genuine Revolutionary.
Comrade Tshinga died a happy man. He is reporting to many comrades who departed ahead that Zimbabwe now has a world class steel industry. That the prosperity they yearned as the price of their epic sacrifices is within grasp under Vision 2030 as championed by H.E. FELLOW COMRADE President E.D. Mbangagwa.
Go well Pioneer Comrade, Brave Combatant, Intelligence Sleuth, Master Nation Builder, Global Class Entrepreneur, Master Nation Builder and Unstinting Defender of the Permanent Zimbabwe Revolution!
Online Reporter