The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe: Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker 9781108472890, 9781108561600

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The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker Blessing-Miles Tendi

The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe

An illustrious African liberation fighter in the 1970s and, until his suspicious death in 2011, an important figure in Robert Mugabe’s ruling ZANU PF party in Zimbabwe, this first full-length biography of General Solomon Mujuru or Rex Nhongo throws much needed light onto the opaque elite politics of the 1970s liberation struggle, post-independence army and ZANU PF. Based on the unparalleled primary interviews with informants in the army, intelligence services, police and ZANU PF elites, Blessing-Miles Tendi examines Mujuru’s moments of triumph and his shortcomings in equal measure. From his undistinguished youth and poor upbringing in colonial Rhodesia’s Chikomba region, his rapid rise to power and role as the first black commander of independent Zimbabwe’s national army, this is an essential record of one of the most controversial figures within the history of African liberation politics. Blessing-Miles Tendi is Associate Professor of African Politics at the University of Oxford where his research has focused on civil–military relations, intelligence, gender and politics and the existence and uses of ‘evil’ in politics. He is the author of Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media (2010).

The Army and Politics in Zimbabwe Mujuru, the Liberation Fighter and Kingmaker Blessing-Miles Tendi University of Oxford

University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108472890 DOI: 10.1017/9781108561600 © Blessing-Miles Tendi 2020 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2020 Printed in the United Kingdom by TJ International Ltd., Padstow, Cornwall A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Tendi, Miles, 1979– author. Title: The army and politics in Zimbabwe : Solomon Mujuru, the liberation fighter and kingmaker / Dr Miles Tendi. Other titles: Solomon Mujuru, the liberation fighter and kingmaker Description: Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2019. | Includes index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019038379 (print) | LCCN 2019038380 (ebook) | ISBN 9781108472890 (hardback) | ISBN 9781108561600 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Mujuru, Solomon, 1945–2011. | Generals – Zimbabwe – Biography. | Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army – Biography. | National liberation movements – Zimbabwe – Biography. | Zimbabwe – History – Chimurenga War, 1966–1980. | Zimbabwe. National Army – Officers – Biography. | ZANU-PF (Organization : Zimbabwe) – Biography. | Zimbabwe – Politics and government. | Zimbabwe – History, Military. | Zimbabwe – Biography. Classification: LCC DT2984.M85 T46 2019 (print) | LCC DT2984.M85 (ebook) | DDC 968.91/04092 [B]–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038379 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019038380 ISBN 978-1-108-47289-0 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

No history is mute. No matter how much they burn it, break it and lie about it, human history refuses to shut its mouth. Despite deafness and ignorance, the time that was continues to tick inside the time that is, even if the time that is does not want to be or does not know. E. Galeano, Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World (New York, Henry Holt and Company, 2000), p. 210

Contents

List of Figures and Tables Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

page viii ix x

1

Preamble

1

2

Fireborn I

11

3

Ghost of Chitepo

33

4

Kingmaker

68

5

The Longest Time

96

6

‘We Are Free . . . We Are Here’

125

7

‘A Big Small Man’

156

8

Gods of Violence

189

9

Fortune, Love and Politics

224

Fireborn II

264

Notes Index

297 336

10

vii

Figures and Tables

Figures 4.1 Rex Nhongo at the scene of the hotel fire in Geneva, 1976 6.1 Rex Nhongo and the Ceasefire Commission members 6.2 Rex Nhongo and Dumiso Dabengwa 6.3 Rex Nhongo and Andrew Parker Bowles 7.1 Rex Nhongo inspecting ZNA soldiers 7.2 Rex Nhongo as ZNA commander 8.1 Rex Nhongo and Robert Mugabe 8.2 Rex Nhongo and members of the Black Rhinos football club 10.1 Solomon’s corpse in original face-down position 10.2 Solomon’s corpse turned over 1 10.3 Solomon’s corpse turned over 2 10.4 Solomon’s corpse in the ZNA morgue

page 92 139 147 150 158 175 205 220 269 270 271 272

Tables 4.1 The 1975 ZIPA Military Committee 6.1 ZANLA guerrillas appointed as AP commanders

viii

76 135

Acknowledgements

Thank you Joice Mujuru and the Mujuru family for entrusting me with Solomon’s life history. I extend my gratitude to Michela Wrong, Miles Morland and Mathilda Edwards at The Miles Morland Foundation, for granting me a Writing Fellowship. Your support afforded me the tranquil space and time to complete this biography. Thank you María Villares Varela for tolerating my unyielding preoccupation with all things Solomon Mujuru/Rex Nhongo and for your encouragement and critical thoughts. Many thanks to Jocelyn Alexander for continuing to set the intellectual standard I will always aspire to reach. My gratitude to Andrew Parker Bowles for his insights, papers and photographs of Solomon, which now inhabit this book. I am also indebted to Solomon’s FRELIMO camaradas in Mozambique and his associates in the British and Pakistani militaries. Solomon’s biography would not be complete without their extraordinarily frank recollections. Thank you, Clinarete Munguambe, for being an excellent research assistant in Mozambique. Last but not least, many thanks to Solomon’s friends and lovers, and his Zimbabwean colleagues, critics and rivals in politics, the security sector and private sphere. You all contributed immeasurably to the researching of this biography. You know who you are.

ix

Abbreviations

ANC ANC AP BMATT CC CC CGS CIO CMF DRC ESAP FCO FRELIMO FROLIZI IMF JHC MDC MMZ OAU PF RENAMO RF RSF RV SADC ZANLA ZANU PF ZAPU ZDF ZIPA ZIPRA ZNA ZZ x

African National Congress African National Council Assembly Place British Military Advisory and Training Team Ceasefire Commission Central Committee Chief of General Staff Central Intelligence Organisation Commonwealth Monitoring Force Democratic Republic of Congo Economic Structural Adjustment Programme Foreign and Commonwealth Office Front for the Liberation of Mozambique Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe International Monetary Fund Joint High Command Movement for Democratic Change Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe front Organisation of African Unity Patriotic Front Mozambique Resistance Movement Rhodesian Front Rhodesian Security Forces Rendezvous Point Southern African Development Community Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African People’s Union Zimbabwe Defence Forces Zimbabwe People’s Army Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army Zimbabwe National Army Zambia Zimbabwe front

1

Preamble

Exploiting previously unexplored oral and archival sources, this biography centres on the life of General Solomon Tapfumaneyi Mujuru. Solomon is one of the most illustrious figures in modern Zimbabwean military and political history and in the transnational politics of Southern Africa’s 1970s liberation struggles. He is, arguably, the greatest of all guerrilla field commanders from Zimbabwe’s independence war against Rhodesian white-settler colonial rule. In the late 1970s, under the nom de guerre Rex Nhongo, Solomon reached the acme of his public acclaim, among black Africans, as a principal liberation fighter. He had abundant infamy with many white Rhodesians because his war successes threatened to overturn their colonial privileges. Solomon became the first black commander of independent Zimbabwe’s national army in 1981 and he oversaw a complicated military integration involving three undefeated rival armies from the independence war. By 1992, under Solomon’s command, the Zimbabwean Army had attained a high degree of conventional training, education, discipline and fighting effectiveness. It was the second-best conventional combat force in Southern Africa, only because the South African Army was better resourced. Solomon was also an influential political figure. He was a kingmaker in ruthless and violent liberation wartime succession politics. Robert Mugabe would not have risen to power in Mozambique between 1976 and 1977, were it not for Solomon’s influence. Solomon once served as a Member of Parliament after his 1992 retirement from the army and, until his alleged death by fire on 15 August 2011, he was a powerful member of former Zimbabwean leader (1980–2017) Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF) ruling party. Solomon was the quintessential public private man. He avoided, assiduously, the public eye but remained a much-discussed public figure. Nothing else underlines the degree to which Solomon sought to maintain privacy than the fact that very little is known about his personal history. Solomon rarely gave interviews to media and researchers on any subject and on the few occasions that he did, he revealed only scant detail about 1

2

Preamble

himself. Consequently, what has been recorded about this great historical figure’s personal background is narrow and often misleading. Take for instance the oft-expressed pseudo fact by politicians and official scribes of Solomon’s ZANU PF party that he was the last-born child in the Mujuru family.1 Solomon was in point of fact the third-youngest child.2 To rectify these factual errors about Solomon’s personal background and in order to use his life story as a prism to write a panoramic military and political history of 1970s transnational Southern African liberation struggles and the post-liberation era, this biography assembles Solomon’s personal history and the principal components of his public business – the African liberation warrior, the peacetime army general and the ZANU PF politician. Solomon’s life history is transfixing, dramatic and embodies important turning points in the military and political histories of his time. The Utility of Biography and Oral History Turning our attention to recent studies on Zimbabwean politics that contain considerable analyses of the ruling ZANU PF, Michael Bratton has written important work about the factors accounting for the endurance of ZANU PF’s authoritarianism, focusing on elite political settlements and power politics.3 Just as instructive is Sara Rich Dorman’s meticulous study on the ways through which ZANU PF dominated its relations with civil society and opposition parties from 1980 to 2014.4 These relations were predicated on co-option and regulation strategies, with ZANU PF and civil society learning from and emulating each other. Bratton and Dorman advance, in different ways, our knowledge of ZANU PF but neither reveal, in a substantial measure, the internal political relations, debates and individual motivations of ZANU PF elites. Bratton, for example, discusses the alliance between ZANU PF civilian and army actors across time but his discussion does not show how intramural political dynamics in these respective categories shaped the pact’s nature. And Dorman does not give us an appreciation of the politics of the human agents in ZANU PF that propelled (and opposed) the party’s dominance before and after 1980. Texts about ZANU PF and the army frequently offer minor insight on the figures central to the politics of the ruling party and army, because they make little use of pertinent oral sources, mainly relying on secondary data and primary materials such as non-governmental organisations’ reports.5 This biography goes some way towards alleviating the aforementioned inadequacies in studies of ruling party politics. It draws heavily on oral histories and has an influential interactive human agent (Solomon) at its

The Utility of Biography and Oral History

3

core. Oral history is valuable to the Politics discipline, especially when investigating human agents, the internal contests and bargaining of political elites, obscure state processes and where written sources are simply non-existent. Thus Solomon’s biography provides revelatory insight on certain aspects of ZANU PF’s opaque elite politics during and after the 1970s independence war. It discloses, for example, the actors who backed Mugabe (and why) from the 1970s and opens our perceptions to debates and divisions in ZANU PF on matters such as leadership succession, party relations with capital and opposition parties, and on decisions to wage long post-independence wars in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). This is possible because of my access to Solomon’s private materials on the liberation war and approximately 150 unparalleled qualitative in-depth research interviews with relevant Zimbabwean, Mozambican, British, Pakistani and Zambian political and military elites who interacted with Solomon. The interviews were made possible by relations of trust slowly built during six years of research fieldwork. Accordingly, the biography is able to bring up themes in internal ZANU PF politics and Southern African liberation politics, which are new, personal, acutely contentious and censored in official representations. In the military studies field, the biographical approach adopted here improves our understanding of the personality idiosyncrasies and motivations of individual commanders that have had important bearing on the constitution and values of a military. This is expressly the case when the commander under study is a founding figure, as was the case with Solomon in the establishment of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) from 1980. Furthermore, biography helps bridge the divide between the public and private, although as R. A. W. Rhodes rightly points out, many biographers often neglect exploring the public-private link.6 A great deal of my primary research and written words in the chapters ahead were devoted to unearthing how the private Solomon interconnected with the public Solomon. For instance, the biographical approach enabled me to write about sex – that most basic of human actions – and how it interrelated with Solomon’s politicking in important ways. The biography details Solomon’s haphazard schooling and nomadic upbringing, which affected his future political behaviour and personal relations considerably, and it reveals that part of his character was formed in 1960s Bulawayo – an important site of urban colonial oppression and home to a vibrant cultural life. The firm roots of Solomon’s political consciousness, which resulted in him joining the liberation struggle in Zambia in 1967 as part of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) – a rival to ZANU PF – are located in his ZAPU youth activism in Bulawayo.

4

Preamble

The biographical approach clearly has distinct advantages yet the use of biography to understand politics is marginal in the approaches of most ‘African Politics’ scholars.7 Mainstream political scientists also generally do not write political biography because Political Science prizes ‘scientific’ methods for understanding politics. 1940s American behaviouralism may be out of fashion but its attempt to transform the study of politics into a ‘science’ has had lasting influence, as evinced in the endurance of positivism, surveys and regression analyses as methodological backbones in mainstream Political Science. Discontent with this ‘scientific’ turn in many university Politics departments – American ones especially – festered for years. In the early 2000s there was an outbreak of fierce debates, commonly referred to as perestroika, about the need to open up the study of politics to more diverse methodological approaches and increase representation of women and minorities in mainstream Political Science.8 Be that as it may, mainstream political scientists continue to eschew qualitative approaches such as biography, because it necessitates subjective interpretations of political experiences and events related to individual figures. Never mind that ‘political life is, after all, lived by individual people, not by sociological abstractions or economic categories’.9 Let me make a few remarks about Zimbabwean political biography writing by politics scholars. The disciplinary background of political biographers on Zimbabwe confirms the broader trend: political biographers are almost always historians and journalists.10 Stephen Chan’s Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence is atypical in this regard because it is a book about politics written in the biographical mode by a scholar of politics.11 His book is a riposte to political scientists who tend to stress structure over agency in their studies. Political scientists who do accord significant attention to agency are apt to overemphasise the role of reason, logic, and calculation and to underemphasise the role of feeling. This is not to say that rational calculation plays no part in political life; patently, it plays a large part. But no one who hopes to understand political decision-making should forget [David] Hume’s famous dictum that reason is the slave of the passions.12

Chan’s book on Mugabe is, in many ways, about a politician whose reason was the slave of the passions, especially when he was confronted by an escalating political legitimacy crisis towards the close of the 1990s. One cannot fully grasp Zimbabwe’s post-2000 political and economic descent, without also employing biography to appreciate that servitude to the passions and its considerable consequences for a country.

Setting the Stage

5

Setting the Stage Chan’s book counts as one among many biographies of Mugabe. In the discipline of History, bar Ngwabi Bhebe’s biography of Simon Muzenda and fellow historian Chengetai Zvobgo’s life history of his brother Eddison Zvobgo, political biographies of ZANU PF elites are habitually about Mugabe. The concentration on Mugabe is understandable, given his approximately four decades long larger-than-life political incumbency. Moreover, Mugabe’s dramatic loss of power in a military coup in 2017 and his profoundly politicised death in 2019 will spawn even more biographies about him for years to come. However, intellectual engrossment with Mugabe obstructs us from scrutiny of other influential ZANU PF elites. One such elite is Solomon. Many scholars have debated, in inconclusive terms, Mugabe’s emergence as ZANU PF’s leader in Mozambique. These debates are particularly concerned with how and why the Marxist Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) eventually supported the non-Marxist Mugabe over his internal rival Ndabaningi Sithole and Marxist guerrillas who rejected nationalist politicians’ (such as Mugabe) leadership of the liberation struggle because of ideological differences. Solomon’s biography reveals – for the first time – his pivotal role in swaying the FRELIMO leader Samora Machel to back Mugabe’s leadership bid. Solomon played kingmaker in Mugabe’s rise to the helm of ZANU PF because of his respect for party and military hierarchy and for the secret reason that Mugabe was his nephew. Solomon’s biography also addresses wider political subjects, ‘for a soldier or a politician, however important, is but a single piece in a complex chessboard in which many pieces can be moving at one time’.13 Put precisely, through Solomon’s life history we learn about aspects of Southern African liberation movements’ 1970s transnational politics. A new path of inquiry has been set by scholars who pay equal attention to liberation politics in and beyond the national in Southern Africa.14 In practice this entails assimilating hitherto unassimilated scholarship about liberation politics’ domestic, regional and international subtleties. It necessitates more serious reflection on the condition and effects of exile on liberation politics. For largely practical and instrumental reasons, Solomon received military and political instruction in Communist Russia, Bulgaria and China. As a leading commander in the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), ZANU PF’s liberation army, from 1971 to 1979 Solomon interacted with a range of important African liberation struggle actors in Mozambique, Tanzania and Zambia. African independence struggle leaders like Solomon journeyed across multiple borders and confronted colonialism

6

Preamble

from beyond their countries of origin, making their warfare and political engagement transnational in content. Solomon’s biography is a useful resource for grasping some of that transnational warfare and politics. This is a critical pursuit because our knowledge of transnational liberation politics and guerrilla campaigns is mostly unclear whilst the nature of politics between liberation fighters and the leaderships of host states is equally obscure.15 Operating from outside colonial borders ostensibly offered liberation movements respite from the colonial state’s repressive reach. But as Solomon’s biography indicates, the condition of displacement generated new, multifarious challenges for liberation movements. Violent and divisive internal politics, inoperativeness, isolation, privation, contending claims between rival movements about who represented the liberation struggle from without, and the politics of unstable relations with host states, in which hostees were often the weaker party, were all partly conditioned by displacement. Studies on Southern African liberation movements also pay increasing attention to ‘the camp’ as an important arena for studying exile politics.16 In this scholarship, liberation movements’ places of military training, refugee settlements, prison spots and transit points are understood as camps, which constitute sites for the study of revolt in exile,17 the politics of discipline and punishment,18 and conflicting ideas about establishing order in campsites,19 which shaped postcolonial governance processes. Solomon’s biography takes up a mutiny that bucks the standard explanations for mutinies in exile. Here the subject is a revolt (the 1974–5 Nhari mutiny in ZANLA) the primary grievances of which did not emanate from the camp per se but in the Rhodesian warfront. Solomon knew the mutiny’s leaders and, ultimately, he was involved in their capture in Mozambique. Official accounts on the Nhari revolt maintain that Rhodesian intelligence operatives used the Nhari group to engineer a mutiny.20 But, according to Solomon, a central observer and participant in putting down the revolt, the mutiny occurred because of particular failings by the ZANLA leadership. Solomon’s biography therefore adds to long-standing arguments about the Nhari mutiny’s origins by accentuating the point that the causes of the revolt were internally generated. The biography underscores an interactive pattern of mutiny – unusual compared to most mutinies that occurred in other exiled Southern African liberation armies in the same period – in which grievance construction at the warfront interacts with military camps and headquarters in exile and with the movement of guerrillas across national borders. Through its reflections on international initiatives to bring about the decolonisation of Zimbabwe and to build a post-conflict state, Solomon’s

Setting the Stage

7

biography complements related studies by Susan Rice and Norma Kriger.21 However, the biography goes beyond Kriger’s work by taking the reader on a rare journey inside the structures of the post-conflict state in the making. And the biography’s discussion of Solomon’s role in the 1979–80 Rhodesia/Zimbabwe ceasefire lays bare that Rice and others overlook, erroneously, Solomon’s importance to the truce’s success. Solomon’s significance in the ceasefire’s accomplishment lies in his filling of the leadership vacuum created by the ZANLA commander Josiah Tongogara’s unexpected death before the truce. The biography makes an additional corrective to literature on the 1979–80 truce by drawing attention to the import of the politics of race and class and subjective ideas about generalship, in shaping political relations between the ceasefire leaders. As we shall see, during Solomon’s post-independence career, the heavy hand of liberation struggle history shaped personal, institutional, political and civil-military relations and decisions to wage external wars. Solomon’s story underlines the potent influence of liberation struggle history but it represents only one of the diverse ways liberation struggle legacies greatly impacted, and continue to impact, Zimbabwe’s postindependence dynamics on a range of planes. Even as the biography emphasises Solomon’s hand in the postindependence amalgamation of ZANLA, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) and the Rhodesian Army, it illustrates Britain’s lasting influence on part of its former empire, by way of its assistance in post-conflict state-making processes such as military integration. Solomon had enormous impact on the value system of the new army through his efforts to foster its commitment to conventional army training and capability and improved formal education standards. However, Solomon’s time as army commander also coincided with mutinies by and the persecution of ZIPRA elements in the army, as well as ZANU PF political violence against ZAPU supporters, in which thousands of civilians lost their lives. The biography implicates Solomon in some of these early 1980s human rights violations, but it also points out the significant ways in which Solomon remained sympathetic to ZIPRA and how his actions as army commander often sought to balance competing pressures placed on him by ZANU PF, ex-ZANLAs, former Rhodesian Army soldiers, the British Army and past ZIPRA colleagues. Solomon joined active politics after his retirement from the army in 1992 and he led the Mujuru faction, one of the main ZANU PF groups in the internal contest to succeed Mugabe. The biography examines the politics of this succession struggle. We learn the reasons Solomon’s desire for Mugabe to leave office began in 1990 and why, by the time of Solomon’s mysterious death, his relationship with Mugabe had become

8

Preamble

acrimonious. Solomon’s demise captured scholarly and popular attention, as attempts were made to unravel the political implications of his death and uncover the precise cause of his passing. Solomon’s death inspired the title of C. B. George’s novel The Death of Rex Nhongo, in which a gun that may or may not have been used to kill Solomon is a MacGuffin in the book.22 Drawing on unique access to confidential investigative documents and oral sources, the biography painstakingly reconstructs events prior and after Solomon’s expiry and it casts grave doubt on the plausibility of the state’s account that he died in a housefire. Solomon influenced his wife Joice’s appointment as vice president in 2004 in order to terminate his ambitious political and business nemesis Emmerson Mnangagwa’s chances of securing the vice presidency and, ultimately, the presidency. But the sudden death of a political lynchpin overturns established elite power relations. Solomon’s unanticipated passing greatly contributed to a change in the direction of succession politics. With Solomon – the power behind Joice – off the scene, Mugabe fired Joice as vice president in 2014 and some leading Mujuru faction members were purged from ZANU PF, at the bidding of Mnangagwa and Constantino Chiwenga, a serving military commander and one of Solomon’s leading adversaries.23 Mnangagwa replaced Joice as vice president in 2014 and three years later Chiwenga led a successful military coup against Mugabe, which brought his ally Mnangagwa to power. After his death, Solomon was publicly vilified by Mugabe and statecontrolled media. Mnangagwa adopted a different stance as president: he is taciturn about discussing Solomon publicly but is accomplished at selectively appropriating Solomon’s successes for political gain. For instance, during Mnangagwa’s 2018 presidential election campaign rallies, he was presented as having gallantly led the first contingent of ZANLA fighters who travelled to Rhodesia for an uncertain truce in December 1979, participated in the challenging management of the ceasefire and chaired the Joint High Command (JHC), which administered the difficult early 1980s military integration process. Yet, as this biography shows, it was in fact Solomon who led the ZANLA group that went to Rhodesia for the ceasefire in 1979. Mnangagwa was not a member of that 1979 group, nor did he take part in the ceasefire’s management. When the JHC was created in 1980, its chairperson was the Rhodesian general Peter Walls. Mnangagwa later became JHC chairman at Solomon’s instigation and he held a rotating chairmanship with Sydney Sekeramayi. Thus, this biography also serves as a recovery of Solomon’s memory, which has undergone distortion and erasure in official discourses and memorialisations.

Setting the Stage

9

Solomon was fireborn: from a 1952 fire in Solomon’s childhood, to the blood and fire that is the life of a guerrilla fighter, to the great hotel fire Solomon started at the failed 1976 independence conference in Geneva, to an early 1980s bedroom fire Solomon’s lit cigarette touched off while he and his wife Joice slept, to the 2011 fire that sang Solomon’s demise by other means. The chapters ahead show that Solomon carved out his name not because he came from a wealthy family or was highly educated. Solomon was a pragmatic man of natural talent. A self-made man. Cunning and charismatic in his particular way. As a soldier, he was an intrepid and discerning god of violence. He led from the front and was at his most comfortable in the operational field. He lived for the warfront. Solomon had an eye for talented soldiers. He respected scientific training and technical expertise in and outside the military – a trait he acquired during conventional army training in ZAPU and with FRELIMO. Solomon was not indifferent to the suffering of men under his command. He understood what motivated fighters and how to make them feel valued. Partisanship transmutes political ‘adversaries into enemies. An adversary has to be defeated, while an enemy must be destroyed. You cannot compromise with enemies. With adversaries compromise is possible. An adversary today can become an ally tomorrow.’24 Solomon stood against partisanship and its accompanying enmity politics. He believed in and openly advocated the principle of periodic leadership renewal, when the majority of ZANU PF elites feared vocalising it publicly. His parliamentary career was short-lived and at no time did he hold a ministerial cabinet post. Solomon never sought political leadership because he saw himself as a soldier essentially and believed that his limited education and speech impediment made him unsuited for high political office. He had none of the hubris that incited politically ambitious soldiers to stage coups d’état in a range of independent African countries – Zimbabwe included. Solomon was also too reticent, ordinarily, and too brutally frank, when he chose to open up, for a flourishing career in active politics. He nevertheless retained a lofty position in ZANU PF and stubbornly sought to influence succession politics from behind the scenes, until his end in 2011. Solomon continually sought the affections of women. He was a Lothario – an improbable one at that, as we shall discover. Solomon was a poor husband owing to his ceaseless womanising and frequently absent from his children’s lives, most of whom were born out of wedlock. In economic activity, Solomon’s at times unethical pursuit of wealth was fuelled by a sense of entitlement. He saw wealth accumulation as reward for his heroism in the liberation war. But there was also a powerful sense

10

Preamble

that the adult Solomon never again wanted to be deprived, having been desperately poor in childhood. When Solomon died, the record-breaking crowd that witnessed his public funeral was indicative of Zimbabweans’ and Southern African former liberation wartime actors’ recognition of his remarkable role in the independence war. The vast funeral attendance was also a show of popular anger and disbelief at his gruesome and unfathomable supposed termination by fire. The converging of profoundly partisan domestic political actors to mourn Solomon, underscored that he had been above partisanship. Every country has its war heroes. Zimbabwe’s last great hero died on 15 August 2011.

2

Fireborn I

I will read ashes for you, if you ask me. I will look on the fire and tell you from the gray lashes And out of the red and black tongues and stripes, I will tell how fire comes And how fire runs far as the sea.1

Through the winter-coloured Zimbabwean savannah and bare Msasa trees, and past unadorned planting fields, a serene June night encased the Mutusva village, deep in Chikomba rural district. Beneath the solitary stare of a pearl-spotted owl, unfed dogs converged outside the village’s cooking hut. The dogs’ paws shifted on the cold earth, their wet noses sniffing for morsels of discarded food. Inside the circular cooking hut, composed of mud, poles and a conical thatched roof, a sickly seven-year-old boy called Solomon Mujuru, who had acquired the nickname ‘Ruzambu’ (Reed) as a term of endearment in reference to his scrawniness, readied for bed with his older brother Joel, a voluble character. Ruzambu’s thinness was made starker by the size of his head. He had a large cranium, which appeared to sit uneasily atop his reedy frame. The hut’s interior had residual warmth from that evening’s cooking, so Joel insisted they both spend the nippy night there. ‘Ruzambu is better off in this warm hut than in the chilly sleeping hut with the other village youngsters, tugging off the few available well-worn blankets’, Joel reasoned. Joel was protective of the infirm Ruzambu. They were born poor and came from the same womb, which set them apart from some of the Mujuru children their father, Nevison, sired with his late first wife. Orange and gold tongues of fire still flickered from the remaining wood in the eye of the hut. The cooking hut lacked a chimney hence smoke ascended and hung below the blackened roof, before seeping out leisurely through the thatch. The two brothers huddled together in a big farm sack, with Ruzambu resting nearest the fading wood fire. Ruzambu soon fell asleep on the hut’s gleaming floor, which the dutiful Mutusva women polished with fresh cow dung in the mornings. In dreamland Ruzambu felt safe from all that stalked him when he was awake. From lost memories of a departed mother, to neglect by his distant 11

12

Fireborn I

and stern father, to a body plagued with a strange affliction the Mujurus only spoke about in hushed tones, and to a mouth that toiled to put into lucid words his thoughts. But the night offered no sanctuary from a force of nature that would shadow him to the end. ‘Wake up Ruzambu, the farm sack is on fire’, shouted Joel. Dreamy Ruzambu did not respond. He lay there, seemingly lifeless, in the growing bag of fire. Joel, still shouting fire, shook Ruzambu vigorously. Ruzambu began to breathe life but much too slowly to escape the hungry tongues of fire. Joel violently heaved his bleary, featherweight brother out of the flaming farm sack. He then hastily pulled himself out of the fiery sack and dragged his confused brother further away from the flames. Joel suddenly winced from a sharp burning sensation on his left calf. He threw his eyes to the spring of his agony. The menacing sack had followed them across the hut. Part of the flaring sack had seared into Joel’s calf. Joel promptly peeled it off with bare hands, casting the alight sack aside. The odour of burnt flesh stung Ruzambu’s wide nostrils. Ruzambu, fully awake now, watched his night refuge turn into ash. It is apposite that a biography of Solomon begin with a story of ashes and fire. The above description is Solomon’s first known brush with fire in 1952. It draws on a recollection of the fire incident by his brother Joel. ‘When I was told Solomon had been killed by fire, my thoughts immediately went back to the [1952] fire when we were young. There was something about Solomon and fire’, Joel reflected on his brother’s death in an alleged house fire on 15 August 2011.2 Solomon came into the world on 5 May 1945 in Chikomba district (then Charter district), a rural area towards the north-east of Zimbabwe. He was the tenth of twelve children (four of which were girls) his father Nevison had with his second wife Maidei, a retiring and acquiescent woman.3 Solomon was Zezuru, a subgroup of the larger Shona ethnic ensemble. In the mid-1890s, Solomon’s ancestors – the Mwendamberi people – attempted to resist encroachment on their farming land and cattle seizures by white Europeans.4 These violent clashes are referred to, in official nationalist history, as the First Chimurenga/Umvukela. In actuality, the First Chimurenga/Umvukela was not collective nationalist resistance to uniform European entry but a multifaceted series of separate fights staged by Africans against unjust European taxes, cattle and land seizures, and forced labour, amongst other localised grievances.5 Europeans overcame the Mwendamberis and, according to indigenous oral histories, some local resistors were burnt alive.6 Chikomba (variously translated as hellhole, burning crater), the place name adopted by defeated Africans, partially harks back to these historical burning incidents. One of Zezurus’ cultural beliefs is that there are resilient ties between the living

House of Nevison

13

and their deceased relatives (midzimu). Accordingly, some of Solomon’s family members understood his participation in the anti-colonial struggle from the 1960s to independence in 1980, as stirred by Mwendamberi midzimu that clashed with European settlers in the 1890s.7 In light of this belief in midzimu, some of which met a flaming end, one may venture to ask whether it is purely happenstance that Solomon’s end, and much of his life, had fire as an enduring theme. In contemporary times Chikomba has approximately 120,000 inhabitants, in a country with a total populace of about 16 million.8 In addition to Solomon, Chikomba is the birthplace of many Zimbabweans who made their mark in the anti-colonial struggle and in independence-time politics. Notable individuals from Chikomba include: Solomon’s cousin Chrispen Mataire alias David Todhlana (a commander in the independence war); Perrance Shiri (a commander in the liberation war, head of Zimbabwe’s Air Force after independence and cabinet minister latterly); Elisha Muzonzini (former chief of state intelligence); Andrew Muzonzini (former internal director of the Central Intelligence Organisation); Ernest Kadungure (guerrilla, politician and cabinet minister after 1980); Rwizi Grafton Ziyenge (veteran nationalist and trade unionist); Chenjerai ‘Hitler’ Hunzvi (leader of liberation war veterans who conducted forcible seizure of white-owned commercial farms in Zimbabwe after 2000); Grace Mugabe (former first lady of Zimbabwe); Sekai Nzenza (cabinet minister); Charles Utete (ex-chief secretary to the president and cabinet); Mariyawanda Nzuwa (former Civil Service Commission chairperson); and former cabinet ministers Michael Bimha, Tichaona Jokonya, Witness Mangwende and Edgar Mbwembwe. That Chikomba, an underdeveloped rural area with a small population size, produced this many significant individuals partly highlights effective kinship and ethnic ties that helped various people with Chikomba origins to position themselves at the heart of the Zimbabwean political establishment. As we shall discover, Solomon was undoubtedly the most influential figure of Chikomba extraction and he was patron to many political and military higher-ups from Chikomba. It is in Chikomba, then, where we must commence ‘reading the ashes’ of Solomon’s upbringing. House of Nevison Solomon was born under a Msasa tree, after his mother Maidei experienced obstructed labour. Joel described the circumstances of Solomon’s birth: Mother almost died giving birth to Solomon because he could not come out. Our custom was that when a woman is failing to give birth, she must go outside the

14

Fireborn I

village and give birth there. Mother found a spot under a Msasa tree, outside Mutusva village. One of the women helping her went away to find a traditional herb that women in that condition chew on. The juices from that herb make giving birth easier. When the woman came back she found that mother had already given birth to Solomon.9

Obstructed labour can occur when a mother has a small pelvis, an abnormally positioned baby or an unusually large baby.10 We will never know the exact reason or reasons for Maidei’s obstructed labour but we can make some inferences. Since Solomon was Maidei’s tenth child and, according to his older siblings Joel and Lucia, she had not suffered difficult childbirths before,11 it seems unlikely that a small pelvis caused obstructed labour. The cause was either the size of Solomon’s head, for he had a notoriously large cranium from babyhood to youth, or that he was abnormally positioned at the time Maidei went into labour. Solomon’s trying birth was perhaps an intimation of his coming troubled childhood. Maidei died when Solomon was three years old. Her death came weeks after she bore her twelfth baby, a girl called Tapiweyi, who died a few months after Maidei’s passing. Both deaths were part of a series of bizarre occurrences in Nevison’s house, as Joel explained: Strange things happened. The day mother died, that same day, the boy who came after Solomon, his name was Tarwireyi, he died. He died. Mother and Tarwireyi were buried on the same day and almost immediately after they were buried, Solomon became very ill. He just stopped eating. He became very thin. He almost died. This is when he got the name Ruzambu because he was thin like a reed. After this illness we realised that Solomon’s stuttering had become worse. Most of the Mujuru children did not live long. Of the twelve children, only myself, Solomon, Lucia and Misheck, who is now also late, managed to live a good number of years. The rest died young and in strange ways.12

Lucia recalled that Maidei ‘was coughing a lot. In those days there were no hospitals so I do not know what disease killed her. I also do not know why Solomon fell ill.’13 Nevison, on the other hand, comprehended the sequence of family tragedies and traumas in terms of bewitchment by a rival local family, following visits to traditional healers and diviners.14 Stories of bewitchment reveal the social constructions of the time. They reflect the lived social world of the young Solomon. After the deaths of Tapiweyi and Tarwireyi, Solomon became the youngest child. Lucia was in her mid-teens and in Maidei’s absence she took on responsibility for the infirm three-year-old Solomon.15 She became Solomon’s maternal figure but after a couple of years, Lucia was married off to a man from Kwenda in Chikomba, leaving Joel to assume increasing care for Solomon. One cold June night, when Nevison was away on an

House of Nevison

15

unskilled seasonal job, Solomon and Joel slept in the warm cooking hut. As narrated before, a farm sack they both used as a blanket that night caught fire while they slumbered. ‘I do not know how that fire started. I remember just waking up and realising that the sack was on fire. If I had gotten out of the sack first, Solomon would have been burnt’, Joel remarked as he pulled up his left trouser leg to reveal burn marks on his calf.16 ‘After we got out of the sack, we looked at each other and said nothing. Nothing was said between us’, Joel reminisced.17 Silence signalled their bemusement at how the sack caught fire as much as it did the fact that Solomon rarely spoke anyway and when he did speak, his mouth often miscarried his thoughts because he had a pronounced speech impediment. Solomon’s poor health did not deter Nevison, ever a disciplinarian, from taking firm action whenever his youngest son overstepped. ‘Father would whip Solomon if he was naughty so they were never very close. We all kept our distance from father to be honest because he could whip you over the smallest thing’, Joel recollected.18 Faced with Solomon’s unimproving health, Nevison resolved to send his son to Kwenda to be cared for by Lucia a second time. Joel summoned up his memories of the day Solomon first left for Kwenda: Father thought Solomon was a child marked for death, like the others who had died. He thought it a good idea to send him away, to Kwenda. Lucia’s husband is the one who came to get him. I remember he put Solomon on his back the day that he took him away. He was 8 years old at that stage.19

As stated by Lucia: Father gave Solomon to my late husband and me so that we could take care of him. Father said he would be better off in my care. He might get better. But he also said if Solomon dies, do not bring him back to Mutusva village, just let me know if he dies, and bury him there.20

Lucia nursed Solomon until his health improved but this was hardly vindication of Nevison’s decision to send him away. Nevison’s uprooting of an ailing child from familiar ground and his indifferent remark, ‘if Solomon dies . . . just let me know . . . and bury him there’, were an abdication of paternal responsibility. Despite his better health Solomon remained awfully lean, thus he continued to be commonly referred to as Ruzambu. Solomon was short in height during boyhood and his big head made him look physically clumsy, given his scrawny physique.21 He had intense brown eyes, tightly curled strands of dark hair and coarse skin.22 A black mole, located next to his right eye, marked his upper face, while his prominent cheekbones, large white teeth and thick lips defined his lower face.

16

Fireborn I

If Solomon could not shed the nickname Ruzambu, Lucia could not shake off Solomon’s continual reference to her as mother – a habit he first adopted when they lived together in Mutusva village, following Maidei’s passing. In adulthood, Solomon occasionally called Lucia his mother. On an occasion, in the 1980s, when Solomon referred to Lucia as such, one Eddison Zvobgo was present. Zvobgo was a flamboyant lawyer and senior ZANU PF politician who contributed to the independence struggle. On the word of Lucia, Zvobgo skipped and said, ‘Ah, you are the General’s mother! You are the woman who gave birth to this great soldier. Here is 500 dollars for your use.’ I did not correct him and took the money, it is embarrassing to say, but Solomon also kept quiet. In those days 500 [Zimbabwean] dollars was a lot of money. I bought cows with Zvobgo’s money.23

A Nomadic Schoolboy Solomon’s poor health partly delayed the start of his formal schooling. He commenced his primary education at the age of ten at Kwenda school.24 Lucia’s husband declined to financially support Solomon’s primary schooling, citing the monetary pressures of providing for his immediate family. Lucia struck an arrangement with Kwenda school’s headmaster. The school was undergoing infrastructural expansion. In exchange for Lucia’s labour, which took the form of brickmaking for the school, Solomon was allowed to attend classes at Kwenda. Solomon was a pupil at Kwenda for three years (Sub-Standards A and B and Standard 1) and he was not an academic star. Lucia evaluated Solomon’s early academic record: ‘He struggled with schoolwork because he started talking very late and he stuttered. It is surprising that despite his fragile body . . . he was better at sports like running and playing football.’25 Brickmaking for Kwenda school was obviously an unsustainable means of putting Solomon through formal education. Lucia also had to tend to her own growing family. As a result, Solomon was sent to reside with an uncle in Masvingo province (then Chatsworth) who could afford to pay for his education.26 Solomon’s uncle was already deceased when I began researching this biography, so it is difficult to copiously construct his life in Masvingo. We do know that Solomon enrolled at Rufaro mission school, where he spent two years (Standards 2 and 3). Solomon passed his Standard 3 education with unspectacular grades and transferred to Zimuto school in Masvingo for his Standard 4 education in 1960.27 During school holidays at Zimuto and Rufaro, Solomon returned to Mutusva village, where Joel enjoyed a more rooted life. Joel remembered some of Solomon’s school holiday activities:

A Nomadic Schoolboy

17

His real passion was sport, even though he was very thin. Solomon still could not talk properly. He was very frustrated by that. Solomon sometimes took that frustration out on other boys, from neighbouring villages, by beating them up, especially if they made fun of him for stuttering. He did not always win those fights. Sometimes he came back beaten. Father did not like cowards. He would say, ‘Solomon, come here and show me where you were beaten.’ If Solomon was hurt in the face, he would be proud of Solomon, even if he had lost the fight. But if Solomon had wounds on his back or the back of his head, he would say, ‘You got these wounds because you were running away from the fight so you are a coward’, then father would whip him for that.28

Another of Solomon’s school vacation interests, during his puberty, involved a girl called Monica Chikasha. As Joel described: Monica was his first girlfriend. She was from Njanja [in Chikomba]. We had these two donkeys called Chari and Jack. Solomon would put her on one of these donkeys. He would ride the other one and they would go to the township centre. Solomon should not have got that girl. She was too beautiful for him. He was not in her class. I cannot understand what she saw in Solomon. Solomon did not have a mother. He could not talk normally. He was very poor. Her family was better off than his. Solomon was not afraid of anything so he would just approach girls without fearing that they would look down on him or reject him. May be that is what got him Monica.29

Besides sports and fist fights, and improbable love as Joel put it, student politics seized Solomon’s interest in his youth. Nationalism developed in the 1950s as a reaction, in part, to the colonial state’s Native Land Husbandry Act (1951). The Act provoked mass resistance from rural blacks in the late 1950s because it enabled the state to govern blacks’ cultivation patterns, it reduced the number of cattle belonging to blacks, it restricted cattle grazing to stipulated regions and it applied mandatory labour on jobless rural blacks, amongst other racist measures.30 In urban areas, steep economic downturn in the late 1950s saw an upsurge in joblessness and declining living conditions.31 Blacks bore the brunt of these vicissitudes and nationalist leaders’ rhetoric exploited the grievance in order to enlarge nationalism’s ranks. In Solomon’s words: I started [student] politics at Zimuto school. We would do it at night. One of the teachers at Zimuto was Kumbirai Kangai. He was teaching us politics, that the whites were wrong to take over our country. They were oppressing us and we must organise ourselves to get freedom. Kangai and others did this teaching very secretly at night.32

Kangai was a student at Zimuto school from 1955 to 1959 and became a teacher there in 1960, which is when he first taught the fifteen-year-old Solomon.33 The colonial government ‘barred civil servants from engaging in political activities’, which compelled Kangai ‘to operate underground’.34

18

Fireborn I

Kangai was an active member of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1960 and he became a ZAPU follower in 1961 when the former was banned by the Rhodesian colonial government, for causing riots and damage of white-owned properties. When ZAPU underwent a split in 1963 Kangai had left Zimuto for a different school, from where he joined the ZANU splinter group. Solomon and Kangai were reacquainted in 1972, when Kangai left America (having completed a college degree in California) to join the ZANU leadership in Zambia. Rugare Gumbo was a student at Zimuto school when Kangai was a teacher there. He too maintained that Kangai politicised students in meetings under the cover of darkness.35 Some might say, therefore, that Zimuto school was a hive of NDP and ZAPU politics that significantly shaped Solomon and others’ early understandings of the political situation in Rhodesia. But Solomon downplayed the significance of student politics at Zimuto school, stating: ‘We did not really know what was happening. It was really playful, sort of like children playing without really knowing the aim.’36 Nonetheless, Solomon’s attendance of Zimuto school initiated him into a form of NDP and ZAPU student activism. In addition to them both being from Chikomba, Solomon and his cousin Chrispen Mataire (nom de guerre: David Todhlana) shared the same year of birth and they were ZAPU cadres in their youth, albeit at different schools.37 Mataire recalled that the tomfoolery of youth in the early 1960s was almost always connected with ZAPU and rebuked as such by elders: ‘If I did something my father did not like he would say wava kuita chi ZAPU manje [you are doing a ZAPU now].’38 ZAPU was more than just an anti-colonial nationalist party in those years. ZAPU embodied the vitality, flurry and rebelliousness of youth, for Solomon’s generation, while for elders it personified their struggle to maintain authority over perceived disobedient youth. Solomon was in due course expelled from Zimuto school in early 1962, when he was studying Standard 6, for participating in a student demonstration over the school’s strict disciplinary code. Joel remembered that: Father was angry. Solomon was sent to Lucia’s for some time so that she could teach him discipline. We had a few relatives in Zambia [then Northern Rhodesia] who brought Solomon there. He was sent to school in Zambia in 1962 to keep him out of trouble and because he now had a bad record for being expelled from Zimuto, Father thought headmasters in Rhodesia would refuse to accept him at their schools.39

Nevison aimed to make, by remote control, Solomon focus on his formal education but sending him to Zambia in the early 1960s was a counterproductive arrangement. For in the 1950s and early 1960s,

Coming of Age in Bulawayo

19

black Zambian secondary school pupils often protested against racism and demanded independence from British colonial rule.40 The Zambian nationalist politician Kenneth Kaunda, who became independent Zambia’s first president in 1964, put it this way: the unjustness of the colonial system only ‘began to make sense’ after his exposure to anticolonial politics in Zambian schools.41 Amid the Zambian disruptions, Solomon abandoned school altogether in 1962.42 Solomon dreaded his father’s expected furious reaction, so he elected to remain in Zambia and secured low-skilled employment at the District Commission in Mumbwa (Central province).43 In accordance with the nomadic pattern of Solomon’s early life, Mumbwa was only a brief station. ‘In 1963 I had to go back home [to Chikomba] because my father became very sick. He died soon after I got there’, Solomon pointed out.44 Solomon likely had mixed feelings about Nevison’s death. Nevison had lived an unremarkable life, mostly eking out a meagre existence on barely arable land. More than anything else, Solomon feared Nevison and had little knowledge of him because he had not been an omnipresent parent. Solomon was shunted off to Kwenda, Masvingo and Zambia and he was in and out of Mutusva village depending on school holidays. Now he returned to Chikomba to find his father close to death. Solomon was old enough to understand death and grief, and he had the opportunity to bid farewell to a deceasing parent, all of which was not the case when Maidei died. Coming of Age in Bulawayo In late 1963 the eighteen-year-old Solomon began drifting again. Bulawayo, located in Matabeleland province in the south-west of Rhodesia, was his next fleeting post. Bulawayo was the second-largest city after the capital Salisbury. It was traditionally the home of the Ndebele ethnic group but by 1963 it was increasingly mixed ethnically because of rapid urbanisation. Bulawayo was an industrial manufacturing centre, which earned it the moniker konthuthu ziyathunqa (the place of rising smokes) among black Africans, for the rising industrial fumes that marked part of its skyline. Bulawayo’s robust manufacturing sector was a pull factor for black job seekers from across Rhodesia and beyond national borders. Joel was attracted by employment opportunities in Bulawayo, like so many young men at the time. He now lived in Bulawayo’s Magwegwe township, which was reserved for Africans. According to Joel, ‘Solomon came there to live with me for a short time while he looked for work. He got a job as a salesman at Dunlop [a tyre manufacturing company] and lived in Mzilikazi’, another African township in Bulawayo.45

20

Fireborn I

The place of rising smokes was a ZAPU stronghold. After the Joshua Nkomo-led NDP was banned in 1961, ZAPU emerged in its place, with Nkomo still at the helm. As mentioned before, in 1963 some ZAPU members broke away to form a smaller ZANU party. Up until the split, ZAPU was the only nationalist party in Rhodesia, hence ZANU’s 1963 breakaway was markedly spiteful. There was ZAPU-ZANU physical ‘fighting in the African townships of Salisbury. But Bulawayo remained solid for ZAPU and Nkomo’s leadership.’46 Solomon moved to Bulawayo in the year of this violent break-up. His arrival in a fiercely pro-Nkomo part of Rhodesia partly determined his choice to remain a ZAPU member in this divisive phase of nationalist politics. As already established, Solomon’s ZAPU political educators at Zimuto school such as Kangai and graduates of the school like Gumbo switched sides. Solomon’s moment of departure from ZAPU to ZANU would only come in 1971, subsequent to another round of ZAPU infighting and paralysis of the party’s war effort.47 Besides being a ZAPU fortress, Bulawayo was famed for its sizzling climate, African social gangs, township sports and mahobo parties that were ‘held in the bush where skokiaan beer was brewed and often amid unwarranted romantic affairs’.48 Bulawayo was also a habitat for joyous shebeens, tea parties, township jazz and transnational musical influences (South African Mbaqanga; the West African Highlife; and the Cha-ChaCha from the DRC).49 The salaried Solomon partook in this rich cultural melting pot: He learned to speak some Ndebele and loved Bulawayo music and dancing. Ah, he enjoyed himself! He also played football with other youth. But in Bulawayo Solomon did not drink heavily, unless he hid it from me. When he came back from the [independence] war he had changed. He now drank too much. What I clashed with Solomon over in Bulawayo was smoking [cigarettes]. He started smoking a lot. I used to say to him, ‘Do you know that you are only alive because of the Christians in Kwenda who prayed for you when you were living with Lucia as a boy? Why are you smoking? Be a good Christian. It is the only way you will stay alive. Stay close to what saved you from death.’ Solomon did not change his behaviour. He continued to enjoy Bulawayo.50

One of Solomon’s partners in revelry was Herbert Ushewokunze,51 a black medical doctor who began practising in Bulawayo in 1965.52 Ushewokunze was a graduate of the University of Natal (South Africa), where he partook in the anti-apartheid struggle as a Pan Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) member and as the Black Medical Students Union (BMSU) chairperson.53 Solomon and Ushewokunze shared a passion for football. They both supported Bulawayo’s Mashonaland United Football Club, the leading local rival of Matabeleland

Coming of Age in Bulawayo

21

Highlanders Football Club. The names of these intensely competitive Bulawayo clubs reflected one of the city’s social divisions. Mashonaland, where Solomon and Ushewokunze originated, was a province dominated by the Shona-speaking Shona ethnic group and Matabeleland was identified with the Ndebele-speaking Ndebele ethnic group. The two football clubs’ names suggested that Matabeleland Highlanders was for the Ndebele and Mashonaland United for the Shona inhabitants of Matabeleland who migrated to Bulawayo in search of jobs. This resulted in social ‘tension among supporters of the two teams from the same locality. Before the Bulawayo derby, running street battles would start as early as Wednesday before the match on the weekend.’54 There is no evidence that Solomon took part in the derby street fights but his support for Mashonaland United meant that he was exposed to the social strains and violence with Matabeleland Highlanders supporters. In 1975, when Solomon had long since left Bulawayo for the war, the ZAPU leader Nkomo and Ushewokunze (who now coached and later acquired ownership of Mashonaland United) took a public stand against the continued existence of both clubs’ names because they fanned social division in Bulawayo for years. Matabeleland Highlanders was subsequently renamed Highlanders and Mashonaland United became known as Zimbabwe Saints. Solomon and Ushewokunze were reunited in 1976, when the latter joined the former in Mozambique (from where part of the liberation war was being waged) as a medical doctor in ZANLA camps.55 Untamed merriment and multilayered suffering were two sides of the same coin in colonial urban life for Solomon and many African residents of 1960s Bulawayo.56 The place of rising smokes was a racially segregated city. A privileged ‘white Bulawayo’ and an economically marginalised and politically subjugated ‘black Bulawayo’ (emalokishini) comprised the city.57 ‘Average wages for European employees went up from $2,112 per annum in 1957 to $3,108 in 1970, as compared with $164 to $312 for African employees. The gap between them widened from $1,948 in 1957 to $2,896 in 1970.’58 Moreover, ‘colonial planning [did not] envision the emergence of great cities for African proletariats or conceive systematically of the need for cultural and economic continuities and infrastructure aimed at the survival of poor people in large numbers’.59 The colonial government passed draconian laws and it introduced measures to contain black nationalists and to push ‘undesirable’ blacks out of Bulawayo.60 After Rhodesia’s illegal Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from the British Crown in 1965, black newspapers and large public gatherings were prohibited. The theatrical and musical culture Bulawayo was legendary for suffocated in state repression’s grip. A plethora of actors and musicians left the city: ‘Bulawayo’s

22

Fireborn I

life was muffled.’61 Bulawayo was all the time a more difficult existence for Solomon. He re-entered political activity, this time as an organising secretary for the ZAPU Youth League, Mzilikazi branch.62 ZAPU was banned in 1962 but its youth continued to operate underground and carried out random sabotage and arson attacks (using petrol bombs) on white-owned factories, shops, vehicles and administrative centres. In Joel’s account: I remember him [Solomon] saying that he had met some of his old friends from Zimuto [school] in Bulawayo, his political classmates. From that time, I saw him get more and more involved in politics. He would work at Dunlop during the day and do politics at night. I told him many times, as his older brother, to hold back because he would get into trouble with the police but that young man was unafraid. He would say, ‘I have heard you big brother’ and carry on with politics. I knew he had not stopped because the police once came to my house looking for him. I confronted him and he said he had been attending ZAPU youth meetings in a bush. Someone sold them out. There must have been a spy in their group who was reporting to the police because a policeman who was from our home area [Chikomba] came to warn me that they were going to put Solomon in jail. I told Solomon this and he started making plans to go to join the struggle in Zambia. He went to Zambia via Botswana. This was in 1967. He wrote a letter to me saying that he was now in Botswana safely. I never saw or heard from Solomon again until the war was over.63

Solomon talked down the degree to which he and fellow students fully understood the import of their ‘political’ activities at Zimuto but what is evident in Joel’s account is the significance of these old school networks in facilitating renewed activism at a later and more mature life-cycle stage. Birthplace connections also mattered, as evinced in the forewarning, about Solomon’s impending arrest, given to Joel by a policeman from Chikomba. Drawing on interviews with Solomon in 1980, the writers David Martin and Phyllis Johnson record Solomon’s passage to Botswana as follows: On 25 December 1967 he was forced to flee to Botswana after it was discovered that he had bribed African police constables to allow the escape of three ZAPU members under guard at Bulawayo’s Mpilo Hospital. Dressed like a schoolboy, in shorts and without shoes and with no travel documents, he boarded the train to Plumtree [a small border town to Botswana] and crossed the border pretending to be the son of a woman he met on the train. It was Christmas day when he entered Botswana and he contacted the ZAPU representative in Francistown.64

Solomon described, elsewhere, his exit from Rhodesia in the following way: When I was at Dunlop there were problems about low salaries and conditions were not good. I was a member of ZAPU youth. We were always being arrested. The police always harassed us. In 1967 we decided kuti no, zvanyanya [no, this is excessive]. We are going out. We went out through Botswana. I was with another

Pointers to the Future

23

man whose name I cannot remember. We were two. We had only known each other two days because he was from a different [ZAPU] branch. So we went to Plumtree by train and we crossed the border. I do not forget that day because it was 25 December. Christmas. When we got to Francistown we declared ourselves to the authorities and we were given refugee status. The CIDs [Criminal Investigation Detectives] in Botswana are the ones who were questioning us, not ZAPU because they had been told already from Bulawayo that we have sent this many recruits, expect them. So our ZAPU leaders in Botswana did not ask many questions. Only the Botswana CIDs did not know us so they asked questions because they wanted to know if we were coming for ZAPU training or had been sent by the Rhodesians for spying. I think they were right to do this. We were then sent to Zambia. In Zambia I became known as Rex Nhongo. It [the nom de guerre] was a way of making sure the enemy did not know who you really were and where you came from. I was just given the name. I did not choose it.65

By 1967 it was progressively trying for Solomon and other ZAPU youth to organise effectively in Bulawayo. The alternatives were stark: continue to coordinate ineffectually in Bulawayo with the risk of being jailed and tortured by police or join the ranks of ZAPU recruits in Zambia. The 22year-old Solomon chose to contribute to the independence struggle from outside Rhodesia’s national borders. Pointers to the Future It is fitting that this chapter’s coverage of Solomon’s early years end with his arrival in Zambia for military training and the appearance of the name Rex Nhongo, which would attract considerable fame and infamy over time. There are some pointers to the future and the roots of Solomon’s character in his early life, which I would like to underscore in this section, before embarking on the next stage in his life cycle. The first of these indicators to the future is Solomon’s testing childhood. An early life of poverty impacted Solomon’s character in lasting ways. When Solomon returned to Mutusva village on school holidays he would, by virtue of being the youngest son, herd his father’s cattle in Chikomba’s grazing planes and hills. The size of a family’s head of cattle signified its degree of wealth. Nevison had two cattle, underlining his family’s penury.66 So familial were these two cattle to Solomon that he named them Black and Hostel.67 There came a time when Nevison required money for an unidentified undertaking, which forced him to sell Hostel, leaving Solomon with just Black to herd. Joel painted a characteristic picture of Solomon’s attitude towards the Mujuru family’s poverty: It bothered him when he was left with one cow and the other herd boys each had several. He complained about it bitterly. He did not talk a lot because he stuttered

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Fireborn I

so when he talked about something for some time you knew it was important. He hated that we were poor. Sometimes when we were older [after the war], he would say, ‘Show me again where you were burnt when we were young’. I would show him and he would say, ‘Ah, if we had not been born so poor this would not have happened’, and then we would laugh. It became a joke between brothers but that joke told a deep story. Solomon never wanted to be poor again. He always said that. That is why he went into business after he came back from the war.68

Solomon was obviously a sensitive boy sorely concerned about class. His courting of Monica, who came from a better-off Chikomba family, was likely also partly a manifestation of a yearning for status. The unremitting acquisitive pursuit of wealth, which defined Solomon’s adulthood, would be his flight from the poverty and indignity of childhood. The adult Solomon was reserved about his upbringing because it was defined by penury and personal shame. A second pointer is the young Solomon’s reluctance to prioritise the advancement of his formal education beyond a basic level because he was a person of action. Were this not the case Solomon would not have been expelled from school. The activist quality he exhibited in his school years and in Bulawayo with the ZAPU Youth League is proof of an actionoriented person. School holidays were spent on sporting activities. Whereas some herd boys carried a book or two with them to pass the time reading, as their cattle grazed, Solomon’s hands were bare, as if in anticipation of the moments they would need to be abruptly clenched for fistfights with lads who dared to mock his stutter. As Black and Hostel were grazing, Solomon had the planes of Chikomba to gallop at speed and a makeshift football made of plastic bags and strips of elastic to kick about. Still, the conditions of Solomon’s upbringing, which a child can hardly control, did not bode well for a life of advanced education. Solomon came from a broken family. He started school late partly because of an unexplained illness. And when he began formal schooling he could barely talk. The rootlessness of his childhood, in which he regularly lived with different family members and repeatedly changed schools in a short span of time, were hardly conducive for a sound education. In the end, his militant choice to participate in the liberation struggle as a ZAPU cadre cements that he was governed by action rather than theory. Other perceptible elements in Solomon’s childhood, which ran through his later life, are resilience, courage, an independent streak and proximity to violence and trauma. From the early death of his mother and some siblings in quick succession, and his father’s neglectful ways, Solomon learned to be independent. Experience taught him to interpret relationships as lacking permanence and life itself as precarious. There were long odds that Solomon would live beyond childhood, given his mystery illness,

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dead mother, indifferent father and poverty. In a show of resilience, Solomon surmounted these personal and family misfortunes. This knack for survival would serve him well in the liberation struggle, which typified ongoing multiple perils. Solomon often lost his boyhood physical fights with other lads, but this did not make him fear fighting and the whiplashes he risked incurring whenever his father deemed Solomon as having behaved like a ‘coward’. That Solomon even dared to engage in physical fights given his sickly, reedy frame can be read as another sign of his courage. But courage can also cover a multitude of sins, seeing as Solomon’s fights were reckless disregard for his own health and safety. Solomon’s boyhood fights probably also signified his shame and anger, because he lacked a mother, had a speech impediment and came from a poorer family than many other Chikomba boys. As we will encounter later, Solomon commanded immense authority over his subordinates in the liberation war and much of this authority was based on the courage and practical knowledge he displayed during the guerrilla incursions that he led. There was much violence and trauma in Solomon’s childhood and youth: from the early death of his mother and certain siblings, to his unsolved illness as a child, to his series of fistfights, to his detached father’s penchant for corporal punishment, to his exposure to football hooliganism in Bulawayo, and to the violence of ZAPU youth activism. Violence and trauma would be mainstays in Solomon’s career as a soldier and in the evening of life. We will also see, in the pages ahead, a few other elements endure in Solomon’s life. Fire always shadowed Solomon’s trail. And the good time living (music, dancing, swigging liquor, cavorting with women and his regard for merry friendships) of 1960s Bulawayo would only ascend, like the rising smokes that conquered the city’s skyline. Becoming Rex Nhongo In Zambia, Nhongo first resided at Luthuli, a holding camp named after the South African anti-apartheid African National Congress (ANC) party leader Albert Luthuli.69 Luthuli was a ZAPU–ANC camp. At Luthuli Nhongo received basic military training, which emphasised discipline and physical fitness. ‘We used to call Rex chimusoro (humpty dumpty) because he had a big head and a very slim body so he looked awkward when he was running and training. It was as if his big head was bouncing on his very slim body’, a fellow trainee depicted.70 In a few weeks, Nhongo and other recruits numbering fewer than fifty were transported to a ZAPU camp in Tanzania called Morogoro. ‘We selected cadres for their capability and we found him capable of becoming a good soldier. We sent him for training in communication. We first sent him to Tanzania then to

26

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Moscow’ in 1968, a ZAPU commander at Luthuli pointed out.71 Upon arrival in Tanzania, Nhongo was not immediately sent to Russia for further training. He temporarily resided at Morogoro camp, which fell under Albert Nxele’s command. ‘We trained every day at that camp. They were making us do a commando type training’, a ZAPU cadre mentioned.72 At Morogoro Nhongo interacted with Ambrose Mutinhiri, Grey Mutemasango, Fakazi Moyo, Elliot Masengo and Gordon Munyanyi. These ZAPU cadres were senior to Nhongo and acted as his instructors. Nhongo and subordinate ZAPU cadres ordinarily referred to Mutinhiri as General Charles de Gaulle, a military hero of French resistance to Nazi occupation during the Second World War and France’s president from 1959 to 1969. ‘We called him General de Gaulle because de Gaulle was a tall and firm-looking fellow. Mutinhiri was like that, lanky, serious military fellow.’73 General de Gaulle was influential in Nhongo’s early survival in the liberation struggle, as we shall see shortly. Nhongo was eventually sent to Russia in 1968 for training as part of a group composed of Joshua Mpofu, Cain Mathema, Bhekuzulu Khumalo, Walter Mthikhulu and John Ndlovu, amongst others. As said by Nhongo, in Moscow: I trained in radio [communication] and intelligence. After this I went back to Tanzania. I stayed in Dar es Salaam and then went to Sofia, Bulgaria, for more training and I was especially trained in artillery. We were about 14 when we went to Bulgaria. We stayed there for 6 months. Then we came back to Dar es Salaam and we were sent to the border between Tanzania and Zambia, to a place called Mbeya.74

Nhongo’s description of his time in Bulgaria (1969) and Russia was matter of fact. He described later trips to other Communist countries in the same matter-of-fact way. Nhongo’s arid descriptions partly betray his instrumental and practical understanding of training abroad. Nhongo was a soldier, first and foremost. He was not converted by the Communist ideologies of the Eastern bloc. Nhongo did not desire to emulate Eastern countries’ political and economic systems in an independent Zimbabwe. He valued Eastern countries’ solidarity and hospitality but was not quixotic about his time in the East. Nhongo viewed ZAPU’s relationship with the East in practical terms – the East was a source of military training and weapons for use in the liberation struggle. Nhongo struggled in some of his training in Russia owing to a legacy of youth – his limited formal education. As a fellow ZAPU cadre explained, ‘radio communication became a bit difficult for him because he stammered and he was not that well educated so the intelligence course was difficult for him’.75 As a result, ZAPU rerouted Nhongo to Bulgaria for

Becoming Rex Nhongo

27

conventional army training. For insights on training in Bulgaria, we must turn to the recollections of David Todhlana, Nhongo’s cousin. Todhlana trained in Russia in the late 1960s but his time there was also cut short because he was expelled by Russian instructors ‘for being too opinionated’.76 Following his return from Russia, Todhlana was sent to Bulgaria, with Nhongo, for regular army training in 1969. A man called Thomas Nhari, who will take on substantial relevance in the next chapter, was one of the ZAPU trainees dispatched to Bulgaria in Nhongo’s group. Todhlana clarified why he teamed up with Nhongo during the Bulgarian training: I joined ZAPU a year earlier than him [Nhongo]. He was my junior so when we were going to Bulgaria I was his section commander. ZAPU had the idea that you would operate better in Rhodesia if you operated in your home area because you know the terrain and the people. We were from the same area [Chikomba] so he was put under me for the Bulgaria training.77

According to Todhlana, the ZAPU trainees resided in a Bulgarian regular army camp that was secluded from the local community. They were not allowed to mix with locals. ‘We were told you are here for military training so you do that only. We were told that if we went around we might become a security risk. The trainers were fair. There was no racism at all’, Todhlana underlined.78 Russia had been different because there ZAPU trainees were allowed to go out for recreation and on some occasions ZAPU recruits were taken to see Russian cooperatives. The Russians even provided a small stipend, unlike the Bulgarians. Todhlana said of Nhongo in Bulgaria: ‘He was quiet. He did not talk much because of his stammering and his level of education was not like some of us so he did not really engage in intellectual discussions. He just went about his military training very seriously.’79 When Nhongo returned from Bulgaria, he found ZAPU in turmoil because of political leadership wrangles between James Chikerema and Jason Moyo. The political discord was partially sparked by ZAPU’s ‘selfevaluation exercise’ in which Moyo criticised the head of the Department of Special Affairs, Chikerema, for having ‘jeopardised our entire strategy’ and compromising Zambia’s security.80 ‘We were no longer getting supplies from Zambia. Many people got disillusioned’, a ZAPU cadre in Tanzania indicated.81 Amid the ZAPU leadership’s divisions, its cadres held a clearing-the-air meeting in Mbeya (south-west Tanzania). Nhongo recounted part of the meeting’s rancorous proceedings and his contribution: I stood up and said, ‘We did not come from home to have political problems. We came here to fight so we must concentrate on fighting.’ By then ZANU

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Fireborn I

was quiet [inactive militarily] and they had a problem with being recognised by the OAU [Organisation of African Unity, because ZANU was seen as an unnecessary splinter group from ZAPU]. At that meeting at Mbeya it was clear to myself and others, about six of us, that we decide to cross over from ZAPU to ZANU.82

At the time of ZAPU’s internal political ructions, a ZANU party representative in Mbeya, who oversaw a camp called Itumbi, was approached by two of his security officers with a request from some ZAPU cadres to defect to ZANLA. The two security officers were fond of spending their evenings drinking alcohol in local Tanzanian bars. On one of these evenings, they met Nhongo in the company of a group of ZAPU soldiers. The ZAPU group indicated to the security officers that they wanted to defect to ZANU because ZAPU’s war effort had been crippled by political infighting. When the security officers relayed the Nhongo group’s defection request to the ZANU representative, he retorted: It is not possible in this country. If you are recruited as a ZAPU cadre you stay there. You cannot just switch. If you want to switch then go back to Rhodesia first and be recruited there as a new recruit for the side you want. The Tanzanian government did not allow people to just cross sides willy-nilly because they were afraid this might start conflict in their country between ZAPU-ZANU. They did not want fighting in their country.83

However, the two security officers kept coming back to the ZANU representative with constant defection requests from the Nhongo group. The ZANU representative ignored each plea, resulting in Nhongo and nine other ZAPU soldiers, Nhari among them, showing up unannounced at the ZANU representative’s house in early 1971: Rex, I remember, said, ‘The chance of me going to Zimbabwe to fight is with ZANU. In ZAPU I have been trained and I came back thinking we will be deployed to fight but we are just training all the time in Tanzania.’ Tanzanian houses were rectangular and there was a courtyard in the middle. I took them to the courtyard and told them what they had done was not allowed by the Tanzanians.84

When the ZANU representative took the matter to a Tanzanian state security official in Mbeya, he was surprised when the official asked if he thought the Nhongo group was comprised of genuine cadres. I told him I believe they are genuine because they had been very persistent about crossing to our side and they had already taken a big risk because if they returned to ZAPU they would be in serious trouble because ZAPU had this guy in charge of security called Ethan Dube who was very hard. Even we in ZANU had heard about Ethan Dube.85

Becoming Rex Nhongo

29

The Tanzanian official instructed the ZANU representative not to immediately accept the Nhongo group as part of ZANU, while he waited to see whether ZAPU would report missing cadres to him. Within days, a ZAPU representative called Sikwili mentioned to the ZANU representative that he suspected some of his cadres had decamped to ZANU. ‘I feared that ZAPU would come to take these guys by force whether I was there or not. I thought it best to be prepared so I armed them. I gave them Uzi machine guns. I told them if ZAPU comes you better defend yourselves.’86 The ZANU representative then communicated to Josiah Tongogara, his chief of operations, that he was harbouring ZAPU defectors. Tongogara was initially wary of the Nhongo group, suspecting that they might be ‘ZAPU spies’ sent to infiltrate ZANU.87 A fortnight passed and ZAPU did not make a concerted effort to recover the Nhongo group, leading the Tanzanians to say: ‘Fine, these people are in ZANU willingly. We will leave them with you. They can stay, even if this is against the normal rule.’88 Nhongo repeatedly mentioned to the ZANU representative that they had left behind other wouldbe defectors. When they first deserted, they had wanted to come as a larger group but some, including his cousin Todhlana, did not make it to ZANU. Nhongo appears to have thought that since his group’s defection was not reversed by the Tanzanians, he ought to try to help others in ZAPU defect to ZANU. The ZANU representative described that: In the area where we lived there were these small restaurants and bars run by Swahili girls. These girls knew the ZAPU guys Rex was saying also wanted to defect because they would eat and drink with these girls. Rex used some of the girls to tell those guys in ZAPU that they had been accepted in ZANU so they should come. But some of these guys or the girls sold out because the information got known by ZAPU intelligence. A message came from the girls saying that Rex must meet the defectors at a certain place so they can go together to join ZANU. Rex went there with two or three and they were captured. It was a trap.89

Dube was away in Botswana when Nhongo was captured but, fortuitously, ‘General de Gaulle’ was present. Mutinhiri had an amiable relationship with Nhongo and they were of the same ethnic (Zezuru) and regional (Mashonaland East) origins, all of which contributed to Mutinhiri’s decision to facilitate Nhongo’s escape.90 Nhongo was detained in a pit but Mutinhiri put on duty for the night a Zezuru sentinel loyal to him. The sentinel had instructions to set Nhongo free late at night and, once he was safely gone, to report his ‘escape’ to Mutinhiri, who would then prevent an appropriate pursuit of the escapee. There were no glitches in the flight scheme but when Nhongo made it back to ZANU, he was treated with heightened suspicion for having defected to ZANU,

30

Fireborn I

returning to ZAPU under the pretext of securing more recruits for ZANU and then reverting to ZANU unscathed and without any new defectors. Tongogara’s suspicion of Nhongo was reinforced by the fact that he was not Karanga – Tongogara’s ethnic group. As stated by the ZANU representative, ‘Tongogara really questioned Rex’s background. He wanted to know if he was Karanga, Ndebele, Zezuru or Manyika. I must confess that I stood up for Rex because he was Zezuru like me. I considered him my homeboy. I protected Rex from Tongogara.’91 Nhongo underwent retraining in ZANLA. ZAPU instruction leaned towards regular army training but ZANLA was a more straightforwardly Maoist guerrilla army that used simpler weapons such as AK47s, landmines and small bombs. According to Nhongo, ‘in the Soviet Union they had told us that the decisive factor of the war is the weapons. When I got to Itumbi, where there were Chinese instructors, I was told that the decisive factor was the people.’92 At the beginning of 1972 Nhongo also received practical guerrilla training from FRELIMO, in Mozambique’s Tete province, where it was waging war against Portuguese colonial rule. FRELIMO took Nhongo and other ZANLA guerrillas on missions against the Portuguese Army, giving them practical experience in how to mount guerrilla operations and how to mobilise the local population in support of guerrilla war.93 These collaborative guerrilla operations between southern African liberation armies tend not to be highlighted in official nationalist histories. The FRELIMO training emphasised the application of scientific methods to reconnaissance and tactical decision-making. FRELIMO cadres recalled disagreements with some ZANLA guerrillas, such as Joseph Chimurenga, who sought to rely on spirit mediums and magical charms for reconnaissance and decision-making.94 Nhongo was described by FRELIMO cadres as ‘practical’ and not one of the guerrillas steeped in belief in mediums and magic,95 which was undoubtedly a vestige of his regular soldier training in ZAPU. After the brief attachment with FRELIMO, the Dare re Chimurenga (ZANU’s supreme war council) envisaged that Nhongo, as part of a group of forty-five guerrillas, would enter the north-east of Rhodesia to commence guerrilla attacks. However, Nhongo and other field commanders from the group of forty-five preferred to first concentrate on stockpiling arms (grenades, landmines, AK-47s and ammunition) in the Zambezi valley for up to six months. According to Nhongo, a series of heated meetings between the group of forty-five and Dare were held at Chifombo, a ZANLA operational base in Zambia near the country’s border with Mozambique:

Becoming Rex Nhongo

31

[W]e told the leadership no, we want some time to prepare adequately. This caused a contradiction between the fighters and Chitepo’s leadership but [Noel] Mukono and Tongogara were trying to understand us. We were very frank. We told the leadership we no longer wanted to do things the old way, where people turn on their radios and get excited hearing that there has been a fight between freedom fighters and the Rhodesians and after that all the freedom fighters get captured or killed, then they do the same thing again and fighters just keep dying. Because of the good training our group had, we insisted on transporting weapons to Rhodesia. Mozambican people who lived along the border helped us a lot to carry arms into Rhodesia. Some of the [Dare] leadership called us cowards but we did that anyway under the command of Meya Urimbo. Then Urimbo called the leadership and we told them we are ready to go in now.96

The group of forty-five divided the north-east into three sectors, each with an equal number of fighters. Nhongo took command of the Nehanda sector. The group agreed to commence operations by moving cached arms from the Zambezi valley deep into the north-east, after which they would only begin guerrilla sabotage activities following a period of concerted recruitment of new fighters: [I]f we got killed there were no fighters left in Zambia and ZANLA’s war would collapse. So we agreed that instead of fighting we would focus on recruitment because what ZANLA really needed at this stage was new fighters and that would also help ZANU to be recognised by the OAU because with more men it would be seen as serious about fighting. We first got 100, second group 300. We raised 600 before we fired a single shot. When the [Dare] leadership saw these numbers they started trusting us more.97

Local black villagers assisted Nhongo’s group in transferring weapons from the Zambezi valley to parts of Nehanda sector such as Chiweshe, St Alberts and Centenary. Still, many locals in Nehanda sector were not supportive of the Nhongo group, particularly in Concession, a farming area composed of scores of migrant farm workers from Malawi who refused to offer the guerrillas any support.98 The Nhongo group were reluctant to tell their local helpers what exactly they were carrying, in order not to give away crucial intelligence on the nature of the weapons stock. Whenever the Nhongo group divulged the containers’ contents, it was more often than not a misleading assertion that they were army radios.99 On 21 December 1972, seven guerrillas commanded by Nhongo’s deputy, a guerrilla named Jairos, attacked a farm called Altena. The farm was owned by a locally infamous white Rhodesian brute, Marc de Borchgrave. Nhongo denied that de Borchgrave’s brutishness towards Africans on his farm was the motive for Jairos’s attack, insisting that ‘the main thing for us was to study the reaction of the enemy and his tactics so we could decide upon our own tactics’.100

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The Altena attack provoked ferocious search and kill operations in the north-east by the Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF). Despite attrition of men, Nhongo continued to operate in the north-east by, under the cover of darkness, planting landmines, continuing with the politicisation of locals and forging links with traditional authorities. As Nhongo described: [W]e used hit and run tactics on roads, power lines . . . . We concentrated on landmines a lot. If we attacked an area we quickly moved away and would spend days and nights walking. The enemy would be searching for us when we were already gone. We kept moving. We were lucky because we soon got reinforcements from Tanzania led by George Rutanhire. These were the first recruits we made when we first entered the north-east. I broke my group into four small groups, then subdivided them again and told them to spread out in Nehanda, so the Rhodesians started believing that perhaps we were all over the north-east yet we were not. When we were doing these things we were still recruiting and sending people to Zambia.101

On 18 January 1973, the Rhodesian Front (RF) government’s prime minister Ian Smith acknowledged in a live broadcast that ‘the terrorist incursion in the north-east of our country has developed in a manner that we had not previously experienced and as a result we have to face up to a number of serious problems’.102 The ‘problems’ were not simply the disruption to roads, communication infrastructure and security by guerrilla sabotage operations, but also the collusion of guerrillas with the rural black population, traditional leaders and spirit mediums. The situation appeared to be one of generalised rebelliousness in the north-east. As one of the leading field commanders in the region, Nhongo’s stock in ZANLA as a bona fide guerrilla fighter rose.

3

Ghost of Chitepo

In August 1973, at the ZANU external leadership’s biennial conference in Lusaka, Nhongo was promoted from field commander in Nehanda sector, Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe (MMZ) warfront, to provincial commander in the Zambia Zimbabwe (ZZ) sphere of guerrilla activity.1 In addition, Nhongo was elected to the ZANLA High Command for the first time, as a junior member. Both promotions were recognition of the intense guerrilla recruitment drive and the 1972 attacks on Altena and Whistle Field farms, which occurred under Nhongo’s watch in Nehanda sector. Dzinashe Machingura, who would have momentous political disagreements with Nhongo towards the late 1970s, was appointed political commissar for ZANLA’s Tanzania-based training camps at the 1973 Lusaka conference.2 Machingura was also proposed for election to the High Command but eschewed the nomination because he ‘felt somewhat of an outsider in the murky politics of Lusaka’.3 According to Machingura, ‘Tongogara had also intended to appoint me as a special assistant’ in his office but was dissuaded from doing so by Webster Gwauya who thought he was more useful as a political commissar.4 Nhongo and Machingura’s varying dispositions towards promotion to the High Command reflected a key difference between both guerrillas at this stage. Machingura’s point that he felt divorced from ‘murky’ Lusaka politics was a reasonable one, since he was mostly based in Tanzania. But Nhongo was not seriously acquainted with Lusaka politics either because the majority of his time since 1971 had been spent in Nehanda sector as a field commander.5 Furthermore, Nhongo only joined ZANLA in March 1971, as an ordinary soldier from ZAPU, but being a Johnniecome-lately from a rival liberation army did not make him reticent about higher politics. Nhongo was attracted to spaces of influence. The 1973 Lusaka conference marked the beginning of Nhongo’s meteoric rise in ZANLA’s top hierarchy.

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Ghost of Chitepo

A Storm Is Coming Nhongo deployed to ZZ front, which was situated to the west of MMZ, following his new appointments. The provincial commanders of the adjacent ZZ and MMZ fronts maintained contact and they sometimes coordinated movement of arms.6 During the course of these exchanges it became apparent to Nhongo that there was growing discontent among some guerrillas in MMZ front.7 Nhongo had a history of disagreements with MMZ commanders such as Thomas Nhari and Dakarai Badza. Nhongo had a historical bond with Nhari. They underwent military training together in Bulgaria as part of ZAPU and they jointly defected to ZANLA in 1971. Nhongo’s differences with Nhari and Badza began in the aftermath of the 1972 attacks on Altena and Whistle Field farms, which triggered a ferocious response from the RSF. This 1972 disagreement was about strategy in the operational field, as Nhongo narrated: The Rhodesians were attacking us. We were losing a lot of men. We [north-east commanders] had a meeting to discuss our strategy. It was myself, [Meya] Urimbo, [Joseph] Chimurenga, Badza and Nhari. There were problems at the meeting. Badza and Nhari were feeling pressure from the war. They said we as the commanders should go back to Zambia. I said no, we cannot leave the boys [junior guerrillas] at the front on their own. Badza and Nhari went back to Zambia. I stayed with the boys. I moved with them further into Rhodesia to avoid detection. We left the Rhodesians looking for us along the border. That is how we survived.8

A second dispute between Nhongo and Nhari occurred a year later. By June 1973 Nhongo’s Nehanda sector had managed to make significant strides in guerrilla recruitment. Nehanda sector guerrillas had done this by actively avoiding confrontation with the RSF and focusing on intensive recruitment by persuasion.9 According to Nhongo, Tongogara became keen on a first-hand briefing from the subdivision’s commander: Tongogara wanted to know what was going on at the front. We had brought about 700 recruits in one year. Before we had never had so many being recruited in a short time. He wanted to know how we had done it. I was commander of Nehanda. I said I could not leave until someone was sent to replace me. Thomas Nhari was sent to take my place. We stayed together for one week. I was showing him how I had been operating. After that I left. I walked for five days to reach Chifombo. The very day [5 July] I arrived, I was shocked to hear on the radio that St Albert’s mission [a school in Nehanda sector] had been closed. Children [and teachers at St Albert’s school] had been abducted [by Nhari]. Tongogara wanted to know what was happening. It seems Nhari wanted a name like Nhongo. He wanted to show he could recruit more than me so he abducted school children. I had stayed around St Albert’s for two years speaking to parents, children, teachers, priests. Recruiting takes time but Nhari wanted to do it

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quickly. Our policy was to take [recruit] people voluntarily but Nhari wanted a name like mine.10

George Rutanhire, a fellow Nehanda sector guerrilla, ‘knew at the time that the [St Albert’s] abductions had not been approved by Nhongo as the possibility had been discussed and rejected before Nhongo left for Chifombo’.11 By going ahead with the abductions anyway, Nhari stressed his disregard for Nhongo’s authority in Nehanda sector. Nhongo’s remark that ‘Nhari wanted a name like mine’ also suggests personal rivalry between the two commanders. Nhongo’s reproach that ‘recruiting takes time but Nhari wanted to do it quickly’ underscored differences between ZANLA field commanders over how to conduct the liberation war. In the 1960s ZANLA often shanghaied civilians as guerrilla recruits but by 1973 there had been a shift in recruitment methods, which now emphasised voluntary conscription.12 But Nhari preferred building up ZANLA’s guerrilla corps speedily and by any means necessary. Nhongo was in favour of rapid expansion of the ZANLA corps, as demonstrated by the concentrated recruitment drive he oversaw in Nehanda sector, but for him this was not meant to compromise ZANLA guerrillas’ relations with potential local allies.13 Voluntary recruits were also more likely to become committed cadres than those who were forced to join ZANLA. The Nhari-led St Albert’s abductions put ZANLA in a difficult position. ZANLA could not publicly denounce the abductions without exposing internal indiscipline and personal rivalries and division over strategy among some of its commanders. ZANLA guerrillas received material assistance from St Albert’s mission but these convivial relations soured because of the 1973 abductions.14 Moreover ZANU’s recognition by the OAU as an authentic actor in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle was still a recent development, having occurred only in 1972. ZANU still had a long way to go in fully justifying the OAU’s sanction.15 The St Albert’s incident was far from a feather in its cap in this regard. The abductions also lent some credence to white Rhodesian propaganda that attempted to delegitimise ZANLA guerrillas’ cause. White Rhodesian media greatly exploited the St Albert’s debacle for an extended period. Subsequent to the abductions, for example, a leading state-controlled Rhodesian weekly newspaper ran an editorial titled ‘The Enemies of All’, which was a forerunner of propaganda brochures produced and distributed by the RSF’s Psychological Action Unit in ZANLA’s operational areas.16 ‘The Enemies of All’ editorial dehumanised ZANLA guerrillas and it foretold a bleak future if they ever came to power: The terrible events at St Albert’s Mission last week have aroused great anger throughout Rhodesia among Europeans and Africans alike . . . This cowardly

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crime was not the work of men; it was the work of hyenas . . . . The way of the terrorist is to murder and rape, to abduct and destroy . . . these are the methods they would employ to rule [independent Zimbabwe] if they ever won the fight. It is Rhodesia’s good fortune that the terrorists cannot, and will not win.17

The Dare re Chimurenga and High Command were indignant about Nhari’s indiscipline and the multilayered damage it caused.18 The Dare’s publicity arm launched a damage control campaign, in which it endeavoured to cast the St Albert’s incident as a case of voluntary recruitment, not abduction, but this exercise was mostly in vain.19 Now that we have established the nature of Nhongo’s past fraught relations with some MMZ guerrillas, let us return to the earlier point that while he was in ZZ front from late 1973, Nhongo became aware of mounting disgruntlement among certain guerrillas in MMZ front. Nhongo did not identify Rhodesian manipulation as a cause of the MMZ discontent but authors such as Martin and Johnson and Bhebe pinpoint RSF skulduggery as having played a role in the unrest. For Bhebe, ZANU’s lack of a fully functional Information Department for the churning out of effective pro-ZANLA propaganda meant that the RSF was winning the battle for hearts and minds in 1974.20 ‘In those circumstances ZANLA combatants must have been easily influenced against their leaders by the Rhodesian Special Branch people’, Bhebe concludes.21 Martin and Johnson affirm that ZANLA’s problems at the warfront came to a head ‘soon after’ a covert meeting in Mozambique on 21 September 1974 between Nhari, Badza and Rhodesian intelligence operatives.22 Mozambique was on the path to independence from Portuguese rule after the swearing in of a transitional government on 20 September. Portuguese soldiers were in the process of withdrawing from Mozambique and FRELIMO fighters were already in their camps. These developments, Martin and Johnson deduce, meant ‘it was possible to meet, without fear of attack or detection, on Mozambican territory. The [independence] settlement in Mozambique had made transit conditions much easier for . . . [ZANLA] guerrillas who could now cross the Zambezi River in broad daylight.’23 In Martin and Johnson’s account Rhodesian operatives encouraged Nhari and Badza to cause unrest in ZANLA. The first stage of this disturbance saw the two guerrillas leave MMZ without the High Command’s authorisation, after the 21 September consultation, in order to register grievances about operational challenges at the warfront such as inadequate supplies and weapons inferior to those of the RSF.24

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The scholar Gerald Mazarire upholds that the High Command responded to Nhari and Badza’s airing of grievances by punishing them and he adds that the latter guerrilla had at one point attempted to shoot Nhongo.25 Badza was demoted for trying to shoot Nhongo, the scholar Luise White points out.26 However, Martin and Johnson note that it is Caesar Molife who attempted to shoot Nhongo.27 Nhongo did not mention an attempt on his life by Badza or Molife, in the life history interviews on this period that I was able to access. If there was indeed an effort to shoot Nhongo, was it Molife or Badza who bore responsibility for the attempt? The culprit was likely Molife, not Badza. This is because White’s source for her statement that Badza tried to shoot Nhongo is Martin and Johnson. Yet Martin and Johnson attribute the attempted shooting to Molife. White misrepresented Martin and Johnson’s identification of the would-beshooter. Mazarire relies on White’s text, not the original Martin and Johnson source, and thus he reproduced this distortion of the would-beshooter’s identity. Besides, the report of the 1975 Special International Commission on the Assassination of Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo (the Dare re Chimurenga chairperson) records that in March 1974 Badza, Molife and Nhari ‘were involved in an incident in which Molife wanted to shoot Rex Nhongo but a member of security arrested him’.28 It was likely Molife, then, who tried to shoot Nhongo, if the attempt did occur. It is important not to overlook Martin and Johnson’s cursory noting that, in addition to demotion, Nhari and Badza ‘were given 15 cuts [strokes] each’ before being commanded to go back to the warfront.29 For ZANLA, demotion was a key means of punishment in the early 1970s, even if it was mainly employed to repress dissension instead of fostering correction, Mazarire argues. White adds that demotion resulted in growing numbers of guerrillas at the warfront who were used to giving, not receiving, orders, thereby creating disciplinary and relational problems.30 Mazarire and White dwell on the effects of demotion and Martin and Johnson make passing reference to beatings. If we neglect, as recent work by Mazarire and White does, or simply make superficial mention of corporal punishment à la Martin and Johnson, we miss an appreciation of the deep sense of humiliation that Nhari and Badza are likely to have felt in September 1974. Cuts are normally administered to juveniles, but Nhari, a field commander, was subjected to corporal punishment. The humiliation of receiving cuts was a probable personal supplementary grievance that fomented the mutiny that Nhari led months later. Nhari and Badza subsequently returned to MMZ front but unbeknown to Tongogara, the High Command’s administering of corporal punishment

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and demotion without a firm commitment to address both guerrillas’ grievances only deepened their restlessness. At the beginning of October 1974 Tongogara summoned Nhongo from ZZ front to Lusaka. Tongogara instructed Nhongo to join a ten-member ZANU delegation on a China study tour, which was also meant to strengthen relations with the Communist Party of China (CCP) and to procure new weapons.31 The study tour came hard on the heels of grievances emanating from MMZ front, which Nhari and Badza put to Tongogara in the preceding month. Nhongo claimed to have updated the High Command on increasing disharmony in MMZ following Tongogara’s September order that Nhari and Badza return to the warfront and he advised that the China trip be postponed in order to first address fermenting discontent at the front line.32 However, Tongogara, according to Nhongo, insisted that the China excursion go ahead as scheduled.33 Having lost the argument about the timing of ZANU’s mission to China because he was a subordinate High Command member, Nhongo requested to return to ZZ front with a small group of guerrillas to ensure operations were in order before his departure for China.34 Tongogara acquiesced to Nhongo’s request. Nhongo had something else in mind. As ZZ provincial commander he supervised the movement and caching of weapons in ZZ front, in preparation for an escalation of the war. Nhongo used a small team of guerrillas as carriers of some arms he had cached along the Zambian border back into Zambia’s interior, where they hid them without Tongogara’s knowledge.35 Nhongo then left for China. The majority of the ten delegates who travelled to China were either key members of the Dare (Rugare Gumbo and Kumbirai Kangai) or were leading ZANLA commanders (Nhongo, Urimbo, Justin Chauke, Patrick Mpunzarima and Sheba Tavarwisa), so their absence created a leadership vacuum in Zambia, which was intensified by the fact that soon after they left for China, Tongogara and Chitepo made a joint trip to Romania. Mao Tse Tung’s China In mid to late October 1974, Rugare Gumbo led the ZANU delegation to China, which included three female cadres, Tendie Ndlovu, Tavarwisa and Pedzisai Mazorodze.36 Nhongo, Chauke, Mpunzarima, Kangai and Urimbo were the other Zambia-based ZANU delegates. Machingura, who resided in Mgagao training camp in Tanzania, met with these nine ZANU members in Nairobi (Kenya), completing the China-bound delegation.37 When Nhongo and his fellow ZANU representatives were in China, living participants and university lecturers taught them about the beginnings, nature and culmination of the Chinese revolution from 1921 to 1945 via visits to a range of locations pertinent to the uprising’s

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progression and through oral accounts.38 In interviews Nhongo did not refer to his 1974 social and political experiences in China.39 Nor did any of his close confidants have recollection of him sharing his views on his experiences in China. This does not mean Nhongo had no views or feelings about his activities there. His silence underlines three other aspects instead. First are the particular research interests of Nhongo’s interviewers. Researchers have tended to overlook the significance of the transnational links of Zimbabwe’s liberation movements. Thus, Nhongo was not probed on how these transnational relations impacted his personal development and ZANLA’s organisational evolution. A second aspect is that for Nhongo, the China excursion was secondary to the growing unrest in MMZ front. Were it up to Nhongo, the China trip would have been postponed. The third aspect that explains why Nhongo did not render any detail on the China trip was his practical and instrumental understanding of ZANU’s transnational links with supportive countries. As we saw before, Nhongo’s description of his time in Bulgaria and Russia was sterile. Nhongo straightforwardly stated dates of travel, destinations and the purposes of voyages without any specificities and emotion about his time in those countries.40 He exuded no romanticism about political engagement with supportive international communists or about the supposed happiness and better living standards in communist countries. Many years later, in 2005, a former ZANLA guerrilla called Christopher Mutsvangwa became independent Zimbabwe’s ambassador to China. Mutsvangwa recalled an occasion in 2005 when Nhongo, now a businessman, visited China: Mujuru [Nhongo] came to China to seal a mining deal. After he saw Shanghai he said to me in some amazement that the Chinese have come a very long way. I asked him what he meant. He said the last time he had been to China was in 1976 to get weapons. I was surprised. I asked myself, ‘the Chinese gave him the weapons that made him the great commander that he was and after independence he never went back to China again?’. I was shocked this was his first trip to China since 1976.41

The China of 1974 and 1976 that Nhongo visited was Mao’s China, in the twilight of the calamitous Cultural Revolution (1966–76). The socioeconomic hardships of the time likely made a lasting impression on Nhongo, judging by his alleged ‘amazement’ at China’s developmental advances decades later. In 1974 and 1976 Nhongo obtained weapons and moral support in China for his insurrectionary undertakings and never returned until 2005 when he needed China once more. The China of 2005 was different to Mao’s China. It was the China Deng Xiaoping imagined and helped initiate after Mao’s extended rule ended in 1976.

