THE SOUL OF THE REVOLUTION
Through superiority of arms you can defeat an ill-equipped adversary. But through superiority of arms you cannot defeat entrenched ideological beliefs. Superior weapons can determine the outcome of battles, but not necessarily define the final outcome of a war. Chimurenga Chekutanga (the first popular war of resistance – 1893 to 1896) was ruthlessly quashed by a better equipped colonial army. The inspirational leaders of that resistance, mbuya Nehanda and sekuru Kaguvi, among others, were captured and hanged. However, the victory of the colonialists was not sufficient to destroy the spirit or ideas that the heroes of the first war of resistance espoused and embodied. This can be borne out by the vindication of the prophetic words of mbuya Nehanda – “You have killed me, but my bones shall arise to inspire the struggle.” Almost seventy years after her death, her prophetic words inspired new generations to continue the struggle for which she and other heroes of the First Chimurenga had selflessly sacrificed their lives. What the colonialists had succeeded in doing was to destroy the visible flesh, but not the invisible spirit.
When Chimurenga Chechipiri (the second popular war of resistance) was launched in 1966 at the battle of Sinoia (now Chinhoyi), seven gallant ZANLA fighters lost their lives. Their courage and sacrifice was not in vain. The battle exposed the tactical inadequacy of relying too heavily upon arms, an area in which the colonists enjoyed overwhelming advantage over the guerrillas. Those of our early commanders, like Comrade Josiah Magama Tongogara, who went to train in guerrilla tactics in China, borrowed a lesson from the Chinese tactical concept of waging a successful guerrilla campaign which defined ‘winning the hearts and minds’ of the people as a critical factor. An analogy of this new approach was to liken the relationship of the fighters and the masses to the relationship between fish and water. If one was to separate the fish (fighters) from the water (masses), the fish would, as an inevitable consequence, die.
After the launch of the Second Chimurenga, ZANU spent the next six years cultivating its relationship with the masses through a deliberate and purposeful programme of politicisation. A head-on confrontation with the enemy became subordinated to the political programme.
Politics was thus seen as the soul without which our armed struggle would find it difficult to succeed. For those who wanted to regard the gun as the sole instrument of bringing about freedom and independence, it was stressed that this was a fallacy. Indeed, when we opted for revolutionary armed struggle we had declared that independence grows out of the barrel of a gun. Through practical application of this doctrine, we realised that a revolutionary gun must be anchored on a political base.
A gun is a lifeless object that gains its life from the person using it. If a person using a gun has a criminal intent, then that gun will be used to commit criminal acts. Conversely, if the holder of a gun is enthused with revolutionary purpose, the life he breathes into the gun will fulfil a just purpose. Therefore, the very same gun can be used in the furtherance of a just cause, or to undermine justice, or to fulfil the two conflicting goals, depending on who breathes life into it at a given time. Comrade Mugabe aptly stated “the justice of our cause is the justice of our gun. Our fight is just because our cause is just. And because our cause is just, our fight is just.” There lay the difference between ours and the enemy’s fight. Whereas our cause was for justice and equality, that of the enemy was for the furtherance of the suppression and oppression of the majority by a tiny white minority.
Having recognized the essentiality of a people-driven and politically sanitised revolution, ZANLA infused political orientation into every phase and aspect of its struggle.
Whether one joined the liberation armed struggle through the route of a refugee camp, or went directly to a guerrilla training camp, it was imperative that everyone had to crawl before learning to walk. In other words, go through the process of purifying the mind before arming the body, in that order. Political orientation was definitively identified as the engine or soul without which the armed struggle would fail to take root and would founder.
Different approaches used to deliver the political message included slogans, songs, and political orientation classes. These were complemented by codes of discipline every comrade was expected to uphold and project.
Through the instrument of slogans we acclaimed our President, venerated those leaders who solidly supported our armed struggle, chastised our enemies, and expressed our hopes and aspirations. ‘Long live Comrade Mugabe’ and ‘Down with imperialism’ were common and popular slogans. We never, as a matter of policy, glorified through slogans any of our living comrades, irrespective of what position they held in the party (ZANU) or within the ranks of the fighting forces (ZANLA), except for our president. In the ‘Long live’ bracket were leaders like President Samora Machel, President Julius Nyerere, and Chairman Colonel Mengishtu Haile Mariam. The ‘Down with’ bracket lumped the likes of Smith and Botha, with whom we were locked in direct combat; Nyathi, a traitor who defected from our struggle and caused the deaths of hundreds of our comrades at Nyadzonya refugee camp; Sithole, Muzorewa, and Chirau – quislings and renegades who joined the Smith bandwagon in an internal settlement designed to derail and undermine the revolutionary armed struggle; and even Dr Kenneth Kaunda, President of Zambia, whom we accused of complicity in the assassination of Comrade Herbert Chitepo by the Rhodesian regime, and of using that assassination as a pretext for arresting the ZANU/ZANLA leadership on trumped up charges.
