Genesis of the Entumbane disturbances

In this final instalment of a conversation that GARIKAI MAZARA had with Cde Andrew Ndlovu, also known as Cde Volunteer or Cde Mkwananzi or Cde Volunteer Mkwananzi, he gives his personal understanding of the genesis of the Entumbane disturbances. Read on . . .

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Q: How were relations between the OAU, Frontline states and the nationalist movements?

A: On our side we were backed by Kenneth Kaunda and Seretse Khama in terms of operational areas. But in Mozambique, ZIPRA ended up leaving that operational area because there was one Makhobe. He was operating from Mozambique around 1974. We went with him to Soviet Union. He would say we would move as commanders of ZANLA and ZIPRA into an operational area, but when you engaged the enemy, your soldiers got shot from the side where your colleagues were, and not from where the enemy is. So this forced ZIPRA to leave the Mozambique operational area.

Q: At one point ZIPA had a structure based in Mozambique, where Report Mphoko was from the ZIPRA side. How many guys were there representing ZAPU/ZIPRA in the ZIPA structures in Mozambique?

A: No, I cannot answer that because it is good to tell the truth than to distort history. As I told you, that time, at the age of 20 or 21, we were not concerned about the structures of the party or who was in Mozambique. We thought that was not our business, and it was the business of Joshua Nkomo, Nikita Mangena, Ambrose Mutinhiri and others. Our minds were groomed to fight the enemy.

We were more concerned about fighting the enemy than worrying about who was in the structures. I should leave that to others who can clarify on who was where. I want to say what I can clarify, what I can stand for, what the peasants in the operational area can also testify.

Q: St Paul’s or Mike Assembly Point, what was life like there?

A: When I arrived, there were comrades still coming. I was appointed chief commandant of the assembly in charge of security and re-deployment of the five battalions. I made the re-deployments such that when the enemy attacked the assembly they would not kill the comrades. Later we were then advised that we were to go to Entumbane, Bulawayo.

Q: This was 1979 or 1980?

A: This was after the elections — 1980. You know we lost the elections and we told Nkomo we should have fought the war, but Nkomo said we were not fighting to rule ourselves as ZAPU but what we wanted was for Zimbabwe to be ruled by a Zimbabwean. He said, ‘let us move together and support the election results.’

Remember, some ZIPRAs refused to move into assembly points and there was a lot of fracas, fighting to bring people to assembly points. The reason why people refused to go to assembly points is because they knew we won the struggle, but going into this election we knew we would not win. Even in the Soviet Union, they told us that if you want to rule the country as ZIPRA, you had to do through the barrel of the gun and not through elections. If you go to elections, you would be back to square one, and we went to square one.

To make matters worse, we disarmed our soldiers early. We should have gone, say, for five years without disarming our soldiers and finish all the unfinished business. Like Lancaster House, it was not clear how a guerrilla would survive after going home. And we knew that we were not defeated in the elections.

I know we can talk and talk about that. We appreciated that these were our comrades but we knew how they behaved against us when we were in Zambia and Tanzania. And we thought since we were now at home, our leadership would bring us together, would work together. We went to Entumbane and I became one of the reserve officers.

Q: Entumbane was like what, an integration base?

A: We were still in assembly points, but this was now in town. I was in Camp Three. Some were in Camp Four, some Camp One, some Camp Two.

Q: So you were moved from St Paul’s to town?

A: Yes! These houses were made assembly points. They were four-roomed houses, some here, some there. And there was an area reserved for parades.

Q: You mean all those five battalions were moved to Entumbane?

A: Though some had left because they had been integrated into the national army, the majority of us were moved into these camps at Entumbane.

Q: What was the reasoning for moving you into town?

A: I don’t know, maybe they wanted to test us. Maybe the politicians wanted to test us because ZANLA cadres were also with us. There were two camps for ZIPRA and one camp for ZANLA, and I don’t remember whether the ZANLA camp was between the ZIPRA camps. I think some politicians wanted to use us in terms of campaigning but they overlooked that there would be some fighting. How? When we arrived there, we were disarmed and all weapons were put into the armoury, and we were now soldiers without guns.

Q: Both sides?

A: I am not sure about the other side, but ZIPRA as a disciplined force, we were quick to accept orders, so we accepted, but not willingly. We said, ‘what can we do?’ But we knew these people were taking the wrong direction.

In fact, we told them that ‘we were at the front and the direction you are taking is wrong’, but there were some decisions at a certain level which we could not oppose for fear of being labelled names, names which we could not accept. So some guys left for integration and I was supposed to go for integration on November 11, 1980. Then the war erupted on November 3.

Q: The war?