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Post-Mao China, part of it at least, brimmed with Western-style modernity: rapid capital flows; cutting-edge scientific and technological advances; international business competitiveness; and consumerism. Chinese youth were no longer rebelling against authority, attacking teachers and lecturers, and burning educational books as Mao commanded them to do in the Cultural Revolution. 2005 China appealed to some of Nhongo’s Western sensibilities, which were conditioned by the postcolonial state’s perpetuation of colonial structures of economy and society. Nhongo derived capitalist economic benefit from 2005 China, while Mao’s China had offered him anti-colonial military and political support. Given Nhongo’s silences on his transnational experiences, we must turn to Machingura for some insight into the 1974 China study tour. Machingura is the only member of ZANU’s delegation who has detailed the 1974 visit. Unlike Nhongo, Machingura had great attachment to communist China because he received his defining military training from Chinese instructors and was ideologically informed by Chinese revolutionary ideals. The approximately two months long China tour made a noticeable impression on Machingura. As stated by Machingura, Chinese teachers pointed out the importance of uniting all anti-imperialist forces so as to ensure a successful national democratic struggle in Rhodesia and the programme ‘helped us chart the correct revolutionary course for our struggle’.42 Machingura also remembered that ‘there was always a chain of banquets, the Chinese boasting that they had enough food for their friends and enough bullets for their enemies’.43 Machingura’s humorous remembrance conceals the famine and economic hardships local Chinese experienced at the time because of the Cultural Revolution’s negative repercussions. Emmanuel Hevi was a Ghanaian medical student in China from 1960, which coincided with Mao’s Great Leap Forward, a programme for accelerated collectivisation and industrialisation that resulted in massive famine in which millions of Chinese lives were lost.44 Hevi writes that local Chinese resented the special treatment and higher quality and quantity of food African students studying in China were furnished with, while they endured privations.45 As stated by Hevi, upon his arrival in Peking (Beijing) in 1960, ‘we [four Ghanaian students] were taken, with hugs, handshakes and back slaps, to a sumptuous banquet in the airport’s restaurant. There were many speeches and toasts to the eternal friendship of the African and the Chinese peoples.’46 This special treatment of African students Hevi describes is evocative of the 1974 ZANU delegation’s attendance of ‘a chain of banquets’, where they gorged on fine Chinese food and wine, while average citizens in China encountered severe shortages. Nhongo and his fellow visiting ZANU members

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received preferential treatment because Mao sought to project the viability of communism internationally. When Nhongo and Machingura went to China in 1974, the economic and social problems Hevi encountered in the 1960s were far from resolved. Hevi, unlike Machingura, took a critical view of Mao’s efforts at papering over domestic social and economic morass, widespread state surveillance and his rule by fear. Machingura said of African-Chinese social relations: ‘seeing black people was a novelty for most Chinese. Some people seemed almost desperate to scratch our skins to find out if the black would peel off and stick to their fingers.’47 This take on African-Chinese relations suggests a somewhat benign exoticism of Africans by some Chinese. But earlier and more forthright accounts by other Africans highlighted racism: If the Chinese man-in-the-street thinks that your black skin is due to accumulated dirt, it is relatively easy to let someone persuade you that he does so in ignorance. But when a full blooded [Chinese] doctor of medicine, whose science should have made him know better, asks why your skin is still so black if you ever wash, it is difficult to believe that no insult is intended.48

The Chinese often referred to Africans as hei ren (black man). Hevi comments that ‘the circumstance under and attitude with which the Chinese term hei ren is used, all make “nigger” the only possible translation’.49 Local racist attitudes led to platonic and sexual relationships between African men and Chinese women being forbidden.50 Hevi could not countenance the added ‘burden of Yellow [Chinese] superiority to that of White superiority’.51 The result was reverse racism on Hevi’s part, as demonstrated by his remark that ‘phlegm and sputum are spat on the floor indiscriminately [by Chinese students] during lectures’,52 and thus with regards to ‘personal hygiene . . . it is we Africans who must civilise the Chinese, not vice versa’.53 How did Nhongo respond to racism in China? What sort of relations did Nhongo and the ZANU delegates have with Chinese women? Did they forgo sex for the months they were in China? Here the point is that ZANU actors are reluctant to critically engage with the fact that they experienced racism at the hands of some nationals of countries that supported their cause for independence from a racist whitesettler colonial regime. They are even less disposed to reveal the kinds of reactions these experiences of racism provoked in them. This reluctance can to some extent be explained in terms of the fact that ZANU received moral and material support from countries such as China. ZANU was to a degree beholden to China whereas Africans like Hevi, who studied in China on a scholarship from the Ghana Trade Union Congress, were less obliged to suppress their critical assessments of Chinese society. ZANU members’ silences on racism are also the result of attempts to construct

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a long history of glorious, equal and amiable relations with Eastern antiimperial countries and movements. Contemporary Zimbabwe – from the early 2000s, to be precise – has seen a reinforcement of Zimbabwe’s political and economic ties with China, after the first two decades of independence during which bilateral diplomatic relations weakened without friction. The now revitalised relations further inhibit critical evaluations of China–ZANU PF ties during the liberation struggle. Blood and Lightning Nhongo and the ZANU delegation left China on 4 December 1974.54 When they reached Zambia Tongogara, who had come back before them, updated the returnees that a mutiny led by Nhari occurred whilst the Dare and High Command were abroad.55 The Nhari group, which had Badza, Molife, Timothy Chiridza, Patrick Tabenga, Herbert Mutise, Peter Sheba, Cephas Tichatonga, Cuthbert Chimedza, Matthew Ndanga, Fidian Kashiri and Sam Chandawa as its leading organisers, opportunistically exploited the authority vacuum created by the High Command and Dare’s transnational engagements to stage a mutiny. ZANLA’s Lusaka headquarters and Chifombo and Teresera camps in Zambia were easily taken over by the mutineers. Field commanders such as Josiah Tungamirai were abducted at the warfront and force marched back to Zambia, while others, like William Ndangana, Chimurenga and Sheba Gava, were arrested in Zambia. Tongogara’s insistence the China trip go ahead, and his departure for Romania without laying any plans in case Nhongo’s intelligence about impending disorder at the warfront was accurate, demonstrates the degree to which Tongogara was out of touch with developments at the war zone. This substantiates, to some extent, the Nhari mutineers’ grievance that the High Command leadership rarely visited the warfront. It also lays bare the fact that, in this specific instance with Nhongo at least, Tongogara did not always take seriously the views of his junior commanders. Nhari intended to replace Tongogara as head of the High Command, Badza would supplant Ndangana as the chief of operations and Molife would substitute Cletus Chigowe as the intelligence chief.56 The Nhari mutineers accused the High Command of corruption, citing Tongogara’s favouritism towards Tungamirai who, so they claimed, sometimes received whisky and cigarettes at the warfront as gifts from Tongogara, even though alcohol consumption at the warfront was forbidden.57 The Nhari group further criticised the High Command for living it up in Lusaka, leaving guerrillas in the field as mere cannon fodder in the war because they used poor Chinese-made arms.58 The mutineers also

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lambasted the High Command leadership for being ‘too old’.59 It must be said, however, that Tongogara was born in 1940, making him thirty-four years old at the time of the Nhari mutiny.60 And Nhongo was twenty-nine years old when the revolt took place. These ages can hardly be considered ‘too old’, and it is not as if the High Command was completely closed to the entry of younger cadres. For example, at the 1973 Lusaka conference, Machingura was proposed for election to the High Command at the age of twenty-three, but he rejected the nomination. Besides, the Nhari mutineers accused High Command members of abusing women cadres. Tongogara was alleged to have had an extramarital affair with a female ZANLA cadre, impregnated her and then coerced her to terminate the pregnancy.61 ‘For reasons best known to the leadership . . . female comrades have been transformed into nannies and house girls and they are compelled to satisfy the animal lusts of our High Command leadership’, ran another of the mutineers’ grievances, which has been substantiated by scholars Josephine Nhongo-Simbanegavi and Tanya Lyon’s work on the experiences of women in ZANLA during the liberation war.62 Lyons and Nhongo-Simbanegavi’s work shows that ZANLA commanders frequently used their positions of authority to order sexual favours from women in camps.63 Nhongo was complicit in this practice.64 Sexual violence against women and girls was sustained by the impunity of top male leaders in ZANLA and ZANU. There was no price to pay for sexual violence against and denigration of women and girls. Sexual violence functioned as a means of domination and control of women in ZANLA and ZANU by men. It was also a way of ‘doing masculinity’, to borrow James Messerschmidt’s turn of phrase.65 In relation to Nhongo and ZANLA, ‘doing masculinity’ was to bed a plethora of women (consensual or otherwise) and it also meant being brawny, selfreliant, dominant and a notable fighter in war.66 Whilst a number of scholars, and indeed the Nhari mutineers, have drawn our attention to the important subject of sexual violence towards women and girls in ZANLA and ZANU, we know nothing about sexual violence directed at men and boys by other men. Researchers have tended to overlook the topic, erroneously assuming that sexual violence in conflict settings only affects women and girls in significant ways. The majority of sexual violence in conflict settings globally is certainly perpetrated against women and girls, but sexual violence towards boys and men in war contexts is only rare to the extent that powerful social taboos about the topic prevent victims and perpetrators from retelling their experiences.67 I encountered profound reluctance by men and women to discuss sexual violence in ZANLA and ZANU other than that targeting women and girls. ‘Cultural myths, gendered stereotypes, narrow legal

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definitions and policy conceptualisations combine to deter male victims from disclosing.’68 Nhari had been a schoolteacher before joining the war and he believed that the High Command discriminated against formally educated cadres.69 However, Machingura left his first degree studies at the University of Rhodesia to join ZANLA in Zambia and despite his high level of formal education, he was lined up for election to the High Command and to become Tongogara’s special assistant in 1973, as already noted. Tungamirai went to the war after completing advancedlevel studies and two years’ study at Salisbury Polytechnic.70 The examples of Machingura and Tungamirai indicate that there was no out-andout discrimination by the High Command against educated cadres. The breadth of the above-mentioned grievances suggests that, in addition to the mutineers’ particular reasons for disgruntlement at the warfront, there was a calculated attempt by Nhari and his co-organisers to tap into the widest possible reasons for disaffection so that the mutiny would attract the backing of the generality of ZANLA guerrillas. The High Command was certainly guilty of discounting the Nhari group’s legitimate grievances about pitiable conditions and weapons at the warfront, which it first articulated formally before resorting to violence.71 But part of the Nhari mutineers’ undoing was that they alienated many potential sympathisers by abducting cadres and civilians such as Tongogara’s wife and children, and because they executed some abductees. Ndangana narrated the following proceedings, which shed light on some of the alienating aspects of the mutiny: I was moved to Teresera camp [in December 1974]. When we arrived we heard that about fifty people had been killed before we arrived having been found to be sell-outs [by the Nhari mutineers] either because they did not support their new bosses or they were related to the police officers and army officers in the Rhodesian government. When I was at Teresera one man was shot by Roy [a mutineer]. The killing was scheduled Hitler style. This shocked me. I was getting new surprises all the time, from the time Nhari had tried to kill me on the way from Lusaka [to Teresera camp] . . . . At Chifombo they [later] found the duplicate to a letter that had been written by Badza ordering Kashiri who was keeping us under arrest to execute us by firing squad.72

If the Nhari mutiny was an RSF project, as has been claimed by Martin and Johnson, why did the mutineers execute some guerrillas at Teresera camp as ‘sell-outs’ because ‘they were related to the police officers and army officers in the Rhodesian government’, as Ndangana reported? And why did the Nhari mutineers have as one of their grievances against the High Command the fact that it was reluctant to take action against guerrillas perceived as Rhodesian spies?73 The alleged execution of fellow

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guerrillas simply because they were purportedly related to black Rhodesian servicemen shows that the Nhari mutineers took a more absolute, hardline position on the divisibility of loyalty than did the High Command. The Nhari group saw family loyalty as indivisible; a single family could not contain members with varying allegiances to the RSF, ZANLA, ZIPRA and the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI) without all of them being sell-outs. In contrast Tongogara’s High Command saw family loyalty as divisible; just because a ZANLA guerrilla’s family member belonged to the RSF did not make that guerrilla a sell-out or spy. Contested understandings of loyalty were therefore part of the differences between the High Command and Nhari group and in this contestation the former appears more inclusive and practical than the latter. Persecuting guerrillas related to RSF members was an extreme position that would have caused indefinable instability and witch hunts in the camps, which had the potential of reducing guerrilla numbers at a time when ZANLA was still actively building up the size of its force. The High Command therefore sensibly desisted from treating loyalty as indivisible. The shooting of fellow guerrillas because they were allegedly related to RSF members besmirched the Nhari mutineers’ grievances. How could the mutineers be certain who among the guerrillas was related to RSF members? And what conclusive evidence existed that these guerrillas – related or not to RSF members – had actually ‘sold out’ ZANLA? Another reason for the Nhari mutineers’ downfall was the High Command’s fight back. Nhongo did not miss the opportunity to remind Tongogara that he had been against the China trip going ahead as scheduled because there was growing unrest at the front among some guerrillas.74 High Command members in Lusaka were short on weapons and men because the Nhari mutineers had captured the guerrilla bases. Nhongo stated, to Tongogara’s surprise, that he had cached some arms before leaving for China.75 Nhongo and Chigowe then drove, in the dead of night to avoid detection by Nhari mutineers surveilling Lusaka for High Command members, to collect these arms from where they were cached.76 Chigowe, a notorious ruthless enforcer of discipline in ZANLA, was ‘said to be first on the [Nhari] rebels death list’ and had only evaded abduction by chance; he was not in his Lusaka home when some of the mutineers came looking for him.77 Some ZANLA fighters alleged Nhongo was also an elimination target.78 Nhongo and Chigowe returned unscathed with the weapons, which boosted the High Command’s capacity to protect itself. There was a sizeable ZANLA force at Mgagao camp in Tanzania that was near completion of its training. Tongogara ordered the Mgagao commander Robson Manyika, as well as Machingura and Gwauya, to assemble these trainees into a force

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comprised of 250 men.79 The OAU Liberation Committee’s assistance was obtained in transporting the 250 guerrillas to Lusaka.80 Within a fortnight Manyika and Gwauya arrived in Zambia with 250 guerrillas that would execute a military operation codenamed Gukurahundi against the Nhari mutineers.81 In his autobiography, Machingura asserts that Nhongo and Urimbo led operation Gukurahundi. Machingura was in Tanzania when the operation against the Nhari mutineers occurred,82 and his assertion was disputed by Nhongo, who maintained that in late December 1974 he crashed his car into a tree and suffered a concussion before Gukurahundi launched and so Mpunzarima replaced him in commanding part of the operation that retook Chifombo camp.83 Ndangana, who was held captive at Teresera camp by the Nhari mutineers, stated that Elias Hondo and Comrade Vhuu led a section of the ZANLA force from Tanzania, which recaptured the camp.84 How Nhongo’s car accident occurred is ambiguous. He gave no explanation for the car crash in interviews. What is to some extent clearer is the accident’s aftermath. Nhongo was hospitalised with a concussion for days and Chitepo entreated Zambian medical authorities to discharge him ahead of time, to assist in capturing the mutiny’s leaders who were still at large.85 Tongogara would later accuse Chitepo of complicity in the Nhari mutiny. Chitepo’s irregular request that Nhongo be released early from hospital to assist in suppressing the Nhari mutiny casts some doubt on the credibility of Tongogara’s accusation against Chitepo. At first glance, Chitepo’s entreaty appears strange because Nhongo was still recovering from a concussion and his scalp had major stitches. However, Chitepo’s request is less strange if we consider that Nhongo knew Nhari better than most and this familiarity proved helpful in Nhari’s eventual capture in Tete province, where Nhongo and Nhari once operated together in conjunction with FRELIMO. Nhongo described his role in Nhari’s capture: Tongogara went with me to see Jose Moyane [Tete province commander] from FRELIMO. We wanted FRELIMO to help us trap Nhari. Moyane told us to tell Nhari to come to Kaswende to meet us and FRELIMO. Kaswende was a FRELIMO camp inside Mozambique on the Zambian side. We can discuss and FRELIMO will help us fix our problems. Nhari came with others. When they arrived FRELIMO helped us arrest them. We took them back to Zambia.86

Nhari and Badza worked well with FRELIMO in Tete in the early 1970s and the Mozambicans considered them highly able guerrillas.87 Owing to

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these good relations, Nhari believed Moyane was sincere in his offer to mediate dialogue between him and the High Command. On 22 January 1975 three Dare members, Chitepo, Gumbo and Kangai, were tasked with investigating the Nhari mutiny. The triad never completed the Nhari inquiry and it did not generate a report on its brief investigative work. Gumbo’s account of the inquiry’s abrupt end and the mutineers’ fate ran thus: Kangai, Chitepo and myself went to Chifombo to hear accounts about the rebellion. [John] Mataure [political commissar on the Dare accused of complicity in the Nhari mutiny] came and explained his case. So did Nhari. After we had heard these accounts we adjourned to go and deliberate with the intention of coming back to hear more accounts and then finalise our judgment. But Tongo [Tongogara] and [Robson] Manyika went behind our backs and killed Nhari, Mataure and others. Manyika did some of the shooting himself. I was later told by witnesses that Manyika would say ‘bugger you’ before shooting each one. ‘Bugger you’, then shoots! We were in Lusaka when all this happened. We had no idea what was going on in Chifombo. Tongo was a good military strategist. His problem was that he was too ambitious. So he sometimes went overboard with his steps to consolidate his power. He felt threatened by the Nhari rebellion so he came down hard but even before the Nhari rebellion he took many decisions on his own without telling the Dare re Chimurenga. This was one of the differences I had with Tongo. You do not take a decision to eliminate people without consulting others. And you know, Chitepo was very consultative so even he clashed with Tongo a number of times. You enjoyed it when Chitepo held his consultative meetings. Chitepo enjoyed debate. Tongo was not like that. Tongo wanted people to follow his orders.88

The contention that the Nhari rebellion was a case of Rhodesian infiltration to undermine ZANLA is somewhat dubious, as already suggested using Ndangana’s account of the Nhari mutineers’ execution of guerrillas related to RSF members. The scholar White gained unique access to Rhodesian intelligence and army records in the Bristol Museum of Empire (UK) before this valuable archive became inaccessible. White found that despite the 1987 claim in Rhodesian intelligence chief Ken Flower’s book, Serving Secretly, that Nhari and Badza were Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) agents, his ‘unpublished [internal] reports to the Operations Co-ordinating Committee’ during the period of the Nhari mutiny ‘indicate he did not know’ Nhari and Badza ‘and had only learned of the extent of the disruption in ZANU from affidavits taken from five captured guerrillas’.89 In these internal reports: Flower described the mutiny as if it were a polite gathering, a matter of a delegation of ZANU section commanders ‘visiting Lusaka to query orders, protest about corruption, and complain that the hierarchy never visited the

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operational area’. Most of what Flower thought noteworthy had to do with Tongogara. An attempt was made on his life sometime between 11–25 December, and he sent for 250 supporters, kept 50 as a bodyguard and ‘set the rest on a disciplinary mission around the camps. Reports claimed that he personally shot three of the ringleaders’. All in all, Flower told his fellow commanders, ‘it was an eye-opener to see the extent of what had been happening in Zambia’.90

And while it is fair to state, as Bhebe does, that the absence of a fully functioning Information Department in 1974 meant ZANU was losing the propaganda war to the Rhodesians, it is unconvincing to then conclude that ‘ZANLA combatants must have been easily influenced against their leaders by the Rhodesian Special Branch people’.91 Still, accusations and counter accusations about Rhodesian infiltration proliferated during and after the Nhari mutiny. ‘There were enemies in ZANU and enemies in Zambia. The whole thing is to eliminate ZANU. I just cannot let it happen’, Tongogara declared.92 Many guerrillas and politicians accused of supporting Nhari fled. Some, such as Simpson Mutambanengwe, a former Dare member, and Noel Mukono, the Dare’s secretary for external affairs, were given death sentences in absentia. John Mataure, the Dare’s political commissar, was executed for supporting Nhari. Many others were arrested, executed or beaten. The exact number of executions is unknown, with total death tallies varying from 60 to 250.93 Eye of the Storm For some, the execution of Nhari mutineers was a manifestation of the ‘ambitious’ Tongogara’s attempt to re-establish his authority, which he saw as critically undermined by the mutiny. Machingura considered the entire High Command complicit in the executions and Tongogara’s ‘high handedness’ as caused by the fact that he ‘took the matter personally, driven to a frenzy by the ordeal his wife and children suffered during the abduction [by Nhari]. It was simply a question of retributive justice: there could be no other rational explanation for the severity of the rage and its excesses.’94 Todhlana objected to Machingura’s perspective, arguing that: Tongo was the commander. Only he could have ordered those summary executions. These cadres [Nhari mutineers] had grievances with Tongo and many of us [ZANLA guerrillas] were not happy that these cadres were just executed that way. Dzino [Machingura] appreciated Tongo but I did not. I was more objective. I always suspected that Dzino appreciated Tongo because they came from the same place [region]. They were fellow [Karanga] tribesman. Dzino annoyed me a lot over the Nhari issue. One time when we were discussing the killing of Nhari, I was criticising Tongo for being so heavy handed and dictatorial but Dzino was defending him saying no, Tongo was not to blame because he had the blessing of

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the Dare including chairman Chitepo. It was a collective decision to kill Nhari. Such lies, can you imagine? Later on I met someone who was there when Badza was shot and he told me that Badza had tried to resist when each individual had been told to dig his own grave. Badza first refused then when he started digging he was insulting Tongo big time with unspeakable obscenities to the point that Tongo ordered him to be shot right away and Badza fell into the shallow grave he was digging.95

According to another relatively senior ZANLA cadre (cadre A, henceforth): What Badza, Nhari and company did was a rebellion. It was a rebellion against the leadership. But we must not forget why they did it. They had grievances, which were not attended to. The grievances were the fight between the Karangas and Manyikas. The major grievance was that the Manyikas [who Badza and Nhari are said to have represented] thought they were being pushed to fight at the front and die while Tongo was keeping his Karangas at the rear so as to preserve them for independence. That was talked about a lot before the rebellion. That talk was very real.96

Cadre A and Todhlana’s accounts acknowledge that the Nhari group tapped into a number of prevailing grievances – real and imagined. Machingura concedes that the Nhari group ‘articulated (genuine) grievances such as poor oversight over the war by the Tongogara-led High Command and corruption in Lusaka to foment the revolt’.97 Gumbo, Machingura and Todhlana’s accounts reveal that Tongogara was not a widely popular commander. Gumbo blamed Tongogara’s insecurity and ambitiousness for the executions of Nhari and others. Machingura was somewhat torn in his views on Tongogara’s role in the capital punishments, while Todhlana was critical of Tongogara’s heavy-handedness. Nonetheless certain Nhari mutineers’ grievances were controversial and some of the actions they took, such as torture and executions, unwarranted. The pertinence of ethnic politics is apparent in some of the aforementioned narratives. In Todhlana’s interpretation, Machingura was reluctant to fully accept Tongogara’s leading hand in the executions because they were both Karangas and yet, as will be revealed later, Machingura disputed the authenticity of Tongogara’s Karanga-ness. For Cadre A the Nhari group exploited existing inter-ethnic suspicion although, as we have already seen, the mutineers utilised a much wider set of grievances. Dichotomous ethnic rivalry between the Karangas and Manyikas in ZANLA was certainly not the primary determinant of the Nhari mutiny. For instance, Ndangana hailed from the Eastern town of Chipinge, making him a Manyika, but he was not in alliance with the Nhari mutineers. Moreover, many of the leading actors in the mutiny such as Nhari,

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Tabenga, Mutise, Sheba, Chandawa and Chiridza were not Manyikas.98 Nhari was Zezuru like Nhongo, but both guerrillas were at odds before and during the mutiny. Machingura draws a fair conclusion that the High Command, which Nhongo was part of, bears collective responsibility for the violent suppression of the Nhari mutiny. Let us try to make sense of why Nhongo backed Tongogara against Nhari. Nhongo was present when Nhari confessed, at a ZANLA parade in Chifombo camp, to having plotted and led the mutiny and for personally ordering the execution of cadres who refused to support his cause.99 Training together in the military, as Nhari and Nhongo did in Bulgaria and Tanzania, fosters loyalty bonds between soldiers. Mutually experiencing life-threatening risk, like Nhongo and Nhari underwent when they simultaneously made a perilous defection from ZAPU to ZANLA in 1971, fortifies loyalty bonds created in training. Loyalty bonds improve solidity between fellow combat soldiers, thereby increasing the probability of triumph in war. Soldiers can risk their lives for their fellow combatants because of these loyalty ties. But as we have established, the loyalty bonds between Nhongo and Nhari began fragmenting because of strategy disagreements in MMZ front in 1972. Nhari returned to Zambia, leaving Nhongo behind, amid relentless pursuit of ZANLA guerrillas by the RSF. A year later, loyalty bonds between Nhari and Nhongo fragmented even further because of their falling out over the St Albert’s mission school abductions. In 1984, Nhongo considered the St Albert’s abductions in this way: ‘I think up to now this was where the problem of Nhari and his friends wanting to take over [the leadership]’ began.100 After the July 1973 St Albert’s debacle Nhari’s reputation in ZANLA descended. As Nhari’s reputation fell, Nhongo’s status rose, by way of his election to the High Command for the first time in August 1973 as provincial commander of ZZ front. Nhongo’s election to the High Command entailed the subsequent building of new loyalty bonds with its members, Tongogara particularly, making remoter what was left of his loyalty ties with Nhari. Thus, when Nhari attempted to take over the High Command in 1974, Nhongo’s loyalty now lay with Tongogara. But Nhongo’s loyalty to Tongogara did not denote uncritical allegiance. Nhongo’s stating of his disagreement with Tongogara on the timing of the 1974 trip to China, his mentioning that he cached arms without Tongogara’s knowledge before going abroad and his reiteration, upon returning from China and amid the Nhari mutiny, that he had disagreed with the China trip’s scheduling were essentially criticisms of Tongogara’s command. Tongogara did not heed the advice of his junior commander bearing ground intelligence about increasing unrest at the

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warfront. He did not devise contingency plans in case a revolt occurred, nor did he move to pre-empt unrest by addressing disgruntled guerrillas’ grievances. Tongogara left for Romania instead. Nhongo did not regard the Nhari mutiny as inevitable. The mutiny could have been pre-empted or neutralised had his advice been taken seriously. Many lives might have been spared death and disruption of ZANLA’s focus on the war could also have been avoided. One of Nhongo’s wartime cadres related a fireside discussion he had with Nhongo about the Nhari rebellion: Some of the people who were involved in it [the Nhari mutiny] were his [Nhongo’s] comrades from ZIPRA but he decided not to side with them. When I asked him what he thought about the Nhari rebellion, he said, ‘Why are you asking me about it?’. I said, ‘I am asking because many cadres were shot and that should not have happened. I have always been concerned about that.’ Rex said to me, ‘Those guys were involved in a power struggle with Tongogara. If they had killed Tongogara first then history would be different. If you enter a power struggle in a war situation you had better win because if you lose you are finished.’101

The cadre’s recollection offered an additional glimpse into Nhongo’s understanding of the Nhari mutiny. Nhari had some legitimate grievances but he too understood the potential deadly repercussions of mutiny. For instance, after his abduction in December 1974, Tungamirai claimed that he witnessed Nhari and fellow mutineers deliberating his fate in the following terms: ‘wafa wafa, wasara wasara’ (he who dies is erased and he who lives endures).102 In the midst of the 1974–5 upheaval, Nhongo made the acquaintance of a woman going by the name Joice Runaida Mugari (nom de guerre Teurai Ropa). Ropa joined ZANU in Zambia in November 1973, when she was eighteen years old. ‘All I knew about him [Nhongo], before I met him, is that he was leading one of the MMZ fronts. I first met him in Lusaka in 1974. He was a very ordinary comrade. I was not fascinated with him.’103 When Nhongo and Ropa first met, she was staying in Tongogara’s house in Lusaka. Nhongo came there one night to receive some orders from Tongogara. ‘I overheard Tongogara recommending me to him. He was saying she is a nice traditional girl. She is hard working. These are the girls single people like you should marry. Solomon just listened. He never said anything to Tongogara’, Ropa remembered.104 Nhongo did not immediately court Ropa, after Tongogara’s commendation. He was not instantly enamoured and a year would pass before Nhongo began to exhibit some interest in Ropa. Even then, Ropa was suspicious of Nhongo because he already had two daughters called Maidei (after his late mother) and Charity, with different women,

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Comrade Tichahwina and Comrade Lucy, respectively.105 That Nhongo named his eldest daughter Maidei was a sign of his attachment to the memory of his deceased mother. Conversely, Nhongo did not name any of his sons, born out of wedlock in the independence years, after his father Nevison. In 1976, in Mozambique, Nhongo succeeded in wooing Ropa, who was of fair complexion and had a short height and svelte figure. Ropa described courtship as anything but blissfully romantic. ‘There is no real romance in war. We lived in shacks made of bamboo, reeds, grass, very temporary accommodation. There was hunger, fear and dying around us. It is not room for proper romance’, Ropa candidly described their relationship.106 If war conditions were austere and there was no love at first sight, what was it that drew Ropa to Nhongo? ‘He was warm and caring towards me. Solomon was a generous man. I also feel for people with disabilities so with him I had a soft spot for his way of talking, his stammer’, Ropa explained.107 Nhongo was drawn to Ropa’s dependable and compassionate ways.108 During the war, Ropa and Nhongo had two children together (a daughter called Kumbirai born in Chimoio in 1978 and a second daughter named Chipo born in Maputo in 1979) and committed to formally marry in independent Zimbabwe. However, Nhongo’s philandering did not cease. Ropa frequently argued with Nhongo over his womanising during the war. Furtive Diplomacy and Succession Politics The Nhari mutiny went hand in hand with important changes to the political context in which the liberation war unfolded. On the final day of Nhongo’s October to December 1974 stay in China, the deputy foreign minister announced at a state banquet for the departing ZANU delegation that their party president Ndabaningi Sithole and the rest of the nationalist party’s top leaders in Rhodesia had been freed from detention.109 Nhongo and his ZANU colleagues were informed that China had been cognisant of this development during the course of their stay but kept the matter secret because it sought to maintain their attentiveness on the study tour.110 ‘For the duration of our stay we were completely cut off from our party back home, and from the world, as we had no access to radios or telephones.’111 The deputy foreign minister’s announcement flummoxed the ZANU deputation because Smith’s RF government had traditionally taken an uncompromising position on the freedom of nationalist leaders in Rhodesia. The RF government detained most of the top nationalist leaders for a decade, it adopted repressive laws to clamp down on agitation against white minority rule and its appetite for

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a military showdown with the ZANLA and ZIPRA armies had not diminished. Since 11 November 1965, when the RF government made the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from the British Crown, consecutive British governments attempted to rein in the errant Rhodesia colony and broker an honest independence. The HMS Tiger (1966) and HMS Fearless (1968) talks between the British and RF governments had come and gone with little diplomatic headway made. The 1971 Anglo-Rhodesian Agreement also proved a false dawn. In 1974, exasperated by ineffective British diplomatic manoeuvres and with his country straining under the cumulative social and economic burdens of hosting black liberation armies on its territory, Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda sought to engineer a negotiated independence settlement for Rhodesia.112 Kaunda conducted private diplomacy with Prime Minister John Vorster’s apartheid South African government, which controlled Rhodesia’s main supply routes and was the RF administration’s chief external supporter. Kaunda reasoned that if the apartheid government could be coaxed into supporting a negotiated independence for Rhodesia, the RF administration would have little choice but to enter talks because it could not envisage winning the war against ZANLA and ZIPRA without South African backing. And since Kaunda was hosting both liberation armies, he could make them negotiate with the RF by, for instance, threatening to withdraw shelter. Vorster collaborated with Kaunda in this diplomatic scheme in part because the April 1974 Carnation Revolution in Portugal heralded the termination of Portuguese rule in Angola and Mozambique. One of the strategic implications of Mozambican and Angolan independence was that communist elements rose to power in both countries. And yet the strength of anti-communist South Africa’s diplomatic links with America and Britain were predicated on its ability to act as a regional hegemon that promoted stability and capitalist economic growth in Southern Africa.113 Vorster sought to use the Rhodesia negotiations to avert another coming to power of communist actors. He wanted South Africa ‘seen [by the West] to be playing a leading role’ in the negotiation of ‘a moderate, internationally acceptable government in which white Rhodesians would have a continuing part’.114 South Africa pressured the disinclined RF government to release detained nationalist leaders for the initiation of a détente between the warring parties. As a result of this diplomatic pressure, on 3 December 1974 the RF government announced ZAPU and ZANU leaders, Nkomo and Sithole, respectively, had been freed after a decade of confinement to participate in talks in Lusaka with Kaunda, the heads of state of Tanzania (Julius Nyerere) and Botswana

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(Seretse Khama), Mozambique’s FRELIMO leader Machel and two other liberation groupings from Rhodesia, FROLIZI and the African National Council (ANC). The Lusaka talks began on 4 December, the day Nhongo and the ZANU delegation left China. The negotiations, and the secretive buildup to them, were not the only developments that Nhongo was not privy to. Nhongo’s ZANU party was on the path to a leadership change, as Mugabe explained: Before we [the ZANU Central Committee in Rhodesian detention] went to Lusaka [for the December 1974 talks], Nyagumbo, Nkala and Tekere had taken a stance that they no longer wanted Sithole to lead us. They were the militant ones. Very extreme. Morton and myself were of the stance that we should not take such a decision, more so now since we were going to these talks and we must also involve those in ZANU who are in Lusaka. Nyagumbo, Nkala and Tekere voted to remove Sithole as leader. The militant ones carried the day and sent me to Lusaka as leader, because as secretary general I was second to Sithole in ZANU’s hierarchy, but I was not recognised by the Frontline leaders. They recognised Sithole so I was sent back to detention with the news. So the militant ones had to reverse and decided we should all go to the talks with Sithole as our leader for now. When we got there [Lusaka] those others like Chitepo and Tongogara said no we do not want such a decision, so Sithole remained our leader.115

Nkala confirmed that he, Nyagumbo and Tekere agitated for Sithole’s removal from power and that Mugabe was reluctant to abandon Sithole.116 According to Nkala, he turned against Sithole because: He lacked certain key elements that other leaders like [Winston] Churchill had. Qualities that could change the course of war. ‘We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the hills, Britain shall never surrender.’ That was Churchill. Churchill never gave up. He never said we surrender. That was so key. Tough and inspirational. When the boys [soldiers] in the front line hear such words from their leader they turn into tigers. Sithole was not like Churchill. He was not a war leader. He had no vision for the armed struggle.117

The Frontline leaders supported Sithole’s leadership because ‘they believed very strongly that the leadership could only be changed at a congress and not in prison’.118 Of the Frontline leaders, Machel was the most forceful in his support for Sithole. ‘Machel was very hostile towards us . . . he minced no words as to what he intended to do if we maintained our decision [to depose Sithole as leader]: he was going to order the arrest of our . . . men-of-war’ in Mozambique, Nyagumbo recalled.119 Nyagumbo was no pushover. He was renowned for boxing white Rhodesian prison officers and had a notorious temper but he

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baulked when confronted by Machel’s ire. Nyagumbo wrote of Machel: ‘I must admit that he was the only man who succeeded in intimidating me.’120 The Lusaka talks encountered significant hurdles such as the RF government’s refusal to accept black nationalists’ demand for instantaneous recognition of the principle of majority rule before a constitutional conference was staged. Another impediment to the Lusaka talk’s success was some nationalists’ reluctance to renounce armed struggle. Mugabe recalled that: ZANU took the stance that we had just started our military operations. Our military operations had not consolidated so we cannot go into discussions at this stage. It was Chitepo who used the word consolidate in front of the Frontline leaders and he was in for it . . . . When he said we have not yet consolidated, Nyerere jumped up and said, ‘You are talking of consolidation. Consolidation of what?’. Nyerere went on and on, repeating the word consolidate, ‘You are talking of consolidation, consolidate what?’. Chitepo was unhappy about that. Very unhappy. And you know Nyerere and KK [Kaunda] were particularly hard on us because they saw us as the party that was refusing to negotiate because of the military operations we had started. KK put pressure on us to sign. We then said let us sign the agreement anyway but let us do tamba wakachenjera.121

Tamba wakachenjera denoted the Dare and ZANU Central Committee’s (CC) agreement, on the sidelines of the Lusaka talks, that they would sign a ceasefire agreement but make covert plans to intensify the war. A ceasefire was agreed on 11 December along with an understanding that all incarcerated nationalist leaders and their supporters should be released by the RF government. An agreement that a constitutional conference be staged to decide the nature and composition of a new government was also reached. Additionally, the regularly feuding nationalist parties ZANU, ZAPU, FROLIZI and ANC decided to unite, by signing the Zimbabwe Declaration of Unity (ZDU) at the Frontline leaders’ behest. In line with the ZDU all nationalist parties were to fall under the ANC, the sole lawful African political party in Rhodesia. The nationalist parties also committed to holding a congress within four months to elect a single leader and to draft a new ANC constitution. Tongogara and Chitepo both supported Sithole against attempts by ‘the militant ones’ to depose him as ZANU leader.122 But Tongogara’s support began to wane because Sithole did not reciprocate by supporting him against the Nhari mutineers. According to Tongogara, when he told Sithole that Nhari intended to reconstruct the High Command, Sithole countered: ‘I think the best thing probably is if you find they [the Nhari mutineers] resist, you can resign and go back to school.’123 Nhongo was not a player in the Lusaka negotiations and ZANU’s succession

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machinations in 1974. He was, as we have seen, seized with suppressing the Nhari mutiny and was hospitalised for a period. Nhongo was bound by the ZANU leadership’s tamba wakachenjera standpoint. There is no evidence that he dissented from the party leadership’s decision. In line with this tamba wakachenjera dictum, ZANU continued to view warfare, not negotiation, as the means to independence. Thus, after the Nhari mutiny, and with his health improved, Nhongo returned to ZZ front in February 1975 and began reconstituting guerrillas there.124 A similar process was underway in MMZ front, where Nhari and Badza had been based. Reconstitution entailed replacing guerrillas who were involved in the Nhari mutiny with cadres perceived as loyal to the High Command. Reorganisation was not restricted to the warfront. In February 1975 Tongogara moved the operational headquarters from Lusaka to Chifombo and he reshuffled the High Command, expanding it to nineteen members.125 Moving the operational headquarters away from Lusaka was a response to the Nhari mutineers’ criticism that the High Command was out of touch with the war and comfortably ensconced in the capital while fighters faced difficulties at the front. Tongogara rewarded guerrillas who showed loyalty to him during the Nhari mutiny by including them in the expanded High Command. Nhongo retained his place in the enlarged High Command for the loyalty he demonstrated during the mutiny. Mpunzarima, who commanded part of the Gukurahundi operation, was promoted to the High Command. Hondo was also elevated to the High Command because he led a portion of the ZANLA force from Tanzania in the rescue of High Command members such as Gava and Ndangana.126 Nhari kidnapped Tungamirai but he escaped eventually and joined Tongogara in suppressing the mutiny. Tungamirai was rewarded with a place on the High Command for the first time. Machingura was also incorporated in the High Command for helping to organise the Gukurahundi force at Mgagao. Eighteen months earlier, Machingura rejected an opportunity to enter the High Command because he ‘felt somewhat of an outsider in the murky politics of Lusaka.’127 Machingura spent the vast majority of those eighteen months in Tanzania and on a study tour in China. He was still an outsider to Lusaka politics but declining Tongogara’s reward for his loyalty during the Nhari mutiny proved impossible for reasons Machingura never disclosed. Though Tongogara re-established his authority over the High Command, his relationship with the Dare leader Chitepo was now marked by a degree of distrust. This distrust stemmed from Tongogara’s lack of certainty on whether Chitepo sympathised with the Nhari mutineers’ bid to remove him as head of the High Command. As stated before, Chitepo’s request that Nhongo be prematurely

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discharged from hospital so that he could help in suppression of the mutiny does not suggest the Dare leader wanted the internal revolt to succeed. This did not, however, stop Tongogara from declaring, at a Chimurenga General Council meeting at Chifombo in January 1975, that he suspected Chitepo of involvement in the Nhari mutiny but he had ‘no evidence at the moment’.128 Tongogara’s reckless assertion would boomerang two months later in one of the liberation war’s murkiest chapters. Uncertain Road and Certain Destination Chitepo was assassinated at about 8 a.m. on 18 March 1975. A powerful bomb in his Volkswagen Beetle car detonated as he pulled out from his home, 150 Muramba Road, Chilenje township in Lusaka.129 ‘The blast threw part of the car onto the roof of his house and uprooted a tree next door.’130 Chitepo and one of his bodyguards, Silas Shamiso, died instantly, while the second bodyguard Sadat Kufamadzuba was wounded. Nhongo was in Chifombo when he learnt of Chitepo’s macabre death via Zambian national radio that morning.131 ZANU instantly became an amalgam of tensions, suspicions, grief and shock. The Zambian authorities quickly, and controversially, concluded that Chitepo’s assassination was an inside job. Thus, Chitepo’s funeral, which was attended by leading ZANLA cadres based in Tanzania such as Machingura, Todhlana and Gwauya, took place under a veil of fear that the Zambian government intended to arrest High Command members on charges of assassinating Chitepo. The High Command maintained it was innocent and resolved to scatter outside Zambia, dreading a crackdown by the Zambian government. Nhongo and Manyika would escape to Mgagao (ZANLA’s largest training base in Tanzania).132 Tongogara, Chimurenga, Sarudzai Chinamaropa, Tungamirai, Machingura, Gava, Chauke and Urimbo, amongst others, would head for Chifombo.133 Dick Moyo was appointed to the High Command after the Nhari mutiny. He was sent to Botswana, only to be assassinated there by a parcel bomb three months later.134 Some High Command members made their way to the warfront to inform guerrillas in Rhodesia of Chitepo’s death, while other commanders simply vanished of their own accord.135 Soon after Tongogara’s group arrived at Chifombo, they learnt of an impending operation by Zambian troops to arrest all senior ZANLA commanders present there.136 The Tongogara cluster decided to traverse the borderline, into Mozambican territory, to avoid capture. After crossing the border, Machingura ‘drew Tongogara’s attention to the need not

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to leave our fighters [in ZANLA camps] to the mercy of Zambian authorities’ and the importance of giving them leadership.137 Machingura claimed to have debated this matter with Tongogara for approximately two hours.138 Tongogara conceded eventually, allowing Machingura to return to Zambia. Machingura first went to Chifombo and then to Mboroma camp, where he avoided arrest by posing as a junior soldier while providing ZANLA guerrillas with leadership until September when he, Saul Sadza and James Nyikadzinashe fled to Mgagao in Tanzania.139 After Machingura went back to Zambia, the Tongogara group retreated to a FRELIMO camp called Fingoe, believing they would find protection there. However, FRELIMO handed over, in two phases, the top leadership of this group to the Zambian government, which requested their arrest on charges they were accountable for Chitepo’s death.140 Tongogara was part of the first group to be turned in by FRELIMO. Less than a week after their arrival at Fingoe, FRELIMO summoned Tongogara, Chimurenga and Urimbo to a meeting in Tete, from which they never returned.141 There is an irony that cannot be lost here: FRELIMO employed on Tongogara the same trick it devised with him and Nhongo months earlier in order to capture Nhari at Kaswende. Chinamaropa, Tungamirai and Chauke were not invited to the FRELIMO meeting with Tongogara but they all were subsequently handed over to the Zambian government by FRELIMO. According to Tungamirai, ‘FRELIMO thought it was genuine [the Zambian investigation into Chitepo’s death] . . . . They told us later that if they had known that was not the case they would not have sent us.’142 The nature of Nhongo’s passage to Tanzania following Chitepo’s killing has, hitherto, not been explained. He and Manyika left for Tanzania separately. They rationalised that travelling unconnectedly increased the chances that at least one of them would make it out of Zambia.143 The road to Tanzania was strewn with Zambian security agents searching for ZANLA High Command members on the loose. A ZANLA cadre described how Nhongo escaped: Rex told me that he slipped away by taking three women comrades to Tunduma border post [border crossing between Zambia and Tanzania]. The comrades’ names were Sandy, Serbia and Chipo. Sandy and Serbia died in the war but comrade Chipo is still alive. Zambian security did not expect a man on the run to be showy with girlfriends. When you are on the run you are hiding. You look suspicious. Rex’s idea was that these women would make him look less suspicious. He looked like a guy with his girlfriends who was just having a good time. The Zambians thought that cannot be him and started paying attention to other people who looked more suspicious and some of the Zambians started paying attention to what the women were doing around Rex instead of looking closely at him.144

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Ropa gave an account of Nhongo’s getaway, which was comparable to that told by the ZANLA cadre: He went with women fighters to Tunduma. It is funny the way he told me this story [laughs]. You see my husband was very naughty with women. So he said to me, ‘When I tell you this please do not think I was doing anything this time. I went to the border with three women and they were flirting, hugging me, pretending to be kissing me and the police said, ah, these lovers are disturbing us, please pass quickly, we are busy looking for someone here.’ That is how he went out.145

According to Nhongo, Manyika arrived in Tanzania within a day of his entry and once reunited, they together proceeded to Mgagao.146 ‘When Nhongo arrived at Mgagao I had completed my training. I was now called a veteran and promoted to member of the ZANLA general staff. Veterans were those who had finished training and were ready to be transported to the warfront’, a ZANLA guerrilla explicated.147 The guerrilla described the general mood at Mgagao before Nhongo and Manyika’s arrival: When we heard the news of Chitepo’s death and that the leadership had been arrested in Zambia, Mgagao became very anxious. The image of Chitepo at Mgagao was that of a very educated and sharp leader. A gift to the struggle. Someone who, because of his intellect, could not be looked down upon by anyone, even the whites. The fighters felt his death was a real loss to the struggle. We were not happy. Those of us, like myself, who had been camped at Chifombo in 1973 started to talk amongst ourselves about what we used to hear at Chifombo about Tongogara and Chitepo’s uneasy relationship.148

On the whole, opinion was very much divided at Mgagao, with some guerrillas taking the view that the bombing was the work of the RSF, while others suspected the Zambians of trying to destroy ZANLA because they favoured ZIPRA: Kaunda gave preferential treatment to ZIPRA, period. I experienced that when I was at Chifombo. Kaunda did not really recognise ZANLA. He thought it was a splinter group. He questioned why ZANU had broken away from ZAPU in 1963. Right after Chitepo was killed we heard that Kaunda was trying to force ZANLA cadres in Zambia to join ZIPRA, by saying that your leadership is full of murderers. He also started moving our fighters to Mboroma, which is in the Zambian interior, far away from the front. How were they then supposed to operate? This was designed to stop ZANLA from fighting. And you know, all along we were having more operations as ZANLA than ZIPRA. We were doing more fighting than his ZIPRA.149

The above-mentioned guerrilla’s doubts about Kaunda’s impartiality were shared by Todhlana, who was among those arrested by Zambian security forces on charges of assassinating Chitepo, after his attendance of the Dare leader’s funeral. Todhlana recollected that upon his arrest,

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Zambian security officials openly proclaimed to him and incarcerated ZANLA commanders that they were all guilty of murdering Chitepo: ‘The Zambians had convicted us before there was even an investigation. I was innocent. There was no point going to court. They had made up their minds long back that we were all guilty.’150 Todhlana was detained illegally for three months before his release to Mboroma camp, which was near Lusaka. As said by Todhlana, ZANLA was ‘constantly harassed by ZIPRA and FROLIZI fighters who were also at Mboroma. Zambian solders were there to keep order but they never intervened to protect us. The Zambians were so against us and at one point they even shot dead fourteen ZANLA fighters.’151 Similarly Machingura noted Zambian troops’ ill-treatment of ZANLA guerrillas at Mboroma but his tally following the shooting was nine dead and a dozen injured.152 A ZANLA cadre highlighted how Mgagao’s trying living conditions deepened a disposition in the camp that ZANLA’s war effort was now in disarray following the leadership’s arrest over the Chitepo assassination: There was a lot of hunger and dying at Mgagao. Mgagao was very cold. Always drizzling. We had to boil our clothes almost every two days to get rid of fleas and ticks. So you are there naked, boiling your clothes and warming yourself by the fire while the drizzle is coming down on your bare back. That was Mgagao. Comrades would go and steal crops like maize and fruits from the Tanzanians’ fields. In many cases their stomachs would swell after eating this stolen food and they would die. Those crops had pesticides but comrades were hungry so comrades kept stealing. It started to cause unreasonable panic and suspicion in the camp because when comrades are dying like that you start to think maybe the enemy [RSF] is nearby. Others thought the Tanzanians had put something in the crops to kill us all. The superstitious ones said it’s witchcraft. Now imagine with these hardships Chitepo has been killed and other top leaders have been arrested.153

The aforesaid divided views at Mgagao about the cause of Chitepo’s demise, the grim living conditions and generalised sense that the liberation struggle was now in danger of losing direction worked to Nhongo and Manyika’s advantage: Nhongo came with Manyika and he explained to us what had happened in Zambia. He did not say who had killed Chitepo but he made it clear that it was not the [High Command] leadership which had done it. We became happy to see him. [Interviewer’s interjection: why?] Because we did not understand what was going on so we wanted to understand from those who were there [in Zambia when Chitepo was killed]. When Nhongo arrived at Mgagao he was at first skeptical that he would be attacked by the fighters saying they had killed Chitepo. But because there was no agreement among the fighters on what had actually happened to Chitepo, and to be honest I think the majority did not believe the leadership had killed Chitepo, Nhongo was not attacked. The fighters also quickly realised it was a good thing he had come to Mgagao because we still had someone who had

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military and political clout to lead us. Nhongo could talk to [Julius] Nyerere and Hashim Mbita and represent us. We were unknown to them but Nhongo was known. It was key with the leadership arrested that Nhongo made it to Tanzania. Nhongo gave us stability. He was also an action man. A good organiser. That made the fighters accept him.154

In another ZANLA cadre’s account, Nhongo had been liaising with the Tanzanian government, he swiftly established his authority and won the fighters’ trust by articulating the Mgagao guerrillas’ material wants and setting out his plan for addressing their needs: Rex addressed us at a parade when he came. He said, ‘We are losing a lot of comrades here, stealing from the fields of Tanzanians. We are not supposed to steal from them. We should go and beg from them if we are hungry not to go and steal. You must start farming. I have spoken to the Tanzanians. They will give us land to plough.’ Days after that hoes started coming from the Tanzanians, maize seed and piglets. Mgagao became more self-reliant because of him. He was always telling us to be self-reliant. Hunger started to decrease at Mgagao. Training also became more interesting and intense. You cannot train properly when you are hungry. You get useless soldiers. But now the guys were fit. Getting better trained. These things made Nhongo popular at Mgagao. But hey, even after Nhongo came, there was still a lot of indiscipline when it came to food. We now had our own maize fields and pigs but comrades were still stealing these things from themselves and eating. They would steal pigs and cook them behind Rex’s back. How can you steal from yourself?155

Nhongo avowed that he and Manyika first presented themselves to officials in Nyerere’s government and to Hashim Mbita, the executive secretary of the OAU Liberation Committee, before proceeding to Mgagao.156 We know nothing about the details of these meetings but it is clear that Nyerere chose to give Nhongo and Manyika sanctuary and material support in Tanzania. Were this not the case, neither man would have been granted Tanzanian farmland and farming inputs they used to assuage the divided and justifiably apprehensive Mgagao guerrillas. Nhongo and Manyika would also have been deported to Zambia, for Kaunda demanded their extradition upon discovering that they were now in Tanzania.157 However, within two weeks of their stay in Tanzania, Manyika had become increasingly keen to understand first-hand the prevailing situation in Zambia. Manyika went against Nhongo’s judgement to abstain from returning to Zambia to assess the state of affairs there.158 Manyika left Tanzania and was captured by Zambian state security, hence Nhongo became the sole member of the ZANLA High Command in Tanzania from April to September 1975, when Machingura returned to Mgagao from Zambia. Nyerere continued to refuse to extradite Nhongo to Zambia, leaving him to reside in Tanzania without restrictions.159

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Existing accounts of Nhongo’s stay in Tanzania do not go beyond glib statements such as that ‘Tanzania adopted a different attitude’ to FRELIMO and granted him refuge.160 Nyerere’s protection and provision of material support to Nhongo requires some explanation, even if this may be incomplete because of the absence of accounts on this specific issue by the key Tanzanian protagonists Nyerere and Mbita.161 A few reasons might explain the Tanzanians’ ‘different attitude’. The first reason is that Manyika, who was once Mgagao camp commander, managed to reach Tanzania. Manyika had credibility with the Tanzanians because he had been based in Tanzania as a senior commander and was well known to Tanzanian authorities. Had Manyika not made it to Tanzania, Nhongo’s status there would have been even more precarious. The second of these reasons was that Nhongo rapidly established a durable comradeship with Mbita, a point that was given some substantiation by another ZANLA guerrilla: ‘He [Nhongo] built a very good relationship with Hashim Mbita and he had broken through to Nyerere. Many times [at Mgagao] I remember him saying he was going to see Mbita and Nyerere. Just like that. He would just go.’162 In his dying years Mbita remarked about Nhongo: ‘Among my best friends in Zimbabwe was comrade Mujuru. He was at home here anytime he visited Tanzania.’163 A possible supplementary reason why Nhongo secured sanctuary in Tanzania was the supportive actions of the Mgagao guerrillas: We [ZANLA general staff] also wrote letters to the OAU Liberation Committee and the Tanzanian government and we even appealed to the Zambian government to release our arrested leaders and the Zambians were saying you have Nhongo there in your camp, give him to us first. We wrote to the Tanzanians to say do not touch Nhongo. Do not give him up to the Zambians. He must not go anywhere. He is our leader. We did not have direct access to Nyerere and Mbita so I cannot be sure about the effectiveness of our letters but I would want to believe that they recognised our letters.164

However, the most crucial reason, in my view, Nhongo and Manyika were not extradited to Zambia was the state of ZANLA guerrillas in Tanzania. From the earlier portrayals of Mgagao camp life, ZANLA guerrillas experienced squalid living conditions, indiscipline was prevalent and there was division, confusion and emerging despondency over the Chitepo assassination. And even after difficult living conditions improved with the introduction of Nhongo’s command, ZANLA guerrillas’ indiscipline remained an acute problem. Mgagao risked becoming volatile or ungovernable in the absence of an acknowledged and capable military leader from the ZANLA High Command. The already fraught local relations between the ZANLA

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guerrillas and some Tanzanian farmers would have been further aggravated in the absence of a figure with authority to maintain a semblance of order. In Nhongo’s estimation, there were approximately 2,000 guerrillas at Mgagao.165 The Tanzanians likely discerned that order needed to be maintained at Mgagao, lest thousands of foreign guerrillas deserted the camp in search of sustenance, which, feasibly, would have resulted in some of them being drawn into criminal activity, thereby posing a security risk. Seen in this light, Nhongo and Manyika therefore became indispensable to the stabilisation of Mgagao, while Tanzanian authorities waited to see what conclusive evidence the Zambian government would produce implicating them in Chitepo’s assassination. According to Mbita, Nhongo ‘played a crucial role in unifying liberation cadres [in Tanzania] after the death of ZANU chairman, comrade Herbert Chitepo and the arrest of the leaders’.166 Whereas a military leader from the ZANLA High Command was ‘crucial’ to maintaining unity and order amongst the guerrillas, ZANU’s political functionaries in Tanzania were inconsequential, as evinced in the fact that Nyerere proscribed the party and closed its Dar es Salaam office in May 1975.167 Nhongo’s refuge in Tanzania was eventually sealed by developments around the Special International Commission on the Assassination of Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo, which Kaunda announced on 31 March 1975, and the RF government’s intransigence towards a negotiated independence. The RF government was not prepared to transfer power to black nationalists and saw Vorster as having coerced it into a détente.168 The nationalist parties, despite signing the ZDU, also continued to be fractious. Their political and personal bickering was an additional hindrance to negotiation with the RF government. Consequently, Nyerere protected Nhongo because resumption of the war seemed the only means of bringing Rhodesia to black majority rule, since the prospects for a negotiated settlement were diminishing. Furthermore, it progressively became transparent to observers that the Zambian government had compromised the Chitepo assassination inquiry in a number of important ways. As the investigation’s biased nature became glaring, Nyerere likely became even more reluctant to give up Nhongo to the Zambian government. The partialities I refer to here centre on the manner in which the Zambian authorities extracted some of the confessions from detained Dare members and ZANLA commanders. Some prisoners were severely tortured and forced to sign affidavits confessing to Chitepo’s assassination, which were inadmissible in court.169 There was active lobbying of Kaunda, Nyerere, other African leaders and the Commonwealth, by the Zimbabwe Detainees Defence Committee (ZDDC) and its lawyer John Platts Mills, as well as by Amnesty International, to the effect that the ZANU detainees had not been accorded appropriate legal representation,

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they were detained illegally and tortured.170 The investigation was also laden with political overtones and Zambian authorities did not pursue all possible suspects and leads. Owing to concerted petitioning, the Zambian government acquiesced to an open trial, in which Mills laid bare the compromised nature of the investigation and lack of evidence against the accused, all of which partly contributed to the phased release of the ZANU prisoners in 1976.171 Nhongo and Chitepo The open trial outcome came after the Commission on Chitepo’s assassination released its report, which implicated some Dare and High Command members in the murder. A key finding in the report was that an ethnic dispute between Karangas and Manyikas in ZANU was an important factor in Chitepo’s assassination. According to the report, Tongogara, Gumbo, Kangai, Henry Hamadziripi and Mukudzei Mudzi (all Karangas, supposedly) eliminated Chitepo (a Manyika) because they believed he supported the supposedly Manyika-led Nhari mutiny. The report attempted to cast, in an incriminating light, Tongogara’s earlier quoted public statement, that he suspected Chitepo of involvement in the Nhari mutiny but had ‘no evidence at the moment’. The commission’s report described how Chitepo was murdered: The members of Dare and the High Command decided on the day 15th March, 1975, to kill Chitepo . . . . On that day Dauramanzi and Mpunzarima were sent to collect a bomb from Rex Nhongo. They returned on Monday 17 March 1975 when Chimurenga handed the bomb to Sadat Kufamadzuba for safe-keeping until midnight when Chimurenga, Rudo, Short and Sadat planted the bomb on the driver’s seat of Chitepo’s car. The four men were acting under the directions of Tongogara . . . . The members of Dare and the High Command could all therefore be indicated as principals to the murder of Chitepo because jointly and severally they actively desired to bring this about and did in fact bring it about. Although only one individual may have completed the final act to consummate the crime and though some may not have been present as in the case of Hamadziripi and Chigowe, who claim to have been in Malawi at the material time, they could all be charged for Chitepo’s murder.172

The report’s binary (Karangas vs Manyikas) analysis of ZANU’s ethnic politics is rudimentary. For example, Nhongo was said to have supplied the bomb that killed Chitepo, even though he did not fit the report’s Karangas vs Manyikas binary because he was Zezuru. The report does not shed any light on what stake Zezurus such as Nhongo might have had in assassinating Chitepo. And as we know, the Nhari mutineers were a mix of ethnic groups and had wide-ranging grievances.

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A certain ZANLA guerrilla developed a genial relationship with Hamadziripi. The degree of trust between them is highlighted by the fact that in the post-independence period, Hamadziripi earmarked this guerrilla as the man to record his life history.173 However, Hamadziripi fell critically ill and passed away before the guerrilla completed recording his life history. The guerrilla shared, with this author, recollections of his discussions with Hamadziripi about his role in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. One reminiscence is particularly relevant here. Hamadziripi related to the guerrilla that Tongogara was in fact a Xhosa (a South African Nguni ethnic group), not Karanga. Machingura (Karanga) buttressed Hamadziripi’s assertion that Tongogara was Xhosa: ‘[I]t is debatable whether strictly speaking Tongogara was an ethnic Karanga as he had recent South African roots as a Fengu.’174 The Fengu are a Xhosaspeaking community, from South Africa’s Eastern Cape, some of whom migrated to Rhodesia’s Midlands province, which is predominately Karanga.175 For Machingura, Tongogara’s family – the Magamas – had a short history in Midlands and thus he had not yet fully assimilated into the Karanga people. The foregoing discussion about Tongogara’s Karanga-ness is indicative of the socially constructed and contested nature of ethnic identity, the role of ethnic gatekeepers in attempting to determine who qualifies as an authentic member of the group and ethnicity’s potential for politicisation. These convolutions are unobserved by the Chitepo Commission report’s simplistic treatment of the politics of ethnicity in ZANU. Given the inadequacies of the report’s crude treatment of the politics of ethnicity, what differences, then, did Nhongo and Chitepo have that might have led to the former’s involvement in the latter’s assassination? The accounts that exist about Nhongo and Chitepo’s relationship suggest there was no significant rift between them. Two accounts best demonstrate this suggestion. The first of these comes from the ZANU external leadership’s biennial conference in 1973, at which Chitepo was re-elected unopposed as Dare chairman. Nhongo described Chitepo’s re-election as follows: Some people [politicians] at the meeting thought because of the progress we [guerrillas] had made in recruitment [of ZANLA cadres], independence was now near. These people now wanted positions [in ZANU’s top hierarchy so that they would be well placed to secure influential posts in independent Zimbabwe]. I was briefed by the late Mudzi about this. We decided to stop this. We sat down to think of a strategy. Mudzi said to me, ‘You have come from the front. People respect and fear you because of that. When the issue of the appointment [election] of the [Dare] chairman comes [up], you must stand up and say Chitepo goes back and no one can oppose.’ The returning officer was Patrick

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Kombayi. So I stood up and said, ‘We can have elections for other posts but for Chitepo’s post, Chitepo, stand up and return to the chairman’s seat. Stand up, no one will oppose you.’ Then Mudzi and others started cheering and clapping hands and Chitepo remained the chairman. Hamadziripi really wanted to be chairman. He is the one who wanted to challenge Chitepo and we said no.176

The manner in which Nhongo and his co-conspirators engineered Chitepo’s 1973 re-election was of course unfair. They unashamedly abrogated Hamadziripi’s democratic right to challenge Chitepo for the Dare chairmanship. But it is also clear from Nhongo’s account that he – and some influential others – supported Chitepo because he was a more credible leader, unlike other contenders who simply ‘wanted positions’. The role of Mudzi (Karanga) in Chitepo’s (Manyika) re-election is also significant because it casts further doubt on the usefulness of the Chitepo Commission report’s understanding of internal ZANU politics solely in terms of a struggle between Karangas and Manyikas. If Karangas were at war with Manyikas, why was Mudzi not aligned with Hamadziripi, his fellow Karanga? A second account that suggests an unstrained relationship between Nhongo and Chitepo centres on the latter’s unusual request Nhongo be discharged prematurely from hospital, in order for him to contribute towards quelling the Nhari mutiny. Would Chitepo have visited Nhongo in hospital to make this request if they had a strained relationship? And would an injured Nhongo have acquiesced to early discharge from hospital if he did not feel aligned with Chitepo? We cannot be certain that Chitepo’s assassination was not an internal job but we can be reasonably sure that if it was the motives were more complex than simply a struggle between Manyikas and Karangas. Moreover, it is worth noting that ZANU had potent adversaries in Zambia, such as ZAPU and FROLIZI. Is it implausible that ZAPU or FROLIZI assassinated Chitepo so as to divide and weaken ZANU, thereby gaining an advantage in the politics of détente initiated by Vorster and Kaunda? Could the Zambian government have engineered Chitepo’s death or turned a blind eye to his approaching assassination (by the RSF or apartheid South Africa) as a means of destroying ZANU, the goal being to ensure ZAPU, which Zambia was accused of favouring, would emerge as the dominant actor in the negotiated independence Kaunda and Vorster were championing? Perhaps by killing Chitepo the Zambian government and apartheid South Africa simply aimed to remove an important impediment to a negotiated independence settlement? Recall that Chitepo preferred a continuation of the war and, as Mugabe put it, was ‘very unhappy’ about Nyerere and Kaunda’s objection to his plan for ‘consolidation’ of ZANLA’s operational activities in Rhodesia.

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We probably will never know who killed Chitepo. Needless to say, Chitepo’s death was politicised and it generated a major crisis in ZANU from March 1975. The Zambian authorities apprehended most of the key Dare and High Command members following Chitepo’s murder and held them for up to eighteen months. Nhongo evaded the Zambian dragnet and reached Tanzania, where Nyerere and Mbita gave him succour. But the detentions in Zambia effectively crippled ZANLA for a year. In that year Nhongo contributed towards maintaining stability among ZANLA guerrillas in Tanzania and as we shall see in the next chapter, he became a leading figure in a new political and military phase that began to emerge in October 1975.

4

Kingmaker

The 1974 détente initiated by Kaunda and Vorster, and the incarceration of the majority of High Command and Dare members the following year for allegedly assassinating Chitepo, largely halted ZANLA’s guerrilla operations from April 1975 to January 1976. During this paralysis period, ZANLA fighters were mainly confined to camps in Tanzania and Zambia. Nhongo preferred a continuation of the guerrilla war and his misgivings about the détente exercise were deepened by Sithole’s refusal to press for the release of High Command and Dare members from Zambian prisons. Sithole appears to have been influenced by the Zambian government’s contention that Karangas in the High Command and Dare eliminated Chitepo. Alternatively, Sithole conveniently exploited the Chitepo assassination fallout to marginalise potential leadership rivals in ZANU. Both explanations for Sithole’s behaviour are of course not incompatible. For Sithole to maximise his authority in ZANU, it was necessary that he gain full control of ZANLA. But ZANLA’s foremost training camp, Mgagao, fell under Nhongo’s command. Nhongo’s friction with Sithole was aggravated by the ZANU leader’s appointment of a new military leadership loyal to him.1 Sithole’s new military leaders did not include Nhongo, despite the fact that he was the highest ranking ZANLA commander outside prison. Nhongo and Sithole met during the latter’s visit to Tanzania in July 1975. A ZANLA cadre narrated how Sithole’s relationship with ZANLA cadres at Mgagao began to disintegrate during the ZANU leader’s stay: Nhongo selected some of us, including me, to go and see Sithole in Dar es Salaam and Nhongo said we are going there to demand that Sithole as president must come and address us, that the leadership must be released from jail in Zambia, that we wanted a plan from him for the comrades in Zambia and Mozambique and that he must tell us how he wanted to prosecute the war because we believed the détente talks would not lead to anything. Sithole was staying in a hotel and had Tanzanian security men [as bodyguards]. He promised to come to Mgagao to discuss our demands because we could not discuss internal issues with the 68

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Tanzanians listening. He then came to Mgagao. We did some [military] exercises for him to show how well we had been trained. [Hashim] Mbita of the OAU Liberation Committee was also there. There was a slight mistake with one of the exercises so there was a small explosion near where Sithole was seated. It spread panic in the camp with the comrades saying some comrades wanted to kill Sithole but that was not true! Nhongo explained to Sithole our grievances and Sithole said he was going away to fix them. When Sithole came back to Mgagao he was with [Abel] Muzorewa [leader of the African National Council party] and [James] Chikerema [from ZAPU]. Sithole said there has been a unity pact between the nationalists so I have come with them. We did not understand that. What about the grievances we had aired on his last visit? Nhongo then asked to meet Sithole in private. Sithole said come to Uringa for a private meeting but when we went there with Nhongo he did not attend to us. Sithole said he was rushing to America to see his child who was ill. We did not like this because many comrades had just been killed and injured by Zambians at Mboroma. This is what broke our respect for him. At least his child had good hospitals. What about those in Mboroma?2

ZANLA guerrillas in Zambia similarly lost confidence in Sithole’s presidency. The generality of ZANLA fighters in Mboroma endured harassment by FROLIZI, ZIPRA and the Zambian military and living conditions there were dismal. In June 1975 Machingura, Todhlana, Gwauya and Baya, senior ZANLA guerrillas at Mboroma, resolved that the cadres there stage a hunger strike, demanding an audience with Sithole.3 Machingura recalled that when Sithole visited Mboroma he ‘underlined his commitment to our welfare and to the armed struggle, something the combatants longed to hear . . . He promised that he and his fellow nationalist leaders would be back within a month to work out the modalities of resuming the liberation struggle.’4 Sithole returned to Mboroma within a month but he did not set out concrete plans for reopening the war. In keeping with his preceding visit to Mboroma, Sithole did not grant ZANLA guerrilla leaders a private audience. Feeling frustrated and neglected, Machingura ran after Sithole as he was leaving. Machingura hurriedly restated the poor living conditions of children and women at Mboroma. ‘He [Sithole] dipped into his pocket and, without a word, dismissively handed me 25 kwachas [a measly amount of Zambian currency]. I was bitterly disappointed. He was the leader of the party, yet he did not seem to care’, Machingura commented.5 Machingura’s account of Sithole’s indifference towards the predicament of guerrillas and civilians at Mboroma was corroborated by Todhlana.6 Sithole later summoned Machingura to Lusaka, under the pretext that he wanted to offer him a post in a new High Command.7 Machingura stayed in Lusaka from mid-August to late September 1975; his appointment to the ZLC High Command did not transpire, but he was at least reunited with other leading ZANLA cadres, James Nyikadzinashe, Parker

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Chipoera and Saul Sadza in Zambia’s capital city. The four guerrillas were critical of Sithole’s sidelining of recognised ZANLA guerrilla commanders. They also disapproved of Sithole’s perceived alliance with Mukono and Mutambanengwe, who were both accused by the Dare of aiding and abetting the Nhari mutiny. According to Machingura, Sithole branded Tongogara and the Dare as ‘murderers’ of Chitepo and produced an initial report of the Special International Commission on the Assassination of Chitepo as evidence.8 ‘Nothing that we said appeared to influence him in any way’, Machingura concluded.9 Disillusioned by Sithole’s leadership, Machingura, Chipoera, Sadza and Nyikadzinashe sought the counsel of Dare leaders, Gumbo, Kangai, Mudzi and Tongogara, in Mpima prison. The outcome of this consultation was the Dare’s edict that ZANLA guerrillas do away with Sithole’s leadership and work to restart the war, and Tongogara advised Chipoera, Machingura, Sadza and Nyikadzinashe to leave Zambia.10 The Dare also instructed the four guerrillas to install Mugabe as the new ZANU leader because, as secretary general, he held the second most senior post after the president in the party’s hierarchy. Nyikadzinashe, Chipoera, Sadza and Machingura knew nothing about Mugabe, bar Gumbo’s glowing recommendation.11 Gumbo explained why he strongly recommended Mugabe: I was of the view that Mugabe should take over because he was secretary general and I knew him in Salisbury [Harare] prison from 1962 to 1964 when I was arrested and stayed with him there. I was made the clerk in my prison section. Mugabe was in the same section as me and he spent a lot of time by himself in his cell. I knew who he was politically so I would go to see him and we bonded. I appreciated him. He was intelligent, well-spoken and committed to the liberation of Zimbabwe from the whites. Mugabe had been circumcised recently. The circumcision was badly done so his penis would swell because of an infection. He shared this problem with me and I did all I could to help him. As the clerk I made sure he could change his prison uniform regularly. I would change his uniform three times a week. You were only supposed to change it once a week . . . . He would dress it in front of me and use a razor blade to remove scales on it. It was really bad and I did all I could to help him manage it. I am saying this to show you how close we became in [Salisbury] prison and how much I liked him. So years later in Mpima [prison] I supported Mugabe to become ZANU’s leader when others like Tongo [Tongogara] were not sure about him. I am the one who convinced the Dare to declare that Mugabe must take over.12

In 1965 Mugabe was transferred to Sikombela restriction area in Gokwe, where Enos Nkala was one of his fellow detainees. Nkala substantiated Gumbo’s account on Mugabe’s bungled circumcision, adding that the effects of the botched procedure continued to give him medical problems at Sikombela.13

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Mgagao Declaration Nyikadzinashe, Sadza, Chipoera and Machingura heeded Tongogara’s advice that they leave Zambia. They left for Mgagao in Tanzania to link up with Nhongo and implement the Dare’s mandates to resurrect the liberation war and discard Sithole’s presidency. Given their various frictional encounters with Sithole, Nhongo, Sadza, Machingura, Nyikadzinashe and Chipoera had a meeting of minds on the deficiencies of Sithole’s leadership and they all recognised the necessity of resuming the war, as instructed by the Dare. But, as we shall see, Nhongo was more cautious than the likes of Machingura in his approach to implementing the Dare’s instruction to remove Sithole. Machingura, a skilled political commissar, took up the task of inveigling the Mgagao cadres to abandon Sithole.14 Anti-Sithole slogans were steadily propagated in the camp. This anti-Sithole messaging fell on relatively fertile ground, given already existent cynicism towards his presidency among some Mgagao cadres.15 Sadza initiated engagements aimed at securing Tanzanian sponsorship for a restart of the liberation war. He engaged the Tanzanian government, the Mbita-led OAU Liberation Committee and Soviet, Chinese and Cuban diplomats in Dar es Salaam.16 The gist of Sadza’s diplomatic line ran thus: the nationalist politicians were a divided and ineffective group; the 1974 Lusaka Unity Accord had not made any progress as evinced in the failed August 1975 Victoria Falls conference between Smith and the nationalist leaders; and it was therefore necessary to restart the independence war but the nationalist politicians lacked genuine commitment to warfare. The standpoint taken by Nhongo, Sadza, Machingura, Nyikadzinashe and Chipoera resonated with Nyerere because he, along with the Mozambican leader Machel, had become disenchanted with the nationalist politicians’ wrangling and lack of purpose since the Lusaka Accord’s signing in 1974.17 Machel and Nyerere now preferred the resumption of warfare. Nyerere agreed to support a renewed war effort but since Tanzania did not share a border with Rhodesia, he advised the ZANLA commanders at Mgagao to seek Machel’s permission to relaunch guerrilla incursions from Mozambican soil. Among the Mgagao commanders, Nhongo was the guerrilla fighter most familiar to FRELIMO, because he operated with FRELIMO cadres in Tete province in the early 1970s. Nhongo developed personal relationships with FRELIMO members Armando Guebuza, Jose Moyana, Lopes Tembe and Antonio Hama Thay and he had met Machel before.18 As a result, Nhongo (accompanied by Sadza) was a diplomatic envoy to Mozambique in October 1975, to formally request that the FRELIMO government host ZANLA.

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FRELIMO arrested Tongogara, along with some ZANLA High Command members, and handed them over to the Zambian government to face charges of assassinating Chitepo, as we saw in the foregoing chapter. Since Nhongo was still on the Zambian government’s wanted fugitives list, he adopted a nom de plume to avoid possible capture. However, Nhongo was detained by Mozambican security agents after trying to contact Machel’s office, claiming to be a senior ZANLA commander. His arrest was referred to Guebuza, the interior minister, who identified Nhongo, upon visiting him in detention, and ordered his immediate release.19 Guebuza explained Nhongo’s arrest: [W]e were still building a nation after Portuguese colonialism and we did not yet have that experience of registering people . . . so if somebody arrives in Mozambique and you [security] do not know him and he is a foreigner, although African, for the sake of vigilance you arrest him, but Rex Nhongo was known to us top FRELIMO cadres so it was an embarrassment.20

Guebuza then facilitated a meeting between Machel, Nhongo and Sadza. According to Nhongo, Machel did not need much convincing on hosting ZANLA’s proposed new war effort. ‘Samora agreed that we must restart the war and said I will give you ground here. I was so happy I went for two days without a proper meal because my appetite was satisfied with happiness’, Nhongo reminisced.21 Before Nhongo and Sadza departed Mozambique, the Mgagao Declaration was leaked to media by Rex Chiwara. The Declaration was conceived by ZANLA guerrillas at Mgagao in October 1975, just before Nhongo and Sadza left for Mozambique. Machingura, Nyikadzinashe, Grey Mapondera, Abel Sibanda and Kennedy Taitezvi were the foremost composers of the Declaration, which was signed by forty-two officers at Mgagao, with Nhongo abstaining from initialling the document.22 The Mgagao Declaration fervidly enunciated the directives issued by the Dare leaders in Mpima prison, namely the denunciation of Sithole’s leadership, the suggestion of Mugabe as an alternative leader, the assertion of ZANLA guerrillas’ commitment to armed struggle and an appeal to the Tanzanian and Mozambican governments and the OAU Liberation Committee to support renewal of the independence war. The Declaration also condemned the Zambian government for the shooting and ill-treatment of ZANLA fighters at Mboroma and it was a trenchant attack on the nationalist politicians for their divisive ways. The Mgagao Declaration was forwarded to the OAU Liberation Committee, Nyerere and the Mozambican embassy in Dar es Salaam. It was also sent to Chiwara, ZANU’s representative in Britain, ‘as a contingency. He was to release it should any adverse action be taken against’ the Declaration’s

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authors.23 Chiwara proved to be an impulsive character. So enthused was he by the Declaration’s radical stance, he revealed to media what was meant to be a confidential document to Machel, Nyerere and the OAU Liberation Committee.24 Machel summoned Nhongo, who was still in Maputo, to explain why the guerrillas had publicly denounced Sithole.25 A livid Machel reiterated that he would host ZANLA in Mozambique but he expressed unequivocal backing for Sithole’s leadership. Caught unawares by Machel’s forceful support of Sithole, Nhongo dissociated himself from the Mgagao Declaration.26 He was in a position of weakness, in terms of power relations, with Machel because he needed the Mozambican leader to maintain his undertaking to host ZANLA. Consequently, Nhongo did not insist on the Mgagao Declaration’s rejection of Sithole’s presidency. Nyerere’s government also sought Nhongo’s clarification on the import of the Mgagao Declaration, upon his return to Tanzania with news that Machel had agreed to host ZANLA in Mozambique. Machingura wrote of Nhongo’s return: Senior Tanzanian state security officials . . . visited Mgagao to find out what was happening. This coincided with the return of Nhongo and Sadza from Maputo. I explained that the memorandum had been published without our approval and expressed sincere regret for any inconvenience caused. Nhongo was able to distance himself from the publication of the memorandum because he had been in Mozambique; he argued that had he been with us, the damaging error would not have occurred and he criticized me in the presence of the Tanzanian officials for having drawn up the memorandum in the first place. (Abel Sibanda and others in Dar es Salaam had informed us that Nhongo had continued to hold secret meetings in Dar es Salaam with Sithole, as well as Nkomo and Muzorewa, long after we had already denounced them). However, Sadza expressed his full support for our action and we all took Nhongo to task for his underhand maneuverings and gave him a stern warning. With the benefit of hindsight it is quite clear that Nhongo had not been exactly above board. Sadza, Nyikadzinashe and I took a very firm position on any continued contacts with the nationalists, particularly Sithole, now that we no longer recognised him as our leader.27

Before explicating Nhongo’s conduct, let us first attempt to establish some of the reasons Machel and Nyerere backed Sithole, subsequent to the Mgagao Declaration. A first reason for Nyerere and Machel’s support for Sithole can be found in Mugabe’s account, in the chapter before, on the Frontline leaders’ December 1974 refusal in Lusaka to recognise his leadership following the motion in detention by Nyagumbo, Nkala and Edgar Tekere to remove Sithole as ZANU president. The Frontline leaders saw the 1974 attempted leadership change in detention as unusual and an objectionable furtherance of division within the Zimbabwean

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nationalists’ ranks at a time when they ought to exhibit unity of purpose in the proposed détente exercise. The Frontline heads of state – Machel especially – were also suspicious of Mugabe because he was a mostly unknown political actor to them. Machel and Nyerere’s support for Sithole after the Mgagao Declaration was therefore in accordance with the Frontline leaders’ joint stance, at the 1974 Lusaka talks, to recognise Sithole as the ZANU president. Furthermore, Mugabe observed that ‘Nyerere was very fond of Sithole because Sithole had written a book praising Nyerere.’28 The book Mugabe referred to is Sithole’s famous African Nationalism, in which he exalted Nyerere’s ideas about African socialism.29 Nkala maintained that Machel’s support for Sithole was also determined by their shared Nguni ethnic origins: He [Machel] came [to Zimbabwe] on a state visit after independence [in 1980] and when we were at a reception, he said to me he was a direct descendent of the great Nguni army general Soshangane ka Zikode. I was surprised. He said he felt close to me because as a Ndebele I was a fellow Nguni. Sithole had a Nguni background. So I asked him [Machel] if that was the reason he had preferred Sithole to Mugabe during the struggle and he said yes.30

Let us now attempt to make sense of Nhongo’s unclear conduct before and after the Mgagao Declaration. A ZANLA cadre narrated: There was a short man called [Abel] Sibanda. He is the one who typed the Mgagao Declaration. I was there as Sibanda was typing it. I am a signatory to the Mgagao Declaration. If you find the original document, my signature is there but you will not find Rex’s signature. Rex refused to sign the Mgagao document. I did not ask him why he did not sign but my view then was that he did not sign because he had just escaped from Zambia where he was accused of killing Chitepo so he feared his name being linked to yet another removal of the political leadership.31

Nhongo’s alleged involvement in the elimination of Chitepo did make his standing somewhat precarious. But we must not overplay the impact of Nhongo’s purported participation in the Chitepo assassination on his conduct during this period because doing so obscures important elements of his political nature: cautious pragmatism, non-partisanship and moderation. Nhongo was critical of Sithole’s leadership and he subscribed to the Mgagao Declaration but his cautious pragmatism and moderation meant he was not gung ho or zealous in his approach to rejecting Sithole’s presidency. Nhongo’s covert meetings with the ZANU president reflected that unlike Machingura, Sadza and Nyikadzinashe who spurned Sithole’s presidency outright, he did not completely close off the possibility of working with Sithole, notwithstanding his criticisms and disagreements with him. Moreover, Nhongo’s meetings with ZAPU’s Nkomo and

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the African National Council’s Muzorewa displayed his capacity to look past partisanship. Adversarial political parties were not enemies to Nhongo. As we shall see from his future political conducts, cautious pragmatism, non-partisanship and moderation defined Nhongo’s politics. The Unity Illusion After Machel and Nyerere’s pledge to sponsor ZANLA in recommencing the liberation war, Mbita met with Nhongo, Machingura and Sadza to throw the OAU’s support behind the two Frontline leaders’ stance. However, the OAU Liberation Committee’s backing came with a proviso that ZANLA merge with ZIPRA to form a joint liberation army against the RSF.32 Given that the OAU Liberation Committee was a crucial source of logistical support in the liberation war and because its unity condition had Nyerere and Machel’s approbation, the ZANLA commanders were not in a position to reject Mbita’s terms. Nhongo, Sadza and Machingura took this reasoning back to Mgagao, where they made clear to the fighters there that it was necessary they acquiesce to the unity with ZIPRA term, lest they received no support from Mozambique, Tanzania and the OAU Liberation Committee. ZANLA guerrillas accepted the unity condition and the merger streamed briskly thereafter. Mbita facilitated dialogue between Nhongo, Machingura and Sadza and a group of ZIPRA commanders led by Nikita Mangena in Dar es Salaam. Machel then hosted a decisive meeting from 24 to 26 November 1975 in Maputo, where ZIPRA and ZANLA commanders amalgamated their commands to form the Military Committee of a new Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA). The ZIPA Military Committee posts were shared equitably between ZIPRA and ZANLA, with Nhongo as the overall commander, as illustrated in Table 4.1 below. Mutual rivalry and distrust between ZIPRA and ZANLA was deepseated. Of the ZIPRA and ZANLA commanders who comprised the ZIPA Military Committee, only Nhongo had experience as a soldier in both armies. This made Nhongo an acceptable overall commander who, because of his links in the two armies, could theoretically act as a bridge of trust between ZIPRA and ZANLA. The fact that ZIPA would operate from Mozambique also made Nhongo the most sensible choice as overall commander because he was highly regarded by FRELIMO.33 Through Nhongo ZIPA would have a reputable soldier, in the eyes of FRELIMO, as its commander, to take the lead in high-level liaisons with the host government. But it was not just the Mozambican and Tanzanian governments and the OAU Liberation Committee which supplied the newly

Table 4.1 The 1975 ZIPA Military Committee ZIPA Commander: Rex Nhongo (ZANLA) Political Commissar

Intelligence & Security

Army Operations

Army Logistics

Political Affairs Army Training

Medical Services

Army Finance

Nikita Mangena (ZIPRA)

Gordon Munyanyi (ZIPRA)

Elias Hondo (ZANLA)

Report Mpoko (ZIPRA)

Webster Gwauya (ZANLA)

Ambrose Mutinhiri (ZIPRA)

Augustus Mudzingwa (ZANLA)

Saul Sadza (ZANLA)

Deputy: Dzinashe Machingura (ZANLA)

Deputy: James Nyikadzinashe (ZANLA)

Deputy: Enoch Tshangane (ZIPRA)

Deputy: Edmund Kaguru (ZANLA)

Deputy: David Moyana (ZANLA)

Deputy: Parker Chipoera (ZANLA)

Deputy: Tendai Pfepferere (ZANLA)

Deputy: Dingani Mlilo (ZIPRA)

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formed ZIPA with resources. Olusegun Obasanjo, the Nigerian Head of State (1976–9), provided a single large tranche of financial support (US$6 million) for ZIPA in 1976. According to Obasanjo: I feel incensed that for the reason I am black, somebody can think of me as inferior. My commitment to help fight for African liberation came from that, so I invited Nhongo to Nigeria because I wanted to give him money for the liberation. Nhongo impressed me as a man who shared my anger about blacks being made to feel inferior. He also impressed me because he was a man of action [war]. Action means the white man in Rhodesia will not give in unless and until the cost of not giving in is higher than the cost of giving in. We found each other on that point.34

Furthermore, as stated by Nhongo, ‘[W]e were lucky that the weapons we had asked for in Beijing [during the 1974 trip to China, prior the Nhari mutiny] had now arrived in Dar es Salaam so we had weapons.’35 ZIPA succeeded in restarting the war and it operated from Mozambique on three warfronts – Tete, Manica and Gaza – thereby stretching the RSF’s counter-incursion operations. However, the ZANLA–ZIPRA unity was short-lived because in July 1976 the vast majority of ZIPRA commanders in the Military Committee withdrew to Zambia. Nhongo’s view on the ZIPRA–ZANLA unity’s collapse was that: [W]e [the Military Committee] made the mistake of sending ZIPA cadres to the [war]front too quickly, before they had matured about unity. Some would go to the [war]front saying forward with ZANU and others would be saying forward with ZAPU, so they started shooting each other at the [war]front yet initially they had come from Mozambique as one. There were many problems so Nikita said, ‘No, we cannot have this, we are going back to Zambia’, but us as the leadership of ZIPA we did not really have a problem [working together]. The problem was with the juniors.36

According to Machingura, when groups of fighters composed of combined ZANLA and ZIPRA elements were deployed to the warfront, the latter often deserted and returned to Zambia.37 Dumiso Dabengwa, a leading member of ZAPU intelligence, substantiated Machingura’s account. Dabengwa noted that ‘instead of engaging in fighting [the RSF] ZIPRA combatants were urged by their commanders that once arrived in Rhodesia they should desert, head for Matabeleland [a ZIPRA recruitment stronghold], get recruits and then leave the country with them for Botswana, from where they would be flown to Zambia’.38 In light of Dabengwa’s point that ZIPRA desertions were ordered by their commanders, Nhongo’s perspective that ‘the problem was with the juniors’ is partial at best. There were no gunfights between ZIPRA and ZANLA members of the ZIPA Military Committee but reciprocal

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distrust and lack of commitment to the unity project were certainly at play in this elite body. Nhongo was not above this mutual distrust and dearth in commitment, as seen in one ZANLA cadre’s recollection: When Nhongo selected me to go to Morogoro [camp] as an instructor [in joint ZANLA and ZIPRA military training], he said to me then and on each time he visited Morogoro that we [ZANLA] should be vigilant about ZIPRA’s intentions and that ZIPA was only a temporary thing. What he wanted was for the [Dare] leadership in Zambia to be released and for ZANLA to prosecute the war on its own. Nhongo said we should use the goodwill of the Tanzanians, Mozambicans and OAU [Liberation Committee] to build up ZANLA.39

Another ZANLA cadre who witnessed attempts to integrate ZANLA and ZIPRA fighters at Mgagao camp described: The ZIPRA approach was very different. ZIPRA even had about 14 girls [soldiers] who were part of the army they sent to Mgagao. There were no girls on the ZANLA side. ZIPRA had smart uniforms, which ZANLA did not have because we were supposed to look like peasants, fish in the sea according to Mao’s [Tse Tung] teaching. ZIPRA was immaculate. They had these big shiny boots that would make this loud noise when they were marching. Their neat marching and the noise from their boots used to piss us off. ZIPRA was a conventional force and we were guerrillas. That was a big difference. ZIPRA also believed in the workers, which was very Soviet, and ZANLA believed in the peasants. So even ideologically we were different. At the morning parades, the camp commander would come and announce the ZIPA advances at home, real or imagined. I later discovered that some of the camp commander’s reports came from BBC radio itself, so perhaps they were not very reliable. The reports were about white farmers ZIPA had attacked. Once the camp commander finished announcing a report, ZANLA would shout in Shona pamberi ne Chimurenga [forward with the uprising], then ZIPRA would reply in isiNdebele, pansi le Chimulenga [down with the uprising]. There was real animosity.40

Nhongo and the Military Committee must shoulder some responsibility for failing to instill unity between ZANLA and ZIPRA junior soldiers. The Military Committee, in its bid to rapidly restart the war so as to justify the support of Nyerere, Machel and the Liberation Committee, deployed fighters to the warfront prematurely. They ought to have taken a gradualist approach to deployments so that the ZIPA fighters had time to ‘mature about unity’. Difficult questions about the feasibility of unity were also not solemnly addressed during ZIPA’s gestation. Machel, Nyerere and Mbita must bear responsibility for this particular oversight. ZIPRA and ZANLA were starkly different armies as the above quoted account showed. Politically, recall, here, the hyper-partisan criticisms Machingura, Nyikadzinashe, Sadza and others directed at Nhongo for staging meetings with Nkomo in 1975. Frontline leaders and Mbita took

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these differences lightly and imposed unity from above. Because the ZIPRA–ZANLA unity was not organic, its likelihood of success was low. Tensions between ZIPRA and ZANLA boiled over in the former’s Morogoro camp in April 1976 and again a month later at ZANLA’s Mgagao camp. Let us first examine the April ZIPRA–ZANLA clash at Morogoro. A ZANLA guerrilla described the course of events leading to the Morogoro shoot-out: We [ZANLA] had 570 untrained men who went to Morogoro. ZIPRA had 137 and this group already had two years of training. You cannot mix trained and untrained fighters so really we were doing separate training exercises at the camp. There was no unity. Nhongo would come from time to time and we would brief him on what was happening at Morogoro. We were watching Joshua Nkomo’s talks with the Rhodesians and as they began to break down we [ZANLA] would sing, Nkomo riya ratswa. Nhasi ratswa. Nkomo nhasi ratswa. Makorokoto Nkomo nhasi ratswa [That Nkomo has been burned. Today he was burned. Congratulations Nkomo was burned today]. The ZIPRA guys got fed up with this song and said, ‘This is our camp, today we will not give you food because you are singing nonsense all the time.’ An argument started over food. We were not going to tolerate going without food. We stormed the food storage house and took all the food. One of the ZIPRA instructors fired at us. I blame him for making the situation worse. The ZANLA comrades started running away shouting tapera tapera [we are finished]. Anderson Mhuru then said that is not happening. He took a big rock and broke into the armoury. We were not allowed to have weapons if we were not training but we went in there anyway and took weapons and ammunition. I took a mortar gun and we started firing at ZIPRA. Many cadres died there. When it was over the ZANLA ringleaders, of which I was one, were put in proper Tanzanian jails in Morogoro. The Tanzanians said how could you shoot ZIPRA like that? You are sell-outs. We are going to send you back to Smith for what you did. We were tried by a joint ZIPRA– ZANLA tribunal. Mbita chaired the proceedings and the Tanzanian Army was there to regulate. In the end Nhongo and Machingura negotiated with Nyerere for our release. That is what saved us.41

The mixing of trained and untrained fighters at Morogoro suggests an attempt by either ZANLA or ZIPRA, or both, to guarantee that their fighters did not actually train together and become a genuinely united force. ZIPRA’s forwarding of significantly fewer soldiers than ZANLA for combined training can be interpreted as intimating its lack of commitment to ZIPA. Moreover, Nkomo continued to negotiate with Smith for a possible political settlement yet ZANLA, through the Mgagao Declaration, had rejected the Sithole presidency for being more committed to negotiation with the Rhodesian government than it was armed struggle. ZANLA distrusted ZIPRA because of Nkomo’s continued engagement with Smith.

