HEROES SPECIAL: Revisiting Gonakudzingwa

02 Aug, 2015 - 00:08 0 Views
HEROES SPECIAL: Revisiting Gonakudzingwa

The Sunday Mail

3107-2-1-GONAKUDZINGWA (3)Garikai Mazara

Five years ago, at about this same time, I took a journey of discovery to Gonakudzingwa detention camp, which housed liberation war heroes and heroines, mostly from Zapu, to find out what 30 years of independence and freedom had meant to the former holding camp.

It was a journey full of anxiety and expectation – which made the four-hour or so journey all the more remarkable, enjoyable and historic.That joy and expectation was to be short-lived upon arriving at Gonakudzingwa, as the police officer, whom we found at Sango police post and was to be our guide, immediately detailed us of the dangers that lurked around us, the most dangerous one being the several landmines that litter the border area.

As to the danger of wild animals, it didn’t need any explanantion, it was going to be obvious, given that Gonakudzingwa lies within the gigantic Gonarezhou National Park, which is part of the trans-frontier park between Zimbabwe, South Africa and Mozambique.In fact, the wild animals never disguised their presence and we had an encounter with one or two, of the famous Big Five along the way.

A fortnight ago, almost five years later, it was no different – game was everywhere as we drove to Sango border post.

For the avoidance of doubt, readers please note that Sango border post and Gonakudzingwa can be used inter-changeably, as the former detention is right at the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe – Sango.

The difference this time around, though, was the absence of expectation and anxiety – for we already knew what Gonakudzingwa looked like, at least going by what we saw five years earlier.If there was to be any anxiety, it was to see if the Department of National Museums and Monuments had done anything in the intervening five years to give a face-lift to Gonakudzingwa, given the historical significance of the detention camp to the liberation of the country.

This is the camp that held Zapu cadres like the late Joshua Nkomo, Josiah and Ruth Chinamano, Enos Nkala, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, Willie Musarurwa, in fact the who-is-who of Zapu leadership was once detained at Gonakudzingwa, a place that has since been forgotten by history.

Dr Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, who stayed at the camp between 1964 and 1965, remembers the harsh days at Gonakudzingwa: “Whereas on one side were the roaming wild animals of Gonarezhou, on the other side there was a fence, but not much of it as they (Rhodesians) knew we would go deep into the wilderness as we risked being devoured by the wild animals.

On the other side, were the Mozambican security forces who were under instruction to shoot on first sight any escapee.”

The siting of the detention was deliberate, in that detainees, besides being removed from normal society, had little or no chance of escaping, back into civilization.

Having played such a significant role in the liberation of the country, one would have expected Gonakudzingwa to have the same iconic status as Robben Island, which housed Nelson Mandela for the much of his 27 years behind bars.

Besides being a World Heritage Site, Robben Island today hosts hundreds of tourists per any given day, those who want to reconnect with the world that Mandela lived in, those dark years of his history gone by.

Five years after having found a desolate place, a place forgotten by history, the same abject state of the former detention camp meets the visitor today. Lost in long savanna grass, chirping birds, danger of landmines lurking in the neighbourhood.

Not even Robben Island, which is miles and history quite removed from Zimbabwe, there are many places and events in present that are marked, celebrated and revered as places of heroism, either for the First or Second World Wars.

At Harare’s Pioneer Cemetery, the graves of the “veterans” of the Second World War are neatly kept and attended to.So are “historical” sites dotted around the country where furious battles of the First Chimurenga were fought.Isaac Matimise, the headman at Chilotlela village, which is about five kilometres from Sango border post, said there was only one visit by “people from Harare” who came to see what they can do to rebuild the history of Gonakudzingwa.

“We have never heard from them again. We are the last of the generations that saw Gonakudzingwa alive and if we pass on, we are going to die with that history.

No-one will know what the detention camp meant to the liberation of this country,” he said.

Besides sharing the neighbourhood with the world-famous Gonakudzingwa detention camp, there is no other joy for Matimise and his villagers, especially given that their village is still surrounded by landmines that were planted by the Rhodesians to deter the detainees from escaping, and later freedom fighters from crossing into the southern parts of the country, through Mozambique.

“The border-line is still littered with landmines and we are constantly losing our cattle to the landmines. At least people know where the landmines are and try to avoid those areas but as for our cattle, they just roam, especially during this dry season when they are not herded.

Once in a while we lose one or two.

We then kill them for beef but there is nothing as disheartening as killing an animal that you had not budgeted for,” he added.

Thought the Zimbabwe National Army is currently involved in a massive demining campaign along the border, the exercise started from Malipati, heading northwards, and is now concentrated around Dumisa.

“Every now and then we travel to Malipati and we see the soldiers removing the landmines and we are praying that if they could move faster and make all this area safe to move around.

We might be saying we are in an independent country but we don’t have the freedom to move in and around our villages. You have to know which path to follow otherwise you wont come back home,” headman Matimise said.

Though the landmines have not yet claimed the lives of any villagers, the headman said the sad thing is that the movements of villagers were largely restricted.

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