The Sunday Mail
The following is excerpted from the biography of Group Captain Sithabile Sibanda, aka Cde Ntombiyezizweni Mhlanga, as researched and written by Tjenesani Ntungakwa and titled “Fighting for my country, a woman’s choice: The unspoken story of the ZIPRA’s Women’s Brigade”. Group Capt Sibanda has been awarded the Liberation Medal (1990), Independence Medal, Mozambique Campaign Medal (1991), 10 Years Service in the Air Force of Zimbabwe (2000), Long and Exemplary Medal after 15 years of service in the AFZ (2005), Sadc Medal of the DRC Campaign (2008), the United Nations Medal (2008) after serving in the Sudan under the United Nations Mission in Sudan.
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By Group Captain Sithabile Sibanda
October 19, 1978 was unexpected in the history of Zapu’s rear camps in Zambia, particularly at Mkushi.
As a guerilla, I knew wars had fatalities, but did not have any idea of what was going to happen in 1978.
We had lived what I considered normal lives since our arrival at Mkushi. The living conditions were nothing to complain about. We had become accustomed to them.
Mkushi was no conventional army base where one could find neatly organised barracks, quartermaster sections, dining halls and the like. One could not take time off.
Mkushi was the home of our souls. It was as though we had been brought up there.
Mkushi became the mark of female combatants’ identities within Zapu’s military wing, ZPRA.
It should be understood that our general perception was that the Rhodesians would not bomb Mkushi primarily because it was a camp for women.
But realistically, Rhodesia was increasingly under pressure to come up with a conclusive solution to the majority rule crisis. Smith remained hard-headed and became more interested in an internally-agreed settlement that was likely to leave out Zapu and Zanu under the banner “Patriotic Front”.
Within that context, some African politicians began to gain increased visibility in Rhodesia. One of them was Bishop Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa of the Methodist Church in Rhodesia.
His credentials had registered during the days of the Pearce Commission in the early ‘70s when the British put forward some fresh constitutional proposals for Rhodesia.
He had been identified by detained nationalists as a potential link with the populace in mobilising against the Pearce Commission. After the progressive failure of the African National Council (Zimbabwe) that had been anointed by the Organisation of African Unity in December of 1974, Muzorewa became the leader of the United African National Council, some kind of outfit which postured against the Smith regime in a relatively less militant manner.
There was also Chief Jeremiah Chirau, who led what was called the National Democratic Union, and Chief Kayisa Ndiweni.
In latter days, Chief Kayisa Ndiweni was at the helm of his own political party which became known as the National Front of Zimbabwe.
Such a scenario complicated the political terrain in Rhodesia, making it a boiling pot of contestations. Ndabaningi Sithole, who had finally been expelled from Zanu, was the steward of another formation, which also went by the name Zimbabwe African National Union.
The departure of Ndabaningi Sithole from Zanu had been long in coming after the release of nationalist leaders from both sides in the mid-70s.
It was amid such realities that Mkushi was bombed on October 19, 1978.
We were caught unawares. Freedom Camp was attacked by the Rhodesian Air Force on the same day.
I woke up as usual, went for early morning physical exercises and came across the Deputy Camp Commander at Mkushi, Jane Ndhlovu.
Routinely, we took recruits for toyi toyi sessions during which one noted how much time each of them took to complete a given distance.
Fitness was the prime and encouraged quality of a willing guerilla. For some who had read Latin-American class struggles, Ernesto Che Guevara had insisted that a revolutionary ought to be in the best of health at all times.
Che was asthmatic; a challenge that he was always scornful of in his “Bolivian Diaries”.
His continuous lamentations were to the effect that the illness of one cadre did not have to impede the advancement of the other comrades.
The same principle applied to us in battle. A sick comrade would have been a tactical liability.
Thus it had become a normative culture that we woke up and went ahead with the desire of being part of the armed wing of Zapu.