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A separate ZANLA trainee at Morogoro in 1976, gave somewhat dissimilar reasons why ZANLA and ZIPRA carried out separate training and he explained the conflict somewhat differently: ZANLA refused to train under ZIPRA who were already trained. We knew ZIPRA had recruitment problems so we said, ‘No way, we are ZANLA, we know you want to steal us.’ ZIPRA also wanted to use live ammunition during training and we asked them: ‘Do you want to kill those ZANLA who you think are too critical minded?’. Hashim Mbita then came there and shouted at us. He called us sell-outs for refusing to be trained by ZIPRA. The compromise was that Nhongo brought a ZANLA training team from Mgagao. That team was led by Agnew Kambeu, Stephen Chocha and Dominic Chinenge. We started training in January 1976 and we were always having quarrels over food. Control of the kitchen was so important. Food was not scarce but the quarrels were mostly about preparing food separately. We did not trust ZIPRA to cook for us lest they poisoned us and ZIPRA did not trust us cooking for them. One day gunfire broke out over control of the kitchen. I was at the clinic when shooting started. I remember hiding under a bed and a ZIPRA cadre came into the clinic. I could see his boots and his gun. He began to walk out and as he was at the door I saw him empty almost an entire AK47 magazine into a ZANLA cadre. The ZIPRA cadre shouted bulala abathakathi [kill the witches/wizards]. After that fight Nhongo came there to try to calm things down.42

The shootings between ZIPRA and ZANLA at Mgagao in May 1976 were also a consequence of distrust, rivalry and disputes over food. However, important differences pertaining to the Mgagao clash were that the camp belonged to ZANLA and that ZANLA-aligned Chinese military instructors based there had a hand in the shooting of dozens of ZIPRA cadres.43 The Cold War-era Sino-Soviet split, generated by China and the Soviet Union’s conflicting national interests and readings of Marxism-Leninism, partly caused the Chinese instructors to have intolerant attitudes towards the Soviet-backed ZIPRA.44 Furthermore, ZIPRA was critical of the quality of Chinese instructors’ training methods, arguing that ‘ZANLA deployed people inside Rhodesia who were not well trained or even completely untrained. Some recruits were trained using sticks and were only given a gun on the day of crossing into Rhodesia.’45 In the absence of mutual trust between ZANLA and ZIPRA commanders and their juniors, unity was an illusion. Nhongo and the ZIPA Military Committee’s failure to entrench genuine unity between ZIPRA and ZANLA, and the resultant inter-violence at the warfront and in camps, only deepened the rivalry and distrust between both armies. Machel, Nyerere and Mbita were by the same token blameworthy for illadvisedly imposing a superficial unity on two diametrically opposed armies. ZIPA continued to exist after ZIPRA abandoned the project in

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July 1976, even though it was now only constituted by ZANLA. ZIPA established Whampoa college at Chimoio camp, for leadership and Marxist-Leninist studies, in August 1976. Todhlana was Whampoa’s inaugural director and he became a member of the ZIPA Military Committee in charge of army logistics at about the same time. Whampoa aimed to produce a principled, effective and MarxistLeninist revolutionary ZIPA corps.46 A Nephew Who Would Be King After Mugabe and other nationalist leaders were released from detention to allow them to participate in the December 1974 Lusaka talks and the ensuing détente exercise, the former ZANU detainees launched a recruitment campaign for the liberation war in Rhodesia. As stated by Mugabe: We had agreed with Chitepo in Lusaka that the Smith regime will not allow us a life of more than three months inside the country and out of detention. So we knew we must have done a lot of recruiting in those three months and this proved to be true. They started arresting some of us . . . . We [the ZANU internal leadership] then had a meeting at George Tawengwa’s [a wealthy black businessman who supported ZANU] hotel in Machipisa [in southern Salisbury] called Mushandirapamwe. Nkala had already gone into hiding. We agreed that I must now go out of the country to lead the liberation struggle from Mozambique. We also agreed that I choose someone to accompany me. I said I wanted to go with [Simon] Muzenda but Muzenda said, ‘No, I have too many family commitments here.’ I then said [Edgar] Tekere and Tekere said yes.47

Muzenda’s refusal to accompany Mugabe to Mozambique indicates how, for some in the nationalist leadership, participation in the liberation struggle did not always take precedence to family and the self. Mugabe and Tekere made their way to Mozambique, under the guidance of a traditional chief called Rekayi Tangwena, in late March 1975.48 When Tekere and Mugabe reached Mozambique they resided in a variety of ZANLA and FRELIMO bases before the country’s formal independence on 25 June 1975. They met with FRELIMO provincial governors between April and June, but Machel would not meet with them.49 Days after formal Mozambican independence, Mugabe and Tekere ‘got word that Machel had said he had information that the Rhodesians will try to kill us soon so we would be safer if we were moved. That is the excuse Machel used. Machel sent us to Zambezia province which is in the north. He restricted us there at a place called Quelimane’, Mugabe explained.50 Marooned in Quelimane for the rest of 1975 and for most of 1976, Mugabe and Tekere were cut off from the

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guerrilla camps. Machel’s restriction order was because he did not want Mugabe to gain influence among the fighters. Machel continued to recognise Sithole as ZANU’s leader regardless of the October 1975 Mgagao Declaration. Machel also disregarded a subsequent declaration by the imprisoned Dare leadership in January 1976, which pointed out that: Mugabe is now the provisional leader of our party (ZANU) and our revolution pending the convening of a party Congress and we call upon all Zimbabweans and all progressive forces in the world to support the dynamic leadership of Comrade Mugabe . . . . Ndabaningi Sithole ceases with immediate effect to be the party leader and spokesman . . . the [1975] statement by the Comrades at Mgagao, Tanzania, pledging their support to Comrade Mugabe’s leadership was in full conformity with the party’s revolutionary line.51

After the Mgagao shootings in May 1976, Machel attempted to promote unity between ZIPRA and ZANLA by requesting that the commanders of each army draw up a register of their respective political leaders – the goal being to use a union of these accepted political heads as a basis for boosting unity between the two armies. The list of political leaders ZANLA members of the ZIPA Military Committee handed Machel was headed by Mugabe and excluded Sithole, as per the imprisoned Dare leaders’ directive, which found expression through the Mgagao Declaration. Machingura described Machel’s reaction to ZANLA’s list in this way: ‘Nhongo then submitted our list, with Mugabe at the top. Machel leapt from his chair in disgust. He was clearly not happy that we had included Mugabe, let alone as the leader’, and Machel criticised Mugabe for being an individual who ‘loves the limelight’.52 Despite Machel’s hostility towards Mugabe, from June 1976 ZANLA members of the ZIPA Military Committee – Nhongo and Machingura mainly – made secret night visits to Mugabe and Tekere in Quelimane. By July, Nhongo and Machingura were sneaking Mugabe and Tekere into ZIPA’s Chimoio and Chibabava camps to meet the fighters, brief them on the war’s progression and to urge them to unite with ZAPU’s political leaders.53 During the course of these interactions, Machingura observed that Mugabe was brusque in his manner of speech, he tended to be aloof, he sought to know each commander’s ethnicity, he had dictatorial deportment and he was vehemently opposed to political union with ZAPU.54 Machingura aired his reservations with other commanders such as Hondo, Chipoera and Pfepferere and found that he ‘was not the only one who had begun to harbour doubts’ about Mugabe.55 Nhongo was excluded by Machingura from these consultations because there were

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unmistakable congenial relations between Nhongo and Mugabe.56 For instance, Machingura noticed that Mugabe referred to Nhongo as Mutusva, pointing to his knowledge of Nhongo’s Chikomba roots.57 One of ZANLA’s codes of conduct was that all members should adopt a nom de guerre because this prevented RSF spies from acquiring information about guerrillas’ family roots. Such intelligence could be used by the RSF to target the families of guerrillas in Rhodesia. Machingura found it odd that Mugabe referred to Nhongo as Mutusva and that Nhongo did not object to Mugabe’s irregular behaviour. It also puzzled Machingura that Mugabe was aware of Nhongo’s family background so early in their relationship. Machingura, Hondo, Chipoera and Pfepferere began to regret the ‘misplaced enthusiasm and the credibility’ they bequeathed the Dare’s instruction to replace Sithole with Mugabe.58 According to Mugabe: Dzino [Machingura] was managing things in the camps. On the face of it he and others were doing things on behalf of those [the Dare] in jail but in reality they were doing things for themselves . . . . Mujuru [Nhongo] was the man who was giving us information about what was really going on. He had been like that from the beginning, giving us information. He would to come to Quelimane and tell us that Dzino did not believe in us.59

Nhongo confirmed Mugabe’s account of his secret lone visits to Quelimane: ‘I used to go and see Robert at night to brief him about what was happening in the camps. I would drive alone at night. I kept this to myself. I never told anybody else.’60 Nhongo feigned solidarity with ZIPA Military Committee members, despite their growing suspicion about the true nature of his relationship with Mugabe. Nhongo, at the same time, underhandedly cultivated a relationship with Mugabe, in which he briefed against his fellow ZIPA Military Committee members. In August 1976, Machingura gave a widely publicised interview on Radio Mozambique, wherein he vigorously articulated that ZIPA was ‘a nonpartisan military entity’, an outlook which riled Mugabe because this meant he lacked control of an army, unlike Nkomo who controlled ZIPRA.61 Mugabe called for Machingura to publicly retract the stance he took on Radio Mozambique. Machingura countered with a letter restating his position. Machingura’s letter to Mugabe was signed by the Military Committee, including by Nhongo who ‘delivered it – but later disassociated himself from it even though he had willingly appended his signature’.62 In the middle of these political intrigues, in August 1976 the RSF attacked Nyadzonia camp, just inside Mozambique’s border with Rhodesia, inflicting approximately 1,000 fatalities. Liberation fighters maintained that Nyadzonia was a camp for untrained civilians, hence

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the majority of victims were non-combatants.63 The RSF, on the other hand, insisted Nyadzonia was a base for guerrilla training and launching of operations, making the camp a legitimate military target.64 Machingura writes that on a visit to Nyadzonia in February 1976 he incarcerated ‘certain officers for insubordination’.65 One of these officers was Morrison Nyathi, a sectoral commander in Manica province. Machingura confined the insubordinate officers pending a disciplinary hearing by Elias Hondo, the director of operations, under whose department they fell. Regrettably, Nhongo, who later passed through the camp in my absence, released them before the hearing, giving Nyathi an AK-47 and telling him to go to the front [which was a form of punishment employed by some commanders]. We were subsequently to regret this move when, in August 1976, Nyathi led the Rhodesian Selous Scouts to attack [Nyadzonia] . . . . We still do not know whether Nyathi actually went to the front after he received the weapon from Nhongo and got captured by the Rhodesian forces or whether he just went straight to the Rhodesians.66

Nhongo and Machingura’s contradictory orders at Nyadzonia were symptomatic of division between them on approaches to discipline and punishment. As shall be laid bare in the next section, Nhongo eventually made a pivotal break from Machingura and other ZIPA Military Committee counterparts, by supporting Mugabe’s leadership bid. Nhongo going against his fellow Military Committee members was instrumental in enabling Mugabe’s recognition as ZANU president by Machel and the guerrilla army. Before demonstrating Nhongo’s role as kingmaker in Mugabe’s rise to power in Mozambique, let us first appreciate why he played this part. Nhongo’s motivations have previously not been made clear. Ropa enlightened: My husband and Mugabe were distantly related. A young girl called Nhemasve from Solomon’s clan was given to Mugabe’s clan. This is how clans built bonds in the past, by intermarrying. It is said that this girl, Nhemasve, is the one who gave birth to the line of Mugabes, which Robert Mugabe belongs to. Solomon and Mugabe kept this relationship secret. Only very few people like me, inner family members I should say, know it. When Solomon and Mugabe were not in public, their relationship was that of sekuru [uncle] and muzukuru [nephew]. Solomon was sekuru and Mugabe was muzukuru. That is how they related to each other in private. Solomon always said to me that with Sithole removed as leader, according to the ZANU hierarchy, as secretary general Mugabe was supposed to succeed Sithole so he was entitled to become the leader anyway. But Solomon also said Mugabe being his distant relative also influenced his decision to make sure Mugabe became the leader.67

Ropa’s explanation of Nhongo’s support for Mugabe was repeated by Mujuru family members and his close political confidants. I reproduce one of these corroborating accounts here:

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Mugabe was the secretary general. Mujuru recognised that. Mugabe was the most senior person after Sithole so Mujuru was at the forefront of campaigning for him. He [Mujuru] also said that Mugabe was well educated and he spoke good English so he would do well as a political leader. I will tell you one thing most people will not tell you because they do not know it. Mugabe and Mujuru were related. Mujuru’s great ancestor gave his sister as a wife to Chief Zvimba. Chief Zvimba is Mugabe’s great ancestor. That sister, sister, bore the family line that Mugabe is part of. Very few people know this. ZANU has many secrets and this is one of them.68

That Nhongo commended Mugabe as a leader because he was highly educated and an eloquent English speaker underlined Nhongo’s belief that education bequeaths political leadership qualities. Nhongo saw in Mugabe qualities that he lacked as a political leader.69 Nhongo had limited formal education and spoke with a pronounced stutter. In contrast, Mugabe held several university degrees, he spoke Edwardian English with a refined accent and his mannerisms were urbane. Added to these qualities, Mugabe was ZANU’s secretary general, making him Sithole’s successor, and he was Nhongo’s muzukuru. Throughout 1976 the American secretary of state (1973–7) Henry Kissinger engaged in shuttle diplomacy to bring about a negotiated agreement for black majority rule in Rhodesia. Kissinger feared that radical liberation armies would ultimately overrun the RSF and a communist government, backed by America’s Cold War rivals in the East, would come to power in Rhodesia.70 Kissinger therefore sought to engineer a negotiated independence, through which a moderate Western-backed black government would in due course take charge of Rhodesia. Vorster was crucial to Kissinger’s diplomacy because Smith’s RF government was dependent on South Africa for trade and the supply of military arms. In 1974 Vorster and Kaunda had engineered a similar plan for majority rule by a moderate government in Rhodesia and so Vorster was amenable to aiding Kissinger’s scheme by stalling trade in goods and fuel between Rhodesia and South Africa in July 1976.71 Under the Kissinger plan Smith was asked to accept a government of whites and moderate blacks, which would usher in black majority rule within two years. A financial reserve for the reimbursement of any whites compelled to emigrate from Rhodesia because of the independence agreement would also be put in place.72 Smith, a proud and obdurate political operator, felt personally betrayed by Vorster but he had no viable option except to give in to the Kissinger plan.73 On 24 September 1976, an outwardly composed but inwardly bitter and broken Smith made a live broadcast on Rhodesian television, publicising his government’s accession of the Kissinger plan.74 Majority rule was to be negotiated in The Palace of Nations in Geneva,

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Switzerland, in October 1976, at a conference chaired by Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ivor Richard. Kissinger and the James Callaghan-led British government also conducted a diplomatic tour de force, as part of the Anglo-American initiative, to persuade Kaunda, Machel and Nyerere to accede to an independence conference for Rhodesia in Geneva. The Frontline leaders bought into the Kissinger plan to varying degrees. Nyerere was open to giving it a try but he was conscious that the nationalist politicians’ divisions were an impediment to reaching a settlement and he continued to view armed struggle as the most viable means to independence.75 Kaunda and Vorster championed the idea of a negotiated settlement since 1974, so the former supported the Anglo-American initiative. Machel’s Mozambique faced significant economic challenges after a ten-year-long independence war. For example, the World Bank approximated a yearly average decline in real GDP of 5 per cent in the period 1970–7 and according to the United Nations the Mozambican government recorded budget deficits of US$35.6 million and US$28 million in 1976 and 1977, respectively.76 Machel supported the Zimbabwean liberation struggle but he was also pragmatic in his outlook because of the economic burden of hosting liberation armies. And so Machel backed opportunities for negotiation that could bring Zimbabwe’s independence war to an end sooner rather than later. Mugabe described Machel’s stance towards him and the Geneva talks: The Frontline states said we must put together the leaders for [the] Geneva [conference]. Samora called us [Mugabe and Tekere] from Quelimane. Samora asked us what we were and we said we are ZANU . . . Samora then said you are going to Geneva and you should be united. We said but release our people [the imprisoned Dare members] in Zambia. Samora said he would talk to Kaunda about that. Samora wanted to know precisely who I was, where I was from and whether I was a Smith man [spy] . . . he said to me point-blank, this man must be a Smith man. But eventually he got enough information that I was genuine and let me go to Geneva as the leader of ZANU.77

With Machingura and other Military Committee members’ support for Mugabe wavering, Nhongo, in his capacity as ZIPA commander, vouched for Mugabe’s credibility and persuaded a hesitant Machel to legitimise Mugabe’s leadership of ZANU by sending him to the Geneva talks as party president.78 As stated by Nhongo: ‘Samora called me [for a meeting] as commander to ask me who should represent ZANU in Geneva. I said Robert and Samora was very angry. He did not want Robert but I stood my ground. I told Samora that as Secretary General Mugabe must take the leadership.’79 Nhongo experienced, unexpectedly, the full force of Machel’s support for Sithole when the Mgagao

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Declaration was made public in October 1975. A year later Nhongo was well acquainted with Machel’s views on Sithole and Mugabe and he was better prepared to engage the Mozambican leader on ZANU’s leadership succession. Ropa offered a glimpse into this explosive and decisive meeting between Nhongo and Machel: Solomon only started opening up to me about everything that he did for Mugabe to become leader, much later in his life when he and Mugabe were no longer seeing eye to eye. He would come back home after seeing Mugabe. They would have had disagreements. Then he would say, ‘Mai Chipo [Ropa] I did a lot for that man. Samora spat in my face and said why are you wanting to take power from Sithole to give it to this Mugabe when even you yourself can take power? Why? I said no, according to ZANU it has to be the next [highest] political leader and it is the secretary general who is Mugabe.’80

The Frontline leaders called a summit, in Tanzania in September 1976, with Rhodesia’s feuding liberation parties in order to pave the way for their participation as a united front in the Geneva talks a month later. Nhongo attended the high-level meeting in Tanzania as part of a ZIPA delegation consisting of Machingura, Hondo and Gwauya. Machingura spoke on behalf of the ZIPA representatives at the Tanzania conference, making the case for a deepening of the war effort and rejection of the Kissinger plan as counter-revolutionary.81 Despite Machingura’s spirited speech, it was clear the Frontline leaders were determined to guarantee the Geneva conference went ahead as planned and they undertook to release the imprisoned Dare leaders to allow them to attend the talks in Switzerland. Nhongo was of the view that the proposed Geneva talks were ‘a fake conference. I never believed in it. The British wanted to sabotage ZIPA because it had opened new fronts. I wanted the war to continue.’82 On this point Nhongo was in sync with other Military Committee members’ views about the conference but differences arose between him and them over the matter of whether to participate in the Geneva conference regardless their lack of conviction in the negotiations and over whether ZIPA should attend the talks as part of ZANU. According to Nhongo: Dzino, Hondo and others now wanted to maintain their positions as top leaders. They no longer wanted to accept Robert [as leader] and they did not want to work with the Dare leadership because they would lose their top positions. They said ZIPA must be independent but our plan from Mgagao [Declaration] was we the military would give power to Robert and we fight for the old [Dare] leaders to be freed from Zambia.83

Mugabe’s description of some Military Committee members’ opposition to attending the Geneva conference and their refusal to be part of

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ZANU if they attended the talks echoed Nhongo’s aforementioned account: Dzino [Machingura] did not want to go [to Geneva]. KK [Kaunda] released [Rugare] Gumbo, [Henry] Hamadziripi, [Mukudzei] Mudzi and [Kumbirai] Kangai and they came to Geneva. Tongogara was released after about two days of these being released, after judgement was passed on him that he was innocent. The Zambians could not prove that he killed Chitepo. Dzino was accusing me of selling out for going to Geneva. Dzino even said ZIPA had acquired a political identity of its own. He said this on BBC radio.84

Machingura contended: ‘Mugabe had only one message for us: now that the Dare members were out of prison, ZIPA had to disband . . . . He saw ZIPA as a blatant threat to his authority.’85 Machingura, Hondo and Todhlana, amongst other Military Committee members, refused to attend the Geneva talks. Nhongo also snubbed the Geneva trip, ostensibly in solidarity with the ZIPA Military Committee. In truth Nhongo suspected a rerun of the 1974 Nhari mutiny. Nhongo calculated that if he went to Geneva with the ZANU leadership, disgruntled ZIPA commanders would take advantage of his and the ZANU leadership’s prolonged absence (the conference lasted three months) to consolidate their control of the fighters in the camps and assert complete autonomy from Mugabe, the Dare and himself. Todhlana detailed that: Kangai was sent to negotiate with us. He said you guys have to come to Geneva because Mugabe is being bombarded by journalists who are saying, ‘You claim to be commander of an army, where is your army? Show us your army commanders. Nkomo has come to Geneva with his ZIPRA commanders. Where are yours?’. We met Kangai at a hotel in Maputo. Rex was also there, listening to everything very carefully and he was quiet as usual. We told Kangai we are not coming to Geneva. After Kangai, Tongogara also came to convince us to come to Geneva and again we refused to go. Rex was quiet. He was always quiet so we did not think anything was unusual about that but later on we began to realise that actually this man may not be with us.86

Machel initially tolerated the Military Committee’s absence from Geneva. But after a fortnight it became clear that Smith was unwilling to negotiate earnestly, partly because ZANU did not control ZIPA, as demonstrated by the Military Committee’s non-attendance of the talks. Consequently, Machel beckoned Nhongo: Samora said as ZIPA commander I must go to Geneva so that Smith can take Robert seriously. I told Samora I could not go alone because Dzino and other commanders would take over the camps. I made a plan with Samora. I would bring the commanders to him and he would threaten us all and order me to choose some commanders to accompany me to Geneva immediately. Samora organized a plane to take us out of Maputo after the meeting. When I brought the

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commanders, Samora did as we had planned. He said Nhongo choose commanders who will go with you to Geneva right now. You must go right away. I took commanders like Dzino who were capable of rebelling against Mugabe to Geneva.87

The Military Committee members Nhongo chose to escort him to Geneva so as to defuse the coming ‘rebellion’ he suspected also included Mudende, Hondo and Nyikadzinashe. Todhlana remembered the abovementioned encounter with Machel in this way: There is no way my brother Rex could have dislodged ZIPA [Military Committee] on his own. Machel helped him dislodge us. It was clear opportunism by Machel. Machel thought independence was near and saw ZIPA as delaying independence. Machel wanted us out of Mozambique. And you know, at our last meeting with Machel as ZIPA, he made me stand up and said, ‘You, you, you are a Soviet agent’ because I joined ZANLA from ZIPRA, which was Soviet trained. Rex was with me in ZIPRA but Machel never called him a Soviet agent. Soviet agent. Soviet agent is what Machel called me. Soviet agent.88

Fire Runs Far as Geneva ‘ZIPA had no position paper for the Geneva conference . . . but we were paraded as if we were there to lend our support to Mugabe. Indeed, Tendai Pfepferere and I were seated right behind him and his delegation, as if affirming his control over the “loyal” ZIPA commanders’, Machingura remembered the conference proceedings.89 The animosity between the ZIPA commanders and Mugabe did not ease, despite the former’s appearance at the talks. The negotiations themselves led nowhere. During the first session, Richard, the talk’s chairperson, noticed that some delegates entered the conference room with their guns, which was hardly conducive to peace negotiations, forcing him to issue an order prohibiting the practice.90 Smith was a reluctant negotiator, having been coerced into the talks by Vorster and because the RSF was undefeated. During the Geneva talks, the RSF bombed some ZANU camps in Mozambique so as to weaken the liberation movement’s hand in the negotiations. However, the RSF operations did not reduce ZANU’s obstinacy in Geneva. Mugabe, for example, ‘persistently’ arrived late for talks and on one occasion the Rhodesian minister of foreign affairs P. K. van der Byl, speaking in his customary exaggerated posh English drawl, ‘demanded an apology’ but only received an insult from Mugabe who shouted, ‘foul-mouthed bloody fool’.91 The raucous nature of the Geneva conference was exacerbated by Richard who, as chairperson, lacked gravitas, failed to drive a cogent agenda and was inept at building trust between the deeply

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divided participants.92 On 2 November 1976, only days after the conference commenced, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic Party candidate in the American presidential election that year, achieved a narrow victory over incumbent president Gerald Ford, the Republican Party candidate. Ford’s electoral defeat fatally undermined the Kissinger plan and Geneva conference, since the incoming Carter administration would seek to implement its own specific foreign policy initiatives.93 While the conference made no headway, in ZANU there were significant new alliances and shifts in power that were fashioned on the sidelines of the talks. Nhongo, Tongogara and Mugabe established a pact in Geneva against the Machingura-led ZIPA commanders. As Mugabe put it: Mujuru told us in Geneva that the High Command’s release had also become a threat to the Dzino group. They were thinking of ways to marginalize Tongo and they were saying if there is going to be a fight, there will be a fight. Mujuru told us that. So we planned that after [the] Geneva [conference] our tactic would be to start sending the top ZIPA commanders on various missions to Yugoslavia, Egypt, China and other places. In the meantime, Mujuru and Tongo would go straight to Mozambique to plan how to take control of the fighters.94

Nhongo and Tongogara duly left for Mozambique once the talks closed on 14 December while the Machingura-aligned Military Committee members were sent on a variety of diplomatic missions. In addition to political chicanery, Nhongo was ‘doing masculinity’ in plush Geneva. He had captured the attention of a young mixed-race woman called Bernadette Monteiro.95 Machingura described Monteiro as ‘a mysterious figure’ who professed ‘to be ZIPA’s spokesperson in Europe and who made press statements about ZIPA’s achievements without our knowledge or permission’.96 It seems plausible that Nhongo put Monteiro up to these activities, given their proximity during the conference. Indeed, when a fire started in Nhongo’s room in the Royal Hotel on 4 December 1976, he had been in his room with Monteiro ‘late that night’.97 The fire caused massive damage to two floors of the Royal Hotel, which was located in the heart of Geneva (see Figure 4.1). Nhongo was unharmed and there were no fatalities but a ZANU member, Robert Marere, suffered a fractured spine after leaping from the hotel’s fourth floor to escape the flames.98 Nhongo explained the cause of the fire thus: ‘when I was there [Geneva] the British tried to kill me. They set my room on fire.’99 Nhongo rarely boasted about his exploits in war and politics but in a moment of atypical bluster he described how he evaded the fire by saying: ‘I escaped through the window. I was still called Rex Nhongo [a hero] in those days. I was not yet Solomon Mujuru [the anti-hero].’100

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The Rhodesian delegation explained the Royal Hotel fire contrarily: Rex Nhongo . . . torched his hotel room. Recently arrived from Mozambique he was unprepared for the Geneva winter. Turning every heating appliance, including a stove, to maximum, he fell asleep in his bed, but something ignited the furniture. With the room ablaze he was forced to leap off the balcony in whatever sleeping attire he was clad in. Later there was a delightful cartoon of PK [van der Byl] holding an outstretched blanket below with a big hole in it urging Nhongo to jump. With . . . [ZANU] claiming foul play, Ivor Richard challenged PK to explain his role. Flicking ash from his cigar he pronounced, ‘it ain’t me wot done it’.101

Some in ZANU believed that the ‘young overfriendly’ Monteiro was a Rhodesian agent and she set the fire in Nhongo’s room.102 However, Swiss investigators ruled that there had been no foul play in the fire incident. According to Tekere, Nhongo fell asleep in his hotel room without putting out his cigarette; his lit cigarette then sparked the fire.103 Mugabe agreed with Tekere’s account. He admitted that at the time the ZANU delegation intentionally blamed the fire on the British and Rhodesians to make the Geneva talks even more intractable but in actuality, Nhongo started the fire: Mujuru was a smoker and a drinker. He set that hotel on fire. The hotel belonged to a West African leader and we were staying at his hotel. Then suddenly we heard fire, fire, the hotel is on fire. Some were jumping out the windows. People were tying together bed sheets in order to drop down windows. That fire caused real havoc. Real havoc. Great damage. Mujuru had escaped. This time he had escaped. He was not to escape again back home [in Zimbabwe on 15 August 2011]. Sorry.104

Old Dogs, Old Tricks By the time ZIPA Military Committee members sent on foreign diplomatic missions after the Geneva conference returned to Mozambique in early January 1977, a plan had been devised to purge some ZIPA elements, as part of asserting Mugabe, Dare leaders and the old ZANLA High Command’s authority over the army. The chief architect of this purge plot was Nhongo. Before detailing how this scheme unfolded, let me first provide a window into some ZIPA commanders’ mindsets just before the purge occurred. One ZIPA cadre recollected the escalating hostility of some Military Committee members towards Tongogara’s return: There was a rally at Chimoio camp. Elias Hondo addressed that rally. Hondo said, and this was in reference to Tongo, ‘You used to command 300 soldiers in Zambia. You come back from jail and there are now 3,000 soldiers in

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Figure 4.1 Rex Nhongo stands in his burned-out hotel room in Geneva as Swiss detectives go through debris after a pre-dawn fire gutted the room on 4 December 1976. Nhongo’s delegation to the 1976 Geneva conference claimed the fire was an assassination plot by ‘enemies of the revolution’. Source: AP/Press Association Images.

Mozambique and you say you are still the commander.’ That was at Tongo. I was taking minutes of Hondo’s address. When I heard Hondo say that I went blind. I could not take minutes anymore. I will never forget that. That is the first time I really sensed that things were not well. That evening there was so much tension in the camp. Everyone was staying close to their guns. Later on there was an attempted ambush by some ZIPA soldiers on Tongo, so Tongo started moving with Mozambican soldiers for protection.105

Todhlana had separate reasons for opposing Tongogara’s comeback: Others like Dzino were opposed to Mugabe because they thought he was not revolutionary enough. My own thinking, my issue, was with Tongo. Tongo and the High Command from Zambia were poorly educated and they had no ideological commitment so I did not think this calibre of people was good enough to make up the High Command. They were only the High Command in Zambia because they joined the war before me. As the war progressed we needed a better High Command. What I wanted was for the High Command to be made bigger, from twenty to thirty-six [members] so that we could bring in graduates from Whampoa College, that way we

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would neutralise Tongo’s influence. I had a very negative attitude towards Tongo because of the Nhari killings. I also believed a High Command with [Whampoa] graduates would be more effective in running the war.106

Nhongo depicted his role in managing, to Mugabe’s advantage, the post-Geneva conference phase: Tongogara and Tungamirai and others [in the old High Command] had just come from jail. The fighters [in Mozambique] did not know them but they knew me so I became the senior [military] person outside trying to contain the situation [after the Geneva conference]. I went with Robert to see Samora and I said to Samora please take [arrest] these people [ZIPA elements opposed to Mugabe and High Command]. Samora said what you have done is good because killing each other is not good. I said yes we do not want to kill them. When we get independence at home we will then take them and discuss it there, which was a very good idea and so Samora agreed.107

A meeting was subsequently called between the ZIPA Military Committee, a carefully chosen group of ZIPA General Staff, the Dare, High Command, Mugabe and other former detainees. Tongogara read out the names of some ZIPA General Staff from a compiled list in the camps, before extending an invite to a consultation at a Mozambican army barrack in Beira, whose agenda was to resolve ongoing differences between ZIPA on one side and Mugabe, the old ZANLA High Command and Dare on the other side, and to reconfigure the political and military leaderships in broadly acceptable ways.108 Tongogara did not have intimate knowledge of the ZIPA fighters and their views about Mugabe, Dare leaders and the High Command, so it is unlikely that he assembled the list of invited General Staff members. The list of names could only have been drawn up by Nhongo who had commanded the General Staff. The so-called consultative meeting was a trap. Nhongo, Mugabe and Tongogara had conspired with FRELIMO to ensnare their political and military adversaries, in the same way that FRELIMO had assisted Nhongo and Tongogara in entrapping some of the Nhari mutineers in 1975. Thirty General Staff members were arrested by Mozambican military police at the Beira meeting, along with Military Committee members, Todhlana, Mudzingwa, Hondo, Pfepferere and Nyikadzinashe. Chipoera, Machingura and Mudende were offered the opportunity to work with Mugabe’s leadership. Machingura and Chipoera declined the offer in solidarity with the arrested ZIPA cadres, while Mudende elected to remain and work with the new leadership.109 ZIPA cadres arrested in 1977 were held by FRELIMO until their release under the independence ceasefire terms in 1980. Once the Beira meeting commenced, Nhongo, some ZIPA guerrillas loyal to him and FRELIMO soldiers supplied by Machel, left for the

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camps to contain the situation there, in case a revolt erupted upon news of the arrest of some Military Committee members. While in the camps Nhongo arrested an additional thirty ZIPA cadres and handed them over to FRELIMO for imprisonment.110 ‘At Chimoio, Whampoa cadres . . . were arrested for mobilizing resistance, and the tension between the old guard and the ZIPA recruits was clear. At Doeroi . . . High Command members faced resistance getting into the camps, and at Tembue it is alleged that ambushes were laid but foiled.’111 Nhongo carried out the arrests selectively. Some ZIPA commanders were spared incarceration whilst Todhlana revealed that prior his arrest in Beira, Nhongo warned him to tone down his Marxist revolutionary stance: Rex would be there listening to me and Dzino when we were teaching communist ideology to ZIPA cadres and when Dzino and I were debating each other’s views. Rex would listen quite carefully. He never once disagreed with us but as we later found out, he never fully embraced our ideology. But you know, even though Rex did not partake in the ideology, he appreciated it. I say that because of what he said to me in the garden at Chimoio just before I was arrested. He took me to the garden and said let us talk privately. He said, ‘I appreciate your concerns that Tongo is not ideological enough but fight for your ideology from inside [ZANLA]. Calm down and stay inside.’ That did not make sense to me when he said it. I was a strong radical. I failed to understand what he meant until I was arrested in Beira. That is when I realised what my homeboy tried to tell me.112

One ZIPA guerrilla commented that ‘I was there when people were being arrested but Nhongo just grabbed me and said go there so I was not arrested. He did that to many others.’113 Another ZIPA fighter pointed out that: Rex protected a number of people when ZIPA was being purged because he realised that he needed them. I and others were called ZIPA rebels by the security guys and we were supposed to be put in prison. We were thoroughly beaten and told: ‘You have also been demoted, you are no longer trained, you are now untrained.’ Then Rex came to our camp a few days later and he said, ‘No, these are not ZIPA rebels.’ He took me and the others to a new secluded camp and kept us there for almost three months. We started to think we had been abandoned. Then Rex came and moved us to Beira and kept us there for about two months. He then came and said he was satisfied things in the camps had died down and he took us to a training camp and said start training ZANLA cadres.114

Nhongo did not go about the ZIPA purges in a fanatical manner because he valued the military competences of ZIPA. Nhongo therefore safeguarded some ZIPA cadres for their particular military skills. These ZIPA cadres became directors of training. In a further recognition of the competencies of ZIPA commanders, Mudende, Machingura and Chipoera were not marked for arrest, but the latter two chose to join

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their imprisoned ZIPA comrades on grounds of solidarity.115 Nhongo also advised Todhlana, ‘fight for your ideology from inside’ ZANLA. However, the selectivity of the purges and resort to imprisonment not execution, which was not the case during the Nhari mutiny, did not disqualify the prevalence of witch hunts and physical violence during the purge. The scholar and former ZANLA guerrilla Zvakanyorwa Sadomba ruminates about ZIPA’s demise and Mugabe’s rise to power in this way: Machel’s switch to support Tongogara . . . remains a mystery. Was his attitude changed by the adept Mugabe? Possibly, but the fact that he is the one who had restricted the movements of Mugabe and Tekere by house arrest in Quelimane, also raises doubts about this argument. Whoever did convince Machel, however, his actions were tantamount to the displacement of ZIPA and imposition of Mugabe’s leadership on the guerrilla movement.116

As we now know, Nhongo is the instrumental figure Sadomba struggles to identify in his rumination above. Through his cautious political doubledealing and orchestration of a purge against some of his ZIPA colleagues, Nhongo played the role of kingmaker in Mugabe’s rise to the helm of ZANU and he paved the way for the return of Tongogara’s leadership of the army. Nhongo played kingmaker because of his respect for party and military hierarchy, for the reason that Mugabe was his distant relative and because Mugabe was highly educated, urbane and eloquent. Machel also emerges as a comparably deceptive and ruthless political operator, as well as an opportunistic host, who collaborated with Nhongo to achieve particular outcomes. The contest between some ZIPA commanders and nationalist politicians was, in a way, an authority struggle between the army (the gun) and civilian authority (the party). Nhongo supported the party’s supremacy over the gun, in addition to his personal reasons for backing Mugabe.

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Tongogara appointed Nhongo as ZANLA’s chief of operations after ZIPA’s downfall. As chief of operations, Nhongo was effectively deputy to Tongogara, ZANLA’s chief of defence. Nhongo and Tongogara had dissimilar approaches to military leadership and their personalities also differed. Nhongo often wore a black beret, jackboots and a Chinese-made plain green uniform and he carried a folding-butt AK-47. He could arrive at a scene populated by ZANU cadres and merge into the gathering unnoticed. Nhongo ‘would just blend in with ordinary people. It is only when he was dealing with the trained personnel that he adopted the posture of a commander’, a senior ZANLA guerrilla observed.1 The ZANLA guerrilla’s view of Nhongo was reinforced by some of the reminiscences of FRELIMO cadres. Nhongo was ‘not noticeable, a quiet person’, Joachim Chissano remembered.2 For Guebuza, ‘Rex was easy to talk to.’3 Jacinto Veloso supplemented that Nhongo was ‘very down to earth. He was often cracking jokes and laughing but he was very quick to act on war things when action was needed.’4 According to FRELIMO’s Antonio Hama Thay, Tongogara was ‘a good speaker. When he was giving a speech, it captured you. Nhongo spoke less and he was more direct than Tongogara. Nhongo did not go around in circles.’5 ‘Tongogara had a lot of charisma. It [his charisma] was natural. Rex Nhongo was not like that’, commented Jose Ajape, a FRELIMO cadre assigned by Machel to assist ZANLA commanders in their guerrilla operations in Rhodesia.6 Some FRELIMO cadres saw Tongogara as deriving inspiration from Machel, whereas Nhongo was his own person. As Hama Thay put it: ‘Tongogara saw Samora as a role model. That is what I saw. I was with Tongogara several times in Tete province and I could see Samora in him. The strong military leader who is also a politician. Very firm. Charismatic.’7 Within ZANLA, Tongogara was well known for his acutely militaristic behaviour, language and leadership style.8 Tongogara was a giant physically, standing at well over six feet tall. He was much feared because of his physical size, flagrant militaristic ways, the circulating oral accounts of his 96

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ruthless quashing of the Nhari mutiny and lingering suspicion that he murdered Chitepo. The dread with which Tongogara was regarded also came about because he suffered from bruxism, an anxiety and stress disorder that caused him to grind his teeth excessively, giving off a menacing facial appearance.9 ‘He was always grinding his teeth and when he got angry, he would grind his teeth even more and his big eyes would be rolling around’, a ZANLA fighter recalled.10 Another ZANLA guerrilla described Tongogara like so: You know sometimes he could just start talking about somebody trying to kill him, just talking, not that we were trying to kill him. He would say, ‘If you try to kill me make sure you do the job one-time because if you do not, when I come back ndino kupaza, ndino kupaza! [I will destroy you, I will destroy you]’. As he was saying this he would be walking around slapping his forehead very hard and grinding his teeth. And this is a big guy. Tall and fit. You became afraid.11

Tongogara’s bruxism appears to have been brought on by a series of traumatic incidents.12 He was tortured in Zambian prisons for allegedly assassinating Chitepo in 1975. After this Tongogara narrowly survived a Rhodesian bomb attack in the late 1970s and, at about the same time, he lived on after his small Volkswagen vehicle crashed into a wild animal on a Mozambican road. Three ZANU cadres died in the road accident, while Tongogara sustained a broken hand.13 Bruxism can also be exacerbated by drinking alcohol heavily and smoking cannabis, which were some of Tongogara’s wartime habits.14 Nhongo was not bereft of some of the militaristic behaviour Tongogara exuded, as evinced in this recollection by a ZANLA guerrilla: Rex once drove us to Maputo for a mission. After the mission he took us for drinks, then he drove us back to Chimoio. The other comrade, I don’t know if it was because beer had gone to his head, on the way back he started saying bad things about some of the High Command members. He was saying so and so must be demoted. Rex never commented but this comrade just kept saying these things. When we got to Chimoio, Rex beat that comrade with a thick stick on his buttocks until he defecated on himself. On that day I realised how much Rex believed in respect for military hierarchy.15

Still, Nhongo by and large was seen as more genial and closer to the guerrillas than Tongogara.16 Nhongo ‘listened but with Tongo, it is you who would be doing the listening. Tongo was the sort of person you felt afraid of rather than close to, but you could feel close to Rex’, one ZANLA guerrilla compared both commanders.17 ‘Rex moderated Tongo. If you wanted Tongo to reverse something radical, you told Rex and he would try to talk to him but that does not mean Tongo would change’, another ZANLA cadre evaluated.18 An additional point of

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difference between Nhongo and Tongogara was their conflicting degrees of recognition for Mugabe’s authority in ZANU. Nhongo had a supportive alliance with Mugabe but Tongogara’s relationship with Mugabe was a competitive one.19 A ZANLA fighter remembered witnessing the following dynamics between Nhongo, Tongogara and Mugabe: ‘Tongo would challenge Mugabe. On one occasion Tongo almost got into a fight with Nhongo for challenging the president. A physical fight. Mugabe trusted Nhongo more than Tongo.’20 I asked Mugabe about his views on Tongogara, to which he responded: [He was] very strong. Very determined, but feared by others. You know you do not want a person who is feared because he is cheeky. He would beat up people. When we were at Lancaster [House for the 1979 independence negotiations] he was staying with Tungamirai. Tungamirai wanted to go out at night and enjoy London. Tongo wanted routine, keeping to bedtime. Tungamirai was not happy about that, so Tongo said, ‘You are stubborn’ and he beat up Tungamirai. Yes, at Lancaster.21

Mugabe’s remark, ‘you do not want a person who is feared because he is cheeky’ betrayed his discomfort with Tongogara’s leadership style. Conversely, Mugabe pointed out that from the ZANLA guerrillas, Nhongo was the ‘dearest’ to him and he added that in warfare: Mujuru was unafraid. Completely unafraid and daring, and he is the one Tongo relied on first and foremost, then Tungamirai, then Zvinavashe . . . . Tongo was the commander so he remained in the background. He would not fight, although Mujuru would have wanted him to fight. Sometimes when they quarrelled about something that had gone wrong at the [war]front, Mujuru would say, ‘Why do you not come and we see if you can do better? Chimbo itawo tione’ [Have a go and we can be the judge].22

Mugabe’s account points to tension between Nhongo and Tongogara about the ZANLA chief of defence’s reluctance to actively engage in guerrilla operations inside Rhodesia. Nhongo’s criticism of Tongogara’s armchair commentary on ZANLA guerrilla manoeuvres calls to mind one of the Nhari mutineers’ legitimate grievances that Tongogara mostly did not visit the Rhodesian warfront, resulting in him being out of touch with developments there. Official ZANU history presents Nhongo and Tongogara’s relationship as a brotherhood,23 but this is a quixotic depiction of their ties, as Ropa reinforced: They did not get along out of genuine love for each other. Solomon used to say Tongo was tribalistic. Tongo preferred Karanga people but Solomon was Zezuru. Tongo had to accept Solomon because he was a fighter and Tongo was not. Their biggest disagreement was Mugabe. Mind you when Tongo came out of jail [in

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Zambia] he did not really want Mugabe to take over ZANU. To persuade Tongo to let Mugabe lead, Solomon said to Tongo when you were in jail I became the commander. I am accepting that you come back as commander but you must accept Mugabe as leader. Had Tongo not been in jail, he would not have allowed Mugabe to take over ZANU.24

The influence of ethnic politics on Nhongo and Tongogara’s relationship was acknowledged by others in ZANLA.25 Nhongo’s supportive alliance with Mugabe was perceived by some as motivated by the fact that they were both Zezuru, placing them in competition with a Karanga faction supposedly led by Tongogara. Ethnic politics mattered in 1970s ZANU politics but, as already argued, ethnicity often overlapped with a range of differences and nonidentity-based disputes often overrode ethnic-centred grievance. Despite their partly ethnic-based misgivings about each other, Tongogara accepted Nhongo ‘because he was a fighter’. Indeed, Tongogara’s forte was guerrilla strategy. ‘Give him maps, his diaries and a table and he plans the war. That was Tongo.’26 Tongogara also had a higher level of education and was a more fluent speaker than Nhongo. Tongogara was at ease travelling globally in pursuit of military assistance from ZANU’s allies, he regularly attended independence negotiations abroad and he often engaged international journalists. Oppositely, Nhongo spoke sporadically and was a man of action. Nhongo went into the ZANLA camps and the warfront to implement Tongogara’s policies and Tongogara appreciated him for that. And Nhongo valued Tongogara for devising strategy and conducting the political dimensions of the war. Nhongo and Tongogara’s relationship was primarily a functional one. They complemented each other’s strong suits and limitations, more than they shared an idyllic brotherhood. They both recognised that their complementarity was indispensable, for ZANLA to pursue the liberation war effectively in the post-ZIPA phase. Chimurenga after 1977 The number of available guerrilla recruits in Mozambique accelerated unremittingly after 1977. This process had first taken off in 1975 because of Mozambique’s independence but as years passed, other dynamics fanned an increasing flow of youth across Rhodesia’s eastern border, into Mozambique to join ZANU. As liberation fighters increasingly infiltrated Rhodesia, defence spending took growing precedence to state investment in the national economy. The RF government’s ‘total defence-related spending rose from R$77 million in 1975 to R$197 million in 1978’ and

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the ‘gross domestic product in real terms fell by 3% and 7%, respectively, in 1976 and 1977’.27 By 1978 Rhodesia was experiencing net negative migration totalling 13,709, stripping the national economy of skilled white manpower.28 The tourism sector – an important contributor to the Rhodesian economy traditionally – also suffered because of the deteriorating security situation, with the quantity of tourists declining from 339,210 in 1972 to 87,943 by 1978.29 When the RF administration made substantial investment in the economy, it was mostly geared towards supporting economic sectors dominated by whites. The black rural economy was adversely affected by lack of investment and limited fertile farming land. The expanding socio-economic hardships in the countryside encouraged rural black youth to join the liberation armies. And in the cities, mounting unemployment and low living standards among black school leavers turned many of them into war recruits.30 Idle urban black youth also chose to become members of liberation armies because they were viewed with suspicion by Rhodesian police and intelligence operatives, who harrassed, detained and beat up many of them on unsubstantiated grounds they were ‘terrorists’. Growing guerrilla incursions also created a precarious security situation in the eastern countryside, resulting in vulnerable rural folk in eastern Rhodesia fleeing to Mozambique as refugees. In 1975, there were 14,750 refugees from Rhodesia in Mozambique but by the time the war ended in 1979, refugee numbers had risen to approximately 160,000.31 Many of these refugees ‘had household and family ties on both sides of the border, and people did not use passports to cross from one side to the other; they were crossing the border through shortcuts, which took them less than an hour of walking’.32 The pace and quality of ZANLA training struggled to keep up with the rate at which camps were swelling with converts, breeding disgruntlement by untrained recruits sitting in overpopulated camps, towards Nhongo and his fellow commanders.33 ZANLA lacked adequate resources to train, equip, feed, shelter and clothe its ever-inflating recruits to a high standard.34 In addition to under-resourced ZANLA trainers being overwhelmed by ever growing recruits, the guerrilla army’s Security Department lacked the capacity to sufficiently screen the masses of youth arriving in Mozambique to become guerrillas. A senior ZANLA security officer admitted that some of the voluminous new arrivals were RSF spies posing as recruits and many of them probably escaped detection because the large influxes of youth made rigorous screening impossible.35 The problem of RSF infiltration of ZANLA was noted by FRELIMO:

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Whenever ZANLA training camps in Mozambique were attacked by Rhodesians, FRELIMO helped in moving them to different places so that Rhodesians would not bomb them again. We did this secretly but the Rhodesians always quickly found the guerrillas and bombed them again, so there must have been many spies in ZANLA who were giving away information about guerrilla movements.36

According to Veloso, Mozambique’s state security minister from 1975, RSF infiltrators also zeroed in on the ZANU leadership. ‘We detected two Rhodesian plots to kill Mugabe in 1976 to 1977 thereabouts. We stopped those plans and shared this intelligence with ZANU’, Veloso divulged.37 ZANLA operations under Nhongo had some continuities with those of the early 1970s and he attempted to build on the operational inroads ZIPA made during its short-lived existence. ZANLA guerrillas inside Rhodesia continued to live amongst the rural population and mujibas (runners) were an unbroken source of local intelligence. The RSF intensified countermeasures against ZANLA’s penetration of northern, eastern and central rural Rhodesia. It attempted to seal off freedom fighters’ access to the rural population, which served as a source of succour, by imposing food embargoes in areas heavily infiltrated by guerrillas and the RSF scaled up its corralling of rural folk in Protected Villages. By the end of 1977, Protected Villages harboured 580,832 countryside dwellers – a figure that rose to 750,000 by 1980.38 In mid-1979 about 20,000 ZANLAs were now operating in Rhodesia.39 At the end of 1979, areas such as Melsetter, Mudzi, Nyajena and Kendeya occupied a status between semiliberated to liberated zones. ZANLA focused much of its energies on mobilising support for ZANU and the liberation war in its operational areas. Mobilisation tactics were a mix of persuasion and force, with pungwes (night vigils) an enduring politicisation ritual. The scholar Norma Kriger’s study of ‘peasant voices’, in Mutoko (north-east Zimbabwe and a region Nhongo once operated in), on their experiences with ZANLA in the 1970s demonstrates that from this mix, the guerrillas mainly employed force and drew on cultural nationalism, because the RSF was a formidable foe and the colonial state still dominated public service delivery to the extent that ZANLA could not extend new benefits, even as the guerrilla army made burdensome demands on black rural dwellers.40 Coercion did not enable ZANLA guerrillas to straightforwardly secure the support of countryside occupants. Saddled between RSF and ZANLA coercion, subjugated rural inhabitants such as youth and women sometimes furthered their own local agendas by allying with and manipulating guerrillas.41

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Some locals and their traditional leaders actively connived with, protected and furnished the guerrillas with clothing, food, medicine and intelligence on RSF movements. But many traditional chiefs also stayed aligned with their patron, the colonial state, consequently it was not unusual for ZANLA to slay traditional leaders seen as affiliated with the status quo.42 Other locals sold out ZANLA to the RSF because they feared Rhodesian backlash, which was often brutal. Yet certain ZANLA fighters’ heavy-handed actions against rural dwellers perceived as sell-outs and some guerrillas’ indiscipline alienated locals, making them disobliging and susceptible to selling out guerrillas to the RSF. As chief of operations, Nhongo entered Rhodesia periodically to assess first-hand ZANLA operations. A guerrilla who operated with Nhongo recalled that: He [Rex] killed a number of villagers who were sell-outs. He had some of them beaten in public as a lesson to the villagers about what would happen to them if they sold out. The villagers were called to a certain area and made to watch the beatings. Rex brought guerrillas from a different area to come and do the beatings so that the ones who were actually operating there would not be hated by the villagers. Rex said we had no choice but to be ruthless with sell-outs at the front otherwise the war would not succeed.43

While rural inhabitants who collaborated with the RSF certainly existed, the process of identifying collaborators was hotly contested. Local rivalries and politics sometimes resulted in community members falsely accusing each other of being sell-outs, for example, with the accused suffering mortal consequences. Outside its efforts to mobilise and control the rural folk, ZANLA planted landmines on Rhodesian transport routes, it sabotaged power and telephone lines and it bombed bridges and fuel stores and other state infrastructure. Nhongo’s guerrillas were aided by Mozambican soldiers, called the internationalistas, in these operational activities, following a determination by Machel in 1977 to prop ZANLA operations in Rhodesia.44 The internationalistas’ collaboration with Nhongo, as ZANLA chief of operations, progressed in three stages, which rendered the liberation war a transnational one. In 1977 the internationalistas entered Rhodesia to assist ZANLA in sabotage operations and the mining of roads in areas such as Chipinge and Penhalonga.45 The second stage (also in 1977) saw FRELIMO sending groups of soldiers to Rhodesia to conduct reconnaissance missions. These groups consisted of five members introduced in each ZANLA platoon that entered Rhodesia. Their role was to verify whether the ZANLA militants were operating

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effectively. These militants entered Rhodesia using 3 principal points: the region of Chicualacuala in Gaza province, Tsetsera in Manyika province and Mucumbura in Tete province. In this phase, the Mozambican soldiers stayed inside Rhodesia and operated with ZANLA militants for a period of six months at a time. After that, they were replaced by another group that was also composed of five members.46

The third stage of ZANLA–FRELIMO cooperation was executed at the start of 1979, when Machel deployed Mozambican guerrillas commanded by Ajape, to work together with Nhongo’s men open-endedly.47 There were approximately 1,000 Mozambican guerrillas operating alongside ZANLA by the time of the December 1979 ceasefire.48 Throughout 1979, Ajape made intermittent trips from Rhodesia to Mozambique with intelligence on ZANLA’s progress inside Rhodesia. Ajape delivered this intelligence directly to Machel each time, drawing attention to how particularly engaged the Mozambican leader was with the development of ZANLA operations and the considerable surveillance and pressure Nhongo was under to expand his men’s penetration of the Rhodesian countryside.49 According to Guebuza, ‘it was the political attitude of FRELIMO to be frank with ZANU so when Samora wanted something clarified about the war, he would call Rex and Tongogara and I would be there. Strategic objectives would be agreed and as a cabinet minister I was supposed to follow up on those targets with ZANU and brief Samora.’50 In addition to their fighting experience in Mozambique’s independence war, the internationalistas deployed to Rhodesia were fluent in ‘one of the languages spoken there. Thus, most of the soldiers sent to Rhodesia were natives of provinces that had a frontier with Rhodesia, where they often shared the same languages.’51 Being able to speak a common language enabled the internationalistas and Nhongo’s guerrillas to collaborate more effectively in operations and to prevent the RSF from detecting the presence of Mozambican soldiers in Rhodesia, since FRELIMO was wary of Rhodesian retribution. The internationalistas were also given Shona noms de guerre as a subterfuge for them to pass as nonMozambican. Ajape spoke Shona fluently, his friendship with Nhongo grew and in due course he married a Zimbabwean woman from Masvingo.52 Ajape was not the only FRELIMO cadre to wed or have children with Zimbabwean women. Guebuza was not part of the internationalistas but he had his eldest daughter with a Zimbabwean woman. Hama Thay, also not a member of the internationalistas, had as his first wife a Zimbabwean woman from Bindura. This underdeveloped history of collaborative cross-border guerrilla operations and intermarriages was not uncomplicated.

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Some ZANLA guerrillas preferred to make random attacks on and harassments of white commercial farmers in the countryside. This caused disagreement with the internationalistas. Ajape criticised certain ZANLA fighters for targeting white farmers simply because they were white, instead of carrying out guerrilla raids on strategic Rhodesian Army points.53 Attacking white farmers because of their skin colour was not official ZANLA operational policy, so Nhongo intervened repeatedly to stamp out the practice but it never died away fully.54 White-owned farms were sometimes targets, rather than RSF installations, for certain ZANLA guerrillas because some were craven, they were less well armed than the RSF hence they often shied away from targeting Rhodesian soldiers and others were undisciplined. Moreover, while ZANLA official policy stated its war was against an oppressive colonial system, the ZANU party to which the guerrillas belonged had a complicated stance on race. For example, there was an anti-white attribute to the nationalist rhetoric of some ZANU leaders, who cast the white man as the enemy, disregarding the oppressive system that enabled dominance by a particular race.55 The internationalistas and ZANLA guerrillas also clashed over women in Rhodesia. Internationalistas such as Lemos Pontes maintained that ‘there was competition for women between ZANLA and FRELIMO because Zimbabwean women often preferred the Mozambican soldiers, owing to the fact that they treated them with more respect than their Zimbabwean colleagues’.56 This view suggests the internationalistas had more progressive attitudes towards women than ZANLA. FRELIMO viewed women’s emancipation as an essential feature of revolutionary struggle,57 while ZANU did not have it as a central objective. Ajape admitted to having had intimate relationships with chimbwidos (war collaborators) in Rhodesia. ‘We all did it’, Ajape confessed.58 Ajape explained the conflicts over women with Nhongo’s guerrillas differently from Pontes: ‘Zimbabwean women liked us more because we spoke Portuguese. Foreign people attract more girls.’59 The internationalistas may have been popular with local women but ‘sex was not always consensual and that is normal in war. These things happen between human beings in war’, Ajape claimed.60 Ajape’s attempt to normalise sexual violence highlights the disjuncture between FRELIMO’s official prowomen’s emancipation principle and what often played out, and it points to convergence of practice, between some internationalistas and certain ZANLA guerrillas, on the matter of sexual exploitation. We should not, therefore, overstate the difference in attitudes and treatment of women between ZANLA and FRELIMO. Women’s emancipation was a fiercely contested topic in FRELIMO and ZANLA.

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As ZANLA and the internationalistas pushed further into Rhodesia, the RSF became even more brazen in its counter-raids on ZANLA bases in Mozambique. After the August 1976 attack on Nyadzonia, in November 1977 the RSF made a significant raid (Operation Dingo) on Chimoio camp, ZANLA’s command centre in the rear. The raid was enabled by a loan of bombers, such as the Mirage III, to the Rhodesian Air Force by apartheid South Africa. When Chimoio was attacked the ZANU and ZANLA leaderships, including Nhongo, were in Maputo for a meeting with Machel. Chimoio was populated by approximately 6,000 people. It was a sprawling headquarters, which comprised Vatoto Base (for children), Percy Ntini Base (for disabled folk), Parirenyatwa Base (medical facility with patients), Nehanda Base (for women), Pasichigare Base (for traditional healers and war spirit mediums), a Logistics Base, Chitepo Base (for the Commissariat), Chaminuka Base (for the Security Department) and Takawira Base (for Training), amongst other bases. The RSF launched a combined air (dropping mainly napalm and cluster bombs) and ground assault. A couple of days after the Chimoio attack, the RSF undertook the final part of Operation Dingo, which was a raid on ZANLA’s Tembue Rear Base Camp. This assault was less successful because it lacked the surprise element of the Chimoio raid. ZANLA fighters had withdrawn from Tembue upon hearing news of a major raid on Chimoio. According to the Rhodesian government, at least 1,200 ZANLA ‘terrorists’ were killed in Operation Dingo.61 Sources sympathetic to ZANU also placed the death toll at over 1,000, adding that hundreds were wounded and many of those killed were actually women, children and infirm patients, not guerrillas per se.62 The RSF used secret chemical biological warfare (CBW) against ZANLA prior to 1977 and this practice intensified towards the late 1970s, amid increasing guerrilla permeation of Rhodesia. The RSF laced canned food, clothing, painkillers and refreshments with biological agents like anthrax and vibro-cholerae and subsequently distributed these goods to supply shops ZANLA guerrillas often raided.63 So effective was the CBW, it sometimes caused more monthly guerrilla deaths than actual RSF combat operations.64 The RSF made use of CBW in the 1977 Chimoio attack, injecting stores of B-complex vials and medicines it seized during the raid with cyanide and other poisons. When the RSF had left, ZANLA doctors began using the recovered medicines to treat injured patients, resulting in multiple deaths.65 Norman Bethune was commander of Chimoio camp when the RSF staged Operation Dingo. He blamed Nhongo and FRELIMO for the severity of damage and deaths caused by the operation. Bethune claimed he warned Nhongo and FRELIMO of an impending RSF attack but both

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ignored his communications.66 Bethune’s warning was based on a prophesy, which was conveyed to him by one of the spirit mediums in Pasichigare Base in August 1977, that the RSF was planning to attack Chimoio. As stated by Bethune in 2015: On this day [of the prophesy], Rex Nhongo was around and as my immediate senior, I advised him of this message from vana Sekuru. Rex did not say anything to me and I did not think much about it because I had told him the message as my senior. I went back and continued with my duties, hoping that after giving what I had told him much thought maybe Rex would tell me something to do. He never said anything about this issue again . . . . He never said a thing . . . did he believe it or not I really do not know. Even his silence, iye ndiye anoziva why akanyarara [only he knows why he stayed silent].67

In 2018, Bethune revised his account of how Nhongo snubbed the prophesy about a looming RSF assault: I told him [Nhongo] kuti zvanzi nemweya varungu vari kuuya [the spirits have said the whites are coming] and he told me point blank kuti ndezvako [those are your beliefs]. When he gave me that response, I was not surprised. He was coming from ZAPU where they did not believe in these things and they also lacked political orientation. They only got military training.68

Whether Nhongo dismissed the prophesy through silence or not is immaterial. What matters in Bethune’s revised account is that he understood, disparagingly so, Nhongo’s refusal to give spirit mediums space in the direction of war in terms of his military training in ZAPU, which eschewed a role for spiritual beliefs in warfare and emphasised scientific conventional soldier training instead. At the core of Bethune’s interpretation is an enduring antipathy towards ZIPRA soldiers who defected to ZANLA and his account also features disunion in the command, over how ZANLA ought to conduct the war. Nhongo was mostly shunned by strict traditionalists like Bethune. And some ZANLA guerrillas never fully accepted Nhongo because of his formative ZAPU background and for being a latecomer who climbed precipitously to become second in command after Tongogara. While Nhongo’s rapid rise to seniority was a font of resentment towards him by some, it also served as a source of security in the sense that being a senior ZANLA commander shielded him from easily falling prey to vindictive run-of-the-mill ZANLA guerrillas. Take for example the case of Edgar Chihota, a Russian-trained intelligence officer who deserted from ZIPRA. A ZANLA Security Department member testified that Chihota was killed by Thomas Tsuro, a Security Department member, in 1978 because he had a ZIPRA background and was a latecomer to ZANLA.69 Tsuro joined ZANLA in the early 1970s, before Chihota, and worked with Chigowe in Zambia. Tsuro and like-

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minded others contrived charges that Chihota was a sell-out to ZIPRA and beat him to death, without the High Command’s knowledge.70 ‘I reported the matter to Rex because he was also ZIPRA and he used to communicate with Chihota. Tsuro’s authority to conduct any form of interrogation was removed. He was made powerless after that’, the Security Department member concluded.71 The RSF conducted another important assault in the Chimoio area in September 1978 (Operation Snoopy), directing its arsenal of cluster and golf bombs at ZANLA’s new operations base, next to Vanduzi mountains. This new base contained no untrained personnel or civilians, it had a formidable 23 mm Anti-Air Defence System and it included various scattered sub-bases, with combat trenches occupied by guerrillas. The RSF withdrew from Operation Snoopy, without inflicting substantial damage to the base because of inadequate prior reconnaissance of the new base and its enhanced defences. These new defence features underlined that Nhongo and the High Command had learned the necessity of stronger defences after the 1977 Chimoio attack. Although ZANLA camps’ defence systems were improved, Nhongo’s scepticism towards the advice, practices and beliefs of spirit mediums and traditional healers remained unchanged. In 1978, ‘many comrades would wear anointed beads, necklaces and tie traditional things on their guns but Rex never did that. He only wore a wristwatch’, a ZANLA guerrilla remarked.72 If anything, Nhongo’s scepticism mutated into undisguised acrimony, as one cadre described: Some comrades would come back from the front and say, ‘I am now a medium’ so they could no longer be sent back to the front to fight. Others just came to join the war as mediums. It had become a problem. There were now too many mediums. Rex said, ‘This has gone too far.’ He called Patrick Mpunzarima who was one of the security officers. He said, ‘Mpunzarima, we have to carry out an operation here.’ They commandeered a truck. Then Rex went to the mediums’ camp and said, ‘Vana sekuru please come here.’ Some of them came running enthusiastically. I do not know what they thought to be so enthusiastic. The truck was full of guns and bullets. Rex said, ‘The war at home is now too tough. It now needs your intervention as mediums because you can foresee everything. So you must all get into this truck, take a weapon and ammunition and go home to lead the war.’ Most of them started taking off their ritual cloths and throwing their sticks and beads away, saying, ‘Aiwa ini handisi sekuru chaiye’ [No, I am not really a medium].73

In ZAPU Nhongo was taught the worth of scientific approaches to war. Whatever residual supernatural beliefs Nhongo may have had after leaving ZAPU were further diluted during his attachment experience with FRELIMO in the early 1970s. FRELIMO forbade resort to spirit

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mediums and other traditional practices in war and its instructors attempted to inculcate this code in Nhongo and other ZANLA guerrillas.74 ‘Rex was amenable to professional scientific advice. He was very clear to me, when I first met him, that he had limited education. He did not hide it from me and said you should tell me what to do and I will do it. You are the expert. He trusted experts’, a ZANU cadre pointed out.75 The point was buttressed by the medical doctor Felix Muchemwa’s narration of Nhongo’s receptiveness to expert counsel, amid unscientific practices and sadism by some ZANLA Security Department members in Doroi camp: Comrade Thomas Regedzai Tsuro was working in Security at Doroi. Whenever new women arrived from Rhodesia, he wanted to examine their private parts. Tsuro would even stick his fingers in their vaginas. Tsuro claimed to be examining their private parts to see if they had been sent by Rhodesians with special diseases to kill the guerrillas. He said the Chinese had warned the Security Department there had been a disease in the Vietnam war that was spread sexually and it killed guerrillas right away. If he found anything strange like a young girl with a yeast infection, he would burn her private parts so that she would never have sex with guerrillas. I knew there was no sexually transmitted disease that killed people right away. If there were sexually transmitted infections, they were normal and we could treat them. I went to Rex and told him what Tsuro was doing and that it had to be stopped. It was unscientific and stupid. You need special equipment to detect a virus or bacteria. Rex did not question me and he told Tsuro to stop doing those inspections.76

In the aftermath of Operation Dingo, Nhongo made concerted plans for a retaliatory attack on the RSF’s Grand Reef Base, from where the Rhodesians had launched the Chimoio assault. By 1977 Grand Reef had generally become an impediment to ZANLA operations, with the RSF launching frequent rapid counter-insurgency manoeuvres in Nehanda and Chaminuka sectors that went some way towards pegging back ZANLA infiltration. Nhongo ordered Stephen Chocha to lead ZANLA’s retaliatory strike on Grand Reef: I said, ‘I will do it but provided you also give me something.’ Nhongo said, ‘What do you want?’. I said, ‘I want full control of the operation, so number one, allow me to train my own team that I will lead to attack Grand Reef. Number two, I will list the type of weapons I want for this operation and you must provide them. Number three, I will do the reconnaissance myself.’ Then I said, ‘Make sure my team is well fed and clothed. I want them to have high morale.’ He turned around and said ‘chikurumidza’ (hurry up).77

Chocha initially chose 300 fighters for the operation but during the course of a gruelling training regime in Mozambique’s Gorongoza forest, he culled fifty trainees. Nhongo visited twice to see how preparations for

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the Grand Reef assault were progressing. ‘Nhongo made it clear that whatever I wanted for the mission I should get and no one was supposed to ask me any questions’, Chocha mentioned.78 On the last day of training, Nhongo was invited to view a demonstration, after which Chocha and nine guerrillas conducted a reconnaissance operation. On 18 December 1977, Chocha led a guerrilla operation that attacked Grand Reef, using mortar bombs, RPG-7Ss and machine-gun fire. The attack caused extensive damage to Rhodesian jets and helicopters positioned there. Rhodesian soldiers stationed at the base were caught unawares when the attack commenced because they were engrossed in an entertainment show. The Rhodesians had not expected that ZANLA would make a retaliatory assault, so soon after Operation Dingo, which they believed had dealt a significant demoralising blow to the guerrillas. The Chimoio assault had a different effect on ZANLA from that which the RSF imagined. ‘We were all angry at what had happened at Chimoio. The Rhodesians had killed women and children. It gave us more motivation’, a ZANLA participant in the attack on Grand Reef underlined.79 When the RSF managed to regroup and take up defence positions Chocha’s team, in typical guerrilla style, had already beat a hasty retreat into the December night. The dramatic highpoint of ZANLA’s 1978 intrusions in Rhodesia was its destruction, in December, of millions of gallons of fuel at a large storage depot in the capital city Salisbury. The attack cost the RF government several millions of dollars and its psychological effect was significant because it demonstrated to urban white Rhodesians that the war was no longer simply confined to the countryside. Nhongo, Tongogara, Gava, a female guerrilla called Comrade Chamu (Oppah Muchinguri), who was Tongogara’s personal assistant, and Perrance Shiri attended the High Command meeting, at which plans to carry out a sabotage operation in Salisbury were laid. At the meeting, Gava suggested ZANLA attack Salisbury’s primary sewer treatment plant. ‘The idea was to make the whole city stink sending a message of how serious we were and to show that the Rhodesians were not as secure as they believed’, a ZANLA commander explained.80 As we were discussing Mai Mujuru [Teurai Ropa] who was a member of the Central Committee asked Tongogara to sit in as she felt lonely, after her fellow officers had left the camp and she promised to be quiet and not participate in the discussions. But after the suggestion to attack the sewer treatment plant . . . Mai Mujuru interjected and asked participants if she could be of assistance by making a contribution and Tongogara gave her the go ahead. [She] . . . said if we were talking about a strategic place to attack then the fuel depot in Salisbury would be the best target. We were stunned and clapped. I did not know the depot myself.

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I thought it was some filling station in town. Immediately logistics and preparations for the attack began.81

The RSF almost always adopted a tactic of making injurious attacks on ZANLA during or before talks for an independence settlement, as part of shoring up the RF’s hand in any negotiations. Thus, before the decisive September to December 1979 Lancaster House talks began in London, the RSF attacked ZANLA’s Mapai base (Operation Uric/Bootlace) in Gaza province.82 The RSF did not capture Mapai and, notably, its Puma 164 helicopter was shot down, killing all seventeen men aboard.83 But the RSF destroyed vital bridges and some military equipment belonging to ZANLA and a brigade of the Mozambican Army stationed in Gaza province. In the following month, the RSF again endeavoured to land a pivotal military blow (Operation Miracle) on ZANLA, as the Lancaster House talks continued in London, by attempting to destroy ZANLA’s new operational headquarters in Mozambique’s Mavonde mountains, which had Monte Casino as the highest point. As we are about to see, ZANLA held its own against Operation Miracle and this did anything but weaken the resolve of its negotiators in London. Nhongo did not attend the Lancaster House talks. He remained in Mozambique, holed up in the Mavonde Base, which fell under his direct command and contained approximately 6,000 guerrillas. Other leading ZANLA guerrillas who were with Nhongo at Mavonde when the RSF carried out Operation Miracle included Gava, Tonderai Nyika, Agnew Kambeu, Mpunzarima and Comrade Guwa. Mavonde was no more than thirty kilometres from Rhodesia’s eastern border because Machel had demanded that ZANLA bases be moved closer to Rhodesian territory, so as to minimise the effects of RSF raids on Mozambican infrastructure and people and to encourage ZANLA to begin establishing bases inside Rhodesia.84 ‘Nhongo chose Mavonde base after he had sent a comrade from Security to do the reconnaissance’, a ZANLA guerrilla indicated.85 The need to avoid the kind of devastation caused by RSF airpower at Chimoio and other smaller ZANLA bases informed Nhongo’s selection of Mavonde. ‘Huge tropical Musasa trees gave a massive canopy to the mountains and to the hills as well as the flat terrain surrounding the mountains and hills. Under the canopy of Musasa trees, visibility was limited to not more than 30–50 metres only. It was in this dense tropical forest that ZANLA HQ subbases were located.’86 Mavonde base was a maze of bunkers and zigzagging trenches dotted by 12.7 mm anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns, while ZU-23 mm anti-aircraft guns were located atop Monte Casino. These weapons were donated by Mengistu Haile Mariam, the

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Communist leader of Ethiopia’s Derg military regime, and the ZANLA fighters who operated them had received conventional training in Ethiopia in 1979. On the morning of 2 October, the RSF visited a barrage of alpha and golf bombs, from the air, assisted by a ground assault of Unimog armoured cars equipped with heavy machine guns, 90 mm guns and 25pounder guns. ‘The morning they [Rhodesians] attacked, Nhongo was supposed to leave for Tete to see Perrance Shiri. He got into his land cruiser. As he was leaving the camp we came under attack’, a guerrilla recollected.87 ‘Trees started falling down in front of his [Nhongo’s] car and a hell of noise caused him to jump out. His driver, trying to make a quick U-turn ended up smashing the Land Cruiser into trees’, another ZANLA guerrilla detailed.88 Nhongo took cover inside the base and made his way to Monte Casino, from where he directed anti-aircraft guns and mortar guns trained on invading Unimog armoured cars. The Unimogs were driven 5–8 kilometres east of Monte Casino because of intense ZANLA fire, forcing the RSF to discard its initial plan to take over Mavonde using a frontal attack of Unimog armoured cars.89 The RSF reorganised in the east of Monte Casino and paratroopers parachuted into the operation. A ZANLA fighter then approached Nhongo to say, ‘Some whites are now in the base, you as the leadership should leave this place.’90 ‘Ndi-ndi-ndiri musoja, handina kumwe kwandingaenda’ [I am a soldier, there is nowhere else I can go but here], Nhongo replied.91 Nhongo ‘told the comrades to cook sadza [cornmeal mush]. We are going to eat and hunker down and wait for their move’, added another ZANLA guerrilla.92 Mpunzarima, supposedly fearing that the base would be overrun and the RSF acquire sensitive ZANLA war documents, ignored Nhongo’s order to hold hard and he led a unit of fifteen guerrillas out of the base, carrying with them dossiers. The Mpunzarima unit walked into an ambush as they departed and were all shot dead. ‘If Rex had accepted the advice to move out, he would have been killed in that ambush. Rex had this intuition. A sixth sense for survival.’93 Another ZANLA fighter explained Mpunzarima’s death in terms of the importance of collective action: ‘Mpunzarima thought he could evade the paratroopers by heading in the direction the paratroopers dropped, assuming they only landed there and moved somewhere else but they had not moved. This is why it is important to act collectively in war. Do not run away from your colleagues because they are the ones who can defend you when trouble comes.’94 As ZANLA readied for a tense night, ‘Nhongo came to our trench and gave us mbanje [marijuana]’, one guerrilla remembered.95 The writer Lukasz Kamienski has drawn attention to the general lack of meticulous

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studies about the history of alcohol and drugs in combat across the world.96 As Kamienski shows, ‘uppers, such as alcohol (in small amounts), cocaine and amphetamines, have been used to improve the fighting efficiency of troops and produce better warriors’, while ‘downers such as alcohol (in large amounts), opium, marijuana and barbiturates, have been used to lessen combat stress and prevent or mitigate war trauma’.97 Nhongo’s doling out of marijuana violated official ZANLA policy, which prohibited the use of any form of intoxicant. But generally, ‘as long as self-intoxication did not reduce fighting efficiency and dampen the spirits of the troops, commanders have often turned a blind eye’.98 The example of Nhongo at Mavonde was a case in which a commander distributed a downer to reduce combat stress and manage trauma. ‘To an extent warfare has always been “pharmacological”’, Kamienski argues,99 yet studies of Zimbabwe’s independence war have not taken seriously the uses, abuses and impacts of drugs on combatants in the conflict. Nhongo himself drank alcohol habitually throughout the war. Nhongo was an exemplary case of ‘the synergistic relationship between drinking and combat’.100 When morning came the RSF renewed its aerial bombardment of Mavonde, employing Canberra and Hunter planes, some of which were shot down by ZANLA anti-aircraft guns.101 From the ground, Rhodesian soldiers charged up Monte Casino from the east but met ZANLA resistance, which compelled them to head in a north-western direction instead of up the mountain. Nhongo embodied ZANLA’s resistance through his display of boundless valour and boldness. Some ZANLA guerrillas recalled that Nhongo was moving around with a big stick. He was not firing his AK. If he got to your position and you were not firing back at the Rhodesians, he would beat you with that stick. Some of us just said, ‘Mudzimu wehondo chete munhu uyu. Anenge ano svikirwa pahondo ’ [This man is a spirit of war. He is possessed by a spirit in battle].102

When day turned into night, the RSF renewed its overnight ground bombardment on Mavonde, with ZANLA returning fire. ‘The all-night bombardment . . . was not intended to knock out any target. Rather the bombardment was meant to keep ZANLA guerrillas fully awake and harassed the whole night so as to make the guerrillas weary’ ahead of fresh Rhodesian air assaults in the morning.103 The Rhodesian air attacks continued for most of the third day, with their planes carpet-bombing the base with napalm and alpha bombs. ZANLA guerrillas sought refuge in trenches and bunkers and suffered terribly from clouds of dust and napalm fumes.104 On this third day, FRELIMO sent in T54 tanks to

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assist ZANLA but these were forced to retreat by nightfall because of a resilient response by the RSF’s pounder guns. As the dark night gathered on this third day, Nhongo was confronted by the fact that his guerrillas were running low on mortar bombs and ammunition.105 Nhongo ordered a tactical night-time retreat, which had as its cover a final barrage of mortar gunfire, directed by Comrade Belingwe, at the RSF’s heavy guns. The Anti-Air guns were dismantled and wheeled out, so were the recoilless guns, for easy transportation out of the ZANLA HQ base. Senior members of the ZANLA High Command and General Staff were assigned command duties to lead the . . . ZANLA force out of Mavonde . . . . The ZANLA forces withdrew in large numbers in fighting formations . . . . The RLI [Rhodesian Light Infantry], sitting in their ambush positions could not dare challenge the heavily armed [and larger numbers of] ZANLA forces since there would be no air support. There were extremely few contacts here and there during the ZANLA withdrawals, but the RLI failed to sustain the contacts.106 When the RSF seized Monte Casino in the morning, most ZANLAs were gone. Fearing that other ZANLAs might soon return, reinforced by FRELIMO troops, and encircle them, the RSF withdrew from Monte Casino. At about 4pm on the fourth day . . . Nhongo . . . went around briefing [the] troops about the battle they had been through and what the next plans were . . . . [Nhongo’s face was] covered by thick layers of dark and grey soot.107

The Mavonde battle marked the final time Nhongo directly participated in combat. Nhongo was a chief of operations who led from the front, making him a much sought after target for elimination by the RSF inside Rhodesia. By 1978 Nhongo now went by the nom de guerre Comrade Bere [Comrade Hyena] whenever he moved into operational points in Rhodesia, in order to avoid RSF detection. Some of Nhongo’s guerrillas became ill at ease with his visits to ZANLA operational zones in Rhodesia because each time the RSF got wind of Nhongo’s presence in a particular area, through local collaborators, it unleashed ruthless search and kill operations. An archetypal case occurred in mid-1978 when Nhongo entered Gaza front (south-east Rhodesia).108 The RSF acquired intelligence that Nhongo was in Gaza and it commenced operations to eliminate him. Chinenge, Kambeu, Rex Tichafa and Twarai Tipone organised a meeting with Nhongo, to recommend that he withdraw from Gaza because RSF search operations in pursuit of him were disrupting their operations and villagers were being brutalised by RSF search parties.109 Tipone was the last one to arrive for the consultation and unbeknown to him his colleagues Chinenge, Kambeu and Tichafa had conspired to make him a sacrificial lamb. Kambeu, Tichafa

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and Chinenge had privately agreed that Tipone be the one to lead Nhongo’s escort party back to the Mozambican rear. A member of the escort party traced the path to Mozambique: It was a suicide mission because the Rhodesians were looking for Rex . . . we decided to take Rex to the rear via Mwenezi district in the south but we failed to pass through Maranda, on the outskirts of Mwenezi. I have never seen such viciousness for one person. The whites were flying planes, spraying chemicals that destroyed villagers’ crops, burning their crops, killing their cows. ‘We want Rex. You bloody Africans are going to tell us where you are hiding Rex.’ Comrade Weekend Munyaradzi then said: ‘We will not make it out. Let’s go back where we came from and hide there.’ We went back. We did not like the comment Kambeu made when we returned. He said, ‘You cowards, you failed to pass through Maranda and brought trouble back with you.’110

Nhongo and the escort party stayed put for two weeks until the RSF search operations died down, finally exiting Gaza via a different route that bypassed Maranda and took them to Limpopo river, where they crossed into Mapai, Mozambique. The group did not encounter any RSF units but Nhongo nearly set off a leg-hold trap as they trudged towards the Mozambican border: We were walking and I heard Rex shout mayibabo [a Ndebele word that can be loosely translated to ‘oh my God’]. His leg put pressure on a tripwire but the trap did not go off. That trap had very sharp jaws. Rex would have had to leave his leg there and we carry him to Mozambique. Maybe Rex did not put enough pressure on the wire. Maybe it was luck.111

Despite the jeopardies of operating in Rhodesia, Nhongo regularly said, in his addresses to ZANLA guerrillas, ‘It is safer to be at home because in Mozambique the Rhodesians know where we are gathered but at home the enemy is overstretched. At home we can roam vast territory so they cannot find us and our people at home will take care of us, hide us and give us information about enemy movements.’112 Nhongo was obviously attempting to encourage his men not to flinch from going to Rhodesia for guerrilla operations. ‘What made Rex an effective chief of operations is that he had been to the front many times so when he said something about the front, people listened and did it because they believed he was talking from experience.’113 Other times Nhongo accompanied select groups of guerrillas to Rhodesia on ‘confidence’-building exercises: The first time I operated with Rex was in 1977 at Ruda. We shelled the Rhodesian camp there and quickly withdrew to Mozambique. It was not a very important post but he led us to hit it because he wanted to give us confidence that you can attack the Rhodesians and live to tell. Instilling confidence. It was psychological.

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That is how I understood it. The whites came after us with helicopters but they could not find us. We enjoyed that.114

Conflicting Wills of Dominant Men Nhongo abandoned ZAPU in 1971 because of internal discord in the liberation movement. After he had been in ZANLA for only three years, it too was rent asunder by intramural fighting manifesting as the Nhari mutiny. The disarray escalated in March 1975 because of Chitepo’s assassination. Machel and Nyerere contrived ZIPA in late 1975 but the joint liberation army was comatose by mid-1976 because of irreconcilable differences between ZANLA and ZIPRA. The purge of certain ZIPA elements from ZANU in early 1977 disrupted ZANLA’s war effort. For much of 1977, ZANLA operations ground to a halt as Nhongo and Tongogara strove to establish complete authority in the Mozambique and Tanzania camps and as they restructured the guerrilla army.115 Zimbabwe’s independence struggle was therefore characterised by periodic stops and restarts because politics between and within the liberation movements was often divisive and disruptive. The RSF had a hand in some of the disharmonies in ZANU but as we saw in the Nhari and ZIPA episodes principally, much of the discords had their origins in arguments within ZANU itself and between ZIPRA and ZANLA. ‘ZIPRA and ZANLA hated each other. They always fought. They helped us immensely by fighting each other [laughs]’, the Rhodesian Army commander Sandy Maclean remarked smugly.116 Because of serial disorders in ZANU and the failure of ZANU and ZAPU to unite politically and militarily, Zimbabwe’s liberation movements struggled to achieve an early, concerted and decisive victory over the RSF. The independence war seemed the longest time for its protagonists. Renewed turmoil in ZANU began fomenting soon after ZIPA’s 1977 termination. The death of Chitepo and release of former Dare leaders from prison and their arrival in Mozambique meant ZANU required reorganisation in order to integrate Dare remnants with Mugabe’s leadership. This integration of political structures produced new impassioned debates and schisms. In September 1977, at a party meeting in Chimoio, Nhongo became the deputy chief of defence in ZANU’s Central Committee (CC) and Mugabe was recognised as ZANU’s president. At the meeting Dare leaders such as Gumbo, Hamadziripi, Mandizvidza, Mudzi and Kangai took the view that the yardstick for incorporation in the CC ought to be one’s liberation struggle credentials, with an emphasis on increasing the guerrillas’ representation.117 However, according to Gumbo, Mugabe, Tekere and Muzenda adopted an opposing standpoint: they maintained

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that the external party leadership was Karanga dominated, hence it required ethnic diversification.118 According to Gumbo, Nhongo sided with Mugabe while Tongogara at first supported the promotion of guerrilla fighters to the party leadership but later aligned himself with Mugabe because he did not want to strengthen a perception in ZANU that he was an ultra Karanga who assassinated Chitepo over ethnic differences.119 Those in favour of ethnic balancing prevailed in the debate but despite ethnicity being a factor in Mugabe’s extension of select invitations to ZANU members around the world to join the civilian leadership in Mozambique, ethnic considerations still intersected with other concerns and in some cases ethnicity was irrelevant. Mugabe progressively invited to Mozambique a gamut of educated ZANU actors, including: Nhongo’s playmate in 1960s Bulawayo, Herbert Ushewokunze (Zezuru and a medical doctor); Didymus Mutasa (Manyika, university graduate and long-standing nationalist); Sydney Sekeramayi (Zezuru and a medical doctor); Dzingai Mutumbuka (Karanga and a university graduate); Nathan Shamuyarira (Zezuru, academic and nationalist); Eddison Zvobgo (Karanga, lawyer and long-time nationalist); Emmerson Mnangagwa (Karanga and a lawyer); and Muchemwa (Manyika and a medical doctor), amongst others. If the goal was strictly to dilute Karanga influence, then the likes of Mutumbuka, Mnangagwa and Zvobgo would not have been accommodated in Mozambique. In these three cases, education and their respective histories in ZANU appeared to trump ethnic considerations. As the inviter, Mugabe became the invitees’ patron in Mozambique, thereby bolstering his support base in the party leadership. Nhongo subscribed to Mugabe’s consolidation of authority because of their supportive alliance.120 Critically, as the second in command in ZANLA, Nhongo acted as Mugabe’s foothold in the army. Mnangagwa, one of the late 1970s invitees, later became Nhongo’s fiercest adversary, after Mugabe. In the independence years Nhongo privately used the little known history of Mnangagwa’s coming to Mozambique, in his attempts to undermine Mnangagwa’s standing in ZANU. This history requires some elaboration. Mnangagwa joined the fight for Zimbabwe’s liberation in 1962 and was imprisoned by the colonial state for an act of sabotage in the mid-1960s. In the early 1970s Mnangagwa was deported from prison to Zambia, where he began reading for a Law degree. Mnangagwa married into the Tongogara family in the mid-1970s and was subsequently invited by Mugabe to Mozambique, where he became a special assistant in the Office of the President. Mnangagwa’s post encompassed taking charge of ZANU’s Security Department, a portfolio once held by Chigowe in Zambia. According to

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Solomon Hwekwete, like Nhongo a relative of Mugabe, Mnangagwa became the special assistant in the Office of the President by chance: Mugabe offered me the job of chief of security at the beginning of 1977. Mugabe feared Chigowe. When he offered me the job, he said, ‘Chigowe is there. He worries me. I want you to come to Mozambique and replace him.’ I had just married my wife in Britain. I could not just leave her like that, so soon. I told Mugabe to give me time to be with my wife. When I eventually went to Mozambique, Mugabe said, ‘You are late, I have offered your position to Mnangagwa so I am now making you my chief of protocol.’121

Hwekwete began his participation in the liberation struggle with ZANU in the early 1960s and was residing in Britain, where he earned an undergraduate degree from York University, when Mugabe invited him to Mozambique. Personal letters between Hwekwete and Mugabe, when Mugabe was quarantined by FRELIMO in Quelimane, reflect the familial bond between both men, they show that Hwekwete was a conduit for Mugabe’s letters to his first wife Sally when she was in Europe and they reveal that Hwekwete acted as Mugabe’s chauffeur and personal assistant whenever he visited or was passing through London in the 1970s. The history of Mnangagwa’s non-participation in the independence war when he was in Zambia in the 1970s, that he re-joined the liberation effort by invitation only, that he acquired the special assistant post fortuitously and that he never saw active combat as a ZANLA guerrilla, are facts that were employed by Nhongo in a bid to undercut Mnangagwa’s stature in the party during ZANU’s intense succession politics of the 2000s.122 Returning to the late 1970s divisions in ZANU after ZIPA’s expiry, an additional focal internal dispute was over the reopening of Whampoa College. In the end, Whampoa College was reopened in mid-1977 as the Chitepo Ideological School and its mandate was to foster a shared ideological thrust among the guerrillas. However, the Chitepo Ideological School was closed within a matter of months partly because its syllabus emphasised the importance of political unity with ZAPU in the independence struggle – an ideal the nationalist leadership of Mugabe and Tekere, which had broken away from ZAPU in 1963, opposed.123 Contrariwise, Gumbo, Mandizvidza and Hamadziripi were in favour of unity with ZAPU.124 Ex-Dare leaders such as Gumbo thought their standpoint about the need for unity with ZAPU was being disregarded and less educated former Dare figures like Chigowe believed they were being marginalised in the CC because of the increasing arrival of Mugabe’s educated invitees.125 Chigowe was said to be bitter that Mnangagwa was given charge of the security portfolio, for example.126 Chigowe joined the liberation struggle in Zambia in the early 1970s, after

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a stint in South Africa, where he was allegedly a township gangster and he developed a reputation for brutality in ZANU, with a senior ZANLA guerrilla describing him as ‘deadly like a cobra’.127 Chigowe was also famously a chic dresser and had obsessive compulsive behaviours such as keeping his shoes shiny – ‘kana muhondo ipolisher bhutsu dzake ne handkerchief yakachena [even in war he would wipe the dust off his shoes with a clean handkerchief]’.128 Disagreement between Mugabe’s leadership and former Dare leaders climaxed in January 1978 when Gumbo, Mandizvidza and Hamadziripi were arrested for purportedly plotting a coup. Chigowe, Comrade Zvosto and Dickson Tokoza, upon hearing of the arrests of Gumbo and others, apparently retaliated by taking hostage Tekere and Ushewokunze. These internal problems in January 1978 coincided with American and British government-sponsored Rhodesia peace negotiations in Malta, at the Grand Hotel Verdala. Nhongo did not attend the Malta talks because, as he claimed, he suspected that some of the politicking in the guerrilla camps, on the differences between former Dare leaders from Zambia and Mugabe’s leadership, pointed to possible instability while the political and military leaders were away in Malta.129 This scenario was reminiscent of 1974, when Nhongo was summoned to Zambia by Tongogara and instructed to travel to China for a study tour. Then, Tongogara did not heed Nhongo’s misgivings about the trip and the Nhari mutiny occurred, while the Dare and High Command leaderships were abroad. In 1978, Tongogara heeded Nhongo’s reservations about travelling abroad for the Malta talks and allowed his chief of operations to remain behind in Mozambique.130 Nhongo commanded the operation that freed Ushewokunze and Tekere after their capture by Chigowe.131 Cadres such as Chocha and Pirato Makiwa were also arrested by ZANLA Security on charges they were part of the supposed coup plot. After the party and military leaders returned from the unsuccessful Malta talks in February, Chigowe, Chocha, Makiwa, Gumbo, Hamadziripi and Mandizvidza were incarcerated until the liberation war ended. Their incarceration followed subjection to torture and controversial show trials that found them guilty of attempting to stage a coup. As said by Gumbo, ‘a kangaroo court’ falsely found him guilty of coup plotting.132 Needless to say, the leadership’s focus on the liberation war took a backseat to the so-called 1978 coup plot, which provoked another round of instability among the guerrillas, accompanied by a witch-hunt by the Security Department and unrest by some fighters in response to renewed purges. Chocha, like Gumbo, also maintained that he was innocent of coup plotting:

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I was accused of sending Tokoza and Zvosto to help Chigowe arrest Ushewokunze. I never did that. Mnangagwa created all that. On two occasions when they were hearing so-called evidence against me, I remember Nhongo saying to Tongo, ‘Let Chocha go free because I need him at the warfront, he can fight.’ Nhongo said: ‘Give him to me.’ Tongo went mad. Tongo totally refused, two times, so I was put in jail until independence.133

Chocha’s version of events stresses a number of important themes. First is Nhongo’s consistently pragmatic approach towards individuals bearing useful expertise. Nhongo had high regard for Chocha’s because he led the successful retaliatory attack on Grand Reef. Thus, Nhongo attempted to prevent Chocha’s incarceration. Nhongo’s endeavour to shield Chocha from arrest corresponds with his protection of some ZIPA guerrillas in 1977 because their talents were useful to ZANLA. In moments of turmoil and witch-hunting in ZANLA, Nhongo recurrently safeguarded, sometimes successfully and other times unsuccessfully, guerrillas whose expertise he deemed essential. It is also palpable from Chocha’s account that the absence of due process for persons accused of rebellion, selling out or coup making, continued to be a trademark of ZANU’s internal politics after its time in Zambia, where alleged mutineers were condemned to death without proper trial. ZANU was not a rule-bound organisation in moments of upheaval that threatened the leadership’s power. Threats to the wills of dominant men were often violently repressed, torture was used and witch-hunts effected. One can explain these practices as a sign of ZANU and ZANLA’s militaristic make-up, amongst other structural factors, but it is also clear that the personal wills of men controlling influential structures, like the Security Department, greatly determined outcomes in investigations, trials and internal contests. The main difference between ZANU’s treatment of ‘rebels’ in Zambia and Mozambique was that while the Nhari mutineers were executed on Zambian territory, the FRELIMO government firmly reserved the right of capital punishment, which placed some constraints on the severity of sentences ZANU could mete out.134 If chronic intramural divisions made the liberation struggle seem like the longest time for ZANU protagonists, for FRELIMO the war seemed to last an eternity. Having only attained its independence in 1975, Mozambique faced titanic economic and social challenges after a decadelong liberation war. Chissano underscored that FRELIMO was sincere in its hosting of ZANU but it also wanted ZANU to achieve independence at the earliest possible moment, so that it could focus on its own domestic developmental problems.135 Ajape bemoaned the incapacitating effect of ZANU’s internal divisions on the pursuance of the liberation war:

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In the Mozambican struggle, Nyerere used to tell us [in Tanzania], ‘Your [internal] contradictions, please go back to your country to resolve them, not here. You are here to fight against the Portuguese, so concentrate on that. You can resolve your contradictions when you are independent in Mozambique, not in Tanzania!’. ZANU was trying to resolve its contradictions in Mozambique when it should have been concentrating on making the war move fast . . . . The Rhodesians came to Mozambique to make a lot of attacks, so Samora was always pushing ZANLA to start making bases inside Rhodesia and fight in Rhodesia so that Mozambique would not be bombed.136

Sergio Vieira was the director of the Office of the President of Mozambique (1975–7). He estimated that 30 per cent of business during his time in the President’s Office concerned Zimbabwean liberation issues, which was high for a newly independent state with pressing developmental challenges.137 Veloso buttressed Vieira’s relation of the exigencies of hosting ZANU in Mozambique: ‘It took up a lot of my time gathering intelligence to support and protect ZANU here. It was a lot of work.’138 Guebuza mentioned that hosting ZANU was made all the more demanding by the fact that FRELIMO ‘did not know the country [Mozambique]. We had experience fighting for liberation, not in governing, but now we also had to make sure ZANU people were protected and to prevent Rhodesian military attacks.’139 Although FRELIMO invested a significant deal of its time and resources in Zimbabwe’s liberation, it ‘tried not to interfere in their [ZANU’s] internal affairs’, Vieira stated.140 FRELIMO stood back from life and politics in ZANU camps because, as Mariano de Araújo Matsinhe underlined, when FRELIMO was based in Tanzania during its own liberation struggle, the Tanzanian government ‘never interfered with life in our camps. We had sovereignty and with that lesson we tried not to interfere in ZANU camps. We gave them land and left them alone but we would not allow them to execute anyone because that would be a crime in our country.’141 FRELIMO was active in efforts to unite ZANU and ZAPU because it evaluated that if both liberation movements combined, independence might be attained more rapidly. According to the FRELIMO commander Raimundo Pachinuapa, after the failed ZIPA try-out, ‘Machel tried very hard to unite ZAPU and ZANU but it did not work because Mugabe and Nkomo were very divided because of tribalism. For FRELIMO the most important thing was unity. ZAPU was there and ZANU was over there, so the Rhodesians could not be defeated.’142 Other FRELIMO cadres located ZANU and ZAPU’s failure to unite less in ‘tribal’ differences and more in the ideological disputes of their respective international backers. ‘It was very difficult to put ZANU and ZAPU together. We tried to create one liberation front against the Rhodesians but it never

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happened because ZAPU was supported by the Soviet Union and ZANU by China and these big countries had their Sino-Soviet fight’, Veloso maintained.143 Vieira took a contradictory view, which highlighted the conflicting wills of two dominant men: Mugabe and Nkomo. ‘Two personalities who were extremely ambitious collided. Full stop. Both wanted to be leader of Zimbabwe. That was the problem’, Vieira concluded.144 FRELIMO’s Oscar Monteiro supported Vieira’s conclusion, narrating a 1976 meeting of the Frontline leaders with ZANU and ZAPU: At that meeting there was more or less a decision to force ZANU and ZAPU to unite for independence talks as the Patriotic Front. Nyerere told Nkomo gently but firmly that ‘We think the president should be Robert Mugabe and the vice president Joshua Nkomo.’ If ever I saw a man reacting like a bull it was then. The meeting had to be stopped and the presidents went out. I stayed in the room. Nkomo was walking back and forth like a raging bull in the room. It was not very pleasant.145

Obasanjo encountered similar obstinacy, on the matter of unity, from Mugabe and Nkomo in his diplomatic endeavours to secure union between ZANU and ZAPU and independence for Zimbabwe. In the words of Obasanjo: I invited them to Nigeria to convince them to unite. They were both playing hide and seek but eventually they came. We talked and they did not want to unite. Then I said, ‘Look, here is a pistol for you Nkomo and Mugabe here is a pistol for you. There are five rounds in each pistol. Shoot each other and whoever dies I will bury him here in Nigeria and the other one will go and lead Zimbabwe to independence. We are not giving you money and weapons to fight each other.’ They became angry!146

Nkomo and Mugabe were undoubtedly ‘extremely ambitious’ but there was also resistance to unity from sections of ZAPU and ZANU and their respective armies. There is no evidence that Nhongo was a strong advocate of unity between the rival liberation movements. Nhongo defected from ZAPU in 1971 and the ZANLA–ZIPRA violent disagreements of the ZIPA phase did not convince him of the feasibility of unity between the two armies. ZANLA and ZIPRA were essentially competitor armies, habitually exchanging gunfire whenever their paths crossed in the Rhodesian warfront. ZANLA and ZIPRA never reunited after ZIPA’s end and although ZANU and ZAPU negotiated jointly as the Patriotic Front in key independence talks, the alliance was always fractious and imbued with profound mistrust and competition. The FRELIMO government could not discount opportunities for a negotiated independence settlement for Rhodesia. ‘We told them

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[ZANU] to be open to diplomacy because we wanted them to go home’, Matsinhe accentuated.147 RSF raids into Mozambique continued to damage communication links and other infrastructure and rebel activities by the Mozambique Resistance Movement (RENAMO) did not diminish. RENAMO was created and controlled by the Rhodesian CIO after Mozambique’s 1975 independence. It was maintained as a ‘small and clandestinely manageable’ rebel movement and it served as ‘the eyes and ears’ of CIO’s intelligence gathering in Mozambique.148 That ZANU’s war was repeatedly interrupted by internal turmoil did not give FRELIMO much encouragement that a decisive ZANLA military victory over the RSF could be scored in the short term. Consequently, FRELIMO always actively encouraged ZANU to participate in peace talks and when the potentially decisive British-led Lancaster House negotiations took place in 1979, FRELIMO ‘applied pressure on Mugabe to settle. It was not going to be possible for them [ZANLA] to ride into Salisbury shooting their AKs’ because ‘there was not going to be a quick collapse by the Rhodesians’, Monteiro rationalised.149 Nhongo understood that a ZANLA total defeat of the RSF was not imminent.150 As a result, Nhongo saw the war as also a means to the independence negotiation table, a pressure tool on white Rhodesians to agree the winding-down of colonial rule. ‘I remember him [Nhongo] saying in the Central Committee to Tekere that ZANU must be involved in the Lancaster House process. His view was that we should attend and see what it leads to but Tekere did not want that’, Mutasa recalled.151 Tekere was ZANU’s secretary general and he preferred total military victory over the RSF to independence talks. As we know, Nhongo did not attend the Lancaster House talks but he found an ally in Tongogara, who participated in the conference and, likewise, was amenable to negotiation. Tongogara proved to be the most pragmatic ZANU delegate in the Lancaster House negotiations, unlike Mugabe and Tekere who preferred continuation of the war and who took intemperate stances over issues such as the agreement’s lack of guarantees about the immediate redress of racially biased land redistribution.152 As stated by Chissano: Tongogara was very much instrumental in the conclusion of the talks at Lancaster with the support of President Machel. When President Machel was travelling somewhere in Europe [during Lancaster House talks], Tongogara went to meet with him. They met and discussed the difficulties at Lancaster because Mugabe did not want to sign. Tongogara wanted to sign. Machel then communicated to Mugabe that if he did not sign he would come back and fight alone because our people were suffering [from the war’s effects] and with that they signed.153

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Why did the military leaders Nhongo and Tongogara find common ground on the value of a pragmatic outlook towards independence talks? Pragmatism was one of Nhongo’s stable traits, so his openness to negotiation can be understood as partly a reflection of his standard modus operandi. Nhongo and Tongogara also espoused a pragmatic position because they both had soldiered against the RSF for many years, which appeared the longest time because of periodic stops and starts in the liberation war. In that weary longest time, they had not yet decisively defeated the RSF, thousands of ZANLA guerrillas had perished in war and both men were fortunate to elude death several times. At the personal level, Nhongo had increasingly turned to alcohol, the ‘liquid way of masking the horrible face of war’.154 In Mozambique Nhongo often imbibed aguardente (burning water), a Portuguese spirit with an alcohol content of about 70 per cent per bottle. One night at Chimoio, after a ZANLA commander called Peter Baya died from liver cirrhosis, Tongogara remarked to Nhongo and other High Command subordinates that it was ‘improper for them to die because of alcohol not a bullet’.155 Tongogara then instructed his commanders to pledge that they would only drink alcohol periodically. Mnangagwa, Mugabe’s special assistant, was present at the gathering, where Tongogara made his commanders vow to imbibe alcohol cyclically. After ZANLA commanders retired to their respective huts, Mnangagwa went to Nhongo’s hut to discuss a matter with him. ‘As I arrived I heard Rex knocking over bottles. I said, “Rex, how come you are already drinking?”. Rex said, “N-n-nezve tiri ungagara usingamwi here? [Can one go without drinking alcohol given this difficult existence?]”.’156 For Nhongo, one-time friends like Badza and Nhari became antagonists and he was involved in their capture and death. Nhongo was also complicit in the incarceration of his cousin Todhlana and he betrayed colleagues such as Machingura. The violence of combat and the perfidy and ruthlessness of politics in war alter participants. War is abnormal. It degrades participants’ humanity. The Lancaster House independence agreement was formally signed on 21 December 1979. When Tongogara returned to Maputo from London, the ZANU leadership finalised its ceasefire plans. It was agreed that Nhongo would lead the first contingent of ZANLA commanders to Salisbury for the ceasefire on 26 December. On that day Tongogara would travel from Maputo to Chimoio to address ZANLA cadres about the truce and finalise other ceasefire arrangements, after which he would proceed to Salisbury to join Nhongo. The option of travelling to Chimoio by air was available to Tongogara but he chose to journey there by road, despite the remonstrations of some ZANU leaders that it was unsafe for

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him to drive to Chimoio at night because Mozambican roads were hazardous.157 Tongogara was seated at the vehicle’s front, beside its driver, and Comrade Chamu sat in the back of the car. A second vehicle, carrying Tungamirai, drove slightly ahead of Tongogara’s car on the road to Chimoio.