Wherever and whenever opportunity availed itself, slogans were routinely used until they became second nature to a guerrilla’s character and way of life. Just to approach a commander, whether he/she was in a group or alone, it was obligatory to announce your approach by the slogan ‘Pamberi’, meaning ‘forward’, and the commander or most senior commander in a group always responded, ‘Ne-Chimurenga’, meaning ‘with the struggle.’ Not to do this was an offence that attracted punishment. Also, wherever two or more comrades were gathered, they would know who was the most senior. When a more senior commander walked towards the group, the one most senior in the group would order the others to attention and salute the approaching senior commander.
Slogans were also used as evening passwords to differentiate friend from foe. At the last parade gathering of the day, the passwords for the approaching evening were disclosed. During the evening, the first to detect a movement issued a challenge, and the one challenged gave a response. Both the challenge and response had to correspond to the announced passwords for the evening. For instance one could challenge as follows, Pasi meaning, ‘Down’. The respondent would answer back or complete the slogan, naMuzorewa meaning, ‘with Muzorewa,’ if those were the agreed passwords for the evening. Failure to give the correct response immediately triggered suspicion that the person challenged was an enemy intruder and, in such event, laid down precautionary measures had to be taken. The same passwords could not be used on two or more consecutive evenings.
Slogans were also used to teach right from wrong. If for instance you were caught stealing or selling donated goods, more often than not you would be lashed at the parade ground in front of everyone else. After flogging you were expected to shout slogans along these lines, ‘Forward with the struggle’… ‘Down with stealing.’ In making the slogans your countenance was not to betray anger or excessive pain, otherwise the punishment would be immediately repeated. The lesson to be learned was that any punishment meted out to comrades was not an act of barbarity but of love, intended to reform the recalcitrant comrades.
Songs were a dynamic means to entertain and educate our fighters and our masses; to express sorrow and anguish for our losses and misfortunes; to deride and belittle our foes; and to eulogise our brave masses, our leaders and those that supported our struggle, and our fallen heroes. Whatever objective the songs were meant to achieve, they all had an underlying and serious political message to impart. The effectiveness of songs as an educational tool could be equated with, and was complementary to, the use of slogans.
In the refugee and training camps, in the operational areas and wherever comrades were gathered, songs were a source of inspiration. Through songs, like our slogans, we paid tribute to our fallen heroes and expressed our abomination for traitors, renegades, and quislings. Our songs eulogised those who supported our struggle and we unequivocally proclaimed the kind of political system based on socialist principles we wanted to establish in a new Zimbabwe. We sang our condemnation and utter rejection of the capitalist/imperialist doctrine espoused and practised by the colonialists.
We sang about the high moral values we wanted our forces to uphold and be judged by. Above all, we sang our praise for Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, our revered and principled leader who proved to be the undisputed inspiration of the ‘Second Chimurenga’.
The ‘Voice of Zimbabwe’ broadcast from Maputo was surreptitiously tuned to and proved immensely popular amongst our Zimbabwean masses. Through songs and commentaries we were able to highlight the iniquities of the Rhodesian regime and to project a most favourable picture of our struggle and what it sought to achieve. Most of our songs took the tunes of church songs. Zimbabweans being a predominantly Christian society were endeared to the Christian-sounding revolutionary melodies. Through revolutionary songs our masses were guided to shun the machinations of the Rhodesian regime which wanted them to accept half-baked measures that gave the illusion of independence while retaining real power in the hands of the white minority.
When I was appointed Chief Representative of ZANU to Socialist Ethiopia, we began broadcasting radio messages and playing revolutionary songs from Addis Ababa on similar lines to the ‘Voice of Zimbabwe’ in Maputo. At the time of independence our broadcasts from Addis Ababa had a sizeable listenership, though not comparable to that enjoyed by our sister broadcasts in Maputo.