Jane had been listening to some bulletins over her transistor radio when it was crossed into by the frequency of Rhodesian communications equipment.
It felt like a temporary reprieve when the Rhodesian signal was intercepted by Jane’s set.
The message went, “We are bombing FC and hitting FC, over.”
One should have understood the background of the bombings conducted by the Rhodesians in Zambia and Mozambique.
The voice that we heard from Jane’s radio was so clear that there was no reason to doubt the possibility of an attack on Mkushi. As far as I was concerned, she was very articulate in her judgment of the situation.
We could not have doubted what Jane had reported to us.
After all, the word of one’s comrade in Zapu was something to take seriously. There was no reason to dilly-dally.
Looking back, we had among us many who had taken the path of traditional African spiritualism. Their dreams somehow explained possibilities of impending danger.
At one time, I had dreamt of aircraft flying over our camp. The objects which appeared in that dream never looked like real planes. However, the vision was to have meaning later. That meaning was related to what happened at Mkushi on October 19, 1978.
It was all about having an undoubted premonition of death. An individual lives once so there was no need to be hard-headed when such experiences took over.
In one instance, I was awakened by a puff adder that had wriggled next to me. Surprisingly, it was not aggressive and simply went away. We used to encounter such moments at Mkushi and took their spiritual implications seriously.
It would be proper for the reader to have an idea of the situation obtaining in Southern Africa in the ‘70s in order to appreciate its connection to the bombing at Mkushi.
Independent states of Southern and Central Africa had become part of what came to be known as the Frontline States. It was a grouping that was very much pro-independence in Rhodesia and Namibia as well as the dearth of apartheid in South Africa.
On one hand, there were two minority governments that had become perennial regional problems.
These were Ian Smith’s Rhodesia Front administration and presidents Vorster’s and Botha’s apartheid governments. The two were not only threats to Southern Africa, but also to the freedom of majority populations within their domain.
Zambia, Angola, Mozambique, Botswana and Tanzania became a bastion that had to stem the tide of colonial and apartheid forces. The United Nations had imposed sanctions on the two warlike states and that compounded the atmosphere.
And despite the punitive measures, the South Africans and Rhodesians managed to amass massive military gear and were not prepared to let go.
Despite such possibilities, the Rhodesians could not contain the advancing Patriotic Front. Infiltration into Rhodesia covered various areas of the country from Zambezi to Limpopo.
On the other hand, the armoury capability, especially in ZPRA, had reached proportions that inherently threatened Rhodesia and the interests of her allies, South Africa included.
Some Viscount planes had been shot down by ZIPRA’s surface-to-air missile (SAM-7) in September of 1978.
It had even been intimated that Head of Combined Operations Lt-General Peter Walls had resorted to using civilian planes to ferry soldiers to forward bases at Kariba and other places along the Zambezi.
ZiPRA’s operational zones, like the Northern Front that stretched to most of what came to be known as Mashonaland West, had become impassable to Rhodesian armoured troop carriers.
Thus it became necessary to take the option of air-strikes.
World War II had been concluded horrendously when the Americans dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
It almost brought Japan to ruins, and facilitated the surrender of the Japanese Imperial Army. In Vietnam, formerly French Indo-China, the Americans had also applied the same principle in trying to push communists from gaining territory before the ultimate fall of Saigon to the Vietcong.
Thus it was not strange that the Rhodesians had every reason to try and put us down by using similar methods.
At Mkushi, we did not have such complicated weaponry as Zegeus or SAM-7s.
The topmost weapons we could have used for our defence were light machine guns and a handful of rocket-propelled grenades (RPG-7s).
In the face of Rhodesian fire-power, we were tactically disqualified as defenceless.
In my opinion, there was never any reason as to why Rhodesian officers like Colonel Ron Reid Daly had to write about such operations as if they required a high level of strategic planning and thoughtful surveys.
By the way, Col Daly had been the Commander of the Selous Scouts, a force that was meant to operate by copying some irregular tactics so as to handle the guerilla threat at an operational level.
