‘Injustices made me politically conscious’

THE name Andrew Ndlovu might not readily ring a bell to some of our readers, but those old enough to remember Chenjerai Hunzvi — the former leader of the Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans Association — will recall that he had a side-kick. And that side-kick was none other than Ndlovu, a more than colourful character who has seen it all. In this, the first of a series of discussions with GARIKAI MAZARA, he narrates how he left the country in 1974 for guerrilla training and came back three years later to face the enemy. Read on . . .

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Q: Maybe briefly, if you can give us some background on who Andrew Ndlovu is.

A: Andrew Ndlovu was born August 19, 1957; born to Gabriel Ndlovu and Martha Dhlamini. I grew up in Bulawayo. My grandmother asked me to go and stay in Zhombe for about four years, where I went to school up to Standard Three, then came back to Bulawayo up to Standard Six. I then visited my younger brother who was in Gwanda, our home area, and when it was time to go back to Bulawayo, because we were having the time of our life with my younger brother, I squandered the bus fare which my father had sent and never bothered to go back to school.

I remember by 10 years old, my political consciousness had already begun as my father would come with his friends singing revolutionary songs, singing about inkululeko. Though I didn’t understand what inkululeko meant, I kept searching for answers. And as we used to go for cinemas, we were inspired by the cowboy movies that we saw, as well as the stories we often heard about “terrorists” killing whites. At times my uncle would come, late at night that is, from the bar and say, ‘you guys are sleeping, you don’t want to hold the machine gun and kill these Boers?’

This influence from my family as well as what was happening around me, like in town, there were areas where blacks were not allowed, whites driving cars and blacks were either cycling or footing to work, inspired me to leave the country. I didn’t think much of it as oppression until I got a job as a garden boy for a white man. During the first days, they treated me well. But then they had a relative who stayed in a cottage and this guy would get drunk and mess his blankets and I would be asked to clean the mess. The toilet at the cottage would have blood stains, then the urine on the blankets.

They also had dogs which they played with in the dining room and when the dogs messed the room, I would be asked to clean that mess. When I thought that it was too much, I refused to do the cleaning as I argued I was a garden boy, and was fired from the job.

I got another job in Pardonhurst, and the area was still new. Part of the job was to fell trees, which were very huge by the way. One day I was found sitting, and to me I was resting, but to my white employer I was loafing around, so I was fired. That is when I realised that these people didn’t like us.

When I went back home, my friends and I decided to leave the country.

Q: Your schooling, up to what level had you gone?

A: I had done up to Standard Six — that was in 1971. And this was now 1974 when we moved to Plumtree, the border.

I had two uncles, one was in Francistown and the other was in Phikwe, but I didn’t know where any of these guys stayed. But I had been told that the one who stayed in Francistown, who was a builder, would always pass through a certain bar after work. So I went to that bar and waited for him by the gate and, sure enough, he came. I told him that Uncle George was also coming to join us.

By then, the Special Branch was busy arresting and deporting people, and my uncle advised that I should not make unnecessary movements as I could be arrested and deported, or, even worse, disappear.

When Uncle George came, he stayed with us for two to three weeks and then the guerrillas came. The guerrillas looked at me, and because I was 17, they said I was too young and they said they were going to take Uncle George and would come for me later on.

But the situation was getting tense as the searches had intensified. So I decided to find a job and I got one as a lorry assistant, and my younger brother, Stephen Ndlovu, got one at a café. So the hide-and-seek was no more. We were always communicating with other guys in Francistown who had intentions of joining the struggle.

In 1975, everything started moving, guys coming from South Africa, from Rhodesia. There was a Zapu house at Minestone where those who wanted to join the struggle went to register. Because of fears that the Rhodesians could bomb anytime, we were advised to stay at different locations, only coming to the house to register.

Q: How many people would come for the daily registers?

A: During my time, we were about 300. Then Dumiso Dabengwa came to inform us that they had made preparations for us to move to Zambia. If I am not mistaken, it was October 1975 when we were taken to Napundwe Transit Camp in Zambia. We flew from Francistown to Lusaka and then taken to the camp. We stayed at Napundwe for some months. January 1976 — that is when we were moved to open Membesi Camp.

