The Sunday Mail
This week, we publish the last part of an interview conducted by our Deputy News Editor Levi Mukarati with Cde Enock Sithole, commander of the Crocodile Commandos, famous for killing the first white man in Melsetter. The attack signalled direct confrontation against white colonial rule. Cde Sithole gives a narration of how they killed the white man as well as his disappointments with life in the post independent Zimbabwe.
Q: How did you kill the white man and who amongst you did it?
A: We had barricaded the road with huge boulders about three kilometres to the Skyline Junction where the road led to either Umtali or Birchenough.
We did not do it at the junction because the place attracted a lot of movement and we feared our operation would be jeopardised. When the vehicle drove towards the rock barricades, it stopped because the rocks were huge and there was no way it could pass over them.
The driver of the car, who was white, immediately got out and at first stood near the vehicle leaning against its open door whilst talking to another person inside. He was probably surprised and wondering how such huge rocks could have ended up on the middle of the road.
The white man then started walking towards the rocks, probably to remove them and gain access. Since we had lined up in the bush along the road, I whistled softly, which was our code to take action; and immediately, we came out of our cover targeting the victim.
We pretended to be inquiring on what had happened. The man who we later knew was called (Petrus Johannes Andries) Oberholzer began shouting at us. During those days, whites regarded themselves as superior and as blacks were just some Kaffirs they could kick around.
So the white man’s immediate reaction was to shout insults at us as we approached him. He demanded to know ‘why the bloody hell, we had blocked the road’. We did not give him a chance to understand what was going on and started attacking him. He tried to fight back.
As he tried to defend himself, we heard him call to the people in the vehicle to lock themselves inside.
The people in the vehicle had already started to scream as we began attacking this white man. The screams were that of his wife and child.
Immediately after the screams, Mapotsa (erroneously referred to as Mapocha last week) and Masunda approached the vehicle, targeting the remaining occupants. One of the front widows of the passenger side was open, thereby exposing the woman who was in the seat. Mapotsa and Masunda went straight to the passenger side and tried to smear some petrol inside the vehicle.
The intention was to douse the vehicle with petrol and set it on fire.
The two comrades later told us that the woman was very combative and kept pushing away the petrol bottle as they tried to pour it into the vehicle.
In the end they had to hurriedly attack her in the face during the fracas.
As for ourselves, we managed to overpower the white man, sending him to the ground where he was stabbed with an okapi knife a few times on the chest before it was left lodged there.
Q: Who exactly stabbed this white man and what weapons did you use to carry out this attack?
A: If I remember well, it was Dhlamini. You can imagine the urgency with conducting such an operation, killing a white man, it was unheard of.
It was the four of us, myself, One from China, Dhlamini and Mlambo, hitting various parts of the body to accomplish our mission in the shortest possible time. There were some fears associated with that act, so we had to be brave and fast.
But I think it was Dhlamini who used his okapi knife to stab the white man in the chest. Also you should understand that this act was committed less than two months after the Gwelo Congress where Sithole said use everything you have to drive out the whites.
He said take your hoes, axes, picks, shovels, bows and arrows, guns, knobkerries and other weapons. Myself I had a knobkerrie, knife and small arrow during this attack. The instructions were to kill the whites and sabotage key infrastructure such as digging up roads or vandalising electricity lines.
But our first task was to kill.
Q: So this attack was just random, you had not undergone any specialised training?
A: At that time, specialised military training, no. But I was to later train in the 1970s in Tanzania and then Cuba.
Q: Going back to the attack on the white man, at what point did you stop and what else did you do whilst still on the scene?
A: When I saw that the man was no longer moving, I stepped aside, but the other comrades continued hitting him with various objects to make sure he was dead.
Since we had carefully planned our mission, I had written a couple of messages on small pieces of paper which we wanted to leave on all scenes to warn the whites of what was to come their way. I took out one of the note with a message that read: ‘This is the confrontation of the Crocodile Gang, whatever we catch will not be left alive. We will fight until all white settlers have gone and our land returned. Viva Chimurenga.’ I had underlined Viva Chimurenga to emphasise that we had declared war.
I took out a small bottle and extracted some blood from the white man that had begun to clot on his shirt.
I was fulfilling the instruction we had been given by the spirit medium. That is the blood I said earlier was used by the spirit medium to conduct some ceremony under a tree in Chimanimani which today needs to be concluded.
Q: But how exactly did you leave the scene, did you just walk away, like that?
A: As Mapotsa and Masunda battled with the screaming woman, we noticed a beam of lights from a vehicle approaching, that is when we all fled into the bush.
Immediately after our operation, the Special Branch issued an alert. We found a place to rest on the Biriwiri Valley and then proceeded to the spirit medium that night. After the ceremony, we spread out because it was risky to move as a unit. But the news of the killing had spread as far as Salisbury and by morning after the killing, there were security reinforcements, the Special Branch was in the area trailing us.
