The Sunday Mail
ANDREW Ndlovu, though the Soviets had named him Volunteer, was popularly known as Cde Mkwananzi on the war front. After witnessing the ZPRA-ZANLA skirmishes at Mgagao first-hand, then going to the Soviet Union for military training, he had always been eager to engage the enemy at the front. In one of the several battles he fought, he lost 14 teeth and had his tongue torn into pieces, but survived to fight many more battles. In this continuing narration with GARIKAI MAZARA, he recounts how he lost his teeth and explains why him and his forces were not happy when the ceasefire was announced in 1979.
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Q: Last week you dwelt on some of the encounters you had with the enemy, they must have been nerve-wrecking experiences, meeting the enemy?
A: In guerilla warfare, you must kill, not be killed; see your enemy first and not be seen first. Those were the principles, if you followed them then you would be okay. The purpose of guerilla warfare was to create fear and open way for conventional warfare. The idea was that, when conventional warfare came, we would have weakened all the enemy’s strong points.
Q: Were there any further encounters?
A: One of the battles I fought, I was found unprepared by the enemy. We would be served meals by villagers in smaller units, say two or three guerillas and then we would go to sleep, meeting at the GP (gathering point) the following morning. I was with two of my guys and we slept in the bushes. In the morning we went to greet the villagers, I think it was around 5am, because we would get food that early so as to avoid being detected by the enemy when the sun rose.
Then we heard the dog barking. When we checked, we saw Rhodesian soldiers coming. It just clicked that the previous day we had seen two boys, from outside the village who could not explain their movements properly, and they are the ones who must have sold us to the Rhodesians. Using the training I had received from the Soviets, I aimed at the guy whom I assumed was the commander and I gunned him down. The second shots and subsequent shots were now automatic and we were firing randomly at the soldiers, whose battle formation we were not sure of.
Q: Were you outside or inside when the shooting started?
A: We were outside, in the yard. Once you left the yard, you were gone. As well, once you gave the enemy your back, it would have been very difficult to turn, you would think you have been over-run and would need to take cover. But I said I won’t give the enemy my back so we fought for some minutes, until I was shot through my cheek.
There must have been another unit that they had deployed because I was facing the eastern direction but I was shot from my left side. The bullet went through the left and came out through the right and you can see my tongue, it got torn. And 14 teeth were ripped off by a bullet.
I could not understand what was happening. By the time I was shot, I could not feel anything. I only felt myself jumping and turning round, I must have moved some five steps and then fell down, still holding my gun. With my head to the ground, I could only hear some noises, which I assumed was the enemy advancing to capture me. I woke up quickly and continued firing, at the same time retreating in a skirmish formation.
I would take five or six steps, then fire, move back, another five or six steps and then fire. I think by the third skirmish, I fired the last round and disappeared into the bush. Then my boys, they had moved in another direction and we met by the river, Dongamuzi River. When I met the boys, I could not speak and I could feel a piece of flesh on my cheek. Then one of the boys said, “Commander, you have been shot”.
When I tried to speak again, I could feel there was mud in my mouth. On one side was a very big hole and some small pieces of my teeth. I said to myself, I deserved to be shot, as a commander. Besides I had killed so many in several other battles, so when I counted the Rhodesians I had killed with my unit in raids, ambushes and landmines, I felt it was fair that I had been shot. But I said I won’t go to Zambia for treatment, for the sake of my unit because every unit needed a brave commander.
I was treated in the bush. The Rhodies carried out a hot pursuit because they must have seen some of my teeth on the battle ground. They brought a helicopter with a Red Cross, and once you see that, you knew you would have wounded or killed some of them. For a whole month, they would search for me, shooting at almost every thicket, thinking that I might be hiding in any of the bushes but I had gone far away.
So I instructed my guys not to carry out operations near to where I was, because I was not well. If they wanted to do operations, they would go some distance away and come back. By this time my unit had grown up to about 150 guerillas.
Q: Obviously, this is a day which you might not easily forget in your life?
A: This was on September 16, 1978. And it must have been a Saturday.
Q: How were you treated and where?
A: In the bush, I used to get injections, we had a medical guy, Khumalo, who used to treat us. We had most of the medical supplies because our party in Bulawayo used to supply us through our leadership in the bush. Also we had traditional healers, they would use African medicines to heal our wounds. So it was a combination of both modern and traditional medicine.
Q: How long did it take to heal the wound?
A: It took slightly over three weeks, to close the wound but I could not talk as the tongue was torn into pieces. I would use a stick to control it, every time I slept I would take a stick to return it back to its normal position. But even after I had healed the wound, I could not talk. I had to start practising talking, doing the ABCs. My guys would always interpret, I think for the next four months, as they knew what I wanted or wanted to say.
There are many battles, maybe more than 40 battles that we engaged in and it got to a time that the Rhodesians had to surrender to us. I think more than 120 soldiers came to surrender, through the peasants. Some of them were children of the peasants. They came and surrendered soon after training, as we were now in control of the liberated zones. The soldiers would came to surrender with all their weapons, radios, machine guns and uniforms.
