The Sunday Mail
A lot of speculation has circulated in the 36 years since General Josiah Magama Tongogara died, with most rumours seeming to suggest the revered Zanla commander was eliminated on the eve of Zimbabwe’s Independence, presumably because he harboured higher leadership ambitions.
Conspiracy theorists contend that because Cde Samora Machel – then President of Mozambique – was a soldier who rose to become President, his wish was also to see Gen Tongogara become Zimbabwe’s first democratically elected leader.
A lot of conspiracy theories have been weaved in the intervening years.
It is against this background that The Sunday Mail travelled to Massinga, 546km north of Maputo, to find out if there could be any surviving eyewitnesses to the accident that happened on the morning of December 26, 1979 that claimed Gen Tongogara’s life.
Mozambique is a Portuguese-speaking country and language was one of the biggest challenges we had to contend with during the seven days we spent in that country.
As fate would have it, when we entered the first high school that we saw (our calculations being that we would at least get an English-speaking teacher to help us around) we bumped into a Zimbabwean, Mr Robert Meki, who is teaching languages at that institution.
Given the sensitive nature of our mission, Mr Meki advised us that the logical thing would be to proceed to the district police station and clear ourselves, especially as there are instances of insurgencies by Renamo in Mozambique.
He reasoned that the chances of villagers assisting us would be greater if we were to be accompanied by the police.
While we were reluctant to take this route, given the bureaucratic nature of police business anywhere in the world, we found Arimando Massecane, the district commander of PRM (Mozambique Republic Police), very helpful and willing to assist.
He informed us that although he was young when Gen Tongogara died, he said when he was posted to Massinga one of his first wishes was to visit and know the site where the great soldier had perished.
With great willingness, he obliged to accompany us to the site for indications and to help locate any surviving eyewitness from that dark day.
The crash site is on a curve that lies right on the 20km peg when approaching Massinga from Inchope, 10km from the settlement of Unguana, 546km kilometres from Maputo and 517km from Inchope itself.
Inchope is the junction where the Chimoio-Beira road meets with the Maputo highway.
And quite interestingly, Gen Tongogara is as famous in Mozambique as he is in Zimbabwe, and looking for anyone who was nearby when he died was no hard task.
Amongst the villagers who were going about their business at the nearest township was 70-year-old Mr Carlitos Massangue, who vividly remembers the accident.
With Mr Meki acting as our interpreter, Mr Massangue and police officer Massecane said it was better to go to the actual site and “try to recreate” what happened on that fateful Wednesday morning.
Mr Massangue claims he arrived at the accident scene some 20 minutes or so after the accident, as he was riding his motorcycle along the highway, minding his own business.
When he got to the site, the body of the victim had been removed, though the Land-Rover truck was still there.
(Efforts to locate the wreckage when we got to Maputo later were fruitless, as no one, then, had thought of preserving it for historical purposes.)
Mr Massangue corroborated the common explanation that the driver of Gen Tongogara’s car had tried to overtake a lorry around the curve. On noticing that there was an oncoming car, he swerved back to his lane, hitting the lorry and overturning. He said when he got to the scene, the lorry was still there, as was the advance Land-Rover which was carrying the late Air Marshal Josiah Tungamirai and others.
The two Land-Rovers carried the military leadership, whose mission was to travel to Chimoio, about 990km further north, to inform comrades of the results of the Lancaster House talks; that the Patriotic Front and Rhodesians had agreed a settlement, and that a ceasefire was due.
Given the significant role that Gen Tongogara played in Zimbabwe’s liberation, the site where he perished stands a desolate place, forgotten by history.
Were it not for the Mozambican government that erected a tombstone – and the villagers who routinely maintain the site, clearing it of grass and sweeping around it – it would be just another unremarkable roadside.
When we were driving towards the crash, knowing only that it was 25km away but unsure if it was before or after Massinga, we were looking for something prominent, like a signpost (typical of the one at Heany Junction, where Dr Samuel Tichafa Parirenyatwa perished in another car crash in 1962).
Or better still, a statue.
The tombstone that lies at General Tongogara’s crash site is not visible to any passing motorist. Hence, the current efforts to build a more visible shrine.
Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Muchero, the defence attaché at the Zimbabwe Embassy in Maputo, said there are plans to erect a more visible shrine, with the Mozambican government having already availed land for that purpose.
What is left now is for the Tongogara Legacy Foundation, in collaboration with the National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, to finalise the erection of the memorial.
Lt-Col Muchero said he was not at liberty to disclose the nature of the shrine, though he had seen artistic impressions, and referred further inquiries either to NMMZ and the Tongogara Legacy Foundation.
Dr Gibson Mahachi, the director of NMMZ, said he was equally not at liberty, and said the Tongogara Legacy Foundation had all that information.
Dr Simbi Mubako, chair of the Tongogara Legacy Foundation, said everything was set, with the date of erection and unveiling of the shrine now in the hands of the Office of the President and Cabinet.
“We have done everything that we needed to do and we are waiting for advice from the Office of the President and Cabinet as to when we can erect and unveil, but hopefully that is to be done this year.
“There are also plans to build a memorial medical centre to serve the local community, who had built a small one – and not so modern – just near the site, to help keep the name of General Tongogara alive.”