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‘We Are Free . . . We Are Here’

In December 1979, Britain’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) sent Lord Christopher Soames to Rhodesia as governor, before the Lancaster House independence talks concluded, in order ‘to step up pressure on the parties to agree’ a settlement.1 Soames was a member of Prime Minister (1979–90) Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government. His mandate as governor was to oversee Rhodesia’s independence transition, which began with a ceasefire in late December, climaxed with inclusive elections from 27 to 29 February 1980 and formally ended with an independence ceremony on 18 April. Soames’s wife Mary Churchill – daughter of Britain’s greatest wartime prime minister Winston Churchill – accompanied him to Rhodesia. Soames was also joined by his military advisor, the commander of the Commonwealth Monitoring Force (CMF), Major General John Acland and Brigadiers Adam Gurdon and John Learmont. They arrived together in Salisbury on 12 December, after which the CMF command began refining the ceasefire plan (codenamed Operation AGILA). The CMF’s responsibility was to monitor and report on the RSF and Patriotic Front (PF) armies’ (ZANLA and ZIPRA) observance of the ceasefire. The lightly armed CMF was prohibited from employing force to preserve the truce, hence the monitors were under instructions to retreat from the field instantaneously in the event of widespread battles between RSF and PF armies. ‘The purpose of the CMF was to facilitate the separation of the hostile forces, to avert ceasefire violations through liaison and persuasion, and to attempt to contain those that occurred.’2 The CMF leadership was exclusively British but the ceasefire monitors were diverse. The monitors totalled 1,548 multiracial soldiers, drawn from five Commonwealth countries – Britain, Kenya, Australia, Fiji and New Zealand. Fiji contributed 24 soldiers, Kenya sent 51, Australia provided 159 and New Zealand bequeathed 75 monitors, a third of which were Maori.3 The majority of ceasefire monitors were therefore British soldiers, many of whom were of a high standard. As Gurdon, the CMF chief of staff, put it: ‘I made it very clear [to British Army regiments] 125

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that I was not interested in ordinary, run-of-the mill soldiers. I wanted good soldiers. They had to have courage and believe in what we were trying to achieve in Rhodesia.’4 Field Marshal Edwin Bramall, a hero of the Normandy landings in the Second World War, was the chief of the general staff (CGS), the professional head of the British Army, in 1979.5 Bramall explained why he took keen interest in Operation AGILA: I put very good soldiers out there [Rhodesia] for the ceasefire and integration [of the rival armies from 1980]. Like all these ex-colonial countries, you like to feel that if it is time to get out, you leave things well. Nigeria is one of our great disappointments. Britain could have done better there. I felt we must do well in Rhodesia. One always has to leave on good terms. Fine, the colonial days can be criticised but try to make certain when you leave, the nature of it, cannot be criticised. That is why I thought we should have good British soldiers down there. It was a sense of responsibility.6

The quality of British soldiers who contributed to Operation AGILA and the subsequent integration of the rival armies into a single national force is borne out by the successful military careers many of them later had. Principal cases in point include: Field Marshal Lord Charles Guthrie (chief of defence staff, 1997–2001); General Sir Peter Wall (CGS, 2010–14); General Sir Rupert Smith (NATO deputy supreme allied commander Europe, 1998–2001); Major General Andrew Ritchie (commandant of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, 2003–6); Major General Jonathan Bailey (director general development and doctrine of the British Army); and Major General Sir Sebastian Roberts (senior army member, Royal College of Defence Studies, 2007–10).7 Other British monitors, such as Acland’s aide-de-camp Iain Duncan Smith (leader of the British Conservative Party, 2001–3 and secretary of state for work and pensions, 2010–16), made their mark in politics instead. Before Nhongo and other PF guerrilla leaders arrived in Salisbury for the ceasefire on 26 December, it was necessary to appoint a team of CMF liaison officers who would monitor the PF commanders and provide them with security. The CMF liaison officers served ‘as a conduit between the 2 PF armies and the RSF, to counsel, persuade and cajole the PF commanders, to defuse anger and to prevent any impetuous action from endangering the ceasefire’.8 Andrew Parker Bowles was appointed the senior CMF liaison officer to the PF because he was familiar with Rhodesia. ‘I first went to Rhodesia in the late 1960s on private business. I knew the country so when Operation AGILA came up I was keen to go and Acland appointed me senior liaison officer’, Parker Bowles stated.9 According to Gurdon, Parker Bowles’s appointment as senior liaison officer was because:

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He was good with words and had flair. He was a cavalry officer from a very wealthy family who was well known in the British Army because he had gone out with Princess Anne, then he married Camilla Shand who was Prince Charles’s love. Parker Bowles had an unusual ability to get on with anybody so we were very lucky to have him on our team. When Acland met Parker Bowles he said, ‘You are just the chap for Rex Nhongo. Off you go.’10

An Adulterated Homecoming Approximately 50,000 people thronged Salisbury airport to witness the arrival of PF military leaders on 26 December 1979, reported The Herald, a leading Rhodesian newspaper.11 The Herald’s estimation of the size of the gathering caused heated disagreement in Rhodesian society. As The Herald testified, after the PF commanders’ arrival: ‘several people telephoned The Herald . . . to dispute the crowd estimate of 50 000 . . . Black callers complained that the figure was much too low and accused The Herald of underplaying the event. White callers, who said they were there, said the figure was much too high. Their estimates of the crowd ranged from 5000 to 10 000’, while the Rhodesian police put the crowd at 8,000.12 Some white RSF officers maintained that the thousands of blacks at Salisbury airport ‘had been forcibly bussed in to welcome’ Nhongo.13 The starkly contrasting estimates of the crowd’s size and contentious explanations for the gathering are indicative of the racially divided nature of attitudes in Rhodesian society towards the ceasefire and independence. Forty ZIPRA cadres, led by Lookout Masuku, arrived in Salisbury from Lusaka at 10.30 a.m.14 Later an Air Botswana Viscount, with Nhongo and forty-three ZANLA cadres aboard, made a slow descent onto the Salisbury airport runway when the clock struck 7 p.m.15 Nhongo left for the liberation war on 25 December 1967. On the next day, twelve years later, The Herald described the feverish scenes, upon Nhongo’s return from war: By the time the ZANLA guerrillas arrived the crowd had dwindled. But they were greeted with wild enthusiasm. Before the arrival of the 44 ZANLA commanders, the crowd had invaded the domestic terminal and gathered at the gate to the tarmac and joined the group of well-wishers on the runway in singing: ‘we shall govern our country – Zimbabwe’. . . . Some of the supporters were carrying green branches and waving placards in support of both wings of the Patriotic Front. Some of the banners read: ‘Welcome Home Comrades’; ‘Pamberi ne Chimurenga ’[Forward with the Uprising]; ‘Forward with Tongogara’ . . . . An elderly white lady passenger in a car wept [presumably for the impending end of white rule] as the car passed through the throng of singing, dancing and chanting supporters.16

Parker Bowles, as senior CMF liaison officer to the PF, was on hand to receive Nhongo at Salisbury airport:

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I went on board the plane to meet Rex and led him down the steps. My immediate impression was that he was pretty rough. He was not friendly at all. I said to myself, ‘This is going to be a tough one.’ I had received Masuku before Rex so I noticed, right away, how different they were. Masuku was much more friendly and trusting from the beginning. Rex was not trusting.17

In a show of unity, Masuku was present at Salisbury airport when Nhongo arrived. Masuku and Nhongo held hands as they walked across the runway. They both briefly addressed a crew of local and international journalists, expressing optimism that the ceasefire could succeed. ‘We are free now. Yes, we are here’, Nhongo remarked to the gathered journalists, while Masuku asserted that ‘given a chance I think it [the ceasefire] will work out’.18 Parker Bowles subsequently escorted Nhongo and his ZANLA contingent to the University of Rhodesia, located in Salisbury’s Mount Pleasant suburb, where they and the ZIPRA group were put up.19 The university premises were cleared of civilians and British soldiers were positioned strategically around the campus to protect the PF guerrillas from a possible RSF attack. The following morning Nhongo claimed to have heard on radio that Tongogara had been killed in a motor accident in Mozambique.20 Tongogara was said to have died at the scene of the accident. As we saw in the previous chapter, there were concerns expressed in Maputo, before Nhongo left for Salisbury, about whether it was prudent for Tongogara to drive to Chimoio camp at night on Mozambique’s hazardous roads. Nhongo alleged that because of this prior concern, he was not astounded by the news of Tongogara’s demise in a car crash.21 Parker Bowles provided a different account of how Nhongo heard, on the morning of 27 December, about Tongogara’s death: They [ZANLA] had no line of communication to the outside world at all. We [CMF] were monitoring them closely because we thought the Rhodesians might try something. I then got a message from Governor Soames that Tongogara was dead. As the senior liaison officer, I had to go break the news to ZANLA. I got there and found Rex and some ZANLA guerrillas sitting around playing cards. When I told them the news they behaved like they already knew what had happened. Rex looked up and said, ‘Thank you, comrade’ and they carried on playing cards. I remember walking away and saying to my number 2, ‘I do not understand that. Are you sure they do not have outside communication?’. He said they did not. We did not give them telephones and I had my signals men there monitoring everything because we wanted to intercept any Rhodesian communications in case they tried to attack them. It was strange that none of the ZANLA men showed any shock when I broke the news to them. I have always thought that they knew Tongogara was never going to come back alive. How did they know what was going on outside? I never forgot that reaction. I always meant to ask Rex what that reaction meant but never did.22

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The Herald of 28 December 1979 reported that Nhongo ‘heard the news of the death from Government House [where Lord Soames was based] in Salisbury’, but the newspaper did not cite the source of this information.23 The Herald’s version of events fits Parker Bowles’s account that news of Tongogara’s death came from Soames. However, the historians Johnson and Martin contradict The Herald and Parker Bowles’s accounts by stating that: Nhongo heard the news on Rhodesian radio at lunchtime . . . and immediately went to see the Governor, Lord Soames, who already had a message from the British embassy in Maputo. The confidential message from Mugabe, which should have gone first to Nhongo as . . . the acting commander of ZANLA, had to have been leaked by British officials or by Rhodesian monitoring of their communications.24

Martin and Johnson, like The Herald, do not tell us the source or sources of this account of events. Their narration is implausible because, as Parker Bowles maintained, Nhongo was quarantined at the University of Rhodesia and under CMF surveillance. He could not have ‘immediately’ left to see Soames, a man he had never met before, without Parker Bowles’s facilitation. Moreover, it is unclear what motive ‘British officials’ would have to leak Tongogara’s death to the media, a move that risked destabilising a ceasefire they championed. Conversely, the RSF was not fully supportive of the truce and, thus, theoretically, it had good reason to monitor communications at Government House and to leak intelligence about Tongogara’s death to the media, with the hope of generating division and suspicion in ZANLA that would destabilise its participation in the ceasefire. Indeed, years later Smith alleged that during the ceasefire Soames made phone calls to ‘his mistress in Paris every night from Salisbury and would discuss . . . the political situation with her. The transcripts of these conversations (complete with endearments) were duly delivered to Smith’s desk the next morning by the “special” department of the Rhodesian Post and Telecommunications Office.’25 Could it be that Parker Bowles was wrong that Nhongo did not have radio equipment with him at the University of Rhodesia? If Nhongo had radio and heard the news of Tongogara’s death on it as he claimed, this might explain why he treated Parker Bowles’s update as old news. Still, Nhongo’s terse response – ‘thank you, comrade’ – to Parker Bowles is peculiar. Why did Nhongo not seek to probe Parker Bowles for any additional intelligence he might have had about the details of Tongogara’s accident? One would expect Nhongo to attempt to glean a modicum of intelligence on the accident from Parker Bowles. An alternative interpretation of Nhongo’s noncommittal reaction is that it

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reflected his mistrust of Parker Bowles. They had met a first time barely twenty-four hours earlier at Salisbury airport and as Parker Bowles observed, Nhongo was ‘not friendly at all’ and distrustful at that initial meeting. The logical conclusion of this interpretation is that whether or not Nhongo heard about Tongogara’s death on radio before Parker Bowles’s message, his reaction to the CMF liaison officer’s news was, in all likelihood, going to be uncommunicative and mistrusting. It is difficult to pinpoint who knew what and when that fateful morning but let us attempt to establish the views of Nhongo, and other players in the cessation of hostilities, on Tongogara’s death, before turning to how Nhongo managed the impact of Tongogara’s passing on ZANLA’s involvement in the ceasefire. When The Herald first reported Tongogara’s expiration, it quoted an ‘informed source’ as saying that ‘foul play is not suspected. It was a straightforward accident.’26 Rhodesian media immediately began speculating that ‘a man who avoids publicity, Rex Nhongo has stepped out of the shadows as the man most likely to succeed the late Josiah Tongogara’ as ZANLA commander.27 Two days after the fatal incident, the FRELIMO government released a communique stating that Tongogara died ‘in a car smash 400 kilometres north of Maputo on December 26 . . . their car crashed at high speed into the back of a heavy lorry parked at the roadside about 25 kilometres from Masinga’.28 Rival political parties, such as Ndabaningi Sithole’s ZANU Ndonga party, promptly began politicising Tongogara’s death by calling for a commission of inquiry into the accident, arguing that ‘unless this is done Mr Tongogara’s death will cause serious controversy which should prove counterproductive for a group like the Mugabe one with a notorious history of assassinations and in-fights’.29 As said by Smith, Tongogara’s ‘death was a great tragedy and the announcement that he had been killed in a motor accident rang hollow to me, especially because of his disclosure to me in London [at Lancaster House] that he had to guard his back against those die-hard extremists in his party . . . I made a point of discussing his death with our police commissioner and the head of special branch, and both assured me that Tongogara had been assassinated.’30 Smith’s view is contradicted by Ken Flower, the head of Rhodesian intelligence, who stated that ‘the Mozambicans subsequently invited [General] Walls and myself to check the facts surrounding his [Tongogara’s] death and we were satisfied that there had been no foul play’.31 Vieira was head of FRELIMO’s Department for Security when Tongogara died. Vieira stated, ‘It was a real accident. Tongogara made a tremendous mistake. I told him in no uncertain terms that he should not travel by road during the night because car accidents can happen. This was after he had

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a different car accident. Was I supposed to handcuff him so he never again drives at night?’.32 In 1979 Guebuza replaced Sebastiao Mabote as chief of staff of Mozambique’s Armed Forces. ‘We did an investigation as the army. Tongogara was not assassinated, that I can assure you’, Guebuza commented.33 Peter Petter-Bowyer, a group captain in the Rhodesian Air Force, became a good acquaintance of Masuku during the ceasefire. PetterBowyer claimed Masuku informed him that: [T]he radical members of ZANU saw him [Tongogara] as a threat to their own futures . . . . Whatever their reasons, they hired a well-known East German assassin to kill Tongogara. This particular assassin specialised in ‘vehicle accident’. Lookout said that the assassin, whose typically German name I have forgotten, arrived in Maputo ten days before Tongogara’s death. Three days after the fatal vehicle ‘accident’ and immediately prior to his departure for Europe, Enos Nkala met him at Maputo Airport to make payment, in American dollar notes, on behalf of himself, Simon Muzenda, Dr Herbert Ushewokunze, Edgar Tekere, Eddison Zvobgo and a couple of others, for services rendered.34

Petter-Bowyer’s account must be treated circumspectly because it does not explain how Masuku – a ZIPRA soldier – acquired such detailed intelligence on a supposed assassination scheme in a rival liberation movement. Was Masuku simply attempting to sully ZANU PF’s reputation ahead of the independence election by peddling this assassination conspiracy theory? Or did Masuku, influenced by a powerful history of rivalry between ZANU PF and ZAPU, actually believe the conspiracy theory? Further doubt is cast on the veracity of Masuku’s theory by the fact that it implicated several politicians and excluded military men, as if Tongogara was universally popular in ZANLA and some guerrillas could have no motives of their own to eliminate him. And would an assassination scheme realistically involve several individuals when the chances for success of any elimination plot greatly hinge on it being known to only a select few planners and implementers? Turning to the CMF, after the tension and disagreement between Tongogara and Mugabe at Lancaster House, over whether to agree a settlement, British officials suspected that the former had been eliminated by the latter. Tongogara had also been in favour of ZANU and ZAPU forming a pact in the 1980 election, a suggestion Mugabe found disagreeable. According to Acland, that Tongogara had been assassinated ‘was the British view initially but our own MI6 people at Government House in the end took the contrary view that it had been a genuine accident’.35 Despite MI6’s conclusion, some British diplomats like Robin Renwick continued to regard Tongogara’s death with profound suspicion. ‘We could not actually prove he was killed but I remain

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suspicious of it all. Tongogara was the only effective rival to Mugabe at Lancaster House. It was just too convenient that he died when he did’, Renwick contended.36 ZANU PF guerrillas’ views on Tongogara’s death were equally mixed. According to Comrade Chamu, Tongogara journeyed to Chimoio in a brand new Land Rover ‘donated by the British government through the Tanzanian government. Before the fatal accident, the Land Rover that carried Comrade Tongogara had burst its new tyres on at least three separate occasions. It would be naïve to conclude that these were just normal occurrences.’37 Among the detained ZIPA commanders, Todhlana reflected: When we heard on radio in detention that Tongo had died, do you know what I said? I said, ‘Thank heavens he is dead. Whoever has done it or whether it was an accident, whatever the reason, thank heavens.’ Dzino [Machingura] was shocked. Dzino was not happy about it but I said it anyway because if we had gone into independence with Tongo, he was going to be another Jean-Bédel Bokassa or Idi Amin [two notorious African military dictators of the 1960s and 1970s]. Tongo was ambitious and cruel. That is the true story of Tongo. I applauded his death in detention.38

Unlike Todhlana, Tekere lamented Tongogara’s expiry and he dismissed speculation that Mugabe arranged the ZANLA commander’s assassination. Tekere remembered ‘addressing the body [Tongogara’s corpse], “what is wrong with you, why did you do such a silly thing? Could you not have chosen a better time [to die]. This is a terrible let down!”.’39 Some in ZANLA recounted ‘shock’ among guerrillas in Mozambique but noted that they ‘could see relief in many of the civilian [ZANU PF politicians] faces because Tongo was dead’.40 This sense of ‘relief’ extended to some ZANLA guerrillas: ‘When I heard Tongo was dead, for me it was a relief. I was unsure about a future that had Tongo as part of it because he was not receptive to other people’s views. He would have become a dictator.’41 Other ZANLA cadres explained Tongogara’s death in terms of a prophecy pronounced by Mbuya Nehanda, a leading traditional spirit medium: A comrade called Dias told me in the early 1970s that comrades had just brought Mbuya Nehanda from Rhodesia to Zambia and she was living about five kilometres from Chifombo camp. Dias also told me something that I later realised was common knowledge at Chifombo. He told me that Mbuya Nehanda had said in his presence to Tongogara that he would not make it to Rhodesia alive at independence. Mbuya Nehanda said to ZANLA cadres, mukawona Tongogara afa, moziva kuti mavakudzokera kumusha [Tongogara’s death will be a sign that you are now going home to an independent Zimbabwe]. So, when we heard that Tongo was dead, those of us who had heard about this prophecy knew the war was

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over. I was not shocked that he did not make it home alive. Tongo used to go around saying he would never see an independent Zimbabwe. I do not think Tongo actually believed what he was saying. Tongo was very cunning. He was saying it so that ZANLA would think he could see the future. He was building a myth around himself.42

ZIPRA’s Dumiso Dabengwa was in Zambia when he learned of Tongogara’s demise. He elaborated his thoughts and actions upon the news of Tongogara’s death: Tongo and I had arranged at Lancaster [House] to fly together to Salisbury from Lusaka, after we had explained the [ceasefire] agreement to our junior soldiers. I went to Zambia to do that. I was now waiting for Tongo in Lusaka while he was in Mozambique. He was taking long. Nkomo sends for me and tells me Tongo is dead. It was sudden and suspicious. I said to Nkomo, ‘I am no longer going for the ceasefire. Masuku can do it, if you want to carry on, this is too suspicious.’ Nkomo said, ‘No, you must go.’ The British also sent messages that said it was you Dabengwa and Tongo who negotiated the ceasefire with us, so you have to be there. I went [to Salisbury] because of Nkomo and the British.43

The circumstances and implications of Tongogara’s passing clearly divided views in all the groups involved in the ceasefire and his death was politicised by ZANU PF’s rivals. There is no conclusive evidence proving Tongogara’s death was not a genuine car accident but many, then and today, continue to believe he was eliminated by his rivals in ZANU PF. Nhongo knew Tongogara better than most, having worked closely with him for several years. Nhongo demonstrated loyalty to Tongogara in moments of violent upheaval in ZANLA, above all during the 1974–5 Nhari mutiny. But, as we know, Nhongo and Tongogara’s relationship was far from being the idyllic brotherhood portrayed in official accounts. Theirs was a pragmatic relationship mainly, rather than a distinctly affectionate one. Nhongo expressed sorrow about Tongogara’s death in what he alleged was an authentic car accident but he did not render a poignant eulogy about Tongogara’s life and career as ZANLA commander.44 Nhongo was generally disbelieving of Traditional Religion, thus he was sceptical of conclusions that Nehanda’s prophesy Tongogara would die at the cusp of independence had come to pass. Nhongo was equally questioning of the customary Zimbabwean cultural practice of seeking out a traditional healer to conduct occultist divination following bereavement. Zimbabwean diviners often accuse the deceased’s foes of responsibility for his or her demise; death is rarely due to natural causes, an unfortunate illness or fate, but is a result of bewitchment on most occasions.45 A National Archives of Zimbabwe researcher recalled attempting to interview Nhongo in the 2000s for an oral history project on the country’s liberation struggle: ‘He [Nhongo] politely refused to be

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interviewed by us. He said what we were really interested to know is who killed Tongogara. He said Zimbabweans do not believe that human beings can just die without someone being responsible.’46 ‘Black Pudding with a Killer Instinct’ This section begins by offering a concise context of Operation AGILA, its assembly phase particularly, before easing into a discussion of Nhongo’s role in the ceasefire. The ceasefire agreement stipulated that all cross-border military undertakings by the RSF and PF were to cease after midnight of 21 December 1979 and the truce itself came into force at midnight on 29 December. From 29 December to 4 January 1980, armed PF guerrillas were all required to enter the nearest of sixteen Assembly Places (APs) that were mostly located along Rhodesia’s periphery and accessible through twenty-three Rendezvous Points (RVs), except for the APs Romeo, Quebec, November, Lima, Kilo, Echo and Charlie, which were accessed directly.47 The 4 January deadline was later extended to midnight on 7 January in order to allow more guerrillas to come into the APs. Any armed PF guerrillas outside the APs after 7 January would be in breach of the ceasefire, while the RSF was to have withdrawn to its bases by then. In the end, however, compromises to this rule were made by the Governor so as to ensure the ceasefire held. For example, whereas there were 15,730 PF guerrillas in the APs as of 7 January, by the 27–29 February independence election, this figure had risen to approximately 30,000, with ZANLA guerrillas constituting a greater majority than ZIPRA fighters.48 The slow entry of PF insurgents into the APs between 29 December and 4 January 1980 was partly because the Rhodesian negotiators at Lancaster House downplayed the extent of the guerrillas’ penetration of Rhodesia’s interior.49 In truth the insurgents were, by December 1979, all over Rhodesia, with ZANLA guerrillas being the most widespread elements in the countryside. The initial week-long assembly phase therefore proved too short, as many guerrillas still had to walk long distances towards the periphery, where their respective APs were located.50 ZANLA guerrillas also came into the APs slowly because some of them suspected that the ceasefire was a ruse.51 ‘We just did not believe it [the ceasefire] was genuine. As for myself, I was at the warfront when it happened. I went to stay with my girlfriend and waited to see what would happen’, remembered one ZANLA guerrilla.52 Small groups of the CMF managed the APs and monitored the assembled PF guerrillas. The APs were mostly large improvised camps, with a minority located in the proximity of schools and communal

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Table 6.1 ZANLA guerrillas appointed as AP commanders54 ZANLA commanders

Assembly point

Agnew Kambeu Charles Munyoro Rex Tichafa Andrew Chiriseri Tonderai Nyika Gibson Gumbo Perrance Shiri Muchandiona Kapenga Anderson Mhuru Justice Kuramba Willie Deveteve Milton Sadza Charles Hokoyo Henry Muchena John Zongororo Watson Juru Augustine Mhere John Chabaya Trust Mhiri Dzepasi Gomo John Tekere Mbumburu Kupisa

Fort Victoria Juliet Foxtrot Alpha Bravo Hotel Golf Kilo Echo Charlie Delta

villages. Each AP had a boundary, which the guerrillas were barred from traversing. The fact that the APs were defenceless to attacks by the Rhodesian Air Force, because they were located in open terrains, stirred the guerrillas’ misgivings about the ceasefire. Nhongo appointed two ZANLA guerrillas as PF commanders to each of the eleven APs containing ZANLA fighters (see Figure 6.1). Some of these commanders also acted as PF liaison officers, tasked with ensuring the CMF monitors’ security at RVs and to inspire confidence in apprehensive guerrillas to enter the APs. PF liaison officers were ‘familiar with the regions to which they were deployed and known to the local population and the guerrillas operating in their areas’.53 The APs varied in size, with some containing hundreds and others as many as 6,000 guerrillas, which was the case with Foxtrot, the largest of all the APs and solely comprised of ZANLA cadres. CMF monitors were struck by the varying ages of Nhongo’s guerrillas: ‘Some of them were very young like one fourteen-year-old who was called Automatic Black

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Devil. He had been with ZANLA since he was seven because his parents had both been killed in some incident. Automatic Black Devil was a radio operator.’55 Automatic Black Devil’s young age draws attention to the fact that some ZANLA guerrillas were child soldiers, even though ZANLA official policy forbade the use of child soldiers. This child soldiers theme is underexplored in the literature on Zimbabwe’s independence war. The CMF monitors found striking the pugnaciousness of the noms de guerre of Nhongo’s guerrillas. Automatic Black Devil is an obvious case in point but there were many other pugnacious noms de guerre such as Air C Dropper. A CMF monitor remembered the first time he met comrade Air C Dropper at an RV: ‘The guerrilla told me his name and as I was writing it down, I asked him, “What does C stand for?”. “Craft, stupid!”, he replied.’56 Air C Dropper had apparently shot down an RSF helicopter. Additionally, the CMF was taken aback by the rapidity of the ZANLA leadership’s politicisation of its guerrillas on the subject of the Lancaster House Agreement: I was amazed by how many ZANLA had heard of the Lancaster Agreement. You had guerrillas coming out of the bush, shouting pamberi ne [forward with] Lancaster House! Lancaster House was like a password. They may not have known the full details of the agreement but they knew it would lead to independence. I do not know how many transistor radios ZANLA had but credit to them, they certainly knew how to get the word out and drill it into their forces. I am a Brit but I did not even know where Lancaster House is in London and here was someone in distant Africa mouthing, pamberi ne Lancaster House! It was quite bizarre.57

British troops managed the RV phase because it was the riskiest part of Operation AGILA and since the British Army designed the operation, its soldiers had to take on the most precarious stage.58 As Learmont explained, ‘there was suspicion of the white man in uniform from the Patriotic Front. There was a great deal of mistrust of the British: indeed, some Patriotic Front initially held the view that we were hand in glove with the’ RSF.59 Using lights, radios, signs, flags and loudhailers to indicate their [RV] positions to guerrillas, [the British contingent of] the CMF made every effort to appear inviting and non-threatening. To win hearts and minds at the outset, the CMF teams issued first aid kits, cigarettes, tea, sugar, jam and biscuits to incoming PF and assured them there would be limited supplies of clothing, tents and blankets available at the APs.60

Nhongo’s PF liaison officers, who were attached to lightly armed small groups of the CMF at ZANLA RVs, helped the guerrillas feel secure about assembling for the ceasefire but this process did not always go according to plan. The perilousness of the RV period is best dramatised

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by an incident involving a ZANLA provincial commander at an RV leading to AP Alpha: [W]hen we arrived at the RV and advanced to the Monitoring Force . . . we noticed a relay station 500 to 600 metres away manned by RSF and BSAP [British South Africa Police]. All the RSF were supposed to be in their camps. We did not understand why they were there. I insisted we would not assemble until the RSF moved from the relay point. The CMF refused. I made the Monitoring Force lie down and I wanted to shoot them. Their argument did not seem logical.61

The commander was dissuaded from executing the monitors because Nhongo intervened, after which he agreed to lead his men towards Alpha AP. ‘That is how they [the monitors] survived’, the commander concluded.62 A commander at Foxtrot AP recalled that after Tongogara’s death: Nhongo took charge. He sent us to the Assembly Points. He took charge. We were not sure about the ceasefire but we knew Nhongo was an effective commander so I trusted him when he said go and command this Assembly Point. Nhongo then came to my Assembly Point. He said to us, ‘Look, this has been agreed but you should not trust the Rhodesians. Always be alert. Do not be fooled. This is a ceasefire on paper but practically you cannot trust the Rhodesians.’ Where I see Nhongo’s command being the strongest is during the ceasefire. If there was no strong command on the ZANLA side after Tongogara died, the ceasefire, it would not have held. You needed a strong character and that was him.63

ZANLA guerrillas harboured ‘extreme skepticism of ceasefires. In the détente period of 1974 . . . hundreds . . . of guerrillas were killed in ambushes’ in a phony truce, consequently they ‘were taught to disbelieve and disregard any word of ceasefire’.64 For instance, Chinenge maintained: ‘I did not believe the ceasefire announcement when I heard it. There had been a meeting of commanders before Lancaster House, but I did not expect events as they developed. Only after I received a letter from Rex Nhongo, my Chief of Operations, did I finally believe the ceasefire.’65 The foregoing accounts by various ZANLA commanders demonstrate that Nhongo quickly filled the leadership vacuum in the guerrilla army, created by Tongogara’s sudden death. Nhongo had considerable authority in ZANLA, hence his order the guerrillas participate in the ceasefire process was observed by many. As the senior CMF liaison officer, one of Parker Bowles’s responsibilities was to accompany the PF commanders Nhongo and Dabengwa to their respective APs whenever disputes and disorders arose there.

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Nhongo and Dabengwa would then attempt to resolve the burning problems. Parker Bowles compared Nhongo and Dabengwa’s degrees of authority in their respective armies: You could see it in the way he [Nhongo] carried himself that he was fearless. ZANLA respected him. He was definitely in command. It is funny, initially Dumiso was not recognised by the [ZIPRA] army. I had to call Masuku two or three times at the beginning, after I went to unhappy ZIPRA APs with Dumiso and the ZIPRA said to Dumiso, ‘Who are you? We do not know who you are.’ All the ZANLA knew Rex. Many of them feared him. I remember a trip to a ZANLA AP where the ZANLA were misbehaving. Rex rounded up the ringleaders. I swear all he gave them was a very menacing grin and few threatening words. They behaved after that. ZIPRA was more disciplined than ZANLA so Dumiso had less problems in the APs but when he had problems, he had a much harder time than Rex disciplining his guys, so he sometimes brought Ben Mathe, a tough guy, with him.66

Despite Nhongo’s substantial authority in ZANLA, his standing, compared to that of Tongogara, came under sharp scrutiny by some in the CMF command. Acland was especially critical of Nhongo. Acland first met Tongogara at Lancaster House, where he was greatly impressed by his charisma and humour . . . We even joked [with Walls] that Tongogara might end up on a course at the Royal College of Defence Studies in London. He struck me then and on other occasions we met as an intelligent, forceful but fundamentally reasonable man. . . . 27 December was a black day. We heard that Tongogara had been killed in a motor accident in Mozambique. . . . We no longer had available one of the key figures in the whole complicated and delicately balanced situation that was beginning to develop inexorably in Salisbury and out in the bush. I wrote a note that day. ‘The loss of Tongogara is a bitter blow, the best Patriotic Front man there is – or was.’ . . . In his place there arrived ‘General’ Rex Nhongo. He had no permanent assistant but was supported at Ceasefire Commission meetings and on other occasions by a variety of seconds in command who were, generally speaking, more articulate and apparently intelligent than he was. Nhongo was once described to me as ‘a black pudding with a killer instinct’ and there is no doubt that he was very much more at home in the field, where he had achieved a great reputation as a ruthless killer during the war, than he was in Salisbury. He found difficulty in expressing himself and often appeared sulky and uncooperative . . .67

Before unpacking Acland’s comparison of Nhongo and Tongogara, let us first establish the actors on the CC and the body’s functions. CC meetings took place at the imperial Government House and they were chaired by Acland. The CC was the main body for discussion of the ceasefire’s management and it adjudicated any breaches of the truce. Members of the CC were Nhongo and Dabengwa as the commanders of ZANLA and

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Figure 6.1 Rex Nhongo and the Ceasefire Commission members: Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles (top left, background). From left (foreground), Dumiso Dabengwa, Rex Nhongo, Adam Gurdon, John Acland, Bertie Bernard and Peter Petter-Bowyer. Source: Andrew Parker Bowles.

ZIPRA respectively, Gurdon, Parker Bowles as secretary of the CC, Major General Bert Barnard from the Rhodesian Army and Petter-Bowyer of the Rhodesian Air Force (see Figure 6.1). Acland bestowed the rank of general on Nhongo and Dabengwa ‘to give them equal status’ with Barnard and himself on the CC.68 Walls, as head of the RSF, should have been a CC member but he rebuffed this responsibility. He appointed Petter-Bowyer as his ‘personal representative’ on the CC because, as he put it, he did not want ‘to sit with those bloody Brits and communists or give them any sense of equal rank with myself or any of the service commanders’.69 Walls recalled Barnard from retirement, specially to assist Petter-Bowyer on the CC, thereby disallowing PF commanders opportunity to build trust bonds with serving senior white Rhodesian commanders, which, as we shall see ahead, partly contributed to antagonism and lack of cooperation between Nhongo and the Rhodesian Army commander Andrew ‘Sandy’ Maclean during the military integration that followed the ceasefire.

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Dabengwa established relations with Acland and Gurdon at the Lancaster House talks. Nhongo, on the other hand, did not attend the Lancaster House negotiations hence the CMF figures on the CC were all new to him. He found himself having to navigate a novel space of intersecting whiteness and notions of British elitism and generalship. Drawing on the scholarship of Hugo Canham and Rejane Williams, I suggest that class, whiteness and generalship are ‘only real to the extent that . . . [they are] performed’.70 Whiteness, generalship and class are ‘performative identities accomplished by “repetition of acts through time” and historic repetition of “social sanction and taboo” ’.71 Class, whiteness and generalship are therefore constructed, regulated and reified across time and space. Acland attended Eton College, an elite public school founded by King Henry VI in 1440.72 Eton has schooled dozens of British prime ministers and a host of aristocrats to date. After completing his schooling at Eton, Acland turned down an offer from the University of Oxford, to read for an undergraduate degree because he preferred to train as a conventional soldier at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst.73 Acland was an upperclass military general with a ‘white gaze’, chairing the CC.74 The white gaze encompasses ‘inscribed racialised discourses that control, inferiorise and negate blackness’.75 The black revolutionary and writer Frantz Fanon wrote of his subjection to the ‘white man’s eyes’, maintaining that the white gaze in colonial settings shapes the experience of blacks; blacks are ‘over determined from without’ and ‘dissected under white eyes, the only real eyes’.76 Acland’s white gaze was certainly inscribed with racialised discourse when he stated that ‘Nhongo was once described’ to him as ‘a black pudding with a killer instinct’. But Acland concurrently sidesteps criticism for employing racialised discourse by preceding his use of the phrase ‘a black pudding with a killer instinct’ with a statement that ‘Nhongo was once described to me’ as such. By locating the original description of Nhongo as ‘a black pudding with a killer instinct’ to a source, which was likely a white Rhodesian military officer, other than himself, Acland’s white gaze is protected ‘from being the object of enquiry’.77 Acland cannot be impugned for employing racialised discourse towards Nhongo because his is a ‘non-racist racism’.78 Acland’s white gaze is refracted through class when he describes Tongogara as a man of ‘charisma and humour’ suited to the esteemed Royal College of Defence Studies in London, while Nhongo, in contrast, was ‘sulky’, ‘uncooperative’ and ‘a ruthless killer’ unsuited even to Salisbury, Rhodesia’s urbane capital city. Nhongo grew up in Chikomba’s black communal areas and had no meaningful contact with whiteness throughout childhood and he had a lower level of formal education than Tongogara. Contrariwise, Tongogara grew up on a thriving

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commercial farm belonging to former Rhodesian prime minister Smith’s parents,79 and his social experiences in many high-level international diplomatic engagements on Rhodesian independence meant that he was more adept than Nhongo at performing behaviours and sensibilities ‘acceptable’ to or recognised by the white gaze and a lofty class. Smith, for example, writes that ‘on 25 January [1980] I was contacted by some Portuguese chap in Maputo wanting to know how he could get a parcel of prawns to my mother. This gift was an expressed wish of Tongogara before his demise’, for ‘the kindness which he . . . had received from my mother’ when growing up.80 Smith contended that Tongogara ‘was a decent black’,81 and ‘one of the few black politicians who gave me hope [that an independent Zimbabwe run by blacks would continue to prosper]’.82 And, as we know, Nhongo had a speech impediment, unlike Tongogara, and throughout the liberation war he repeatedly eschewed travel abroad, which might have given him some cosmopolitan attributes. Nhongo therefore lacked the Bourdieun type cultural capital recognised by dominant classes, which would have facilitated his acceptance in spaces such as the CC, where he was scrutinised by an elitist white gaze.83 In addition to class, Acland’s white gaze was refracted through the prism of a particular understanding of military generalship. For Acland, Nhongo did not wield the performative attributes of a general, whereas Tongogara did. Nhongo was not like Tongogara who spoke good English, was better educated and was an ‘intelligent, forceful but fundamentally reasonable man’. Yet what constitutes generalship is inherently subjective. Edgar Puryear’s noted study on the qualities of successful generalship would disqualify Nhongo as an effective general on primarily a single quality – reading books avidly.84 According to Puryear, generals are bibliophiles that read voraciously about military history and they are well versed in grand politics. Nhongo was certainly not a bibliophile but as we have seen from his soldiering, he wielded several characteristics that Puryear argues are also hallmarks of effective generals, namely: gallantry; the personality to question; a sixth sense when making commands; the art of delegation; a knack for problem-solving; constant contact with soldiers and receptiveness to their views; and performance on the battlefield.85 Whereas Nhongo fell short on a single factor, Puryear would rule out Tongogara as an effectual general for three reasons: lack of ceaseless contact with soldiers; unreceptiveness to the assessments of junior soldiers; and non-performance at the warfront. Let us now turn to Nhongo’s agency under the white gaze. The white gaze can be internalised by those subjected to its scrutiny, resulting in performative ‘black self-disciplining’.86 Nhongo appears not to have internalised the white gaze because his ‘sulky’ and ‘uncooperative’

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behaviour were not signs of black self-disciplining and inferiority. Besides, Nhongo attempted to equalise power relations with white CC members by instrumentalising fear and refusing to cooperate with the CMF, unless he was offered something in exchange. Parker Bowles got to know Nhongo better than any other CMF member because of his role as the senior CMF liaison officer. He explained that Nhongo had a penchant for making a litany of demands in exchange for his cooperation in the ceasefire: [Q]uite often we [Nhongo and Parker Bowles] would have a drink or a talk. He [Nhongo] would let off some steam about something General Walls had said or something he had read in the [news]paper. He was a hero [of the war]. A good soldier and a good leader, without a doubt . . . [but] Nhongo was not easy. It was a matter of choosing one’s time and . . . letting him have something in return for his cooperation . . . probably some ladies . . . and he could go out on trips as long as one of us went with him. It was all give and take.87

By accepting women for sex in exchange for his cooperation Nhongo, wittingly or unwittingly, reinforced enduring racial stereotypes about black males as hypersexual. On an occasion, Nhongo asked Parker Bowles to allow a ZANLA choir in Foxtrot AP to take a brief leave of absence from the camp so that it could perform during Mugabe’s homecoming rally, at Zimbabwe grounds in the Highfield township of Salisbury, on 27 January 1980. According to Parker Bowles: I had been told that every single bus in Salisbury was booked so I very stupidly said, ‘Well, you will not be able to get a bus to bring the choir to Salisbury.’ But of course Rex got a bus. Three buses in fact. The Rhodesians stopped the buses and locked up the singers. Rex thought I had the singers arrested so he rang me up late at night and said, ‘I am going to kill you, Parker Bowles.’ He gave me a great fright. When morning came I sent my driver in first, at the Patriotic Front headquarters, Morgan [High] School, to test the water. I apologised to Rex and got the choir out of jail.88

Similarly, Nhongo stirred anxiety in Gurdon and Acland. Gurdon recalled that: I knew very little about Rex, other than that he was a very effective guerrilla leader, before I met him. As I got to know him, I realised he was much feared by the white population. Rex was a very severe man. He did not take no for an answer. Rex was one of those people you can have a wonderful party with, knowing very well he would kill you if he had the chance. Acland would sometimes say, after our [CC] meetings with Rex, ‘Wasn’t the killer in good order today?’. That is how uneasy it could be with Rex.89

The anxiety Nhongo stimulated in some members of the CMF command is jarring when put adjacent to accounts, in previous chapters, about

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how he was generally perceived in ZANLA. Nhongo could be firm with ZANLA guerrillas if he needed to be and some of them did fear him, but he was generally perceived as one of the more affable senior commanders. The figure widely regarded with trepidation in ZANLA was in fact Tongogara, not Nhongo. One of the reasons for the likes of Acland and Gurdon’s misconceptions about Nhongo was because, confronted by white gazes that interconnected with class and certain ideas of generalship, Nhongo exercised his agency by performing severity. Nhongo’s proclivity for being uncooperative with the CC, unless he was granted favours, were a means of asserting the self, thereby equalising power relations with some CMF commanders who regarded him in racialised terms, who saw him as a shadow of the general that Tongogara was, and who viewed him as inferior because of his lack of cultural capital they recognised. Nhongo’s instrumentalisation of fear was aided in no small measure by the racist attitudes and propaganda of some white Rhodesians towards him. As suggested earlier, Acland was likely told that Nhongo was ‘a black pudding with a killer instinct’ by a white Rhodesian military officer. Also recall that Gurdon, in the quotation above, stated ‘I realised he [Nhongo] was much feared by the white population.’ White Rhodesians for years constructed Nhongo as an archetypal murderous black terrorist and this propaganda likely helped condition the perceptions of some CMF commanders. Fate and Hope Once the assembly phase of the ceasefire passed, universal attention turned to whether the truce would hold until the 27–29 February Common Roll elections and to speculation about which of the parties would triumph in the poll. As expected, Smith’s RF party won all twenty seats available on the White Roll on 14 February. British FCO diplomats believed Nkomo’s ZAPU party would win the Common Roll election, whereas the CMF expected a victory for ZANU PF and Mugabe.90 ZANU PF won fifty-seven seats (63 per cent) to ZAPU’s twenty seats (24 per cent) in the election, while Bishop Muzorewa’s United African National Council (UANC), which many white Rhodesians hoped would win the election and form a moderate government, secured only three seats (8 per cent). The FCO saw Mugabe as an unmanageable MarxistLeninist, from the point of view of its capitalist and pro-white interests in independent Zimbabwe. A combination of inherent bias against Mugabe and flawed intelligence gathering on the likely poll outcome resulted in the FCO misreading the election result.91 Nhongo, in collusion with other ZANLA and party members, contributed to ZANU PF’s election victory. Parker Bowles commented that ‘Rex

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had made a strong case to me that ZANU PF had the election sewn up and would win by a wide margin. ZANU PF [through the work of ZANLA guerrillas] had cells all over the country, except in the south which was ZAPU territory. Rex was convinced those cells would ensure most of Rhodesia elected ZANU PF.’92 The CMF was aware that Nhongo instructed thousands of ZANLA guerrillas to remain outside the APs.93 These absentee guerrillas were scattered over large swathes of the Rhodesian countryside. They actively campaigned for ZANU PF in the election, often resorting to intimidation and violence against the rural electorate.94 Furthermore, Nhongo’s guerrillas tended to abscond from their APs both in larger numbers and more frequently than ZIPRA.95 This was because of indiscipline and boredom that resulted in guerrillas leaving the APs in pursuit of local women, alcohol and entertainment, as much as it was a consequence of Nhongo’s orders for some guerrillas to exit APs intermittently so as to campaign for ZANU PF in surrounding communities.96 The activities of Nhongo’s guerrillas exacerbated friction between him and CMF commanders on the CC, although some of the verbal encounters had amusing turns: The ceasefire commission was quite funny in a way because none of the allegations of violations were actually resolvable. No one was going to admit that they had been breaking the rules. It was tense with Rex but now and then I found him slightly charming because his explanations for the wrongs ZANLA were doing, like going out of bounds, could be tongue in cheek. He would make all sorts of excuses with a look on his face that said, ‘I know you do not believe me’ [laughs]. The ceasefire commission was tricky because we were trying to be even-handed, to treat everyone fairly, but Rex believed we were biased against ZANLA. We [CMF] knew the Rhodesian chiefs of staff were meeting every day to calculate how they could upset the ceasefire. That planning was happening on a daily basis and I know this because we had enough intelligence in their boardroom to know what they were doing. The Rhodesians were particularly set on discrediting ZANLA because they wanted Mugabe barred from the election, so Rex felt quite aggrieved even though his guerrillas were [my emphasis] breaking the rules.97

The former British foreign secretary (1977–9) Lord David Owen was less abstruse than Gurdon about the identity of the figure leaking intelligence on Rhodesian plans to the British. Owen revealed that ‘Flower was on our side’ and he recounted reading Flower’s intelligence reports on RSF operations during his time as foreign secretary.98 The RSF frequently attempted to provoke PF guerrillas into breaking the ceasefire by flying its fighter planes low over the APs and Rhodesian police sometimes conducted patrols close to the APs, causing

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consternation among assembled guerrillas.99 In one instance, a bus transporting UANC supporters between Umtali and Salisbury was attacked by supposed ZANLA guerrillas, resulting in a dozen deaths. Parker Bowles went to confront Rex about the ambush. Rex denied ZANLA had done it. He asked for time to prove ZANLA’s innocence and threatened to walk out on the ceasefire if it was not given to him. I took Rex’s words back to Acland who agreed to give Rex time. Rex proved to us that ZANLA had nothing to do with the ambush. The Rhodesians had carried out the ambush and made it look like ZANLA. It did not wreck the ceasefire but it worsened Rex’s relationship with the Rhodesians.100

Gurdon narrated another incident in which the RSF attempted to undermine the ceasefire by targeting Nhongo’s party: Walls invited Acland and me to play tennis at his house. Walls was playing tennis with Acland when his telephone rang. I left it alone but it was ringing persistently so I just picked it up, said hello, and the chap on the other end, thinking I was Walls, said, ‘We have made a balls of it, I am very sorry’ and he put the phone down. When Walls was done playing tennis, I told him the message. I have never seen a man go absolutely green. He had been caught red-handed. I said to him, ‘It does not sound very good to me. What have you been up to?’. What had actually happened was that the whites had put explosives on a road which Mugabe was going to use when he was out electioneering. The explosives went off under the wrong vehicle so Mugabe was not killed.101

According to Acland the FCO was in league with the Rhodesians in attempts to discredit ZANU PF. The FCO lobbied Soames to disqualify ZANU PF from contesting the election in some areas because of violence and strong intimidation of the rural electorate by Nhongo’s guerrillas.102 But Soames turned out to be a ‘very practical man who was less susceptible to FCO pressure because he rightly saw that Mugabe was going to win. He also leaned on the army’s [CMF] advice. So he was influenced by the information we [CMF] gave him not to proscribe Mugabe.’103 Soames rationalised his ‘practical’ approach towards ZANLA’s intimidation of the rural electorate using racialised discourse. In Soames’s words, ‘this is Africa. They think nothing of sticking tent poles up each other’s whatnots and doing filthy, beastly things to each other. It does happen, I am afraid. It is a very wild thing, an African election.’104 In addition, proscribing Mugabe would almost certainly have resulted in resumption of the war, given the thousands of ZANLA guerrillas outside the APs and the existence of a large ZANLA force that was held back in Mozambique in case the ceasefire collapsed.105 The RSF’s endeavours to discredit ZANU PF and to assassinate Mugabe partly explain why Nhongo’s relations with RSF members of

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the CC were often strained during the ceasefire.106 There were, however, some lighter moments between Nhongo and RSF officers. Tungamirai sometimes accompanied Nhongo to CC meetings, where they often whispered to each other in the Shona language about how to explain away ZANLA’s breaches of the ceasefire terms. Petter-Bowyer detailed a comical incident between himself and Nhongo in the course of one CC engagement: Most of the whispered communications held up proceedings whilst they [Nhongo and Tungamirai] conspired to find a way out of every accusation levelled at ZANLA and to conjure up counter accusations. Both ZANLA men seemed particularly concerned not to be overheard by ZIPRA who would understand what was being said, but they were quite unconcerned about the . . . whites who they were quite certain could not understand their language. They were wrong! I understood all I heard. Sometime in late February or early March, I foolishly let loose on Rex Nhongo in his own tongue, challenging his past and present whispered lies. This had an electrifying effect on the meeting and obviously tickled the ZIPRA commanders who did nothing to suppress their mirth. Thereafter the whispering ceased.107

Parker Bowles often pressed Acland to allow Nhongo to use the CC to ‘say what was upsetting him and hopefully sort it out’.108 Acland reflected: Nhongo . . . used to ring me up at all hours of the day and night . . . slightly drunk . . . [with] some imagined [or] . . . real grievance and . . . say that he was going to call his people out of the Assembly Places. I would say . . . ‘OK Rex, we will have a Ceasefire Commission meeting at 7 o’clock. I will lay it on there. For God’s sake do not do anything until then.’ And I would say to Parker Bowles, ‘Stick by Rex and make sure that he does not give any orders to anyone and get him to the Ceasefire Commission meeting.’109

Indeed, whenever Nhongo threatened to withdraw cooperation it was often left to Parker Bowles or Dabengwa to bring him back from the brink (see Figure 6.2).110 However, on some occasions Nhongo and Dabengwa both made use of brinksmanship to gain concessions from the RSF and CMF. One episode of Nhongo and Dabengwa’s joint brinksmanship came dangerously close to collapsing the ceasefire. In a Situation Report to the British Ministry of Defence on 8 January 1980, Acland described this episode, which occurred when armed PF guerrillas were spotted by the RSF outside APs after the assembly phase had passed: Dabengwa . . . argued most convincingly that his men should come in [to the APs] with their arms but this was contrary to the Governor’s ruling and the agreement with the Rhodesians. We reached the point around 14:00 yesterday where Dabengwa and Nhongo had stated that their men would not lay down their arms and that if the Rhodesians, as was intended, took the necessary action against a ZANLA group of some 400 North of Umtali, the ceasefire would be

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Figure 6.2 Rex Nhongo (left) and Dumiso Dabengwa (right) waiting to board a helicopter to an Assembly Point during the 1979–80 ceasefire. Source: Andrew Parker Bowles. null and void and they would empty the Assembly Areas taking no responsibility for the risk to British soldiers. Fortuitously there was at this time a thunderstorm, perhaps the Almighty was closely observing the situation, which postponed the Rhodesian [military] action for some 45 minutes. 15 minutes before it was due I got hold of General Walls and he finally agreed to further postponement of action on condition that in the meanwhile the Patriotic Front accepted the requirement to lay down their arms. We worked on Dabengwa who finally . . . [relented on his position] . . . . Our Senior Liaison Officer to the Patriotic Front then went with Dabengwa to see Nhongo. Time was running out with General Walls but with half an hour to spare Nhongo was persuaded to order his group to lay down their arms and then be moved to the Assembly Area upon receipt of which information General Walls ordered off the operation. Thus for about 1 hour we were in danger of a collapse of the ceasefire.111

Such nerve-racking episodes were punctuated by uninhibited, carnal Salisbury nights. Nhongo ‘was an absolute wild man . . . wine, women and song’, Parker Bowles recalled.112 He elaborated Nhongo’s night-time pursuits: I was responsible for the Patriotic Front commanders’ security. Rex was by far the trickiest. Sometimes I would put them up in hotels for the night. Rex

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would sneak out at night and I had to follow him and stay with him to make sure everything was fine. There was this bar in Salisbury he liked to go to. I cannot remember its name but I can still picture him, seated in there, a glass of alcohol in his hand, many women seated at his table, making them laugh, buying them drinks. Rex was not very subtle with his women. Women knew right away what he wanted.113

Nhongo was not the sole womaniser among CC members. Acland, for instance, began an extra-marital affair with the wife of the Rhodesian chief of staff, Major General Derry MacIntyre, for which he was heavily criticised by some FCO staff because they thought it undermined the CMF’s standing with the RSF in the ceasefire.114 An FCO official who was in Rhodesia during the ceasefire clarified the pervasive libidinous behaviour by Nhongo and others during the ceasefire, in this way: That sort of thing does happen. In an intense situation where people have come in from everywhere, people get involved. The temperature rises. There is a lot of tension. You start to think you might die in that dangerous situation, so you start thinking about perpetuating the species. Let me tell you a story. One time a pretty young lady who was in our office in Salisbury [Government House] came in, in the morning. I greeted her and she said, quite contently, ‘I had some monitoring force last night.’ I did not know what to say, so I let it pass. People were, to put it rather bluntly, screwing each other everywhere.115

While it may be true that for some the dangerous nature of the ceasefire made them ‘start thinking about perpetuating the species’, this explanation barely applied to Nhongo. His desire for merriment and women were long-standing behaviours having their roots in 1960s Bulawayo, the ‘place of rising smokes’, where a young Nhongo came of age in a cultural life of mahobo parties, jolly shebeens and black township jazz. The ceasefire held until the independence election because of: the CMF’s effectual supervision of the truce; the participation of PF guerrillas (however circumscribed); the gradual building of trust between the CMF and PF guerrillas; the fact that some key Rhodesian security figures such as Flower aided the CMF by providing it with intelligence on RSF schemes to disrupt the ceasefire; and for the reason that some Rhodesian commanders (Walls especially) ultimately decided against going ahead with a planned military coup. Just before the election, heavily armed Rhodesian Army units encircled the PF’s base in Salisbury. Nhongo commented that ‘if they [Rhodesian Army] had fired a single shot, that would have been the end of it [the ceasefire]’.116 Acland appealed to Walls who eventually ordered the Rhodesian soldiers to withdraw from the PF headquarters. Walls explained why he decided against giving an order for the commencement of a coup:

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I would not call it a coup. It was unconstitutional action . . . . It would have worked if it had not been compromised I think. There had been a complete breach, which we only learnt about literally hours before it would have been put into action. People who were due to be picked up throughout the country moved their positions. They were aware of what was going to happen in detail. I decided, rightly or wrongly, and it was a very hard decision to make, that it was no good going on with the thing if it would not achieve its objective.117

The coup plans were leaked by a mole or moles at the highest level of the RSF.118 Flower is widely said to have been the mole, or one of the moles, in the top tier of the RSF.119 Nhongo’s contribution to the ceasefire’s success mainly lies in his filling of the leadership vacuum created by Tongogara’s sudden death. Despite Acland’s criticisms of him, Nhongo largely had effective control of ZANLA guerrillas and he ensured that they participated in the ceasefire, although he ordered many to remain outside the APs as contingency in case the ceasefire collapsed and for the purposes of campaigning for ZANU PF in their operational spheres. Nhongo’s significance in the ceasefire process was also enhanced by the fact that Mugabe, ZANLA’s commander-in-chief, was not knowledgeable in military affairs. As Acland acknowledged, ‘Mugabe never claimed to be a military man at all and therefore on the military side, my dealings [as CMF commander] were almost entirely with Rex Nhongo.’120 Walls, too, found Mugabe unfamiliar with military affairs. In a Situation Report to the British Ministry of Defence on 11 March 1980, Acland reported: ‘General Walls . . . is somewhat frustrated by what he sees as a lack of clear [military] policy direction from Mr Mugabe. I do not find a lack of clear direction surprising because Mr Mugabe’s knowledge of the armed forces is very slender.’121 Nhongo’s leadership provided ZANLA with a firm anchor during the precarious 1979–80 ceasefire. This fact is underappreciated in the literature. For instance, Susan Rice’s otherwise impeccable study on the 1979–80 Rhodesia truce does not discuss the implications of Tongogara’s death for the ceasefire and Nhongo’s subsequent role of guaranteeing stability in ZANLA. Tongogara’s death is a brief unedifying footnote in Rice’s study.122 Other writers such as Anthony Verrier efface entirely Nhongo’s role in the ceasefire, through factually incorrect statements such as ‘Tongogara and Masuku arrived in Salisbury [on 26 December 1979] to serve on the Ceasefire Commission.’123 Additionally, the role of the politics of race and class and subjective ideas about generalship in shaping relations between the ceasefire leaders is absent in authoritative works on the truce.124 Yet, as demonstrated here, these factors greatly determined the nature of relations between Nhongo and some members of the CMF and RSF commands.

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Figure 6.3 Rex Nhongo and Andrew Parker Bowles Source: Andrew Parker Bowles

In the CMF, Nhongo was closest to Parker Bowles, with whom he frequently took helicopter rides to ZANLA APs to defuse crises and deal with indiscipline. In Nhongo’s words, ‘[I] used to fight [with Parker Bowles] but then we were seen eating together. We were sleeping with him (see Figure 6.3).’125 Parker Bowles surmised: [W]hen I think of him [Rex] out on the town, he always seemed to have a strange grin on his face. At work he could be blunt and rude. He also had this thing with his gun. I remember being a bit edgy at first when I was around him, seeing the way he handled his gun, but that soon stopped. He knew his guns well but it looked awkward. It was, it was a certain swagger. It gave him a certain swagger. My enduring picture of Rex in the ceasefire is him striding off to hot-tempered ZANLA APs with his gun, all done with a certain swagger.126

Maruza Imi (You Rhodesians Have Lost) In late February, Acland instructed Nhongo and Dabengwa to get their respective political leaders to accompany them and RSF generals on

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a combined tour of all the APs.127 The goals of this tour were to encourage the guerrillas to accept the election result when it was announced and to keep the peace by remaining in their APs after the poll winner was known. PF guerrillas were also asked to accept the RSF’s takeover of the administration of all APs in order to allow the CMF to carry out its exit from Rhodesia. Nkomo, who cast himself as an authentic commander-inchief, toured all ZIPRA APs as per Acland’s request. However, Mugabe ‘absented himself in Mozambique’, leaving his deputy Simon Muzenda to tour all ZANLA APs alongside Nhongo and RSF and CMF commanders.128 An address Nhongo made to ZANLA guerrillas at Foxtrot AP immediately before the 1980 election has been iconicised by a popular documentary Pamberi ne Zimbabwe (Forward with Zimbabwe).129 In the documentary footage, ZANLA guerrillas at Foxtrot AP are seen seated on open grassland under a moderately cloudy sky. In the background are granite hills. Nhongo was clad in a green uniform, shiny black jackboots and he wore a black beret on his head. His shirt sleeves were rolled up above his elbows, exhibiting his sturdy arms. Nhongo, speaking in the Shona language, stuttered as he delivered an off-the-cuff address to ZANLA guerrillas but he exuded selfconfidence nonetheless, as he adroitly pitched a message of peace and reconciliation to his guerrillas, many of whom were opposed to RSF presence in their AP: nhongo: Handiti tine ma elections? Nhasi ndi 26 ka? Mangwana vanodi? [‘We have got elections. Today is the 26th of February. What will the people do tomorrow?’] zanla: Vanovota! [‘The people will vote’, the guerrillas shout unenthusiastically]. Nhongo begins singing a liberation war song in order to cajole ZANLA guerrillas and they sing along vociferously. nhongo: Nyika yedu yababa [‘Our country, our father’s country’, Nhongo sings]. zanla: Zimbabwe Nyika yedu yababa [‘Our country, our father’s country’] Zimbabwe Nyika yedu yababa [‘Our country, our father’s country’] Zimbabwe Nyika yedu yababa [‘Our country, our father’s country’]. RSF arrive by helicopter to begin establishing a presence in Foxtrot AP. nhongo: Avana kuwuya kuzokuchengetai se zvakaita ava. Handiti tinonzwanana? [‘The RSF have not come to monitor you like the CMF. Do we understand each other?’]. There are grumblings of discontent from ZANLA guerrillas. nhongo: Kana mechivaona, member dze police force nedzemawuto emuno aya vamanga mechirwisana navo, muno vatora se shamwari. Muno vatora se mukadzi ne murume vari kunyengana. Hanti tino nzwanana? Heh? [‘From now onwards, when you see the Rhodesian police and the army that you have been fighting, you should treat them as friends. Your relationship with

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them should now be like that of a woman and a man who are courting. Do we understand each other?’]. Guerrillas answer ‘yes’, reluctantly. nhongo: Maybe ndivo vakadzi imi ndimi varume, kana kuti maybe ndimi vakadzi ivo ndivo varume [‘Maybe the RSF are the women and you the men or maybe you are the women and they the men’]. Raucous laughter by ZANLA guerrillas. nhongo: Handiti tino nzwanana? Ndiri kureva matswagiro ehusahwira wacho. Hanti tiri kunzwanana? Andisi kureva kuti imi makakundwa kana kuti ivo vakakundwa. It’s a draw ka iyi [‘Do we understand each other? I am trying to illustrate how you can begin to build friendship with the RSF. Do we understand each other? I am not saying you lost the war to them or them to you. This is a stalemate is it not?’]. More rumblings of disapproval from ZANLA guerrillas. nhongo: Hanti tino nzwanana? Saka apa zvariri draw [‘Do we understand each other? So since this is a stalemate’]. Louder groans of disapproval by ZANLA guerrillas. Nhongo, with a crafty grin on his face, turns to the RSF officers as if to make sure that they have noted ZANLA guerrillas’ refusal to accept a stalemate. nhongo: Vakuwuya kuwaridza hwaro rekuti tinga dzokerana muku nzwanana neku garisana neku rara tose sei. Handiti tino nzwanana? Futi ndaka vawudza kuti tine vasikana vakanaka maningi, mechida kupfimba pfimbai [‘The RSF has come to lay the ground for reconciliation. Do we understand each other? I also told the RSF that there are many beautiful women in ZANLA and that if they fancy any of them, they are free to ask them out’]. Raucous laughter from ZANLA guerrillas. nhongo: Handizvo here? [‘Is it not true that there are many beautiful women in ZANLA who the RSF are free to court?’]. A ZANLA choir at Foxtrot breaks into an inflammatory liberation war song called Maruza Imi. choir sings: Hondo maiwona ka imi vapambi vepfumi [‘You colonial takers of our wealth have felt the effects of our war’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Hondo ka ye Chimurenga [‘The war of our uprising’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Imi vapambi vepfumi [‘You colonial takers of our wealth’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Vakatandaniswa nenzara [‘They left Europe because of hunger and poverty’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Vapadhuze kudzokera kumusha kwavo [‘They are close to returning to their land of origin’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Kumusha kunonuwha nhamo [‘A land of origin that smells of poverty’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Mazitama anonyepa [‘Your fat cheeks tell lies’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Mazimhino akabenda [‘You have crooked noses’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Mazimhanza anokuya dovi [‘Your bald heads are ideal surface for grinding groundnuts’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Endai kumusha kwenyu kune vakadzai vanehunyope [‘Go back to your land of origin where there are lazy women’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Imi vapambi vepfumi [‘You colonial takers of our wealth’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. Maruza imi [‘You Rhodesians have lost’]. . . . Singing ends. Major General Bert Bernard begins to make

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a brief statement to the guerrillas in English, with Nhongo translating to Shona. bernard: ‘The war is now finished’. Loud grumblings of disagreement from the guerrillas. Bernard suddenly stops speaking. He appears uneasy and only resumes speaking after Nhongo gives him a prompting look. bernard: ‘We as soldiers can stop this war and that is why we have come today so that we can start to build a trust between the ZANLA forces and the Rhodesian Security Forces’. Bernard ends his brief address and a question and answer session between Nhongo and ZANLA guerrillas commences. zanla guerrilla: Handizivi kuti sezva mati tinonga techi gara tose ava vanenge vari mukamba ravo isu tiri muneredu, kana kuti tinonga techigara musection imwe chete [‘You have said we will now be living with the RSF in Foxtrot but I do not understand whether they will have separate quarters or we will all live together’]. nhongo: Ndingaite mufananidzo wakanaka maningi. Kana uchinyenga musikana, unotanga nekumubata mazamo here? [‘I have a good example. When you are courting a woman, do you begin by fondling her breasts?’]. Loud laughter by ZANLA guerrillas. nhongo: Hanti anotanga abvuma kuti hongu wozomutevera? [‘Is it not that you first woo her, then when she says yes, now you can follow her [to her bedroom presumably]?’]. Loud laughter by ZANLA guerrillas.130

Nhongo radiated vigour and charisma, arms gesturing as he strode the grassy plain, in order to speak directly to each section of the large gathering of ZANLA guerrillas. He urged the ZANLA guerrillas to interpret the RSF’s entry in Foxtrot and the relationship thereafter as an elaborate form of courtship between a man and woman. He tactfully infused his address with humour whenever he made a statement the guerrillas found difficult to accept. For example, Nhongo’s point that ZANLA accept the RSF in Foxtrot and build trust with them provoked tension, which he broke by playfully goading the guerrillas’ masculinity through his assertion that he was unsure whether the RSF were women and ZANLA men, or the opposite was true, in this courtship. In addition to using humour to make his message palatable to the guerrillas, Nhongo also employed song. Nhongo interspersed his address by leading in the singing of a liberation war song. The guerrillas also sang war songs of their choice. Njere Tungamirai mu Zimbabwe (Comrade Chinx) led the ZANLA choir in singing Maruza Imi. He recalled that: When Comrade Nhongo finished his address I said, ‘Chefe Nhongo regai timbotuka varungu ava vasati vapinda muno’ [Boss Nhongo let us first insult the white Rhodesians before they enter this AP]. Comrade Nhongo said, ‘Okay, the choir can sing.’ Whites could not be insulted by blacks in those days so it was right we first insult them before accepting them. Letting us insult them in Shona made the comrades feel better about the whole thing.131

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Nhongo exercised his democratic right to vote in the independence election at Foxtrot AP on 29 February. Foxtrot was the most volatile AP throughout the ceasefire period. Nhongo’s presence there on polling day was meant to engender a calming influence on his guerrillas. The Herald of 1 March 1980 reported emotive scenes at Foxtrot on balloting day: Activity started at Foxtrot, about 100 kilometres south west of Umtali [Mutare], at 5am yesterday. Hundreds of guerrillas marched around the sprawling tent camp singing war songs before roll call. Then the estimated 6000 ZANLA men were disarmed by their commanders before filing about 200 metres to the polling booth . . . . ZANLA’s supreme commander Mr Rex Nhongo, flew to Foxtrot to add his vote to those of his men. During the day the guerrillas staged an impromptu concert. To the tune of the rock tune, ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ [by the band Creedence Clearwater Revival], the men sang: ‘we sacrifice our lives for revolutionary gain’. On Thursday night a complaint was lodged by one of the [Foxtrot] commanders, that a light [white Rhodesian] aircraft had dropped leaflets nearby which stated: ‘your wife will be taken if you vote for ZANU PF’.132

Part of the verses to the song ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ were poignant commentary on the desperate raining propaganda leaflets of a dying Rhodesian colonial establishment: Someone told me a long time ago There is a calm before the storm I know It has been coming for some time When it is over, so they say It will rain a sunny day I know Shining down like water. [Chorus:] I want to know, have you ever seen the rain I want to know, have you ever seen the rain Coming down on a sunny day.133

The RSF had hatched a plan to rig the election against Nhongo’s party.134 But the rigging scheme was not implemented because it lacked universal support among the RSF leaders. ‘A Mugabe victory was inevitable’ and attempting to manipulate the result ‘would raise too many suspicions’, Flower claimed.135 However, former Rhodesian intelligencers such as Dan Stannard accused Flower of having called off the election-rigging scheme at the behest of British intelligence.136 In ZAPU, ‘Nkomo’s reaction [to the election result] was that of shock, and he went into tears. He just could not believe it.’137 Some ZAPU members believed that the British government rigged the 1980 election in favour of

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ZANU PF because, they alleged, Britain did not want a Soviet Unionbacked government to come to power in independent Zimbabwe.138 The fact that ballot boxes were ‘transported to a secure location and guarded overnight by British “Bobbies”, who often slept next to them’ before counting began the following morning made the British government an obvious suspect for some ZAPU members.139 The conviction of some in ZAPU that they were denied electoral victory by Britain because of its Cold War calculations conveniently elides the reality that ZANLA controlled a larger portion of the black rural population than ZIPRA. ZANLA’s guerrilla war, in contradistinction to ZIPRA’s that strived for conventional warfare, was based on politicisation of the masses by persuasion and force and this proved a trump card in the 1980 election. In reality, ZAPU was the FCO’s favoured African party in the 1980 election but British diplomats were simply incorrect in their computations about the likely election winner.

7

‘A Big Small Man’

After the independence election, Acland went to see Mugabe, the newly elected prime minister, to ask him if the British military might be allowed to conduct the training and amalgamation of the Rhodesian, ZIPRA and ZANLA armies.1 Acland also inquired whether Mugabe would prevent other countries from sending military instruction teams to Zimbabwe. Acland’s account of Mugabe’s response ran as follows: He said, ‘Well, General, if the money [from British government] is forthcoming and I do not have to go elsewhere for support to do the amalgamation, I am only too happy for the British to do it.’ That is how the original BMATT [British Military Advisory and Training Team] got set up … . I said to Mugabe, ‘I suppose you would consider asking General Walls to stay on and help organise the amalgamation because you will need someone of that calibre?’. … [Mugabe] looked at me with a wintry smile and said, ‘My dear General you need not ask me that for I had already decided to ask General Walls to stay.’ My immediate sense at that moment was that had the roles been reversed, there would have been no such sense of reconciliation or pragmatism on Walls’s part. He would have liked to hang Mugabe from the highest tree.2

Britain had decades of experience in the integration and training of armies in its former colonies. British military training missions abroad were as much about promoting stability as they were a means of maintaining Britain’s political and military influence in its ex-colonies. Competitive Cold War politics made the maintenance of influence in its former colonies important to Britain’s foreign policy goals. The British defence industry also profited from the sale of military equipment to ex-colonies hosting BMATTs. Britain’s overture to Mugabe about a BMATT for Zimbabwe was inspired by this range of considerations. As a matter of fact, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) had been planning for its supervision of the formation of a single Zimbabwean army since 1976.3 Mugabe was both prime minister and minister of defence (1980–2) in the independence government, reflecting his immediate moves to consolidate his power. Mugabe sought to exercise firm civilian oversight on the army, because it was a potential powder keg given the long history of 156

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hatred and distrust between the undefeated ZANLA, ZIPRA and Rhodesian armies. A structure called the Joint High Command (JHC) managed the amalgamation of the three armies into the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) and it reported to Mugabe. In 1980 the JHC was chaired by Walls (overall commander), with Maclean (army commander), Nhongo and Tungamirai (ZANLA) and Masuku and Dabengwa (ZIPRA), as his subordinates. The JHC worked in consultation with the inaugural BMATT commander (1980–2) Major General Patrick Palmer and Rupert Smith, his deputy commander (1980–2). Smith was a cerebral, relatively short in height, dark-haired and rugged-looking young officer in the British Parachute Regiment. Smith was on his way to the introductory JHC meeting in 1980, when he set eyes on Nhongo for the initial time: The first time I saw Rex my impression was of a big small man. Rex was not tall but he was big and broad and he exuded power. There is a twist to this first sight. General Palmer was very tall, six foot two I think, and he was a Highlander. When General Palmer wanted to impress he would put the full rig on. So, picture a blond-haired six-foot-two Highlander, kilt, socks, a knife in one of his long socks, half a dead badger in front of him and bonnet with feathers. I see Rex for the first time, walking behind the giant Highlander in full rig, in a long corridor down to the conference room where the Joint High Command was about to meet. I was walking right behind Rex. He was small physically, unlike the Highlander, but even then, Rex was to me a very big small man.4

Rhodesians Never Die Nhongo’s primary concern in early JHC meetings was ‘just to maintain order and control of ZANLA, nothing else, because there was an unruly element in some of their Assembly Points’.5 This indiscipline was a carryover from the ceasefire period. ZANU PF’s decisive victory in the independence election gave further stimulus to some ZANLA guerrillas’ raucous behaviour. The poll win allowed ZANLAs to mould themselves as the victors in the liberation struggle. Because of this self-perception, many ZANLA guerrillas expected to fill the top officer posts in the ZNA and to dominate the army generally. Their perspective was that they had finally arrived and would be the new bosses in independent Zimbabwe. In the midst of the euphoria, some ZANLAs came and went, as they pleased, from their APs and engaged in illegal activities in local communities. Nhongo was ‘very defensive about ZANLA’s reputation, that although there was criminality, you could not paint the whole of ZANLA with a single brush. Rex got into heated arguments about that with the former

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Figure 7.1 Rex Nhongo inspecting ZNA soldiers Source: Joice Mujuru.

[Rhodesian] army and ZIPRA who to some extent ganged up against Rex’ on the JHC, Smith opined.6 Smith’s observation about JHC dynamics between Nhongo and the Rhodesian and ZIPRA commanders had echoes of Nhongo’s relations with Ceasefire Commission (CC) members in the ceasefire. The ZIPRA and ZANLA leaderships on the JHC were mostly unchanged from those that served on the CC. But the Rhodesian elements on the JHC were entirely new. Walls’s short-sighted decision not to serve on the CC and his barring of all senior serving Rhodesian commanders from CC participation meant that he and Maclean were largely unfamiliar with the ZIPRA and ZANLA commanders on the JHC. The measure of trust the RSF had established with ZANLA and ZIPRA commanders on the CC, through Bernard and Petter-Bowyer, was nullified by both officers’ absence on the JHC. PetterBowyer alleged that before the JHC was formally constituted, Nhongo and Masuku made him an offer to transition from the CC to the JHC as overall commander. Petter-Bowyer had reservations about this joint offer because he did not have the requisite military rank and command experience.7 Nhongo’s ‘reply showed how differently he thought’.8 According to

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Petter-Bowyer, Nhongo insisted that ‘when the sergeant is better than the lieutenant-colonel, the sergeant becomes the full colonel’.9 Nhongo failed to persuade Petter-Bowyer to accept his and Masuku’s unorthodox offer, resulting in Walls and Maclean taking their places on the JHC. This outcome would prove detrimental to Nhongo’s relations with Rhodesian members of the JHC and it also impacted negatively on the integration process. Nhongo, Maclean and Walls knew each other mainly from the unconstructive propaganda their respective armies traded during the war. Walls declared he did ‘not have any real respect’ for ZANLA as ‘a disciplined fighting force. ZIPRA, however, had the same outlook on discipline [as the RSF], so there was instant obedience and intelligent implementation of orders.’10 Relatedly, Maclean claimed he had a better working relationship with Masuku and Dabengwa because they were better trained and had the attitude of a regular army. Rex Nhongo was not a prepossessing individual to look at. He stammered. He was not very good at English. He was not a great-looking guy and he drank a lot. I was not impressed by Rex Nhongo but he obviously commanded a great deal of respect in ZANLA. He was absolutely ruthless with the men under his command. During the war, before we ever met, to me he was just an untrained terrorist who had to be eliminated. We twice came close to eliminating him in Mashonaland. He was invading our country and killing.11

ZIPRA was certainly a more disciplined army than ZANLA, but the two armies were also fundamentally different, making them unsuitable for direct comparison. ZANLA was essentially a political guerrilla army while ZIPRA had a stronger conventional code, although it also had a guerrilla wing. Maclean’s contention that Nhongo was ‘an untrained terrorist’ was obviously untrue. Nhongo started out in ZIPRA, where he received regular soldier training in Bulgaria. Nhongo’s 1971 defection to ZANLA no doubt eroded some of ‘the attitude of a regular army’ he acquired in ZIPRA. Nhongo’s heavy drinking also sullied his standing when contrasted with the teetotal Masuku. The RSF’s two failed attempts to kill Nhongo during the war piqued Maclean. When Maclean looked at Nhongo he seemed to see nothing more than a prized scalp that the RSF should have taken. Dan Stannard, a former Rhodesian intelligencer who stayed on in the intelligence service after 1980, disclosed that Nhongo was given the nickname ‘Missed’ by CIO operatives during the war. ‘We tried to kill him a number of times but we missed him here and there so we stopped calling him Rex Nhongo. We called him Missed. If you came back from an operation and said “Missed”, the others knew what you meant.’12 Nhongo’s notoriety for avoiding elimination by the RSF meant

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that he was, for Maclean, a greater enemy soldier than Masuku on the JHC. Maclean believed integration of the three armies would have proceeded ‘more smoothly’ had Tongogara, not Nhongo, been ZANLA’s commander in the independence period: Tongogara befriended Walls at Lancaster House. Walls spoke very highly of Tongogara to me. Had he not been killed the amalgamation would have gone more smoothly. It would not have been politicised. Rex Nhongo was a difficult character. Very different from Tongogara … I wish Tongogara had survived and been in charge of the whole exercise. I would have felt better about the whole thing.13

Curiously, Maclean never met Tongogara. His knowledge of Tongogara was informed by Walls’ views from his time with Tongogara at the Lancaster House talks. While Walls and Maclean were united in their disapproval of Nhongo, their views on BMATT diverged. Maclean was a royalist. He thought the RF government’s 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) from Britain was imprudent, he attended the Imperial Services College in Britain and he admired the British Army.14 Walls trained at Sandhurst in Britain but he was bitter toward the British because he believed they let him down by allowing ZANU PF to come to power in 1980.15 Despite accepting to stay on as overall commander, Walls was pessimistic about Zimbabwe’s political and economic future under Mugabe’s leadership. His pessimism did little to encourage white members of the Rhodesian Army to remain in service after 1980.16 Whites steadily retired from the army, resulting in the ZNA losing many of the experienced and conventionally trained officer corps. In August 1980, Walls left his overall commander post under controversial circumstances. Walls gave a media interview, while in South Africa, in which he conveyed a negative assessment of Mugabe’s rule. Mugabe responded by prohibiting Walls from returning to Zimbabwe, proclaiming that ‘one thing is quite clear – we are not going to have disloyal characters in our society’.17 Walls’s public utterances and the rancour surrounding his departure undermined Nhongo’s confidence in former white Rhodesian soldiers and it increased the number of white Rhodesian retirees.18 After Walls’s exit, the overall commander post remained unfilled for a year and in that time Maclean projected a ‘negative and sometimes despondent attitude’, which was ‘contagious among the white officers’.19 In the absence of an overall commander, decision-making on the JHC became gridlocked. An auxiliary member (ZANLA) of the JHC in 1981 recalled that:

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[I]t was very difficult for the commanders to agree and act on things so one day [Emmerson] Mnangagwa [the minister of state in the prime minister’s office] walked in with his briefcase and without introduction just said, ‘I am now the chairman of the Joint High Command.’ I later found out it was Rex’s idea for a government minister to come in. He had discussed it with Mugabe and got approval.20

Nhongo went behind the JHC’s back and suggested to Mugabe that he appoint a ZANU PF minister to chair the JHC in order to break the sustained gridlock and to steer JHC decisions in favour of ZANLA. Consequently, relations worsened between Nhongo, Maclean and ZIPRA commanders, as pointed out by Maclean: The whole atmosphere was a little strange on the Joint High Command. We now had Mnangagwa there and other times Sydney Sekeramayi [a cabinet minister]. They both kept a watching brief … . At one meeting, Rex called me a ‘bloody liar’ after he asked for vehicles for the [ZANLA] Assembly Points and I said the army did not have any available ones. We of course had spare vehicles, but I did not want to hand them over because his people would bugger them up. I ignored Rex Nhongo but eventually released some vehicles reluctantly and in no time at all they were run into the ground or completely smashed. They just wanted this and that. Taking and destroying. We [Rhodesian Army] took care of our kit but they did not. That is another difference we had. I do not want to go into present-day Zimbabwe but look at the filth on the streets. The unpainted buildings. Look at it. The potholes. Look at ZESA [state electricity supply company]. Look at Air Zimbabwe [state airline]. Look at the farms. The whole engine of the country has been stifled, with sugar put in the petrol, because of taking and destroying.21

Maclean made a correlation between what he saw as the failure by Nhongo’s men to take care of army equipment and the ZANU PF government’s poor governance record, which became most marked from the late 1990s onwards. In contrast, according to Maclean, the Rhodesian Army took good care of its kit and likewise the white Rhodesian government had ensured commercial farms were productive, it kept the streets clean, it repaired old or damaged roads, it maintained electricity supply to the public and the state airline was fully functional. Maclean’s statements drew on long-standing white Rhodesian constructions about black Africans’ incompetence and their unpreparedness for self-governance. Maclean expanded: [T]he African had come along in tremendous strides in the less than 100 years the white man had been here [in Zimbabwe] … . They had received education and so on but still lacked practical experience. We could not just hand them everything we had built up. They would not know what to do with it. Before the white man came the African did not have the wheel. He had no written language. It was a very simple life. An agrarian life that suited them admirably. Then the white man comes along and imposes his brand of civilisation on them and straight away they see things they would like, like motor cars, telephones and Coca-Cola. They

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thought this is very nice, good and aspired to it but it does not just fall from trees. You have got to work for it.22

Maclean’s notion that ZANLA was ‘letting down standards’ in the amalgamation created even more friction between himself and Nhongo: [M]y attitude was they [ZANLA] were coming up to our [RSF] standard but they did not view it like that. So when we tried to drill them and our instructors tried to teach them, they rebelled. BMATT had to send in more and more instructors whereas our instructors were perfectly capable. It was uncomfortable but we had to accept it, as well as Rex Nhongo’s whole business about training black pilots. Well, they ran a first course of the twelve [black] candidates that got through selection and only three passed out eventually as sort of pilots. Rex Nhongo was prepared to lower standards to get them into cockpits, which is dangerous, highly dangerous. Anyhow the proof of the pudding is in the eating. I am not saying blacks cannot be pilots but these are highly qualified, properly schooled and properly selected. The whole standard was going to drop and I was fiercely protective of our standard, which was very high.23

Maclean’s statement that Nhongo’s guerrillas rebelled against white Rhodesian instructors is factually correct but not all ZANLAs resorted to mutiny. BMATT records show that whenever ZANLA guerrillas mutinied, their grievance was mistreatment by white Rhodesian trainers.24 Nhongo’s bid to rapidly Africanise the Air Force unsettled Maclean. Although Maclean stated, ‘I am not saying blacks cannot be pilots’ and made a valid point about the importance of maintaining high standards, we ought to bear in mind that ‘maintaining standards’ was a euphemism employed by some white Rhodesians to exclude blacks from certain positions during the amalgamation. At times the behaviour of some white Rhodesian officers was overtly racist, as one of Nhongo’s ZANLA officers detailed: Some of them never changed. [White] Rhodesian commanding officers at 2 Brigade near Cranbourne Park denied us blacks beds. I was at 2 Brigade with P. V. Sibanda [ZIPRA]. We were both officers and the Rhodesians said, ‘You will fall off the bed at night because you have never slept on a bed in your whole life, so you must sleep under the bed.’ The Rhodesians put our sheets, blankets and pillows under the bed. The mattress had nothing on it. At night P. V. Sibanda and myself would just take our blankets and sheets from under the bed and we would make our beds and sleep. In the morning, the Rhodesians would be shocked we had not fallen off our beds at night. They were also refusing to let us enter the Officers’ Mess. We reported our treatment to Mujuru [Nhongo]. … Mujuru believed us and he sent [Jevana] Maseko [ZIPRA soldier who was a ZNA chief of staff] to talk to the Rhodesian officers. I could not believe what the Rhodesians were saying to Maseko. They said they really believed we would fall down from the bed so they were trying to help us. Can you imagine that kind of racism? BMATT had seen

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our treatment by the Rhodesians. They never supported us against the Rhodesians.25

Still, many white Rhodesian officers, the junior ones particularly, were amenable to making a success of the integration.26 And some non-highranking white officers – Colonels Dudley Coventry and Lionel Dyck especially – forged strong bonds with Nhongo because they were firstrate conventional soldiers committed to the attainment of an effective ZNA. As said by Dyck: I just wanted to be a soldier and to do my job well. I did not care about the colour of the government. I liked Rex the first day I met him. He had charisma and was very brave. I was up in the north-east [of Rhodesia] as part of the fire force during the war. On two occasions we made operations there, we had a 100 per cent kill, except Rex got away. When peace came, I told Rex I was there when he escaped twice in the Mount Darwin area. Rex said, ‘It was you? I remember that.’ I said, ‘You are bloody lucky we did not meet a third time because then I would have killed you because us varungu [whites] believe in third time lucky, so I would have got you.’ We laughed about it.27

For Dyck, unlike Maclean, Nhongo’s escapes were not a sore point. The war was over. He and Nhongo could be light-hearted about the conflict. If anything, Nhongo and Dyck’s violent encounters in the war elicited mutual respect for each other’s soldiering. In August 1981, Mugabe dissolved the JHC and created a new command structure in which Maclean was promoted to commander of the defence forces (CDF) of Zimbabwe, in the rank of full general. Nhongo, a lieutenant general, was appointed Maclean’s successor as army commander, with Masuku as the deputy army commander, and Norman Walsh was the air marshal (see Figure 7.2). In this reorganisation, ‘black officers were given senior military command posts for the first time in the army. 8 of the 10 white commanders and deputy commanders of the army’s brigades were removed. They were replaced by black brigadiers and colonels drawn about equally from the ranks’ of ZANLA and ZIPRA.28 Fifty per cent of former white Rhodesian soldiers had already resigned from the army by August 1981 and the fact that Maclean ‘was not consulted over the brigade command changes,’29 signalled his marginalisation from the appointment-making process, while Nhongo and Masuku both nominated their preferred ZANLA and ZIPRA officers for promotion. Some white army officers voiced concern that Nhongo now had authority over them, noting that he drank too much whisky, he was ‘a strange person’ and that they would only obey his orders ‘as long as they are reasonable’.30 Nhongo was the winner in this new command structure because despite reporting to Maclean, he had day-to-day authority over army

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business and Masuku was now his direct subordinate. Maclean believed Nhongo had a hand in his elevation to the CDF post because ‘he just wanted to get rid of me’.31 However, in a moment of regret about his frosty relationship with the new army commander, Maclean described how Nhongo never forgave him for not ceremoniously handing over the leadership of the army and for withholding a mentorship offer: Rex tackled me about that when he was army commander. He said, ‘You never even showed me your old office. You never recommended good staff to me. You never offered to mentor me.’ In all honesty, I thought he just wanted to get rid of me and would not have listened to me. Looking back on it, I think I made a bad mistake. The die was cast. I could no longer influence things the same way as before but why not be pleasant about it and help the new commander? I was rude. Having approached me and said these things, I realise that if I had been pleasant and mentored him, he would have liked it. I misread it very badly. But it was also the mood. Things were very prickly between us in meetings.32

With time Maclean felt marginalised in his new CDF role, resulting in his resignation in 1982.33 The CDF post would remain vacant for a decade, leaving Nhongo as the undisputed power in the army until his retirement in 1992. Dyck’s chance encounter with Pam Maclean in 1982 underlined her husband’s feelings of marginalisation: ‘one day as I walked out of army headquarters, I bumped into Sandy’s wife, Pam. She said, “Hello, Lionel. How is your army?”. I said, “You got that wrong, it is Sandy’s army.” Pam said, “No way, Sandy tells me you are the only one who counts with these people”.’34 Nhongo’s criticism of Maclean for not recommending capable staff officers and for not offering to mentor him shows he was conscious that his experience as commander of a guerrilla army did not suffice the requirements for commander of a regular army. Despite the bad blood between them, Nhongo appreciated the regular army expertise Maclean held. Nhongo’s appreciation for expertise had historical continuities. Recall, here, Nhongo and Masuku’s colour-blind entreaty during the ceasefire to Petter-Bowyer to stay on as JHC chairperson because they had grown to trust him and valued his professional competence. It is also worth remembering the selective and pragmatic ways in which Nhongo went about protecting certain skilled ZIPA guerrillas in 1976. Regard for expertise and professionalism, however imperfect, would be a hallmark of the ZNA Nhongo attempted to mould going forward. Nhongo understood professionalism in a precise way, which is that the ZNA was to be a well-equipped and technically competent conventional army with a high degree of discipline, education, training and operational readiness.35 The roots of Nhongo’s regard for expertise and professionalism were twofold. First was Nhongo’s beginnings in ZAPU, which sent him abroad for training

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as a regular army soldier, and his attachment with FRELIMO in the early 1970s. Second was Nhongo’s admiration for the Rhodesian Army’s operational effectiveness during the liberation war and for the more sophisticated, than ZANLA’s, army administration he inherited from Maclean. In ZANLA, the aspiration to become a professional (in the way Nhongo understood it) regular army did not begin and end with Nhongo. ZANLA was more distant than ZIPRA from being a professional regular army but making this point in sweeping terms, which is often the case in many writings, is a one-dimensional interpretation of ZANLA. It conceals the fact that an aspiration to become a well-trained and disciplined army had considerable resonance among some ZANLA guerrillas. Take for example Gurdon’s account of the conduct of one ZANLA AP during the ceasefire: There was an Assembly Point with only ZANLA and some of my monitors were from the British Army Guards division. The Guards have a very disciplined routine, with their gun inspections, muster parades and all. The ZANLA chaps noticed this. Then the leader of the ZANLA there approached the Guards and said, ‘We like the way you behave and we think it would be a good idea if we could be like you.’ So, the Guards started instructing them on their ways. This actually helped the Guards run the Assembly Point. They shared their Guards’ magazines with them. One day the ZANLA chaps approached the Guards and said, ‘We have seen in one of your magazines that you do a thing called the Queen’s Parade. We think we would also like to do a Queen’s Parade.’ So, the Guards instructed them. They made colours on some sort of blanket, a guard of honour, everything, and they invited me to inspect it. It was absolutely wonderful. That Assembly Point was well behaved.36

The single matter Maclean accorded Nhongo approval was his pragmatic treatment of black soldiers who served in the RSF. These black soldiers constituted the majority in the Rhodesian Army by 1980. Many of them expected to be lynched as ‘sell-outs’ or to suffer other forms of grievous retribution from black soldiers who fought in liberation armies. In point of fact, one of the reasons Maclean stayed on in the army in 1980 was, as he put it, because of his ‘concern that those black soldiers of our army should not be abused by the new hierarchy and to a large extent they were not abused at all. They were honourably treated but they were not favoured.’37 Many black Rhodesian soldiers had a professional ethos, as understood by Nhongo, and they became an important contributory element to the making of the ZNA. A ZANLA officer stressed that ‘the white soldiers could, and most did, emigrate to South Africa but the black soldiers had nowhere to go, so most of them cooperated with us and actually volunteered a lot of army information’.38 The JHC also deployed black Rhodesian Army soldiers at decisive moments to put down