Q: With the Special Branch on your trail, what happened next?
A: After the attack we spread out, but Dhlamini was tracked and arrested in Chipinge, a day after the killing. Mlambo was arrested just after crossing into Mozambique after two days. Masunda was captured at his home in Bikita as he collected some books to join us en-route to Botswana.
I was with Mapotsa and One from China and we managed to sneak out of the area, heading for Botswana via Buhera.
However, we were captured at a gum tree plantation in Chivhu. We all found ourselves back at Nyanyadzi police.
Other suspects had also been rounded and these included Sawana, (the elder brother to Chubby Sawana who was part of the Chinhoyi Seven liberation fighters), Khombo, Makuwaza, Shasha, Mughidho and his young brother Mushati, Mukome, Ndangana, Mutezo and others.
We were all subject to serious torture except for Khombo because he was a local businessman and knew a lot of local whites.
Q: Torture, how did you handle it?
A: At one time, my hands were tied together with both legs. I was assaulted in that position and taken into a helicopter.
The man leading the torture was a Special Branch officer based at Nyanyadzi. He was called Denser.
In the helicopter, they slid another rope below the one binding my hands and legs and tied it. I was tossed off the helicopter.
I thought this was the end because what was holding me was just the tightness of the rope used to tie my hands and legs together.
After what seemed like eternity, they lifted me back into the helicopter, demanding answers to the killing of the white man.
I denied any involvement in the killing and said I was in Buhera at the time of his death.
Then on another day, Denser took me in a Land Rover vehicle from Nyanyadzi, passed Birchenough Bridge and then we arrived at Deure.
The beatings were too much and I took out some money that I had to hand it over to Denser.
I said, “Mr Denser please take this money, I can no longer feel anything. My body has become numb from your beatings. This money is to buy your ammunition so that you shoot me and let me die here.”
It was at that moment that Denser said he was convinced I had not taken part in Oberholzer’s killing. I bled from the nose, ears and mouth from the torture.
Later, Mlambo, Dhlamini and Masunda were sentenced to death before being hanged. I was to be taken to Whawha Prison, together with One from China and Mapotsa, where I was between 1964 and 1966.
In 1966, we broke out of the prison. We escaped from Whawha Prison with Padera and Madyangove. Padera had a huge body and I would constantly pull him to keep up the pace, warning him that if he failed to run and got caught, that would be his end.
I went underground for some time, but remained active in politics in the Nyanyadzi, Chimanimani and Birchenough area. I became one of Ndabaningi Sithole’s close allies and he used to send us, with Steven Mutetwa, to Mozambique to deliver messages to the then FRELIMO President Eduardo Modlane.
Q: You earlier mentioned training in Tanzania and Cuba, can you shed more light on that?
A: I went for training in Tanzania and then Cuba and I remember returning in 1976 after the Nyadzonia massacre in August of that year. We helped bury some of the victims.
It was a painful sight of people’s skulls in the water that had turned to fish nests. This was after Morrison Nyathi had sold out to the whites.
These people dying for the country, please don’t play with the sacrifice of these people.
But I had comfort in that we were fighting for the land and we now have the land.
The liberation struggle was not easy. We could go without food and had to map survival tactics. At one time we killed a python and ate it raw because we were facing starvation in the bush.
This was to ensure we fight for the freedom of this country. Look at me now, do I look like one of the contributors of the freedom?
Look at the six hectare farm that I got, after serious lobbying, there is no one producing on that land. It is an area of tall trees and grass because I do not have the means to work on it.
Nothing. There is no hope, it pains to see others splashing their wealth when I suffer like this.
I did not even get my demobilisation money, I continue to live in poverty?
If I recall the torture I was subjected to after being caught, I feel hurt.
I even feel tears building in my eyes. This is because when I look at my life now, it is like that of a pauper.
I live in two rooms without electricity in one of the farm compound houses. I have a few clothes, I struggle to carry water from the nearest water source to bath.
But there are those who are clever, they drive in posh cars and have lots of properties.
For me there is no hope in life. It pains to see them driving in cars that were bought as a result of other people’s sweat.
The situation is just like that of a hunter, when a hunter and his dogs chase after an antelope. After a long chase, another person just appears from nowhere to kill it and takes away all the meat. How does it feel going back home empty handed to pluck out thorns from your feet?
That is what is happening to us and it is very bad. What do I possess here? Nothing.
I am a war commander myself. I have a bullet scar on my head, all to free this country.
Do you think we also did not want to go to school like what others were doing during the war?
Q: What then happened to you after independence?
A: After independence I went to Goromonzi, Chikwaka Assembly Point. My children and brother had been looking for me after the war and they found me there. It was devastating to be told that my wife had died during my absence in the war. But I later remarried and have a son called Hondo. He is 18 years old now and he is the only one I stay with. I have six children in total but they are struggling with their lives and families elsewhere.