A: At Entumbane. The ZANLA guys would be singing, when they reached our gate they would start sing derogatory songs and say all kinds of things. When they did their exercises, they would pass through Camp Three and they would insult us. We decided we should try to stop them and talk to the command structure. So we sent Tondlana — he was one of my former instructors and he was the chief security officer — and others guys in a Jeep, armed with machine guns, AKs and bazookas. There was no alternative because we were dealing with people who were aggressive. When they reached there, they asked for the camp commander.

Only that the camp commander came back as bullets. Those in the Jeep could not run away or even reverse, so they started fighting.

Everyone in the camp ran to the armoury. It was a small house, and having almost 3 000 scrambling to get guns . . . I managed to get an AK with a magazine. So I, together with Makwiramiti, commanded a group of more than 20 and we were the second group advancing to the ZANLA camp. That is when we realised that we were told not to carry any artillery piece to the camps, but the ZANLA guys had mortars — if not mortar 60, it was 82. We were attacked with these small artillery pieces.

But as the Rhodesian forces preferred the ZANLA guys to us, we were not sure whether these were ZANLA guys fighting us or they were the Rhodesians. This is history, you have to tell the truth, there is nothing to hide. So we advanced until some were injured and some killed. Those who could, ran away to Brady Barracks (now Mzilikazi Barracks) — the ones you see on your way out of Bulawayo to Harare. They ran away from Entumbane to Brady and at the end of the day, we had no one to fight with.

Then a spotter plane came to announce that we should stop fighting. To us we thought it was a process now, to advance to Midlands and Harare — that is what we wanted. We wanted to diffuse this Lancaster House plan. We were commandos.

Then we said we were going to do it, they had taught us how to do it. We brought in a B10 — that is a small artillery piece with wheels, which can hit a direct target; we brought in mortar 82 (and) we brought in ZU one-barrel anti-air during the night and we dug and covered them.

Q: You were bringing these arms from where?

A: From Gwayi. We had a full-scale regular army at Gwayi; those who could fight conventional warfare, those with tanks. We manoeuvred and brought these arms. It was a secret; it was us guerrillas who had been at the front to advise that let us now play guerrilla warfare and bring these artillery pieces to the front.

Q: So who was commanding your forces, the secret deployment of arms from Gwayi?

A: All commanders were participating. It was not one commander because you cannot use one commander where there is an army. So it could not have been a decision for one person.

Q: And your leadership, did it know this was happening? Joshua Nkomo, Dumiso Dabengwa?

A: No! Those commanders like Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku, they did not know, that is why previously they tried to stop us fighting. It was only inside camp business.

We wanted to protect our soldiers; if our soldiers were killed, it meant poor planning on the part of the commander. You were put before a firing squad for failing to protect your soldiers.

We were acting according to the military tactics which we learnt in the Soviet Union. And this helped when they tried it the second time, second Entumbane. By then I had gone for integration at Zimbabwe Military Academy (ZMA) — that is on November 11. The first disturbances took three days, November 3 to November 5. At ZMA, I was commissioned as a captain.

Then on December 21, we were told to go on leave and the second Entumbane occurred. Imagine that it started while we were on leave, and just heard the guns firing.

Those guys acted, though I didn’t take part, but the artillery pieces which we had brought from Gwayi worked, to hit even the Rhodesian forces who were against us. Some had camped near a beerhall and those artillery pieces were used. Whatever happened there, I didn’t participate but I came after and realised that this war was not ending. By joining my colleagues there, I got into trouble.

They said you are in the national army, you were not supposed to join in. We were punished; we stayed for six months without any pay.

Q: During the liberation struggle, how pronounced were the Shona-Ndebele differences?

A: During the war, we never had these divisions of Shona-Ndebele because in my unit I was commanding some people from Mashonaland. And we never asked someone what their tribe was, we never did that. No one knew where someone was coming from.

Q: But language, wouldn’t it give someone away?

A: We would speak all languages. We would speak Venda, we would speak Tonga, we would speak Ndebele, we would speak Shona — all languages. Even Nkomo said there is no tribe called Ndebele, there is no tribe called Shona, it is a group of tribes coming together. This system was brought by the Boers when they came to colonise us.

 

In the next instalment, we focus on a comrade who crossed into Mozambique in 1974 at 15 years, probably the second set of women after the pioneering group of Cde Teurai Ropa Nhongo (Joice Mujuru) to do so. She narrates the arduous journey on foot into Mozambique, then into Zambia, a journey which took days, such that at times they were forced to drink urine to quench their thirst. And not only that, she once watched a group of about 20 washed away by the raging Zambezi River. Years later, as Chimoio was being bombed, she was so mesmerised by a dropping Rhodesian parachute (for she had never seen one in her life) that she forgot she was under attack, but she survived all that to tell her story . . . don’t miss the first instalment of Cde Pepukai’s story.