The Sunday Mail
Garikai Mazara
The happenings of the chilly evening are still etched in Lydia Sithole’s memory like it happened yesterday. In fact, it might take a while for the mother-of-two to forget that Wednesday’s events. For days running, days which might easily have added up to weeks, the villagers in Chingowe village were sleeping with one eye open, for random attacks had become the order of the day.
On the fateful evening, two of the several marauding Renamo rebels walked into their homestead, and started beating Lydia and anyone they came across. Lydia, as had become the norm, was half asleep. But that did not stop the bandits from tying up her hands and frog-marching her to the centre of the village court-yard.
“They were shouting on top of their voices, obviously a bit drunk and they ordered us not to look into their eyes. We were force-marched into the centre of the yard, were the beatings continued.
“They said they will come for us again later,” she narrated last Monday at the make-shift homestead that her family – and several others – is now calling home, after fleeing Renamo rebels.
The following morning, after a rushed caucus called for by the patriarch of the family, it was resolved that the 20-kilometre journey into safer Zimbabwe be undertaken. Nothing was to be spared from the trek into safer Zimbabwe, from pots and pans, chickens, goats, sheep to cattle.
For 70-year-old Elias Mashava, who is headman Chingowe, the decision to flee to Zimbabwe didn’t take long to reach, for over the years he has seen quite a significant number of the Renamo incursions – and has survived them too.
Borrowing from the once bitten adage, he advised his fellow villagers to take the safe route out of the skirmishes, for destination Zimbabwe.
“The rebels are ruthless. We were somehow heartened that this time around they were just beating people, otherwise to those old enough to have seen the previous uprisings in the 90s, they will easily tell of mutilated villagers. So it was very easy to decide to run away to Zimbabwe, at least immediately. Before the rebels got into the angrier mode.”
The dispute between Renamo and the ruling Frelimo has been long running in Mozambique. When Andre Matsangaisse died in 1979, Afonso Dhlakama immediately took over the reigns of Renamo, at a fairly young age of 26.
At the time he took over, he had the sympathy and support of the then Rhodesian government, who were fighting a brutal war of liberation with freedom fighters who were based in Mozambique, in turn, being supported by Frelimo.
To the south, the South African apartheid regime, which still wanted to cling onto its racist beliefs, found a willing partner in Dhlakama, thus offered him support, either in sympathy or kind. The remnants of that support has been the guns that lie around today in Mozambqiue, at the hands of the Renamo rebels.
In the intervening years, despite losing several elections and in some instances agreeing to coalition governments, Dhlakama and his troops of rebels (who are still referred to as Matsangaisse up to this day), launch sporadic attacks onto defenceless villagers, especially in provinces that he holds considerable support.
Gaza, Manica and Tete provinces – the three provinces that border Zimbabwe on the eastern side and where Dhlakama and his rebels enjoy measurable support – has seen several of these attacks in recent years, of which one of the most recent saw the attack on Chingowe village, which lies some 20 kilometres from Zimbabwe, in Chipinge South constituency.
The displaced villagers have since relocated at Mabee, a settlement about 40 kilometres from Checheche business centre, where they hope to start life all over again.
But for the refugee villagers to start all over again, they will have to get over the scars of the recent attacks, a process which is not likely to be a stroll in the park.
Confessed 48-year-old Mirriam Sibanda, life at the make-shift settlement is difficult, especially given the wintry conditions prevailing.
“We wake up at the break of dawn to fetch water, and the well where we draw water from was already stretched before we even came, so it can be hours before one returns with just a bucket of water.”
Although the refugees said they are still feeding off their harvests from their deserted fields, where they occasionally go and harvest (that is if they receive information from those who stayed behind that it is safe to come), the obvious fear is that soon the harvests will come to an end.
Another glaring challenge is clothing, especially among the children, who make up the majority of the refugees who are having to make-do with scant clothing, “because in the heat of the moment, we could not take everything with us”.
Enock Porusingazi, the Member of Parliament for Chipinge South, said since Renamo had started their assaults on hapless villagers, such incursions has a bearing on his constituency, especially given the fluid relationships that characterise border families.
“Probably our immediate concern might not be to see the Renamo insurgency as a security threat, because they don’t pose any danger to our citizens but their actions erode the social fabric of our citizens, because a lot of trade goes on between families on the border areas.
“Because of the poor rains this past rain season, our farmers usually take their cattle across the border for grazing, only getting them back when the rains come back. So given the renewed banditry, this will not happen and our cattle will suffer.
“Besides, these refugees have settled in an area where there is no water, no ablution facilities and the risk of disease outbreaks is very high, especially with the coming of the dry, hot season.
“When such an outbreak happens, we carry the burden of not only containing it, but also run the risk of having the outbreak spread to our communities,” complained Porusingazi.
But for Headman Chingowe, who with some of his family members have fluid citizenships, which they change as per circumstances and situations, it is all back to the drawing board and starting life in Zimbabwe all over again.
“Most of us here have both Zimbabwean and Mozambican identity cards, and now that the Matsangaisse have started their wars again, we revert to our Zimbabwean citizenships. After all, where we have settled, it is part of our family land so we are just coming back home,” that from him.
But it is this fluid citizenship that has Honourable Porusingazi tearing at his hair.
“This is why and how this crisis is difficult to handle at times.
“These people change citizenship when it suits them, when we are giving Presidential inputs, they become Zimbabweans; when they are in a crisis like this, they are Zimbabweans but when everything is good going for them, they are Mozambicans. Even after supporting them in such times, when it is time to vote, they don’t vote and if they do, they usually align themselves with the opposition here.”
For Lydia, the month that she has been sleeping in the bush with her family has brought some peaceful nights, in spite of the chilly weather. She can sleep soundly, knowing that a repeat of that early June night, when she was tied up, beaten and frog-marched, will not happen again.
She, too, can sleep soundly knowing that one of her two children will go to a Zimbabwean school the following morning, which is well within walking distance.
But for legislator Porusingazi, the continued influx of the refugees in his constituency means that he has to be ever on his toes, looking for medicinal supplies, blankets, potable water and tents so that the pressure on the social amenities and infrastructure in his constituency are not overwhelmed.
