The Sunday Mail
INFORMATION, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister Senator Monica Mutsvangwa is regarded by many as the effervescent voice of the Zimbabwean Government. However, not many know that she came from humble beginnings and only sheer bravery and hard work made her become the woman she is today. As a teenager, she joined the liberation struggle and survived the massacre at Nyadzonia. Last week our reporter spoke to Sen Mutsvangwa on various aspects of her life, including her experiences during the war and her current ministerial portfolio. Below are excerpts.
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Q: Who is Monica Mutsvangwa née Parirenyatwa?
A: I was born in Gombakomba Village, Zimunya in 1961, currently serve as the Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services and also as the Senator for Zimunya-Chimanimani in Manicaland since 2008. My maiden Cabinet post was Deputy Minister of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services and then Deputy Minister of Economic Planning and Development. Later I also served as Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Services. I hold a Masters of Business Administration from Rutgers University, New Jersey and a Bachelor’s Degree in Marketing from Baruch College, City University of New York. I also hold professional qualifications in travel, public relations and administration. I am married to Ambassador Christopher Mutsvangwa, my Chimurenga wartime fellow Comrade and blessed with four boys who all hold university degrees from various international universities. We take pride in that we paid every cent of our offspring’s education from the proceeds of our business acumen.
I attended Gombakomba Primary School before proceeding to Mutambara High. Due to my academic acumen, my parents wanted placement at St Augustine’s Tsambe for its academic reputation but tragedy struck and my father, who was a policeman, passed on resulting in challenges in our family welfare. My mother had to visit her sister who lived near St Albert’s in Mt Darwin so that I could study there under her oversight as a young girl. During her return trip, she landed into a ghastly sight of self-defeating anti-war propaganda, an army roadblock of displayed slain guerrilla freedom fighters displaced as the battlefield prize of macho racist and settler minority Rhodesian army and their war prowess.
St Albert’s School was out and Mutambara School which was near her maternal home was the fall back. Not long after, the war migrated to Manicaland with a tempestuous ferocity, the Chairman Chitepo -General Tongogara duet had studied the military fiasco of the ZIPRA-ANC conventional warfare in the Whange-Sipolilo incursion.
They learnt their military lessons well and opted for Maoist People’s War strategy of asymmetrical warfare. They deployed freedom fighters initially as political commissar to prep the populace.
The duet approached Eduardo Mondlane and Samora Machel who were now seasoned.
They later were being harassed by interventionist Rhodesian soldiers deployed along the Zambezi River as a Maginot Line. They were gingering the faltering imperial army of fascist Portugal.
The ZANU-FRELIMO alliance was an inspired stroke of fateful strategic genius.
Exhausted Lisbon succumbed to a regime changed through coup of Red Carnation disgruntled colonial expeditionary colonels in 1974. Victorious FRELIMO marched to power in Mozambique in 1975.
This was a magic wand of freedom to the sub-region that had groaned for centuries and decades under onerously repressive and oppressive settler racist minority rule.
In Soweto 1976, bare-handed but fearless school children confronted volleys of apartheid army bullets protest Afrikaner education.
In Zimbabwe, youths chose the more calculated option and started absconding en masse, crossing into free Mozambique. They were long aware of the guerrilla warfare in the North East. Now the whole border, with its mountains as opposed to the treacherous Zambezi River, offered camouflage.
The de riguer badge of my youths of the Samora Machel-Soweto 1976 Uprising was crossing the border to go seek the AK47, train warfare tactics and be deployed back to confront Ian Smith on an even military basis.
Q: How did you join the struggle as a 15-year-old?
A: In 1976 I joined that bandwagon with my classmates. My parents came to collect my school trunk long after I had been received by kind, helpful and disciplined FRELIMO soldiers of free Mozambique.
I was doing form three and together with my three friends — Veronica Chigumira, Winet Mupita and Sophia Munakandafa — we left, but it was not an easy decision to take. My enrolling for secondary school was a big achievement for my widowed mother but Smith was very ruthless and having declared that “never in a thousand years will a black man ever rule this country,” we felt the need to liberate ourselves. At Mutambara, a lot of young girls and boys had left in 1975 and 1976 so we also left. We just told ourselves that we would simply walk to the east, in the direction of Mozambique hoping to get to the boarder and get the help of Frelimo soldiers. We had not seen any guerrillas at the school, but we had heard a number of many others who had left before us so it was during lunch hour and I just put one dress under my school uniform and we left.
We walked up and down the mountains for hours, I recall at one point when we thought we had reached the border only to be shocked to discover that it was in fact Nyambeya and the soldiers we had seen from afar were actually Rhodesian soldiers and we had to take another direction to ensure we were not spotted. By around 8-9 in the evening we then got to the border where we then met the Frelimo soldiers. They took us into their barracks and the following day they walked us into Mozambique. We walked for the whole day and that is when they actually told us that we had come for war. I remember how we had developed blisters all over our feet when we got to Villa-Peri and later Nyadzonia Camp which became our new home. It was already teeming with thousands of refugees of a similarly eager disposition and it is there where I adopted the name Chido Chimurenga.