On the other hand, political orientation had a dominant impact on our liberation armed struggle and fell into four main categories – the pouring out of National Grievances, understanding the history of the Party, the study and countering of the changing enemy tactics, and viewing the struggle in the broader context of a class struggle.
To provide a firm foundation for revolutionary consciousness, the logical and preferred genesis of our political orientation was the deeper understanding of the national grievances. Our political commissars were skillfully trained to walk the cadres through the intricate maze of grievances against the settler regime that constituted the propelling reason for their decision to join the revolutionary armed struggle.
Whether one joined the armed struggle through forced recruitment or by one’s own volition, or even as a fugitive from justice, the bottom line was that the colonial regime was ultimately responsibile for the resultant but courageous choice by each and every comrade or refugee, to opt for the armed struggle. Some of those who were thieves or murderers were driven to such extremities because the repressive regime in Rhodesia denied them education, employment and human dignity. Others, who through non-violent means tried to have the oppressive and segregated system of government reformed, were ruthlessly thrown into prisons or detention camps and even killed without any recourse to the tenets of natural justice or the protections of the international justice systems. Those who were born black were condemned to a life of servitude. Equally, those who were born white were ordained into the earthly ‘Kingdom of Heaven’. The role of the settler regime was to ensure that the gulf between these destinies remained unbridgeable.
The cadres learned how through pieces of legislation and brute force the black majority were dispossessed of their land, denied access to areas reserved for whites, barred from a universal right to vote, and allowed limited educational opportunities, just enough to serve white interests. Every cadre was encouraged to recount his or her own grievances against the white settler regime led by Ian Douglas Smith.
Listening to the myriad examples of individual grievances against the Smith regime was like listening to confessions before the priest. After the recruits or refugees had bared themselves, the political commissars would assume the priestly role of pardoning all those who chose to join the armed struggle for any transgressions, no matter how grave or horrendous, including those committed against one’s own, as long as they were committed in colonial Rhodesia.
By the same token, all deaths resulting from natural causes or enemy action; deficiencies in supplies of food, clothing and medicines; any diseases or misfortunes occurring in all our bases, including refugee camps and operational areas; were all blamed on the Rhodesian regime.
After having been cleansed, one was expected to uphold high moral values and to follow a very strict code of discipline. The biblical ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’ was strictly observed, to the extent that even pointing a wooden replica of a gun towards a comrade was regarded as a serious transgression.
All the comrades had a responsibility to articulate the National Grievances and to ensure that the masses understood that choosing to join the liberation armed struggle was not an act of adventurism or bravado, but a purposeful desire to rid our country of a repressive and cruel colonial monster for the betterment of every Zimbabwean.
In our orientation classes we highlighted the supremacy of the party (ZANU) over its military wing, ZANLA. We emphasised that it is politics that leads the gun, and not vice versa. It was thus necessary that all ZANLA cadres got an historical perspective about the evolution of politics in Rhodesia that led to the formation of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and what differentiated ZANU from other political parties.
Comrade President Mugabe was our mentor, political strategist and orator par excellence. His every speech and every interview shaped the direction of our political consciousness and became the resource pool of our political thinking. We saw the ugliness of capitalist exploitation through his eyes. We began to perceive things through his mind. The Mugabe that refused to be treated as a second class citizen, that showed courage in the face of adversities, and that was totally committed to the cause for freedom and justice for all, was born in every one of us. The rebel in him became the rebel in us.
The Soul of the Revolution thus drew inspiration from, and was nourished by, the thinking and teachings of the principled President of ZANU and Commander-in-Chief of ZANLA forces, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe. I cannot do better in this chapter than sometimes giving a verbatim account of the teachings of my inspirational guru.*
In the history of our country we began by explaining how a Briton named Cecil John Rhodes is credited for his role in expanding British imperial influence to many parts of Africa. Rhodes succeeded in claiming for the British the territory that is present day Zimbabwe. Armed with a British royal charter, he hoisted the British flag on our soil on 12 September 1890. This flagrant act of aggression, the subsequent land grabbing, gold speculation and capital investment, imported into the country new dynamics of conflict that from the very outset created sharply antagonistic contradictions. In recognition of his colonial achievements the territory was named after him.