Q: These were what? White Rhodesian soldiers or just black Rhodesian soldiers?
A: They were black, the auxiliary forces. This proved that we were now in control of the liberated zones and also proved that the enemy had felt our might. They knew that the guerillas had control, even Brigadier Schoote, who was in command of the Northern Region and stationed at Lupane, he knew where to find guerillas but could not do anything because we had captured all the territory.
But I said to my guys, we cannot take in these guys as they are, what if tomorrow they decide to turn against us? So we asked them to hand over all their weapons and their uniforms, in fact we exchanged our jeans with their uniforms. We were with them for a week and in the second week we moved them to another area, and they joined our guys from Nkayi and were taken to Botswana.
Q: Quite some interesting encounters you had?
A: Yes, there were a number of many other encounters. Then came the ceasefire. Richard Dube, must now be a retired colonel, he was an army commissar for ZPRA, he came and announced that a ceasefire had been agreed.
Q: That was after the Lancaster House Agreement?
A: Yes. But even before the agreement, I had gone back to Zambia to report back all my operations. On October 10, 1979 I crossed into Zambia and on November 11, I crossed back into Rhodesia, with another unit of 130. So it means I managed to cross twice into Rhodesia. My mission back into Zambia was to report to Joshua Nkomo and the ZAPU leadership, of the achievements we had made in the past two years of operation.
We managed to move into the areas of operation with the new unit and deployed them into the various areas of operation. What I am saying is, this is the sacrifice I made liberating Zimbabwe and crossing the 20-km Zambezi minefield twice is not a joke, crossing the Zambezi itself twice, is not a joke, fighting in Lake Kariba, is not a joke. The initial 140 and the second 130, these are the people that I commandeered and it was no easy task.
After Richard Dube explained the ceasefire, I addressed the peasants and then commanded my forces to go to the assembly point. We told the peasants that we were going but we were not happy. We had done a lot of operations, we had attacked garrisons and tried to bring down these planes without success, using our small artillery pieces.
Of course, our guys in other operational areas had brought down those Viscounts and when we tried to bring down these two planes, I think the enemy had devised ways of misleading our missiles. So we missed these two, one in Binga and the other one in Gweru, near a military base.
Q: Were these military or civilian planes?
A: The other one was not a military because the enemy was now using civilian planes so you would say this is a civilian aircraft and it would hit you instead. So we were hitting anything, to stop any movement, either on the ground or in the air.
Strategically, we were making sure we were fighting a powerful enemy as Smith was a powerful enemy because he also had mercenaries.
Q: You mentioned that when you addressed the peasants, you said you were not happy. Why were you not happy?
A: Because I had just arrived with another unit of 130 in November, well-equipped, with enough ammunition, to attack other remaining key targets and we had liberated zones. And the enemy had surrendered. We just wanted our guys to cross and walk over these big cities, Salisbury, Bulawayo, Victoria Falls and Kariba. Because we had weakened the enemy, the enemy knew that when they engaged ZPRA, they would lose the fight. So we were not happy. But we took orders and we went to Mike Assembly Point in Lupane, which had five battalions.
Q: Five battalions, that would be how many fighters?
A: If it is not mechanised, on average a battalion would be about 1 500, so that would be 1 500 times five.
Q: We know ZPRA forces were concentrated in the southern part of Zimbabwe . . .
A: No. When you are told ZPRA forces . . . I hear people say northern region, southern region. Do you know ZPRA also operated from Mozambique? ZPRA and zanla had joint operations, attacking from Mozambique. Mashonaland West, East ZPRA did all that. Harare was even covered by ZPRA, urban warfare, because we had urban guys who were trained using these small folding guns, they had modernised devices for urban warfare. Some of them would come through me and I would escort them to Nkayi and Nkayi would escort them further.
Q: After the skirmishes at Morogoro and Mgagao, did we find any similar skirmishes at the front, between ZPRA and zanla forces?
A: The guys who were in the southern region, some of them clashed at the front. They would hold a meeting and agree to co-operate in fighting but the ZPRAs would get ambushed by the zanla guys. This made the ZPRA guys not to select, they said they were going to hit both the enemy and the zanlas. Maybe that was the language that they understood better. They didn’t do it intentionally but they would have been attacked first.
Q: At what point did zipa collapse?
A: After the clashes at Morogoro and Mgagao, zipa collapsed. Why? Because we were now operating as ZPRA and zanla, under the Patriotic Front, but we were engaging the enemy on different fronts. This is the name that our leaders accepted, they never accepted zipa. They were forced by the leaders of the Frontline States, that time Nyerere was the leader of the Frontline States.
In the next and final instalment, Cde Mkwananzi talks life at assembly points and how fragile the co-existence between the ZPRA and zanla comrades was at Entumbane. He goes a step further and asserts that the Shell tanks in Salisbury were blown up by ZPRA. Make a point not to miss the next Chimurenga Chronicles.