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momentous mutinies, which acutely threatened independent Zimbabwe’s domestic stability. Despite the aforementioned constructive roles played by black Rhodesian soldiers, Nhongo did not favour them, as Maclean indicated. Nhongo expected former ZANLA and ZIPRA soldiers to quickly learn the skills and traits of a professional regular army from black Rhodesian soldiers and rapidly replace them. Nhongo prevented the advancement of black Rhodesian soldiers to top command positions in the army, thereby encouraging most of them to retire on fair retirement packages. Under Nhongo’s leadership, the rank of colonel was normally the glass ceiling for former Rhodesian Army soldiers, black or white.39 The Brits’ Second Coming Palmer mainly dealt with the JHC and Zimbabwean government, in his capacity as BMATT commander. His responsibilities were more political than those of his deputy Smith, who managed the day-to-day practicalities of army amalgamation and received intelligence from BMATT officers, located at all the various training spots. Palmer regarded Nhongo as ‘uncouth but possessed of an innate animal cunning, he is anti-British and would like to see BMATT removed’.40 Smith moderated Palmer’s view that Nhongo wanted BMATT ejected from Zimbabwe: If I wanted to see Rex or Tungamirai, I just knocked on their door and they said come in. They gave me access but he [Nhongo] was much more distant and less engaged with us than Tungamirai and Masuku. On the other hand, you also knew that if BMATT made a decision, sought Rex’s approval and he blessed it, it was going to happen. That Assembly Point would be cleared tomorrow and the next process began …41

However, Smith reflected that Nhongo was sometimes difficult to work with because: ‘I would be making a sincere comment about the guerrillas and Rex would say, “Oh, of course you would say that considering who you are”.’42 ‘I had to understand where Rex was coming from because there was that suspicion of colonials, if you cannot understand that then you better get on the plane and go home’, Smith continued.43 To dispel Nhongo’s ‘suspicion of colonials’, Smith banned all BMATT officers (himself included) from travelling to South Africa until after their service in Zimbabwe had come to an end. ‘South Africa was apartheid so BMATT could not be seen by Rex going to or coming from there on weekends and still expect to be trusted.’44 Palmer’s successor BMATT commanders, who worked with Nhongo, are Major General Colin Shortis (1982–3), General Edward Jones (1983–

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4), Major General Bob Hodges (1985–7), Major General John BaskervyleGlegg (1987–9), Major General Tim Toyne-Sewell (1989–91) and Major General Garry Barnett (1991–3). I interviewed Palmer’s successors about Nhongo, except Jones and Baskervyle-Glegg who both passed away before I began my research. On the word of Baskervyle-Glegg’s predecessor (Hodges) and his successor (Toyne-Sewell), Nhongo had a poor working relationship with Baskervyle-Glegg. According to Hodges, ‘BMATT stalled a bit’ under Baskervyle-Glegg because ‘he was arrogant. He thought he was superior to the Zimbabwean Army.’45 In line with Hodges’s view, Toyne-Sewell asserted that Nhongo ‘was very sensitive. He did not tolerate white people talking down to him. My predecessor Baskervyle-Glegg was an arrogant guardsman who had no time for Rex. They had an awful relationship.’46 Nhongo also did not tolerate BMATT officers demeaning his soldiers. Hodges recalled that the ZIPRA officer Phillip Valerio Sibanda ‘mentioned to Rex that one of my BMATT officers was being patronising, possibly racist too. Rex called me to his office. I could see that he was angry. Rex said, “Your officer must go back to Britain” but I managed to convince Rex to give him one last chance because we needed his expertise.’47 Shortis, Hodges, Toyne-Sewell and Barnett all maintained that Nhongo was not anti-British and he had not sought BMATT’s ejection from Zimbabwe during their time there. Shortis, like Smith before him, found Nhongo a mostly withdrawn army commander who let him get on with the job of being BMATT commander.48 In Shortis’s view, ‘Rex was a damn good guerrilla field commander but he struggled adjusting to the demands of being a conventional army commander.’49 Shortis also recollected Nhongo’s habit of making a particularly unusual request: Rex had quite recently come back from the UK. He knocked on my door and I let him in. It was very rare for Rex to come to my office so I thought there was trouble. To my pleasant surprise, he said, ‘When I was in your country I had this fish for breakfast. I liked it very much. I do not remember its name.’ It had to be kipper fish so I said, ‘Was it kipper fish, General?’. He shouted, ‘Yes, the kipper fish! Can you get me some kipper fish from your country?’. So I imported kipper fish for him a couple of times.50

For reasons we will soon appreciate, from the seven BMATT commanders Nhongo worked with, he appears to have enjoyed the warmest and most productive relationship with Hodges. It is also my considered assessment that Hodges best understood Nhongo. Jones, Hodges’s predecessor, was a jocular character but he soberly advised Hodges before he went to Zimbabwe that Nhongo ‘was a complicated man and if the BMATT commander did not have a relationship

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with Rex, he would get nowhere. You had to get his trust. You needed Rex onside to get work done, to meet targets.’51 BMATT commanders who earned Nhongo’s trust accomplished the most. Those who failed to establish trust accomplished the least. ‘Rex would not block you. Rex just left you alone to do things and you soon found out how hard it is as a white British officer to move opinion in the army without Rex’s support. Rex basically left you to sink’, Hodges explained Nhongo’s exercise of power over BMATT commanders.52 Before Hodges went to Zimbabwe, he fortuitously met Nhongo in 1984 at the Royal College of Defence Studies (RCDS). Nhongo was in Britain to look at the country’s military training establishments. He visited the former Staff College Camberley and RCDS, then the senior Defence College with an international course membership. Hodges was at RCDS when Nhongo came to lunch one afternoon. Hodges commented that Nhongo appeared socially uncomfortable at RCDS: He did not like sitting down with senior international officers and diplomats to chit chat. He said very little. He had come from a humble background so I believe it was a class thing. But it was also about power. In Zimbabwe he was very powerful but here he was in this environment where he was having to tell himself, ‘I have to behave with this lot because when in Rome do as the Romans do.’ He did not like having to abide. So, he did some things quite deliberately, which did not annoy me but they annoyed others. His table manners were very basic and I think he did it deliberately because when I got to Zimbabwe after that, I realised his table manners were not basic at all. He had done those things at RCDS to shock us. In Zimbabwe he was well mannered whenever he had me over for dinner at his house or when we were doing something in the ZNA officers’ mess. His behaviour at RCDS was deliberate, he was saying, ‘I do not care what you think I am. You might think I am off the trees but I am a three-star general and I am on the Central Committee. I am very powerful and I am sensitive, so if I get the feeling someone, anyone here, is patronising me, watch out!’. That was his body language. At one point he looked at me and said, ‘I want a cigar.’ Rex demanded it from me. I said, ‘Fine, General, I will fetch you one.’ He was not like that with me in Zimbabwe.53

Nhongo’s conduct at RCDS, as described by Hodges, fits the pattern of behaviour he showed in his negotiation of the white gaze, class and particular ideas about generalship on the CC. Hodges took a forbearing approach in his relations with Nhongo, which is reminiscent of the stance Parker Bowles adopted to great effect in his relationship with Nhongo in the ceasefire. Hodges narrated how this forbearing approach played out in practice: I got on very well with the UK army commander [Nigel Bagnall] and he came to visit Rex once. He stayed in my house. He said to me a number of times on that visit he could not understand what Rex was saying to him. But I understood Rex because I took the time to pick up his codes and follow his stutter. The army

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commander did not have the patience for that so during his stay the head of the British Army would always turn to me and ask, ‘What is he saying?’. You needed to be patient and get to know Rex. When you got to know Rex and he got to know you and trusted you, you understood that beneath all that roughness, he was very cunning and serious when you sat down to plan things with him. He was perceptive but he never came across in that way if you only knew him superficially.54

In addition to patience, Hodges’s maxim as BMATT commander was to never talk down to anyone in the ZNA. ‘Do not even think you are superior. That is how I approached Rex and I tried to pass the same lesson to my team. Those who learnt the lesson well got on well with the Zimbabwean Army and did their job well. Those who did not learn the lesson, well, their work suffered.’55 Hodges, like his predecessor Shortis, became an importer of kipper fish for Nhongo. ‘I contacted London and said, “We need kipper fish. A box!”. They got a box and gave it to the Air Zimbabwe pilot and it was in Harare the next day and Rex thanked me for it. He loved kipper fish. He also had a lot of parties to which he would invite me.’56 Nhongo grew fond of Hodges to the extent that when Baskervyle-Glegg, his successor as BMATT commander, first arrived in 1987, Nhongo christened him ‘Hodges II’.57 It soon became clear to Nhongo that Baskervyle-Glegg and Hodges were dissimilar commanders. Baskervyle-Glegg’s successor Toyne-Sewell avoided his predecessor’s missteps. Toyne-Sewell took lessons in the Shona language, which ‘broke down barriers with Rex. I would say some things to him in Shona. He liked that. It showed him I genuinely wanted to immerse myself in the country.’58 Toyne-Sewell also remarked on Nhongo’s crude manner of speaking: We were in Gweru and it was very cold. I had taken my wife with me for an event at the Air Force base there. After it was over we went inside. Some Zimbabwean officers were warming themselves by a fireplace. Rex saw them and told them to go away because it was my wife Jenny’s turn to warm ‘her backside’. Now, he said all this quite crudely and he ushered my wife to the fire. It was said crudely but he was being a gentleman to her. My wife found it funny. She was very fond of him. He was always nice to her.59

At ZNA public events where the army commander ought to deliver a speech, Nhongo always ‘ordered one of his more articulate junior officers to speak on his behalf’, Toyne-Sewell stated.60 Nhongo was insecure about his stutter and deficient English. He was keen not to lose face. As far as Toyne-Sewell could remember, ‘The one time he did speak, he spoke for no more than two minutes.’61 On this rare occasion, Nhongo and Toyne-Sewell were at Harare’s Sheraton hotel for a reception in

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honour of the visiting British CGS, John Chapple. Nhongo gave an abrupt speech that did not suitably pay courtesy to the British CGS. Chapple turned to Toyne-Sewell and asked, ‘How do you work with a chap like him?’, to which Toyne-Sewell replied: ‘It is difficult but you adapt.’62 Barnett, Toyne-Sewell’s successor, maintained that Nhongo ‘let me just get on with my work. He wanted a more professional army and he appeared genuine about that. He would ask how things were going at the staff college. He was very interested in building up highly capable officers.’63 Nhongo’s drive, from 1985, to establish a top-class staff college for the ZNA exemplified the pursuit of his brand of professionalism. The Zimbabwe Staff College was established during Hodges’s tenure as BMATT commander. Hodges described its genesis: Rex came to my office one morning. Rex had clearly been out drinking heavily last night. Rex was very hungover. He said, ‘I want a new staff college for my officers like the one you have in Britain. Can you arrange this with your government?’. I said, ‘How long do we have to do this?’. Rex said, ‘one week’. I said, ‘It might take up to six months because we have to design and build it properly.’ Then Rex started tapping his finger on my desk and said, ‘Okay, six months but it’s only six months.’ I knew then that he really wanted his staff college.64

Recall that Hodges first met Nhongo at RCDS in late 1984, when Nhongo was in Britain touring the British Army’s various academies and installations. The calibre of British Army academies made an impression on Nhongo, hence his request months later to Hodges that he build ‘a new staff college for my officers like the one you have in Britain’. But Nhongo’s particular professional ambition for the ZNA, which incorporated discipline, was rendered impure in his discussion with Hodges by the fact that he had ‘been out drinking heavily’ and turned up for work hungover. A disciplined commander would have made the new staff college request in a sober state but Nhongo’s was an impure professionalism. Nhongo’s excessive drinking is widely acknowledged by all his colleagues, family, friends and lovers across decades. His disproportionate drinking has thus far been attributed to the synergistic link between combat and alcohol abuse. But by 1985, when Nhongo had the abovementioned encounter with Hodges whilst in an inebriated state, the war was six years behind him. Standard stereotypes about alcoholics are that these are friendless and destitute individuals leading dysfunctional lives in which they even fail to maintain a regular job. Such stereotypes are misleading. High-functioning alcoholics have the capacity to maintain eminent careers and relationships with workmates, friends and family –

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their world does not fall apart and they appear ‘normal’.65 Certainly, the successful lives high-functioning alcoholics lead result in their family, companions and workmates denying their alcoholism.66 Alcoholism is a chronic disease but Zimbabwean society rarely treats it as such, hence Nhongo was never properly diagnosed and treated by a physician. Nhongo nonetheless had the aforementioned attributes associated with high-functioning alcoholics. Despite being intoxicated, Nhongo still checked in for work and retained clarity of mind to embark on major army projects such as the setting up of the staff college, as Hodges pointed out. Many others in the army and business reported that Nhongo was often intoxicated but met his commitments regardless. We will encounter more signs that Nhongo was a high-functioning alcoholic in the pages ahead. Returning to the staff college saga, Hodges began laying building plans for the staff college. A new major hotel was already being built in Harare and almost all the city’s builders were involved in its construction. When Hodges attempted to entice some of the companies building the hotel to begin constructing the staff college, they turned down his proposal saying, ‘We will come in nine months.’67 Hodges was conscious that he agreed, with Nhongo, to complete the construction in six months, thus he decided to take liberty with the social power the name Rex Nhongo carried. ‘I said to them, “You do not have the option to come in nine months. Rex Nhongo wants his staff college built and you better get on this and finish within six months, otherwise you will have to answer to him.” The builders came and finished it in six months.’68 Nhongo was involved in the design and building process of the staff college. He personally knocked down two buildings at army headquarters, then called King George VI: Rex came to the building site and said, ‘How is it going, Hodges?’. I said, ‘We are a little behind.’ He said, ‘What are those two buildings still doing there?’. People were still in there typing. Rex jumped onto a wrecker and he drove up to the two buildings. He started operating the wrecking ball and made a hole in one of the buildings and the typists just started running out. Another time he came and said, ‘Hodges, where is the library?’. I said, ‘It should be there where the church is.’ He said, ‘So why is the church still a church?’. I said, ‘We have to deconsecrate it first.’ He said, ‘What is that?’. Rex was not a practising Christian. I said, ‘We need a vicar to deconsecrate it.’ Rex said, ‘I will get the vicar man to do it.’ It was deconsecrated that same day. The next day we were putting shelves for books. Then the American Embassy donated books and money and after a week it was looking like a library already.69

When construction of the staff college was completed, the matter of who would become its inaugural commandant arose. Hodges

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recommended a ZANLA officer, whom he thought highly of, to become the commandant. Nhongo ‘smiled and said, “It is you, Hodges, who will be the commandant”.’70 Hodges protested Nhongo’s decision, arguing that his was an advisory role and so he should not command Zimbabwean soldiers. Nhongo disagreed because he saw Hodges as a trustworthy and qualified soldier who, as commandant, would instil a high professional standard in the ZNA officer corps at the staff college. Nhongo ordered Hodges to become the commandant and went on holiday soon after. While Nhongo was holidaying, his decision to appoint Hodges drew the ire of the defence minister Ernest Kadungure and Gava (Vitalis Zvinavashe), who was acting army commander in Nhongo’s absence. Kadungure summoned Hodges to his ministerial office. ‘I hear General Nhongo has made you the commandant of the staff college’ was Kadungure’s opening remark.71 Hodges replied that this was true. ‘We will see about that because I want someone else who is a Zimbabwean to be commandant’, Kadungure concluded.72 Hodges felt in a difficult place and informed Nhongo, upon his return from holiday, of Kadungure and Gava’s opposition to him as staff college commandant: Rex sent for the minister of defence and Gava. I did not get on with Gava. I was seated with Rex in his office when they came. Rex remained seated and said, ‘Hodges, stand behind me.’ I got up and stood behind his chair. Rex was wearing an army t-shirt and the minister was in his suit. Rex, still seated with me standing behind him, said, ‘The commandant of the staff college is to be Hodges and you are to do what he tells you to do because he is my choice. That is finished.’ Then he told them to leave and they left. This was the bloody minister of defence! And just to rub it in, Rex ordered me to give the army address at the opening of the staff college when there were senior Zimbabwean officers who could have done it.73

After Hodges left Zimbabwe, Nhongo continued his practice of appointing the BMATT commander as commandant of the staff college. It was only late on in Toyne-Sewell’s time as BMATT commander that Nhongo finally overturned the tradition he began. Toyne-Sewell convinced Nhongo that he ‘could no longer be commandant. It was high time one of his men took over.’74 Nhongo reluctantly agreed to let ToyneSewell step down as commandant. Nhongo’s choice as Toyne-Sewell’s successor – Phillip Valerio Sibanda (ZIPRA) – accentuated his stable desire to maintain a particular professional standard at the staff college. Before his appointment as commandant, Sibanda attended Britain’s staff college, Camberley, which greatly influenced his outlook as a soldier.75 Toyne-Sewell regarded Sibanda as ‘intelligent’ and an ‘excellent choice’ for the commandant post.76 According to Hodges, Nhongo ‘rated Phillip and so did BMATT. As BMATT we believed Phillip was one of us.’77

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Nhongo appointed Michael Nyambuya (ZANLA), another Staff College Camberley graduate, as Sibanda’s deputy commandant. Barnett referred to Nhongo’s idiosyncrasies, some of which were meant to shock his British sensibilities: Rex took me to a national event. I was the only white man there. There was a big lunch after it and I was seated on Rex’s immediate right. A waiter placed a cooked cow’s head right in front of us. Rex went for one of its eyes. He plucked it out and chucked it in his mouth. Then he turned to me, with a cheeky grin. I was afraid he was going to offer me the other eye but he said, ‘I do not think you will want the other one so I will have it.’ ‘Thank heaven’, I said to myself.78

Toyne-Sewell underwent similar shock treatment: We went to lunch together and he said, ‘You are going to have what I am having.’ A huge glass, full of whisky, came. Then I was served bones with little bits of meat on them. Bones! The bones were salty and had been boiled for a long time. After that I was served this cooked green slimy vegetable [okra]. I was supposed to eat it with my hands but I failed because it kept sliding off my fingers. It kept sliding and sliding.79

Nhongo and Hodges both drove old state-issued Peugeot cars to work. Hodges’s Peugeot had become unreliable, experiencing frequent breakdowns, so he ordered a brand-new Ranger Rover through the British High Commission. Hodges’s parking slot at King George VI was next to Nhongo’s. Nhongo parked his Peugeot next to Hodges’s new Range Rover and admired it.80 A month later, Hodges discovered ‘a beautiful brand-new Mercedes-Benz’ parked next to his Range Rover.81 The Mercedes belonged to Nhongo. ‘Our cars were “equal” again’, tittered Hodges.82 However, sometime after that I see Rex arriving in his old Peugeot again. I said, ‘Where is your beautiful car’?. He said, ‘It is buggered.’ I said, ‘What happened?’. He said, ‘The prime minister wanted to see me late at night so I went to his house. I wanted to give him some documents. On my way there I realised I had taken the wrong documents. So I drove back to my house very fast in my new car and when I got to my gate, the sentry did not lift the pole quickly so my car went right through the pole. It ripped off part of the car’s roof.’ Rex ended up on the floor of the car. He crashed his car and lived to tell the story. Rex joked that he now had a convertible Mercedes! He did not like sentries much after that. He was leaving the barracks once and the sentry did not lift the pole quick enough for Rex to drive out. Rex shot at him from his motorcar with his revolver, just to make him alert.83

BMATT did not manage to carry out even-handed integration of the three armies. Nhongo marginalised Rhodesian Army soldiers and some of them did not conduct themselves in ways that made their fair integration in the ZNA possible. And, as we shall see in the next section, even-handed

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integration of ZIPRA in the ZNA was also unsuccessful because Nhongo sought to achieve ZANLA primacy in the ZNA and some BMATT commanders were complicit in this design. Additionally, BMATT was significantly undermined by the British government’s inability at times and reluctance in some instances to commit greater financial resources and a larger training team with experienced officers.84 According to the British government’s original plan for BMATT Zimbabwe, the mission had April 1981 as its deadline for conclusion of training and withdrawal, which was too short a duration of time for a training team of fewer than 200 to integrate three rival armies totalling more than 60,000.85 While Palmer went out of his way to encourage the British government to increase its financial support for BMATT, many cost-cutting measures were applied, which resulted in the shortening of military courses in Zimbabwe and reluctance by the British government to host, without charge, many ZNA soldiers at Britain’s premier training establishment.86 Yet the creation of stable and efficient armies, state-building, does not come cheap. Britain sought to exercise constructive political and military influence in independent Zimbabwe without committing a large amount of resources, which would have enhanced its sway.87 By the time of Zimbabwe’s independence, Britain was no longer the grand imperial power of old. In the 1980s Britain’s ability to project its power internationally was ever declining because of economic austerity under Thatcher’s prime ministership, a reality Nhongo found difficult to accept. Guthrie, then a colonel MO2 (Military Operations 2) in Britain’s Ministry of Defence, carried out the staff work for the British contingent of the CMF in 1979 and for BMATT in 1980. Guthrie visited Zimbabwe in the early 1980s with the British CGS in order to assess BMATT’s progress. He remembered that on his visit, Nhongo had ‘a row with our CGS. Rex was asking for the impossible. He wanted more equipment and training for his army. Our CGS got cross and snapped. He said, “Stop asking for all this, we are helping you a lot as it is.” Rex just collapsed, figuratively, after that.’88 Guthrie’s account of Nhongo’s pleas for more British training reinforces my earlier point that Nhongo desired a particular variety of professionalism for the ZNA. Besides direct pleas, Nhongo employed other tactics in an attempt to secure increased British military training. He played up, to the early BMATT commanders, the possibility of the Nigerian, Chinese and Egyptian armies coming in to conduct the training instead. ‘Faced with competition for influence, the British upped the ante slightly by increasing the number of liaison visits by Zimbabwean officers to British Army schools in the UK’ and they increased the size of their training team but this never matched Nhongo and BMATT commanders’ requests.89

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Figure 7.2 Rex Nhongo as ZNA commander Source: Joice Mujuru.

A Bridge Too Far Before Acland left for Britain in March 1980, he went to bid farewell to Nhongo, Masuku and Dabengwa. Nhongo was ‘perfectly pleasant’ to Acland and he was in a ‘state of euphoric arrogance’ because ZANU PF won the independence election.90 On the other hand, Acland found Dabengwa ‘depressed about the future’, while Masuku uttered: ‘I hope for the best and believe things [fair military integration] could be made to work but the way they are at the moment, we could be driven apart by ZANLA and this might even end up in another civil war with ourselves and the whites on one side and ZANLA on the other.’91 Dabengwa and Masuku’s concerns were vindicated by future events in the sense that ZIPRA and the Rhodesian Army were both marginalised in the ZNA. But there was to be no violent conflict in which ZIPRA and the RSF were on one side and ZANLA on the other. If anything vulnerable RSF tended to side with ZANLA because ZANU PF triumphed in the 1980 poll and was

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the government of the day. ‘When integration ended, ZANLA constituted 60% of the army and the officer corps, ZIPRA 30–35%, and the former Rhodesian soldiers, chiefly Africans’, were only 5 per cent.92 Within the ZNA, Nhongo bears primary responsibility for ZIPRA’s marginalisation and persecution because he was army commander. There are three main reasons Nhongo pursued ZANLA primacy in the ZNA. First, Nhongo did so because of the political directives of his party, ZANU PF. Although ZAPU and ZANU PF had negotiated as the PF at Lancaster House, with some members on both sides taking the position that the two parties should contest the independence election as a united front, after the conference ZANU PF formally announced it would run autonomously in the poll. As stated by Nkala: There were people in ZANU and ZAPU who had become friends. They wanted us to run as one front. That would have produced an ugly situation. Both sides would be able to stand up and say, ‘We are the people, we won the election, we brought independence.’ I opposed that. Some of my colleagues were very unhappy with me for doing that but I said, ‘No, we must go it alone. When the results are announced and we have won, then we will seek for each other.’ We won the election in a big way. Demonstratively we were the power. Now everyone knew where power was, so we could dictate terms.93

One of the ‘terms’ ZANU PF prescribed was complete control of the independence army and in practice this meant the ZNA was to be dominated by ZANLA.94 From 1977 Nhongo had a supportive alliance with Mugabe’s leadership. Whether the party leadership commands the gun or the gun commands the party was a highly contentious theme between 1975 and 1977. Nhongo erred on the side of the party commanding the gun, hence his role in the purge of some ZIPA elements who preferred that the gun command the party. Nhongo’s adversaries and allies affirmed his conviction in the party commanding the gun. Amongst his adversaries, Mnangagwa commented that Nhongo ‘preached’ that ‘politics should command the gun and not the other way around’.95 A ZANU PF politician supportive of Nhongo observed: Mujuru respected the political leadership. He did not have political ambition. He just wanted to be a soldier and in that sense, he was professional. He would not defy the civilian authority, President Mugabe. If he had a strong view he would argue for it so that it is heard and if it finds supporters and prevails, well and good. If his view did not find supporters he would leave it at that. He would not defy.96

The fact that Prime Minister Mugabe was also the minister of defence (1980–2) ensured effective civilian oversight in the early years of military

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integration. Nhongo’s notion of professionalism did not contest the dictum the party commands the gun. Yet one can argue that this party leads the gun relationship was a potential source of the politicisation of the army, in the precise sense that it left the army vulnerable to misuse by ZANU PF for political purposes. Acland, Walls and Maclean believed that unlike Nhongo, Tongogara would have overseen fair military integration. Dabengwa concurred with the trio: Things would have been different had Tongo been there. I worked with Tongo for three months at Lancaster House. He really wanted us to come together … . He said to me personally that he wanted unity between ZANU PF and ZAPU in the 1980 election and between the armies. We had agreed to discuss with Walls how to unite the three armies when we got to Salisbury. A proper integration of a third of the best from each side.97

In the late 1970s, Tongogara had a competitive alliance with Mugabe, which saw him sometimes take up positions at variance with Mugabe at Lancaster House, particularly on the matter of unity with ZAPU in the 1980 poll. It is these divergences at Lancaster House that gave Dabengwa, Walls and Acland, amongst others, belief Tongogara would have guaranteed fair military integration and an independence election pact between ZANU and ZAPU. However, this conviction was not supported by any detail about how, precisely, Tongogara would leverage these outcomes, so it is difficult to engage it in productive ways. We will never know the difference Tongogara might have made. The risk of being labelled a sell-out also likely influenced Nhongo’s commitment to instituting ZANLA’s primacy in the ZNA. Nhongo’s history as a former ZAPU soldier was well known. He was resented by some ZANLA commanders for having come from ZAPU and having risen rapidly in ZANLA to become a principal commander, ahead of figures who had been in ZANLA many years before him. Had Nhongo allowed ZIPRA to become the main force in the ZNA or was seen as treating ZIPRA and ZANLA as equals, he risked being accused of selling out ZANLA because of his historical association with ZAPU.98 The generality of ZANLA guerrillas harboured a sense of entitlement to dominate the post-independence military and political composition because they campaigned for ZANU PF in the countryside, resulting in their party winning the 1980 election convincingly. Because ZIPRA belonged to the losing ZAPU party, many ZANLA guerrillas believed ZIPRA soldiers ought to be subordinate members of the ZNA and there are accounts that suggest Nhongo shared this belief. One of these accounts was given by Acland, who observed that ‘when the election

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results were declared … the effect on Nhongo was extraordinary. He immediately sought to assume the role of the most important soldier in the country. A good deal of his hesitancy seemed to disappear and was replaced by a euphoric arrogance … towards Masuku and Dabengwa.’99 Many ZANLA guerrillas were also of the view they carried out more military operations in Rhodesia than ZIPRA did in the liberation war.100 Whether it holds true that ZIPRA carried out fewer incursions in Rhodesia is not relevant here. What is pertinent is that the view ZIPRA was less operational had wide resonance in ZANLA, thereby militating against ZANLA guerrillas’ acceptance of ZIPRA as an equal partner in the ZNA. In order to maintain ZANLA guerrillas’ allegiance to him, Nhongo gave them pre-eminence in the ZNA. Yet ZIPRA soldiers consistently argued they were treated unfairly in the integration process. The ZIPRA colonel Tshinga Dube evoked that at times Nhongo appeared to be ‘cracking’, because of competing pressures placed on him: He said to me, ‘The Rhodesians are stabbing me from the front. ZIPRA is stabbing me from the back. ZANLA is stabbing me from the side. I do not know what to do.’ We as ZIPRA felt we were not being treated as equals. ZANLA wanted more positions and promotions. The Rhodesians did not want both ZIPRA and ZANLA. Rex was struggling to balance these three interests. He was struggling to keep everyone happy. Remember these were all undefeated armies so nobody was ever going to be satisfied.101

Abel Mazinyane, a top figure in ZIPRA’s military intelligence during the 1970s war, echoed Dube’s characterisation of Nhongo: I think sometimes Rex was sitting on the fence. In the early 1980s I was suddenly demoted from lieutenant colonel to captain. I decided to go to Rex’s office to complain. He did not refuse to see me. He never said point blank that I deserved to be a captain. He just said, ‘There are others who have been demoted more than you.’ I said, ‘Others are others, you know what I was in ZIPRA and I know you.’ He said, ‘Okay, let me call Maseko.’ Maseko came and I was asked to leave the room. They discussed and then I was called back in. Rex said, ‘Maseko will get in touch with you about how to redress the matter.’ Maseko never contacted me and I just decided not to push it any further with Maseko and just accepted my fate.102

Nhongo’s history as a former junior ZAPU soldier had contradictory effects on his standing with ZIPRA. ‘Some [ZIPRA] did not like Rex because he left them. They did not want to recognise him because of that. But others felt because he was once with them in ZIPRA, their destinies were somehow entangled so they were prepared to work with him.’103 Despite having been the primary ZIPRA figure at the Lancaster House negotiations and in the ceasefire, Dabengwa chose not to join the ZNA after 1980. ‘I could not join the army under Rex. No. Rex was my junior

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when he was in ZIPRA so he could not be my commander in independent Zimbabwe’, Dabengwa explained.104 Mazinyane supplemented that ‘there were people in ZIPRA who even felt Rex did not deserve to be up there with [Nikita] Mangena as the leaders of ZIPA [in 1975] because Mangena trained Rex when he was in ZAPU. Really the man was just lucky in his rise in ZANLA. I mean, when he left ZAPU he was not a commander.’105 Enduring historical hierarchies therefore counted against Nhongo becoming a ZNA commander acceptable to some in ZIPRA. To fulfil his ambition to lead the independence army and to guarantee his authority as commander, Nhongo went about ensuring ZANLA became the main ZNA element. Between the Lines Akin to how Nhongo conducted the removal of some ZIPA elements in 1977, the ways in which he set up ZANLA dominance in the ZNA were often inconsistent and purges were selective. Many ZIPRAs were compelled to take early retirement from the ZNA because of mistreatment and ‘poor and erratic pay and low promotion prospects’, while others were simply discharged or physically eliminated.106 Fearing for their security, some ZIPRAs took matters in their own hands and deserted from the ZNA, which partly spawned ‘dissident’ activity in Midlands and Matabeleland provinces by deserters.107 As will be revealed in the next chapter, ZANU PF later exploited the existence of dissidents by deploying the 5 Brigade to Midlands and Matabeleland under the pretext of targeting dissidents, when in reality the brigade’s main goal was political: the targeting of ZAPU supporters and structures in both provinces. Pragmatic recognition of ZIPRA’s areas of military expertise, the strength of personal networks, the politics of ethnicity, ZIPRA soldiers’ agency and the recommendations and complicit silences of some BMATT officers are all factors that influenced the ways in which Nhongo went about establishing his and the ZANU PF’s leadership’s ultimate control of the ZNA. Let me now elaborate how each of these influences unfolded. ZANLA–ZIPRA rivalry in the ZNA expressed itself in diverse ways. For example, in late 1980 Bramall, the British CGS, visited Zimbabwe after the first integrated battalion had been formed by BMATT. In Bramall’s account: I went to inspect the battalion. A very smart officer came to me with his sword. He saluted and said, ‘Comrade General Bramall, the battalion is ready for inspection.’ I inspected it and when I went back to stand with the senior Zimbabwean officers I said to them, ‘This is the first time I have been called comrade general.’

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Dabengwa barked, ‘Who said that? It is certainly not one of my men. It would be one of Nhongo’s men. Not mine.’ Nhongo remained silent.108

The JHC was by far the most important site of competition between Nhongo and ZIPRA commanders. After Walls left his post as overall commander, Nhongo exploited the resultant power vacuum. He became increasingly assertive in JHC meetings, behaving as if he was the new supreme commander, and he did not always report some of his activities to the JHC, such as his undisclosed sending of a group of ZANLA guerrillas to Nigeria for officer course training in 1980.109 Because ZANLA was not a regular army, ZIPRA had a distinct advantage in the competition for officer posts in integrated ZNA units. To make ZANLA more competitive, Nhongo secretly arranged for guerrillas he considered as having potential to become capable ZNA officers to undergo officer training at the Nigeria Defence Academy. Brian Mwaketa, Morgan Munawa and Tabai Dhliwayo were part of the ZANLA contingent Nhongo sent to the Nigeria Defence Academy and they all later became recognised ZNA officers. Masuku quickly ‘grew tired’ of Nhongo’s schemes to bolster ZANLA in the amalgamation and ‘considered walking out of the JHC altogether’ in September 1980.110 In spite of Nhongo’s efforts, ZIPRA regularly surpassed ZANLA in the competition for officer posts. Faced with the inevitability of ZIPRA officers commanding the majority of battalions, the deputy BMATT commander Smith ‘made it a rule’ that the positions be equally distributed between ZIPRA and ZANLA ‘to reflect the political situation’, because ZANU PF governing elites would not ‘have tolerated an army where the officer corps was dominated by ZIPRA’.111 Thus, BMATT was complicit in Nhongo’s promotion and protection of ZANLA in the ZNA. Military integration is far from being a purely technical exercise. It proceeds in influential local political contexts that constrain technical considerations. According to the writer Stuart Doran, during the violent 1980s persecutions of ZAPU and ZIPRA, ‘Nhongo did rescue certain ex-ZIPRAs for apparently personal reasons.’112 Furthermore, Doran invokes Irvine Sibona, a former ZIPRA commander, who pointed out that ‘there were a number of ZIPRA officers Nhongo saved. I am giving you an example of Richard [Ngwenya], Stanford Khumalo, Phillip [Valerio Sibanda] … . But those are small-time fish who were not … harmful, who were just behind there … obscure in some battalion.’113 Nhongo’s selective approaches were consistent with how he purged only some ZIPA guerrillas, while protecting and promoting others, in 1977. However, to reduce this selectivity to simply personal reasons and that those he ‘saved’ were

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harmless ‘small-time fish’ is an incomplete understanding of Nhongo’s approaches, as well as distortion of ZIPRA history. Ngwenya and Sibanda were part of ZIPRA’s High Command and Khumalo was in the tier of commanders immediately below the High Command when the independence war ended.114 To refer to them as ‘small-time fish’ is misrepresentation of their actual status in ZIPRA. Turning to Nhongo, he did protect some ZIPRA soldiers for personal reasons and in this regard the case of Mutinhiri, General de Gaulle, stands out unquestionably. Mutinhiri, as seen in an earlier chapter, aided Nhongo’s escape after he was detained for attempting to defect from ZIPRA to ZANLA. Nhongo harboured personal gratitude towards Mutinhiri for facilitating his 1971 escape. In 1980 Mutinhiri was excluded from the army integration process, despite his having been ZIPRA’s chief of staff from 1976 to 1978 and a leading military training instructor before that.115 Mutinhiri explained his marginalisation in explicitly ethnic terms: [T]he leadership thought the Shonas were well represented from Maputo where ZANU was. So there was no need to get some more Shonas from their side, strengthening this other side. Yeah. That was the feeling. People talked about it. At integration … I was left out and that is when I approached Dabengwa to find out what the situation was and all he could tell me was: ‘Ah, well, sorry, we are full. There is no place.’116

Nonetheless, Nhongo facilitated Mutinhiri’s incorporation in the ZNA as a lieutenant colonel. During Nhongo’s time as army commander Mutinhiri became one of the directors of training in the ZNA, he commanded 2 Brigade and retired from the army as a brigadier general in 1992.117 Ethnic considerations also shaped Nhongo’s approaches. Harold Chirenda (nom de guerre: Elliot Masengo) was a member of the ZIPRA High Command from 1976 to 1978, before he was summarily removed from his chief of training post and sent to Romania as ZAPU’s chief representative there. In 1980, Chirenda was sidelined by ZIPRA leaders in the integration process but Nhongo intervened and accommodated him in the ZNA for apparently ethnic reasons: ‘Chirenda was blocked from entering the army by the ZIPRA guys because he was Shona not Ndebele. So at integration we entered him as ZANLA. Rex is the one who did that because Chirenda was Shona. He brought Chirenda to our side.’118 Chirenda was attested into the ZNA as a lieutenant colonel and later became the chief instructor at the Zimbabwe Military Academy.119 Still, Nhongo also accommodated ZIPRA soldiers because of his recognition of their military expertise and professionalism, as he understood it. Chirenda was not a run-of-the-mill ZIPRA soldier, who

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Nhongo happened to include in the ZNA solely because he was Shona. It is worth recalling that Chirenda was one of the leading military instructors when Nhongo trained in ZAPU. Nhongo knew, first-hand, of Chirenda’s capability. That Nhongo appointed Chirenda chief instructor at the Zimbabwe Military Academy points up his recognition of Chirenda’s expertise. Being Shona would, solely, not have been enough to warrant Nhongo’s action to incorporate Chirenda in the ZNA officer corps. Additionally, ZIPRA had regular army signals expertise superior to that of ZANLA. Accordingly, the head of army signals, a strategic arm of the ZNA, was Tshinga Dube, a ZIPRA colonel who, along with other ZIPRA soldiers such as Brigadier General Fakazi Mleya, dominated the signals division.120 Dube was a long-standing ZAPU cadre. He was commander of ZAPU’s Luthuli recruitment camp in 1967 and later became the head of ZIPRA’s signals department and a member of the ZIPRA High Command. There were other ZIPRAs whose expertise was valued by Nhongo. Sibanda had a reputation for intelligence, which resulted in Nhongo appointing him the first Zimbabwean commandant of the staff college, as we saw earlier. Major General Maseko took over from Mutinhiri as ZIPRA’s chief of staff in 1978. In 1981, Maseko became major general and later Nhongo’s chief of staff from 1983 to 1987.121 Doran’s notion that some ZIPRA soldiers were ‘rescued’ by Nhongo is problematic because it downplays ZIPRA’s agency. Certain ZIPRA soldiers were active participants in the purge of fellow ZIPRA combatants from the ZNA, while others exercised their agency to secure ZIPRA’s place in the ZNA. For instance, in 1983 Nhongo resolved to expel all ZIPRA officers from the ZNA, after which those who wanted to remain in the army would be permitted to apply for re-entry. Dube received news of Nhongo’s resolve and he was concerned that the directive would worsen an already unstable national security situation, in which some disaffected ZIPRA were operating as dissidents in the south of Zimbabwe. Dube quickly approached Maseko, the ZNA chief of staff. ‘This decision I am hearing about is going to create civil war, we must go and see Rex. We must reverse this’, Dube pressed Maseko.122 However, Dube added, ‘Maseko did not want to go [to see Nhongo]. His behaviour surprised me. I had to force Maseko to go with me to Rex’s office.’123 Nhongo granted Dube an audience. Maseko opened the meeting by saying, ‘Dube thinks demobilising ZIPRA officers and asking those who really want to be in the army to apply to re-join is going to create more problems.’124 Dube then made his case to Nhongo: ‘[D]issidents are one thing. We have to deal with that. But removing all ZIPRA officers from the army is another thing. We are going to create a bigger problem

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than dissidents. We are going to have a civil war. You are saying they must go home but some of them have no home. They left home long ago so when you say they must go home, which home are you talking about?’. Rex did not say anything. He pulled out a file and gave it to me. It was the minutes of the meeting where the decision had been taken. I could see from the minutes Rex had discussed it with ZIPRA commanders and our own commanders like Maseko had actually agreed to remove ZIPRA and ask them to apply. I was furious with Maseko. I said to Maseko very angrily, ‘You are chief of staff because you have troops. If your troops go away what are you chief of staff of?’. I said, ‘Rex, you cannot allow this.’125

The accounts of many ZIPRA deserters from the ZNA who became dissidents often refer to how they felt unprotected or abandoned by some of their ZAPU and ZIPRA leaders.126 Maseko’s behaviour towards Mazinyane and Dube supports the validity of claims by some ZIPRA soldiers that they felt forsaken and unprotected by certain ZIPRA higher-ups. Following Dube’s remonstration, Nhongo immediately called a meeting of all officers in the Beit Hall of King George VI army headquarters. There was complete silence and palpable tension in Beit Hall, when all the officers had gathered. Nhongo broke the muteness with a declaration that ‘we must pull together’.127 But information had trickled to some ZANLA officers present that their ZIPRA counterparts were going to be ejected from the ZNA, hence: [W]hen Rex was heard saying the opposite of this, some of the hawkish junior ZANLA commanders started shouting, ‘No, no, Rex, you are now selling out. You are wrong. ZIPRA must be totally thrown out.’ They were boiling. Some of them genuinely hated ZIPRA but others just saw an opportunity because if ZIPRA was removed they would be promoted to those positions ZIPRA would have left. Rex stood firm and the meeting decided ZIPRA must stay. If ZIPRA had been removed we would have become like Angola with civil war. I actually blame the likes of Maseko not Rex or those hawkish young ZANLA commanders. How could our own commanders agree to remove ZIPRA? I never pardoned Maseko until he died [in 2013]. I never forgave him for that. Never. I later found out that information [about the resolution to expel ZIPRA officers] had also leaked to ZIPRA on the ground and many of them were saying: ‘We are not going anywhere. We will stay and fight with our guns.’ We would have gone to war.128

A ZANLA officer who was present at the Beit Hall meeting made two additions to Dube’s account of events. First was that after Nhongo ‘asked those present if they wanted to say anything’, two officers, one ZANLA and one ZIPRA both agreed ‘we should go to war. A fight will show everyone who is boss’,129 indicating that some ZANLA and ZIPRA soldiers were equally gung-ho. Second, during the course of the explosive Beit Hall meeting Nhongo determined that Maseko and Edzai Chimonyo (a ZANLA officer) ‘visit all the integrated brigades to try to understand

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the problems’.130 Chimonyo aired views in favour of addressing ZIPRA’s grievances at the meeting, showing that not all ZANLA subordinates were in favour of discharging ZIPRA from the ZNA.131 Another ZANLA officer who attended the tempestuous meeting alleged ZIPRA’s Charles Grey and ZANLA’s Gibson Mashingaidze were the two officers who argued strongly for armed conflict and he noted that ‘the Rhodesians were happy to see us ready to finish each other. The Rhodesians just stood by.’132 This volatile 1983 meeting demonstrates how divided ZNA officers were at the time. A cohesive officer corps was non-existent and as army commander Nhongo bears a great deal of responsibility for this. Nhongo emerges as an inconsistent, indecisive even, army commander in this 1983 episode. His vacillation alienated the ‘hawkish junior commanders’ and also ZIPRA officers who were made to feel replaceable. Up to now, Norma Kriger has written the most detailed account of this 1983 near-expulsion of ZIPRA officers from the ZNA. But Kriger’s account does not mention the involvement of ZIPRA commanders like Maseko in the decision to eject ZIPRA officers and it gives sole credit to Shortis for allegedly dissuading Nhongo and Sekeramayi from implementing the resolution.133 Additionally, Doran has written in misleading ways about this 1983 episode, in order to demonstrate Nhongo’s unwavering close collaboration with his ZANU PF colleagues in the persecution of ZIPRA.134 Doran’s version of this 1983 event does not highlight some ZIPRAs involvement in the decision to discharge ZIPRA officers and it neglects to mention that in addition to Shortis’s alleged dissuasion of Sekeramayi, the BMATT commander claimed to have simultaneously influenced Nhongo against implementation of the resolution. Moreover, Doran does not underline, as Kriger does, that BMATT had ‘been pushing demobilisation for a while’.135 BMATT’s agenda-setting partly created an enabling context for the 1983 decision to finally demobilise on a massive scale, although this took a one-sided and sudden thrust. This point is not made so as to whitewash Nhongo’s role in the 1983 demobilisation incident but to present, instead, the milieu in which his decisions were located. Nhongo also emerges, in the 1983 incident, as a commander who was receptive to interventions made by his subordinates. Finally, it is clear Nhongo’s approaches to establishing ZANLA’s dominance in the ZNA were not intrinsically fanatical. These caveats matter because they objectively bring to light Nhongo’s complicated outlooks and practices towards ZIPRA and the various agendas and pressures he interacted with as ZNA commander. The caveats cast doubt on the accuracy of Doran’s homogenous portrayal of ZANLA and ZANU PF members’ views and attitudes towards ZIPRA and ZAPU respectively. In Doran’s misleading standardised representation, ZANLA and ZANU PF were

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universally and reliably working towards the destruction of ZIPRA and ZAPU. A significant influence from outside the ZNA that Nhongo interacted with was the extremely partisan national political rhetoric of the early to mid-1980s, which had as one of the leading themes some ZANU PF members’ zealous anti-ZAPU politics. In January 1981, Mugabe demoted Nkomo in government. ‘I do not see any way of taking this. There was no negotiation and I was just faced with the change. The whole thing is a complete violation of our understandings’, Nkomo complained publicly after his demotion.136 Some ZIPRA soldiers left their APs in protest of Nkomo’s demotion while others departed because they were uncertain about their security if the coalition government collapsed completely. Mugabe in due course fired Nkomo and other ZAPU ministers from government in February 1982. He alleged Nkomo was secretly stockpiling weapons as part of a plot to violently depose his government. Nkomo denied the charges, insisting ZIPRA’s arms caches were known to government and that Nhongo’s ZANLA had also cached arms. The following month, Dabengwa and Masuku were arrested for allegedly plotting a coup against the ZANU PF government. Masuku and Dabengwa were placed in detention, put on trial and acquitted in April 1983 but they were immediately rearrested before they exited the High Court. By the time of Masuku and Dabengwa’s acquittal, Nkomo, fearing for his life, had fled to Britain. Nkomo returned to Zimbabwe in August 1983, after five months of self-imposed exile. However, Dabengwa and Masuku were illegally detained until 1986. Masuku was freed in March 1986 because of ill health and died in hospital a month later from what the state claimed was cryptococcal meningitis. A ZIPRA commander narrated how the above-mentioned exceedingly partisan national political developments adversely affected ZANLA and ZIPRA relations in the ZNA: One of the leaders of the extremists was Enos Nkala. I remember him saying, ‘I am going to crush Nkomo.’ I and others in ZIPRA could not believe what he was saying. Nkala influenced many people that the only way was to destroy ZAPU. Another extremist was Ernest Kadungure. Maurice Nyagumbo was another one. The minister of security was Mnangagwa. He is the one who was digging up socalled intelligence that said: ‘ZIPRA is plotting a coup, we must act on it’, when I had never heard anything about a coup in ZIPRA. These extremists did not believe in any kind of discussion and the one thing they had in common was that they were all politicians. There were problems between ZIPRA and ZANLA but most of these were historical. When we came home for independence it was the politicians who really created problems. The soldiers on both sides responded to the divisions politicians created.137

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A shoot-out occurred in Chitungwiza between ZANLA and ZIPRA in response to Nkomo’s demotion in January 1981. In November 1980, fighting broke out between ZANLA and ZIPRA at Entumbane (Bulawayo) and Chitungwiza (a satellite town near Harare). There were fifty-five deaths, 550 injuries and 2,000 damaged homes after the Entumbane violence, which Mugabe unfairly attributed to ZIPRA, maintaining that its goal was to cause the collapse of his government.138 Nkomo countered Mugabe’s accusation by saying that inflammatory anti-ZAPU speeches made in Bulawayo immediately before the Entumbane violence by ZANU PF politicians, Nkala, Eddison Zvobgo and Nathan Shamuyarira, caused the deadly fighting.139 Dube averred it was Zvobgo’s, the minister of local government and housing, idea to bring soldiers from isolated APs to towns. ‘I told people it would be a disaster [Zvobgo’s plan]. It was the wrong environment’, Dube asserted irately.140 Dube continued: ‘Soldiers should have been kept on their own as soldiers because once they came to Entumbane and Chitungwiza they were more exposed to extreme politics. Politicians were holding rallies and soldiers would attend.’141 BMATT deputy commander Smith acknowledged that the intemperate national politics of the time was not conducive to peaceful army integration but he clarified that ‘It was BMATT’s idea to move soldiers near urban areas in little towns [like Chitungwiza and Entumbane] because their tents [in the APs] were rotting. BMATT recommended it.’142 The movement of soldiers to townships and their resultant exposure to frenzied partisanship should not be seen in isolation from the fact that immoderate partisans such as Nkala often visited ZANLA APs, making unrestrained political speeches and interacting with guerrillas.143 Doran notes that Tekere, another well-known radical anti-ZAPU politician, was a fixture in ZANLA APs to ‘promote’ his ‘ideas’.144 Doran explains Tekere’s visits in terms of internal power machinations in ZANU PF. That is, Tekere planned to replace Mugabe as the ZANU PF leader and he visited ZANLA APs in order to canvass support. What Doran misses in his analysis is that the ‘ideas’ the likes of Tekere and Nkala promoted in ZANLA APs most likely included a hard-line stance towards ZAPU and the propagation of this uncompromising anti-ZAPU position undermined the likelihood of fair and non-violent integration of the armies. In February 1981, there was a sequence of instability in various ZNA establishments that culminated in recurrence of strong violence in Entumbane between ZANLA and ZIPRA, which turned into a mutiny eventually. The 1:1 infantry battalion, an unintegrated unit that had been renamed, composed entirely of black former Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) soldiers commanded by white officers, violently put down the

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mutiny. The conflict, which came to be known as the Battle of Bulawayo, was graver than that of November 1980. There is no consensus on the total death toll, with estimates ranging from 197 to over 300 dead.145 The originator of the plan to deploy a former Rhodesian Army unit against ZIPRA mutineers has remained a mystery to date.146 Was the operational plan’s originator Nhongo, Maclean or Masuku? Doran quotes South African military intelligence reports from 1981 as saying that ‘Mugabe seems to have deliberately pushed ZIPRA to the point of open revolt. This has provided the excuse to deploy loyal forces against ZIPRA to break their military strength.’147 This assessment was challenged by Smith, who revealed that Mugabe was in fact uncertain how to respond to the mutiny and that the response plan came from BMATT.148 When the mutiny occurred, Palmer was away in Mauritius, leaving Smith as the acting BMATT commander. Nhongo, Smith and the rest of the JHC were summoned by Mugabe to his office to discuss the mutiny. When Smith arrived at Mugabe’s office, well in advance of the scheduled meeting time, Nhongo, Masuku and Maclean had not appeared. While Smith was waiting alone for the appointed time, an irresolute Mugabe suddenly called Smith into his office and asked him what he thought he should do about the mutiny. Smith responded to Mugabe in the following way: ‘[Y]ou cannot have a mutiny like this going on. You have ZIPRA people coming across the border from Zambia now and ZIPRA trucks coming down from Gwayi mine. You are going to have to use the former [Rhodesian] Army. The battalions I am integrating are work in progress. If you send any of them they will pick their side and shoot each other instead of quelling the mutiny and they are part of the problem, at the moment, that is why they are mutinying. Once more you are going to have to use the Rhodesian Air Force to show them how much proper force you have. They do not have to be involved in the operation by bombing them. They are there just to show them [the mutineers] that this firepower is there.’ When Rex [and the JHC] arrived, Mugabe dictated my plan, as if it was his, to the very last detail and ordered that this be done immediately. So when the former army went in, we also had the Air Force fly above. They flew the Lynx [which is ideal for field target shooting] and did a couple of high passes with Hunters as a show of force.149

Smith never mentioned to Nhongo that Mugabe regurgitated his recommendations. Nhongo and the JHC ‘came together effectively to deal with this problem. They gave orders and oversaw the operation and I was also very impressed by the [former] RAR who did the fighting on the ground. It was an operation that sort of brought the JHC together as military men’, Smith evaluated.150 Maclean was ‘proud’ of the former RAR’s performance in the Battle of Bulawayo, which according to him certified that the Rhodesian Army had greater conventional fighting prowess than

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ZIPRA.151 1:1 battalion’s routing of ZIPRA’s regular troops put to an end any designs some ZIPRA soldiers might have harboured about staging a conventional insurrection.152 After his pronounced involvement with the RAR in the Battle of Bulawayo, Dyck met Nhongo for the first time. Dyck described that initial encounter: Rex came to my office. Rex smoked in those days, so he started smoking. I said, ‘Sir, you do not smoke in my office.’ Rex said, ‘Okay, I will not smoke but do not ever tell me that again.’ I would like to believe two hard men had finally met. I was in some pretty hot incidents with Rex after that. He called me a number of times to say, ‘D-D-D-Dyck, c-c-c-come here.’ We would take our weapons and go together to face off some bloody dissident blokes shaking their weapons on a football field or soldiers who were misbehaving in the Assembly Areas.153

Dyck’s qualities as a candid and hardy field soldier (characteristics he shared with Nhongo), along with the fact that the 1:1 battalion showed it was an effective fighting force in the Battle of Bulawayo, endeared him to Nhongo. When a group of ZANLA performed poorly on a ZNA staff course in the mid-1980s, Nhongo ordered Dyck to ‘t-t-take them away for a month and turn them into men. F-f-f-fix them!’.154 Dyck took the poorperforming ZANLA officers to a boot camp along the Zambezi river. Nhongo and Dyck remained quite close for the duration of their time together in the ZNA and, as we shall see next, they both were involved in the violent state of affairs that progressively developed in parts of Matabeleland and Midlands provinces after the 1981 Battle of Bulawayo. Indeed by 1982, after Nkomo was sacked from government, Mugabe was speechifying in ways that pointed to a coming exceptionally violent turn. ‘Nkomo is like a cobra in a house. The only way to deal effectively with a snake is to strike and destroy its head’, Mugabe boomed at a ZANU PF rally.155

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Gods of Violence

A minority of Nhongo’s ZANLA guerrillas continued to engage in banditry in the north-east and eastern parts of Zimbabwe after independence. A small group of ZIPRA were also involved in lawlessness in the country’s southern and north-west regions. Banditry by some of Nhongo’s guerrillas was caused by indiscipline, boredom and declining living standards in the APs. These same factors also help explain certain ZIPRA soldiers’ resort to banditry, as well as the fact that some ZIPRA remained outside the APs because they were unwilling to accept a negotiated end to the war.1 The JHC deployed ZNA units in May and June 1980 to arrest ZANLA and ZIPRA outlaws, but the former were dealt with more leniently than the latter.2 ZANU PF also constructed ZIPRA banditry in dissimilar ways to that committed by ZANLA. Certain ZANU PF politicians began to mostly accuse ZIPRA solely of criminality and they labelled ZIPRA outlaws ‘dissidents’, a politically charged term rarely applied to ZANLA bandits. In 1982 some ZANU PF leaders accused ZAPU of motivating ZIPRA dissidence and they claimed ZIPRA dissidents used ‘brutal methods’ to coerce ‘ZANU PF members in Matabeleland to support them’.3 By January 1983 ZANU PF’s accusation that ZAPU was connected to ZIPRA dissidents had become more detailed: [The dissidents’] strength is within the people. ZAPU has its own organisational structures. The dissidents are working within these structures. [Joshua] Nkomo may say that the dissidents are not his but we know the dissidents are working with the people. They are being moved from chairman to chairman. These chairmen belong to ZAPU. So are the dissidents not his?4

In a particularly vitriolic parliamentary session on 3 February 1983, the minister of state in the prime minister’s office (1980–7) Mnangagwa ‘stunned’ parliamentarians with an assertion that two ZAPU MPs (Sydney Malunga and Vote Moyo) were the leaders of a ‘war council’ that directed dissident activities in Matabeleland and that another ZAPU legislator, Ackim Ndlovu, was ‘travelling all over the world seeking funds for ZIPRA dissidents’.5 Mnangagwa also announced that captured 189

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dissidents had confessed that they had met the ZAPU leader before engaging in their operations. One of the captured, Davison Ndawana Siziba, had attended meetings at [Dumiso] Dabengwa’s house where eighty dissidents were recruited and taken to . . . Nkomo’s ranch. . . . The captured dissidents had told the government that the main objective of their operations was to bring down the Government of Prime Minister Comrade Mugabe and install Comrade Nkomo into power.6

Mnangagwa did not present any credible and lawfully acquired evidence to support his assertions. Mnangagwa expected Parliament to accept his unsubstantiated claims by dint of his authority as the intelligence minister with access to information everybody else in the House of Assembly lacked. In point of fact Mnangagwa’s assertions signified ZANU PF’s reiterated practice of employing politicised intelligence against challengers and perceived threats. This reiterated practice had deep roots in the liberation war, as we saw earlier through, for example, the ZANLA Security Department’s use of contested intelligence in ‘kangaroo courts’ that controversially found the likes of Gumbo and Chocha guilty of plotting a coup. After Mnangagwa’s exposition of politicised intelligence in Parliament, the home affairs minister (1982–4) Ushewokunze immediately denounced ‘the ZAPU leadership for masquerading as leaders while taking the country for a death ride. They were frauds washing the blood of innocent people on to the hands of the government’ and Nkomo was ‘an ageing lion which became a man-eater’.7 It fell upon former Rhodesian prime minister Smith to appeal, with tongue in cheek, for constructive deliberation in Parliament. Smith apparently ‘was surprised to see that the two major parties that formed an alliance during the liberation struggle hurled insults at each other across the House’.8 On the occasion of Nkomo’s first appearance in Parliament, after his return from self-imposed exile in Britain in August 1983, he was welcomed back by Mugabe, from across the floor, with the following words: ‘the dissidents are operating in the name of the “Father of Zimbabwe” therefore we must call him the “Father of Dissidents” . . . . Now their leader is here.’9 Nkomo was often referred to as Father of Zimbabwe by his supporters because he was the most prominent nationalist protagonist in the independence struggle. Mugabe endeavoured to devalue Nkomo’s standing as Father of Zimbabwe. ZANU PF’s forceful recriminatory politics, in which ZAPU was portrayed as the director of dissidents, served as an enabling context for a series of distinct army operations in Matabeleland and Midlands between May 1980 and 1987. The operations ended when Nkomo agreed to dissolve ZAPU and join ZANU PF in what was termed the Unity Accord. This power-sharing political settlement left ZANU PF without

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any real opposition party challenger, it subordinated former ZAPU members in ZANU PF and it ended years of strong mainly state-led violence in Midlands and Matabeleland especially. ZANU PF never presented insurmountable evidence that ZAPU actually directed dissidents and that they in unison sought to overthrow the incumbent government. ‘Dissidents had neither political leaders nor political support’, although ‘the majority nonetheless maintained their loyalty to ZAPU and tenaciously clung to their liberation war identity as ZIPRA’.10 Where insuperable evidence of top-down political direction did exist was the case of Super ZAPU, which was a dissident group numbering about 100, created and controlled by the apartheid South African government and deployed to Matabeleland for destabilisation purposes from 1982 to 1984. Super ZAPU heightened insecurity in the region but it was ultimately unsuccessful in its destabilisation goal for the reason that ZIPRA dissidents refused to enter an alliance with the apartheid South African government, which would have deepened the destabilisation programme, and because ZIPRA dissidents found Super ZAPU’s operational code objectionable.11 Super ZAPU operational plans and South African involvement were further compromised by a security and defence cooperation agreement that was struck by Nhongo, Mnangagwa and Sekeramayi with the Botswana government in April 1983. A number of ZIPRA soldiers avoided persecution in the ZNA by escaping to Botswana. Some civilians and dissidents in Matabeleland also fled to Botswana as refugees to avoid government forces that were ruthlessly hunting down dissidents in the northern part of the province. Super ZAPU attempted to turn Zimbabwean refugees in Botswana camps such as Dukwe into recruits and it sought cover among the refugees, as its members went to and came from destabilisation operations in Matabeleland. The April 1983 agreement with Botswana led to the phased deportation of some Super ZAPU members to Zimbabwe and the unearthing of alleged Super ZAPU arms stockpiles in Botswana. These developments resulted in disclosures that effectively compromised Super ZAPU’s destabilisation agenda. Having set out the milieu in which the dissident issue in Matabeleland and Midlands was situated, I now turn to a discussion of Nhongo’s role regarding the creation and combating of dissidents. Path to Ferocity Army desertions and the dissident problem in Matabeleland and Midlands were caused by a complex combination of factors: the immoderate anti-ZAPU politics of certain ZANU PF members; long-standing genuine mistrust, hatred and rivalry between ZIPRA and ZANLA in

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some integrated ZNA battalions that was deepened by the violent 1981 Entumbane clashes; and the marginalisation and persecution of ZIPRA in the ZNA that occurred under Nhongo’s watch. I reproduce four accounts by four ZIPRA deserters turned dissidents for an appreciation of only some of the conditions that caused their desertion from Nhongo’s ZNA: Our party [ZAPU] put us into this integration to form the National Army. Because of problems we encountered there we left. We were made responsible though it was the party that put us there. We would not have left if there were no problems. At the same time, these people [ZANU PF] blamed Josh [Nkomo], that he was responsible for our activities [as dissidents]. [But] we were sent by the situation [in the ZNA].12 I started being called a dissident, though I was still in the ZNA and had not deserted. The situation escalated . . . . When going into [the officers’] mess, you would find it was written Dumbuguru [Big Tummy], insulting Nkomo [who had a very large stomach]. Our [ZANLA] comrades were doing that. So now it is not everybody who will be patient and bend. You might lose your head, you might draw a cartoon of Mugabe, call him four-eyes [because he wore glasses], or write opasi [from the ZANU PF slogan ‘Pasi ne . . . ’, or ‘Down with . . . ’] meaning ZANLA. When this was happening, people might go on leave, and return by train, and there would be fights on trains [between ZIPRA and ZANLA], and people would be thrown out of windows.13 During the time we were in the army we felt threatened, but it was still better than when we were demobilised. When we were demobilised it was even worse. CIO could come at night and pick up somebody that was an ex-soldier and disappear with him and the person disappears forever.14 During the time when the disturbances were continuing, people were thrown out of the trains and many murders were going on [in the ZNA]. We reported all matters to the officer commanding. Even that could not help us. We were sometimes taken by the police even if we were within the army, taken to be murdered. The Battalion commanders knew all that was happening but they could not say anything. They were just quiet.15

In addition to the aforementioned drivers of desertions and the growth of dissidents, some ZANLA officers alleged that ZIPRA’s internal divisions resulted in a minority of its guerrilla elements turning to dissidence. ZIPRA was not exclusively a regular army. It contained a guerrilla wing, part of which developed grievance with some ZIPRA leaders who it claimed favoured ZIPRA regulars for integration in the ZNA. A ZANLA officer involved in operations against dissidents in Matabeleland elaborated the point: Shiri [inaugural commander of 5 Brigade, tasked with ‘hunting dissidents’] went back to Mnangagwa with messages from dissidents that they wanted to sit down

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and discuss their grievances and one of these grievances was that some of the dissidents were unhappy with their ZIPRA commanders. They were saying their commanders like Masuku and Maseko were not fighters. They had never been to the front to fight [the RSF] but they were the ones who were up there after independence as the commanders, deciding who in ZIPRA joined the army. I attended a meeting with Shiri and Mnangagwa where Shiri said this after coming back from Matabeleland. The dissidents were saying, ‘We are guerrillas and we were sidelined from the army by these commanders who never fought. They have pushed conventional soldiers into the army at our expense.’16

Mutinhiri was excluded from entry to the ZNA by some ZIPRA leaders, as we saw in the last chapter. He did not become a dissident but he too questioned the soldiering credentials of some ZIPRA leaders who managed the ceasefire and entered the JHC as commanders at independence. Mutinhiri was ZIPRA’s chief of general staff and deputy to the ZIPRA commander Nikita Mangena from 1976 to 1978. Following Mangena’s unexpected death in 1978, Nkomo appointed Masuku over Mutinhiri as the new ZIPRA commander.17 Mutinhiri observed that Mangena had ‘distinguished himself during [military] training in Algeria. He was really outstanding as a military leader. He got a present from the then President of Algeria for being the best student. So he was someone who knew his stuff.’18 On the other hand, Mutinhiri described Masuku as ‘a very good political leader’.19 Additionally Mutinhiri was critical of the fact that when the Lancaster House talks and ceasefire occurred, ‘Dabengwa became the head [of ZIPRA] . . . although he is not a military man.’20 It is useful to recall, here, Parker Bowles’s surprise when he ‘went to unhappy ZIPRA APs with Dumiso and the ZIPRA said to Dumiso, “Who are you? We do not know who you are” ’,21 because Dabengwa was an intelligence czar quintessentially. Tungamirai was the acting ZNA commander from the end of May to August 1982, while Nhongo was in Pakistan for an orientation course with the Pakistani Army. The writer Stuart Doran notes that as acting ZNA commander, Tungamirai ‘enthusiastically pushed what amounted to an accelerated policy of de-Ziprafication and concomitant Zanlafication [of the ZNA]. This enthusiasm saw Tungamirai take a direct role in the targeting and punishment of “dissident” elements within the officer corps.’22 Doran does not explain why there was a difference in approaches between Nhongo and Tungamirai. The shift in approaches highlighted by Doran reinforces my earlier points that Nhongo’s endeavours to make ZANLA the primary force in the ZNA were not as fanatical as those of some of his ZANLA and ZANU PF colleagues, they were accommodating at times, they recognised ZIPRA’s conventional expertise and they were shaped by his historical

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relationships with some ZIPRA soldiers. Tungamirai, however, was never a ZIPRA soldier, so he is unlikely to have encountered some of the particular influences Nhongo contended with. Besides, from 1977 Tungamirai was ZANLA’s chief political commissar and the deputy political commissar on the party’s Central Committee, whereas Nhongo was never a political commissar. Political commissars were the foremost propagators of anti-ZIPRA rhetoric and slogans among ZANLA guerrillas in the 1970s, hence the zeal with which Tungamirai went about the ‘de-Ziprafication’ of the ZNA in 1982 was likely because of his occupational role as a political commissar. One ZANLA officer described the durable effects of the political commissars’ wartime anti-ZIPRA and ZAPU teachings: Most of us in ZANLA had no respect for Nkomo whatsoever. Pasi na [down with] Nkomo, pasi ne [down with] ZAPU were slogans that we were still chanting after independence. People had been indoctrinated. Even myself, I did not like Nkomo because I was given the wrong impression when I was young and joined ZANLA. For years and years, we were told by the political commissars to hate and distrust ZIPRA. They would tell us that ZIPRA is doing no fighting in the liberation war so that ZANLA does most of the fighting and then when ZANLA has defeated the Rhodesians, ZIPRA will come in feeling fresh and finish ZANLA off and be the winners of independence. We were told these things for years. You cannot just forget them.23

Another ZANLA officer looked back ruefully on the 1980s violence: ‘Today I have absolutely no problems with the ZIPRA guys. If I think about those old days, I cannot understand why we did not like ZIPRA to that extent. I cannot understand what we were fighting about.’24 Irrespective of Tungamirai’s idiosyncrasies and contrasting approaches, his actions had the ZANU PF leadership’s authorisation or else they would have been reversed; the party continued to command the gun. Two other significant developments occurred while Nhongo was in Pakistan. First the 5 Brigade began its gradual deployment from the Nyanga training base in Manicaland province to Gweru (Midlands province),25 and second a ZNA Task Force established by Tungamirai and commanded by Dyck was deployed to Matabeleland to counter growing dissident activity.26 While the above-mentioned happenings in and outside the ZNA gathered pace, Nhongo struggled to adapt to life in Pakistan. Because Nhongo only had experience running a guerrilla army, Mugabe decided that he wanted his army commander to acquire experience in how to manage a conventional force.27 According to Shortis, ‘Mugabe struck an agreement with the Pakistani government for Rex to go over there for a year for practical training in running a very large regular army.’28 The Pakistani

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Army is organised in similar ways to the British Army, which is what the ZNA was being modelled on, so the experience was appropriate for Nhongo. But Nhongo was not keen on being away for a year in Pakistan, Shortis remembered. Nhongo did not doubt the competencies of the Pakistani Army. His reluctance was because he felt Pakistan’s culture was markedly different to what he was accustomed to. As a result, Nhongo discussed with Shortis the possibility of him acquiring practical experience with the British Army instead. However, the British government would not allow a non-British citizen to take command of any part of its army.29 With the British Army option dead in the water, Nhongo still attempted to resist going to Pakistan, but as Shortis narrated: Mugabe said, ‘I am prime minister, you are going to Pakistan.’ When Rex got there he soon became unhappy. Ramadan [the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, in which fasting and reflection are practised from dawn to sunset for a month] started. Rex did not like the idea of Ramadan. He also could not access his beloved whisky there so I once arranged for one of my officers to travel to Pakistan with whisky hidden in a cricket bag! The Pakistanis thought he was taking delivery of cricket gear. Rex did not last even six months there. He did three months. He hated life in Pakistan.30

The Pakistani Air Marshal Azim Daudpota gave an additional reason for Nhongo’s misery in Pakistan: I happened to be with General Aslam Beg, the vice chief of army staff. He mentioned that General Nhongo did not have money . . . . It was when I went to Zimbabwe [in 1983 to run the air force as part of a bilateral agreement] that I learnt about the shortage of foreign exchange [which explained Nhongo’s lack of money in Pakistan]. On my return [to Pakistan] in 1986 I appraised General Aslam Beg about the problem. He [Beg] was a thorough professional and would have passed on all the required information and shown him our Army’s strengths and weaknesses.31

Nhongo’s premature return from Pakistan displeased Mugabe.32 The timing and length of the orientation course were strange. At the time of Nhongo’s departure for Pakistan, political tensions between ZANU PF and ZAPU were running high. Mugabe had fired Nkomo from government in February 1982 and in the next month Dabengwa and Masuku were arrested on unproven charges they were plotting a coup. In June, small armed groups of ZIPRA soldiers serving in the ZNA conducted failed attacks on the residences of Mugabe and Nkala in Harare, thereby increasing hostility between ZANU PF and ZAPU. Furthermore, these soldiers’ botched raids could only have worsened ZANLA–ZIPRA relations in a ZNA already lacking cohesion. In July, South African operatives

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set off explosives at the Zimbabwe Air Force’s Thornhill base in Gweru, as part of their country’s destabilisation plan in Zimbabwe. Thirteen aircrafts were damaged or destroyed. Amongst the damaged equipment were three expensive and recently delivered brand new British Aerospace Hawk jet trainer aircraft. That same month, six Western tourists were kidnapped, seemingly by dissidents, in Matabeleland, drawing international diplomatic and media focus on Zimbabwe. Nhongo surely followed from Pakistan the unfolding unpredictable security situation back home. And yet despite the symptoms of escalating domestic instability, Mugabe still saw fit to send his top army commander away to Pakistan for a year. Nhongo likely recognised that he was losing some of his significance to Mugabe. After Tongogara’s sudden death, Mugabe relied immensely on Nhongo to maintain control of ZANLA during the ceasefire and in BMATT’s early integration of the three armies. It is impossible to envisage Mugabe sending Nhongo away in those crucial phases of the independence transition and early ZNA integration. Was being sent to Pakistan in mid-1982 a sign that Nhongo’s indispensability to Mugabe’s rule had begun to decline? BMATT, at least, argued Mugabe was uncomfortable with Nhongo. A BMATT situation report from 1982 noted that ‘Mugabe would no doubt have preferred someone more civilised as senior ZANLA General, but Nhongo was too influential to be removed.’33 Use of the term ‘civilised’ and its antonym ‘uncivilised’ has colonial and racist connotations in the Zimbabwean context, given that British colonialists justified colonialism in terms of a civilising mission. Thus Mugabe’s emergent discomfort with Nhongo is unlikely to have been because Nhongo was ‘uncivilised’. But there was certainly a suggestion that something was becoming amiss in Nhongo’s relationship with Mugabe at the time. The 1982 Pakistan affair did not break the supportive alliance between Nhongo and Mugabe but it was one of the early signs of emerging strain in the partnership. Gukurahundi The period 1983–4 witnessed the deployment of North Korean trained troops (5 Brigade) to Matabeleland North (1983) and then Matabeleland South (1984), as well as parts of the Midlands, in what is known as the Gukurahundi.34 5 Brigade was trained and operated outside the regular ZNA. Its operations were, ostensibly, to eliminate dissidents but they had a decidedly political thrust because it targeted ZAPU supporters and party structures.35 From 1983 to 1984, 5 Brigade, supported by CIO and the Police Internal Security Intelligence (PISI), employed strong violence in an attempt to make ZAPU supporters in Matabeleland

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transfer their support to ZANU PF. But as the result of the July 1985 election showed, violence did not break Matabeleland’s support for ZAPU. If anything, the campaign of violence rolled out by 5 Brigade, CIO and PISI in Matabeleland only hardened ZAPU’s support base. ZANU PF increased its total number of seats in the House of Assembly from fifty-seven to sixty-four, while ZAPU’s share declined from twenty to fifteen representatives in the 1985 election. However, ZAPU won all fifteen parliamentary seats available in Matabeleland and it marginally enhanced its share of the poll there.36 ZAPU’s strong showing in Matabeleland underlined the limits of Gukurahundi violence. There is no consensus on just how many civilian lives were lost in the 5 Brigade operations, largely because the ZANU PF government, which has ruled Zimbabwe continuously since 1980, has not declassified early 1980s state intelligence and 5 Brigade situation reports. And although the Chihambakwe Commission of Inquiry was set up towards the end of 1983 to investigate the killings in Matabeleland, its findings were never made public. Suppression of the Chihambakwe Commission’s report was a replay of how the ZANU PF government blocked release of The Dumbutshena Report on the 1981 violence in Entumbane, Connemara and Ntabazinduna, because it viewed it as unfavourable. Nkomo estimated that 20,000 civilians were killed by 5 Brigade in 1983.37 But a report compiled by the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe (CCJPZ), which is not based on findings from all zones affected by 5 Brigade operations and which makes cautious estimations, states that in Matabeleland ‘the figure for the dead and missing is not less than 3000’.38 The CCJPZ report does not rule out that ‘the real figure for the dead could be possibly double 3000, or even higher’.39 Within the Zimbabwean state, estimations of the total fatalities in Matabeleland and Midlands vary greatly. For example, Doran cites an approximation made by the CIO intelligencer Stannard that the death toll was 30–50,000.40 Stannard made this estimation in 2008. When I interviewed Stannard in 2014 he revised his 2008 figures downward: ‘13,000 to 15,000 dead in Gukurahundi’, he approximated.41 It is safe to say, as the CCJPZ report correctly concludes, that ‘only further research will resolve the issue’ of the Gukurahundi total death toll.42 One more apposite reflection made by the CCJPZ is that ‘the number of dead is always the issue in which there is the most interest, wherever in the world human rights offences are perpetrated. While such a focus is understandable, it should not be considered the only category of offence to give an indication of the scale of a period of disturbance.’43 During the Gukurahundi many primary wage earners were killed and sources of economic livelihood destroyed, resulting in economic difficulties for

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surviving family members. Numerous civilians were raped, tortured, beaten, verbally abused, starved during food embargoes, harassed, subjected to long curfews and others were kept in inhumane detention camps, of which Bhalagwe camp in Matabeleland South and St Pauls in Matabeleland North were the most notorious. These grave and wideranging human rights violations led to physical and psychological injuries, some of them life-long, and economic losses for victims in Midlands and Matabeleland. Before 5 Brigade deployed to Matabeleland North in January 1983, various ZNA units, the Police Support Unit (PSU) and CIO were already targeting dissidents in the province. Some of the operations by these three bodies continued until July 1987. Hence ‘there were two overlapping “conflicts”’: one pitted assorted ZNA units, CIO and PSU against dissidents and the second one saw CIO, 5 Brigade, PISI and the ZANU PFaligned People’s Militia mainly descend on ‘those who were thought to support ZAPU’, that is civilians in ZAPU rural strongholds and urban centres.44 Approximately 90 per cent of civilian killings were committed by 5 Brigade, CIO and PISI. ZNA units were guilty of the remainder of civilian killings and they also carried out beatings, torture and rape, amongst other human rights abuses. ZIPRA dissidents, too, perpetrated grim human rights violations but these were not as high as those committed by ZNA, PSU, CIO, PISI and 5 Brigade because ‘dissidents were probably no more than 400 at their height. Their attrition rate was very high, with approximately 75% being killed, captured, injured or fleeing to Botswana.’45 Moreover, CIO and 5 Brigade sometimes posed as dissidents and committed human rights violations that included murders.46 The CCJPZ report indicates, ‘government figures would place the murdered [by dissidents] in the region of around 700 to 800. But in areas where fairly exhaustive research has now taken place, these high casualty claims are not borne out.’47 Thus the precise number of civilians killed by actual dissidents is contested but even the uppermost figure is still much less than that for those believed to have been killed by 5 Brigade. Now that we have an appreciation of the nature of human rights violations involved and the unresolved issue of the total death toll, the significant question of Nhongo’s culpability in these human rights abuses requires our attention. I interviewed various figures who were participants in or were close to the 1980s operations in Matabeleland and Midlands. What came to light in my interviews is that Nhongo was fully in charge of all ZNA operations in Matabeleland and Midlands from the time that he became army commander in August 1981, with the exception of the period May to August 1982 because he was away in Pakistan. In terms of the chain of command, Nhongo bears ultimate responsibility for all

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human rights violations committed by the various ZNA units deployed to Matabeleland and Midlands. However, my interviewees, who included two 5 Brigade commanders, maintained that 5 Brigade reported directly to Mugabe and they told of struggles for control of 5 Brigade operations between the Home Affairs and Intelligence Ministries. North Korean instructors’ possible arrival to conduct military training in Zimbabwe was first announced to the JHC by Mnangagwa in January 1981.48 Mnangagwa stated that Mugabe had been offered military training and equipment for an armoured brigade free of charge by North Korea. The JHC expressed collective astonishment at Mnangagwa’s announcement except for Nhongo, indicating that he had been aware of the North Korean offer before the minister’s declaration.49 The BMATT commander Palmer met Mugabe on 6 February 1981 and he was told that ‘the North Koreans had offered military assistance when Mugabe visited North Korea the previous year. Specifically, Kim Il Sung offered to help equip and train a special field brigade for “counter coup and counter revolutionary” purposes.’50 In May 1981, Nhongo disclosed to Palmer ‘that the North Koreans were ready to ship the equipment necessary for a 5000-man heavy brigade that would not be a part of the ZNA chain of command. Instead, this unit would report directly to’ Mugabe.51 The Deputy BMATT commander Smith was privy to the 5 Brigade selection process. According to him, 5 Brigade troops were selected from an integrated ZNA battalion and from some remaining unintegrated guerrillas in the APs. ‘We were down to about 4 APs when the men were drawn and most of them were clustered near the Mozambican side. Foxtrot [AP] certainly provided many of the people for 5 Brigade.’52 Foxtrot was the most unmanageable AP during the ceasefire. That a sizeable contribution of 5 Brigade came from Foxtrot did not bode well for 5 Brigade’s chances of a high standard of discipline. Smith noted that Nhongo was aware of the 5 Brigade selection procedure and he mentioned ZIPRA’s involvement in the choosing of the ZIPRA contingent of 5 Brigade: [W]hen I was running the integration, I would move around with two soldiers. One from ZIPRA and one from ZANLA. We would go around the APs and then these two soldiers would select soldiers who would make up a battalion. These two soldiers – the ZIPRA one was called Cephas – are the ones who selected the men that went into 5 Brigade. I witnessed this. 5 Brigade was 50 per cent ZANLA, 50 per cent ZIPRA. There was no political interference in the selection. The selection was done in the same way it had been done for other brigades. Political direction entered during training and what 5 Brigade was asked to do in Matabeleland.53

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5 Brigade’s composition gradually changed during training. Many ZIPRAs were persecuted, demobilised and transferred from 5 Brigade such that ‘by the time we reach August 1982 and 5 Brigade is being deployed to Matabeleland and Midlands it is pretty much mostly Shona ZANLAs’, Smith observed.54 ZIPRA soldiers were pushed out of 5 Brigade because they were equated with ZAPU and therefore seen as less likely to carry out pro-ZANU PF political activities in Midlands and Matabeleland. Smith left his post as BMATT deputy commander at the end of 1982. He maintained that ‘while I was in Zimbabwe, 5 Brigade was being directed from Mnangagwa’s office, not by Rex. That is the intelligence we had. By the time I was leaving it was clear to us that 5 Brigade had a different purpose to the rest of the army.’55 Shortis stated, ‘From what we knew Rex did not have direct control of 5 Brigade. It was Mugabe’s brigade but that did not stop me from asking Rex about 5 Brigade atrocities. Rex said he knew what 5 Brigade was doing but he was not in charge of it.’56 A top civil servant in the prime minister’s office claimed to have probed Nhongo during Gukurahundi about state operations in Matabeleland and Midlands, in order to gain profounder understanding of goings-on there. ‘Mujuru said to me the Matabeleland operations were very secretive and were being run by State Security. He said he knew what was going on and he was not happy about the brutality of some of the operations and made his views known to the prime minister.’57 Felix Muchemwa commanded the Presidential Guard’s operations against dissidents in Matabeleland in 1987. He too claimed to have discussed 5 Brigade’s activities with Nhongo. As said by Muchemwa, ‘Rex told me 5 Brigade reported to Mugabe but as state security minister Mnangagwa had overall day-to-day control of all operations in Matabeleland and Mnangagwa reported to Mugabe.’58 I asked Nkala about who controlled 5 Brigade operations. Nkala maintained that Mugabe and Mnangagwa were responsible for 5 Brigade and he refused to discuss the contribution of his intemperate enmity politics to the 1980s violence.59 Emile Munemo was the deputy commander of 5 Brigade from December 1982 to April 1983, after which he became the 5 Brigade commander from April to July 1983. In 1996 Munemo told the researcher Katri Yap that 5 Brigade ‘bypassed intermediate army levels observed by other units – answering directly to Prime Minister Mugabe’.60 When I interviewed Munemo in 2013 he commented that: ‘We [5 Brigade commanders] used to drive to Harare on weekends to Mugabe’s house, so that we could brief him on operations. When others in the army [ZNA] saw this, they started asking, “Who are these guys who go straight to the prime minister?”. They started to fear us.’61

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A ZANLA officer catered for the North Korean training team’s needs upon its arrival in Zimbabwe. As he remembered: When they arrived from Korea I took them to a meeting with the prime minister at his residence. Rex was not at that meeting. I then put them on Express Motorways buses from Harare to Nyanga. We stayed at Troutbeck Hotel for about six months when they were still setting up in Nyanga. The Koreans refused to be based near Harare. They wanted an isolated area. It was their choice, so we gave them Nyanga.62

Munemo alleged that 5 Brigade was trained to be a conventional force ready to wage modern warfare against external aggressor regular armies, hence why the North Koreans brought with them seven T54 tanks, artillery and armoured personnel carriers.63 When 5 Brigade finished its training the troops’ ‘perception of their task was not to fight “a small guerrilla force” but “being ready for big fire fights”, representing national military power’, Munemo elaborated.64 Consequently, when 5 Brigade was told by Mugabe that it would be targeting dissidents in Matabeleland the soldiers considered this ‘a big bore’, Munemo concluded.65 Munemo’s representation of 5 Brigade as a sophisticated conventional force was disputed by Smith, who pointed out that ‘once they [5 Brigade] were deployed [to Gweru, Ntabazinduna near Bulawayo and Gokwe] all sorts of administrative problems arose, so I got people coming to see me to say please come and teach them how to administer themselves, to do logistics’.66 Shortis concurred with Smith’s account of the dysfunctional nature of the brigade, noting: ‘I had a chat with Shiri about the [North Korean] training when he had been removed as the 5 Brigade commander. Even Shiri admitted the brigade was poorly trained.’67 5 Brigade exhibited indiscipline early on in its existence. For instance, in December 1981, a group of foreign tourists unintentionally drove into a prohibited zone that was part of 5 Brigade’s training ground. The tourists were physically assaulted by 5 Brigade soldiers and were it not for Shiri’s mediation the foreign visitors would likely have come off even worse.68 And in July 1982, three British tourists were shot dead by 5 Brigade soldiers in Nyanga.69 Such uncontrolled behaviour before its operations began in earnest in January 1983 was a sign of worse occurrences to come. Additionally, 5 Brigade suffered from lack of cohesion in its officer corps because of various divisions during training. For example, one 5 Brigade battalion commander (ZANLA) commented: I was sent there [to 5 Brigade] as a pacifier between Shiri and a ZIPRA soldier whose name I cannot remember. This ZIPRA man was the deputy [commander of 5 Brigade]. He looked like a coloured [mixed race individual]. This ZIPRA and

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Shiri were having clashes about who is the boss. Shiri was the commander but this ZIPRA was always challenging him. I was sent there as a peacemaker.70

Another ZNA officer (henceforth referred to as Officer L) was dispatched on various ‘special prime minister’s assignments’ concerning 5 Brigade.71 He claimed that Nhongo was ‘unwilling to be involved in 5 Brigade when it started. He always said to me 5 Brigade inyaya yako na [it is your matter with the] prime minister.’72 Officer L shed light on the politics of controlling 5 Brigade in the prime minister’s office: After Nkomo was fired, the minister of home affairs was Ushewokunze then Nkala and state security was Mnangagwa. I was present at meetings between these ministers and Mugabe. Mugabe was under severe pressure from his ministers. There was a tug of war for control of 5 Brigade. The minister of home affairs was saying I am in charge of the police. The dissidents are a home affairs issue so the police must handle it. He was saying his police guy Senior Assistant Commissioner Amelio Svaruka must handle it and report directly to him and because 5 Brigade would play a supportive role to the police, 5 Brigade must report directly to the minister of home affairs. State security was putting pressure on Mugabe and calling 5 Brigade the special forces. That was the first time I heard 5 Brigade being called special forces. Mnangagwa was saying special forces must be under the prime minister’s direct command, from your office. This tug of war was happening at the point of [5 Brigade’s] deployment. When they were about to be deployed they were given military police uniforms, red berets and red belts because they were in support of civilian police. This happened at the police staff college. Amelio Svaruka and the director of military police, a Colonel Mhaka, are the ones who did this. I was there against the advice of Mujuru. He advised me not to go there but I defied him.73

Infighting in the prime minister’s office resulted in 5 Brigade’s disorganised deployment. ‘5 Brigade did not even have barracks. I had to take over an abandoned school called Guinea Fowl as temporary accommodation and headquarters’, Officer L testified.74 He added that 5 Brigade had no vehicles for transportation, thus he commandeered old trucks and cars that were left behind by South African soldiers who had operated inside Rhodesia in support of the RSF during the 1970s war. Disorder came to pass when 5 Brigade was eventually deployed to Matabeleland. I reproduce, at length, Officer L’s forthright account of the violent ‘chaos’ unleashed by 5 Brigade: Home Affairs would go to 5 Brigade soldiers with orders from the minister. The next day state security comes with orders from Mnangagwa direct to the soldiers. It was confusing for Svaruka and Shiri [Svaruka served as Shiri’s offsider when 5 Brigade was carrying out its operations]. There was chaos. Things slid badly, so badly. Shiri lost control of his command post. When this was happening [Constantino] Chiwenga was in charge of [ZNA] 1 Brigade [in Matabeleland] and was saying since 5 Brigade is chaotic let me fully get in there now and sort

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this mess out. I cannot have chaos in my province. 5 Brigade was out of control. They were doing as they wanted. They were just beating and killing people randomly. Shiri contacted me to say he wanted to pull out from Matabeleland without a directive from the prime minister. I told him he would be charged with treason if he did that. So I went down there with Felix Muchemwa as my army doctor. I addressed 5 Brigade and told them to behave. I said, ‘How dare you threaten to shoot Shiri?’. Many of them were uneducated. I knew one of them personally. His name was Watson. I said, ‘Watson, you cannot even write your name. You are not an elite force. You were only picked for your revolutionary commitment. You failed to enter the integration army but because we have a duty to our fellow comrades we decided to look after you by putting you in 5 Brigade. Who do you think you are? Until you change there will be no more food rations, vehicles, nothing for you.’ . . . I went back to Harare and blocked all supplies to them as punishment.75

Officer L’s account of 5 Brigade’s behaviour goes against Munemo’s depiction of 5 Brigade as an advanced regular force trained in the art of modern warfare. The brigade’s poor discipline was as much a reflection of the inadequate standard of North Korean regular army instruction as it was a manifestation of the inferior quality of some of its recruits. 5 Brigade’s dysfunctional nature was also a consequence of uncoordinated planning and direction from the prime minister’s office. The brigade was deployed without proper logistical support. It received competing, contradictory and morally reprehensible instructions from the Home Affairs and State Security Ministries, which were duelling for control of 5 Brigade. The above discussion about 5 Brigade’s dysfunctionality is not an attempt to downplay the premeditated nature of the brigade’s violence against ZAPU structures and supporters. 5 Brigade engaged in zealous violence against civilians in order to fulfil ZANU PF’s goal to politically destroy ZAPU. 5 Brigade was dysfunctional as a regular brigade but it did accomplish the objectives it was deployed for, namely terrorising and killing civilians that supported ZAPU, eradicating ZAPU structures and staging large pungwes during which civilians were made to chant ZANU PF slogans and songs in Shona. There was method in 5 Brigade’s chaos. 5 Brigade’s raison d’être was political, as Mugabe explicitly stated in 1983: [5 Brigade] were trained by the Koreans because we wanted one arm of the army to have a political orientation which stems from our philosophy as ZANU PF. So when we deployed them in parts of Matabeleland North, their approach was not just to use the gun. It was also political, as was their approach during the war. You do not just act against the dissident. You also act with the population so that they can support the government.76

Mugabe’s control of 5 Brigade reflected his growing centralisation of authority in ZANU PF and his consolidation of power outside it by

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violently targeting Nkomo and ZAPU, the sole credible political opposition. Writers such as Doran take an opposing view, arguing that ‘the 20member ZANU Central Committee had decided there had to be a “massacre” of Ndebeles’ through the 5 Brigade operations.77 Doran’s viewpoint is informed by Zvobgo’s alleged admission, to this effect, to Australian diplomats in 1983. Zvobgo’s divulgence ‘demonstrates that 5 Brigade’s deployment and its annihilationist modus operandi were formally and broadly endorsed by the party’s political leadership’, Doran upholds.78 Doran’s position is acutely flawed. The Central Committee had twenty-eight members not twenty as Doran states erroneously.79 Second, the Central Committee was not ZANU PF’s highest decisionmaking body, so it could not have taken the resolution to deploy 5 Brigade. The decisive body in ZANU PF was the Executive Committee, which was composed of fourteen politicians who were the heads of the party’s various departments.80 Zvobgo (and Nhongo) was not a member of the Executive Committee. Dzingai Mutumbuka, a member of the Executive Committee during the period concerned, claimed that: ‘We never sat down as the Executive Committee or even as Cabinet to decide whether to send 5 Brigade to Matabeleland. Mugabe only informed us after he had already sent 5 Brigade to Matabeleland.’81 Mutumbuka’s assertion corresponds with Nhongo’s characterisation of the Gukurahundi operations as ‘secretive’. This does not mean, however, that after 5 Brigade had deployed ZANU PF leaders were unaware of ongoing human rights violations in its spheres of operation. Nhongo, for instance, openly pointed out to BMATT commanders, a civil servant and ZNA subordinates that he was aware of 5 Brigade’s activities. Nhongo featured sparingly in much of the foregoing 5 Brigade accounts but he too was a god of violence in this period. ZNA operations against dissidents, which Nhongo controlled directly, were exceptionally ruthless. As a senior ZANU PF politician put it, Nhongo ‘said very firmly that the national army must come down hard on dissidents’.82 Consequently, dissidents (real or imagined) were routinely shot dead on sight by the ZNA. And while ZNA violence towards civilians was far less than that committed by 5 Brigade, it also perpetrated serious human rights violations against non-combatants, for which Nhongo bears ultimate responsibility as army commander. BMATT was aware of the 1980s violence and human rights abuses in Matabeleland and Midlands but the British government adopted a ‘pragmatic’ policy response.83 Britain set aside the abuses and killings for the reasons that the ZANU PF administration managed the domestic economy rationally, it maintained reconciliation between blacks and whites and because the perception of a stable Zimbabwe was meant to serve as a counter to the apartheid regime’s

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Figure 8.1 Rex Nhongo (right) and Robert Mugabe (left) Source: Joice Mujuru.

contention that independent black governments could not guarantee domestic stability, hence the need for maintenance of white rule in South Africa. Morning after Dark The North Korean training team defrauded the ZANU PF government. ‘As CIO we would intercept the North Koreans’ phone calls and we would get a translator to translate their conversations’, Stannard divulged.84 Through this phone tapping, CIO discovered that North Korean trainers often inflated their ranks. ‘If a soldier was a lieutenant they told Mugabe he was a colonel so he was paid a colonel’s salary by our government. They also used their time in Zimbabwe to export illegal ivory to North Korea. They were doing it through the North Korean embassy’, Stannard further exposed.85 At the beginning of 1985, Nhongo informed Hodges that ‘Mugabe was no longer happy with the North Koreans and had decided they should leave.’86 Nhongo discussed with Hodges what to do about 5 Brigade and they resolved that the brigade be totally retrained

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by BMATT in Nyanga. ‘There were about 4,000 of them when they came for retraining and they were not disciplined at all’, Hodges observed.87 The retraining of 5 Brigade, with a view to its eventual incorporation into the regular army, was followed by the CIO’s arrest of eight relatively senior ZIPRA officers (C. Grey, J. Ncube, C. Moyo, R. Nyika, T. Nleya, M. Sibata, K. Ndlovu and E. Sigoge) in the ZNA, from September to October 1985, on grounds that they were plotting to overthrow the ZANU PF government. A ZIPRA officer who was not among those arrested by CIO explicated how he avoided being taken into custody: Rex came to my house at night. He took me on a long drive towards Bindura where he owned property. On the way he said, ‘There are a lot of political things that are about to happen. Do not believe what is going to be said because it is all politics.’ Come morning, Grey’s wife phoned me to say her husband had been taken away by CIO. Then I heard Ndlovu had also been taken by CIO. I then recalled what Rex said to me. These ZIPRA officers were falsely accused of plotting a coup. I later found out that I and some others should also have been arrested but when Rex saw the CIO list he resisted and said, ‘Why are you arresting all these people?’. Rex later said to me that he was now under pressure from some politicians who were wondering about his loyalty to ZANU PF.88