The trend had hardly begun towards the inevitable creation of a class structure when, firstly in 1893 the Ndebele people, and secondly in 1896 to 1897 the whole Shona/Ndebele community, rose up in arms to expel the enemy and liberate the fatherland. When in 1896 the settlers were on the verge of defeat, Britain hurriedly sent reinforcements to sustain its newly established colonial system, and our people suffered military defeat. British colonialism, through the settler community, had gained a new lease of life by usurping our people’s right to sovereignty and independence.
The main objective of land occupation was economic. The capital sponsored bourgeoisie emerged economically, politically and socially as the dominant class above the oppressed and exploited working class. The creation of a new civil administration in the context of the establishment of a new political dispensation, based on the monopoly of power by the settler community, the forcible acquisition of land by the settlers, and the entrepreneurial pursuits of mining, agriculture, trade and commerce, ushered in a matrix of antithetical relations. For ninety years, succeeding colonial administrations projected, protected and prolonged British interests by any means, including brute force and naked aggression.
Cadres were then taken back to the era of reformist politics in Rhodesia to show that struggles for national liberation can operate to defeat their own objectives, unless they are properly organised and properly led. The early nationalist movements, such as the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress and the British Voice Association, lacked, firstly, the sound basis of well-defined principles and objectives. Secondly, they lacked committed and courageous leadership. Thirdly, they had no effective methods of purposefully appealing to, and mobilising the masses; and fourthly they were devoid of a sound ideology. They were never a real link between the nationalist uprising of 1896-1897, which aimed at the overthrow of the then newly established British South Africa Company (BSAC) regime, for they aimed at the correction of wrongs by praying and appealing to the violent wrong-doer without either the means of violence or the intention to overthrow him.
The leaders of these organisations thus never really fully appreciated the demands of the situation, nor did they feel the same intensity of the burden resting on them as Nehanda and others felt in 1896. They felt overwhelmed by the national experience of defeat and subjection to the settler usurpers. They did what, within the limits of their comprehension and the circumstances of the moment, was possible. And yet, even that which they judged as possible translated itself into the impossible, and the grievances they had sought to remedy – such as land shortage, forcible ejection from acquired land, meagre wages, poor accommodation in industrial areas, etc. – received but little palliative correction. The major grievances went unheeded by the ruling white dynasty.
The struggles of other nations, such as those of the Congress Party of India (up to 1948), the Convention People’s Party of Ghana (up to 1957), Algeria and Kenya, and the granting of independence to several African countries by 1962; plus the existence of well-organised and well-directed nationalist movements like the African National Congress (ANC) and Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) of South Africa, the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in Zambia and the Malawi Congress Party in Malawi, did not go unnoticed. The Zimbabwean nationalists found ripe circumstances for the launching of an effective nationalist movement espousing well-defined principles and objectives and with a leadership at the time predominantly, though not wholly, clear-minded and courageous.
Thus, when the ANC was launched in 1957, there was an appreciable mobilisation of people in certain urban and rural areas of the country, but the approach was not very removed from remedial or reformist politics. However, with the creation of the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1960, the nationalist movement, for the first time in the country’s history, fought for the change of system of government. The leadership of the NDP in their discharge of the burden of history, effectively mobilised people towards the acquisition of political power, and weaned them off the idea of seeking the mere correction of their grievances. They clearly stated their ultimate political objective as ‘majority rule,’ and thus organised strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, sit-ins and industrial sabotage in 1960–1961 in pursuance of this objective.
Like the ANC, the NDP failed to comprehend the requirements of the situation in terms of the correct method of struggle. Its resort to strikes, boycotts, demonstrations, etc., was not intended to overthrow the settler regime but rather to put pressure upon both the British government and the settler regime to democratise the parliamentary system and its franchise, leading to majority rule. Whilst this type of struggle succeeded in Malawi and Zambia, as indeed it did in Ghana and several other African countries, it just could not work in Rhodesia and South Africa where bigoted, racist, settler communities having acquired self rule, in respect of whites in Rhodesia in 1923, and independence in respect of South African whites in 1910, were pledged to wage armed resistance against any change undermining their position.