It was a bush. If I say we opened Membesi Camp, even at Napundwe we would wake up and do exercises like crawling, toyi-toying. When we arrived at Membesi, we started training, clearing obstacles, clearing the ground for parade, building kitchens. It took some months before the OAU (Organisation of African Unity) announced that we were to leave for Mgagao. It had been agreed that we were to join the Zimbabwe People’s Army, comprised of Zanla and ZPRA.

Q: At Membesi, did you have a camp commander and how many were you?

A: I will try to recall his name, but we were 810. Stanley Gagisa, the late, was our training chief of staff. Then to Mgagao, we travelled with OAU trucks and we were brought to train under one umbrella, Zipa with our Zanla colleagues.

Q: Were you equal in number?

A: Our colleagues were over a thousand and we were 810. They were more than us. They believed we were Cuban-trained. They could not believe us, because those three months we spent with Gagisa, it was tough training, and they could not understand how a recruit coming from home could do judo, (and) spinning. Gagisa had trained us all that. I remember our camp commander was Sam Madondo.

When it came to choosing barracks, they chose the ones outside and us inside. They surrounded us because Mgagao was a university.

Q: Who was the camp commander for Mgagao? Was it Zanla or ZPRA?

A: Since we were together, they had their own guys — Rex Nhongo, Perrance Shiri and the likes of Chiwenga and Zimondi — and they had their own camp commander and we had our instructors. It was an issue of integrating these two administrations in terms of the Zimbabwe People’s Army because the purpose of forming ZIPA was to do away with the political leadership, because the political leadership was creating divisions within the guerrillas.

I cannot say we were training, but we were exercising so that we could keep fit. But there came a time when we felt weak because of hunger and there came a time when we could go to the fields of the Tanzanians to eat raw maize and came back to drink water.

Q: So there were two skirmishes, one at Morogoro and the other one at Mgagao?

A: Yes. If I am right, if the one at Morogoro happened in May, at Mgagao it was on June 6. These happened in 1976.

Q: How many people were killed at Morogoro?

A: We had 136 people at Morogoro and no one was killed because our guys had weapons and they faced resistance when they started the fracas. Then we were moved from Iringa to Morogoro. When we arrived, there was an instruction that no one was to get out of Tanzania because there was going to be a board of inquiry into what had happened at Mgagao as well as at Morogoro.

We were instructed not to carry weapons but we had to carry on with our training. We used heavy sticks for the training to simulate the weapons. We were taught how to use compasses, we did long marches, we used notes to train on machine guns and we had to move deep into the mountains to train using guns. But this training was limited to three rounds per recruit and we were strictly advised against shooting into the sky to avoid echo. We didn’t want our instructors to get into trouble for letting us use guns.

We had a tough pass-out parade; we finished in December 1976. Remember, we had done four months in Zambia and another six months in Tanzania, so we had 10 months of rigorous training.

Our leadership back in Zambia wanted us to go for further training and I was lucky that I was among the 40 who were chosen to go to the Soviet Union for further training. We were accompanied by Brigadier-General Collen Moyo (Retired), whose Chimurenga name was Rodwell Nyika.

Since we were not allowed to leave Tanzania, and that ZPRA had an alliance with Umkhonto weSizwe, they communicated with the ANC office in Dar es Salaam, so the ANC guys came around December 20 and we were moved from Morogoro around 2am. Stanley Gagisa led us in that manoeuvre. About 30km from the Tanzania-Zambia border, we were asked to disembark and cross the border on foot. On the other side of the border, that is the Zambian side, we found a lorry waiting for us. It took us to Napundwe, where we stayed for a week or two before flying to Nairobi.

In the next instalment, three years after leaving Rhodesia, Andrew Ndlovu enters the country to fulfil a long-standing itching — to fight the white man. But does he find the action that inviting or the terrain that easy? Don’t miss it!