LEST WE FORGET: Veteran Bosso administrator, pioneer freedom fighter

26 Feb, 2017 - 00:02 0 Views
LEST WE FORGET: Veteran Bosso administrator, pioneer freedom fighter Retired Colonel Thomas Ngwenya

The Sunday News

Retired Colonel Thomas Ngwenya

Retired Colonel Thomas Ngwenya

A number of football lovers especially Highlanders supporters often see the unassuming Retired Colonel Thomas Ngwenya taking his seat among the Bosso board members at Barbourfields Stadium during football matches.

A majority of them probably take him as a simple  football enthusiast and a Bosso board member without knowing that he belongs to a cast of the first patriotic young Zimbabweans to receive military training after being fed up by the racist Rhodesian colonial regime.

In our today’s Lest We Forget column our Assistant Editor Mkhululi Sibanda (MS) spoke to Retired Colonel Ngwenya whose pseudo name was Menu and he opened up about how he joined the armed struggle and the fact that he was one of the guerilla pioneers to receive guerilla warfare training in Ghana in 1963. Rtd Colonel Ngwenya was to observe the growth of the nationalist military wings, Zipra and Zanla as well as see the arrival of now senior military officers and politicians as they joined in the war efforts as the struggle exploded. Rtd Col Ngwenya was to rise in the Zipra ranks to become the Zapu’s military wing’s chief of transport, a strategic position indeed in any military set up. Below are excerpts of the interview:

MS: Cde Ngwenya, a number of people associate you with football administration but it looks like you have an interesting past in our fight against colonialism, so who is Thomas Ngwenya?

Rtd Col Ngwenya: I was born on 10 January 1935 at Botela area in Kezi District also known as Matobo. But I grew up at my uncle’s home (Bhetshwana) in Donkwe-Donkwe area, the village where the late Jason Ziyapapa Moyo came from. I did my primary education at DK as Donkwe-Donkwe is commonly known up to Standard Five. After that I moved to Dadaya Mission in Zvishavane but quickly left as I could not afford the fees there. So I ended up at St Patrick’s School in Makokoba, Bulawayo.

After St Patrick’s I continued my education by doing JC through correspondence. During those days I used to work as a messenger and I worked for different companies. After passing JC I then got a job as a dispatch clerk and then invoicing clerk at a big company which was called International Hardware Corporation. I was paid more than four pounds and that was a lot of money then. I was staying in Makokoba.

However, while at St Patrick’s I had a dream of becoming a policeman and this was because I and other boys used to admire a local policeman, Chingoka, the father of Peter and Paul who were later on to become brilliant sports administrators in tennis and cricket. Peter and Paul’s father was based at the nearby Mzilikazi Police Station and used to visit our school to teach us first aid. He was always smart and that is why we admired him.

MS: How and when did you join politics?

Rtd Col Ngwenya:  As a result of the segregation that blacks faced at the hands of whites I was one of the young people who used to attend political meetings at Stanley Hall in Makokoba and would from time to time throw stones at the regime’s cars.

Later on, I started working with other nationalists assisting sabotage missions until my cover was blown off by Cde Boblock Manyonga following his arrest after he was caught with some explosives. Cde Manyonga was from Mhondoro in Mashonaland West Province and he used to work closely with other youths then such as Dumiso Dabengwa and the late Ethan Dube who was captured at the height of the armed struggle and killed by the Rhodesians while in Bostwana.

MS: Tell us more about the Manyonga incident.

Rtd Col Ngwenya:  What used to happen was that the car which was used to carry weapons used in sabotage missions was usually parked at my house in Makokoba. The weapons were usually brought into the country by the now late national hero Sikhwili Khohli Moyo and Misheck Velaphi Ncube, who is my cousin and cached in the mountains of Matopos. Those two were working closely with party youths especially Dumiso Dabengwa and Ethan Dube.

Dumiso and Ethan were the ones who would bring the weapons to Bulawayo and put them in the car which was being driven by Manyonga. Manyonga was the one who would take the weapons to various parts of the country where there was a mission.  So it happened that on his trip to Salisbury, now Harare, he decided to drive via Zvishavane in a bid to evade roadblocks along the Bulawayo-Harare Road but he was caught still. He then revealed my name as the person who kept the car he was using.

MS: Were you immediately arrested after Manyonga had been netted?