The realisation that an oppressive bourgeoisie that sustains itself and maintains its exploitative civil and socio-economic structures by armed force can only be overthrown by armed force employed as an instrument of the broad masses, had not dawned upon the NDP leadership and neither did it upon the leadership of ZAPU of 1961–1963. True, the burden of struggle yielded by history was felt. True, nationalist goals were clearly defined and on the basis of salient principles. True, the method of struggle was defined and pursued on the basis of sabotage and violence, though limited only to economic institutions and structures. True, cadres were sent for military training. And yet, the immediate objective was never to overthrow settler imperialism by force, but rather to create persuasive pressures capable of making Britain act in convening a constitutional conference to negotiate an agreement based on majority rule.
ZANU, an offshoot from ZAPU, was born out of the realisation that negotiations, strikes and all other forms of protest and resistance pursued by preceding political parties could not speedily advance the cherished goal of independence on the basis of universal adult suffrage. The youthful and enlightened leadership of ZANU envisioned the gun as the instrument through which the aggressive and repugnant system of oppression by the settler colonial regime in Rhodesia could be annihilated, rather than reformed.
With the launching of the armed struggle by ZANU in April 1966, and also by ZAPU later that year, and the improvement in guerrilla warfare strategy and tactics by ZANU in 1972, there occurred a transformation in the evaluation of, not only the methods of struggle, but also in the appreciation that power could only transfer with the total overthrow of the enemy, or with the advent of his abject surrender.
In the orientation related to the history of ZANU, we highlighted the leadership structure of the party in order to explain and justify the decision to choose Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe as the logical successor to Ndabaningi Sithole, the first ZANU President, who was disowned by the fighting forces for reneging on the armed struggle. Since the Vice President of ZANU, Comrade Leopold Takawira, had died in enemy detention, the third most senior leader, according to the hierarchical pyramid of ZANU, was its Secretary General, Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe. It was logical, therefore, that he should fill the vacuum created by the suspension and consequent dismissal of Sithole from ZANU.
The next stage of our orientation involved the study of the psychological tactics the enemy used and refined in order to frustrate the successful execution of our struggle. It was intended, through this phase of orientation, that every possible ploy employed by the enemy in order to demoralise our forces and defeat our cause, be anticipated, identified and exposed, or countered by both our fighters and the masses at home. The orientation had to be responsive to the situation on the ground and quickly adapt to the changing enemy tactics.
Numerous attacks were conducted targeting guerrilla and refugee positions, both at home and in neighbouring countries, that provided sanctuary and bases for training and from which attacks against the regime in Rhodesia were launched. The attacks were aimed at neutralising guerrilla targets before deployment into operational areas could occur. They were also meant to induce a sense of insecurity and hopelessness in the minds of refugees and trainee fighters.
Inside Rhodesia itself, the masses were shepherded into concentration camps, called ‘Protected Villages*’, in order to break the fish and water relationship between the masses and the fighters. At the same time Selous Scouts† were used to impersonate our fighters and to commit atrocities against the masses with the objective of painting our forces with the brush of being real terrorists without regard for life and bent on terrorising innocent civilians.
When the above desperate measures failed to stem the tide of guerrilla successes, the regime attempted to court some within the ranks of ZANU or ZAPU, or their respective military wings, into denouncing the armed struggle or to cut deals with the regime so as to sow disunity within the ranks of those who had chosen armed struggle as the instrument for achieving freedom and independence. In this regard, lucrative offers of money and improved status were offered to those of our forces who opted out of the risky and hazardous life of struggle. When these inducements were largely rebuffed, the regime resorted to the use of various forms of poisoning, a practise proscribed by international conventions.
When I was appointed the Acting Director for Politics in ZANLA it was at a time when the so called ‘internal settlement’ – the charade that power was being transferred to the black majority – was switching into high gear. Every trick in the book was used to woo guerrillas and the masses alike into accepting the façade so skillfully engineered by the Rhodesians in concert with the British that gave the illusion of a power transfer. The reality on the ground was that power was merely being transfered from a white Smith to a black puppet Smith (Muzorewa) with the original Smith continuing to pull the strings. That could be no cause for celebration. Huge cash benefits, beautiful mansions (even in white residential areas), elegant and prestigious cars, etc. were being promised to those guerrillas who agreed to lay down arms.
As Director for Politics my urgent task, therefore, was to study and interpret the significance of all these developments and come up with a blueprint to counter the enemy’s machinations.
The attack on our Headquarters at Chimoio on 23 November 1977 occurred when we were in the middle of designing such a blueprint. That task was continued and concluded on 4 June 1978, six and a half months after the attack.