In principle, it was all about attacking us. Yet, we did not have matching capability to defend ourselves.
It was painful.
Even though we had committed ourselves in ZiPRA, it was not about welcoming death with open arms; otherwise there would not have been any need to fight the Ian Smith regime.
Nevertheless, Jane’s interception of the signal indicated clearly that Mkushi had not been mentioned.
But she applied her initiative and ran to advise us as instructors to disperse the trainees from the parade ground. I believed that Jane’s assessment was such that if FC was under aerial fire, it was likely that Mkushi was going to be next.
From then, confusion gripped the camp.
Finah came running and told me that we had to command the rest of the recruits so that they could hide in the surrounding bushes. I was conducting a cross-country class, recording minutes of completion.
Despite that, we were still convinced that Mkushi would not be targeted.
Whilst we were clearing the parade grounds, I spoke to Henrietta and together we proceeded towards the kitchen. The first battalion used to go for lunch at around 11am.
Such an arrangement had been made because there were so many of us to be catered for.
During training, it had to be emphasised that we had to eat for not more than three minutes. Such an instruction was in place partly because of the possibilities of a surprise raid by the enemy.
Naturally, it was within the idea of being alert since guerilla culture required us to always be wary of what the other side could do.
By nature, the Rhodesians were crafty and would not have been worried by a total massacre of us. In the event of mass murder on our part, they would have popped some champagne and congregated around a braai.
I crossed the square in haste with Henrietta, took my Semenov (SKS) rifle and got lunch. By the way, the SKS had also been made in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
Under some highly-urbanised conditions, it was very useful as a sniper’s weapon.
It took only 10 rounds of ammunition, but could not be adapted for automatic fire. In principle, it was like a Soviet WWII relic which proved to be unhelpful on that fateful day.
The atmosphere became hazy; there was turmoil all around us as the appropriate step we were to take was not clear. It was as if the smell of death was all over the place. That made us feel insecure.
As a matter of tradition, we had dug defence pits in which every individual was expected to hide in the event of Rhodesian-perpetrated violence.
We used to rehearse by way of simulated battles against an attacking Rhodesian force. Each ZiPRA cantonment – be it at Mkushi, Membweshi, Mulungushi, MTD, CTT or wherever – had made such facilities for defensive purposes.
At times, trainers shot above us with live ammunition, forcing us to crawl into such dugouts. It was never easy as the bullets whistled over our shoulders.
We had been taught that the projectiles fired in a straight line and, therefore, it was wise to be on ground level as much as possible. All that was in vain because when the Rhodesians pounced, many were killed in the depths of Mkushi.
It was as if they had committed mass suicide by digging themselves into holes of demise.
As I ate, mayhem started.
I had gone all the way to Botswana on foot, crossed Ramakwabane River, taken to Selephi Phikwe; VC in Zambia and finally Mkushi. The time of reckoning had come.
My mother was not near, but the comrades were around. The Rhodesians came with a purpose to destroy the revolutionary morale in Zapu.
My life had been that of troubles all the way, but I was determined that there wasn’t going to be any crying.
As a woman, I had made my choice, and the armed struggle was definitely not going to be a summer picnic.
As a precaution, the Rhodesian jets flew at low altitudes.
The sound of their engines could not be heard above us. I caught sight of what appeared to be an enormous formation of eagles with dark metal wings.
Within no time, explosions began. The Earth shook. I shivered. Bombs fell like boulders, boulders released from Heaven.
It was clear the Rhodesians intended to slay the children of the soil, delay the onset of Zimbabwe’s sovereignty and decimate the firing muscle of Zapu.
That was not going to be.
Our resolve was to live and fight until Rhodesia changed its constitutional and moral outlook to a civil nation called Zimbabwe. We were scattered like flies and left to react based on individually-managed decisions, an outcome which worked in favour of the Rhodes- ians.