After the July 1985 election ZANU PF renewed its pre-election political violence against ZAPU party leaders and supporters. Having failed to secure any seats in Matabeleland in the July election, ZANU PF applied renewed pressure on ZAPU to force its leaders to capitulate and enter a formal unity agreement in which they would become subservient members of ZANU PF. The above-mentioned arrests of ZIPRA officers in the ZNA on spurious charges were part of ZANU PF’s politics of capitulation directed at ZAPU, which culminated in the Unity Accord of December 1987. When the Unity Accord came into being, ‘the ZIPRA officer component in the army had fallen to less than 20 percent’.89 Nkala became the minister of defence in 1987. The reduction in ZIPRA officers fulfilled ZANU PF’s ‘term’, as Nkala put it, that the ZNA be ZANLA dominated in order to guarantee its loyalty. The end to violence brought about by ZAPU’s capitulation in the Unity Accord allowed Nhongo’s ZNA to stabilise. This is not to say that ZANLA and ZIPRA rivalry was discontinued. The rivalry was unceasing but it became less intense and more civil. The rate of ZIPRA promotions in the ZNA increased, although ZANLA continued to control the key command posts.90 As the ZIPRA–ZANLA rivalry lost some of its steam, other fissures that were often obscured came to the fore. Tungamirai’s competitiveness with Nhongo gathered pace, for example. As army commander Nhongo competed with Tungamirai’s air force for priority from

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government in the procurement of high-tech military equipment.91 Tungamirai wanted his airmen to fly modern jets and helicopters and they operated an advanced warning radar system, while Nhongo strove to accrue more sophisticated weaponry for his soldiers. To some extent this competitiveness was not unusual. Inter-service rivalry between the air force, navy and the army is commonplace in militaries. Armies, navies and air forces often compete for the largest share of annual defence spending. However, the competition between Nhongo and Tungamirai was exacerbated by the absence of an overall commander. Maclean was not replaced when he resigned his overall commander post in 1982. The politics of inter-service rivalry was furthered by the absence of a supreme commander. Nonetheless, the inter-service rivalry did not lead to a breakdown in working and personal relations between Nhongo and Tungamirai. As Daudpota underlined, when Tungamirai failed to assert his authority in the air force, he turned to Nhongo for assistance: When Shiri joined the air force . . . he was causing some problems, and I reported them to Tungamirai . . . on the second occasion of Shiri’s misbehaviour, Tungamirai took me to General Nhongo, who felt very sorry. He called Shiri to his office and in our presence he gave him a real dressing down. He warned him that he would send him to Chikurubi prison if he ever acted funny with me. Thereafter I counselled Shiri and told him that he should go to the UK for the RCDS one-year course which would broaden his horizon and groom him for higher appointment.92

What is more, before Tungamirai died on 25 August 2005, he appointed Nhongo as the person responsible for his estate and both men often collaborated politically. Nhongo had more marked differences with officers in his army. From the army top brass, Nhongo got on the least with Gava, his deputy. Gava joined ZANU and underwent military training in 1968 – three years before Nhongo defected from ZAPU to ZANLA. But Nhongo rapidly overtook Gava in the ZANLA hierarchy, creating a measure of tension between them. Gava felt he was senior to Nhongo in ZANLA but the guerrilla army’s hierarchy and later that of the ZNA did not reflect that.93 Nhongo also differed with Gava in their approaches towards BMATT. Hodges commented: ‘Sometimes I would discover that BMATT was being blocked from carrying out its objectives in the army. Whenever I would trace the blockage it was almost always Gava who was stopping things. He would be blocking things Rex had agreed to let me do.’94 On the word of Toyne-Sewell, Gava ‘was a hardliner. You could talk to Rex about the army and he would listen, not Gava.’95 A wartime comrade narrated Nhongo’s treatment of Gava during a courtesy call he made at the army commander’s office in the mid-1980s:

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I was talking to Rex in his office and Gava came in wanting to pass on what he said was an important message. Rex said, ‘I am in an important meeting, I will talk to you later’, and we carried on just talking about the war of liberation and drinking tea. After some time Gava came again and Rex said, ‘I am still in an important meeting, come back later.’ You know I felt very bad that second time so I said, ‘Rex, why don’t you listen to what Gava has to say?’. Rex said very dismissively that he would talk to him later. I felt very uncomfortable because he treated Gava like he was a nobody.96

Gava preferred to take lunch at home with his wife, not with ZNA senior officers, and he rarely partook in activities in the Officers’ Mess when Nhongo was army commander. Nhongo believed Gava’s shunning of social engagements with other top officers undermined the ZNA’s esprit de corps. On an occasion between the late 1980s and beginning of the 1990s, when Gava was leaving army headquarters for lunch at home, Nhongo remarked derisively to some of his officers: ‘How come this man never wants to socialise with others? He always goes home to his wife at lunchtime. No wonder he had twins.’97 Gava’s wife had recently given birth to twins when Nhongo made this caustic comment, by which he seemed to suggest that Gava’s dutiful lunchtime excursions home were for baby-making purposes. Gava was Nhongo’s point man in Mozambique’s intensifying internal conflict between the FRELIMO government and RENAMO. In 1981 Gava became commander of 3 Brigade in Manicaland province, which is along the Mozambican border. Because of this geographical proximity Gava ‘was the commander of the first ZNA troops that were deployed in defence of Zimbabwe’s economic life-line, the Beira Corridor’.98 Nhongo later appointed Gava as the initial ZNA task force commander in Mozambique and he gave Gava general responsibility for ZNA operations there until 1992, when the Rome General Peace Accord brought the Mozambican civil war to an end. Gava was not a renowned operations commander in the independence war. He was better known for his role as one of the top figures in ZANLA’s Security Department, making him a somewhat odd pick for the Mozambique operations. Still, Gava oversaw the ZNA’s largely successful protection of Zimbabwe’s key trade routes, the Tete, Limpopo and Beira Corridors, which were at risk of RENAMO sabotages. Nhongo’s choice of Gava appears to have been designed to keep Gava preoccupied with external army operations, thereby minimising his engagement with internal ZNA business, which Nhongo sought to manage undisturbed. Former Mozambican president (1986–2005) Chissano rationalised the ZNA’s deployment to Mozambique in three main ways: the economic

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importance to Zimbabwe of protecting the Tete, Limpopo and Beira Corridors; the ZANU PF government’s gratitude to FRELIMO for its tremendous assistance in the independence struggle; and because the RENAMO insurgency was at its outset a creation of the Rhodesian CIO hence Zimbabwe had ‘a moral obligation’ to help end the insurrection.99 Approximately 1,000 ZNA soldiers were already in Mozambique guarding trade routes important to Zimbabwe at the close of 1982 and by 1984 this number had grown to about 3,500 ZNA troops on Mozambican soil for trade route protection purposes. By June 1985, the FRELIMO government was under severe pressure from RENAMO insurgents, resulting in President Machel requesting Mugabe to expand the ZNA’s involvement in Mozambique to active assistance in combat operations against rebels. Machel’s request for combat assistance created new strains in Nhongo’s supportive alliance with Mugabe. The Mozambican diplomat and former FRELIMO commander Lopes Tembe Ndelana was privy to the June 1985 discussions between Machel and Mugabe, which Nhongo attended. Ndelana recounted Nhongo’s anger with Mugabe over his utterances in one of those meetings: Machel said, ‘Robert, you people fold your arms, just watching the theatre next door [RENAMO’s growing insurgency] but yesterday we were together. You are just watching but Mozambique is still fighting [former Rhodesian prime minister] Smith and here [in Zimbabwe] you are free of Smith. For us Smith is not yet defeated.’ Mugabe then turned and said to his people, and Mujuru was one of them, shamwari yedu yawuya kuzo kumbira ropa. Ari kuti ropa rino bhadarwa ne ropa [our friend has come to ask for blood. He is saying spilt Mozambican blood should be repaid through spilt Zimbabwean blood]. This statement pricked Mujuru. He got angry. He did not like what Mugabe said. The translator was General Tobias Dias. He did not tell Machel that Mugabe is saying you have come to ask for blood. He changed the translation. General Dias was trying to prevent a confrontation because Machel would have exploded if he had given him the correct translation. Machel died [in 1986] without knowing what Mugabe really said.100

Mugabe agreed to Machel’s request but Ndelana was critical of the attitudes of Mugabe and some ZANU PF politicians towards military assistance for the FRELIMO government. FRELIMO ‘gave ZANLA guerrilla training here and we sent our guerrillas to fight alongside ZANLA in Zimbabwe. Mujuru knew all this because he was a soldier with us in the bush [in Tete] but politicians like Mugabe were not in the bush so they did not really appreciate it’, Ndelana opined.101 Mugabe’s initial reluctance to offer combat assistance to Machel was probably also influenced by their lukewarm personal relationship. Machel had always preferred Sithole to Mugabe and quarantined him in Quelimane in the

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mid-1970s, a historical fact Mugabe likely abhorred. Only after Nhongo stood up for Mugabe did Machel grudgingly accept Mugabe’s leadership of ZANU. The ZNA deployed into the Mozambican interior in 1985, leading to its takeover of RENAMO’s Casa Banana headquarters in August and it made inroads in other rebel areas such as Inhaminga and Marromeu. Its intervention in Mozambique helped stave off the FRELIMO government’s potential collapse in the face of RENAMO’s insurgency, at the total cost of 320 ZNA soldiers’ lives and hundreds of millions of Zimbabwean dollars in financial outlay by the ZANU PF government.102 Nhongo’s support for the ZNA’s involvement in the Mozambican civil war opened up some intramural division in the army. Grey, a ZIPRA Brigadier, was a vocal internal critic of the ZNA’s engagement in combat operations in Mozambique because ‘it would create another Vietnam-type war’, that is Zimbabwe would be bogged down for years in an unwinnable conflict in a foreign land.103 In some ways Grey made a valid point because the ZNA did not formally withdraw from Mozambique until April 1993 – approximately twelve years after it was first deployed there to protect trade routes from RENAMO sabotage operations. However, for Nhongo the FRELIMO government was owed military assistance because it hosted him and ZANLA in the 1970s. Grey and ZIPRA were mainly based in Zambia hence some ZIPRAs may have felt little or no obligation to fight alongside the FRELIMO government’s troops in a prolonged campaign. Nonetheless, many ZIPRA soldiers actively contributed to the ZNA’s Mozambique campaign. ZIPRA’s Stanford Khumalo served as a Task Force commander and was awarded a medal for excellent service in Mozambique, along with other ZIPRAs such as Titus AbuBasutu. Nhongo made intermittent visits to ZNA troops in Mozambique and he sometimes asked Ndelana to accompany him on these outings. On an instance when they visited troops together, Nhongo observed the segregated living conditions of the Zimbabwean and Mozambican troops. They had separate food stores and kitchens, and the Zimbabwean stores were better stocked. Mozambican soldiers wore old and sometimes tattered army uniforms. Nhongo, feeling upset, ‘informed the Zimbabwean soldiers that instead of having two uniforms, they must give one to the Mozambican. He also declared that groceries and meals would be shared. These great qualities of Mujuru reminded me of the days during the liberation struggle in Tete’, Ndelana reminisced.104 Mozambican troops were also often deployed without pay and appropriate military equipment, causing many desertions and lack of will to fight RENAMO.105

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A former RENAMO guerrilla remarked that the ZNA was ‘bad for RENAMO’ because it was organised and had proper training ‘unlike the FRELIMO soldiers’.106 For the RENAMO leader Afonso Dhlakama the FRELIMO army’s main weakness was its ‘poor morale’.107 The difficult conditions endured by Mozambican soldiers are stressed in the following recollection by a ZNA soldier: Machel came to Chimoio where we had a military base. One of the Mozambican soldiers raised his arm and asked Machel if he could supply them with Lux [bathing soap] because the Zimbabweans had Lux and so they were bathing with Lux, looking nice and taking all our Mozambican girls. That is what he said. Machel was stunned. He had nothing to give. Zero logistics. Mozambique was now very poor. We had a better economy and we . . . [had] a good regular army.108

Nhongo gradually became ‘frustrated with the Mozambican Army’s disorganisation because the Zimbabweans were doing a lot of the fighting now. He would not mince his words with the Mozambicans. He would tell them off.’109 A particularly sore point for Nhongo was that after the ZNA’s capture of RENAMO’s Casa Banana headquarters in August 1985, his army handed over control of the base to the Mozambican Army and six months later RENAMO easily retook its centre of operations.110 Consequently the ZNA had to launch another risky, albeit successful, operation to take back Casa Banana in October 1985. After the October raid, part of the ZNA was permanently based at Casa Banana because of the Zimbabweans’ lack of faith in the Mozambican Army’s will and capacity to maintain control of Casa Banana. Dyck led both effective takeovers of Casa Banana, resulting in Nhongo granting him a promotion. However, according to Dyck, Nhongo ‘stopped Machel giving me a medal for that, so Machel gave me a special FRELIMO crested Swiss army knife. I still have it.’111 A medal from Machel to Dyck exclusively would have drawn too much attention to the capabilities of former Rhodesian Army soldiers, at the expense of soldiering by ex-ZANLAs and former ZIPRAs in the Mozambique campaign, so Nhongo’s logic went. In 1985, soon after the ZNA began combat operations in Mozambique, Machel summoned Hodges to Maputo. When Hodges met with Machel, the Mozambican president stated that he had spoken with Nhongo, who explained the training BMATT was conducting in Zimbabwe. ‘Machel said he wanted BMATT to do for Mozambique what it was doing for the Zimbabweans. Machel started calling me “my brigadier” after that’, Hodges mused.112 Nhongo gave a complimentary review of BMATT’s

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work to Machel but the Mozambican leader’s turn to BMATT was also greatly influenced by his personal chemistry with the British prime minister Thatcher and his emerging conciliation with Western states.113 In 1986 BMATT began training Mozambican soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Nyanga region and in the following year ZNA instructors positioned at Chimoio in Mozambique began instructing Mozambican soldiers. In the mid-1980s, Mozambique was no longer the capable wartime ally of the 1970s Nhongo had once known. Despite the disagreements in relations, the ZNA propped up the Mozambican Army from 1985 to 1992, partly emphasising the strength of solidarity ties forged during the 1970s liberation struggles in both countries. Out Is Through Nhongo retired from the ZNA in 1992, leaving a complicated and sometimes nefarious legacy that for many years shaped the army’s operating concept, internal politics, its relationship with civilian authority and soldiers’ welfare. To start with, Nhongo did not implement an exercise for psychological rehabilitation of soldiers who participated in the liberation war, Mozambique campaign and the Matabeleland and Midlands operations. ZANLA, ZIPRA and Rhodesian soldiers came back from a long independence war, as well as post-independence soldiering in Mozambique, Midlands and Matabeleland, and were expected to get on with their roles in the ZNA, yet some of them exhibited signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).114 This was a critical oversight on Nhongo’s part. Psychological rehabilitation of conflict participants was left to families and local communities when it ought to also have been carried out at an institutional or state level. Over the years, I have interacted with a range of war veterans from the three armies. The effects of wartime psychological traumas were a recurrent theme during many of my interviews. Veterans of the 1970s war described how they still remembered and re-experienced war traumas through distressing vivid dreams at night, lucid daytime flashbacks, hallucinations, depression and anxiety, and some seemed to have sociopathic tendencies. These legacies of war impacted the individual lives of veterans as much as they affected their families and broader societies in which they were located. Heavy drinking was a common trait among ZANLA war veterans during and after the liberation war. Alcohol – the drug most commonly used by soldiers – was seen by some as a way of coping with the mental tolls of wars gone by. Nhongo showed signs of being a high-functioning alcoholic. He was, to be expected, psychologically damaged when the liberation war

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ended but never sought mental rehabilitation for himself and his ZNA soldiers in independent Zimbabwe. Likewise, alcoholism was not approached as a disease requiring the intervention of physicians. Nhongo left a detrimental legacy for women’s advancement in the ZNA. There were no women’s representatives in ZANLA contingents on the Central Committee and JHC and female soldiers were regularly marginalised in Nhongo’s ZNA. Women were given the least priority during integration of the three armies and they often went unpaid in the APs. These practices were meant to compel women to pursue careers outside the ZNA and were consistent with how Nhongo, in his capacity as chief of operations from 1977 to 1979, downgraded women’s participation in ZANLA, particularly in combat roles. A ZNA officer gave an account of a patriarchal address Nhongo delivered to female soldiers in the 1980s: I appreciate you might say I am not promoting you. But the limitations of the organisation tend to restrict that opportunity. Say I appoint you as Lieutenant Colonel or Major, and that post was to command a battalion in the field or which is very far from your residential place. Traditionally, when a lady gets married she goes to stay with her husband. If the army commander found you most suitable to command a regiment or go some other area, you will be wrecking your marriage. If you went to the field and you are deployed with your troops in Mozambique – it is an operational area and civilians cannot visit you. How do children feel? They can be more comfortable with the father away. But the other way around is more difficult, particularly in our African tradition.115

Men continue to be over-represented in the ZNA’s command structures and the rank and file because of unenthusiastic recruitment, retention and promotion of women soldiers. Women make up an estimated 20 per cent of the ZNA, with the vast majority relegated to the lower ranks.116 In 2013 the ZNA made much publicity of Shailet Moyo’s promotion to the rank of brigadier general – the highest rank a woman has ever attained in the ZNA’s history. But there are no other women of comparable rank to Moyo, who was catapulted from colonel to brigadier general, and her ZNA responsibilities are primarily administrative. Moreover, increasing the number of women in the ZNA is less significant than steadfast application of gender awareness training and practices in the army that actively challenge the ZNA’s gendered values and discourses. Another adverse legacy of the Nhongo years was the ZNA’s logistical complications. Logistics did not always function efficiently under Nhongo because the administrative system was ill-equipped to cope with a large army, ranging from a high of approximately 65,000 soldiers, which was reduced to about 51,500 by the time of his retirement.117 ‘We

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[BMATT] should have had a stronger logistics team down there to help Rex improve his army’s logistics. Rex needed to run the army on a more cost-effective basis and this was not happening’, Hodges observed.118 The ZNA also had a wide variety of vehicles, many of which did not have spare parts. Army vehicles were donated to the ZNA as military aid by several states after independence. ‘Rex was just grateful and accepted the vehicles. If Rex had training as a conventional army general he would have stood his ground and turned them down because it was going to be a logistical nightmare to maintain so many different vehicles in the long run’, Hodges further critiqued.119 In response to the ‘logistical nightmare’, Hodges sent for a good logistician from the British Army who spent two years attempting to sort out the ZNA transport system. Nhongo’s ZNA paid a significant price for its solidarity with FRELIMO. Money that ought to have been spent on improving conditions of service in the ZNA was diverted to the war effort. Generally low salaries and allowances and lack of adequate accommodation in the ZNA were also because of the army’s large size. However, Nhongo was reluctant to markedly reduce the ZNA’s size because it was in a long war in Mozambique. Maintenance of a large ZNA was also a means of projecting Zimbabwe’s power internationally and in this regard apartheid South Africa was the main target audience. Apartheid South Africa pursued a regional destabilisation programme in the 1980s and Nhongo was wary of possible South African military intervention. The preservation of a large conventionally capable ZNA was a strategy for warding off the apartheid South Africa threat. When the ceasefire occurred in 1979, the government’s military expenditure was 8.5 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).120 During the Nhongo years, the ZANU PF government’s military expenditure remained high. The Ministry of Defence received among the highest annual allocations, but this never exceeded 5.8 per cent of GDP per annum, a peak reached in 1987, followed by a gradual annual decline to 4.3 per cent of GDP in 1992.121 Hodges was critical of Nhongo’s failure to cut down on the purchase of certain army hardware. ‘While I was there, the air force bought from China a sophisticated Air Defence System, which cost millions, and Nhongo bought some tanks. I thought the tanks were status symbols. They were not really useful in that terrain because Zimbabwe lacks large open planes’, Hodges added.122 The purchase of tanks for Nhongo and a new air defence system for Tungamirai was also partly symptomatic of the inter-service rivalry between the army and air force. But to apportion full responsibility for high military spending on Nhongo and Tungamirai is misleading because the Defence expenditure budget was planned by civil

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servants under the supervision of the Ministry of Defence’s permanent secretary, with the country’s national parliament being the final approver. In this procedure, Nhongo and Tungamirai were consulted during the budget planning stage. That Nhongo and Tungamirai often got their way in securing substantial budget allocations was in part a sign of the strength of militarism in the ZANU PF government. Militarism denotes the values, symbols and lingua franca that legitimise military power and in Zimbabwe these were sustained by the long experience of the independence and Mozambican wars. Nhongo’s retirement roughly coincided with the ZANU PF government’s adoption of an International Monetary Fund (IMF)-supported Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) that had as a central goal the reduction of government spending. And in 1992 regional peace and stability were enhanced by the Mozambican civil war’s end and the gradual drawing to a close of the apartheid era in South Africa. These emerging conditions meant the ZNA now had to be downsized – a programme that was left to Nhongo’s successors to implement. But, as we shall see in the following chapter, military spending remained high and there would be new external wars for the ZNA to fight, underscoring the force of militarism in the ZANU PF leadership. When Hodges was writing the syllabus for the staff college, he asked Nhongo for his views on the army operating concept he wanted instilled in his officers. Nhongo replied that his primary security concern was a possible military attack by apartheid South Africa – not dissidents in Matabeleland and Midlands – hence he wanted his soldiers trained to use tanks in a tactical environment to protect themselves from South Africa so we [BMATT] did that for him. But I kept telling Rex that what his men were good at was what they did in the war, being in the bush and acting like guerrillas, not pure conventional warfare. Rex would always say he wanted his men to fight like a modern conventional army. Rex was moving away from the old [guerrilla] methods I thought better suited his men and which would have made them a handful for anybody.123

ZNA operations in Mozambique signalled the degree to which Nhongo’s goal of conventional fighting capability took hold in the new army. For example, top RENAMO guerrilla commanders were contemptuous of the ways in which the ZNA conducted its operations from 1985 to 1992. They noted that the ZNA ‘ “did not like to fight faceto-face” and would “only fight on their own terms” and with air power’.124 Yet Nhongo was not at ease commanding a large conventional army, which was a step change from his role as a guerrilla field commander.125 As the ZNA made conventional warfare a central

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doctrine, many of the pertinent subjects being taught in the army were not of great interest to Nhongo but, as Hodges qualified, ‘this has to be balanced by that Rex knew how to delegate command powers to those with good conventional training and once Rex delegated he allowed his men to just get on with their tasks’.126 In order to make effective delegation possible Nhongo required educated and well-trained subordinates. Thus, the ZNA’s joint command and staff course, intermediate staff course, junior staff course, company group commanders’ course and the platoon commanders’ course all came into being on Nhongo’s watch. Nhongo also invested in a ZNA adult education programme that gave soldiers whose formal education was prematurely ended by their participation in the liberation war, an opportunity to go back to school. Many soldiers sought educational qualifications while on ZNA paid leave and they subsequently returned to serve in the army. Nhongo was unenthusiastic about advancing his formal educating, but he pushed his subordinates to seek further education and he sent them on various military courses abroad. Nhongo rejected improving his formal education because, as we have already established, he was not governed by theory but by action. Nhongo believed that his authority in the ZNA derived from his standing as a formidable commander who led from the front in the independence war.127 Furthermore, Nhongo became the ZNA commander without much formal education and advanced training as a regular army general in the first place. Nhongo therefore had little incentive to seek further education and conventional training for a position that he already held. Instead, Nhongo decided that he would simply delegate to his more accomplished subordinates the responsibilities he could not manage. It is not unusual for great military leaders to lack a high standard of formal education, as seen in the cases of Angola’s Queen Njinga, Namibia’s Hendrik Witboii and South Africa’s Shaka Zulu. Other great military commanders such as Britain’s Bernard Montgomery and the Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley did not excel in their formal education. And America’s Ulysses S. Grant and France’s Napoleon Bonaparte were not outstanding in military academy. But like Nhongo, these military greats all had a talent for wartime soldiering, they were generally decisive leaders, they often exercised good judgement, they had the following of their command, and this is what mattered most. Patronage and politically tolerated corruption in the ZNA’s upper ranks have their roots in the Nhongo years. In 1993, the Parliamentary

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Public Accounts Committee produced a report that unearthed financial and procedural irregularities in the Ministry of Defence, covering the period 1988 to 1992. According to Alois Mangwende, the chairperson of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee: More often than not, tender procedures were not followed and Treasury instructions and authority on buying were ignored by the Ministry of Defence . . . . People have been known to sign long-term contracts for supplies of military hardware and then resign after they have received their kickbacks and the country tied to difficult protocols . . . . Gross deficiencies in the Defence Ministry which were detected . . . included improper rent records, stocks and barracks equipment deficiencies, irregular payment of general duty allowances and private injection of funds into the army farm projects . . . . Of great concern to the Committee is a situation whereby officials of the Ministry display prevaricative and defensive attitudes moulded by a wrong assumption that the Ministry must be treated as a special case when it comes to accountability for public funds.128

Nhongo and Tungamirai had recently left the military when Mangwende made these comments. There is little doubt therefore that Nhongo and Tungamirai were the ‘people’ Mangwende alleged resigned from the military after receiving kickbacks from military hardware sellers. From the foregoing, it is clear the Ministry of Defence behaved as if it were a power unto itself, disregarding standard tender processes and the Treasury’s directives and refusing to be transparent about its use of public funds because it was ‘a special case’. Mugabe, Sekeramayi, Kadungure, Nkala, Richard Hove and Moven Mahachi were the successive defence ministers from 1980 to 1992. The exact point at which, and under whom, the Ministry of Defence began to behave in the ways Mangwende outlined is unclear but this behaviour did not develop by chance or because of mere oversight. Deliberately lax adherence to tender procedures and negligible accountability on the grounds that the Ministry of Defence was ‘a special case’ created opportunities for political and military elites to corruptly accumulate patronage. Mugabe often did not distribute patronage directly to recipients. He doled out patronage by turning a blind eye to unethical dealings, allowing those whose allegiance he required to exploit the state for personal gain. Thus, Mugabe allowed Nhongo and other top military figures to accrue kickbacks as barter for their allegiance. Nhongo’s successors were similarly permitted to reward themselves and by the same token their enrichment was justified in terms of entitlement, or ‘a special case’ in Mangwende’s parlance, deriving from what they saw as their sacrifices during the independence war.129 The Ministry of Defence has continued to be impenetrable regarding its actual defence

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expenditure.130 There is no existing World Bank data on Zimbabwe’s military expenditure for the years 2006–10, for example.131 And in 2014, the defence minister justified his ministry’s opaqueness by saying that these are ‘matters of defence and national security and as such, they cannot be discussed with anyone who might be interested’.132 Nhongo appointed the ZIPRA officer Chirenda as the general staff officer (grade 1) for sports in the directorate of army training at the beginning of 1983. In this capacity, Chirenda became a founder member of a ZNA football club called Black Rhinos, with Nhongo serving as its patron. The club first entered the Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) Division One in 1983 and it was promoted to the Super League the next season. Black Rhinos won Zimbabwe’s main knockout tournament (the ZIFA Cup) and the Super League title in 1984, which was its first year in the top football division. The army side won the Super League title again in 1987. As we know, Nhongo was a keen football follower and player from his youth in 1960s Bulawayo, so he enthusiastically supported Chirenda’s ambitious work to build up Black Rhinos. Nhongo’s support for Black Rhinos had an additional motivation. Black Rhinos was a platform for fostering a collective identity and morale in the army, and since football was the most popular sport in Zimbabwe, the club’s success elevated the ZNA’s profile in society.133 Japhet Mparutsa was a goalkeeper for Dynamos, arguably Zimbabwe’s most widely supported football team and with a rich history of success going as far back as 1963. Mparutsa won the footballer of the year award with Dynamos in 1982 but he transferred to the new Black Rhinos in 1983 because it offered him better employment terms.134 The offer of a job in the army, availability of mortgage loans from the ZNA and adequate training facilities for the football team were attractive incentives created by Nhongo, which saw a number of talented players from more established clubs opting to join Black Rhinos. Nhongo often travelled with the Black Rhinos players for away matches, on the club’s impressive Mercedes-Benz coach. While on the travelling coach, Nhongo customarily attempted to motivate the players for the game by taking the lead in the singing of songs by a popular local band called the Bhundu Boys. The Bhundu Boys came to the music fore in 1982, with their upbeat melodic sound and folksy storytelling lyrics about life’s lessons, societal change, love, regret, poverty, longing and loss. From the Bhundu Boys’ catalogue, Nhongo normally sang a song called Simbimbino to inspire the Black Rhinos players. Simbimbino was an eccentric choice as a motivational song. The chorus went:

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Amai chekekai kani, amai chekekai Kuchekeka ndochekeka mwanangu Ndibaba vako, hona vakandicherera Hona Simbimbino Simbimbino Simbimbino wee . . .

The song told a story about a devious male sorcerer who transformed his wife into a pig that he slaughtered for meat. Simbimbino, the dead woman’s son, eventually reported his father’s crime to the local chief who tried the dad for murder, found him guilty and sentenced him to death. The song’s gruesome lyrics convey a moral message about the importance of ethical uprightness but bizarrely Nhongo found it most appropriate as a pre-match motivational song, perhaps because its chorus was catchy. Leading Zimbabwean football pundits considered the 1983–7 Black Rhinos one of the best ever football sides in Zimbabwe and the team contained renowned players Stanley ‘Sinyo’ Ndunduma, Stanford ‘Stix’ Mutizwa, Japhet ‘Short Cat’ Mparutsa, Simon ‘A. K.’ Mugabe and Maronga ‘The Bomber’ Nyangela.135 Nhongo wrote himself into Zimbabwean footballing folklore, through his support for the ZNA’s legendary 1980s Black Rhinos football club (see Figure 8.2). By the time Nhongo retired, the ZNA had a defined command structure and his brand of professionalism had strong roots.136 These qualities were most pronounced in the ZNA’s rank and file while the senior commanding officers were a mixed bag, with some being more professional than others.137 The staff college was also beginning to attract army officers from across Southern Africa to attend its courses. The few remaining former Rhodesian Army soldiers such as Dyck commended the ZNA’s development during the Nhongo years. ‘At that time, I thought we had the best army in the region. We did not have strong technical ability in the air but on the ground, we could beat anyone in the region. We were a battle-hardened army. We had been at war for years before 1980 and after that in Mozambique’, Dyck enthused.138 BMATT took a different view on the ZNA’s capabilities: ‘the Zimbabwean army was the best in the Southern African region apart from the South African army which was . . . [better] equipped’.139 International recognition for the ZNA came in 1991 when a ZNA detachment led the United Nations Verification Mission in Angola (UNAVEM II), which was a peacekeeping mission tasked with overseeing and maintaining Angola’s 1990 ceasefire and the transition to multiparty democracy. Because the ZNA acquitted itself well in the Angola peacekeeping mission, it was in the following years called upon by the United Nations to contribute soldiers towards peacekeeping operations

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Figure 8.2 Rex Nhongo and members of the Black Rhinos football club Source: Joice Mujuru.

in Somalia and Rwanda. However, the ZNA’s involvement in the DRC war from 1998 to 2002 (a military engagement Nhongo opposed) would prove a watershed period for the ZNA’s deterioration in operational capacity.140 The ZNA lost considerable amounts of hardware and key officers became embroiled in illegal commercial operations in the DRC, all of which debased the army’s capacity, morale and international reputation.141 Focusing now on the politics of Nhongo’s retirement from the ZNA, Dyck asserted: ‘I know from our conversations when we were still in the army that he wanted to leave that job several years earlier than he did.’142 A ZANLA officer echoed Dyck’s view: ‘I remember him saying in 1991, while we were waiting for the president to arrive in his aeroplane at the airport, ndaneta neku mirira va Mugabe ndiri mu uniform. Ndoda ku retire [I am tired of waiting on Mugabe while dressed in uniform. I want to retire].’143 A senior ZANU PF figure explained Nhongo’s retirement by saying, ‘Mujuru said to me he wanted to give others a chance. He said he had educated the army so there were many who could lead better than him. It was very much voluntary. He went to the president and said he wanted to go but Tungamirai was not as enthusiastic about retiring as

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Mujuru.’144 However, one officer maintained that when Nhongo was pensioned off, there had been ‘a lot of lobbying that he retires’.145 Muchemwa observed that the lobby for Nhongo’s retirement was given a fillip by the army commander’s lack of a high level of formal education: In 1987 Tungamirai gave an interview to Sunday Mail [newspaper] and insinuated that because he was studying for a degree in War Studies and Muchemwa now has a degree in Strategic War Studies we are the only ones qualified to run the army. Such statements undermined Rex who had not pursued any further studies. At that time I was in Jotsholo with the Presidential Guard making a final sweep of dissidents in Matabeleland. I said, ‘Bloody bastard, how can he put my name in Sunday Mail like this?’. When I got to Harare I went to see the Sunday Mail editor Tommy Sithole. I said to him, ‘What are you trying to do? Separate the army from Rex?’. Tommy said, ‘Ah, no, we were just trying to show Zimbabwe that we have educated soldiers.’ Some people in the army were out to bring down Rex. I blame Tungamirai. He is the one who started these intrigues.146

Stannard observed that by 1992 Nhongo had also lost a great deal of his political closeness to Mugabe and this drifting apart only intensified after his retirement.147 On the other hand, ‘Mnangagwa always sided with Mugabe but Rex was more independent’, Stannard continued.148 In addition, Stannard contended that Mnangagwa disapproved of Nhongo. Stannard first detected this disapproval during a mid-1980s dinner organised by Mnangagwa: German intelligence people were in Harare and there was a big dinner for them one night. Mugabe was there. I was seated next to Mnangagwa. Rex was also invited to the dinner Mnangagwa had arranged at Meikles Hotel. There was only one empty seat at the dinner table. Rex’s seat. Rex eventually turned up when he wanted to turn up, which was very late. There was whisky on Rex’s breath and he was wearing a shirt with no dinner jacket. Mnangagwa just shook his head and said, with some contempt, ‘and this is my army commander’.149

The weakening supportive alliance between Nhongo and Mugabe appears to have been accelerated by ZANU PF’s internal debate about whether the ruling party should decree a one-party political system in Zimbabwe. One of the reasons, for figures such as Mugabe and Nkala, of persecuting ZAPU was their goal of a single-party political system. After ZAPU ceased to exist in 1987, Mugabe’s one-party state objective was on course to fruition but international circumstances rapidly changed. In 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, signalling the Cold War’s end, and in the coming years one-party states in Africa came under increasing internal and external pressures to adopt multiparty democracy. The oneparty state model also encountered a growing number of critics in ZANU PF. At an August 1990 Politburo meeting the majority of members rejected the idea of a one-party state for Zimbabwe. After the meeting,

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ZANU PF Politburo members who spoke to The New York Times disclosed that ‘they believed Mr. Mugabe had shelved planned legislation for a one-party state, especially since the three senior military officials in the country opposed the idea’.150 Dumiso Dabengwa, a Politburo member in 1990, affirmed that Nhongo had opposed Mugabe’s one-party state agenda because ‘Rex did not subscribe to communist ideals and he thought Mugabe was becoming too powerful for his liking.’151 The matter of who in the ZNA would succeed Nhongo was especially contentious, as an official in the Ministry of Defence described: In 1989, we needed a new Zimbabwe ambassador to Mozambique. Rex wanted to retire from the army and he knew Gava would succeed him because he was the most senior person in the army after him. I remember Rex trying to get Gava appointed as our ambassador to Mozambique. Rex wanted to ease Gava out of the army but he refused. Gava put up a fight. He said, ‘You won’t get rid of me because I want my turn as army commander.’ Rex thought the younger and more educated officers could run the army better than Gava and I think he wanted to maintain his influence in the army. It was also about his legacy. If one of his loyalists got the job that protects his legacy and in fact when Gava was now in charge, there was a period when people who were loyal to Rex were victimised in the army.152

As it turned out, Nhongo’s desire to further his legacy in the ZNA suffered a double setback. Gava was appointed ZNA commander in 1992 and, two years later, he was made overall commander of the air force and ZNA, making Nhongo’s adversary a powerful military man. Chiwenga, who reviled Nhongo, replaced Gava as the ZNA commander in 1994, completing the double setback. Shiri succeeded Tungamirai as Air Marshal in 1992 and he remained in his post after the 1994 changes. The unified command structure adopted in 1994 was a return to the chain of command that was abandoned when Maclean retired in 1982. There can be little doubt that Mugabe made the appointments of Gava and Chiwenga knowing fully well that this would lessen Nhongo’s influence in the security sector. In keeping with Nhongo’s dramatic life, his departure from the ZNA was eventful. Nhongo, along with the heads of army logistics, medical services, finance and military intelligence, made periodic visits – via helicopter – to the ZNA’s various establishments. Nhongo conducted a farewell tour of these army establishments before his retirement. As the helicopter Nhongo was travelling in flew past Mutare, a piloting error occurred. ‘The helicopter hit a pylon. It was human error. For some reason the pilot did not see the pylon. I was in the helicopter behind his and saw Rex’s helicopter crash into the ground’, an eyewitness recollected.153 Nhongo survived the freak helicopter crash but sustained

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a cervical vertebrae injury that nearly paralysed him years later.154 And in a twist of fate, Tichaona Mudzingwa, who was one of Dzinashe Machingura’s allies during the 1975–7 ZIPA phase, pulled an incapacitated Nhongo out of the fiery helicopter wreckage. Mudzingwa was a colonel directing the ZNA’s Medical Services at the time and his relations with Nhongo were lukewarm at best, because he remained critical of his army commander’s leading role in the 1970s ZIPA purge.155 Nhongo was thirty-six years old when he became lieutenant general and ZNA commander in 1981. In the mid-1980s, the average ages by rank from general downwards in the British Army were: general – fifty-seven; lieutenant general – fifty-four; major general – fifty-two; brigadier – fifty; colonel – forty-nine; lieutenant colonel – forty-five; and major – forty-one.156 Thus, going by age only, if Nhongo was a soldier in the British Army in the 1980s he would likely have been a captain or a major at best. Nhongo was young and inexperienced for the conventional ZNA commander post he reached in 1981. Inexperience comes with mistakes. Nhongo’s impure professionalism, his at times inconsistent behaviours and his moments of indecision when under conflicting pressures from ZANLA, ZIPRA, the Rhodesian Army and BMATT to pursue certain policies in the ZNA, were partly signs that he lacked the requisite maturity of a standard regular army lieutenant general. It is the young who make and unmake history in remarkable ways. The young enhance the age-old Oriental curse, ‘may you live in interesting times’.

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‘Ever since the coming to power of ZANU PF in 1980, there has been so much rhetoric on Socialism by ZANU PF Ministers and Members of Parliament, with varying degrees of accuracy’, Maurice Nyagumbo, ZANU PF’s national organising secretary, wrote in 1983.1 Socialist rhetoric that was inconsistent with policy and practice, reflecting politicians’ duplicity and general lack of ideological clarity, caused bemusement among both sceptics and supporters of ZANU PF’s professed commitment to socialism. ‘Cynics have queried the claim of ZANU PF that it is a Marxist-Leninist Party. Some have even charged that the rhetoric on Socialism is a smokescreen to hide the Capitalist tendencies of some of the party’s leadership’, Nyagumbo continued.2 To resolve these contentious ambiguities and contradictions, Nyagumbo announced that ZANU PF’s Second National Congress in 1984 would ‘address the ideological question and work out a concrete programme’ on issues such as ‘permissible class alliances’, the transformation steps from capitalism to socialism and ‘the identification of the primary enemy at each stage’.3 Nyagumbo’s statement that ZANU PF would identify the ‘primary enemy’ at each socialist transformation phase had historical echoes from countries elsewhere, which undertook leftist revolutions. From these countries, Mao’s China is perhaps the most illustrious example. During the Cultural Revolution, Mao denounced Communist Party figures such as Deng Xiaoping, Liu Bocheng and Tao Zhu as ‘capitalist roaders’ and enemies of the revolution for seeking to take the revolution down the capitalist road. ‘If was Mao I would call Rex a capitalist roader. He was openly capitalist but it only really became clear to everyone in ZANU PF at the 1984 Congress’, a senior ZANU PF politician observed.4 Nhongo forthrightly opposed the proposed adoption of a socialist agenda by ZANU PF at the Congress, which was attended by 6,000 delegates. Other leading ‘capitalist roaders’ in ZANU PF were Zvobgo, Bernard Chidzero and Nkala, while Tekere, Shamuyarira and Ushewokunze were seen as more committed to some type of socialist vision.5 Nhongo was expressly critical 224

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of ZANU PF’s Leadership Code, which was adopted at the 1984 Congress. The Leadership Code required ZANU PF leaders to periodically declare their assets, it forbade them from owning businesses or having shares in companies, it barred them from being recipients of more than a single monthly salary and it banned them from owning more than one dwelling house and land in excess of fifty acres. ‘ZANU believes that a leader who concentrates on acquiring property or who personally engages in the exploitation of man by man rapidly becomes an ally of the capitalists and an enemy of Socialism, and of the masses of the population’, read part of the Leadership Code.6 Those who failed to abide by the Leadership Code would face unspecified punitive actions by a Disciplinary Committee. But ‘capitalist roaders’ such as Nhongo and Zvobgo defied the Leadership Code after the Congress, contributing to its abject failure. When the Leadership Code was taken on board in 1984, Nhongo was already growing tobacco for sale, on a large commercial farm. ‘This Code restricts us to fifty acres. What do you grow commercially on fifty acres?’, Nhongo scoffed at one of the Leadership Code’s stipulations.7 Joice recounted a 1983 conversation, which occurred in her presence, about the Leadership Code, between her husband and Mugabe: He said to Mugabe, ‘How can you talk about Leadership Code for us? How can you restrict us when the people we fought against in the liberation war like van der Byl and Smith have big farms and other interests? The people we fought against kept all their business interests and can get more but we cannot? How are we going to change our lives? I’m going to do whatever I want to make money.’ I was pregnant with my daughter Nyasha. Solomon then said to Mugabe, ‘Look at Mai Chipo. She is pregnant. I am uneducated and when I retire from the army I will still have children to raise. I must make sure that they have a better life and go to better schools than I did.’8

Nhongo’s defiance on the matter of the Leadership Code counts as another early sign of strain in his supportive alliance with Mugabe. Nhongo’s non-cooperation on the Leadership Code came one year after he returned from training in Pakistan prematurely – an act that had displeased Mugabe. Nhongo began to execute his capitalist designs in 1980, when he bought a commercial farm in the Bindura area that belonged to Harry Solomonides, a Cypriot who had recently died in a shooting accident.9 Thakor Kewada, a lawyer at a leading law firm called Scanlen and Holderness, drew a strict agreement of sale for Solomonides’s farm. Nhongo agreed to pay for the farm through a fixed number of monthly instalments and if he defaulted on a single payment, the farm’s total cost

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would be due immediately.10 Nhongo’s first couple of payments were made to Kewada’s office but the third instalment did not go through. Kewada wrote Nhongo a stern letter demanding the full sum owed for the farm: The general never made appointments so he just pitched up at my office holding my letter. He said, ‘Kewada, what is all this about?’. I told him he had not made his installment. The general said, ‘I paid, I paid.’ It turns out he had transferred money to his lawyer’s account but his lawyer had diverted the money to his own commercial dealings instead of making payment for the general’s farm. That same day the general came back to my office fuming and said, ‘Kewada, you are my lawyer now. Finished.’11

And so Nhongo’s long relationship with Kewada commenced in 1980, over a missed payment. Kewada became Nhongo’s main legal advisor and as we shall see in the next chapter, he was the Mujuru family’s legal representative in the 2012 inquest on Nhongo’s death. Nhongo’s acquisition of property in 1980 went beyond a farm. As part of its rebranding exercise in independent Zimbabwe, the British diplomatic mission decided to change the High Commissioner’s residence because ‘it was all too redolent of colonialism. It was a very colonial house. We needed a new image’, the then Deputy High Commissioner Nick Elam mentioned.12 Nhongo got wind of the plan to sell the house, via BMATT commander Palmer, and he placed a phone call to Elam to enquire about the proposed sale: He phoned me and said, ‘May I please get first refusal if you sell the house?’. This was in 1980, right after the independence. I think Rex Nhongo longed to belong. He wanted to be perceived as part of the new establishment. He was a man who was seeking acceptance. Seeking status. Seeking equality with whites on a social plane. And why not? The war was long. He had a hard life in the bush and he could have died. Why not seek recognition?13

Nhongo made property investments exceptionally early in the independence era. Yet, as Elam stated, he had been living ‘a hard life in the bush’ for years. And, as we know, Nhongo’s family in Chikomba was poor. How did Nhongo acquire the resources to begin making these immediate property acquisitions? According to Kewada, ‘The general had a relationship with Tiny Rowland who had a lot of commercial interests in Zimbabwe. Whenever the general went to London he would meet with Tiny Rowland. Tiny Rowland would take care of him there.’14 Rowland was a tremendously wealthy British businessman and the chief executive of the London and Rhodesian Mining and Land Company (LONRHO), which had vast interests in Africa and beyond. The Conservative British

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prime minister (1970–4) Edward Heath denounced Rowland as ‘the unacceptable face of capitalism’ in 1973 because of his unscrupulous business practices, but Nhongo had no compunction about building commercial links with Rowland.15 Before 1980, Rowland mostly backed, financially, Nkomo and ZAPU but he quickly sided with ZANU PF after its victory in the February 1980 election, in order to safeguard LONRHO’s existing interests in Zimbabwe and to increase the likelihood of securing future business opportunities there. Nhongo’s links with financiers abroad were supported by Maclean’s account of an early 1981 trip he made with Nhongo to London: We went to London on military business. There was an official programme and Rex kept slipping away at the end of the day to do his private things. When we were returning to Harare, Rex’s suitcase was too heavy so he had to open it and remove some things to make it lighter. I was standing right behind him, waiting for my turn to check in [at the airport]. As he threw out the clothes on top, I noticed his suitcase was full of money! We Rhodesian soldiers had been paupers. The whole idea of amassing wealth was anathema to us.16

Rhodesian soldiers were not ‘paupers’ when compared with, for example, the generality of colonised and unemployed urban blacks and blacks residing in communal areas. During the struggle years, Nhongo was concerned about his economic status after the liberation war, as a ZANU cadre related: ‘He often used to say to me, vana . . . muri ma doctor. Kana hondo yapera muno ngoenda kozvi . . . [shandira], moita mari yenyu. Isu vana Rex hatina chikoro, saka tichaita sei? [you are highly educated. When the war is over you will become gainfully employed, make money, but what will uneducated people like me do?]’.17 Let us also pause and recall Nhongo’s childhood bitterness and shame when his father Nevison sold Hostel, leaving him with only a single cow to herd. Nhongo ‘hated’ being poor and had long desired to better himself financially, hence his obscure monetary dealings in London. Elam offered another explanation for Nhongo’s access to capital: ‘There were a lot of insecure rich white business people who would have been prepared to back Rex Nhongo in exchange for protection, so we suspected that is how he got money. He would have had no trouble finding money at that time.’18 Nhongo’s business activities expanded steadily from 1980. In the early 1980s Nhongo and Obert Mpofu, his fellow military trainee in ZAPU in the 1960s, invested in Coin Security Group, which provided security at Zimbabwe’s local and international airports.19 Nhongo developed a business partnership with James Makamba, a young and ambitious former radio broadcaster with an

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entrepreneurial knack. Nhongo and Makamba enjoyed a lucrative relationship with Rowland, for whom they facilitated a range of supply deals in Zimbabwe. Nhongo leveraged his influence in ZANU PF and the state to facilitate entry to Zimbabwe by a host of external business people, earning him handsome facilitation fees in activities that undermined the integrity in public life the Leadership Code attempted to preserve. Additionally, Nhongo and Makamba bought a number of stores in Bindura, a mining and farming town approximately ninety kilometres outside Harare. Dino Athienites, a shrewd operator in the stores business, was their prime competitor in Bindura. Nhongo and Makamba floundered to match the profitability of Athienites’ B & D store but they had considerable sums of money to spare. Thus, they bought out Athienites but because they revered his knowledge of the stores business, they coaxed him to stay on as manager of their stores business, now named Jam-Dino (for James and Dino). Nhongo’s name went unmentioned but he held equal shares in Jam-Dino.20 Makamba mostly took day-to-day charge of their shared business interests.21 This arrangement also suited Nhongo because he had a taxing full-time job as the ZNA commander. Nhongo could concentrate on army business and maintain the facade of a civil servant uninvolved in private business, while Makamba generated the money. This arrangement worked well for Nhongo and Makamba for most of the 1980s, but in the 1990s they began to drift apart. There were a number of reasons, some of which were litigious, Nhongo and Makamba agreed to go separate ways. One of the less litigious causes of this drifting apart was that Nhongo and Makamba grew into fundamentally different business operators. Nhongo was quite happy running Zimbabwean businesses whereas Makamba steadily sought entry to big international business. In the mid1990s, Nhongo and Makamba sat down together one warm Harare afternoon and shared equally and genially their various joint interests, in the presence of their lawyer, Kewada. In 2004 Makamba was arrested on charges of externalising millions of dollars in foreign currency. The state’s case against Makamba was feeble and there appeared to be an ulterior motive for his arrest. A rumour was rife that Makamba had been having a romantic affair with Mugabe’s wife, Grace: James was being accused of dipping his pen in the wrong inkwell. He spent seven months in jail. When James was on trial the general came to the courts almost every day and on one of those days I said to the general, ‘The charges against your friend are weak. There is this rumour doing the rounds. I think you should talk to Mugabe.’ The general phoned Mugabe in my presence. They spoke in Shona. The general said Mugabe had agreed to see him at his home after dinner. I told the

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general I would wait up for him at my house, so he should come there after seeing Mugabe. I waited up until midnight and finally went to sleep. At 5 a.m. I get a phone call and it is the general. I said, ‘I waited for you last night, how come you did not make it?’. The general said, ‘Sorry, we finished late.’ I said, ‘So when are you coming to see me?’. The general said, ‘I am at your gate.’ I let him in and he said to me, ‘It is very difficult to take out what is in that old man’s head. Once that old man gets something in his head, it is very difficult to take it out. I tried and tried to convince him James did not have an affair with his wife but he would not believe me.’22

The state prosecutor’s case against Makamba was eventually thrown out by a judge because of insubstantial evidence and Makamba went into selfimposed exile. His business relationship with Makamba aside, Nhongo was involved in arms deals with Graham Wilson, a former member of the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS). Wilson and Chris Schulenburg (of the Selous Scouts) were the only Rhodesian soldiers awarded the Grand Cross of Valour (GCV) in the 1970s for their exploits in the war. The BMATT commander Hodges remembered going to see Nhongo about an army matter in the mid-1980s and finding the ZNA commander chatting with Wilson in his office. ‘Rex introduced me to Wilson. He said Wilson had been trying to kill him for five years in the war but now they were business partners. They both laughed. They were discussing arms deals’, Hodges related.23 Nhongo invested most of his financial proceeds in farms, mining ventures, safaris (because he was an avid hunter) and real estate, particularly in the Bindura area, which resulted in the town becoming popularly known as ‘Rex-ville’. Nhongo made considerable amounts of money from his commercial activities and his family lived comfortably indeed. But he never became the standout business person in a particular commercial sphere. The reason for this was explained by Joice: ‘Solomon was into too many things. Farming, shops, bars, mining, real estate, company shares here, shares there, too many things, and that is why he could not do one thing very well. If he had chosen one or two business things and specialised in those, he might have stood out.’24 Despite having many irons in the fire, Nhongo’s overall administrative set-up was sometimes too thin to meticulously oversee his various interests. For example, Nhongo’s stores business in Bindura suffered losses in the mid-1990s because of insufficient managerial attention.25 In business Nhongo applied some of his practices from the ZNA, such as delegating responsibilities to others more capable than himself. Nhongo appointed managing directors to his various companies, and in firms where he only held minority shares he rarely sat on boards, preferring to work through fronts.26 By all accounts Nhongo’s real passion was commercial farming.

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Nhongo had sundry successful seasonal harvests and he was happiest when tending his farm.27 Yet even his passion for farming did not deter him from branching out into other commercial ventures. Many, Mugabe among them, criticised Nhongo for being acquisitive but he never minded their disapprovals. Nhongo was a fully paid-up member of Zimbabwe’s avaricious politico-capitalist class and he was unapologetic about it. Fortune came with mounting financial responsibilities to the underprivileged Mujuru family. ‘The general was generous with his relatives but they were demanding, expecting things from him all the time’, Kewada mentioned.28 It was not unusual for Nhongo to report for work in the morning, only to be greeted by a queue of distant relatives seeking monetary assistance. Nhongo frequently gave his relatives Kewada’s work address and instructed them to visit his lawyer’s office. ‘They would come to my office and I would dispense money he held in a family trust. I had to tell the general to stop giving his money away at some point’, Kewada opined.29 After his release from detention in 1979, along with fellow detained ZIPA cadres, Todhlana reconnected with his cousin Nhongo in the independence period. ‘I wanted to buy a shop in Mabelreign and I approached Rex to ask if he could sponsor me. He agreed but the shop owner started dilly dallying and decided not to sell. We had our differences but Rex was always generous’, Todhlana remarked.30 As said by Dyck, ‘Under that hard exterior, Rex was generous. I never asked him for money but I know that if I had, he would have helped me.’31 Many of Nhongo’s allies reported having received financial assistance from him at some stage in their lives. Nhongo’s aid was not exclusively monetary. Some allies wanted to pursue careers outside the army such as law, the diplomatic service, the intelligence service, police force, the education and financial sectors and politics. Nhongo used his formal power as army commander and a leading ZANU PF member to facilitate their entry to these new fields. Nhongo’s assistance was not always altruistic. It was, in significant ways, also a means of constructing power. Many of the assorted individuals he opened doors for in and outside the state and in ZANU PF became his loyalists. Through this range of loyalists, Nhongo extended his influence in the public and private sectors. He could call in favours in a variety of spheres. Lives and Loves Nhongo was the most famous liberation war hero who made it back home alive. Being a famous thirty-something war hero with money and power saw Nhongo spiral into a hedonistic life. Nhongo was the very cliché of independence-time excess by liberation war participants. On a balmy

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Harare evening in the early 1980s, Nhongo, dressed in jeans and a shirt, attempted to enter the ceremonial Meikles hotel. The hotel reserved right of admission and its staff denied Nhongo entry on the grounds that jeans were prohibited casual clothing for clientele. A scuffle between Nhongo and the Meikles hotel guards ensued. Nhongo took umbrage at being denied admission, so he rounded up a small ZNA unit comprising only black soldiers. He believed the behaviour of Meikles hotel staff was ‘colonial’ hence the ZNA unit’s orders were to ‘liberate whites-only nightclubs’ in Harare.32 Members of the army unit entered approximately five Harare clubs whose patrons were primarily white. The soldiers did not behave violently. Their orders were to mingle, order drinks, sit at tables and make their black presence felt.33 Nhongo was prolific at ‘doing masculinity’ in the independence years. A friend, who invited him to visit her newly bought house in a stunning residential area north of Harare, with rocky hillsides and lush woods, evoked: I left him [Nhongo] outside and went inside the house to check on a road-runner chicken I was cooking for him. When I came back outside he was looking at a big rock in my garden. He said he liked my house and this big rock especially. He said, ‘Dai imba yako iri yangu ndai tora mukadzi wangu ndo muponda zvekuti pa dombo iro. Hapana anondiwona, ende andi tarise mumwe futi’ [If this was my house I would take my wife to that rock and sex her hard. Nobody will see me and I will never look at another woman].34

Nhongo philandered in a miasma of cigarette smoke, fine whisky, wealth and music. At first impression, Nhongo was not much of a sex symbol. For Nhongo was relatively short, he lacked social grace, he had coarse skin, his face had a near-permanent toothy grin, he was not renowned for being a suave dresser, his stutter could be off-putting and his bloodshot eyes (from recurrent heavy drinking) were unsettling. Nhongo was an improbable Lothario, but many women found him attractive for his legendary heroism, affluence and power. Faced by a long line of female admirers, Nhongo pampered his craving for women. His serial bedhopping resulted in him fathering several children out of wedlock by a string of mistresses. But it was not simply power, money and his celebrated heroism that gave Nhongo access to women. Zimbabwean society tends to have strong patriarchal norms, which are permissive of philandering by men. Nhongo also had an imperceptible charm with women. The BMATT commander Toyne-Sewell remembered: ‘If Rex arrived at an [army] officers’ party and saw a pretty woman, he immediately called her over and would start talking to her and he took her home after the party. He liked women and

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they liked him.’35 ‘When Rex approached women he would become so soft. A soft voice and soft behaviour. Rex’s softness surprised women. It made women also want to be soft with him’, a ZNA officer who observed Nhongo’s interactions with women pointed out.36 Revealingly, one of Nhongo’s lovers reported that he was calculating in the way that he wooed her and had pronounced stamina in bed.37 Nhongo’s ‘doing masculinity’ hurt the feelings of many men and women, not least his wife Joice, and it expanded his sphere of antagonists. Constantino Chiwenga looms largest in this domain of antagonists who felt aggrieved by Nhongo’s ‘doing masculinity’. Chiwenga alleged that Nhongo had an erotic affair with his first wife.38 Chiwenga never presented conclusive evidence proving the sexual affair occurred, bar a claim that he accidentally discovered an army jacket, emblazoned with the name Rex Nhongo, hanging in his bedroom wardrobe one luckless morning. The curious case of Nhongo’s wandering army jacket led Chiwenga to conclude that Nhongo had at one point engaged in carnal relations with his wife in their home and audaciously left behind an item of his clothing. Nhongo denied fornicating with Chiwenga’s wife, as a person who witnessed their falling-out described: We were sitting around one day and General Mujuru started saying he was sick and tired of his girlfriend . . . . General Mujuru said she was too demanding of his attention and he did not know what to do. Chiwenga then said he liked General Mujuru’s girlfriend and General Mujuru said he was free to try to go out with her if he wanted. General Mujuru’s girlfriend started to like Chiwenga. They were now together and Chiwenga was enjoying the relationship so much that he no longer wanted his wife. One day when Chiwenga was arguing with his wife, he pointed to General Mujuru’s jacket in the wardrobe and accused his wife of having sex with General Mujuru. General Mujuru said Chiwenga used his jacket as an excuse to divorce his wife.39

How the jacket ended up in Chiwenga’s bedroom wardrobe was explained by a separate individual: The general said to us that one-time mudhara [the old man/Mugabe] was coming back from a trip and he did not feel like going to the airport to receive mudhara. The protocol was that the top commanders would go to the airport whenever mudhara was coming back from somewhere. So the general called Chiwenga and told him to go to the airport on his behalf. Chiwenga said he did not have an army jacket with him, so the general gave him his and said do not worry no one will notice. Chiwenga took the general’s jacket home after that. A while after that he started saying the general was in my bedroom.40

The aforementioned account of events was also repeated to me by Joice who acquired this version of proceedings from Nhongo, after she confronted him about the alleged affair.41

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Lasting mutual animosity was created between Nhongo and Chiwenga, by the former’s alleged sexual liaisons with the latter’s wife. This personal acrimony was one of the reasons Nhongo did not support Chiwenga’s elevation to ZNA commander in 1994 and to the ZDF commander post in 2004. Chiwenga’s knowledge of Nhongo’s disapproval of his promotion to the leadership of the military hardened his antagonism towards Nhongo.42 Nhongo regarded Chiwenga as having a brittle personality unsuited to soldiering and he was critical of Chiwenga’s failure to advance his conventional officer training.43 These criticisms were informed by an incident in the 1980s, described here by a ZNA officer: Chiwenga . . . attempted suicide when he was in the army by putting his arm up against a wall and shooting himself such that the bullet would not hit any major internal organ. I went to see him in hospital and Mugabe and some of the other officers were there. I said, ‘Brigadier, that is a shit shot. When you decide to shoot yourself next time, come see me first and I will teach you how to shoot.’ The other officers who were there laughed. Mugabe remained silent.44

As stated by Toyne-Sewell, ‘Everyone in the army knew Chiwenga once tried to commit suicide. It was absolutely humiliating for him.’45 Some ZNA officers ridiculed Chiwenga’s attempted suicide, dubbing it ndaenda (I am gone).46 They explained that Chiwenga tried to commit suicide after he plagiarised another officer’s answers to a test he took at the staff college. BMATT referred the plagiarism case to Nhongo and, according to ZNA rules, Chiwenga should have been court-martialled and handed dishonourable discharge from the army if found guilty of attempting to kill himself while a serving officer in the army. Nhongo would live to regret his response to Chiwenga’s court-martialling. ‘General Mujuru started saying if I kick him out of the army what will he do with his life? Just leave him in the army’, one officer revealed.47 Chiwenga escaped dishonourable discharge and was promoted to a higher army rank soon after his alleged suicide attempt.48 Whilst some ZNA officers believed Nhongo did not eject Chiwenga from the army because he regarded him as pitiable, others took the view that Mugabe was in fact the figure mainly behind Chiwenga’s survival and promotion in the military, although they could not explain why Mugabe took this action. Nhongo continued to deny that he slept with Chiwenga’s wife, long after the alleged occurrence. Chiwenga was not the only individual who claimed to have been cuckolded by his wife, with Nhongo in the mix, as one soldier narrated: I had been posted outside the country on military duty. I did not know that Rex Nhongo had affairs with my wife. My driver is the one who phoned me when I was

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outside the country. He said he was always seeing my wife in Rex Nhongo’s Peugeot 504. So I got permission from my commanding officer to go back to Zimbabwe for a brief time. I said I needed to attend to family business in Zimbabwe. I arrived at my house in Mabelreign just after midnight. I saw Rex Nhongo’s 504 Peugeot parked outside my house. I went inside silently and saw bottles of wine in the living room and clothes lying around. I went to my bedroom and opened the door quietly. I saw Rex Nhongo was fast asleep in my bed. My wife was also sleeping. She was in her underwear.49

The man took Nhongo’s car keys as evidence. He had a good relationship with Nkala, the defence minister, so took the incriminating exhibit to him and unburdened his distress. ‘Rex was very reckless with women’, Nkala commented on Nhongo’s relations with women.50 Nhongo was eventually summoned by Nkala. He did not deny having been caught in bed with the man’s wife and offered material compensation to the cuckolded man, which is the custom in parts of Zimbabwe whenever a man is found having sexual relations with another man’s wife.51 The aggrieved man declined Nhongo’s material recompense, pointing out that ‘arambwa anuhwa [when someone rejects you it means you are smelly]. I blamed my wife for letting Rex Nhongo into my house and my bed so I divorced her.’52 I asked the hard-done man how he thought Nhongo wooed his wife. ‘Mbiri ne mari. Vakadzi vaingo mudira izvozvo [fame and money. Women loved him for those things]’, the man replied.53 According to the man, his former wife in due course relocated to Bulawayo, where Nhongo assisted her in purchasing land that she developed into a cattle ranch. Nhongo’s extra-marital affairs had colossal emotional impact on Joice. She knew in the 1970s that Nhongo was a womaniser but had believed that the war’s end would provide a stable environment in which they could properly settle down, buy a house and raise children.54 She was disconsolate that Nhongo’s philandering only intensified after independence. Joice raised some of his children born out of wedlock. And Nhongo was not always discreet in his affairs. Joice felt humiliated by Nhongo’s public reputation for womanising. The humiliation was made all the more glaring by the fact that Joice was a public figure. Mugabe appointed her to his cabinet in 1980, as minister of youth, sport and recreation, despite the fact that she was twenty-five years old and had not completed her General Certificate of Education (GCE) Ordinary Level when she went off to the war. Nhongo’s infidelities occasioned prolonged periods of low self-esteem for Joice and their marriage lost the key foundation of any relationship – trust. To counteract the low selfesteem, and as a general coping strategy, Joice increased her formal education:

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I used to chase Solomon in the beginning but I started to realise I could not change him and I am the one who looked like a fool chasing him around with a stick. I left him alone and paid attention to educating myself. I realised that I somehow lost myself, trying to track him. You start to forget yourself and your life goals because you are busy chasing your man around. I took my driving lessons in 1982 and I never told him. When Solomon first saw me driving a car, he almost fainted! I did my O Levels, A Levels and went for my first degree at university. I bettered myself.55

One more aspect Joice ceased trying to change about Solomon was his heavy drinking. Joice was of sober habits and a practising Christian belonging to the Salvation Army but her remonstrances were without effect. Joice found supplementary ways to equalise power and assert selfworth in her marriage: When he would come back home after days [away], I would say makadii baba [how are you daddy], which is a greeting you say when you have not seen someone for some time. This was in the 1980s but later on I stopped that. If he came back in the morning after being away, I just said good morning to him and walked away. If he came back in the afternoon after some time I just said good afternoon to him. I wanted to show him I had not even noticed he had been gone.56

Joice earnestly considered leaving Nhongo in the early 1980s but after the birth of their third child, a daughter named Nyasha, in 1983, she decided to bear with Nhongo’s philandering for the sake of their children. ‘I stayed for the children. At least let my children grow up in a home where there is a mother and father’, Joice rationalised.57 Joice’s upbringing also helped determine her choice to stick it out with Nhongo. As a young girl she was taught by older women such as her mother and aunts that a ‘good wife’ ought to steadfastly stand by her husband. Joice’s loyalty to Nhongo must be viewed in the context of the patriarchal norms of her time. Joice shielded Kumbirai, Chipo and Nyasha from Nhongo’s uninhibited behaviour. ‘I tried not to discuss their father’s mistakes with them. Culturally you do not sit down with your children and humiliate their father. I also tried not to have big fights with Solomon in front of the children but they were growing up and starting to see things for themselves.’58 Nhongo never had the chance to adequately provide Kumbirai and Chipo with a father’s love during the war. Peacetime presented Nhongo with an opportunity to be a close father to his daughters but this did not come to pass in entirely satisfactory ways: Solomon was responsible about his children because he made sure he provided for them. They lived in a good house and went to good schools. He even sent the children to school in Britain. But you know he was often absent. His job in the

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army was demanding in the early years and sometimes with his [extra-marital] affairs he did not come home. He still loved his children. When he was with them he was good to them. He tended to spoil them actually, especially Kuzivakwashe. I was the tougher one with them.59

Kuzivakwashe was Nhongo and Joice’s fourth and final child. She was born in 1989 and by then Joice was desperate for a son, because Nhongo wanted a son to carry on his family name. ‘James Makamba came to see me in hospital when Kuzivakwashe was born. He asked me if we had decided a name for the baby. I just said, from nowhere, Kuzivakwashe, in reference to why God never gave me a son.’60 Joice believed it was Nhongo’s desire for sons that partly explained why he went about fathering children with other women. Nhongo fathered at least three sons outside wedlock and made a dozen children, inclusive of his four daughters with Joice. Joice gave another reason for Nhongo’s womanising: the fact that he grew up without a mother. Regarding the absence of Nhongo’s mother Maidei when he was a growing child, Joice commented: ‘A mother is important for hunhu [traditional moral conduct towards others] in a child. Solomon never had a mother to show him hunhu. Solomon anga asina hunhu. Mwana anorerwa [Solomon lacked traditional moral conduct towards others because he was not taught it as a child].’61 The destructive effect of Maidei’s untimely death on Nhongo’s development of hunhu may very well be true but her early demise had other possibly more significant impacts on his life. Maidei’s death left Nhongo exposed to his stern and uncommunicative father Nevison. Since some of the roots of Nhongo’s character are to be found in his childhood, then his relationship with Nevison is also pertinent. Whereas Nevison ought to have stepped into the parental chasm Maidei left behind, he dispatched the sickly young Nhongo to be raised by other family members. Nevison became a distant relative to his son, which was a detrimental model of fatherhood for Nhongo. The resourceful and persevering Lucia did what she could to nurse and raise Nhongo but she was never going to be both mother and father to her brother. Nhongo the child lacked a parental role model on healthy marital love and on the worth of the continuous presence of a father in a child’s life. The absence of these exemplars in his childhood probably also influenced the adult Nhongo’s own failure to be exemplary on wholesome marital love and to be a permanent presence in all his children’s lives. When his detached father passed on, Nhongo left for the ‘place of rising smokes’. In 1967 he left for Zambia to join the liberation struggle. Military instruction in ZAPU brought more nomadism, as he travelled

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to Russia, Tanzania and Bulgaria for training. With time, he decamped from ZAPU to ZANLA, where he operated as a guerrilla first from Zambia, then Tanzania and finally from Mozambique. Operating as a freedom fighter in Rhodesia entailed constant movement, making guerrilla attacks hither and thither, and taking flight to avoid capture. And when he returned to the Mozambican rear, there was little respite from movement for Nhongo because as chief of operations, he had overall charge of ZANLA camps in Mozambique. As Nhongo moved from one ZANLA camp to another, he had encounters with women, just as he did in Chikomba, Bulawayo, Zambia, Tanzania, the Rhodesian warfront and in Europe. Nhongo loved, used and left women continually for many years. When he came home from war aged thirty-four, displacement had defined his life up to that point. Nhongo’s shuffling from woman to woman and his periodic absences from the women and children in his life post 1980 were lasting effects of the life of displacement he lived from childhood to adulthood. Some former liberation fighters broke free from displacement’s grip after 1980 but Nhongo never did, possibly because unlike them, displacement was not just a product of his participation in the independence war but an essence of his life from the start. Joice and the children offered Nhongo a rooted home amid the roving but he could never settle definitively. He shambled for life. A mother is the earliest person of the opposite sex that a boy child will develop a deep attachment with. Some studies show the lack or shallow experience of this connection with one’s mother in childhood can create difficulties in developing strong emotional and durable bonds in relationships with women in adulthood.62 Emotional detachment emanating from desertion by his mother might also have facilitated Nhongo’s maltreatment of women and conspicuous ability to roam restlessly from woman to woman. Nhongo was a child of abandonment and his children and women paid a steep emotional price for it. However, Nhongo’s treatment of women can be seen as shaped by the sexist and gendered norms and practices that pervaded the liberation war generally and ZANLA and ZANU PF specifically – subjects well developed by scholars Lyons and Nhongo-Simbanegavi, amongst others. I do not dispute the important conditioning or habituation effects of the war and Nhongo’s time in ZANLA and ZANU PF, on his attitude towards women. Nonetheless, these structural factors on their own are incomplete explanations for Nhongo’s outlooks because they obviate childhood experience. Onlookers who glimpsed Nhongo laughing decadence and basking in his illustriousness and affluence, grasped a superficial impression of Nhongo as

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a man who only oozed life. Nhongo certainly radiated life but it is doubtful that his existence was as magnificent as it seemed on the surface. Underneath the decadent splendour, part of Nhongo was probably morose and unsettled because of disquieting memories and the scarred emotions of childhood and war. He rarely spoke about the emotive wounds of his upbringing, the war or what else may have haunted him. ‘Solomon did not like to talk about himself. It is hard to understand who he really was sometimes’, Joice observed.63 One might say that had Nhongo confronted his torments more transparently, he might not have been so shaped by some of his lugubrious past. But Nhongo held his burdens and personal shame inside and the innermost core is where they essentially lingered until death. He was a stoic man who shirked perspicuous self-pity. According to his friends and some family members, outside matrimony Nhongo loved two women particularly – Simbiso Chisirimunhu and Sibongile Kunaka. Nhongo met Simbiso when he was middle-aged and fathered two children by her, one of whom was a son he named after himself. His relationship with Simbiso broke down after she emigrated to England. Nhongo subsequently met Sibongile, with whom he did not father children, and their lives were entwined until the end of his life. Joice averred that the number of women in Nhongo’s life began to decrease in the 2000s because of his advancing age. ‘In the last four or five years, we grew closer but as friends. In those final years we were like good friends. It was not romantic love. We were good friends’, Joice supplemented.64 Joice looked back on her marriage to Nhongo: ‘People can say a lot of things about how he was an unfaithful husband but he was still my husband. He still gave me love in his own way. He gave me children who I am proud of. He took care of his family financially. I had forgiven him for many things when he died but there was still a lot of pain.’65 ‘Fire runs in, runs out, runs somewhere else again’,66 in Nhongo’s life history. One warm night in the 1980s, Nhongo was chatting with Joice in bed until she fell asleep, leaving him awake, enjoying his cigarette in the dim light. Nhongo fell asleep but without putting out his lit cigarette, which sparked a fire: I woke up and saw the fire. Solomon was not drunk so I cannot explain how he fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand. The [bed] sheets we were using that night, I liked them so much and they were burnt but not totally. I decided to keep them even though they had been damaged by the fire and I sometimes showed them to Solomon to tease him about how he had burnt sheets I liked very much. One day he came home with brand new sheets like the ones he had burnt and said, ‘Now you can stop teasing me about your sheets.’ When I looked for those burnt sheets they were gone.67

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The Trials of Politics ‘Any other business’, Mugabe asked ZANU PF members during a Politburo meeting, which was one of the earliest Nhongo attended after retiring from the ZNA in 1992.68 On the word of Dabengwa, Nhongo, who reverted to using his birth name Solomon Mujuru upon his retirement from the army, raised his arm, with bloodshot eyes firmly fixed on Mugabe, to make a statement in his customary stuttering voice: ‘I want to say you the president and vice president Nkomo should also consider retiring. Give others a chance.’ Mugabe kept quiet. Nkomo took his stick, angry, jumped up and said, ‘Wena mfana, thula!’ [You, boy, shut up]. Everybody started laughing and then Rex said, ‘M-m-mandinzwa’ [You have heard me]. I liked what he did. That is how we really got close. We thought alike on many other things and we would support each other’s motions in the Politburo.69

Solomon’s pronouncement encapsulated a political principle he stood for in ZANU PF – periodic leadership renewal. He also represented ‘middleground’ politics, as a ZANU PF politician explicated: ‘He was a middleground person in the Politburo, what some people call a moderate. I call it middle-ground. He did not side with extreme political ideas. He always wanted to meet at the middle-ground and chart a way forward from there.’70 The aforementioned instance was not the sole time Solomon called for leadership renewal. He repeatedly made the case for periodic leadership renewal, at opportune moments, in Politburo meetings and private conversations with Mugabe.71 But Mugabe resisted leadership renewal through his authoritarian practices and single-minded pursuit of long political incumbency, his use of patronage to maintain loyalty and the unequal support of some party leaders like Muzenda, Mnangagwa, Mutasa, Patrick Chinamasa and Ignatius Chombo, amongst others. Many in ZANU PF simply feared Mugabe because of his ruthlessness toward political challengers. ‘The majority of us in Politburo and cabinet were afraid to tell him the truth that leadership must change from time to time for the good of the country’, one ZANU PF leader confessed.72 Solomon, characteristically, was fearless and having played kingmaker in Mugabe’s ascension to power in Mozambique somewhat equalised their interpersonal power relations. Just as his demonstration of courage was a source of authority in the war, Solomon’s intrepid challenging of Mugabe’s long incumbency saw him accrue power in ZANU PF. Solomon attracted the following of many ZANU PF members who subscribed to the principle of periodic leadership renewal. Being a ‘middleground’ politician meant Solomon was not a polarising figure amongst many ZANU PF leaders. This accorded Solomon added influence since

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he could easily engage various ZANU PF actors in order to forge consensus on party issues. Solomon’s two main Politburo allies in his leadership renewal agenda were Dabengwa and Tungamirai. Dabengwa wanted to see Mugabe removed as president because of his responsibility for the 1980s violence. ‘After Gukurahundi I had to sit with Mugabe and Mnangagwa in cabinet. That was tough, knowing what they had done. It was a terrible predicament’, Dabengwa stated.73 Solomon was complicit in some of the 1980s violence but Dabengwa now regarded him as a close ally because they shared an objective – leadership change in ZANU PF. Dabengwa also maintained that Solomon was acceptable to him because ‘he tried not to be the director of Gukurahundi. He tried to distance himself from some things but he was definitely aware of all the violence that was going on. He knew and did some bad things.’74 Christopher Charles Tapfumaneyi was a group captain in the air force and a medical doctor. Tapfumaneyi had close relations with Tungamirai from their time together in the air force and once was Solomon’s personal physician. He explained why Tungamirai allied with Solomon on the matter of leadership renewal in ZANU PF: Tungamirai did not like the timing of his retirement. He wanted to become the Zimbabwe defence forces commander after Mujuru retired but he was retired with Mujuru. He also did not like how ZANU PF had been changed to suit Mugabe. He said to me what happened at the ZANU PF Congress in 1984 that was manipulated by Mnangagwa is what leads us to where we are now. The Politburo was not supposed to be appointed by Mugabe. It should have been elected by the Central Committee. But at the Congress Mugabe said he wanted to change the constitution so he could appoint. The Central Committee did not like this. Then Mnangagwa said let us go and sleep over Mugabe’s proposal and tomorrow morning, it will be the first item on the agenda. That night Mnangagwa went from door to door telling Central Committee members that tomorrow you are going to vote yes to what Mugabe wants otherwise there will be severe consequences for you. By 7 a.m. members had already begun to gather and they voted yes by show of hands. Tungamirai believed that was the beginning of the end for the real ZANU PF.75

Solomon had grown uneasy with Mnangagwa’s political proximity to Mugabe by the mid-1980s and this unease increased in the 1990s as his own proximity to Mugabe declined further.76 As the minister of state in the prime minister’s office (1980–7), Mnangagwa was Mugabe’s point man on national security issues and various tasks for most of the 1980s. Mnangagwa became the justice minister in 1987 and Mugabe continued to give him important planned and ad hoc duties in government.77 For example, when the finance minister post fell vacant in 1994, following

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Chidzero’s resignation, Mugabe appointed Mnangagwa as acting finance minister even though he already held another cabinet appointment. Mugabe again appointed Mnangagwa to the Finance Ministry in an acting capacity when the minister’s post needed filling two years later. Solomon took exception to the way Mnangagwa threw his weight around in ZANU PF, seemingly because he was doing Mugabe’s political bidding within the party. One of Solomon’s political allies narrated some of the retired general’s mordant private views on Mnangagwa: He would say that he first met Mnangagwa at Tongogara’s house in Lusaka in the mid-1970s and Mnangagwa at that time was not part of the liberation struggle. He would mock Mnangagwa saying he abandoned the liberation struggle and was bringing girlfriends for Tongogara at his house. Mnangagwa then rejoined the liberation struggle as Mugabe’s personal assistant in the late 1970s. General Mujuru said Mnangagwa was small when the war was being fought but after independence he started acting big in ZANU PF.78

The complete collapse of Solomon’s relationship with Mnangagwa occurred in the mid-1990s over ZIMASCO, a chrome mining and smelting enterprise in Midlands province.79 The acquisitive Solomon sought to acquire shares in ZIMASCO but believed Mnangagwa and Mugabe conspired to thwart the expansion of his mining interests, through the National Investment and Empowerment Trust (NIET) chaired by Mnangagwa. Mutasa remembered a Politburo meeting in the early 2000s, during which he pronounced to members, ‘muno mune ma faction two. Ra Mujuru nera Mnangagwa’ [the Politburo has two factions, one belongs to Mujuru and the other Mnangagwa].80 Mugabe asked Solomon and Mnangagwa to respond to Mutasa’s allegation. As said by Mutasa, ‘Mujuru said, Mnangagwa, you are blocking me from doing A, B and C and I will not forgive you until you stop that. Mujuru’s complaints were about business. When Mnangagwa responded, his complaints were also about business.’81 Solomon and Mnangagwa’s differences over ZIMASCO and Mutasa’s recollection of this party proceeding underlined the significant degree to which party politics and business competition overlapped for ZANU PF elites. A disagreement in one of the two spheres inevitably spilled over into conflict in the other arena. Solomon had other reasons, in addition to business rivalry, for opposing Mnangagwa. ‘The general felt after a hard person like Mugabe, the country needed somebody different. The general did not trust Mnangagwa with power. The general felt he [Mnangagwa] wanted power too much, somebody like that would be a problem.’82 The conflation of politics and business in ZANU PF presented Solomon with an

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opportunity to destroy Mnangagwa politically. From the 1980s, ZANU PF steadily made a range of local business investments, with a view to generating funds for party activities and to make the party financially independent. Mugabe gave Mnangagwa overall charge of these party– business ventures. Mnangagwa collaborated managerially with two British business people of Indian extraction, the Joshi brothers Jayant and Manharlal, along with Dipak Pandya. Jayant had a long relationship with ZANU PF, having allegedly sponsored some of the party’s UKbased members during the 1970s liberation struggle.83 Solomon detected unusual business practices by Mnangagwa and the Joshi brothers, so he incited clamour within ZANU PF for an in-house investigation into the state of the party’s companies and finances, resulting in a committee being established in 2004 to carry out investigations.84 David Karimanzira chaired the investigating committee, comprised of Solomon, Simbarashe Makoni, Thokozile Mathuthu and Obert Mpofu. The committee uncovered fraud and mismanagement of ZANU PF businesses.85 Fearing arrest, the Joshi brothers fled Zimbabwe in dramatic circumstances, with Mnangagwa personally assisting their escape.86 One of Solomon’s political confidants detailed the general’s mood at the time: Mujuru was angry. He wanted to bring down Mnangagwa. Mnangagwa was interviewed by a committee that Mujuru was in and Mujuru came from that interview and said to me, ‘Nda bata matshende ake manje [I have his testicles in my vice-grip]. Mnangagwa has nothing he can say.’ They prepared a report but it went nowhere. What Mujuru later realised was that the looting had been happening with Mugabe’s full knowledge. Mujuru came to believe that Mugabe was part of the looting and that is why there was no criminal investigation. But for Mujuru it was not over. We were drinking whisky sometime later and he said, ‘Mnangagwa will only become president of Zimbabwe over my dead body.’ He swore that Mnangagwa would never be president if he was alive.87

At the end of 2004, Solomon demonstrated the sincerity of his vow to prevent a Mnangagwa presidency in Zimbabwe. Muzenda – one of the country’s two vice presidents – died in 2003 and the vacant vice presidency was due to be filled at ZANU PF’s 2004 Congress. Mnangagwa coveted the vice presidency and canvassed for support in ZANU PF’s provincial structures. Solomon’s initial response to Mnangagwa’s bid for the vice presidency was to pit Sekeramayi against him at the December Congress.88 Solomon’s plan swam against a tide of female ZANU PF members campaigning for one of the vice-president posts to be filled by a woman for the first time. The ZANU PF government signed the Southern African Development Community’s (SADC) Declaration on Gender and Development in 1997, committing itself to gender

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mainstreaming. In the 2000s, some ZANU PF Women’s League actors used the SADC declaration to clamour for greater representation of women in the party’s top posts, with Olivia Muchena and Oppah Muchinguri being the lynchpins of this agenda.89 When Muzenda died the Women’s League began a campaign for his successor to be a woman and, to garner clout for its crusade, it invited the First Lady Grace to champion its agenda. The Women’s League asked Grace to coax Mugabe to throw his weight behind a woman vice president at the 2004 Congress.90 When it came down to who in the Women’s League would be put up for the vice presidency, three interested contenders arose – Joice, Thenjiwe Lesabe and Muchinguri. Joice informed Solomon of these goings-on in the Women’s League and some women party leaders lobbied Solomon to back Joice in the vice-presidency race. Solomon was initially not in favour of supporting Joice because he believed Sekeramayi was a more accomplished candidate for the job and he viewed him as the future president.91 Sekeramayi proved a reluctant contender for the vice president’s post, leaving a frustrated Solomon to remark, after a decisive meeting on the matter, ‘Sekeramayi aramba humambo, saka ini ndava kutora matshende angu ndoisa pane mudzimai wangu’ [Sekeramayi does not want the leadership so I am now taking my testicles from him and placing them next to my wife].92 Solomon then went about meeting ZANU PF’s provincial leaderships to mobilise support for Joice ahead of the Congress, but not before he held a pivotal private meeting with Mugabe and Grace at their residence: I met with Mujuru right after he came from the meeting. He went to Mugabe’s house and said, ‘You are having problems on who should replace Muzenda and some of it is just tribal politics. I am offering my wife to replace Muzenda. There is support from the Women’s League for one of the vice presidents to be a woman and Joice is Korekore [a minority ethnic group] not Zezuru like you, so there will not be any accusations of favouring Zezurus. She is not Zezuru and Joice is a woman. That combination will solve everything for you.’93

Mugabe responded to Solomon’s proposal by mentioning that Grace had been applying pressure on him to back a woman candidate for the vice presidency. Mugabe called Grace into the room and he asked Solomon to retell his suggestion.94 Grace stood up and ululated, after she heard Solomon’s proposal.95 Subsequently, in November 2004, the Politburo made an unprocedural amendment of ZANU PF’s constitution to stipulate that henceforth one of the party’s two vice presidents would always be a woman. Joice was elected vice president the following month. The foregoing is instructive on three counts. First is that Solomon was once again playing kingmaker in politics. Had Solomon had his way,

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Sekeramayi would have become vice president in 2004, with a view to him succeeding Mugabe as president before the next presidential poll. Solomon regarded Sekeramayi as a moderate, responsive to political advice, not conceited and personable. As was the case with Mugabe in the 1970s, Solomon also backed Sekeramayi because he was a welleducated politician. A second evident point is that Solomon was determined to block Mnangagwa’s political ascendency. 2004 was not the first time Solomon encumbered Mnangagwa’s political ambitions. At ZANU PF’s 1999 Congress, Mnangagwa hankered for the post of ZANU PF National Chairman but Solomon, in league with Tungamirai, Zvobgo and Dabengwa, successfully drummed up support for ZAPU’s John Nkomo instead.96 And in 2002, when the ZDF commander Gava (now known as Vitalis Zvinavashe) began engineering a scheme that proposed Mugabe retire and Mnangagwa replace him as president of a unity government incorporating the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Solomon scuttled the furtive plan by leaking its details to media.97 The third matter of note is the gendered obstacles confronting women seeking participation in political leadership roles. Solomon’s eventual pivotal support for Joice’s candidature cannot be separated from the power politics of male elites, which initially marginalised women’s claim to the vice presidency. Solomon conveniently used a woman (Joice) to thwart his male rival Mnangagwa’s bid for power. In addition to Zvinavashe’s apparent support for Mnangagwa, Solomon was vexed by a political statement the ZDF commander made prior the 2002 presidential election.98 Before the election, Solomon, Tungamirai, Dabengwa and Zvobgo, amongst others, preferred a ZANU PF presidential candidate other than Mugabe. But there was no strong consensus on who should succeed Mugabe, nor was Mugabe enthusiastic about retirement. Mugabe stood as ZANU PF’s candidate in the 2002 presidential election. Two months before the vote Zvinavashe released a political statement, which he orated personally while flanked by other service chiefs at a press conference. Zvinavashe’s pronouncements were widely perceived as supportive of Mugabe’s continued rule and they came at a time when Solomon preferred Mugabe’s retirement. Zvinavashe’s intervention was an unwelcome reminder, for Solomon, of how his failure to determine the military’s leadership in 1992 fortified Mugabe’s hand after 2000. Part of Zvinavashe’s statement ran: ‘Let it be known that the highest office in the land [the presidency] is a straitjacket whose occupant is expected to observe the objectives of the liberation struggle. We [the military] will therefore not accept, let alone support or salute, anyone with a different agenda that threatens the very existence of our sovereignty.’99 Zvinavashe’s words were not directed at Solomon but

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they might as well have been, given Solomon’s internal opposition to Mugabe and the fact that by 2002 Solomon had established private links with the MDC, which Zvinavashe’s statement partly targeted.100 The above-quoted fragment of Zvinavashe’s statement entered ZANU PF’s political lexicon with alacrity and it became a mainstay for its intimidating and control effects on party members and supporters and opposition voters. The fragment was publicly restated by Chiwenga, Zvinavashe’s successor as ZDF commander in 2003, before future elections. Other political military officers also employed it publicly and some ZANU PF politicians, supporters and the state-controlled media did likewise, in support of Mugabe’s presidency. As it turns out, the ubiquitous fragment did not originate from Zvinavashe. It was in fact inserted in Zvinavashe’s written statement by Mugabe’s spokesperson George Charamba, who the ZDF commander consulted when he was drafting his proclamation in 2002.101 Chiwenga becoming ZDF commander in 2003 only further reinforced Mugabe’s hold on power, much to Solomon’s infuriation. Zvinavashe supported Mugabe before the 2002 election but his allegiance was unstable, as seen in his attempt to orchestrate Mugabe’s retirement after the election. On the other hand, Chiwenga’s loyalty to Mugabe was, at the time, more stable and his animosity towards Solomon ran deeper than that of Zvinavashe. Solomon did not support Chiwenga’s promotion from ZNA to ZDF commander in 2003. In the contest between Chiwenga and Shiri, the two most senior serving officers in the military, to become the next ZDF commander, Solomon preferred the latter candidate but Shiri declined the offer of promotion, citing poor health.102 A member of Solomon’s inner circle of associates recounted that when Chiwenga’s appointment was confirmed, Solomon drank heavily that night: ‘He did not want Chiwenga in that job. That was the first time I saw him drink whisky to that extent.’103 Solomon and Chiwenga had many differences, in addition to the ones we already know. A former Black Rhinos football player stated Chiwenga often disparaged the army club for receiving favourable treatment in the ZNA when Solomon was commander and that when Chiwenga became the army commander, he oversaw the football club’s decline by depriving it of satisfactory resources,104 perhaps because he saw it as one of Solomon’s insufferable legacies. From the late 1990s Chiwenga gradually grew into a real estate magnate, business and game reserve proprietor, which brought him in competition with Solomon. For example, in the early 2000s there was competition between them for shares in River Ranch diamond mine in Zimbabwe’s Beitbridge town, a contest in which Solomon ultimately prevailed.105 Furthermore, Chiwenga considered

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Solomon’s residual influence in Zimbabwe’s security sector as a threat to his authority as ZDF commander.106 As one of the main creators of the ZNA, Solomon still had significant influence in the army and he had many serving loyalists in the security sector. His leadership renewal agenda aside, Solomon became a Member of Parliament for his birthplace, Chikomba, in 1995. Parliament was ZANU PF dominated, with the ruling party holding 148 of 150 seats after the 1995 parliamentary election, although some opposition parties boycotted the poll because electoral procedures favoured ZANU PF. Solomon left life as a parliamentarian in 2000 because, as one of his allies in Parliament explained, ‘He felt it was distracting him from his businesses. He also said some people were in Parliament just for financial security, if they left Parliament they would become paupers. For Mujuru there was life after Parliament.’107 A ZANU PF politician who had inimitable insight on Solomon’s conduct as an MP in Chikomba observed: I never saw him enjoying constituency politics, so he did one term and left. It was not for him. When he was in the army, he had a whole structure and he liked delegating but as an MP in little Chikomba he was suddenly all alone. He struggled with that isolation. There you are, you are used to giving orders to soldiers. Mujuru did not enjoy having to do the politics of persuasion. Mujuru also did not like public speaking and that contributed to his disenchantment. I remember him trying to answer back to Margaret Dongo in Parliament. She was a good communicator and he was just stammering things, so he threatened to confront her physically.108

The confrontation threat centred on a heated 1998 parliamentary session, during which Dongo, a forthright Independent MP, labelled ZANU PF male parliamentarians ‘Mugabe’s wives’.109 Solomon queried the acceptability of Dongo’s language in Parliament, stating: ‘The language used by Hon. Member Mrs Dongo is not right . . . I do not agree with that. It will lead us to fighting in this house.’110 Dongo interrupted Solomon’s point of order by saying, ‘I was not referring to you.’111 ‘Ha-a pfutseki’, Solomon shot back, after which he threatened to assault Dongo and commotion ensued between them.112 Pfutseki is an impolite Shona word that has its genesis in the Afrikaans word voetsek (get away or get lost). A parliamentary committee, proposed by Mnangagwa incidentally, to investigate the unruly behaviour, fined Solomon 750 Zimbabwean dollars and Dongo 1,000 dollars for ‘uttering derogatory, disrespectful and offensive remarks’ in Parliament.113 Solomon told the parliamentary committee: [H]ere and there she [Dongo] shouted at the members who were there saying ‘muri vakadzi va Mugabe’ [you are Mugabe’s wives] . . . . I lost my temper. It is

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true that I wanted to hit her because I could not believe that an Honourable Member of Parliament and a young girl like Dongo can say to members who are her father’s age, they are wives of another man.114

The 1998 fracas between Solomon and Dongo was gendered in a number of ways. Solomon’s wish to ‘hit’ Dongo would have constituted an unacceptable act of violence against a woman had he gone through with it and his assault threat was equally improper. Solomon believed Dongo’s language was unbecoming of an ‘Honourable Member of Parliament’, without pausing to consider how his own reaction to her comments was also unbecoming. Besides, Solomon’s reference to Dongo as ‘a young girl’ was ageist in the workplace. Of the 150 seats in Parliament, only 22 were held by women when Solomon and Dongo had their disagreement. Parliament had a distinct lack of gender equality and its discourses and cultures were often sexist. Dongo’s remark ‘you are Mugabe’s wives’ was part and parcel of the gendered discourses that pervaded Parliament. Solomon couched his criticism of Dongo, before the committee, in terms of her lack of respect for male elders in Parliament but he might have had two additional but unstated reasons for taking offence at his fellow parliamentarian’s comment. First, Solomon viewed his masculinity as challenged by Dongo’s sexist statement. Second, Solomon was often outspoken in his criticisms of Mugabe’s policies and he was seeking to make him retire from the presidency. Consequently, Solomon was also likely offended by Dongo’s intimation that he was politically submissive to Mugabe. In a twist of fate, Solomon became a member of the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, which scrutinised audits on government spending. As described in the last chapter, in 1993 the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee censured the Ministry of Defence for procedural and financial wrongdoings and it suggested that Solomon and Tungamirai received handsome kickbacks before retirement. The paramount financial saga, concerning government spending, of the 1990s was Zimbabwe’s military involvement in the DRC from 1998 onwards. Precisely how much the Ministry of Defence spent on military operations in the DRC, the value of military hardware lost in operations and the exact number of Zimbabwean soldiers killed in the Congo remain an enigma. In October 1999, the ZANU PF government ‘told the IMF its spending [in the DRC] was $3 million a month, but the UK Financial Times quoted an internal memo which said $166 million had been spent on the conflict between January and June – more than $25 million a month’.115 In August 2000 the ZANU PF government announced it had spent $260 million between 1998 and 2000 on the DRC war but

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unofficial sources continued to cite much higher expenditure.116 Solomon opposed Zimbabwe’s military involvement in the DRC.117 Had the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee and Parliament as an institution been more effective checks, Solomon might have found them useful for challenging the ZANU PF government’s military engagement in the DRC. But the Ministry of Defence’s ‘special case’ status from the 1980s held sway, therefore there was never financial transparency and accountability by government to Parliament on the DRC war costs. Solomon found Parliament’s impotence on the DRC war frustrating.118 Yet Solomon had been party to the Ministry of Defence’s opaqueness and ‘special case’ status during his time in the army; the boot was on the other foot now. Above and beyond supporting parliamentary motions for the ZANU PF government to promote the participation of black businessmen in the national economy, in Parliament Solomon lobbied for expansion of the country’s water sources in communal areas such as Chikomba and in commercial farming zones owned by blacks.119 To raise government money for the growth of water reservoirs, Solomon lobbied Roger Boka – an influential, with government, black baron in the tobacco auction business – to induce government to support amendments to the Tobacco Marketing and Levy Act.120 The amendments were passed in 1997, causing a change in the collection of levies, which were now paid to government, not associations of buyers and growers.121 However, ‘government reaped money [from levies] but instead of building dams the money went towards the government’s recurrent expenditure. In hindsight, we should have made a case for the money to go to a separate special account. We made a mistake’, one of Solomon’s collaborators in Parliament maintained.122 A pertinent debate that arose during Solomon’s period as a parliamentarian was political leadership succession, an important theme for him. ZANU PF’s December 1997 conference passed a resolution for the party leadership to engage in a constitutional review process. The resolution was a response to clamour, earlier that year, for constitutional reform by a new civil society group called the National Constitutional Assembly (NCA), which regarded the powers accorded to the executive as excessive and it sought the expansion of the Bill of Rights, amongst other envisaged changes.123 The December 1997 resolution was also a manifestation of fomenting succession politics within ZANU PF, with figures such as Zvobgo, who drafted the 1987 amendments to the constitution that accorded the president many powers in the first place, at the forefront of an endeavour to use constitutional reform as a means of easing Mugabe out of power.124 Solomon was part of this succession lobby, which spilled