The final phase of our political orientation was to view our revolutionary armed struggle in the broader context of a class struggle. This, in my view, was a defining phase but a phase which, at independence, had not been fully grasped by the majority of our fighters, and even less so by the masses. I shall qualify this assertion later in this chapter.
The British were not alone in their ambitions to colonise parts of Africa. The Portuguese had earlier, in the 16th and 17th centuries, sought without success to get a hold on what is present day Zimbabwe. Other European powers like the Dutch, French, Belgian and German imperialisms vied with each other for control of portions of Africa. Conflicting and coinciding interests by imperial powers led to the partitioning of Africa in 1884 at a conference held in Berlin in Germany. The parcelling out of Africa to competing imperial powers has, to this day, remained a curse that continues to haunt and threaten the sovereignty of African nations.
We saw our struggle, therefore, not in the context of a fight against a white minority regime led by Ian Douglas Smith, but a struggle against British colonialism, buttressed by other imperial forces. This explains why we refused to honor the authority of the minority regime in Rhodesia in our negotiations for independence. We saw it, and quite rightly too, as a mere extension of British colonialism. We were vindicated when the Bristish assumed their colonial responsibility, and rejoiced when they lowered their flag as we hoisted ours in victory and celebration. The sun had finally set on the British colony and the colonial demon was exorcised from our land, or so we thought.
Thus, at the time we were waging our armed struggle, the world was split into two distinct and antagonistic camps – the capitalist and socialist camps. Because the capitalist forces were united and openly arraigned against us, we naturally gravitated towards the socialist camp. We embraced the socialist doctrine and got the bulk of our support from socialist countries.
We adopted scientific socialism based on Marxist-Leninist principles as our ideological bedrock. In our orientation we highlighted the nobility of socialist principles that projected a human face towards the marginalised and disadvantaged. The two cardinal socialist principles ‘an equal amount of products for an equal amount of labour’ and ‘for he who does not work neither shall he eat’ resonated well within our struggle, in contrast to the capitalist philosophy that favoured the colour of the skin rather than one’s labour input. We looked at socialism as a transitory stage towards a perfect communist state in which everyone invested their labour ‘to the best of their ability’ and got rewarded ‘according to their individual needs.’ This presupposed the highest stage of human consciousness and development. A stage where a doctor, for example, will exert maximum effort to deliver good service in the same way a house cleaner equally exerts maximum effort to deliver good service, specific to his/her professional competence. Therefore, because both the doctor and cleaner fully commit themselves to provide the best of their professional competencies, they must both be rewarded according to their needs. In other words, if the needs of a doctor coincide with those of a cleaner, they will be rewarded the same.
We contrasted the socialist principles against the capitalist principles that exalt the exploitation of man by man. We highlighted how the colonialists, being avowed capitalists, had constituted themselves into a bourgeois or aristocratic class that condemned and trampled with impunity the black race.
In our orientation we challenged, rejected and unequivocally condemned the notion of a superior race, which is a euphemism that the black race is cursed to be inferior in perpetuity. We cited examples of blacks who have excelled in life, better than the whites, such as Comrade Herbert Chitepo, the first black barrister in Rhodesia, and President Mugabe, who holds six academic degrees and some honorary degrees.
Political orientation was largely, but not totally, successful in achieving the goals we had set for ourselves during the struggle. Our biggest success was in the battle to win the hearts and minds of the people, thereby galvanising support for the successful execution of the struggle. The results of the first post-colonial elections (1980) bear testimony to this. Through political orientation, comrades were transformed into a politically conscious fighting force driven by, and committed to, a just cause. Their full grasp of the national grievances and ability to articulate them in simple and easy to understand language, helped cement the ‘fish and water’ relationship between them and the masses in Rhodesia. Both the fighters and the masses remained unshakeable in their resolve for freedom and independence, even when subjected to the most brutal treatment and persecution by the Rhodesian regime.
That ZANU was able to eclipse the advantage deriving from incumbency that the puppet Muzorewa regime enjoyed, and the spirited campaign of the only other party engaged in the armed struggle, ZAPU, speaks volumes about the success and effectiveness of the ZANU political programme.
Our least achievement was in the last phase of our political orientation. At the time of independence, not many of the fighting forces had an opportunity to have an in depth study of both the capitalist and socialist philosophies. What we had succeeded in doing was to paint a romantic and idealistic picture of socialism, but without the critical analysis of how both internal and external factors would affect its application. Indeed, we saw capitalism as an evil, but never fully appreciated how difficult it would be to fight such evil. In hindsight, we did not realise that many of us would, after independence, embrace and perpetuate that same evil we were fighting against.