Rtd Col Ngwenya: When I got wind that Manyonga had been arrested I did not sleep at my home that night. I put up at a girlfriend’s place in Matshobana. During those days I had left my well paying job to go full time into politics. However, I would walk past my Makokoba house and see a detective sitting on my bed waiting for me. However, my luck ran out when the police located my girlfriend’s house and raided it. My attempt to run away was futile as I was caught by a detective called Mkhethwa while trying to run away along Luveve Road and that was towards the end of 1962.

After my arrest I was detained at Stops Camp, moved to Bulawayo Central Police Station before I was locked up at Grey Prison where I found Misheck Velaphi. However, during that time Jason Ziyapapa Moyo had been alerted of our problem. While at Grey Prison we decided to write a letter to Ethan Dube so that he could contact the party’s lawyer, Leo Baron. Later on Mr Baron managed to secure bail for me with reporting conditions but Velaphi was slapped with a jail term. Although I was released it was a difficult moment for me because Velaphi is my cousin brother. Our mothers were sisters. However, after my release I came up with a plan to skip the border and that is what I did.

MS: How did you leave the country?

Rtd Col Ngwenya:  After my release I complied with the bail conditions and that was to lull the police.  So one day after reporting to Mzilikazi Police Station I went and spent the day at the house of Misheck Velaphi’s younger brother at Luveve. I then left in the evening and headed to Luveve Railway Station where I boarded the train which was going to Northern Rhodesia, remember Zambia was not yet independent.

When I got into the train I went straight to the third class and took the upper bed. Even when the conductor came asking for tickets I just gave him the money without going down as I was afraid that I could be identified by the police. I was relieved the following morning when the train crossed the Victoria Falls Bridge into Zambia without an incident. I knew that at least I was safe. People from our country and Zambia could move freely then because it was during the Federation period.

MS: When you got to Lusaka, where did you go?

Rtd Col Ngwenya: There was a place where the nationalists lived and I managed to locate it. That place was Bwacha Hotel and there I found quite a number of comrades among them  Sikhwili Moyo, Bhebhe and Luke Mhlanga. However, a few days after my arrival the place was raided by the police and the feeling was that they were looking for me, so I was sent to spend the time at the main railway station in the company of Luke Mhlanga.

After that it was decided that I leave for Tanganyika as Tanzania was known because it had not been integrated with Zanzibar. When I got to Tanganyika I stayed at Mbeya for a few days then proceeded to  Dar es Salaam where I started working with Benjamin Madlela and other Zapu comrades. It was before the 1963 split which led to the formation of Zanu.

MS: You had not done any military training?

Rtd Col Ngwenya: Not at all, I was still a civilian. However, sometime in January 1963 I was among the six cadres that were chosen to undergo military training in Ghana. Among the comrades that I went with were Walter Mthimkhulu, Sikhwili and Gamanya who later joined Zanla after the formation of Zanu in 1963. I cannot remember the other two comrades.

MS: How long were you in Ghana and what did you learn there?

Rtd Col Ngwenya: We were in Ghana for just over three months and we did all aspects of the military training. However, we concentrated more on sabotage activities. After our training we passed through Accra and that is where we boarded the plane to Tanganyika. When we arrived in Tanganyika I remained working at the party offices together with Gamanya and Madlela while others such as Sikhwili were taken to Zambia.

MS: So Cde Ngwenya most people joined the armed struggle after you?

Rtd Col Ngwenya: Very true, I am one of the first guerrillas.  Comrades like Dumiso Dabengwa, Vice-President Mphoko, the late Cephas Cele and Ackim Ndlovu came after me. Something which I must say is that while I was in Tanzania I started being assigned duties of picking recruits from Zambia taking them to Tanzania for military training. I was one of the few experienced drivers as when I left the country to join the armed struggle I had already acquired a drivers’ licence. During the early stages of the armed struggle I was also involved in driving those going for deployment to the front for operations the likes of Dabengwa, Cele, Sakupwanya and so on. I also witnessed the opening of Morogoro as a military training camp for us in Tanzania.

We will continue with the interview with Rtd Col Ngwenya next week when he speaks about how he survived a rebellion which he said was led by Walter Mthimkhulu and former Matabeleland North provincial administrator Livingstone Mashengele and others, the attack on Zimbabwe House as well as being called to put out a potential explosion situation at St Paul’s Assembly Point in Lupane when some  Zipra guerillas made an attempt on the life of a senior commander, the now late Richard Dube (Gedi).

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