Q: Tell us about the experience at Nyadzonia, where were you when the massacre at the camp happened?
A: It was crowded, the living conditions were appalling, and there was scant food if at all. The rookie Mozambique government emerging from a debilitating war had no matching welfare capacity. The more endowed powers of the West were not that haste in helping the burgeoning refugee crisis, their hearts and minds were with their settler white minority kith and kin rulers of European stock. Yet all the international stinginess could not flag down the morale of the intrepid youths who had sworn ‘freedom or death’ in their undaunted spirit. The war had resumed in earnest as of January 1976.
Terrified and panicky, racist Rhodesia lost no time to degenerate into a genocidal mindset of massacres and war crimes. August 1976, two months into Nyadzonia Camp, a column of Rhodesian soldiers entered the camp disguised as FRELIMO soldiers. They baited the refugees with Morrison Nyathi also known as Levy Mandeya, a captured and turned ZANLA guerrilla. The parade was turned into a massacre ground of unsuspecting refugees.
It was my first time hearing gun shots and see people being shot. I survived that terrible attack by dint of discretionary judgement. I did not rush to the death trucks, I was a recent arrival. Many others had been there for a year or longer, I did not fancy my success jumping the queue to go for military training to Nachingweya that fast.
Not so lucky for my eager classmate, she rushed into a volley of deadly enemy firepower and the human cull was over 3 000 souls. The horrified International community condemned Rhodesia, even apartheid South Africa was forced to distance itself from the excess of its racist ally, it withdrew its military support.
On discovery of the ongoing carnage, I turned and escaped into the forest deeper into Mozambique. I hit the Pungwe which was still in full floor from the steep Nyanga catchment. I saw many terrified comrades drown as they dared the fast waters.
Local villagers had strung a rope across, Comrade Casablanca came to my aide and we safely made it across. The new camp was Doeroi which was a make shift. In no time it became a worse cesspit of misery and deprivation, the Rhodesian racists lost no time in aggravating the depravity through biological warfare and contaminating the Doeroi stream.
Each day we were burying up to 60 bodies.
Q: When did you first meet your husband, was it at the Nyadzonia?
A: I first saw Cde Che Muchazvirega, also known as Christopher Mutsvangwa at Doeroi in 1976. Having recovered from battlefield wounds, he had proceeded to graduate as a political commissar of Chitepo School of Ideology. He was the Camp Political Commissar teaching political orientation.
Q: So coming to the present day. You have a very hectic schedule. How do you balance office and private life?
A: I have always been a politician so what I know best in my life is working for the people. My office brings all my talents which are tolerance, embracing everyone despite what political background the person is coming from. I believe in harmony and humility.
Q: What is your assessment of our media fraternity?
A: I have no grudge with any media institutions, I respect everyone’s thinking and the best way to move forward as a country is to discuss your differences and come up with what is best for the country to progress. Working for the Second Republic, the President has always said he does not want to leave anyone behind and that is what we are taking a leaf from as a ministry.
We want as a ministry to ensure that everyone comes on board, carrying our mandate of informing, educating and entertaining our people without leaving anyone behind.
Under the New Dispensation, despite the fact that we were among the first African countries to have a television, Zimbabwe still has one channel so and for the first time, we have licensed six commercial TVs, 10 community radios and made sure universities are not left behind by also giving them compass radio licenses.
This is being done to make sure access to information is to everyone. We will soon be rolling out private television channels, they should be able to roll-out in 18 months which they are mandated to. There is going to be competition and diversity. Community radios will also help all communities to hear and understand about the developmental projects that the Government is doing.
Q: How has been your experience serving under the two Republics?
A: Under the First Republic, Zimbabwe was not open for business. People were not very free to exercise their thinking and bring on board what they thought on how the country should be run. The best thing that has happened with the Second Republic is that when you are running a Ministry, you exercise it without fear or favour knowing you have a supporting Head of State who gives you room to exercise your responsibility without fear.
There has been a lot of implementation in the Second Republic which was not really the case back then. There were some good policies but very little implementation and the Second Republic has achieved a lot in implementation.
Women and the youth empowerment have been implemented, with the policy of establishing banks for these groups. The New Dispensation has made sure that they capitalise the banks and carry out the mandate to empower women and youth.
In the First Republic there was hardly road rehabilitation, infrastructure developments, among other developments because we concentrated more on that we were under sanctions and as such we could not get good investors, there are no loans from the World Bank or IMF but in the Second Republic, the President has gone all out to pluck out corruption and ensure that the domestic mobilisation of funding is done at a high level. We have a lot of development being done with no investors, which means there was a lot of money which we could not really pinpoint what it was doing during the First Republic.
Q: What is your take on Government’s engagement and re-engagement programme?
A: Under, the First Republic it was still about blaming the West but now with the Second Republic we are working our way amidst it all and we are happy, we are seeing the progress that is being made. The President has gone all out to ensure Zimbabwe progresses as a nation and we, across ministries embrace that.