I was one of the few who seriously studied the literature on capitalism and imperialism on the one hand, and socialism and communism on the other. Socialism made a very strong appeal then, as it still does today. I was convinced then, as I am convinced today, that the bourgeoisie,* with their insatiable appetite for wealth, are the cause of social tensions within societies and hence the cause of the inequitable distribution of wealth among nations.
As for the ZANLA forces in the camps and battlefield, the socialist gospel was easy to embrace. They had no wealth to distribute and therefore nothing to lose. But, for some of our political leaders and ZANU supporters, especially those living in capitalist countries, they emulated the glamorous lifestyles of the wealthy. The inevitability of Zimbabwe’s independence through the heroic efforts and commitment of the liberation forces was not lost on them. Therefore, whilst espousing socialism in order to ingratiate themselves with the fighting forces, their hearts and souls remained capitalist. Indeed, many were old enough to join the struggle but shunned doing so because they shared the same ideology with those we were fighting. Even worse, they considered the armed struggle a hazardous expedition which only the uneducated should venture into. Whilst comrades sacrificed their lives for the liberation of Zimbabwe, they chose to improve their education and amass wealth so that they could be better positioned when Zimbabwe attained independence.
The capitalists saw the opportunity cost presented by these pseudo revolutionaries who shouted ZANU slogans the loudest, and prepared them for a counter revolutionary role aimed at promoting and protecting colonial interests, while negating and undermining the gains of the revolutionary armed struggle. The comrades who had so successfully mobilised the masses to support the armed struggle and were instrumental in ZANU’s resounding victory at the first democratic elections in 1980, those same comrades who were willing to sacrifice their lives for freedom and independence were now seen as uneducated and therefore unable to hold positions of authority in government.
It is a shame that many of those selfless comrades live in abject poverty today, only to be acclaimed as heroes when they die. If indeed they are our heroes, why can’t we treat them as such while they are still living? Couldn’t we have adopted a policy that all comrades who participated in the armed struggle be assisted by the state to acquire university qualifications? Surely we would then have in positions of authority many with the vision and clarity of thought and discipline such as we had during our struggle.
Let me be a voice in the wilderness, but is it not a shame that many years after independence we still teach Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, etc. but no meaningful account of our glorious struggle for independence? Who is blocking such entry of our history into the school curriculum? What value do we as a nation derive from teaching our youths the literature and values of those we fought and vanquished?
Fortuitously, the uniformed forces that many regarded as a convenient assemblage of the uneducated freedom fighters, have proven the cynics wrong. Not only have they excelled in their educational pursuits, but most importantly they have remained loyal, resolute and disciplined in safeguarding the gains and ideals of the liberation struggle.
For the many forsaken comrades in their rural homes, or roaming the cities unable to eke out a decent living, the revolutionary zeal that motivated them to cross the borders to join the armed struggle, and that spirit of selfless sacrifice that has turned them into unsung heroes, was never doused by the seeming neglect or lack of recognition. When they saw the lethargy in the implementation of agrarian reforms that would lead to fairer land redistribution, they once again rose to the occasion and gave impetus towards its historic fulfilment. Again, many have not benefitted from this programme. Predictably too, the indigenisation gravy train shall pass them by. Let me take a long pause here to salute these heroes.
The nation has an obligation to take good care of our revolutionary heroes. They are the torch bearers of the ‘Soul of the Revolution’.
* Zimbabwe News, Vol 10, No. 2, May/June 1978.
* The ‘protected villages’ were camps into which the masses uprooted from their homes were moved under the pretext that they were being protected from terrorist atrocities. The truth was that the Rhodesians wanted to isolate the guerrillas in the targeted areas from the people who provided them with food, clothing and intelligence.
† The Selous Scouts was a multiracial specialist psy-ops unit of the regular Rhodesian Army. Many of its members were ‘turned’ former guerrillas who assisted in the unit’s prime role of intelligence gathering and actively combating the freedom fighters, both inside and outside Rhodesia. They frequently masqueraded as genuine comrades in order to penetrate guerrilla groups and camps.
* According to Marxist theory, a middle class that owns the means of producing wealth and exploits the working class.