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over into Parliament in January 1998, through the establishment of a Parliamentary Reform Committee that released a critical report in May, highlighting limited accountability of the executive to Parliament, excessive presidential powers and the need for electoral reform, amongst other issues. Before the Parliamentary Reform Committee released its report, there was excited deliberation in Parliament about constitutional reform, leading the ZANU PF parliamentarian Dzikamai Mavhaire to declare on 10 February 1998 that ‘we are not a monarch. Honourable Members will agree that we must remain a democratic republic . . . . What I am proposing is that the president must go.’125 From Kingmaker to Kingbreaker In March 1997 an Air Zimbabwe Boeing 707 aircraft carrying Mugabe and a presidential entourage of thirty-seven people from Ireland to Zimbabwe was forced into an emergency landing after one of its engines caught fire.126 Mugabe and his entourage were fortunate the engine fire occurred three minutes after take-off so the plane quickly returned to Shannon airport for an emergency landing. Solomon reacted to the news of Mugabe’s lucky escape by saying: ‘Cha-cha-cha pona. Achidi ku-kukufa. Dai ndenge iyoyo yakaputika, azvina basa kuti vamwe vese varimo vaifawo. Dai chango fa’ [The little thing survived. It does not want to die. I wish the plane had exploded, it does not matter that others in there would also die. I wish it had died].127 Solomon’s antipathy towards Mugabe intensified a year later because of the ZNA’s involvement in the DRC war. Mugabe’s ‘views and personality, and experience as an African nationalist and one of the then co-leaders of the armed struggle’ were ‘crucial’ in the ZANU PF government’s foreign policy decision-making.128 On the subject of the DRC war, officially Mugabe stated that the Congolese leader Laurent Kabila requested military assistance from Zimbabwe in order to fend off Rwandan and Ugandan armed incursion on his country’s borders and that it was in Zimbabwe’s national interest to render military support. Ostensibly, a commitment to African independence, sovereignty and pan-Africanism was central to Mugabe’s guiding foreign policy principles and so the official justification for military intervention seemed to fit his values. Zvinavashe superintended the DRC operations but Mugabe sent Mnangagwa on various classified missions to the DRC on his behalf.129 Mnangagwa and Zvinavashe were both named by a United Nations Panel of Experts, on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the DRC, as engaged in the looting of Congolese natural resources.130 Economic gain for

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particular political and military elites was an unofficial incentive for Zimbabwe’s involvement in the DRC. For Solomon, the DRC did not share a border with Zimbabwe hence the conflict there was not an immediate security threat and the DRC was not a liberation wartime ally hence Zimbabwe had no historically rooted obligation to come to the Congolese government’s military aid.131 What is more, Solomon contended the Zimbabwean military was likely to encounter operational difficulties in the DRC because the war there did not enjoy strong support at home and the Congolese terrain and language were unfamiliar to Zimbabweans.132 Solomon and Tungamirai met with Mugabe in 1998, after the military had already deployed to the DRC, to advise against Zimbabwe’s military engagement there.133 Mugabe rejected their views and persevered with an expensive and unpopular war, ultimately withdrawing from the DRC in 2002 after the signing of a peace deal. Mugabe’s imperviousness to the counsel of retired military commanders increased Solomon and Tungamirai’s disapproval of his presidency. The DRC war’s unpopularity, because of its human life and economic costs, growing agitation for constitutional review in and outside ZANU PF, the Zimbabwean currency’s declining value due to Mugabe’s 1997 unbudgeted payment of grants to long-neglected liberation war veterans and the negative social and economic effects of his government’s 1990s IMF-supported ESAP, combined to generate Mugabe and ZANU PF’s declining support. Public disgruntlement was collectively expressed through the 1998 urban riots against the ZANU PF government, over rising prices of basic commodities. Police and ZNA units were deployed in Harare townships to quell unrest. Eight deaths, numerous injuries and arrests took place over three days of urban disorder.134 In February 2000 citizens again registered their dissatisfaction with the ZANU PF government when they rejected, by 55 per cent to 45 per cent, a state-sponsored new constitution in a national referendum. The result was both a vote of no confidence in the ZANU PF administration, as well as a rejection of some of the proposed constitution’s contents. The referendum loss was of serious concern to ZANU PF because the NCA and MDC party, led by the former trade unionist Tsvangirai, energetically de-campaigned the state-sponsored constitution. Subsequently, the MDC cast the rejection of the proposed constitution as a win for opposition politics. In response, ZANU PF’s partisanship was given renewed impetus following the February 2000 referendum and some of the themes in the party’s post-2000 politics (such as targeting perceived ‘sell-outs’ and ‘traitors’) had roots in the nationalist politics of the liberation struggle years.135

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However, the MDC had the momentum going into the June 2000 parliamentary election. ZANU PF controlled 148 of 150 seats in Parliament after the 1995 election but following the 2000 poll it now held 92 seats to the MDC’s 57, while the ZANU Ndonga party had 1 seat. From the 120 elective seats ZANU PF won 62 to the MDC’s 57. ZANU PF’s final tally rose to 92 because the constitution conferred Mugabe power to appoint an additional thirty Members of Parliament. The MDC disputed the election outcome, citing manipulation of the result by the incumbent ZANU PF government and state-sponsored political violence against opposition candidates. Some liberation war veterans were the main foot soldiers in the political violence, targeting MDC supporters in the countryside and forcibly taking over white-owned commercial farms partly because some white farmers backed the upsurge of opposition politics. Mugabe neglected the social and economic needs of many war veterans for years but his disbursement of gratuities in 1997 brought them onside and the takeover of white-owned commercial farming land fulfilled one of the core objectives of the liberation war – equitable redistribution of productive farming land between blacks and whites. Thus, from 2000 many war veterans vigorously campaigned for Mugabe and ZANU PF in elections. The new ‘traitors’ were local whites who had allegedly renounced ZANU PF’s hand of reconciliation and formed a ‘puppet’ or ‘sell-out’ MDC party. Mugabe also claimed British prime minister (1997–2007) Tony Blair’s government sought to recolonise Zimbabwe through its support for the MDC. Partisanship and the language of sell-outs caused sharp divisions in Zimbabwean politics after 2000. ‘Loyalty is the moral core of partisanship, the value that trumps all others. Once you become a partisan, you enter an information bubble of political positioning. You abjure the other side, do not keep company with them and define them as everything you oppose.’136 Solomon was anything but an out-and-out partisan. As Tsvangirai disclosed, from 2000 onwards Solomon: always communicated with me through a third party who I am never going to reveal because it was in confidence. Mujuru would express his opinions through this third party very frankly on any issue. Mujuru was unhappy about the political and economic direction Mugabe was taking the country. The first time I actually met Mujuru was towards the 2002 presidential election when he invited me to his offices in Gunhill.137

Tsvangirai said of that inaugural 2002 late-night meeting: [W]e spoke frankly about the country’s problems, their causes and how they could be resolved. I was surprised by his depth of understanding and his clarity on issues

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affecting the country. It was also surprising that in that one and half hour discussion, Mujuru went through a big bottle of whisky and yet he was still very clear in our conversation. It was almost like he was drinking water. It struck me that the heavy drinking was perhaps second nature. In all his interactions with me, Mujuru never expressed any hatred towards me, never, and because of that I did not have any disrespect or contempt for him. There was mutual respect between us. Mujuru was not a rabid politician. He never hated MDC. He recognised Mugabe and ZANU PF’s mistakes.138

After 2000 Zimbabwe experienced unprecedented economic decline and the 2000 referendum and parliamentary election results represented a momentous reversal of political fortunes for the ruling party. Instead of blaming local whites, Blair and MDC ‘sell-outs’, Solomon believed the primary cause of these volte-faces was Mugabe and ZANU PF’s misgovernment. Solomon did not share the partisan views held by Mugabe and his supporters in ZANU PF, hence his ability to share honest political views with Tsvangirai. Let me, here, briefly underline yet another telltale sign Solomon was a high-functioning alcoholic – he drank an entire bottle of whisky, whilst engaging logically in an important ninety-minute-long discussion with Tsvangirai. America (2001) and the European Union (2002) responded to the absence of rule of law, political violence, property rights violations and staging of controversial elections by imposing sanctions on the ZANU PF government and targeted restrictive measures on individuals associated with the administration. In practice this meant direct Western development aid to the ZANU PF government was withheld, America would oppose Zimbabwe’s access to credit lines from international financial institutions and named individuals associated with ZANU PF were barred from doing business with American citizens and they were also banned from travelling to America and the European Union. Solomon was one of the ZANU PF politicians on whom targeted measures applied. He complained bitterly about the effects of Western sanctions and his ability to do profitable business and he at one time said to Tsvangirai: ‘The MDC must work towards the removal of sanctions.’139 ‘I never called for sanctions on Zimbabwe. Sanctions are there because of ZANU PF’s bad governance’, Tsvangirai responded to Solomon.140 Solomon grew to regard Mugabe’s continued tenure as president as the chief obstacle to the end of Western isolation.141 Certainly, many Western states’ approaches to Zimbabwe’s domestic problems were often personalised around the figure of Mugabe.142 Many war veterans saw Solomon as having neglected their social and economic needs in the independence period.143 War veterans who held this view regarded Solomon as an acquisitive capitalist who, when the war

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ended in 1980, forsook them and went off to enrich himself. Consequently, in the 2000s Solomon had lost much of his 1970s standing with many war veterans. Chenjerai ‘Hitler’ Hunzvi was a confrontational leader of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association (ZNLWVA) when Mugabe allied with war veterans for political survival. Hunzvi’s war record was a matter of controversy. He claimed to have been an active ZIPRA soldier in the 1970s but some ZIPRA cadres disputed the validity of his claims.144 What Hunzvi had going for him was that from the time he became ZNLWVA chairman in 1995, he fervidly championed war veterans’ demands for material and social recognition by government of their contributions in the independence war and he was active in the rolling out of the farm seizures programme. This won Hunzvi considerable legitimacy among many war veterans, regardless of his dubious war record, and Mugabe aligned with him expediently. Hunzvi was from Chikomba and he sought to become ZANU PF’s candidate there in the 2000 parliamentary election. Seeing as Solomon was bent on leaving his unsatisfying life as a parliamentarian, he lined up Edgar Mbwembwe, a young and determined politician who was a former Students’ Union leader during his studies at the University of Zimbabwe in the late 1980s, to succeed him as Chikomba’s representative in Parliament.145 Hunzvi’s campaign, in ZANU PF’s Chikomba primary election, had as its staple message a claim that he was Mugabe’s anointed candidate for the constituency. Mugabe had not made this point to Solomon and he resented the prospect of Mugabe imposing a parliamentary candidate in his place of origin.146 Hunzvi routinely threatened Chikomba residents with violence if they did not support him, he labelled Solomon’s candidate an MDC candidate in disguise and coined the campaign slogan ‘pasi na MDCMbwembwe’ [down with MDC’s Mbwembwe] and he denounced Solomon for allegedly having done ‘nothing’ for war veterans since 1980.147 Solomon, Tobias Musariri, Ernest Kadungure and Charles Utete were the main founders of the Chikomba Development Association (CDA) in the 1980s so as to support economic and social development in their generally underdeveloped Chikomba homeland. The CDA promoted the education of local girls by providing scholarships,148 it established Chikomba’s first and only HIV-AIDS clinic,149 and it upgraded water sources, power supply, schools and some roads and bridges, amongst other developmental and humanitarian activities.150 In 2000 Hunzvi fired a shot across the bows of the CDA by forming a new Chikomba Development Association chaired by himself, which incensed Solomon.151 Ultimately, Solomon’s candidate stood down for Hunzvi in the primary election because Solomon feared an

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outbreak of strong political violence in Chikomba.152 Hunzvi won the primary after intimidating all his potential rivals and subsequently he waged a campaign of intimidation and violence against opposition party candidates to secure victory in the June 2000 election. Despite Solomon’s political disagreements with Hunzvi and Mugabe, he supported the redistribution of land from whites to blacks. Solomon ‘had no problem with land being redistributed. He said it was what many people had fought for in the liberation war.’153 Toyne-Sewell related that in the 1980s Solomon ‘said to me land was going to become an issue in the country one day because not enough had been done to share it. He was very busy with his farming activities at the time.’154 In December 2001 Solomon seized a farm for himself from a white commercial farmer, Guy Watson-Smith, after it was identified for him by one of his allies: ‘I am the one who identified the general’s farm in Beatrice. I used to see it and said, “General, you do not have a farm from the land redistribution. I have seen a good tobacco farm in Beatrice for you. Come have a look.” He came with me to the farm and liked it and he decided to take it over.’155 Solomon ordered Watson-Smith to leave the farm, taking only his and his family’s personal household belongings. Watson-Smith accepted giving up the land but lodged a successful case in Zimbabwe’s High Court for right of recovery of his movable assets (farming equipment, livestock, game) on the farm, which were valued at approximately $1.7 million. But Solomon ignored the High Court’s order and Watson-Smith and his family in due course emigrated from Zimbabwe. Solomon’s seizure of Watson-Smith’s farm stressed his inherent contradictions. He disapproved of the violence Hunzvi and the war veterans wrought during the land takeovers and in election campaigns yet when Solomon took over the Beatrice farm, he intimidated Watson-Smith using a group of war veterans. Solomon was critical of ‘the political and economic direction Mugabe was taking the country’ in but by ignoring the High Court’s judgment that he allow Watson-Smith to recoup his movable assets, he displayed the same disregard for rule of law he lambasted Mugabe for. The CIO, Zimbabwe’s main intelligence body, was affected by crippling internal feuds, corruption and declining standards of intelligence work in the mid-1990s.156 Under the pretext of alleviating these problems, Solomon recommended to Mugabe that he appoint two ZNA brigadiers (Elisha Muzonzini and Happyton Bonyongwe) to the leadership of the CIO, the logic being that military men are well attuned to instilling order hence they would end the divisions and reform the organisation into an effective one. Muzonzini had allegiance to Solomon going back to his years as army commander. Solomon attempted to use Muzonzini to influence Mugabe to step down before the 2002

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presidential election.157 The CIO presented Mugabe with diagnostic reports that pointed to declining support and suggested his retirement. Mugabe did not retire and instead fired Muzonzini as CIO director general in 2003, for being at Solomon’s beck and call. Mugabe won the 2002 presidential election, with a campaign message that only his victory would guarantee irreversibility of land redistribution, he cast Tsvangirai as a sell-out to the West, he employed political violence against opposition supporters and as the incumbent he manipulated the electoral process to his advantage. America, the European Union, the Commonwealth Observer Mission and local non-state election observer groups judged the poll result illegitimate. But most African observer groups validated the outcome, lending Mugabe a seal of legitimacy amongst many African leaders, a lot of whom subscribed to his political message that his leadership was being targeted by racist and imperialist Western states for redressing a colonial legacy of racially biased land distribution. Zimbabwe’s socio-economic problems worsened after 2002. Economic hardship stepped up amid mammoth job losses and food and fuel shortages. Many thousands of Zimbabweans and migrant workers were dislocated because of the land resettlement programme and a 2005 urban ‘clean up’ operation called Operation Murambatsvina (meaning: one who rejects filth), in which the state wrecked a considerable amount of unplanned homes without first providing alternative accommodation. The emigration of educated young and old Zimbabweans largely to South Africa, Botswana and the West also accelerated. By 2008 Zimbabwe had world-record-breaking inflation in peacetime. The violent repression of opposition forces was sustained, with the most infamous instance being Tsvangirai’s thorough beating by police on 11 March 2007, as part of the state’s clampdown on a planned ‘Save Zimbabwe’ prayer meeting. Mugabe’s answer to the worsening crisis was unchanged: the West was behind all Zimbabwe’s domestic problems and it was directing Tsvangirai and the MDC to remove him and ZANU PF from power. Solomon’s business investments became less profitable because of the economic crisis. As the crisis worsened, Solomon’s criticisms, in and outside Politburo meetings, of Mugabe’s leadership for mismanaging Zimbabwe’s affairs became unrestrained.158 But the Politburo’s composition was much changed after the 2002 presidential election. Mugabe’s liberation wartime peers and other fearless politicians who might have allied with Solomon to force Mugabe to step down were either deceased or had been systematically marginalised from ZANU PF by Mugabe. Nyagumbo committed suicide in 1989, Zvobgo was a marginal figure when he died in 2004 and the following year Tungamirai died. Nkala and Tekere were no longer in ZANU PF and could only offer critical

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commentary as private citizens in Zimbabwe’s non-state-controlled newspapers. Zvinavashe became a Politburo member after his retirement as ZDF commander in 2003. He was all the time more critical of Mugabe’s policies but Solomon was somewhat wary about forging an alliance with Zvinavashe because of their historical differences and due to Mnangagwa’s links to Zvinavashe.159 Dabengwa became Solomon’s closest and most willing Politburo ally in actively championing leadership renewal by the time of the 2008 presidential election. Mugabe was aware of the succession agenda Solomon and Dabengwa were advocating in ZANU PF in the build-up to the 2008 poll. In one of the years leading up to the 2008 election, some members of Solomon’s faction in ZANU PF were roped into a fundraising committee for the celebration of Mugabe’s birthday on 21 February, an annual event at which party youth and other sycophants took turns to eulogise Mugabe’s life and leadership. Solomon was watching state television one evening and saw some of his allies on a news report about plans for Mugabe’s birthday commemoration. Solomon immediately summoned them to his residence. When they arrived, Solomon had a face like thunder and he asked them to follow his vehicle to an outdoor pub: When we arrived, Mujuru started roasting meat for us. I could tell something was wrong. His face was scary. He said, ‘I saw you on television. What are you doing in a committee for Mugabe’s birthday? Who put you there?’. I said, ‘Ah, we were invited to join and as party people we thought we should be involved.’ Mujuru was very angry. He was now roasting us and the meat! He said, ‘You are busy promoting a man I am trying to remove. Did I say you must do that? What are you doing there?’. After he was finished roasting us, we ate the meat and he gave us a bottle of whisky to drink on our way home. We withdrew from that committee.160

The politics of succession came to a head at ZANU PF’s December 2006 conference in Goromonzi. Mugabe proposed at the Goromonzi conference to have his presidential term, which terminated in 2008, extended by Parliament for two years so that its expiry would coincide with the end of the parliamentary term in 2010. This would mean that the presidential and parliamentary elections would be staged concurrently in 2010. Mugabe’s plan was to use ZANU PF parliamentarians to mobilise support for him as they campaigned in their respective constituencies in the 2010 elections. He feared that if the presidential poll was staged separately in 2008, ZANU PF parliamentarians would be lacklustre in mobilising their constituencies for an election pitting their progressively unpopular leader and because their political careers were not on the line. Solomon, Dabengwa and their allies organised support in ZANU PF for the rejection of Mugabe’s

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cunning scheme. ZANU PF spurned Mugabe’s proposal at the Goromonzi conference and he held Solomon greatly responsible for the setback.161 Some members of Solomon’s faction had also lobbied him to publicly challenge Mugabe over who the party ought to have as its candidate in the 2008 election.162 Solomon was in favour of challenging Mugabe to allow a leadership succession but he made a tactical withdrawal at the conference. ‘There was a lot of intimidation at the conference. People who had been saying to Mujuru we will support you once you move the leadership motion were now afraid. I remember a large group of vapositori [a large religious sect in Zimbabwe] who even deliberately stood in front of where Mujuru was seated and were shouting “if anyone here tries to push for succession we will undress him”.’163 Another of Solomon’s allies commented: ‘Not enough work had been done on the ground to push Mugabe out at Goromonzi and I told the general as much before Goromonzi. There was an overzealous push for Mugabe to go at Goromonzi but the general would have found himself isolated, without total support from the provinces. ZANU PF is full of cowards and self-interested people.’164 A month after the Goromonzi conference, Tekere published his autobiography, A Lifetime of Struggle, and the publication extended Mugabe’s hostility towards Solomon. This was because Tekere’s autobiography nitpicked Mugabe’s liberation struggle credentials and leadership qualities and it highlighted his cruel personality, while it endorsed Joice’s political ascension and it praised Solomon for not being cruel-hearted and for assisting Tekere financially when he fell on hard times.165 Mugabe, in an unaired portion of his annual birthday interview to the state broadcaster in February 2007, accused Solomon of conspiring with Tekere to discredit him politically through the autobiography and he castigated Solomon for his avaricious construction of a business empire.166 The more widely read private newspapers censured Mugabe daily for misgovernance and being undemocratic. Why was Mugabe particularly indignant about the contents of Tekere’s book, which had a narrower readership? The answer is that by 2007 Mugabe was discredited as a democratic and effective governor. One of the main factors Mugabe had left to sustain his legitimacy was liberation history, his role in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle specifically, which was steadily propagated by state-controlled media and sympathetic public intellectuals. And yet here was Tekere, Mugabe’s immediate peer in the fight for liberation, demeaning Mugabe’s struggle credentials by, for example, stressing that Mugabe never trained as a soldier in the war so he could not fire a gun, as well as alleging that Tongogara, the foremost guerrilla commander in the war, once labelled Mugabe a sell-out.167

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After the publication of Tekere’s autobiography, a series of meetings by former members of the ZANLA general staff resolved that leadership change in ZANU PF was necessary for Zimbabwe’s economic recovery and for the party’s presidential candidate to stand a chance of triumphing in the 2008 presidential election.168 Some representatives of the former ZANLA general staff asked Solomon to verbally communicate their resolution to Mugabe. Mugabe flatly refused to meet with Solomon, having been tipped off by Mnangagwa, allegedly, about the general’s intended message to him.169 Sensing his standing in the 2008 election ever more insecure, in March 2007 Mugabe attempted to move ZANU PF to endorse his candidature in next year’s election but Solomon’s faction again successfully organised against his desired outcome.170 Mugabe then attempted to move parliamentary elections from 2010 to 2008, in order to realise his crafty scheme rejected at Goromonzi, and he turned to some in the ZNLWVA for support. Hunzvi had died in 2001 and the new ZNLWVA leader was one Jabulani Sibanda, a militant war veteran. Sibanda and his supporters, backed by state resources, mobilised support for the confirmation of Mugabe’s 2008 candidature in ZANU PF’s provincial structures. ‘Any party member who does not support the revolution will be considered a sell-out’, Sibanda declared in October 2007.171 Mugabe’s personal bid for uninterrupted political power had become synonymous with revolution and the likes of Solomon morphed into ‘sell-outs’. Sibanda’s campaign for Mugabe’s endorsement culminated in a ‘million men march’ in Harare at the end of November. A million men did not turn up for the march but there was considerable attendance, a compelling show of force and afterward the marchers were addressed by an appreciative Mugabe. He made thinly veiled references to disloyalty, directed at Solomon and his faction in ZANU PF, during his speech. The ‘million men march’ stole the impetus from Solomon’s faction going into ZANU PF’s Extraordinary Congress a fortnight later. When the Congress opened those opposed to Mugabe’s candidature in 2008 were backtracking briskly. Mnangagwa carried out the legal work for the calling of an Extraordinary Congress, as part of further ingratiating himself to Mugabe following his demotion to the Rural Housing and Social Amenities Ministry, after his failed attempt to secure the vice presidency in 2004. The December 2007 Congress’s main agenda was to declare Mugabe as ZANU PF’s candidate in the March 2008 presidential election, which would now be held in tandem with parliamentary and municipal elections. Solomon’s faction did not move a motion challenging Mugabe’s 2008 candidature, because the war veterans’ campaign had whipped most of the provincial leaderships into line, hence Mugabe was

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confirmed as ZANU PF’s candidate.172 Mugabe had overcome the leadership succession agenda, for now, but ZANU PF was left deeply divided over his 2008 candidature. Certain politicians in ZANU PF and other figures outside it who had historical connections to the party resolved to put up an alternative ZANU PF-linked candidate to challenge Mugabe in the 2008 presidential election. Solomon’s wartime comrade Machingura (now known as Wilfred Mhanda) was among the persons outside ZANU PF. One of Solomon’s allies sounded out his views about an alternative candidate to Mugabe and whether he would be willing to work with Mhanda again after their 1970s falling-out in Mozambique. Solomon had had little to do with Mhanda in the independence period, bar a memorable chance reunion in the early 1980s, recounted here by Mhanda: I was in a bar and someone touched me from behind. I looked back and it was Rex Nhongo. He greeted me. Later that night he drove me in his car to the [ZNA] Officers’ Mess to have some drinks there. When we arrived the other officers were there. They knew who I was from ZIPA. Rex made me sit next to him as if to say I was also a senior commander. We had drinks, all of us. At some point Rex just disappeared. He just left.173

‘The thinking is that Mugabe will lose to Tsvangirai and there are people, Dzino [Mhanda] is one of them, who would like to support [Simbarashe] Makoni as an alternative candidate’, the ally stated to Solomon.174 Makoni was a former finance minister and a ZANU PF representative in Europe in the 1970s. Solomon’s ally described the general’s reaction: Mujuru was always tactful so he never said he would be part of it. He said, ‘I agree with you, Tsvangirai will win’, which was enough to suggest he was agreeing to be involved but also enough for him to be able to say, ‘I never said I am in.’ Then Mujuru said, ‘I think this project is a good thing for you.’ He never said it was a good thing for himself. Mujuru mobilised money for Makoni a few times. But the money never came directly from him. It was always through a third party, so nothing would ever come back to him.175

Makoni introduced his candidature in February 2008, a month before the presidential election. He ‘was seen by many as a possible route to ZANU PF renewal in a version acceptable to the West . . . Makoni carefully positioned himself as a reformer who would revive not destroy ZANU PF and as a technocrat who could fix the economy, something Mugabe . . . patently could not.’176 Makoni publicly indicated that he had major backers in ZANU PF but he did not name them. Speculation was rampant in local and international media that Solomon was one of these supporters, in part because of his now well-known internal opposition to

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Mugabe’s continued rule. Dabengwa and Zvinavashe both agreed to back Makoni’s candidature and the chief organisers in the Makoni-led Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn party planned to stage phased public declarations of support by some ZANU PF leaders for Makoni, beginning with Dabengwa, followed by Zvinavashe and finally Solomon.177 Dabengwa duly met his side of the agreement by announcing his support for Makoni but someone was leaking intelligence so Mugabe found out Zvinavashe was next. Mugabe travelled by helicopter to visit Zvinavashe. Zvinavashe’s health was poor at the time so Mugabe made it look like he was just checking on his sick retired general. They met privately and some deals or threats were made by Mugabe because next thing when Makoni tried to go see Zvinavashe, his guards would not let Makoni through the gate of his house. Zvinavashe did not want to see Makoni. Zvinavashe had pulled back. That is how Mugabe managed to divide the team.178

Solomon noted Zvinavashe’s changed stance and he began to prevaricate. Four days before the presidential election, some members of Mavambo/Kusile/Dawn visited Solomon at his Chisipite home to put pressure on him to publicly support Makoni, regardless of Zvinavashe’s withdrawal. ‘I am not the only politician in this house. There is also my wife. Go talk to her and get her support’, Solomon stated.179 Part of the visiting delegation approached Joice, who was at home, to ask her to back Makoni publicly. ‘I am married to the Mujuru family. I will go where baba [Solomon] goes’, Joice answered. The small group went back and relayed Joice’s answer to Solomon. ‘Good. I want to make a press statement at my house tomorrow morning at 9’, Solomon retorted.180 By 7 a.m. members of Makoni’s party and some of Solomon’s associates had begun gathering outside his house in Chisipite: I was there. I was convinced if Mujuru announced support for Makoni, Mugabe was gone. But I noticed there was very little activity inside the house. We had taken a decision that we would only call the press to the house when everything was set up so there was no press yet. It is now 8 a.m. – nothing. 8.30 a.m. and the man is still not appearing from his bedroom. 9 a.m. – nothing. Ah, people starting running away from the house. Grown men rushing to their cars to leave the house. Mujuru was in fact not at home. No one saw Mujuru. He vanished. His phone was unreachable. Next time I saw him was on TV on election day! He was filmed with Joice. They were voting. I asked him after the election why he had disappeared and he said when we were gone his wife confronted him and said, ‘What are you trying to achieve? I am already vice president. Leave this Mavambo project alone.’181

Joice believed Makoni would not win the presidential election because he had declared his candidature late and that Solomon, as her husband, ought to remain politically loyal to her by waiving support for Makoni and

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backing her, because as vice president she was a shoo-in for the presidency.182 However, it was not exclusively because of Joice’s misgivings that Solomon abandoned Makoni. ‘Mujuru had doubts about Makoni. Mujuru criticised Makoni behind his back many times during the campaign. Mujuru believed Makoni was very detached from the people, which is true, I agreed with that. Mujuru also did not think Makoni was humble.’183 Importantly, Makoni’s campaign rallies drew unexceptional crowds. Solomon therefore reasoned that Makoni was unlikely to win the election. It later turned out that ‘Solomon managed to meet Mugabe just before the election. They met alone. To this day, we still do not know what they talked about.’184 In the parliamentary vote, the Tsvangirai-led MDC won ninety-nine seats to ZANU PF’s ninety-seven seats and a smaller splinter MDC party headed by Arthur Mutambara secured ten seats in what were peaceful elections in March 2008. But the presidential poll results were only released after a month, with Tsvangirai obtaining 48 per cent of the votes cast, Mugabe 43 per cent and Makoni 8 per cent. Tsvangirai’s 48 per cent was below the 51 per cent required to win the election outright hence a run-off poll between him and Mugabe was held in June. Mugabe won 90 per cent of the votes cast in the June run-off, after Tsvangirai withdrew from the election because of strong state-sponsored political violence, although the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission deemed his pulling-out void because it was made after the stipulated deadline for withdrawals. Mnangagwa and Chiwenga played important roles in Mugabe’s violent fightback but the June run-off’s outcome lacked legitimacy, consequently SADC brokered a power-sharing agreement between three political parties headed by Mugabe, Mutambara and Tsvangirai. Mugabe retained the powerful presidency, Tsvangirai became prime minister and Mutambara was deputy prime minister in a power-sharing government that took power in 2009 and ended in 2013. ZANU PF candidates for Parliament who were members of Solomon’s faction had actively campaigned for themselves and neglected canvassing for Mugabe in their respective constituencies, in a ploy named bhora musango [kick the ball into the long grass], so as to ensure the incumbent’s defeat in the March 2008 presidential election. Days after voting in the presidential poll ended and the result was being withheld from the electorate, one of Solomon’s political collaborators visited the general at his Beatrice farm to hear his views: I was concerned because I had been told Tsvangirai, not Makoni, had won the election but I found General Mujuru nonchalant. He said to me that there was nothing to be concerned about, ‘Tsvangirai anotonga ka’ [Tsvangirai will govern].

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On that day, I realised how much General Mujuru had turned against the president. He was prepared to accept Tsvangirai as president. That was his view. It shocked me.185

Solomon retained his position in the Politburo and Joice the vice presidency in the power-sharing government despite Solomon’s disloyalty in the 2008 poll. However, in a milieu of acute partisanship and powerful nationalist discourses about ‘sell-outs’ within and without, disloyal party members transmute into great internal enemies. Mugabe promoted Mnangagwa from minister of rural housing and social amenities to the minister of defence for his contribution to Mugabe’s rebound in the June run-off, whilst the ever more political Chiwenga retained his CDF post. After 2008, Mnangagwa and Chiwenga became leading pillars of support for Mugabe’s presidency. In the power-sharing phase (2009–13), both figures mostly worked in sync towards the progressive development of a state within the state, a deep state, as a means of protecting Mugabe’s presidency and ZANU PF rule from the political threat posed by the MDC in the power-sharing government. The deep state also worked against disloyal internal elements such as Solomon. As was the case before, there was a political economy dimension to Solomon’s feuds in ZANU PF during the powersharing period. In 2006 Africa Consolidated Resources (ACR), a UKregistered company in which Solomon had a minority shareholding, acquired a significant concession of alluvial diamonds in Chiadzwa, in eastern Zimbabwe. Mugabe blocked ACR from proceeding with mining activities. ACR sought legal recourse, with the High Court ruling in its favour, but government ignored the judgments. Solomon was a minority shareholder in another diamond venture (River Ranch) in the southern town of Beitbridge. With the ACR project impeded, Solomon attempted to secure a formal stake in the Chiadzwa diamond fields via River Ranch. A River Ranch official explained: The claims given to Chinese companies that were in partnership with the Ministry of Defence, they were initially given to River Ranch. We were finalising the paperwork so we could start mining, things were very advanced, when Mpofu [the mines minister] went on leave in 2010 and Mnangagwa became the acting minister of mines and things suddenly changed. All of a sudden the Ministry of Defence moved in on our claims. Their papers were put together and processed overnight. They ran ahead of River Ranch.186

The deep state effectively monopolised exploitation of the diamond fields through joint enterprises, such as Canadile Miners, Mbada Mining and Anjin, with external mining consortiums. A River Ranch official explained the deep state’s behaviour in this way:

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The guys in defence wanted the diamonds for themselves and the general was fighting Mugabe politically. Mugabe already could not control the general, what more if the general had big money from diamonds now? Mugabe and the guys in defence found each other over the general and diamonds.187

Despite encountering impediments in Chiadzwa, a journalist who worked for the Financial Gazette, a local weekly newspaper published by a company owned by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) governor Gideon Gono, intimated that Solomon was making inroads in the diamond mining sector in order to use the wealth to take over ZANU PF from Mugabe. A River Ranch official described Solomon’s reaction to the news report: The general instructed us to sue that journalist. He said shut him up because it was not true. The general was not the controlling shareholder of River Ranch, he only had 20 per cent. The boss at River Ranch was [Adel Abdul Rahman al] Aujan [of Aujan Group, a billion-dollar Saudi Arabian diversified holding company]. Journalists did not know that River Ranch was not making a lot of money. The general was not that rich. 2010, thereabout, the general and Aujan actually fell out because the general was not realising his share dividend, but somebody was creating a perception the general was becoming very rich. The general had lots of assets and shares in companies but they were not making him that much money because the economy was a disaster. We could not get Western investors. Those unproductive assets were one of the reasons the general was demanding Mugabe retire, so the economy could pick up. There were many intrigues around the general those last days.188

‘Vanhu ava vane masimba akawandisa. Ndafunga kuzvi regedza . . .. Handisi kunzwa kuchengeteka’ [These people have too much power. I think of letting go . . . I do not feel safe], Solomon remarked to an ally in July 2011.189 Another ally recounted a lunch meeting with Solomon in the same year: I met him for sadza [cornmeal mush] and Mujuru brought mushonga wemusana [libido-boosting herbs] for us to eat. We were eating, then he said something strange. He said, from nowhere, that when it was time for him to die, he would not be sick in hospital with people bringing him bananas and oranges to eat. ‘Isu kana tava kuenda tinongoti vereru se shumba. Tinongoti nzwe’ [When it is time to go we slip away like lions]. I said, ‘Mujuru what are you talking about?’. He laughed, then he started talking about different things.190

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Death comes once, let it be easy. Ring one bell for me once, let it go at that. Or ring no bell at all, better yet. Sing one song if I die . . . . Or sing nothing at all, better yet. Death comes once, let it be easy.1

8 August 2011 was a public holiday, in honour of deceased heroines and heroes of Zimbabwe’s independence struggle. A day before an official commemoration at the North Korean-built National Heroes Acre in Harare, Joice rang up Solomon who was away at his Ruzambo farm in Beatrice. She asked Solomon to return to their Chisipite home in Harare for the night, so that they could attend the remembrance ceremony at National Heroes Acre as a couple in the morning. Joice remembered Solomon’s response to her proposal: He said, ‘I will always be there’, in English. Now that he is dead, I wonder about that statement. His spoken English was not always perfect and he had a speech problem, so sometimes he would say things and they would not come out exactly like he wanted. Now I wonder whether he meant he would always be there [at National Heroes Acre] with me so he was coming to Harare or he meant something else. You see, I was expecting him in Chisipite on the 7th [of August] at night but he never came so I went to Heroes Acre alone on the 8th and people were asking me, ‘Where is the general?’. I told them he was travelling so he could not make it. One week later Solomon was dead and he was buried at Heroes Acre. Is that what he meant when he said, ‘I will always be there’? I wonder about it.2

As the vice president’s husband, Solomon regularly sat at the main podium and in proximity to Mugabe during the Heroes Day commemoration, making conspicuous his non-attendance on 8 August 2011. Mugabe, reading from a prepared official speech for the 2011 remembrance, acknowledged Solomon’s presence at Heroes Acre, despite his absence on the solemn occasion.3 Joice returned to their Chisipite residence after the commemoration. She was having her hair plaited when Solomon suddenly arrived home. Solomon did not offer a reason for his absence from National Heroes Acre that day. Solomon only proclaimed 264

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he wanted to get some sleep because he felt tired and his grandchildren were not to disturb him. Joice observed: Solomon rarely slept during the day. I even said to my hairdresser, jokingly, shasha kurara masikati kudai [he who is always up to something is sleeping during the day], what will become of us today! Come the next day, which was Defence Forces Day [a successive public holiday] he said, ‘I want to rest. I am not coming with you to the Defence Forces Day celebration’, so he stayed home.4

Joice believed Solomon’s melancholic comportment during the 2011 Heroes and Defence Forces days was a presentiment of his approaching expiration. Her conviction drew on the benefit of hindsight, but as we saw in the chapter before, in the preceding weeks Solomon expressed, to some in his inner circle, that he felt unsafe. Solomon’s snub of state functions on 8 and 9 August was also probably influenced by his now acutely acrimonious relations with Mugabe. Mugabe habitually took centre stage as the chief orator of Zimbabwe’s liberation history during national commemorations such as Heroes Day. Solomon had grown to profoundly resent Mugabe’s omnipotence in this regard. He was also disaffected by Mugabe’s continued refusal to allow a political leadership change in Zimbabwe. Solomon had had these views for many years and he communicated them to Mugabe repeatedly, to no effect, and his attempt to engineer Mugabe’s removal from power by supporting Simba Makoni’s candidature in the 2008 presidential election failed. Solomon strongly regretted his 1970s kingmaker role in Mugabe’s ascendance to power in Mozambique. After 9 August, there was an uplift in Solomon’s temperament. He travelled back to his farm in Beatrice, returning to Harare on 11 August to attend to his commercial interests in the capital city. On Sunday 14 August, the then minister for youth development, indigenisation and empowerment, Saviour Kasukuwere, visited Solomon at his Chisipite home to consult him on an economic indigenisation matter.5 Kasukuwere was directing a government policy to increase local share ownership of predominately foreign-owned private companies. According to Kasukuwere: When I got there, the general was seated outside with his wife Joice. She greeted me, then left us alone. We discussed the indigenisation issue and he agreed to personally take me to companies in which he held some shares in order to effect indigenisation for workers at those companies. We agreed to start with River Ranch diamond mine in Beitbridge on Tuesday [16 August]. The general said he would pass through his Beatrice farm tomorrow [Monday 15 August], then drive to River Ranch very early on Tuesday. I said, ‘General, I can get us a small aeroplane. Why don’t we fly there together?’. The general said he preferred driving. He said, ‘Don’t worry, by the time you get to Beitbridge with your

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plane I will already be there.’ We chatted and had a very traditional meal for lunch. One of his daughters, the youngest one called Kuziwa, came to ask him for money for something I cannot remember. He gave her a lot of money. Then I said, ‘General, I have got to go to the cricket match [between Zimbabwe and Bangladesh] at Harare Sports Club to support our boys and my kids are there waiting for me.’ The general said he had been invited to the match, let us go together. He said let me change my clothes. He went into his house and came out wearing a blue shirt and grey trouser and he had a blazer. He had even put on a tie. I said, ‘General, you are dressed too smartly now.’ He laughed and removed the tie.6

Solomon and Kasukuwere drove in separate cars to Harare Sports Club. Solomon drove a green-coloured Mercedes-Benz to the venue. An individual closely connected to Solomon remembered seeing him arrive at the VIP enclosure with Kasukuwere for the cricket match: I was surprised to see him hanging out with Kasukuwere, frankly, because he was not very chummy with him. I said to the general, ‘I did not know you were very close to Kasukuwere to be hanging out with him like this.’ The general said they had been working on an indigenisation project. They were going to meet in Beitbridge to implement it, nothing more than that.7

‘The general ordered Scotch whisky from the bar. He would stand up and cheer each time our guys hit four or six runs. He was very relaxed and joyful, just enjoying cricket’, Kasukuwere recollected.8 During the course of the match, the second secretary of the Indian Embassy to Zimbabwe approached Solomon and Kasukuwere, requesting to be photographed with them, to which both men assented. These photographs, from the afternoon of 14 August 2011, may be the last ever taken of Solomon alive. The aforementioned person closely associated with Solomon remarked: ‘The general agreed to be photographed with an Indian-looking woman. Normally the general did not like being photographed. He was very publicity shy. I just said to myself, perhaps the general is mellowing with age.’9 Zimbabwe defeated Bangladesh by seven wickets in the cricket match, after which Solomon and Kasukuwere parted ways. Solomon spent the night at his Chisipite home. On the morning of 15 August, Joice was getting ready to leave for work when Solomon called out to her: He said, ‘Mai Chipo, please rub this ointment on my back, I have backache.’ I was annoyed with him because he had taken long in the bathroom, then asked me to rub his back yet I wanted to go to work. You know I have never seen a cleaner back. Solomon had rough skin but that day it was smooth. You know when someone dies, you bathe their dead body, oil it, dress it in the best clothes, then bury. I could not do that because of the state of his remains after the fire. I feel rubbing that ointment on his back that morning was me bathing and oiling him for

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burial. That was goodbye. I wish I had not been annoyed with him for delaying me because that was the last time I saw him alive. He came back home for lunch that day while I was at work. He had lunch with his grandchildren, then he went back to his offices.10

Before he left for his offices, Solomon once again inquired from family members and staff at the Chisipite home about the whereabouts of keys to his farmhouse in Beatrice. ‘After he came back from the farm [on 11 August] he was saying someone had stolen his keys. He had been asking about those keys since he came back. I still do not know whether they were stolen at the farm or in Harare’, Joice recalled.11 At sunset on 15 August, Solomon undertook the approximately fiftykilometre drive from Harare to his farm in Beatrice, death winds hollering more potently with each kilometre the wheels of his white Isuzu Double Cab KB250 traversed. Solomon stopped over, alone, for some drinks at his regular haunt in Beatrice, the Beatrice motel. The bartender, Portia Kamvura, who sold him drinks, stated that ‘General Mujuru only had four tots of [Johnnie Walker] Black Label [Scotch whisky] and refused to have anymore because he had an early trip to Beitbridge. He told us he wanted to wake up at 4am the next morning. Normally the General could drink a whole bottle of whisky and still appear sober.’12 As Solomon sipped whisky, back in the capital city Mhanda was officially launching his autobiography entitled Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter. I attended Mhanda’s book launch in the evening in Harare’s upscale Belgravia area. The attendees were a who’s who of figures critical of ZANU PF rule, incorporating Prime Minister Tsvangirai and Deputy Prime Minister Mutambara, and a host of other notable critical voices from politics, law, civil society, academia, business, media and the foreign diplomatic community. Solomon’s ally Dumiso Dabengwa acted as a discussant at the book launch. Mhanda still felt bitter towards Solomon for not supporting him against Mugabe in the 1970s, as seen in his autobiography, which is censorious of Solomon’s hand in Mugabe’s rise to power.13 Solomon left Beatrice motel unaccompanied at approximately 7.30 p.m. and arrived at his farm at about 8 p.m.14 He drove through the farm’s first security gate, which was guarded by a private security guard called Clemence Runhare. Solomon then journeyed to his farmhouse, entering its yard via a second security gate manned by three constables, Lazarus Handikatari, Augustinos Chinyoka and Obert Mark, from the Zimbabwe Republic Police (ZRP) Very Important Person (VIP) Protection Unit. According to the constables, after five minutes Solomon drove out of the yard to collect a key, for entrance to the farmhouse, from his maid

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Rosemary Short.15 Rosemary inhabited a house located within the farm, fewer than two kilometres away from the main farmhouse. To access Rosemary’s house, Solomon drove through a security gate located on the eastern side of his farm. The private security guard in charge of this eastern gate that night was Samuel Lewis. Solomon collected a key for the kitchen door entrance from Rosemary and drove past the farm shop on his way back to the farmhouse.16 According to the constables, Solomon entered the farmhouse at about 8.20 p.m. and at 1.40 a.m. on 16 August. Chinyoka, who was on duty while Handikatari and Mark were taking a nap break, discovered that part of Solomon’s farmhouse was engulfed in a ravenous fire.17 Solomon’s lifeless remains, still burning, were discovered at 3.45 a.m. in the searing heat of a small living room.18 Solomon was lying face down on top of a Moroccan rug, with his legs spread apart (see Figure 10.1). A portion of his left arm was under his torso. Blue tongues of fire climbed from Solomon’s charred and ashy frame. The blue tongues mounted towards the begrimed ceiling when they met buckets of water decanted by would-be rescuers at the scene. As news of Solomon’s ostensibly fiery end spread like wildfire via mobile phones and social media, Solomon’s family, friends and adversaries journeyed frenetically to his farm in the cold early morning hours of 16 August. They convened outside the partly gutted farmhouse, which reeked of many things, burnt human flesh included. Aye, fire always catches up with the fireborn. Elysian Fields 15 August and the days leading up to it were characterised by warm springtime weather in Harare. 16 August was wintry and overcast. The unenticing weather outside seemed to fit the morose ether in the Zimbabwe government’s ministerial cabinet meeting room that 16 August morning. David Coltart, the then education minister, chronicled part of the cabinet meeting: Mugabe . . . arrived about half an hour late . . . . He told us that General Mujuru had died in a fire at his farm; his body had been burnt beyond recognition but there was no word yet regarding the cause of the fire. The news was met with shocked silence by everyone present . . . . Minister [Obert] Mpofu, broke the silence by suggesting that cabinet adjourn, which I thought Mugabe would agree to. I was surprised when Mugabe responded by saying that business should go on, which it did . . . . I was intrigued by Mugabe’s apparently nonchalant response to General Mujuru’s horrific death.19

The fact that Mugabe was, prior an investigation into the incident, already certain of Solomon’s death by fire (not as a result of anything

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Figure 10.1 Solomon’s corpse in original face-down position Source: Thakor Kewada.

else) and that the unidentifiable remains discovered in the farmhouse were Solomon’s is baffling. Three other ministers who attended the 16 August cabinet meeting articulated surprise at how Mugabe arrived, hurriedly, at the conclusion Solomon died in a fire and like Coltart they noted Mugabe’s indifference to the unfortunate news. As one of these ministers verbalised, ‘Mugabe did not appear to be shocked. Before ministers made submissions in cabinet they would begin by saying your Excellency let me use this opportunity to pass my condolences to you for the death of General Solomon Mujuru but Mugabe was unmoved. He cracked jokes at that cabinet meeting. He was jovial.’20 After the cabinet meeting Mugabe was driven to 1 Commando military morgue to view Solomon’s body, en route to the international airport, where he planned to board a flight to Luanda (Angola’s capital city) for a meeting of the regional body, the SADC. An eyewitness to the body viewing recounted: General Chiwenga announced that the body was here now. I do not understand what the plan was because there was nothing to see except bones. I suppose the goal was just to show that the general had been burnt to death. They uncovered

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Figure 10.2 Solomon’s corpse turned over 1 Source: Thakor Kewada.

the body. The general was a skeleton. Then General Chiwenga shouted varai varai azviite izvi [cover his body, this is too grisly to view].21

Joice attended the body viewing at 1 Commando. She was perplexed when Mugabe accorded her acting president of Zimbabwe status for the duration of his visit to Angola. ‘As he was leaving 1 Commando he said you are now the acting president. My husband had just died. I thought it was strange to give me that responsibility at that time’, Joice highlighted.22 After the body viewing, Joice returned to the Chisipite residence, where mourners were gathered. Grace, Mugabe’s wife, arrived in Chisipite soon after Joice’s return. Two Mujuru family members, who were at the Chisipite house to mourn Solomon, offered similar accounts of Grace’s utterances upon her arrival there. I reproduce the more articulate of these two accounts: Grace entered the living room where we were, then she started crying loudly. Then she stopped [crying] and started shouting, ‘Why do they do such things? When they no longer want someone why do they kill that person? Killing a person like this is terrible. Burning him until he is just a stick. How could they kill him like this?’. Everyone in the living room stopped crying and just looked at her. It was like drama. Then she started crying again and everyone else started to cry with her.23

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Figure 10.3 Solomon’s corpse turned over 2 Source: Thakor Kewada.

None of the mourners dared to ask Grace to elaborate her declaration that Solomon was killed and for her to identify who it is she referred to as ‘they’. Mutambara was part of the delegation that flew to Angola with Mugabe. He described his interactions with Mugabe aboard an Air Zimbabwe flight to Luanda: From Harare to Angola we sat together and talked. I was more concerned about Mujuru’s death than Mugabe. You would have thought I was the one who had been close to Mujuru and benefited from him politically as Mugabe did. When we were now in Angola I kept asking Mugabe if there was any news on Mujuru and he was saying, ‘Ah, no, it was an accident. We have to bury him on Friday [19 August]. We cannot keep bones.’ He never said to me we must investigate. He had no appetite for an investigation. He was more concerned about burying Mujuru sooner rather than later.24

Tsvangirai was already in Luanda when he received news of Solomon’s unexpected death. According to Tsvangirai: I was really shocked. When Mugabe arrived in Luanda I went to see him right away to pay my respects. Mugabe said General Mujuru was badly burnt. The fire had almost finished him. To me the whole thing was suspicious so I said to

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Figure 10.4 Solomon’s corpse in the ZNA morgue Source: Thakor Kewada.

Mugabe, do you suspect any foul play? Mugabe said no. I could not believe his answer. Then I said I do not think the Zimbabwean people will accept that so if I was you I would not make a public comment until the investigation is finished. Mugabe just brushed my advice aside.25

Mutasa, the then minister for presidential affairs in charge of intelligence and ZANU PF’s secretary general, narrated a private meeting with Mugabe, soon after his return from Luanda, during which they discussed Solomon’s passing: I said to him [Mugabe] this is rather suspicious. How do you think va Mujuru really died? Va Mugabe said, very abruptly, ‘Do you not know that Mujuru was a drunkard? He was a drunkard.’ I said the intelligence reports I have say that he was not drunk. Mugabe got very angry with me. I have known Mugabe long enough to know that when he is angry and evasive in that way, there is more than meets the eye.26

Nkala, the veteran nationalist, publicly insinuated that ZANU PF was responsible for Solomon’s expiry: ‘I used to call [Solomon] him Tshaka because of his courage and good military command. His death is also similar to that of Tshaka’, an eighteenth-century Zulu warrior-king

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assassinated for political reasons by family members.27 Nkala’s comments were emblematic of popular disbelief that Solomon perished in a genuine domestic fire. The popular incredulity found puissant expression in local and international media coverage of the circumstances surrounding Solomon’s termination,28 and it drew a response from the ZANU PF government, which slated private media for ‘stoking the fire of hatred’: [W]e are getting a situation where a little informed media run by uneducated people build foolish ideas to create violence in society. Everyone is mourning the death of this enormous figure in our history. And here they are, stoking the fire [author’s emphasis] of hatred. There are confusionists in our midst. There is politics that thrives on mischief . . . . Why are these questions being raised? Way ahead of the results of a forensic investigation?29

The ZANU PF government’s rebuke of media for raising questions ‘way ahead of the results of a forensic investigation’ was of course duplicitous, given that Mugabe had already concluded – before the investigation commenced – that Solomon croaked in a fire accident because he was a ‘drunkard’. Needless to say, Mugabe conveniently passed over the fact that Solomon functioned normally despite being addicted to alcohol. Moreover, commentary by unnamed political analysts in the statecontrolled Sunday Mail newspaper, in support of the ZANU PF government’s castigation of private media, was desperately defensive and gauche: [S]o much is being made out of the failure of the fire brigade [to arrive speedily to put out the farmhouse fire]. The fire brigade belongs to the Harare City Council, which is run by the MDC-T [opposition political party] in the main. What is being suggested; that ZANU PF consorted with the MDC-T to kill its own? If there is an SOS in Beatrice, which is a good 50 km plus out of Harare, part of it dust [road], would they reach the farm on time? Is that possible?30

A separate anonymous Sunday Mail analyst opined, in similarly gauche terms: ‘another dubious view is being put forward, that he [Solomon] being a trained soldier, why did he not escape? Even an experienced driver dies in . . . [a car] accident!’.31 Solomon’s sudden termination agitated established factional divisions in ZANU PF and the security sector, forcing Joice to make a public appeal for calm on 17 August.32 However, her plea did not prevent a demonstration by ‘hundreds of [ZANU PF] youth chanting slogans and revolutionary songs demanding to know why “you burnt the leader of the liberation struggle?”’ on the same day.33 Jim Kunaka, a ZANU PF member, addressed the demonstrators: ‘we did not expect such a death for our General. As youth we want to get to the bottom of it and find out

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whether it was a normal death, whether it was a normal electrical fault or it was the work of enemies.’34 Chiwenga, Solomon’s long-standing antagonist, commented: ‘the way he [Solomon] has gone is difficult to comprehend. He was such a fine fighter.’35 Mnangagwa, Solomon’s chief adversary after Mugabe in ZANU PF, eulogised his now extinct political opponent and added: ‘I knew General Mujuru since 1974 when I came out of prison. We met in Zambia where we worked together until today.’36 Mnangagwa attempted to use Solomon’s death to inflate his limited liberation struggle credentials with fabricated history. Upon entering Zambia, Mnangagwa had in fact enrolled at a law school, abandoning altogether participation in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. As we know, in 1974 Solomon was mostly engaged in guerrilla activities at the ZZ warfront, where Mnangagwa was non-existent. In the latter months of 1974 Solomon travelled to China for a study tour, he was involved in putting down the Nhari mutiny after the China trip, he fled to Tanzania in March 1975 after Chitepo was murdered and soon after that he moved to Mozambique to become ZIPA’s overall commander. Mnangagwa did not work with Solomon in any of these defining independence struggle developments in ZANU PF. Mnangagwa only began working with Solomon in 1978, following his acceptance of an invitation from Mugabe to rejoin ZANU PF’s liberation struggle effort in Mozambique. Mnangagwa’s assertion that ‘we worked together until today’ was also false because, as we are aware of, Solomon had sought to destroy Mnangagwa politically since the 1990s. In response to mounting politicisation of Solomon’s passing, on 18 August ZANU PF banned all its members, except the official party spokesperson Rugare Gumbo, from speaking to media about the circumstances pertaining to Solomon’s death.37 ZANU PF accorded Solomon national hero status, resulting in his interment at the National Heroes Acre. The state took over burial preparations, which progressed with haste ahead of the funeral on 20 August. Most remarkably, Solomon was buried before scientific identification of his remains had been made. ‘We were all in a state of deep shock. The government machinery just took over everything and it moved fast. It was easy for the government to railroad us because we were in shock. Some of us only really woke up to the fishiness of the government’s behaviour days after he had been buried’, a member of Solomon’s family called to mind.38 The funeral itself was a grand military affair pregnant with meaning. From 2000 onward, ZANU PF’s political uses and abuses of Zimbabwe’s liberation history divided the country politically, to the degree that opposition parties often boycotted attendance of national commemorations at Heroes Acre, while sections of the general public at times eschewed related national functions. Solomon’s funeral was different. It was the first of its

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kind since Vice President and ‘Father of Zimbabwe’ Nkomo’s major funeral at the National Heroes Acre in 1999. The mourners were conspicuously multiracial. All leaders of the main opposition parties attended Solomon’s funeral, forging an authentic sense of national unity and grief across the political spectrum. Douglas Mwonzora, the spokesperson of the leading MDC opposition party, stated that his party was ‘very saddened at the death of General Mujuru, his works before and after independence objectively and undoubtedly qualifies him to be a national hero’.39 ‘A record crowd of more than 40000 mourners thronged the national shrine to bid farewell to the gallant fighter . . . . Some openly wept; others ululated to celebrate the life of the legendary commander’, the state-controlled press reported Solomon’s funeral.40 Thousands of mourners were unable to find seats on the Heroes Acre’s imposing amphitheatre so they spilled over onto an adjacent hill to witness Solomon’s burial. Other mourners were turned away at the Heroes Acre entrance because the venue had reached full capacity. Some youth attending the funeral mimicked soldiers on a military operation by painting their faces green and gluing foliage to their clothing and they witnessed the funeral proceedings from inside bushes. ‘Senior army officers from Southern Africa were present, ample testimony that Rtd General Mujuru’s influence transcended Zimbabwe’s borders. Among them were Mozambique’s Army Commander General Graca Tomas Chongo; Tanzania’s retired General George Waitara and Retired Brigadier General Hashim Mbita; and South Africa’s Brigadier General Vusimuzi Masondo’, state press reported.41 The state press’s funeral coverage elided the restless atmosphere at Heroes Acre. There was anger and effervescent suspicions about the nature of Solomon’s death among many present and absent mourners. In FRELIMO, Ajape, Guebuza, Monteiro, Ndelana and Tobias Dias believed the circumstances surrounding Solomon’s demise were strange. Vieira and Hama Thay were the most candid. ‘They killed the guy. That is what I thought when I heard and read about everything’, Hama Thay asserted.42 Vieira declared, outlandishly: ‘They made sure he could not get out of the burning house, nailing all the doors and windows.’43 From the CMF, Parker Bowles travelled to Zimbabwe a few weeks after Solomon’s passing: ‘I brought flowers for Rex’s grave and went to see Joice Mujuru. I believe Rex was dead before they set fire to him.’44 BMATT commanders shared Parker Bowles’s view, with Hodges being the most emotional: ‘Rex was not the kind of bloke who would burn to death in his house. Would I fight alongside Rex in battle? Yes I would because he was a warrior. I would go to battle with him. No way that warrior burned to death in his house.’45

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Mugabe’s funeral speech did little to assuage epidemic suspicions of foul play. Whereas expectation was that Mugabe would pledge to ensure a thoroughgoing investigation into the cause of Solomon’s passing and that the inquiry’s findings would be made public, Mugabe proclaimed Solomon’s death ‘an inexplicable horrendous fire accident’.46 Mugabe expanded that ‘as humans we raise questions, seek explanations to phenomenal events that baffle us. This is one of them. For some events we can never get answers that satisfy us.’47 Furthermore, Mugabe attempted to ascribe responsibility for Solomon’s death to the unknowable ways of the Christian God, asserting: ‘The ways of the Lord are hard to fathom, harder to question . . . . This is how God has willed it and we cannot do anything about it, even to pray, to ask so many questions.’48 Mugabe attempted to superimpose a hegemonic version of Solomon’s death as a fire accident. He endeavoured, for good measure, to close off any speculation about the fire accident by imputing its occurrence to the gods. Mugabe’s speech was not heartfelt. It did not paint an intimate, compelling portrait of Solomon the human being. Yet Mugabe avowed in his speech that ‘Rex was known to me closely.’49 Mugabe’s address was also tangential in nature. Fifty per cent of Mugabe’s hour-long address had nothing to do with Solomon. In an act of sheer stand-up comedy Mugabe cracked unfavourable jokes about former British Prime Minister Blair. He attacked Britain and America’s critical foreign policy stances towards his rule. ‘Let them [the British] drink our tea. We are happy to export it to them. Let them enjoy it but after drinking it they must not think it has come from their colony. Zimbabwe will never be a colony again’, Mugabe speechified over Solomon’s coffin.50 Mugabe celebrated ZANU PF’s indigenisation and black economic empowerment programme, turning his funeral address into a political campaign speech ahead of elections two years away. And, in a bizarre turn, Mugabe poked fun at traditional exorcists called tsikamutanda and he chided some Zimbabweans for being gullible, noting that despite their generally high levels of education, they adhered to superstitious beliefs, resulting in their misguided frequent visits to ‘witch doctors’ – a practice he himself did not partake in, so Mugabe claimed.51 Additionally, Mugabe panned the proliferation of pseudo evangelical pastors in Zimbabwe and he found time in his address to denounce homosexuals: [T]o do the inhuman thing, homosexuality, the beastly thing, ah to say beastly is actually insulting animals because as I have said before, pigs and dogs know their wives. Even a bull knows its wife. It does not go after another bull. This is why I am persecuted in Europe. I am persecuted for attacking homosexuality. I mean it when I say you [homosexuals] are worse than dogs and pigs because pigs and dogs

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know their natural mates. If you do not know that a man cannot be a woman, then you are worse than my dog and my pig.52

Mugabe did, however, emphasise Solomon’s record as a soldier in Zimbabwe’s liberation war, describing him as a ‘legend’, ‘brave fighter’, ‘fighter of fighters who never used his rank to avoid the risks of war’ and ‘a hero in real life’.53 After Mugabe finished his unbefitting address, military pallbearers carried Solomon’s weightless brown coffin on stout shoulders to the Heroes Acre’s West Wing, to the sound of a military band playing. Decorating Solomon’s coffin was Zimbabwe’s national flag, with its green, yellow, red and black stripes glistening under the August sun. The pallbearers were flanked on both sides by Zimbabwe’s highestranking serving and retired military officers – General Chiwenga, Lieutenant General Sibanda, Air Marshal Shiri, retired Air Vice Marshal Henry Muchena and retired Lieutenant General Nyambuya. The Mujuru family walked sullenly behind the pallbearers, towards the West Wing, where many of Solomon’s liberation struggle comrades such as Tongogara, Zvinavashe, Chitepo and Manyika, amongst others, were put in the ground. Mugabe lumbered behind the Mujuru family. Grace walked at Mugabe’s side, carefully adjusting her pace to his, and she sometimes offered a steadying arm to her elderly husband whenever he seemed unbalanced. After burial rites were fulfilled, Joice laid a large heart-shaped wreath on the headstone of Solomon’s grave, before collapsing onto the wreath. Kumbirai, Nyasha and Chipo ran to their mother. They pulled Joice up to her feet and dragged her away from the wreath. Pristine uniformed soldiers fired a gun salute using artillery as Solomon’s coffin was lowered into the earth. The lowering of Solomon’s coffin also coincided with a planned 3 Air Force of Zimbabwe fighter jets aerial flyover. The crowd at Heroes Acre looked up at the cruising fighter jets, before letting out a collective shriek of dread and panic because two jets had a side collision during the flyover.54 ‘Fragments fell off one aircraft’ but ‘no one was injured in the mishap’.55 According to the Zimbabwe Defence Forces director of public relations Colonel Overson Mugwisi, ‘the aircraft on the left appeared to have lost course and rolled twice before the pilot appeared to regain control’.56 Zimbabwe’s national anthem rang out soon after the jets’ flyover, bringing the enigmatic funeral proceedings to a close. Solomon’s grave is situated two empty graves away from that of Mugabe’s first wife, Sally. A management official at the National Heroes Acre later remarked to me that the empty space between Sally and Solomon’s graves was reserved for Mugabe and Joice.57

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Official Inquest into the Death of Solomon Mujuru On 16 January 2012, the state opened an inquest into Solomon’s death, partly owing to sustained disbelief in and outside ZANU PF that he died in a fire accident. Zimbabwe’s Inquest Act (1998) restricts inquests to authenticating the identity of the deceased, as well as when and how death came about. The inquest into Solomon’s death received wide coverage in local and international media. With Solomon off the scene, a great majority of his followers feared for their lives, wealth, political careers or job security in the civil service, hence most of them did not attend the inquest into Solomon’s death, dreading backlash, real or imagined, from Mugabe or Solomon’s now revitalised political adversaries. Solomon’s relatives were the dominant attendees of the inquest proceedings. The inquest lasted three weeks, during which the testimonies of thirty-eight witnesses were heard. Witnesses who saw Solomon in the final hours of his life, forensic specialists, a pathologist, fire investigators and experts from the local electricity supply authority were called to give testimonies before a magistrate. The findings and verdict of the inquest were published on 14 March 2012 as a report, which was prepared by presiding magistrate Walter Chikwanha. The report stated that Solomon was last seen by constable Chinyoka entering his farmhouse at 8.20 p.m. on 15 August 2011. Solomon did not exit his farmhouse again. Chikwanha’s report underscored that the charred corpse found in the farmhouse at 3.45 a.m. on 16 August 2011 was indeed Solomon’s and ‘the facts and evidence presented before the court . . . do not show that there was foul play and consequently the court concludes that there was no foul play [in Solomon’s death]’.58 Chikwanha drew on the postmortem findings, produced by a Cuban pathologist called Gabriel Gonzalez, ‘that the cause of death was carbonisation due to open fire’.59 What follows in this section is a critical reading of Chikwanha’s report and the manner in which the state managed both the primary investigation and inquest into Solomon’s death. A peculiarity of Chikwanha’s report is that it went out of its way to establish Solomon was alone when he arrived at his farm and when he retired to bed on the night of 15 August. Chikwanha even emphasised that ‘the deceased was seen by witnesses leaving his Chisipite residence [after lunch with his grandchildren] alone’.60 According to Chikwanha, demonstrating Solomon was a solitary traveller on 15 August was an important way of ascertaining that the unrecognisable human remains found in the farmhouse were indeed Solomon’s. But the testimony of Solomon’s private security guard Runhare did not fit Chikwanha’s construction of an uncomplicated account that Solomon was alone on the

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evening of 15 August. Runhare alleged that Solomon arrived at the farm in the company of somebody who he assumed was the general’s personal driver, Enoch Talapenzi. Runhare was uncertain that the person in the front passenger seat was in fact Talapenzi because it was night-time, there was a power cut in Beatrice and Solomon did not turn on his car’s interior lights. If the mystery passenger was his personal driver it is odd that Solomon, not his personal driver, was driving the car. As it later became clear during the inquest, Talapenzi was in fact in Chisipite on the night of the fire so he was not the mystery passenger Runhare claimed to have seen in Solomon’s car. Chikwanha’s report expressed strong ‘reservations’ about the truthfulness of Runhare’s testimony, because of his erroneous assumption that the unidentified passenger was Talapenzi.61 Chikwanha also inferred that since it was night-time, there was no artificial light owing to a routine power cut and Solomon did not turn on his vehicle’s interior lights, Runhare could not have been able to spot a passenger in the general’s car. Chikwanha particularised: Runhare was standing at a distance of about 2 metres from the General’s motor vehicle, surely for him to have made some observations in the circumstances as described above, is in the court’s view not possible. . . . there was considerable distance from where the witness was standing and the driver’s door let alone the passenger side of the vehicle and the deceased spent very little time at the gate. These factors are such that they affected the accuracy of the witness’s observations.62

Chikwanha added that ‘the witness might have possibly mistaken the hanged jacket [in Solomon’s car] to be a human being’.63 However, a distance of two metres between where Runhare was standing and the position of Solomon’s stationary car can hardly be called ‘considerable’. Decisively, Zimbabwe’s 2011 lunar calendar shows that there was a full moon on 15 August so it was not a pitch-black night. It is contentious that Chikwanha did not consider the likelihood that natural light from a full moon could have enabled Runhare to spot a passenger in Solomon’s car, even if his assumption it was Talapenzi was incorrect. In the end, Chikwanha dismissed Runhare’s testimony as ‘totally faulty’ and unacceptable to the court because constables Handikatari, Chinyoka and Mark, who let Solomon through the farmhouse gate, located approximately 300 metres from Runhare’s post, testified that the general was alone in his vehicle.64 Chikwanha’s report privileged the homogenous accounts of the constables and it underlined that upon his arrival at the farmhouse gate, Solomon turned on the interior lights of his vehicle and conversed with Mark who was standing thirty centimetres away from the car, compared with Runhare who had stood two metres

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away from the automobile at the farm’s entrance. Chikwanha’s report makes great play of the fact that a private security guard called Samuel Lewis and Solomon’s maid Rosemary Short also testified Solomon was travelling alone when they saw him at the farm that night. While Chinyoka, Mark and Handikatari certainly saw Solomon when he initially arrived at the farmhouse, Lewis did not – he saw Solomon when he was driving his car from the farmhouse yard (where he was said to have stayed five minutes) to Rosemary’s residence on the farm so that he could collect keys to the farmhouse. Reaching Rosemary’s house entailed passing through the farm’s eastern gate that Lewis guarded, which is where Solomon was seen driving alone. That Lewis and Rosemary testified Solomon was unaccompanied when they saw him does not rule out that he could have arrived with somebody (as claimed by Runhare) who he left at the farmhouse, before proceeding alone to collect house keys from Rosemary. This line of reasoning obviously implies that the constables’ accounts of Solomon’s arrival at the farmhouse are incomplete. There is certainly reason to doubt the completeness of the three constables’ accounts, for the trio were of questionable character and they behaved unprofessionally on the farm. As Rosemary testified during the inquest: The police officers’ relations with General Mujuru were sour. He told me that the officers were avoiding him and he wanted them changed, but he let them stay because they had only a few days left [to be assigned elsewhere]. General Mujuru was always concerned with security at the farm and at one time he told me that there was virtually no security at the farm and that we were actually guarding ourselves. . . . [Rosemary] said relations between General Mujuru and the policemen further deteriorated when they severely assaulted a farm worker. [According to Rosemary] the worker . . . was thrown into a ditch full of water after the assault and was only rescued by his wife. He was taken to hospital where he was treated for the injuries. . . . [Rosemary testified that] the policemen were drunk when they assaulted the worker. General Mujuru asked them if they had carried out any investigations into the matter and they said they had not. He wondered what type of police officers they were when they rushed to act without carrying out investigations. [Rosemary attested] I used to give the policemen food when theirs had run out, but General Mujuru stopped me from doing so because he was not happy with the way they conducted their duties. . . . [Rosemary] – who worked for General Mujuru since 2000 – said policemen who used to guard the farmhouse in the past would spend only a certain number of weeks at the farm. But the three, who were on duty on the fateful night, had stayed longer [than their predecessors].65

In light of Rosemary’s testimony, the constables’ uniform accounts that Solomon arrived alone, he turned on the interior lights of his automobile and stopped to converse cordially with them about goings-on at the farm,

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come across as an embellishment of actual events. Coincidentally, the three constables were supposed to be relieved of their duties at Solomon’s farm ‘on the day of the inferno but the car [belonging to the state] that was supposed to pick them up did not come’.66 What is more, the constables contradicted each other on the weighty point of whether Solomon was drunk. Constable Mark testified that Solomon was drunk when he arrived at the farmhouse because he had ‘bloodshot eyes and slurred speech’ but fellow constable Chinyoka maintained the general was sober.67 The constables’ accounts were also problematic because they did not shed light on the purpose of Solomon’s initial brief stopover in the farmhouse yard. As mentioned earlier, Solomon’s keys to the farmhouse disappeared unaccountably in the days leading up to 15 August and he raised the matter of their disappearance with family and staff. Why would Solomon – aware that he did not have keys to the farmhouse – first drive to the farmhouse yard upon his arrival, instead of collecting Rosemary’s keys in the first instance? The constables testified that Solomon entered the farmhouse yard in his car, lingered for five minutes, then exited to collect keys from Rosemary. What did Solomon do in the farmhouse yard in those five minutes? Solomon’s unstated (by the constables) activity in those five minutes was likely the reason he first drove to the farmhouse, not Rosemary’s residence. Was the purpose of Solomon’s brief stopover at the farmhouse to drop off the mystery passenger Runhare claimed to have seen, before driving to Rosemary’s to collect keys? If the answer is affirmative, why did the constables omit in their accounts the presence of this unidentified passenger? If the constables did not make this omission, what reason did Runhare have to invent the presence of this mystery passenger? These essential questions and probabilities are not cogitated in Chikwanha’s report, which was single-minded in its attempt to prove beyond doubt that Solomon was alone when he arrived at his farm. Runhare and the three constables were the key witnesses on whether Solomon was a lone traveller. The former represents a private security actor and the latter state security. Chikwanha, representing the judicial arm of the state, sided with the testaments of the security branch of the same state. The presence or absence of a mystery passenger in Solomon’s car was not the only point of difference between Runhare and the constables’ accounts. Runhare averred that he heard gunshots on the night of 15 August, while the constables denied hearing weapon fire. Chikwanha’s report disregarded Runhare’s testimony this way: The court noted the confusion the witness [Runhare] had. At one time he changed and stated that the time he heard bullet explosions was around 11pm

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and the other time 12 midnight. Every time he was asked a question he would come out with a different time. He was generally not an impressive witness. He is also the same witness, and the only one for that matter, who claimed to have seen the General in the company of someone when he arrived at the farm. . . . even when it was put to him that in his statement he had written that he heard gunshots he refused to confirm that by keeping quiet. The court is in fact more comfortable in accepting what he said in court because he is not the one who wrote his statement as he can neither write nor read.68

Chikwanha maintained that the gunshots Runhare claimed to have heard were in fact explosions of some of the six kilograms of ammunition Solomon kept in his farmhouse, which detonated because of heat from the fire. Chikwanha noticeably strove to discredit Runhare as a confused and unimpressive witness. He questioned the admissibility of Runhare’s affidavit, highlighting that because he was uneducated, his statement he heard gunshots that night was not trustworthy, since it may have been inserted, without his knowledge, by the amanuensis. It is standard practice for an amanuensis to read out loud a statement she or he would have written on behalf of an illiterate witness, enabling the witness to certify that the written statement is an accurate reflection of the account dictated. Chikwanha’s stance cast aspersions on the character of the amanuensis who typed the statement Runhare dictated but, strangely, the amanuensis was not called to testify at the inquest about what Runhare actually dictated to him. Chikwanha also took a patronising and elitist stand by intimating that the written statements of uneducated folk are inadmissible in court because illiterate people are intellectually illequipped to verify their affidavits when they are read out loud to them. Runhare’s lack of education stood in sharp contrast to the education levels of the three constables, who were required to hold a minimum educational qualification of five Ordinary Level passes in order to enter the police force. Chikwanha’s education-based elitism dovetailed with that of the ZANU PF government, which as cited earlier in this chapter, disparaged the private press as ‘uneducated confusionists’ because it wrote articles asserting Solomon was assassinated by some ZANU PF members. Education functioned as a resource that educated state actors employed to reject the fault-finding writings of ‘uneducated’ private media journalists and the disordering accounts of illiterate private security guards in court. In this vision of educated state actors as ‘anointed’,69 what does not derive from the omniscient state can be delegitimised as ignorance and unqualified perspectives, making it inconsequential knowledge. In anointed state actors’ haste to classify themselves as educated and therefore authoritative they presume, incorrectly, that they

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possess greater knowledge than the uneducated and that extent of education is the appropriate evaluation of which individuals’ views are consequential.70 ‘Too much of what is called “education” is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.’71 Runhare’s erratic responses to questions about the time he claimed to have heard gunshots and his unexplained silences in court were more likely signs that he was experiencing fear or intimidation of some sort, rather than illustrative of his lack of education and inherent confusion. This is because there was a degree of intimidation of certain witnesses by some state actors during the inquest. Rosemary, for instance, covertly alerted Thakor Kewada, the Mujuru family’s legal representative in the inquest, that she was under pressure from state officials who instructed her ‘not to talk too much’, prior her testimony.72 Kewada expounded: The state’s investigating officer [Chief Superintendent] Chrispen Makedenge was always following Rosemary around at the inquest. He would even sit right behind her during the hearings. All the time. I noticed this. So I told a photographer we had there with us that that officer is always following Rosemary. He does not leave her alone. Watch that officer and take photographs. He took those photographs.73

Rosemary, like Runhare, alleged that she heard gunshots on the night of 15 August. But Rosemary had to be prompted, persistently, during her testimony before she came out with this allegation. Chikwanha’s report attempted to set aside Rosemary’s claim she heard gunshot sounds, in this manner: Rosemary had a close relationship with the deceased, the nature of her evidence was so vivid and detailed such that she took a long time on the witness stand. One would therefore not have expected her to leave out such a relevant and important piece of evidence [that she heard gunshots], if at all it existed. It was only when she was questioned by Tendai Mundawarara, the deceased’s nephew, that the issue of gunshots came into being. And her first response was that the only time she heard gunshots was sometime back, in June and July, prior to this day and she inquired with the police officers who told her that it is them who had fired guns into the air in order to scare off would be intruders or at times they would explain that they would be killing snakes. It was upon a lot of insistence and persistence by Mr Mundawarara for her to explain what she heard on the night of 15 August or the morning of 16 August that she told the court that there were sounds coming from the direction of the [farm]house that were akin to gunfire. She inquired from the police officer constable Mark who was present [when Rosemary reached the farmhouse after the fire had been discovered] and he explained that the sound was caused by exploding asbestos. . . . if she had heard [gunshots] . . . surely she should have told the police but she did not. This should have been one of the first issues she would have told the court, again, she did not. It needed some persistent questioning for her to make reference to it. The court therefore concludes that she acted in this way because she was sure that the sound came from exploding

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asbestos as she was told by constable Mark . . . . No allegation was made against the police that they were malicious or they were telling lies to mislead court. The only allegation against them was that they were incompetent. The court therefore finds no reason to doubt constable Mark when he told Rosemary that the sound was caused by exploding asbestos.74

Rosemary’s reluctance to state that she heard gunshots was likely a consequence of the intimidation and pressure she was subjected to by some state actors. When Runhare was asked to confirm in court his written statement that he too heard gunshots he fell silent, thereby refusing to deny or confirm anything. Chikwanha’s report, whether because of deliberate or genuine imperceptiveness, was not alive to the actual import of some witnesses’ aversion to testifying freely about particular topics. Nevertheless, certain witnesses employed subtle practices of subverting state intimidation and, in this respect, Rosemary emerged as particularly adept and courageous. She quietly sent a missive to the Mujuru legal team to the effect that she was under state pressure ‘not to talk too much’. And when pressed by Mundawarara to disclose she heard gunshot sounds that night, Rosemary first answered by saying she heard gunshots in June and July 2011, which the constables at the farm confirmed, saying they were firing their guns into the atmosphere and at snakes. Answering Mundawarara’s question by first referring to gunshots she heard in June and July 2011 can be read as Rosemary’s rhetorical strategy of first demonstrating to the court that she was familiar with the sound of gunshots. After more prodding by Mundawarara, Rosemary then revealed that she heard gunshots on 15 August, which the constables denied on this occasion, claiming she had heard the sound of asbestos exploding instead. Because Rosemary first established her familiarity with the sound of gunfire, her claim she heard gunshots on 15 August ought not to have been dismissed so flippantly in Chikwanha’s report. In this specific dismissal, Chikwanha once again recognised the police officers’ account as accurate. Yet, in an act of courage highlighted before, Rosemary systematically undermined the credibility of all three police officers by detailing their unprofessionalism, which saw them develop a fractious relationship with Solomon. Thus, for Chikwanha to regard (uncritically) the police officers’ accounts as authoritative was unsound judgement. Furthermore, Chikwanha’s upholding of the constables’ authority was at times dogged to the extent that he tied himself in knots, especially when he wrote: ‘The only allegation against them [the constables] was that they were incompetent. The court therefore finds no reason to doubt constable Mark when he told Rosemary that the sound was caused by exploding asbestos.’ One could query Chikwanha’s conclusion in this way: can the allegation of incompetence levelled against the constables not also incorporate the

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possibility that they might have been incompetent to the extent of being unable to differentiate between the sound of exploding asbestos and ammunition fire? Chinyoka claimed he last saw Solomon at 8.20 p.m., when the deceased stated he was retiring to bed. ‘During the course of the night Chinyoka would make regular patrols in and around the farmhouse yard.’75 Chinyoka alleged that he discovered the house fire during one of his patrols at 1.40 a.m., which was five hours and twenty minutes after Solomon was said to have gone to bed. It is bizarre that in those five hours and twenty minutes of patrolling the yard and farmhouse, Chinyoka did not detect or hear anything unusual in the farmhouse that suggested a breakout of fire. At the inquest Chinyoka could not explain why he only realised at 1.40 a.m. that the farmhouse was engulfed by a ferocious fire. And when Kewada asked the constables why they did not break one of the windows at 1.40 a.m. in order to enter the farmhouse to rescue Solomon, all three officers stated they did not know where Solomon’s bedroom was located in the farmhouse. Yet, as Rosemary testified, the three constables had provided security at Solomon’s farm for a record duration of time compared to past policemen assigned there. Was it conceivable that after three months of guarding the farmhouse, the constables still did not know the location of the master bedroom in which the person they were assigned to protect slept in at night? Extraordinarily, when Rosemary first arrived at the scene of the fire, she asked the constables to reveal the fire’s origin, to which they replied that the fire sprung from the farmhouse’s water-heating compartment. Were the constables really aware of the water-heater compartment’s location in the house, rather than the farmhouse’s main bedroom where Solomon slept? If it was true the constables only noticed at a late stage that the farmhouse was in flames (when fire had spread to many rooms and part of the roof was collapsing) how could they be certain the water-heating compartment was the fire’s source? They could only know for sure that the water-heating compartment was the source of the fire if they had witnessed the fire in its preliminary stage. And if the water-heating compartment was indeed the origin of the fire as the constables claimed, why, as we shall see shortly, did fire investigators not draw attention to the water-heating partition as the fire’s source? Chikwanha played down the state’s dubious conduct in a variety of instances. Solomon was buried speedily and before a conclusive scientific identification of his charred remains was made. Chikwanha gave a toneddown response to this anomaly: [T]he court . . . noted that the DNA analysis was done well after the burial of the deceased. This in the court’s view was inappropriate on the part of the police. I do

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appreciate that there was strong circumstantial evidence, which pointed to the identity of the body as that of [Solomon] . . . . The Director of Forensic, Mr Mutandiro, admitted in court that it was an oversight on their part.76

Suspicious irregularities in the state’s behaviour were accepted by Chikwanha as merely ‘inappropriate’ and ‘oversights’, which did not warrant meaningful probing. Turning to the testimony of the fire brigade investigator, Chikwanha noted that the investigator was ‘not able to establish the cause of the fire because by the time they [the fire brigade] arrived most of the leads had been disturbed and interfered with by people who had been fighting the fire’.77 Firefighters are trained to treat all fire scenes as crime scenes but according to eyewitness accounts of the fire brigade’s conduct on the morning of 16 August, the firefighters did not immediately take charge of the scene upon their arrival, allowing helpers to continue going in and out of the farmhouse in bids to put out the fire and remove any unburnt furniture and other household goods. Chikwanha’s report is uninterested in firefighters’ unusual operation at the fire scene and the crucial upshots of this abnormal performance for the investigation. According to Chikwanha’s report, [T]here might possibly be 2 sources of fire in the bedroom and in the main lounge. . . . this could have been caused firstly by an arsonist, secondly by a short circuit within the function of electricity power, thirdly by the premixture and convergence of heat and dust in the ceiling which would have created a ball of fire that is then thrown to the other end of the house.78

The Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) resumed electricity supply to Beatrice at 8.54 p.m. Chinyoka told the court that at 8.20 p.m. Solomon said to him that he was going to bed. Could an electrical short circuit have occurred, sparking the fire, when power was restored approximately thirty minutes after Solomon is said to have declared he was going to bed? A ZESA expert testified that ‘because of the extensive damages that had been caused by the heat’ the investigations of his team ‘could not establish whether or not electrical fault had caused the fire’.79 ZESA experts were equally uncertain about the plausibility of the formation of a fireball in the ceiling, which was propelled to a different end of the house, generating fire there. Significantly, the ZESA expert did not rule out arson, but this arson theme received no treatment, beyond being stated passively in Chikwanha’s report. A number of pointers that could have helped explain the fire were not pursued. Window security metal bars tend to bend in the direction of a heat source in house fires, making them a useful, but in this case unexplored, clue for fire investigators attempting to pinpoint seats of fire. Fire investigators can use arson

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dogs that are trained to sniff out accelerants and direct investigators on the scene to particular areas where fire debris should be collected for submission to forensic laboratories for tests. Fire investigators did not make use of arson dogs in their investigation of the fire in Solomon’s farmhouse. Additionally, the human eye can observe possible use of highly inflammable substances in house fires by examining the scene for localised burning patterns with evident separation between scorched and unscorched zones. The fire in Solomon’s farmhouse had hints of localised burning patterns, particularly in as far as fire in the zone in which Solomon’s body was found concentrated on his corpse. The scene also suggested there were multiple seats of fire (the main bedroom, principal living room and mini living room where Solomon’s corpse was found), which is frequently an indicator of arson. A supplementary clue suggesting the presence of accelerants is that when water was poured onto Solomon’s remains to put out the fire, the flames burned more intensely, rising to the ceiling. Chikwanha’s report explained this occurrence by arguing: ‘water boils at 100 degrees Celsius and the temperature in the room was way above 100 degrees Celsius. When water was poured, because of these very high temperatures, it vapourised, the hydrogen in the water would then explode and cause intense burning of flames.’80 However, this explanation still does not rule out the possible presence of an accelerant because the state sent poorly packaged samples of Solomon’s remains to a South African police forensic laboratory for tests. South African forensic experts who examined these samples revealed evidence was contaminated and that they were given specific instructions by the Zimbabwean state to test for only three accelerants: diesel, paraffin and petrol.81 They did not test for any other accelerants. Accelerants (other than diesel, petrol and paraffin) that contain sodium, potassium, lithium or rubidium, amongst others, are exceptionally reactive with water. The application of water to these accelerants causes the boiled water to split into hydrogen and hydroxide atoms. Hydrogen acts as an accelerant, intensifying the fire in the manner testified by those who tried to extinguish flames burning Solomon’s body. Lastly, in cases where it is suspected a victim suffered a bloody death, forensic science can overcome criminals’ efforts to conceal evidence by setting fires, through the selective application of the chemical Luminol at a crime scene.82 Luminol is a highly sensitive reagent which exhibits a luminescence when sprayed onto areas with concealed blood stains. Forensic science techniques such as the well-judged application of Luminol were not employed in Solomon’s farmhouse to detect blood traces for DNA sample analysis, which would have been a potential indicator that the fire was set to cover up a previous crime.

