The Sunday Mail
Tjenesani Ntungakwa
The long and arduous journey to a free Zimbabwe was definitely not going to be an endless one.
One day, the chickens would come home to roost.
Each pace towards Independence strengthened the nationalist movement and also raised the stakes.
The British and Americans were closely watching the political dynamics in Africa.
Such was the trend from the end of the WWII and throughout the Cold War.
In early February 1959, US secretary of state John Foster Dulles issued a statement in which he said the Soviet Union was making inroads in Africa at the expense American foreign policy.
The following month, assistant secretary of state for African Affairs Joseph Sattethwaite was pessimistic about the future of a proposed union of Guinea and Ghana on the grounds that it was having some “insuperable differences”.
Towards the end of June 1959, senator John Kennedy, a Democrat candidate for the presidency, suggested an African regional economic plan initiated by independent states in co-operation with certain European countries.
Kennedy chaired the foreign relations committee on African Affairs.
Africa was awash with revolutionary movements that were gaining mileage regardless of their size.
In Namibia, Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique, South Africa and Rhodesia, there was an unstoppable quest for self-rule.
On October 28, 1976, the main session of the Geneva Conference was officially opened by Britain’s ambassador to the UN, Ivor Richrad.
The Zanu delegation was headed by Secretary-General Cde Robert Mugabe, the Zapu team by Cde Joshua Nkomo and the ANC by Bishop Abel Muzorewa. Also there were Ndabaningi Sithole faction of Zanu and Ian Smith’s Rhodesian government.
Richard was in charge of his own ensemble.
Before the Geneva Conference, US secretary of State Henry Kissinger visited several African destinations.
When it came to Rhodesia, the Americans followed British spoor.
The US didn’t want Independent Africa to fall under Soviet influence.
Towards the end of 1974, the Union for the Total Independence of Angola agreed to a ceasefire with Portugal.
The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola followed suit.
An was signed at Alvor, Portugal in January 1975 and a transitional governing council made up of MPLA, Unita and Holden Roberto’s National Front for the Liberation of Angola was to be in place until November 11, the expected Independence Day for the former Portuguese colony.
Its responsibilities would be to organise elections.
As implementation started, South Africa invaded Angola in November 1975.
In the first week of November 1975, Cuban troops landed in Luanda and immediately deployed against the advancing South Africans.
The long arm of US involvement in Africa, found itself in Angola and Kissinger apparently authorised a covert CIA operation.
In December 1975, The New York Times acknowledged the CIA’s presence in Angola.
The US state department said the presence in Angola was based on the need to counter Soviet activities in that part of Africa.
By the end of November 1975, the Cubans and MPLA allies had repulsed the South African Defence Forces at Queve River, about 100 miles south of Luanda. It was for these reasons that Kissinger toured what he considered Africa’s delicate spots before the Geneva Conference of October 1976.
In April and June of 1976, Kissinger flew to West Germany, Switzerland, Lusaka, Dar es Salaam and finally Pretoria.
Ambassador Richard visited the Frontline capitals of Lusaka, Gaborone, Maputo and Dar es Salaam in January 1977.
Geneva came and went without any substantive progress towards majority rule in Southern Rhodesia.
Britain and Ian Smith were unprepared for total transfer of power. The Geneva Conference gave room for the Rhodesian Front to insist on a settlement that was fully cognisant of the Kissinger Plan.
Zanu and Zapu were also wary of the fact that Ivor Richard had conducted some wide consultations with Johannes Vorster and Ian Smith.
The Geneva Conference was adjourned.
From December 24 to 29, 1976, Cde Mugabe went on a consultative outreach in Tanzania.
It was in the course of his visit that he met US ambassador to Tanzania James Spian and his assistant, Herbert Levin on December 25 at Kilimanjaro Hotel.
The Americans spoke of a fund to help an autonomous Republic of Zimbabwe.
The grant would be called the Zimbabwe Development Fund.
Cde Mugabe also spoke with the ambassadors of Algeria, Guinea, Vietnam, Yugoslavia and the Libyan charge d‘affairs.
At the beginning of 1977, the Deputy Publicity Secretary of Zapu in the ANC, Cde Mark Nziramasanga, inserted a New Year’s message to the people of Rhodesia from the party‘s President, Cde Nkomo.
The text appeared in the Rhodesia Herald of January 1, 1977.
Cde Nkomo gave a summary of the Geneva Conference, the failed talks with Ian Smith in March 1976 and also celebrated the birth of the Patriotic Front that same year.
Cde Nkomo said, “The driving force behind the formation of the Patriotic Front was our love for the land of birth. For the love of our country we buried our differences and agreed to work together. This is our real achievement, a milestone in the history of the nationalist movement.”
In a nutshell, the Geneva experience showed Zanu and Zapu they had their hands full in dealing with Western trickery over the Rhodesia question.
The Geneva Conference was followed by Malta I and II in the first half of 1978.
Nothing much came out of these.
Geneva culminated in a frustrating impasse. There was a strong feeling that the British had unilaterally called off the conference, a development which incensed the OAU.
On a continental scale, the fight for freedom in Southern Africa was becoming everybody’s business.
The OAU convened its 28th Ordinary Session in Lusaka from January 24 to February 4, 1977.
President Kaunda delivered the keynote address to the delegates at Mulungushi Hall, lamenting the fact that efforts to resolve pertinent issues in Southern Africa amicably had failed.
He also confirmed the fact that the Anglo-American proposals behind which the OAU had thrown its weight “floundered on the head of Ian Smith”.
“For us Geneva was only an extension of the Liberation War in Zimbabwe,” President Kaunda said.
After everything had been said and done, 1977 was a year of awakening.
The 28th OAU Summit passed a resolution endorsing the Patriotic Front on February 4.
The Liberation Committee affirmed that it was giving assistance and full support for all the fighting cadres of Zimbabwe whether they were based in or outside Rhodesia.
For the sake of progress, Zimbabwean nationalists were to desist from condemning each other.
Finally, the liberation Committee was to find means and ways of ensuring that the armed struggle was intensified.
On a broader scale, 1978 was the year in which confrontations in Southern Africa escalated to an unprecedented magnitude.
Zapu, Zanu, Swapo, Umkhonto we Sizwe and the MPLA government in Angola were in one way or another engaged in massive military deployments against the armies of settler colonialism, apartheid and a brand of post-WWII Eurocentric fascism in Africa.
The mood was fiery and diplomacy had lost its relevance.
The Patriotic Front was a chapter that preceded the Lancaster House Conference in the last quarter of 1979.
By that time, there had been some change to Rhodesia’s political system.
A new and short-lived administration was in place, the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia marriage of settlers and Bishop Muzorewa.