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South African forensic experts observed that ‘the method of gathering the debris was not good enough and was too subjective’.83 Zimbabwean state investigators also did not elaborate the quantity and colour of smoke and the presence of any strange odours at the fire scene. Unusually coloured smoke and uncommon odours at fire scenes may denote the presence of accelerants. Chikwanha’s report downplayed these fundamental failings and suspicious procedures by writing: ‘human errors are part of human life and should never be ruled out’.84 His report also blamed lack of resources as the cause of the inadequate investigation: [T]he court appreciates the economic quagmire that this country has been exposed to for so many years and this has resulted in serious lack of resources in the majority of our public institutions and the Zimbabwe Republic Police has not been spared. That is the reason why the communication radios of the three constables who were guarding the farmhouse were not working.85

Chikwanha was equally understanding of the fire brigade’s failure to respond quickly to the fire. As stated by Chikwanha, the fire brigade lacked ‘capacity at all to react to an emergency. They had no vehicles, the only vehicle they had had leakages such that if they had put water in its tanks, by the time they arrived all the water would have leaked out.’86 While it holds that the state faced economic challenges, which undermined its capacity to function efficiently, Chikwanha’s clarification of the state investigation’s shortcomings was a strategy of deflection because the deceased was husband to Zimbabwe’s vice president, he was the country’s most senior retired general and a hero of the Zimbabwean independence struggle. Was the Zimbabwean state bankrupt to the degree that it could not make available funds, enabling a suitable investigation into an important person’s death? The Mujurus were also a well-to-do family. If the state was bankrupt, why was the Mujuru family not given leeway to engage private investigators to participate in the inquiry? A police investigator testified that Solomon’s ‘feet and the right arm’ were completely ‘burnt out’ but ‘the carpet beneath the body was not burnt’, meaning ‘the body was protecting the carpet from the fire and also that the body had been in that position before the fire’.87 If Solomon’s body ‘had been in that position before the fire’, how did (and from where) the fire rapidly spread to where the corpse was eventually discovered? Was Solomon already in flames when he collapsed (or was placed) on the rug? The police did not present definitive answers to these questions. The area under a victim’s body is normally protected from fire as police investigators correctly clarified, but what was not discussed in Chikwanha’s report is that material under a victim’s body, when it is removed, can provide crucial evidence. The unburnt rug

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under Solomon’s body likely contained traces of his blood and other bodily fluids, as well as residues of an accelerant (if one was used) that might have seeped into the rug. The rug potentially held valuable evidence but the police did not scientifically pursue this lead. Chikwanha’s report also passed over a noticeable fact in photographs of Solomon’s remains, which is that the general’s body burned inconsistently in the fire. Solomon’s right arm was reduced to ash but his left arm was not and his left leg burned more extensively than his right leg. Inconsistent burn patterns such as this suggest the possible presence of a fire accelerant that was applied unevenly on the body. Additionally, although Solomon’s left arm was not burnt to ash, it nonetheless charred expansively. This too was unusual because Solomon’s left arm was compressed beneath his torso, depriving the burning arm of ample oxygen that would have facilitated allencompassing burning in a natural fire. This abnormality is a clue the fire was unnatural and that the body may have first burned considerably in a posture (and location) different to the one it was discovered in at 3.45 a.m. on 16 August 2011. In addition, fire victims are often found in a pugilistic pose, which was not the case with Solomon’s remains, but this oddity was left unexplained by state investigators. Some police officers provided guided tours of the fire scene to people who rushed to Solomon’s farm on the morning of the fire. They did not immediately cordon off the fire scene, resulting in contamination of evidence as people came to view the site. As people came and went they altered evidence by introducing or subtracting data from the scene, such as traces of blood, soil, fibres, possible accelerants and hairs, amongst other evidence. One of my enduring personal memories about Solomon’s death is the state-controlled Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) chief correspondent Reuben Barwe hovering over Solomon’s remains, which had been covered by a blanket (further contaminating evidence) for viewer discretion, as he recorded a television news report about the general’s demise. Nevertheless, the contamination of evidence was not entirely the state’s doing. For example, one of Solomon’s farmworkers realised, while standing close to the deceased’s car as the fire raged in the early morning, that a mobile phone was ringing in the parked vehicle. He opened one of the car’s unlocked doors and answered the ringing mobile phone. The caller turned out to be Joice, attempting to call Solomon to verify his location and whether he was safe, while she was being chauffeur driven to the Beatrice farm. Solomon’s farmworker may have erased potentially useful fingerprints from the deceased’s mobile phone and car door when he touched them. Solomon’s car was eventually pushed further away from the farmhouse by his workers because they feared it might catch fire. This too was unwitting alteration of evidence by non-

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state actors, although it can be argued that the constables should have ordered workers not to alter anything at the scene. Solomon’s car could have provided investigators with other useful clues, particularly in terms of determining whether there was a passenger in the front seat, as Runhare claimed, and whether the vehicle was driven by anyone else besides the deceased that night. There was scope for tape lifting of trace evidence from the car’s front seats and seatbelts, footwell, car window controls and switches, headrests and car door handles, but none of this was carried out by state investigators. Gonzalez, the Cuban forensic pathologist who examined Solomon’s body, did not speak English so a Spanish interpreter facilitated his testimony. According to Gonzalez, Solomon’s ‘death was caused by open fire whose origin is unknown’.88 Gonzalez further testified that ‘there was carbon in the trachea of the deceased’, which is ‘indicative of the fact that when the fire started the deceased was alive because the deceased could only have inhaled smoke through breathing’.89 Kewada, disbelieving of the Cuban pathologist’s testimony, asked Gonzalez if he still had a copy of his initial autopsy report (written in Spanish). Gonzalez first confirmed that he still had his original autopsy report but, after a tea adjournment, when asked by Kewada to produce this report for the court he now claimed to have torn up the report and thrown it away.90 Chikwanha’s inquest report ignored this inconsistency in Gonzalez’s testimony, whereas the contradictions in testimonies by uneducated witnesses such as Runhare were strongly stressed and used as a basis to undercut their credibility. There was also evidence that Gonzalez’s examination of Solomon’s remains was unsatisfactory. Gonzalez did not independently identify the body, as Kewada narrated: ‘I asked the Cuban pathologist if he knew whose body it was when he did the autopsy. He said yes. I said how did you know. He said the state told him it is the general’s body.’91 Gonzalez did not take an X-ray of Solomon’s remains, which is customary exercise in post-mortems. He also did not extract a blood sample, for toxicity analysis, from Solomon’s remains because he maintained ‘the body was charred and there was no longer blood in the body’.92 But a representative of the Mujuru family who was tasked with observing the autopsy recalled that part of Solomon’s chest (the area around his sternum especially), which was in contact with part of the unburnt rug, retained ‘bloody bits of flesh’.93 The family representative observed supplementary anomalies during the autopsy: The body arrived in a bag. They had shovelled everything that was under the body and put it in a cardboard box. Now you do not use a dirty shovel and a used cardboard box to handle evidence. That is just not done. The state took

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everything to 1 Commando Barracks. They ordered an autopsy be done there. We do not have a forensic pathologist in Zimbabwe but we do have some pathologists. None of them were called. The state chose to rely on a foreign pathologist who had only come here recently. He could not speak a word of English so I could not ask him anything about the autopsy. I watched him do the entire autopsy. He did not have any tools. All he had was his gloves and mask. I saw him sifting through the cardboard box. He pulled out bones and put them with the body. Then he poked around. Pulling little bits of flesh out. When he wanted to open up the chest cavity he did not even have a saw so they had to call for one from Parirenyatwa [a state hospital across town]. We had to wait for the saw to be delivered from Parirenyatwa. As I was waiting, I was asking myself why they brought the body here [1 Commando] where they cannot do a proper autopsy. Why did they not take it to Parirenyatwa in the first place?94

Chikwanha’s report defended how Gonzalez conducted the autopsy, arguing that ‘a lot of criticism was directed at the Doctor in the manner he carried out the post-mortem but the court does not share this criticism. The criticism directed at the Doctor is what one would term as textbook criticism. The family lawyer was comparing what Doctor Gonzalez did to what is written in textbooks.’95 Because of his dissatisfaction with Gonzalez’s approaches to the autopsy, Kewada enlisted the service of Reggie Perumal, a well-thoughtof South African forensic pathologist with a track record of involvement in high-profile cases, most notably the Paralympian sprinter Oscar Pistorius’s murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. Kewada wanted Solomon’s remains exhumed for examination by Perumal and for the South African to testify in the inquest but both goals were unsuccessful. ‘Even if one was to agree to a second post-mortem as was suggested, I would wonder what value this would add because there is no blood to extract, there are no organs to examine and there is no brain to examine. No value at all will be derived from that’, Chikwanha dismissed the usefulness of a second autopsy.96 Intriguingly, the state was apprehensive about Perumal’s involvement in Solomon’s case, as Kewada recounted: I said to Chikwanha I would like to call another pathologist but I did not give him a name. After that he kept asking ‘Who is this pathologist?’. I did not give him a name. According to the [Inquest] Act only the magistrate can call witnesses, so he then said if you want this pathologist to testify, put it in writing. If you send your request to me before 8 a.m. tomorrow I will speak to the Judicial Services Commission so we can get a quick answer and not waste time. He took my written request, came to court next morning and said nothing about my application. So, we quickly got hold of Reggie in South Africa and said please come anyway, as soon as possible. He caught the final flight to Harare from Johannesburg that same day. After Reggie arrived he phoned his wife in South Africa who told him that just after he had left for Harare, the [Zimbabwean] investigating officer

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Chrispen Makedenge suddenly appeared at the Perumals’ house in South Africa wanting to see Reggie. Reggie’s wife simply said he is not here but if you leave your full details I can tell him to call you when he gets back, so he left his details. We believe Makedenge had gone to South Africa either to intimidate Reggie or to bribe him. On that same day Reggie arrived, we were tipped off that the state was sending agents to hotels all over Harare looking for Reggie. So, we put him up in a little-known private guest house. I said to Reggie the magistrate will not call you to the stand. He will string us along until the inquest is over. But please stay and listen to the proceedings, particularly what the Cuban pathologist has to say. Sit behind me in court and give me advice on the questions we should ask the Cuban pathologist. Reggie stayed and did all this for us and we were able to show the court the Cuban pathologist did not do a proper examination of the general’s body.97

The state allowed an inquest into Solomon’s death in order to dispel lingering speculation that there was foul play in his demise. But the state’s tactic miscarried prodigiously because the inquest unearthed supplemental inconsistencies that suggested foul play in Solomon’s death. Witnesses were reluctant to testify about certain key details such as the alleged sound of gunshots on the night of 15 August 2011. The ZRP constables’ testimonies were incomplete – they strangely heard and saw nothing from 8.20 p.m. to 1.40 a.m. despite night patrols by one of them and the fact that the police post was in full view of Solomon’s farmhouse. There was speculation that in the absence of electrical power, Solomon lit a candle in his bedroom and fell asleep without blowing it out. The candle fell over and sparked fire while Solomon slept, so the theory went. However, Rosemary testified that although she left a small candle on a saucer in Solomon’s bedroom, she did not put out a lighter or matchbox, making it unclear how the general, who had long since quit smoking cigarettes, managed to light the small candle.98 Whether or not Solomon was in the company of someone when he arrived at the farm was not categorically resolved. Why did Solomon’s missing keys suddenly reappear in his bedroom on the morning of the fire? Solomon strangely went to bed leaving his white Isuzu Double Cab unlocked, with his mobile phone, groceries, handgun and jacket inside. If the state had nothing to hide, why did it reject Kewada’s exhumation plea? Solomon’s bedroom had large low-lying windows – all without security metal bars. His bedroom also had three exit doors. Two of these doors led to bedrooms that were largely unaffected by fire. Solomon (a trained soldier with combat experience and survivor of the gargantuan 1976 Geneva fire) surprisingly did not make a quick exit via one of the bedroom’s large windows or flee from the fire into one of the secure bedrooms. Mugabe gave Joice permission to take leave from work while the inquest was ongoing but he would often call her away from the hearings on the pretext that he wanted to see

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her briefly but these private meetings would last as long as two hours and on one occasion a whole morning.99 Joice claimed that Mugabe once said to her in one of these private meetings: ‘All this [the inquest] is not necessary. It will not change the situation. It will not bring your husband back so you should let it go because anyway you are the one to take over [the presidency] from me.’100 The ways in which the presiding magistrate Chikwanha conducted the inquest and prepared its report were exceedingly controversial. Chikwanha’s report confirmed precisely what Mugabe declared, during his address at Solomon’s funeral at Heroes Acre on 20 August 2011, that the general died in ‘a horrendous inexplicable fire accident’. Months after he completed his inquest report, Chikwanha was promoted to regional magistrate and chief registrar of the Supreme Court.101 Chikwanha was promoted again in 2014 to the post of deputy secretary of the Judicial Services Commission.102 Kewada summed up his thoughts on the inquest verdict in this way: There was a clear agenda to hide evidence. What I do not understand is how the state can do this and think the general public is stupid. Maybe they do think Zimbabweans are stupid so they can feed them with anything and they will believe it. It is interesting that during the inquest, when I was in public going about my own business, I would meet ZANU PF members who would say to me in private, we do not believe he died in that fire. He was already dead. They threw him into the fire after they had killed him. Random people who had seen my picture in the newspaper reports about the inquest would walk up to me and say, ‘You are Mr Kewada! They killed your client.’ People would just walk up to me, shake my hand, then walk away without saying anything.103

‘The Death of Rex Nhongo’104 The inquest’s unconvincing verdict provoked a variety of theories about what could have happened to Solomon on the night of 15 August 2011. In this section, I highlight two theories I frequently encountered during the course of my research, before turning to the findings of a private investigation that sought to ascertain the nature of Solomon’s demise. The first of these theories was shaped by occult beliefs. The anthropologist David Pratten has written about police investigations into a spate of bizarre murders in colonial Nigeria, in which the victims were found with injuries that appeared to have been inflicted by leopards.105 What is relevant from Pratten’s work is his use of these murders as a lens for exploring broader political-cultural undercurrents. So, for instance, colonial investigators came to believe the killings were ritual murders perpetrated by manleopards and latterly that they were murderous acts committed by

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a secret occult society. In addition, ‘a pattern by which male victims had their right arm removed’ in the murders soon became clear.106 ‘It now appears likely that the killers performed this act . . . to prevent the spirits of the victims from pursuing the assailants’; cutting off the right arm, which was believed to be a source of power, robbed the victim of spiritual strength to seek revenge on his killers.107 Returning to Solomon’s case, his death threw light on the influence of supernatural beliefs on the minds of some police figures privy to the state’s investigation, certain ZANU PF members and a section of the Mujuru family I interviewed. Specifically, the absence of Solomon’s feet, apparently because they were reduced to ashes by the fire, brought forth a supernatural belief among these individuals (some of whom appeared quite steeped in occult beliefs and practices) that in cases of murder, the murderers sever the victim’s feet and take them away to perform a ritual that prevents the deceased’s spirit from returning to haunt or seek revenge against his killers, presumably because the departed was buried without his feet, which are necessary for walking in search of his killers. Owing to this occult belief, these particular individuals ruled out that the fire was accidental, concluding instead that Solomon could only have been murdered because his feet were missing. Some Mujuru family members even claimed to have carried out mighty rituals that would enable Solomon’s spirit to return anyway and exact revenge on his killers. As happened with investigators and wider society in Pratten’s study of the man-leopard murders in Nigeria, the occult clearly shaped the mindsets of some in the case of Solomon’s death. This is not to say, however, that occult beliefs and practices in Africa are unitary. Specificities, context, matter. For example, in addition to his feet, a considerable portion of Solomon’s right arm was missing after the fire. But in the Zimbabwean setting occult beliefs focused on the absence of Solomon’s feet, unlike in Pratten’s Nigerian case where a missing right arm was the focus of attention. The second theory I came across regularly was that the assassination of a high-profile individual associated with the state is only accomplishable in the Zimbabwean context if part of the state sanctions the elimination. As one figure who is a strong proponent of this explanation put it: Assassinations like Rex’s are almost impossible if they are not state-sponsored because the assassins want to get away and live the rest of their lives, unless you are a Muslim suicide bomber. Killing Rex was the easy part. Getting away and living the rest of your days a free man is the hard part and to achieve that hard part in Zimbabwe your operation must be state-sponsored.108

A motley cluster of actors who were intensely disgruntled with the manner in which the inquest into Solomon’s death was conducted,

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enlisted the services of foreign elements to quietly conduct a private investigation. The private investigation tracked some of the leads identified earlier in the chapter, which were not pursued by state investigators, and it employed innovative investigative methods such as the assembling and analysis of electronic information and surveillance data. The private investigation produced an undisclosed account of Solomon’s death. I now set out some of the private investigation’s main outcomes. A central discovery of the private investigation was that in the evening of 15 August, when Solomon had reached Beatrice, but not his farm, a confederate warned him of an impending unspecified manoeuvre, which the confederate believed might target Solomon, as an extract of the transcript of their exchange shows: confederate: Chefe [Portuguese for boss] zvinhu hazvina kumira mushe. Muwone kuti munorara mu Harare nhasi, kusvika tanyatsonzwisisa mafambiro ezvinhu [things do not look good. Ensure that you spend the night in Harare today, until we fully understand what is afoot]. solomon: Hmmmm by 7.30 [p.m.] ndinenge ndadzoka mu Harare [I will be back in Harare by 7.30 p.m.]. confederate: Shuwa here chefe? [Are you telling the truth, boss?] solomon: Ko ndinogokunyepera chirudzi ndakuudza kuti 7.30 ndinenge ndamuHarare [I have no reason to lie to you. I will make it back to Harare by 7.30]. confederate: Good chefe. solomon: Zvakanaka [Good]. confederate: Chefe zvinhu hazvina kumira mushe. Vakomana . . . vafunga kuita Jesu nhasi [Boss things do not look good. The boys . . . have decided to play Jesus today].109

A second core finding of the private investigation is that Solomon was in the company of a young lady, when he arrived at his farm on the night of 15 August. Solomon entered the farmhouse with the young lady after 8 p.m., leaving behind parcels in his unlocked white Isuzu Double Cab KB250. He was ambushed in the kitchen, which was his entry point into the farmhouse, by a group of men. It is believed the men gained entry to the farmhouse using Solomon’s keys, which vanished mysteriously days earlier. By the time the young lady was terminated, Solomon had already been shot in the knee in order to immobilise him. The wounded and defenceless Solomon was then dragged to his bedroom, where the men held Solomon down as an accelerant was poured onto him. Solomon, cognisant he was about to meet a flaming end, screamed for life, the blood from his knee wound seeping onto the bedroom floor. One of the men quieted Solomon with a bullet through the throat. Another commenced the ghoulish procedure of gutting Solomon’s body. Solomon’s corpse

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burned in a delimited area of his bedroom until after about 10.15 p.m., when the men transferred his cadaver to a Moroccan rug located in the mini lounge. The men disposed of the young lady’s remains and torched part of the farmhouse, to make it appear as if Solomon died alone in a domestic fire and in order to destroy potentially incriminating evidence. Had Solomon promptly driven back to Harare after his exchange with the confederate, he might have eluded the men. Why, then, did Solomon head for the farm instead of returning to Harare? Did Solomon disregard the confederate’s warning and decide to spend the night at the farm anyway? The private investigation could not ascertain Solomon’s true intentions that night but the fact that he did not park where he normally parked when going to bed, that he left his car unlocked and did not take with him into the house his mobile phone, groceries, documents, jacket and pistol, which were all found in his vehicle in the morning, all suggests he did not intend to spend the night at the farm. Solomon was likely making a stopover, not a sleepover. By all accounts, Solomon left Beatrice Motel alone, thus he could only have met or driven to see the young lady (who he had come to know before the fateful night) after leaving the motel. Could it be that Solomon was ‘doing masculinity’, hence he wanted quiet time alone with the young lady in his farmhouse? Was the young lady used by the men to lure Solomon to the farmhouse or was she just unfortunate to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? Solomon only had a handgun with him in his car on the inauspicious night. Seventeen firearms (including an AK47) and a large amount of ammunition were found in his farmhouse after the fire.110 In light of the confederate’s warning, did Solomon head for the farmhouse to collect some of these weapons and ammunition? The farmhouse contained a safe, in which Solomon sometimes kept valuable documents and items. Was there a particularly important item he wanted to collect from the safe? Driving to the farmhouse was a fatal decision. Solomon perished with the explanation for his determination to drive to the farmhouse. The connivance of a member of Solomon’s inner circle is another bone of contention. Somebody close to Solomon likely lifted the farmhouse keys. Moreover, the men could only have known the precise layout of Solomon’s farm from an individual familiar with it. More importantly, the men’s knowledge of Solomon’s plans, movements and time of arrival at the farm that final day suggest Solomon was betrayed.

Notes

Preamble 1. See, for example, D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Second Chimurenga (London, Faber and Faber, 1981). Martin and Johnson’s book, which includes a foreword by Robert Mugabe, is an essential volume in ZANU PF’s official history of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. 2. Interview, Joel Mujuru (Solomon’s brother), 24 July 2012; Interview, Lucia Mujuru (Solomon’s sister), 18 September 2015. 3. M. Bratton, Power Politics in Zimbabwe (Boulder, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2015). 4. S. R. Dorman, Understanding Zimbabwe: From Liberation to Authoritarianism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016). 5. See, for example, M. Rupiya (ed.), Zimbabwe’s Military. Examining Its Veto Power in the Transition to Democracy, 2008–2013 (Johannesburg, Africa Public Policy Institute, 2013); D. Compagnon, A Predictable Tragedy: Robert Mugabe and the Collapse of Zimbabwe (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013); R. Bourne, Catastrophe: What Went Wrong in Zimbabwe? (London, Zed Books, 2011); E. Masunungure, Defying the Winds of Change: Zimbabwe’s 2008 Election (Harare, Weaver Press, 2009). 6. R. A. W. Rhodes, ‘Theory, Method and British Political Life History’, Political Studies Review, 10, 2, 2012, pp. 161–312. 7. A few exceptions are: T. Lodge, Mandela: A Critical Life (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006); A. Butler, Cyril Ramaphosa (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2013); J. I. Elaigwu, Gowon: The Biography of a Soldier-Statesman (Ibadan, Nigeria, West Books Publisher Limited, 1985); K. W. J. Post and G. D. Jenkins, The Price of Liberty: Personality and Politics in Colonial Nigeria (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1973); J. N. Paden, Ahmadu Bello, Sardauna of Sokoto: Values and Leadership in Nigeria (London, Hodder and Stoughton, 1986). 8. K. R. Monroe (ed), Perestroika!: The Raucous Rebellion in Political Science (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2005). 9. D. Marquand, ‘Biography’, in M. Flinders, A. Gamble, C. Hay and M. Kenny (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of British Politics (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 188. 297

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Notes to pages 4–6

10. Important political biographies by historians include: S. Onslow and M. Plaut, Robert Mugabe (Ohio, Ohio University Press, 2018); M. Meredith, Our Votes, Our Guns: Robert Mugabe and the Tragedy of Zimbabwe (New York, Public Affairs, 2003); N. Bhebe, Simon Vengayi Muzenda and the Struggle for and Liberation of Zimbabwe (Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 2004); T. Ranger, Are We Not Also Men?: The Samkange Family and African Politics in Zimbabwe, 1920–64 (Oxford, James Currey, 1995); S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe (London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017); M. Clarke and P. Nyathi, Welshman Hadane Mabhena: A Voice for Matabeleland (Bulawayo, Amagugu Books, 2016); C. Zvobgo, The Struggle for Zimbabwe 1935–2004: Eddison JM Zvobgo (Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 2017). Leading political biographies by journalists are: H. Holland, Dinner with Mugabe: The Untold Story of a Freedom Fighter Who Became a Tyrant (London, Penguin, 2012); D. Smith and C. Simpson with I. Davis, Mugabe (London, Sphere Books, 1981). 11. S. Chan, Robert Mugabe: A Life of Power and Violence (London, IB Tauris, 2019). 12. Marquand, ‘Biography’, p. 194. 13. R. Muir, Wellington: The Path to Victory 1769–1814 (London, Yale University Press, 2013), p. xii. 14. See H. Sapire and C. Saunders (eds.), Liberation Struggles in Southern Africa in Context: New Local, Regional and Global Perspectives (Claremont, South Africa, UCT Press, 2013); L. White and M. Larmer, ‘Mobile Soldiers and Un-National Liberation of Southern Africa’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 40, 6, 2014, pp. 1271–4; J. Alexander, J. McGregor and B-M. Tendi, ‘Southern Africa Beyond the West: The Transnational Connections of Southern African Liberation Movements’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 43, 1, 2017, pp. 1–12. 15. This observation is drawn from Alexander et al., ‘Southern Africa Beyond the West’. Key texts that do not throw light on the convolutions of transnational liberation politics are: Martin and Johnson, The Struggle; B. Raftopoulos and A. Mlambo (eds.), Becoming Zimbabwe – A History from the Pre-colonial Period to 2008 (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2009); N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds.), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Oxford, James Currey, 1995); A. Mlambo, A History of Zimbabwe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014); N. Bhebe, The Zapu and Zanu Guerrilla Warfare and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe (Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 1999). 16. See, for example, C. Williams, National Liberation in Postcolonial Southern Africa: A Historical Ethnography of SWAPO’s Exile Camps (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2015); P. Trewhela, Inside Quatro: Uncovering the Exile History of the ANC and SWAPO (Johannesburg, Jacana, 2010); various authors, ‘Special Section: Camps and Liberation in Southern Africa’, Social Dynamics, 39, 1, 2013. 17. L. Callinicos, ‘Oliver Tambo and the Dilemma of the Camp Mutinies in Angola in the Eighties’, South African Historical Journal, 64, 3, 2012, pp. 587–621. 18. G. Mazarire, ‘Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA: 1964–1979’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 3, 2011, pp. 571–91.

Notes to pages 6–15

299

19. M. G. Panzer, ‘Building a Revolutionary Constituency: Mozambican Refugees and the Development of the FRELIMO Proto-State, 1964–1968’, Social Dynamics, 39, 1, 2013, pp. 5–23. 20. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle; Bhebe, The ZAPU and ZANU Guerrilla Warfare. 21. S. Rice, “The Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe, 1979–1980: Implications for International Peacekeeping” (University of Oxford, DPhil Thesis, 1990); N. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-war Zimbabwe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003). 22. C. B. George, The Death of Rex Nhongo (London, Quercus, 2015). 23. B-M. Tendi, ‘State Intelligence and the Politics of Zimbabwe’s Presidential Succession’, African Affairs, 115, 460, 2016, pp. 203–24. 24. M. Ignatieff, Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 150.

Fireborn I 1. C. Sandburg, ‘Fire Pages’, The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (London, Harcourt, 2003), p. 266. 2. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 24 July 2012. 3. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 24 July 2012; Interview, Lucia Mujuru, 18 September 2015. 4. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 24 July 2012. 5. See B. Raftopoulos and A. Mlambo (eds.), Becoming Zimbabwe – A History from the Pre-colonial Period to 2008 (Johannesburg, Jacana Media, 2009). 6. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 24 July 2012. 7. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 24 July 2012; Interview, Lucia Mujuru, 18 September 2015. 8. 2018 World Bank Country data, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP .POP.TOTL/countries/ZW?display=graph (last accessed 2 April 2018). 9. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. 10. J. P. Neilson, T. Lavender, S. Quenby and S. Wray, ‘Obstructed Labour: Reducing Maternal Death and Disability during Pregnancy’, British Medical Bulletin, 67, 1, 2003, pp. 191–204. 11. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015; Interview, Lucia Mujuru, 18 September 2015. 12. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. 13. Interview, Lucia Mujuru, 18 September 2015. 14. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. 15. Interview, Lucia Mujuru, 18 September 2015. 16. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Interview, Lucia Mujuru, 18 September 2015. 21. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015.

300 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Notes to pages 15–21 Interview, Lucia Mujuru, 18 September 2015. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. Ibid. J. Alexander, The Unsettled Land: State-Making and the Politics of Land in Zimbabwe 1893–2003 (Oxford, James Currey, 2006). T. Ranger, Bulawayo Burning: The Social History of a Southern African City, 1893–1960 (Oxford, James Currey, 2010). Solomon Mujuru primary material. ‘Kumbirai Kangai Obituary’, Harare, Zimbabwe Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, 2013. Ibid. Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015. Solomon quoted in D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Second Chimurenga (London, Faber and Faber, 1981), p. 86. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. Ibid. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. D. Mulford, Zambia: The Politics of Independence, 1957–1964 (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967). F. Macpherson, Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia: The Times of the Man (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1975), p. 54. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, p. 244. Solomon Mujuru primary material. J. Jenje-Makwenda, Zimbabwe Township Music (Harare, ORT Printing, 2005), p. 28. Ibid. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. Ibid. ‘Herbert Ushewokunze Obituary’, Harare, Zimbabwe Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, 2014. Ibid. ‘Sport Turned into Unifying Tool’, The Patriot, 2 July 2015. ‘Ushewokunze Obituary’, 2014. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, p. 6. B. Mpofu, ‘No Place for “Undesirables”: The Urban Poor’s Struggle for Survival in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, 1960–2005’ (University of Edinburgh, PhD Thesis, 2010), p. 80.

Notes to pages 21–32 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80.

81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102.

301

B. Fruend quoted in Mpofu, ‘No Place for “Undesirables”’, p. 28. Mpofu, ‘No Place for “Undesirables” ’. Ranger, Bulawayo Burning, p. 10. Dumiso Dabengwa, ‘The Rex I Knew’, Sunday Mail, 21 August 2011. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, pp. 86–7. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Interview, Joel Mujuru, 17 August 2015. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Tshinga Dube (senior ZAPU cadre), 7 April 2014. Interview, ZAPU cadre 1, 11 December 2012. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. Interview, ZAPU cadre 1, 11 December 2012. Ibid. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Interview, ZAPU cadre 2, 5 January 2015. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. D. Dabengwa, ‘ZIPRA in the Zimbabwe War of National Liberation’, in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds.), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Oxford, James Currey, 1995), p. 30. Interview, ZAPU cadre 1, 11 December 2012. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Interview, ZANLA cadre X, 17 August 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid.; Solomon Mujuru primary material. Interview, ZAPU cadre 3, 19 August 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre X, 17 August 2012. Solomon quoted in Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 88. Interview, Antonio Hama Thay (FRELIMO), 13 December 2016; Interview, Rafael Jose Rohomaja (FRELIMO), 21 December 2016. Ibid. Ibid. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Solomon quoted in Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 73. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ian Smith quoted in Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 74.

302

Notes to pages 33–8

Ghost of Chitepo 1. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 2. W. Mhanda, Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011). 3. Ibid., p. 38. 4. Ibid., p. 38. 5. Solomon Mujuru primary material; Solomon’s interview with Janice McLaughlin, 15 August 1990. 6. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Solomon’s interview with McLaughlin, 15 August 1990; Solomon Mujuru primary material. 10. Solomon’s interview with McLaughlin, 15 August 1990. 11. J. McLaughlin, ‘The Catholic Church and the War of Liberation’ (DPhil Thesis, University of Zimbabwe, 1991), p. 223. 12. Ibid. 13. Solomon’s interview with McLaughlin, 15 August 1990. 14. McLaughlin, ‘The Catholic Church’. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Ibid., p. 214. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. N. Bhebe, The Zapu and Zanu Guerrilla Warfare and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe (Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 1999). 21. Ibid., p. 57. 22. D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Second Chimurenga (London, Faber and Faber, 1981), p. 160. 23. Ibid., p. 159. 24. Ibid., p. 160. 25. G. Mazarire, ‘Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA: 1964–1979’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 37, 3, 2011, pp. 571–91. 26. L. White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 2003), p. 22. 27. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 160. 28. ‘Report of the Special International Commission on the Assassination of Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo’ (Lusaka, Government of Zambia, March 1976), p. 17. 29. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 160. 30. White, The Assassination. 31. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid.

Notes to pages 38–43 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

62. 63.

64. 65. 66. 67.

303

Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015; Mhanda, Dzino. Mhanda, Dzino. Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015; Mhanda, Dzino. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ibid. Interview, Christopher Mutsvangwa, 20 August 2013. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 45. Ibid., p. 45. K. Leiberthal, ‘The Great Leap Forward and the Split in Yan’an Leadership, 1958–65’, in R. MacFarquhar (ed.), The Politics of China: Sixty Years of The People’s Republic of China (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 87–146. E. Hevi, An African Student in China (London, Pall Mall Press, 1963). Ibid., p. 19. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 45. Hevi, An African Student, p. 187. Ibid., p. 186. Ibid., p. 131. Ibid., p. 135. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., p. 50. Mhanda, Dzino. Solomon Mujuru primary material; Mhanda, Dzino. ‘Report of the Special International Commission’. Ibid. Ibid. Josiah Tungamirai quoted in Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 161. Josiah Tongogara Legacy Foundation, Tongogara in His Own Words (Harare, African Publishing Group, 2015). J. Nhongo-Simbanegavi, ‘Zimbabwean Women in the Liberation Struggle: ZANLA and Its Legacy, 1972–1985’ (DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford, 1997). Ibid., p.163. Nhongo-Simbanegavi, ‘Zimbabwean Women’; T. Lyons, Guns and Guerilla Girls: Women in the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle (Trenton, NJ, Africa World Press, 2004). Interview, ZANLA cadre A, 4 April 2014; Interview ZANLA cadre B, 17 December 2012. J. Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory (Lanham, MD, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1993). Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. W. Russell, ‘Sexual Violence against Men and Boys’, Forced Migration Review 27, 2007, pp. 22–3. M. Christian, O. Safari, P. Ramazani, G. Burnham and N. Glass, ‘Sexual and Gender Based Violence against Men in the Democratic Republic of Congo: Effects on Survivors, Their Families and the Community’, Medicine, Conflict and Survival, 27, 4, 2011, pp. 227–46.

304

Notes to pages 44–52

68. H. Touquet and E. Gorris, ‘Out of the Shadows? The Inclusion of Men and Boys in Conceptualisations of Wartime Sexual Violence’, Reproductive Health Matters, 24, 47, 2016, pp. 36–46. 69. White, The Assassination. 70. ‘Josiah Tungamirai Obituary’ (Harare, Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, 2014). 71. Mazarire, ‘Discipline and Punishment’; Mhanda, Dzino. 72. William Ndangana interview, 2 August 1985. 73. ‘Report of the Special International Commission’. 74. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 75. Ibid. 76. Ibid. 77. White, The Assassination, p. 27. 78. Ibid. 79. Mhanda, Dzino. 80. Mhanda, Dzino; Solomon Mujuru primary material. 81. Mhanda, Dzino; Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. 82. Mhanda, Dzino. 83. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 84. William Ndangana interview, 2 August 1985. 85. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 86. Ibid. 87. Interview, Antonio Hama Thay, 13 December 2016; Interview, Rafael Jose Rohomaja, 21 December 2016. 88. Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015. 89. White, The Assassination, p. 35. 90. Ibid., p. 35. 91. Bhebe, The Zapu and Zanu Guerrilla Warfare, p. 57. 92. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 165. 93. White, The Assassination. 94. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 49. 95. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 96. Interview, ZANLA cadre A, 4 April 2014. 97. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 47. 98. ‘Report of the Special International Commission’; William Ndangana interview, 2 August 1985. 99. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. 100. Solomon Mujuru quoted in Bhebe, The Zapu and Zanu Guerrilla Warfare, p. 44. 101. Interview, ZANLA cadre X, 17 August 2012. 102. Josiah Tungamirai quoted in Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 162. 103. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 19 September 2014. 104. Ibid. 105. Ibid. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid.

Notes to pages 52–9 109. 110. 111. 112.

113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149.

305

Mhanda, Dzino. Ibid. Ibid., p. 45–6. K. Woldring, ‘Aspects of Zambian Foreign Policy in the Context of Southern Africa’, Australian Journal of International Affairs, 34, 3, 1980, pp. 338–48. J. E. Spence, ‘Southern Africa’s Uncertain Future’, The Round Table: The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 65, 258, 1975, pp. 159–65. J. Barber and J. Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy: The Search for Status and Security, 1945–1988 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 185. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. Interview, Enos Nkala, 28 August 2011. M. Nyagumbo, With the People: An Autobiography from the Zimbabwe Struggle (Harare, Graham Publishing, 1980). Interview, Enos Nkala, 28 August 2011. Nyagumbo, With the People, p. 219. Ibid., p. 221. Ibid., p. 221. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. Nyagumbo, With the People. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. Solomon Mujuru primary material. William Ndangana interview, 2 August 1985; ‘Report of the Special International Commission’. William Ndangana interview, 2 August 1985. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 38. ‘Report of the Special International Commission’, p. 25. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. White, The Assassination, p. 1. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ibid. Mhanda, Dzino. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Mhanda, Dzino. Ibid., p. 63. Ibid. Ibid. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe. Ibid. Tungamirai quoted in Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 180. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 19 September 2014. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. Ibid. Ibid.

306 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160.

161. 162. 163. 164. 165. 166.

167. 168. 169. 170.

171. 172. 173. 174. 175.

176.

Notes to pages 60–9 Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. Ibid. Mhanda, Dzino. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle, p. 180. Other works that do not explain Nyerere’s different response include: Mhanda, Dzino; F. Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle (Harare, Weaver Press, 2007); Z. W. Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution: Challenging Neo-colonialism and Settler and International Capital (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011). All four actors are late and I was unable to identify any official records of their first meeting or meetings in the aftermath of Chitepo’s death. Interview, ZANLA cadre E, 12 April 2013. ‘I Hope Africa Will Remember Me’, Sunday Mail, 24 August 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, ‘Mujuru a Great Fighter: Generals’, www.zbc.co.zw/news-categories/top-stories/11269-generals-described-as-a-gr eat-fighter (last accessed 20 August 2011). Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. I. D. Smith, The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith (London, Blake, 1997); Barber and Barratt, South Africa’s Foreign Policy. For accounts of these tortures, see Mhanda, Dzino; Martin and Johnson, The Struggle; Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga; White, The Assassination. Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga. ZDDC was comprised of concerned ZANU members, international academics, religious priests and white liberals such as Judith Todd. Ibid. ‘Report of the Special International Commission’, pp. 49–50. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 39. S. Makoni, ‘A Critical Analysis of the Historical and Contemporary Status of Minority Languages in Zimbabwe’, in N. Kamwangamalu, R. B. Baldauf Jr and R. B. Kaplan (eds.), Language Planning in Africa: The Cameroon, Sudan and Zimbabwe (London, Routledge, 2013), pp. 437–55. Solomon Mujuru primary material.

Kingmaker 1. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 2. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014.

Notes to pages 69–75

307

3. W. Mhanda, Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011); Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 4. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 72. 5. Ibid., p. 73. 6. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. Also see D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Second Chimurenga (London, Faber and Faber, 1981) and F. Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle (Harare, Weaver Press, 2007). 7. The Zimbabwe Liberation Council (ZLC) was formed in July 1975. It was composed of nationalist political parties that were signatory to the December 1974 Lusaka Agreement. 8. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 76. 9. Ibid., p. 75. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015. 13. Interview, Enos Nkala, 28 August 2011. 14. Mhanda, Dzino. 15. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. 16. Mhanda, Dzino. 17. Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. 18. Solomon Mujuru primary material; Interview, Lopes Tembe Ndelana, 24 March 2017; Interview, Armando Guebuza, 24 March 2017. 19. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 20. Interview, Armando Guebuza, 24 March 2017. 21. Ibid. 22. Mhanda, Dzino. 23. Ibid., p. 89. 24. Ibid. 25. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 26. Ibid. 27. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 89. 28. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 29. See N. Sithole, African Nationalism (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1968). 30. Interview, Enos Nkala, 28 August 2011. The Nguni people (Zulu, Ndebele, Swazi, Xhosa and Ndau groups) are found in Southern Africa, including in southern and eastern Zimbabwe and parts of Mozambique. Ndabaningi Sithole’s father (Jim Sithole) was Ndau and his mother (Siyapi Tshuma) was Ndebele. The Ndau who migrated to Eastern Zimbabwe were assimilated into the larger Manyika group but retained many of their Nguni linguistic characteristics. Thus, although Sithole identified as Manyika he, for example, spoke fluent chi Ndau and isiNdebele. For more autobiographical information on Sithole, see his book, African Nationalism. 31. Interview, ZANLA cadre G, 6 September 2015. 32. Solomon Mujuru primary material; Mhanda, Dzino.

308

Notes to pages 75–85

33. Interview, Armando Guebuza, 24 March 2017; Interview, Antonio Hama Thay, 13 December 2016. 34. Interview, Olusegun Obasanjo, 28 January 2017. 35. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 36. Ibid. 37. Mhanda, Dzino. 38. N. Bhebe, The Zapu and Zanu Guerrilla Warfare and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe (Gweru, Zimbabwe, Mambo Press, 1999), p. 64. 39. Interview, ZANLA cadre G, 6 September 2015. 40. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 2 September 2015. 41. Interview, ZANLA cadre G, 6 September 2015. 42. Interview, ZANLA cadre I, 27 December 2013. 43. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 27 August 2011. 44. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 45. Dabengwa, ‘ZIPRA in the Zimbabwe War of National Liberation’, in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds.), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Oxford, James Currey, 1995), p. 34. 46. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 47. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012; also see E. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle (Harare, SAPES Books, 2006). 48. Ibid. 49. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 50. Ibid. 51. ‘Dare re Chimurenga Leaders’ Declaration on Robert Mugabe’s Leadership of ZANU’, Zambia, 24 January 1976. 52. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 111. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., p. 138. 56. Interview, Wilfred Mhanda, 5 February 2011. 57. Ibid. 58. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 138. 59. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 60. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 61. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 140. 62. Ibid., p. 140. 63. Mhanda, Dzino; A. Mutambara, The Rebel in Me: A ZANLA Guerrilla Commander in the Rhodesian Bush War, 1975–1980 (Solihull, Helion and Company, 2014); Interview, ZANLA cadre M, 9 January 2017; Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. 64. R. Reid-Daily, Selous Scouts: Top Secret War (Alberton, South Africa, Galago, 1983). 65. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 106. 66. Ibid. 67. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 20 September 2013. 68. Interview, Solomon’s confidant 1, 30 March 2012. 69. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 20 September 2013.

Notes to pages 85–93

309

70. J. Hanhimaki, Henry Kissinger: The Flawed Architect (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004). 71. H. Wessels, PK van der Byl: African Statesman (Johannesburg, South Publishers, 2010). 72. Ibid. 73. I. D. Smith, The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith (London, Blake, 1997). 74. Ibid. 75. Mhanda, Dzino. 76. J. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Economy of Mozambique: Problems and Prospects’, Third World Quarterly, 3, 1, 1981, pp. 77–87. 77. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 78. Interview, Joachim Chissano, 21 March 2017. 79. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 80. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 20 September 2013. 81. Mhanda, Dzino. 82. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 83. Ibid. 84. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 85. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 153. 86. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 87. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 88. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 89. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 161. 90. A. B. Muzorewa, Rise Up and Walk: An Autobiography (London, Sphere Books, 1979). 91. Wessels, PK van der Byl, p. 215. 92. K. Flower, Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record, Rhodesia into Zimbabwe 1964 to 1981 (London, John Murray, 1987); Muzorewa, Rise Up; Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle; Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 93. Smith, The Great Betrayal. 94. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 95. Interview, Wilfred Mhanda, 5 February 2011. 96. Mhanda, Dzino, p. 163. 97. Ibid., p. 163. 98. Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga, p. 167. 99. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 100. Ibid. 101. Wessels, PK van der Byl, p. 216. 102. Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga, p. 167. 103. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle.. 104. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. 105. Interview, ZANLA cadre J, 16 December 2012. 106. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 107. Solomon Mujuru primary material. 108. Mhanda, Dzino. 109. Ibid.

310

Notes to pages 94–100

110. Ibid. For additional accounts of the arrests, see Z. W. Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution: Challenging Neo-colonialism and Settler and International Capital (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011). 111. Sadomba, War Veterans, p. 36. 112. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 113. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. 114. Interview, ZANLA cadre I, 27 December 2013. 115. Mhanda, Dzino. 116. Sadomba, War Veterans, p. 36.

The Longest Time 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29.

Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, Joachim Chissano, 21 March 2017. Interview, Armando Guebuza, 24 March 2017. Interview, Jacinto Veloso, 20 December 2016. Interview, Antonio Hama Thay, 13 December 2016. Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. Interview, Antonio Hama Thay, 13 December 2016. Interview, ZANLA cadre K, 28 August 2014. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 9 September 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 9 September 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. Also see E. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle (Harare, SAPES Books, 2006). Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 9 September 2014. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. B-M. Tendi, ‘Ideology, Civilian Authority and the Zimbabwean Military’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 39, 4, 2013, pp. 829–43. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. Interview, Robert Mugabe, 8 September 2012. Ibid. See D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Second Chimurenga (London, Faber and Faber, 1981). Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre X, 17 August 2012; Interview, ZANLA cadre L, 13 December 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. A. S. Mlambo, A History of Zimbabwe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 166. Ibid. Ibid.

Notes to pages 100–5

311

30. J. Tungamirai, ‘Recruitment to ZANLA: Building Up a War Machine’, in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds.), Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 1995), pp. 36–47. 31. N. K. Powell, ‘The UNHCR and Zimbabwean Refugees in Mozambique, 1975–1980’, Refugee Survey Quarterly, 32, 4, 2013, pp. 41–65. 32. C. Munguambe, ‘Nationalism and Exile in an Age of Solidarity: FRELIMO– ZANU Relations in Mozambique (1975–1980)’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 43, 1, 2017, pp. 161–78. 33. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. 34. Ibid. 35. Interview, ZANLA cadre M, 9 January 2017. 36. Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. 37. Interview, Jacinto Veloso, 20 December 2016. 38. Mlambo, A History of Zimbabwe. 39. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Solomon Mujuru primary material. 40. N. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerrilla War: Peasant Voices (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1992). 41. Ibid. 42. D. Maxwell, ‘Christianity and the War in Eastern Zimbabwe: The Case of Elim Mission’, in N. Bhebe and T. Ranger (eds.), Society in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (Harare, University of Zimbabwe Publications, 1995), pp. 58–90. 43. Interview, ZANLA cadre N, 5 October 2016. 44. Munguambe, ‘Nationalism and Exile’. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid.; Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. 48. Interview, Sergio Vieira, 20 March 2017. 49. Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. 50. Interview, Armando Guebuza, 24 March 2017. 51. Munguambe, ‘Nationalism and Exile’. 52. Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Interview, Enos Nkala, 4 January 2012; D. Mutasa, Rhodesian Black behind Bars (London, Mowbrays, 1974). 56. Munguambe, ‘Nationalism and Exile’. 57. S. Kruks, ‘Mozambique: Some Reflections on the Struggle for Women’s Emancipation’, Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, 7, 2, 1983, pp. 32–41; H. West, ‘Girls with Guns: Narrating the Experience of War of Frelimo’s “Female Detachment” ’, Anthropological Quarterly, 73, 4, 2000, pp. 180–94. 58. Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. ‘Guerrilla Camps at Chimoio and Tembue Were Hit by Rhodesians’, www .nytimes.com/1977/11/29/archives/rhodesia-reports-killing-1200-in-raids-

312

62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98.

Notes to pages 105–12 military-command-says-two.html, New York Times, 29 November 1977 (last accessed 1 September 2018). Martin and Johnson, The Struggle. G. Cross, Dirty War: Rhodesia and Chemical Biological Warfare 1975–1980 (Solihull, Helion and Company, 2017). Ibid. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 12 December 2012. ‘Chimoio Massacre: Camp Commander Opens Up’, Sunday Mail, 6 December 2015. Ibid. ‘Nhari and Badza Were Just Cowards’, Sunday Mail, 1 April 2018. Interview, ZANLA cadre O, 1 January 2017. Ibid. Ibid.; Sadomba, War Veterans. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 12 December 2012. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013; Nhongo’s ill-feeling towards spirit mediums was also related by ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, Lopes Tembe Ndelana, 24 March 2017; Interview, Antonio Hama Thay, 13 December 2016. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 12 December 2012. Interview, Augustine Chihuri, 11 April 2014. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre P, 7 April 2014. ‘The Bombing of the Salisbury Fuel Tanks: Shiri Explains How the Idea Was Hatched’, The Patriot, 3 July 2014. Ibid. N. Jackson and R. van Malsen, The Search for Puma 164: Operation Uric and the Assault on Mapai (Johannesburg, 30° South Publishers, 2011). Ibid. Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. F. Muchemwa, The Struggle for Land in Zimbabwe: 1890–2010 (Harare, Heritage Publishing House, 2015), p. 181. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Muchemwa, The Struggle, p. 182. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre I, 27 December 2013. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre I, 27 December 2013. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre Q, 26 December 2012. L. Kamienski, Shooting Up: A History of Drugs and War (London, Hurst, 2016). Ibid., p. xvii. Ibid., p. xviii.

Notes to pages 112–21 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143.

313

Ibid., p. xxiv. Ibid., p. 28. Muchemwa, The Struggle. Interview, ZANLA cadre Q, 26 December 2012. Muchemwa, The Struggle, p. 184. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre I, 27 December 2013. Muchemwa, The Struggle, p. 184. Ibid., p. 185. Interview, ZANLA cadre O, 1 January 2017. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre P, 5 April 2014. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. Sadomba, War Veterans. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 23 August 2014. Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015. Ibid. Ibid. Tendi, ‘Ideology, Civilian Authority’; Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. Interview, Solomon Hwekwete, 7 September 2015. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015; Interview, ZANLA cadre J, 16 December 2012. Interview, Solomon Hwekwete, 7 September 2015. Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015. Interview, Dzingai Mutumbuka, 21 July 2017; Sadomba, War Veterans. Interview, ZANLA cadre M, 9 January 2017. Ibid. Ibid. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ibid. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle; Solomon Mujuru primary material. Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015. Interview, Augustine Chihuri, 3 April 2014. Interview, Sergio Vieira, 20 March 2017. Interview, Joachim Chissano, 22 March 2017. Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. Interview, Sergio Vieira, 20 March 2017. Interview, Jacinto Veloso, 20 December 2016. Interview, Armando Guebuza, 24 March 2017. Interview, Sergio Vieira, 20 March 2017. Interview, Mariano de Araújo Matsinhe, 21 December 2016. Interview, Raimundo Pachinuapa, 15 December 2016. Interview, Jacinto Veloso, 20 December 2016.

314 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152.

153. 154. 155. 156. 157.

Notes to pages 121–7 Interview, Sergio Vieira, 20 March 2017. Interview, Oscar Monteiro, 7 December 2016. Interview, Olusegun Obasanjo, 28 January 2017. Interview, Mariano de Araújo Matsinhe, 21 December 2016. K. Flower, Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record, Rhodesia into Zimbabwe 1964 to 1981 (London, John Murray, 1987), p. 302. Interview, Oscar Monteiro, 7 December 2016. Interview, Jacinto Veloso, 20 December 2016; Interview, Jose Ajape, 12 December 2016. Interview, Didymus Mutasa, 16 September 2014. R. Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa (London, Macmillan, 1997); I. D. Smith, The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith (London, Blake, 1997). Interview, Joachim Chissano, 22 March 2017. Kamienski, Shooting Up, p. 28. Account by Mnangagwa at Josiah Tongogara Tribute Event, Harare, 26 December 2012. Ibid. Solomon Mujuru primary material; Muchemwa, The Struggle; Interview, Dzingai Mutumbuka, 21 July 2017; Interview, Didymus Mutasa, 16 September 2014.

‘We Are Free . . . We Are Here’ 1. R. Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy in Southern Africa (London, Macmillan, 1997), p. 55. 2. S. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative in Zimbabwe, 1979–1980: Implications for International Peacekeeping’ (University of Oxford, DPhil Thesis, 1990), p. 66. 3. Ibid. 4. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. 5. M. Tillotson, Dwin Bramall: The Authorised Biography of Field Marshal The Lord Bramall KG, GCB, OBE, MC (London, The History Press, 1996). 6. Interview, Edwin Bramall and Michael Wilkes, 2 July 2012. After independence from British rule in 1960, Nigeria underwent civil conflict (Biafran War, 1967–70) and a series of military coups d’état. 7. Interviews, Charles Guthrie, 13 June 2012; Peter Wall 17 December 2015; Rupert Smith 12 September 2013; Andrew Ritchie, 27 October 2011; Jonathan Bailey, 31 May 2012; and Sebastian Roberts, 7 November 2012. 8. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 100. 9. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 10. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. 11. ‘Thousands Turn Out to Welcome PF Commanders’, The Herald, 27 December 1979. 12. ‘Estimate of PF Crowd Disputed’, The Herald, 28 December 1979. 13. P. J. H. Petter-Bowyer, Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot (Pinetown, South Africa, 30° South Publishers, 2013), p. 375.

Notes to pages 127–34 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48.

315

‘Thousands Turn Out’, The Herald. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. ‘Thousands Turn Out’, The Herald. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. Solomon Mujuru primary material. Ibid. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. ‘Tongogara Is Killed in Car Crash’, The Herald, 28 December 1979. D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Second Chimurenga (London, Faber and Faber, 1981), p. 320. ‘African Warrior’, The Telegraph, www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/4256332/ African-warrior.html (last accessed 29 September 2018). ‘Tongogara Is Killed in Car Crash’, The Herald. ‘Nhongo Tipped to Head ZANLA’, The Herald, 29 December 1979. ‘An Accident Says Maputo’, The Herald, 29 December 1979. ‘Tongogara: Investigate Says ZANU (S)’, The Herald, 29 December 1979. I. D. Smith, The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith (London, Blake, 1997), p. 335. K. Flower, Serving Secretly: An Intelligence Chief on Record, Rhodesia into Zimbabwe 1964 to 1981 (London, John Murray, 1987), p. 252. Interview, Sergio Vieira, 20 March 2017. Interview, Armando Guebuza, 24 March 2017. Petter-Bowyer, Winds of Destruction, pp. 379–80. John Acland interview with Conrad Wood, Imperial War Museums, 12 December 1990. Interview, Robin Renwick, 12 February 2014. Oppah Muchinguri quoted in A. Mutambara, The Rebel in Me: A ZANLA Guerrilla Commander in the Rhodesian Bush War, 1975–1980 (Solihull, Helion and Company, 2014), p. 249. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. E. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle (Harare, SAPES Books, 2006), p. 121. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. Interview, ZANLA cadre I, 27 December 2013. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014; for other Traditional Religion inspired explanations of Tongogara’s death, see F. Chung, Re-living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle (Harare, Weaver Press, 2007); ‘Mbuya Nehanda’s Chilling Six Commandments’, The Sunday Mail, 5 June 2016. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 27 August 2011. Solomon Mujuru primary material. T. Shoko, Karanga Indigenous Religion in Zimbabwe: Health and Well-Being (Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2013). Discussion with National Archives researcher, 23 August 2014. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’. Ibid.

316

Notes to pages 134–41

49. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. 50. Blessing-Miles Tendi, ‘Soldiers contra Diplomats: Britain’s Role in the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia Ceasefire (1979–1980) Reconsidered’, Small Wars and Insurgencies, 26, 6, 2015, pp. 937–56. 51. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’. 52. Interview, Emile Munemo, 16 August 2012. 53. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 90. 54. Andrew Parker Bowles private papers. 55. Comments by a CMF officer to D. Robinson, ‘Miracles Take a Little Longer’, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) Radio 4 documentary, 1985. 56. Ibid. 57. Interview, Andrew Ritchie, 27 October 2011. 58. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. 59. J. Learmont, ‘Reflections from Rhodesia’, The RUSI Journal, 125, 4, 1980, pp. 47–55. 60. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 93. 61. Shiri quoted in ibid., p. 94. 62. Ibid. 63. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. 64. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 90. 65. Chiwenga quoted in ibid. 66. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 67. J. Acland, ‘The Difference Tongogara Might Have Made’, GB0099 KCLMA, The Papers of Acland, Sir John (London, Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives). 68. Petter-Bowyer, Winds of Destruction, p. 376. 69. Ibid., p. 375. 70. H. Canham and R. Williams, ‘Being Black, Middle Class and the Object of Two Gazes’, Ethnicities, 17, 1, 2017, p. 24. 71. Ibid. 72. Tendi, ‘Soldiers contra Diplomats’. 73. Ibid. 74. I borrow the phrase ‘white gaze’ from Canham and Williams, ‘Being Black’, p. 28. 75. Ibid., p. 27. 76. F. Fanon quoted in ibid., p. 28; also see F. Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (London, Pluto Press, 2008). 77. This idea is drawn from Canham and Williams, ‘Being Black’, p. 28. 78. J. Fiske quoted in ibid., p. 28. 79. Smith, The Great Betrayal. 80. Ibid., pp. 334–5. 81. Ian Smith interview in Rebellion! (BBC documentary, 1999). 82. Smith, The Great Betrayal, p. 335. 83. For ideas about cultural capital referred to here, see P. Bourdieu, ‘Cultural Reproduction and Social Reproduction’, in R. Brown (ed.), Knowledge, Education and Cultural Change (London, Tavistock, 1973), pp. 71–84.

Notes to pages 141–9

317

84. E. Puryear, American Generalship: Character Is Everything: The Art of Command (New York, Random House, 2001). Puryear’s research on generalship lasted thirty-five years, in which he interviewed hundreds of four-star American generals and leaders. 85. Ibid. 86. Canham and Williams, ‘Being Black’. 87. Parker Bowles quoted in Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, pp. 101–2. 88. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 89. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. 90. Tendi, ‘Soldiers contra Diplomats’. 91. Ibid. 92. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 93. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. 94. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’. 95. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. 96. Ibid. 97. Ibid. 98. David Owen interview, ‘Document’, BBC Radio 4, 1 August 2011, www .bbc.co.uk/programmes/b012wf3s (last accessed 23 July 2019); Rhodesian Army commander Sandy Maclean and Rhodesian intelligencer Dan Stannard also maintained Flower was a double agent in interviews with me on 17 August 2012 and 23 June 2014, respectively. 99. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012; John Acland interview, 12 December 1990. 100. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 101. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012; also see P. Baxter, Bush War Rhodesia 1966–1980 (Solihull, Helion and Company, 2014). 102. John Acland interview, 12 December 1990. 103. Ibid. 104. Christopher Soames interview in Rebellion! 105. Tendi, ‘Soldiers contra Diplomats’. 106. Acland, ‘The Difference Tongogara Might Have Made’. 107. Petter-Bowyer, Winds of Destruction, p. 377. 108. Parker Bowles quoted in Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 170. 109. Acland quoted in ibid. 110. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 111. CMF Commander’s Situation Report to the British Ministry of Defence, 8 January 1980. 112. Parker Bowles quoted in Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 102. 113. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 114. Tendi, ‘Soldiers contra Diplomats’. 115. Interview, Confidential FCO Source, 8 November 2013. 116. Solomon quoted in Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 103. 117. Peter Walls interview in Rebellion! 118. Baxter, Bush War Rhodesia. 119. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 17 August 2012; Interview, Dan Stannard, 23 June 2014.

318

Notes to pages 149–59

120. John Acland interview, 12 December 1990. 121. CMF Commander’s Situation Report to the British Ministry of Defence, 11 March 1980. 122. See footnote 41 in Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 100. 123. A. Verrier, The Road to Zimbabwe 1890–1980 (London, Jonathan Cape, 1986), p. 288; Nhongo’s contribution is also elided in Christopher Soames’s ‘From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe’, International Affairs 56, 3, 1980, pp. 405–19. 124. See Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’; Verrier, The Road to Zimbabwe; H. Wiseman and A. Taylor, From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe: The Politics of Transition (New York, Pergamon 1981); Renwick, Unconventional Diplomacy. 125. Solomon quoted in Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 101. 126. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 127. John Acland interview, 12 December 1990. 128. CMF Commander’s Situation Report to the British Ministry of Defence, 2 March 1980. 129. Pamberi Ne Zimbabwe documentary, Memories of Rhodesia Inc., 2004. 130. Ibid. 131. Interview, Dickson Chingaira Makoni, 26 August 2012. 132. ‘Nhongo at ZANLA Base to Put His X’, The Herald, 1 March 1980. 133. Author’s transcription of ‘Have You Ever Seen the Rain’ by Creedence Clearwater Revival. 134. Flower, Serving Secretly. 135. Ibid., p. 306. 136. Interview, Dan Stannard, 23 June 2014. 137. A former advisor to Joshua Nkomo quoted in Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 308. 138. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 27 August 2011; also see J. Nkomo, Nkomo: My Life (London, Methuen Publishing, 1984). 139. Rice, ‘The Commonwealth Initiative’, p. 297.

‘A Big Small Man’ 1. John Acland interview with Conrad Wood, Imperial War Museums, 12 December 1990. 2. Ibid. 3. B. H. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies of Africa?: The British Military Advisory and Training Team and the Creation of the Zimbabwe National Army’ (PhD Thesis, Texas A&M University, 2014). 4. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013; the Highlanders are an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid. 7. P. J. H. Petter-Bowyer, Winds of Destruction: The Autobiography of a Rhodesian Combat Pilot (Pinetown, South Africa, 30° South Publishers, 2013). 8. Ibid., p. 386. 9. Ibid., p. 386. 10. ‘A Soldier Faces His Critics’, Time Magazine, 1 September 1980.

Notes to pages 159–68 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

319

Interview, Sandy Maclean, 17 August 2012. Interview, Dan Stannard, 23 June 2014. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 17 August 2012. Ibid. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 23 August 2014. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’. ‘A Soldier Faces His Critics’, Time Magazine. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’, p. 257. Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 17 August 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’. Interview, ZANLA cadre S, 30 March 2017. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 October 2013; Interview, Colin Shortis, 28 June 2012; Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. ‘Mugabe Picks White to Head Military, Puts Blacks in Key Posts’, Washington Post, 8 August 1981. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 23 August 2014. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre V, 3 April 2012; Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. Interview, Adam Gurdon, 19 June 2012. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 17 August 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre T, 3 January 2017. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’, p. 296. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Interview, Colin Shortis, 28 June 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Ibid. Ibid.

320 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

Notes to pages 169–77 Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Garry Barnett, 26 June 2012. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. S. A. Benton, Understanding the High-Functioning Alcoholic: Professional Views and Personal Insights (London, Praeger, 2009). Ibid. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012; Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012; Interview, Garry Barnett, 26 June 2012. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Interview, Garry Barnett, 26 June 2012. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’. Ibid. Interview, Colin Shortis, 28 June 2012. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’. Interview, Charles Guthrie, 13 June 2012. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’. Acland, ‘The Difference Tongogara Might Have Made’. Ibid. N. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-war Zimbabwe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 131. Interview, Enos Nkala, 4 January 2012. Ibid. ‘Mnangagwa Speaks on General Mujuru’, The Herald, 20 August 2011. Interview, ZANLA cadre K, 28 August 2014. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012.

Notes to pages 177–84

321

98. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 27 August 2011; Interview, ZANLA cadre K, 28 August 2014. 99. Acland, ‘The Difference Tongogara Might Have Made’. 100. The view is also shared by some military historians. See P. Moorcraft and P. McLaughlin, The Rhodesian War: A Military History (Johannesburg, Jonathan Ball, 2008). 101. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 March 2014. 102. Interview, Abel Mazinyane, 7 January 2015. 103. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013. 104. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012. 105. Interview, Abel Mazinyane, 7 January 2015. 106. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, p. 139; also see: J. Alexander, ‘Dissident Perspectives on Zimbabwe’s Post-independence War’, Africa, 68, 2, 1998, pp. 151–82. 107. Alexander, ‘Dissident Perspectives’. 108. Interview, Edwin Bramall and Michael Wilkes, 2 July 2012. 109. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies’. 110. Ibid., p. 258. 111. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, p. 112. 112. S. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory: Mugabe, ZANU and the Quest for Supremacy, 1960–1987 (Midrand, South Africa, Sithatha, 2017), p. 586. 113. Ibid., p. 586. 114. Interview, ZIPRA commander A, 5 January 2016; Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 March 2014. 115. Mutinhiri quoted in ‘A Humble and Bitter War Commander’, Sunday Mail, 5 August 2012. 116. Ibid. 117. Ibid. 118. Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014. 119. ‘Harold Chirenda Obituary’, Harare, Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, 2014. 120. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. 121. ‘Jevana Maseko Obituary’, Harare, Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, 2014. 122. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. 123. Ibid. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid. 126. J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the ‘Dark Forests’ of Matabeleland (Oxford, James Currey, 2000). 127. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. 128. Ibid. 129. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 9 September 2014. 130. Ibid. 131. Ibid. 132. Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014.

322 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146.

147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155.

Notes to pages 184–91 See Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans. See Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, p. 137. ‘Nkomo Is Removed from Key Position’, New York Times, 11 January 1981. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans. Alexander, ‘Dissident Perspectives’. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. Ibid. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 9 September 2014. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory, p. 299. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans. See, for example, P. Stiff, Cry Zimbabwe: Independence – Twenty Years On (Alberton, South Africa, Galago, 2004) and L. White, ‘“Whoever Saw a Country with Four Armies?”: The Battle of Bulawayo Revisited’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 33, 3, 2007, pp. 619–31. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory, p. 340. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 17 August 2012. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. Ibid. Mugabe quoted in K. Yap, ‘Uprooting the Weeds: Power, Ethnicity and Violence in the Matabeleland Conflict, 1980–1987’ (PhD Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2000), p. 142.

Gods of Violence 1. J. Alexander, J. McGregor and T. Ranger, Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the ‘Dark Forests’ of Matabeleland (Oxford, James Currey, 2000). 2. N. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans in Post-war Zimbabwe (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003). 3. ‘Dissidents Flushed Out’, The Herald, 21 September 1982. 4. ‘Infiltrators on the Increase, Says Mnangagwa’, The Herald, 24 January 1983. 5. ‘2 ZAPU MPs Named as Leaders of “War Council”’, The Herald, 4 February 1983. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. ‘Nkomo Reclaims Seat in Zimbabwe’s Parliament’, New York Times, 18 August 1983. 10. Alexander, McGregor and Ranger, Violence and Memory, p. 181.

Notes to pages 191–8

323

11. J. Alexander, ‘Dissident Perspectives on Zimbabwe’s Post-independence War’, Africa, 68, 2, 1998: 151–82. 12. Saymore Nkomo quoted in ibid., p. 163. 13. Attempt Siziba quoted in ibid., p. 161. 14. Zwelibanzi Ndlovu quoted in K. Yap, ‘Uprooting the Weeds: Power, Ethnicity and Violence in the Matabeleland Conflict, 1980–1987’ (PhD Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2000), p. 115. 15. C. Ndiweni quoted in ibid., p. 112. 16. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. 17. Mutinhiri, ‘A Humble and Bitter War Commander’, Sunday Mail, 5 August 2012. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid. 20. Ibid. 21. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 22. S. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory: Mugabe, ZANU and the Quest for Supremacy, 1960–1987 (Midrand, South Africa, Sithatha, 2017), p. 455. 23. Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014. 24. Interview, ZANLA cadre T, 3 January 2017. 25. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory. 26. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012; also see Yap, ‘Uprooting the Weeds’. 27. Interview, Colin Shortis, 12 June 2012. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Interview, Azim Daudpota, 19 January 2016. 32. Interview, Colin Shortis, 12 June 2012. 33. TNA, PRO, Cable from BMATT to MOD, Appendix 1 to Annex to CGS 121–82-5, 13 October 1982. 34. Gukurahundi is a Shona term which, if translated loosely, means the rain that washes away the chaff. 35. Yap, ‘Uprooting the Weeds’. 36. A. Lemon, ‘The Zimbabwe General Election of 1985’, The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 26, 1, 1988: 3–21. 37. J. Nkomo, Nkomo: My Life (London, Methuen Publishing, 1984). 38. CCJPZ, Report on the 1980’s Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1997, p. 87. 39. Ibid., p. 87. 40. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory. 41. Interview, Dan Stannard, 24 June 2014. 42. CCJPZ, Report on the 1980’s Disturbances, p. 87. 43. Ibid., p. 87. 44. Ibid., p. 15. 45. Ibid., p. 47. 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., p. 48.

324

Notes to pages 199–05

48. B. H. Whitaker, ‘The “New Model” Armies of Africa?: The British Military Advisory and Training Team and the Creation of the Zimbabwe National Army’ (PhD Thesis, Texas A&M University, 2014). 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., p. 273. 51. Ibid., p. 289. 52. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid.; on the removal of ZIPRA soldiers from 5 Brigade; also see Alexander, McGregor and Ranger, Violence and Memory. 55. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013. 56. Interview, Colin Shortis, 28 June 2012. 57. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 58. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. 59. Interview, Enos Nkala, 28 August 2011. 60. Yap, ‘Uprooting the Weeds’, p. 172. 61. Interview, Emile Munemo, 18 September 2013. 62. Interview, ZANLA cadre W, 3 January 2016. 63. Yap, ‘Uprooting the Weeds’. 64. Ibid., p. 169. 65. Ibid., p. 170. 66. Interview, Rupert Smith, 27 September 2013. 67. Interview, Colin Shortis, 28 June 2012. 68. ‘Soldiers Harass Tourists Near Inyanga’, The Herald, 12 December 1981. 69. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory. 70. Interview, ZANLA cadre S, 30 March 2017. 71. Interview, ZANLA cadre L, 13 December 2014. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. Ibid. 75. Ibid. 76. Mugabe quoted in Yap, ‘Uprooting the Weeds’, p. 167. 77. Doran, Kingdom, Power, Glory, p. 575. 78. Ibid., pp. 575–6. 79. Interview, Dzingai Mutumbuka, 21 July 2017; also see B. Munslow, ‘The ZANU Party Congress of 1984: At the Margin of Marxism-Leninism’, The Journal of Communist Studies, 1, 1, 1985, pp. 78–80. 80. Interview, Dzingai Mutumbuka, 21 July 2017. 81. Ibid. 82. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2015. 83. B-M. Tendi, ‘The Origins and Functions of Demonisation Discourses in Britain–Zimbabwe Relations (2000–)’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 40, 6, 2014: 1251–69. 84. Interview, Dan Stannard, 24 June 2014. 85. Ibid. 86. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012.

Notes to pages 206–14 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120.

121. 122.

325

Ibid. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, p. 138. Ibid. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, Azim Daudpota, 19 January 2016. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre X, 17 August 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre T, 3 January 2017. ‘Vitalis Zvinavashe Obituary’, Harare, Ministry of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services, 2014. Interview, Joaquim Chissano, 22 March 2017. Interview, Lopes Tembe Ndelana, 24 March 2017. Ibid. N. Mlambo, ‘Raids on Gorongoza: Zimbabwe’s Military Involvement in Mozambique, 1982–1992’, SACDI Defence Digest, Working Paper 3, 2003. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. L. T. Ndelana, From UDENAMO to FRELIMO and Mozambican Diplomacy (Terra Alta, WV, Headline Books, 2016), p. 190. S. A. Emerson, The Battle for Mozambique: The FRELIMO–RENAMO Struggle, 1977–1992 (Pinetown, South Africa, 30° South Publishers, 2013). Former RENAMO guerrilla quoted in Emerson, The Battle for Mozambique, p. 146. Afonso Dhlakama quoted in ibid., p. 150. Interview, ZANLA cadre U, 4 April 2017. Ibid. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Interview, Joaquim Chissano, 22 March 2017; Interview, Lopes Tembe Ndelana, 24 March 2017. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012; Interview, ZANLA cadre K, 28 August 2014. Lieutenant Colonel Zulu’s account of an address Nhongo made to female ZNA soldiers, quoted in Kriger, Guerrilla Veterans, p. 245. N. Mushonga, ‘A Case Study of Gender and Security Sector Reform in Zimbabwe’, African Security Review, 24, 4, 2015: 430–7. ‘Army to Be Reduced’, The Herald, 6 November 1993. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Ibid. ‘World Bank Data on Global Military Expenditure (% of GDP)’, http://data .worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?locations=ZW (last access ed 8 August 2018). Ibid. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012.

326 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130.

131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140.

141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148. 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156.

Notes to pages 215–23 Ibid. See Emerson, The Battle for Mozambique, p. 222. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. ‘Army Loses $13 Million to Corrupt Top Brass’, The Daily Gazette, 10 September 1993. B-M. Tendi, ‘Ideology, Civilian Authority and the Zimbabwean Military’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 39, 4, 2013, pp. 829–43. ‘Sekeramayi’s Ministry Fails to Account for $35 Million’, http://bula wayo24.com/index-id-news-sc-national-byo-60932.html (last accessed 2 August 2017). ‘World Bank Data on Global Military Expenditure (% of GDP)’. ‘Review Military Budget: Sekeramayi’, The Herald, 30 January 2014. Interview, Black Rhinos player (1983–90), 16 August 2017. Ibid. Charles Mabika, ‘When Black Rhinos Were the Team to Beat’, The Sunday Mail, 21 September 2014. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012; Interview, Garry Barnett, 26 June 2012. Ibid. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. Garry Barnett quoted in ‘BMATT Chief Backs Axing of the Army’, The Daily Gazette, 29 July 1993. Interview, Adrian Naughten (BMATT commander 1997–9), 23 July 2011; Interview, Vere Hayes (BMATT commander 1999–2001), 20 February 2013; Interview, ZANLA cadre V, 3 April 2012. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. Interview, ZANLA cadre K, 28 August 2014. Interview, Tshinga Dube, 7 April 2014. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. Interview, Dan Stannard, 24 June 2014. Ibid. Ibid. ‘Zimbabwe Aide Affirms Plan for One-Party State’, The New York Times, 19 August 1990. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 27 August 2011. Interview, ZANLA cadre U, 4 April 2017. Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. Data provided by Roger Freeman, parliamentary under secretary of state for the armed forces, ‘British House of Commons Hansard’, Vol. 111 cc144–5W, 23 February 1987.

Notes to pages 224–32

327

Fortune, Love and Politics 1. M. Nyagumbo, ‘ZANU PF: Towards the Second National Congress – May 1984’, Zimbabwe News, 4, 4, 1983, p. 7. 2. Ibid., p. 7. 3. Ibid., p. 8. 4. Interview, ZANU PF politician B, 26 August 2014. 5. Ibid.; Interview, Enos Nkala, 28 August 2011; B. Munslow, ‘The ZANU Party Congress of 1984: At the Margin of Marxism-Leninism’, The Journal of Communist Studies, 1, 1, 1985, pp. 78–80. 6. ‘Where Is the ZANU PF Leadership Code?’, The Patriot, 15 October 2015. 7. Interview, ZANU PF politician B, 26 August 2014. 8. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 9. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 16 August 2012. 10. Ibid. 11. Ibid. 12. Interview, Nick Elam, 8 November 2013. 13. Ibid. 14. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 16 August 2012. 15. ‘Obituary: Tiny Rowland’, Independent, www.independent.co.uk/artsentertainment/obituary-tiny-rowland-1170056.html (last accessed 10 August 2017). 16. Interview, Sandy Maclean, 17 August 2012. 17. Interview, ZANU PF politician B, 26 August 2014. 18. Interview, Nick Elam, 8 January 2013. 19. Interview, Obert Mpofu, 12 January 2014. 20. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 16 August 2012. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. 24. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 25. Ibid. 26. Interview, Solomon’s business associate, 30 August 2012. 27. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 28. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 16 August 2012. 29. Ibid. 30. Interview, David Todhlana, 6 September 2013. 31. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. 32. Interview, ZANLA cadre Y, 4 January 2017. 33. Ibid. 34. Solomon’s friend, 2 April 2017. 35. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. 36. Interview, ZANLA cadre M, 9 January 2017. 37. Interview, Solomon’s lover, 14 January 2017. 38. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. 39. Interview, ZANLA cadre T, 3 January 2017. 40. Interview, ZANLA cadre J, 16 December 2012. 41. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015.

328 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62.

63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70.

71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78.

Notes to pages 233–41 Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014. Interview, Felix Muchemwa, 11 April 2012. Interview, Lionel Dyck, 12 July 2012. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre N, 5 October 2016. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. Ibid. Interview, ZANLA cadre S, 30 March 2017. Interview, Enos Nkala, 4 January 2012. Interview, ZANLA cadre S, 30 March 2017. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 19 September 2014. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. L. A. Sroufe, ‘Attachment and Development: A Prospective, Longitudinal Study from Birth to Adulthood’, Attachment and Human Development, 7, 4, 2005, pp. 349–67; M. Malekpour, ‘Effects of Attachment on Early and Later Development’, The British Journal of Developmental Disabilities, 53, 2, 2007, pp. 81–95. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. Ibid. Ibid. C. Sandburg, ‘Smoke and Steel’, The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (London, Harcourt, 2003), p. 152. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012. Ibid. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013; this view of Solomon was also expressed in interviews with Dumiso Dabengwa, Obert Mpofu, Didymus Mutasa, Saviour Kasukuwere, Enos Nkala, Nathan Shamuyarira and Rugare Gumbo. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013; Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012. Ibid. Interview, Christopher Charles Tapfumaneyi, 21 December 2014. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. Interview, Dzingai Mutumbuka, 21 January 2017. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012; a similar account was relayed by ZANU PF politician C, 19 September 2014.

Notes to pages 241–7

329

79. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician C, 19 September 2014; Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 80. Interview, Didymus Mutasa, 16 September 2014. 81. Ibid. 82. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 83. Interview, Didymus Mutasa, 16 September 2014. 84. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 85. M. Dawson and T. Kelsall, ‘Anti-developmental Patrimonialism in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 30, 1, 2012, pp. 49–66. 86. G. Nyarota, Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman (Johannesburg, Zebra Press, 2006); Interview, Didymus Mutasa, 16 September 2014. 87. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 88. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid. 91. Ibid. 92. Interview, Solomon’s associate, 21 July 2012. 93. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 94. Ibid. 95. Ibid. 96. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015; also see I. Mandaza, ‘ZANU PF Congress – the Rise and Triumph of the Securocratic State’, Zimbabwe Independent, 15 December 2014. 97. Mandaza, ‘ZANU PF Congress’; B-M. Tendi, ‘Ideology, Civilian Authority and the Zimbabwean Military’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 39, 4, 2013, pp. 829–43. 98. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 99. Statement by ZDF commander Vitalis Zvinavashe, Harare, 9 January 2002. 100. Interview, Morgan Tsvangirai, 28 August 2012. 101. Interview, Confidential source, 3 August 2012. 102. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015; Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. 103. Interview, Solomon’s associate, 21 July 2012. 104. Interview, Black Rhinos player (1983–90), 16 August 2017. 105. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 106. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014. 107. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 108. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013. 109. ‘What Nearly Got Dongo Punched Up’, The Insider, 20 June 1998. 110. Ibid. 111. Ibid. 112. Ibid. 113. ‘Dongo, Mujuru Fined over Parliamentary Scuffle’, Zimbabwe Independent, 19 February 1999. 114. Ibid.

330

Notes to pages 247–50

115. ‘Mugabe’s Costly Congo Venture’, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/ africa/611898.stm (last accessed 25 August 2017); ‘Zimbabwe’s Hidden War Costs’, The Guardian, www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/09/14 (last accessed 25 August 2017). 116. ‘Zimbabwe Spent $260M on Congo War’, WRAL, www.wral.com/news/l ocal/story/152145/ (last accessed 25 August 2017); ‘DRC War Costs Taxpayers $6 Billion in 18 Months’, Financial Gazette, 3 February 2000. 117. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015; Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013; Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 118. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 119. Ibid. 120. Ibid. 121. ‘Tobacco Industry and Marketing Act’, Parliament of Zimbabwe, www .parlzim.gov.zw/acts-list/tobacco-industry-and-marketing-act-18-20 (last accessed 25 August 2017). 122. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 123. S. Rich-Dorman, Understanding Zimbabwe: From Liberation to Authoritarianism (New York, Oxford University Press, 2016). 124. B-M. Tendi, Making History in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe: Politics, Intellectuals and the Media (Oxford, Peter Lang, 2010). 125. J. Chikuhwa, Zimbabwe: The End of The First Republic (Bloomington, IN, Author House, 2013), p. 195. 126. ‘Mugabe in Fire Alert on Aircraft’, Irish Times, www.irishtimes.com/news/ mugabe-in-fire-alert-on-aircraft-1.50879 (last accessed 11 March 2017). 127. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 128. S. Chan and H. Patel, ‘Zimbabwe’s Foreign Policy: A Conversation’, The Roundtable. The Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs, 95, 384, 2006, pp. 175–90. 129. Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre T, 3 January 2017. 130. United Nations, ‘Final Report of the Panel of Experts on the Illegal Exploitation of Natural Resources and Other Forms of Wealth of the Democratic Republic of the Congo’, www.securitycouncilreport.org/undocuments/document/DRC%20S%202002%201146.php (last accessed 26 August 2017). 131. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015; Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013; Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012; Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014; Interview, ZANLA cadre V, 3 April 2012. 132. Ibid. 133. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015; Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012; Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012. 134. Tendi, Making History. 135. Ibid. Also see T. Ranger, ‘Nationalist Historiography, Patriotic History and the History of the Nation: The Struggle over the Past in Zimbabwe’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 30, 2, 2004, pp. 215–34.

Notes to pages 251–8

331

136. M. Ignatieff, Fire and Ashes: Success and Failure in Politics (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 147. 137. Interview, Morgan Tsvangirai, 28 August 2012. 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid. 140. Ibid. 141. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015; Interview, ZANU PF politician E, 28 August 2012; Interview, Morgan Tsvangirai, 28 August 2012. 142. B-M. Tendi, ‘The Origins and Functions of Demonisation Discourses in Britain–Zimbabwe Relations (2000–)’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 40, 6, 2014: 1251–69. 143. Z. W. Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution: Challenging Neocolonialism and Settler and International Capital (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011). 144. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012. 145. Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician E, 28 August 2012. 146. Ibid. 147. Ibid. 148. A. Thody and E. S. Mkaabwe, Educating Tomorrow: Lessons from Managing Girls’ Education in Africa (Cape Town, Juta, 2000). 149. Interview, Solomon’s associate, 2 April 2012. 150. Interview, ZANU PF politician E, 28 August 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 151. Ibid. 152. Ibid. 153. Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013. 154. Interview, Tim Toyne-Sewell, 17 February 2012. 155. Interview, ZANLA cadre R, 27 August 2014. 156. B-M. Tendi, ‘State Intelligence and the Politics of Zimbabwe’s Presidential Succession’, African Affairs, 115, 460, 2016, pp. 203–24. 157. Ibid. 158. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015; Interview, ZANU PF politician A, 13 August 2013; Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, 4 January 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012; Interview, ZANLA cadre C, 26 August 2014. 159. Tendi, ‘Ideology, Civilian Authority’. 160. Interview, Solomon’s associate, 21 August 2012. 161. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 162. Interview, ZANU PF politician E, 28 August 2012; Interview, ZANU PF politician D, 20 August 2012. 163. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 164. Interview, ZANU PF politician E, 28 August 2012. 165. E. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle (Harare, SAPES Books, 2006). 166. Interview, Confidential source, 3 August 2012. 167. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle. 168. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. 169. Ibid.

332

Notes to pages 258–68

170. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015; Interview, ZANU PF politician E, 28 August 2012. 171. News 24, ‘ “Million Men” March for Mugabe’, www.news24.com/Africa/Zi mbabwe/Million-men-march-for-Mugabe-20071007 (last accessed 27 August 2017). 172. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 173. Interview, Wilfred Mhanda, 5 February 2011. 174. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 175. Ibid. 176. J. Alexander and B-M. Tendi, ‘A Tale of Two Elections: Zimbabwe at the Polls in 2008’, ACAS Bulletin, 80, 2008, pp. 1–30. 177. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 178. Ibid. 179. Ibid. 180. Ibid. 181. Ibid. 182. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 4 January 2015. 183. Interview, ZANLA cadre H, 7 January 2015. 184. Ibid. 185. Interview, Confidential source, 6 March 2012. 186. Interview, River Ranch official, 11 August 2018. 187. Ibid. 188. Ibid. 189. Interview, ZANLA cadre F, 11 September 2013. 190. Interview, ZANLA cadre D, 2 April 2014.

Fireborn II 1. C. Sandburg, ‘Finish’, The Complete Poems of Carl Sandburg (London, Harcourt, 2003), p. 267. 2. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 19 September 2014. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Interview, Saviour Kasukuwere, 10 August 2012. 6. Ibid. 7. Interview, Solomon’s associate, 26 March 2012. 8. Interview, Saviour Kasukuwere, 10 August 2012. 9. Ibid. 10. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 19 September 2014. 11. Ibid. 12. ‘Mujuru Allies Cry Murder Most Foul’, Zimbabwe Independent, 19 August 2011. 13. W. Mhanda, Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter (Harare, Weaver Press, 2011). 14. ‘Inquest Report on General Solomon Mujuru’s Death’, 14 March 2012. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid.

Notes to pages 268–76

333

17. Ibid. 18. Ibid. 19. D. Coltart, The Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe (Johannesburg, Jacana, 2016), p. 532. 20. Interview, ZANU PF cabinet minister, 15 December 2012. 21. Interview, witness to Solomon’s body viewing, 4 January 2012. 22. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 19 September 2014. 23. Interview, Mujuru family member, 7 January 2017. 24. Interview, Arthur Mutambara, 19 December 2012. 25. Interview, Morgan Tsvangirai, 28 August 2012. 26. Interview, Didymus Mutasa, 16 September 2014. 27. ‘Matabeleland Plunged into Mourning’, Newsday, 16 August 2011. 28. Examples are: ‘Mujuru Burnt to Death’, Newsday, 16 August 2011; ‘Mujuru Allies Cry “Murder Most Foul” ’, Zimbabwe Independent; ‘Succession Turns Nasty’, Financial Gazette, 18 August 2011; ‘The Mysterious Death of Solomon Mujuru and Fears for the Future of Zimbabwe’, Telegraph, www .telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/zimbabwe/8726823 /The-mysterious-death-of-Solomon-Mujuru-and-fears-for-the-future-ofZimbabwe.html (last accessed 6 March 2019); ‘Zimbabwe’s Ruling Party Shrouded in Suspicion after Ex-Military Chief Dies’, The Guardian, www .theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/16/zimbabwe-party-military-chief-dies (last accessed 6 March 2019). 29. ‘Government Castigates Media Frenzy’, The Sunday Mail, 21 August 2011. 30. Unnamed political analyst in ibid. 31. Second unnamed analyst in ibid. 32. ‘Hold Your Guns: Acting President’, Newsday, 18 August 2011. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. ‘Zimbabwe’s Ruling Party Shrouded in Suspicion’. 36. ‘Mnangagwa Speaks on General Mujuru’, The Herald, 20 August 2011. 37. Interview, Didymus Mutasa, 16 September 2014; Interview, Rugare Gumbo, 3 January 2015. 38. Interview, Mujuru family member, 8 January 2012. 39. ‘Scores Throng Mujuru Residence’, The Herald, 17 August 2011. 40. ‘Befitting Send off for General Mujuru’, The Sunday Mail, 21 August 2011. 41. Ibid. 42. Interview, Antonio Hama Thay, 13 December 2016. 43. Interview, Sergio Vieira, 20 March 2017. 44. Interview, Andrew Parker Bowles, 5 October 2011. 45. Interview, Bob Hodges, 8 October 2012. 46. Author’s copy of video recording of Mugabe’s funeral speech, 20 August 2011. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid.

334 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

Notes to pages 277–91 Ibid. Ibid. ‘Aircraft Disaster Averted’, The Sunday Mail, 21 August 2011. Ibid. Ibid. Interview, National Heroes Acre official, 28 August 2012. ‘Inquest Report’, p. 18. Ibid., p. 18. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 4. Ibid., p. 5. Ibid., p. 4. ‘General Mujuru Unhappy with ZRP Security’, The Herald, 19 January 2012. ‘Mujuru Inquest: Security Rapped’, The Herald, 17 January 2012. Ibid. ‘Inquest Report’, pp. 9–10. I borrow the idea of the educated having ‘an anointed vision’ from T. Sowell, Intellectuals and Society (New York, Basic Books, 2011). Ibid. T. Sowell, ‘Abolish Adolescence!’, Jewish World Review, 1 May 1998. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 18 August 2012. Ibid. ‘Inquest Report’, p. 11. Ibid., p. 9. Ibid., p. 7. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 12. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 18 August 2012. W. Eckert and S. James, Interpretation of Bloodstain Evidence at Crime Scenes (Boca Raton, CRC Press, 1999). ‘Inquest Report’, p. 13. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 13–14. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 13. Ibid., p. 15. Ibid., p. 15. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 18 August 2012. Ibid. ‘Inquest Report’, p. 16. Interview, witness to Solomon’s autopsy, 16 December 2011. Ibid. ‘Inquest Report’, p. 16. Ibid., p. 16.

Notes to pages 292–6 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110.

335

Interview, Thakor Kewada, 18 August 2012. ‘Mujuru Wanted to Sleep in Car: Maid’, The Herald, 18 January 2012. Interview, Joice Mujuru, 19 September 2014. Ibid. ‘President Swears in Four Judges’, The Herald, 21 December 2012. ‘Judicial Service Commission Makes New Appointments’, Newsday, 30 July 2014. Interview, Thakor Kewada, 18 August 2012. I borrow this subheading from the title of C. B. George’s novel The Death of Rex Nhongo (London, Quercus Publishing, 2015). D. Pratten, The Man-Leopard Murders: History and Society in Colonial Nigeria (London, Edinburgh University Press, 2007). Ibid., p. 223. Ibid., p. 223. Interview, confidential source, 28 March 2012. Material on the death of Solomon Mujuru. ‘2 Assault Rifles Found on Mujuru Bedroom Floor’, The Herald, 26 January 2012.

Index

Acland, John, 125–127, 131, 136–51, 156, 175, 177 African National Congress, 15 African National Council, 44, 59, 65 Ajape, Jose, 96, 103–104, 119, 275 Alcoholism, 42, 97, 112, 123, 144, 148, 170, 171, 173, 195, 212, 213, 221, 242, 245, 252, 256, 266, 267 Altena raid, 31–34 Badza, Dakarai, 34–38, 42, 44–49, 123 Barnett, Garry, 167, 170, 173 Baskervyle-Glegg, John, 167, 169 Battle of Bulawayo, 186–189 Beatrice, 254, 261, 264, 265, 267, 273, 279, 286, 289, 295, 296 Bernard, Bertie, 152, 153, 158 Biographical approach, 2–5 Black Rhinos Football Club, 218–220, 245 Blair, Tony, 251, 252 BMATT, 156–157, 160, 162, 166–170, 172–174, 179, 184–187, 196, 199–200, 204, 206–207, 211–215, 219, 223, 226, 229, 231, 233, 275 Bramall, Edwin, 126, 179 Central Intelligence Organisation, 13, 47, 122, 129, 159, 192, 196, 205, 209, 254, 255 Chamu, Comrade (also see Muchinguri Oppah), 109, 124, 132 Chifombo, 30, 34, 35, 42, 44, 46, 47, 50, 57–59, 132 Chigowe, Cletus, 42, 45, 64, 106, 116, 117–119 Chikasha, Monica, 17–18, 24 Chikerema, James, 27, 69 Chikomba, 11–14, 17–19, 22–27, 83, 140, 226, 237, 246, 248, 253, 254 Chikwanha, Walter, 278–293 Chimoio, 52, 81, 91, 94, 97, 105–110, 115, 123–125, 132, 211–212

336

Chimurenga, 12, 99, 127, 152 Chimurenga, Joseph, 30, 34, 64 Chinenge, Dominic (also see Chiwenga Constantino), 80, 113, 114, 138 Chinx, Comrade, 163–164 Chissano, Joaquim, 96, 119, 122, 208 Chitepo, Herbert, 31, 37, 46–47, 54–57, 59–60, 63–67, 70, 72, 74, 81, 97, 115–116, 227 Chiwenga, Constantino (also see Chinenge Dominic), 8, 202, 222, 232–233, 245, 261–262, 269–270, 274, 277 Chocha, Stephen, 80, 108–109, 118–190 Dabengwa, Dumiso, 77, 133, 136, 138–139, 146–147, 150, 157, 159, 175, 177–181, 185, 190, 193, 195, 222, 239, 240, 244, 256, 260, 267 Dare re Chimurenga, 30, 36, 42, 47, 48, 49, 55, 57, 64, 65, 67, 68, 71, 72, 78, 82, 87, 88, 91, 93, 115, 117–118 Daudpota, Azim, 195, 207 Dhlakama, Afonso, 211 Dias, Tobias, 209, 275 Dongo, Margaret, 246–247 DRC war, second, 220, 247–250 Dube, Ethan, 28–29 Dube, Tshinga, 178, 182, 183, 186 Dyck, Lionel, 163–164, 188, 194, 211, 219, 220, 230 Education (significance of), 7, 9, 16, 18, 24, 26, 27, 40, 44, 85, 108, 116, 140, 161, 164, 216, 221, 234, 282, 283 Ethnicity and politics, 12, 29, 30, 48, 49, 50, 57, 64, 65, 68, 82, 99, 116, 179, 243 Exile politics, 5–6, 30, 36, 48, 55, 78, 185, 190 Fire, 1, 7–15, 90–92, 238, 268, 269, 273–280 Flower, Ken, 47–48, 130, 144, 148, 154

Index FRELIMO, 9, 30, 36, 46, 54, 58, 62, 71, 75, 81, 93, 94, 96, 100, 102–105, 113, 117, 120–132, 130, 208, 210, 275, FROLIZI, 45, 54, 55, 60, 66, 69 Gava, Sheba (also see Zvinavashe, Vitalis), 42, 56, 57, 109, 110, 172, 207–208, 222, 244 Gender, 43, 93–99, 142, 144, 154, 213, 235–238, 242, 243–247 Generalship, 7, 140–143, 149, 168 Geneva conference, 9, 85–91, 93, 292 George, CB, 8 Grand Reef attack (1977), 108–109, 119 Guebuza, Armando, 71–72, 96, 103, 120, 131, 275 Gukurahundi, 196, 197, 200, 204, 240 Gumbo, Rugare, 18, 20, 38, 47, 49, 54–55, 64, 70, 73, 88, 115–118, 116–118 Gurdon, Adam, 125–126, 142, 143–145, 165 Guthrie, Charles, 126, 174 Gwauya, Webster, 33, 45, 46, 57, 69, 87 Hama Thay, Antonio, 71, 96, 103, 275 Hamadziripi, Henry, 64, 65, 66, 88, 115, 117, 118 Hodges, Bob, 167–173, 205–207, 211, 214–216, 229, 275 Hondo, Elias, 46, 56, 76, 82–89, 91–93 Hunzvi, Chenjerai, 13, 253–254, 258 Hwekwete, Solomon, 117 Joint High Command, 8, 157–166, 180, 187, 189, 193, 199, 213 Jones, Edward, 166, 167 Kadungure, Ernest, 13, 172, 185, 217, 253 Kambeu, Agnew, 80, 110, 113, 114, 135 Kangai, Kumbirai, 17–18, 20, 38, 47, 64, 70, 88, 115 Kasukuwere, Saviour, 265–266 Kaunda, Kenneth, 19, 53–55, 59, 61, 63, 66, 68, 85, 86, 88 Kewada, Thakor, 225–228, 230, 283, 285, 290–293 Khama, Seretse, 54 Kissinger plan, 85–87, 90 Lancaster House talks, 98, 110, 122–125, 130–140, 160, 176–178, 193 Leadership code (ZANU PF), 225–227 Lusaka Conference, 33, 43, 55, 71

337 Machel, Samora, 5, 54–55, 71–78, 80–89, 93, 96–96, 102–105, 110, 115, 120, 122, 209–212 Machingura, Dzinashe (Dzino), 33, 38, 40–50, 56–61, 65, 69–75, 77–79, 82–84, 86–90, 93–94, 123, 132, 223, 259 MacIntyre, Derry, 148 Maclean, Sandy, 115, 139, 157–166, 177, 187, 207, 222, 227 Makamba, James, 227–229, 236 Makoni, Simba, 242, 259, 260, 261, 265 Malta talks and attempted ‘coup’, 118–119 Mangena, Nikita, 75, 76, 179, 193 Manyika, Robson, 45, 47, 57–63 Mao, 30, 38–41, 78, 125, 224 Mapai attack, 110–114 Maseko, Jevana, 162, 178, 182–184, 193 Masengo, Elliot, 26, 181, 182, 218 Masuku, Lookout, 127–128, 131, 133, 138, 149, 157–160, 163–166, 175, 178, 180, 185, 187, 193, 195 Matsinhe, Mariano, 120–122 Mboroma, 58–60, 69, 72 Mbita, Hashim, 61–63, 67, 69, 71, 75, 78–90, 275 Mgagao, 38, 45, 56–63, 68–75, 78–80, 82, 86, 87 Military training, 25–34 Mnangagwa, Emmerson, 8, 116–119, 123, 161, 176, 185, 189–193, 199–202, 221, 239–246, 248, 249, 256, 258, 261–262, 274 Molife, Caesar, 47, 52 Monteiro, Bernadette, 100–101 Monteiro, Oscar, 121, 122, 275 Morogoro, 25–26, 78–80 Monte Casino attack, 110–116 Moyane, Jose, 46–47 Moyo, Jason, 27 Mpunzarima, Patrick, 38, 46, 56, 64, 107, 110, 111 Muchemwa, Felix, 108, 116, 200, 203, 221 Muchena, Olivia, 243 Muchinguri, Oppah, 109, 243 Mudzi, Mukudzei, 64–66, 70, 76, 88, 93, 101, 112, 115 Mugabe, Grace, 13, 228, 243, 270, 271, 277 Mujuru, Joel, 11–20, 22, 23 Mujuru, Joice, 8, 9, 51, 225, 229, 232, 234–238, 243–244, 257, 260–270, 273, 275, 277, 289, 292–293, Mujuru, Lucia, 14–16, 18, 20, 236 Mujuru, Maidei, 12–16, 19, 51, 52, 236 Mujuru, Nevison, 11–19, 23, 52, 227, 236

338

Index

Mutasa, Didymus, 116, 122, 139, 241, 272, 311, 328 Mutinhiri, Ambrose, 26, 29, 76, 181, 182, 193 Muzenda, Simon, 5, 81, 115, 131, 151, 239, 242, 243, 298 National Democratic Party, 18, 20, 56, Ndangana, William, 42, 44–47, 49, 56 Nhari, 6, 27–28, 34–38, 42–58, 64, 66, 70, 77, 88, 93, 95, 97, 98, 115, 118, 119, 123, 133, 274 Nkala, Enos, 54, 70, 73–74, 81, 131, 176, 185–186, 195, 200, 202, 206, 217, 221, 224, 234, 255, 272, 273 Nkomo, Joshua, 20, 21, 53, 73, 74, 78, 79, 83, 88, 120, 121, 133, 143, 154, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190, 192, 193, 194–197, 202, 204, 227, 239, 244, 275, 298 Nyadzonia, 83–84, 105 Nyagumbo, Maurice, 54–55, 73, 185, 224, 255 Nyerere, Julius, 54–55, 61–63, 66–68, 71–79, 86, 115, 120, 121 OAU Liberation Committee, 28, 31, 35, 46, 61, 62, 69, 71, 72, 73, 75, 78 Obasanjo, Olusegun, 77, 121 Palmer, Patrick, 157, 166, 167, 174, 187, 199, 226 Pan Africanist Congress of Azania, 20 Parker Bowles, Andrew, 126–130, 136, 138, 140–150, 168, 193, 275 Petter-Bowyer, Peter, 131, 139, 146, 158, 159, 164 Partisanship, 9, 10, 74, 75, 186, 250, 251, 262 Perestroika, 4 Race, politics of, 7, 104, 134–143, 149, 162 RENAMO, 122, 208, 209, 210, 211, 215, 225 Rhodesian Front government, 1, 32, 54, 79, 81 Rhodesian Security Forces, 32, 34, 35, 36, 44, 45, 47, 50, 59, 60, 66, 75, 77, 83, 84, 85, 89, 100–120, 123, 125–130, 134, 137, 139, 144–159, 162, 165, 175, 193, 202 Ropa, Teurai (also see Mujuru Joice), 51– 52, 57–59, 71, 84, 87, 98, 109, 143, 254, 159, 186, 194, 209, 257 Rowland, Tiny, 226, 227, 228

Sadza, Saul, 58, 70, 71, 74, 76, 78 Sekeramayi, Sydney, 8, 116, 161, 184, 191, 217, 242, 243, 244 Shiri, Perrance, 13, 109, 135, 192, 193, 201, 202, 203, 207, 222, 245, 277 Shortis, Colin, 166–167, 169, 184, 194, 195, 200, 201 Sibanda, Abel, 72, 73, 74 Sibanda, Philip Valerio, 162, 167, 172, 180, 181, 182, 277 Sithole, Ndabaningi, 5, 52–55, 68–74, 79, 82–87, 130, 209, 221 Smith, Ian, 32, 52, 71, 79, 81, 88, 129, 141, 143 Smith, Rupert, 126, 157–158, 166–167, 180, 186–187, 199, 200, 201 Soames, Christopher, 125, 128, 129, 145 Spirit mediums, 3, 30, 32, 105–107 St Albert’s incident, 31–35 Stannard, Dan, 154, 159, 197, 205, 221 Tekere, Edgar, 54, 73, 81, 82, 86, 91, 95, 115, 117, 118, 122, 131, 132, 135, 186, 224, 255, 257, 258 Tembe, Lopes, 71, 209 Tichafa, Rex, 113, 135 Tipone, Twarai, 113, 114 Todhlana, David, 13, 18, 27, 29, 48, 49, 57, 59, 60, 69, 81, 88, 89, 92–95, 123, 132, 230 Tongogara, Josiah, 7, 29–38, 42–51, 54–59, 64–65, 70–71, 88–99, 103, 106, 109, 115, 116, 118, 122–124, 127–134, 137–141, 143, 149, 160, 177, 196, 241, 257, 277 Toyne-Sewell, Tim, 167–170, 172–173, 207, 231, 233, 254 Tsuro, Thomas Regedzai, 106–108 Tsvangirai, Morgan, 250–252, 255, 259, 261–262, 267, 271 Tungamirai, Josiah, 42, 44, 51, 56–58, 93, 98, 124, 146, 153, 157, 166, 193–194, 206–207, 214, 215, 217, 220–222, 240, 244, 247, 250, 255, 303–305 United African National Council, 143, 145 Urimbo, Meya, 31, 34, 38, 46, 57, 58 Ushewokunze, Herbert, 20–21, 116, 118, 119, 131, 190, 202, 224 Veloso, Jacinto, 96, 101, 120, 121 Vieira, Sergio, 120, 121, 130, 275

Index Vorster, John, 53, 63, 66, 68, 85, 86, 89 Walls, Peter, 8, 130, 139, 142, 145, 147, 148, 149, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 177, 180 Whampoa College, 81, 92, 93, 94, 117 ZAPU, 3, 7, 9, 18, 20–34, 53, 55, 59, 66, 69, 74, 77, 82, 87, 106–107, 115, 117, 120, 121, 131, 143, 144, 154, 155, 164, 176–190, 194–200, 203–207, 221, 227, 236, 237, 244

339 ZIPA, 75–96, 99, 101, 115, 117, 119–121, 132, 164, 176, 179, 180, 223, 230, 259, 274 ZIPRA (also see ZAPU), 7, 45, 50, 51, 53, 59, 60, 69, 75–80, 82, 83, 88–89, 106– 107, 115, 121, 125, 127, 128, 131, 133– 134, 138–139, 144, 146, 151, 155–163, 165–167, 172, 174–220, 253 Zvinavashe, Vitalis (also see Gava), 108, 172, 244–245, 249, 256, 260, 277 Zvobgo, Eddison, 5, 16, 116, 131, 186, 204, 224–225, 244, 248, 255