The Sunday News
CDE Gibson Mayisa a feared intelligence officer during the country’s armed struggle who saw everything in that field of secret service has now retreated to his rural home of Bubi District in Matabeleland North where he is domiciled. The bespectacled Cde Mayisa sounds like a legend in that field of secret service and Chronicle Political Editor Nduduzo Tshuma (NT) last week had to do a lot of convincing to get the veteran freedom fighter to grant him an interview on his exploits during the armed struggle. Below are excerpts of the interview.
NT: Cde Mayisa may you please give us your brief background, where you were born and so on.
Cde Mayisa: I was born Gibson Mayisa and my friends used to call me Mjiya. I was born on 3 August 1936 at a place called Emakhandeni under Fort Rixon, which is in Insiza District. I went to school at the age of nine at Sesheli Primary School run by the Seventh Day Adventist (SDA), I was there for my Sub-A up to Standard 3. However, when I was still in Standard 3 in 1952, the Rhodesian government chased us from Emakhandeni and we were taken to Ngwaladi under Nkayi District. Ngwaladi did not have Standard 3 so in 1954 I went to Lower Gwelo in Sikombingo where my sister was married. I left Sikombingo and went to Vungu Division for Standard 4 and 5. In 1955 I went to Bulawayo and attended Mtshede Government School in Njube where I did my Standard 6. I didn’t continue to do teacher’s training because of lack of finances and looked for a job. Jobs were hard to come by but I got lucky and got a teaching job at Tshatshane Primary School in Kezi run by the SDA. I taught until 1958. In the middle of 1958, I applied for a place to do teacher’s training in Lower Gwelo and the pastors pledged to assist me.
NT: During that time how was the political situation like?
Cde Mayisa: Already something was bothering me, we were not allowed to leave the school at weekends without the approval of white pastors in Bulawayo. I would ask myself why I was forced to work on weekends when I earned money for five days in a week. I ended up going to Bulawayo without permission and the head teacher reported me to the pastors. They summoned me and asked why I was doing that and I said I had some pressing issues to attend to, they then said they would not pay me for days I absented myself from work but I wondered what they meant when already I was not getting paid for working on weekends. I didn’t ask them but that thing bothered me. On that we were invited by Donkwe-Donkwe, a few kilometres from Kezi Business Centre that was headed by a Mr Mnkandla popularly known as Huluteyi.
My headmaster released me to that school to listen to what was said. Huluteyi said there was someone who wanted to address teachers from surrounding schools. Then the man came, it was a big strong man and very smart man, his name was Joshua Nkomo. He spoke to us on a lot of issues especially on the treatment of teachers by pastors, inspectors and the education ministry. He spoke exactly to the things that bothered me.
NT: Take us through what you did after that.
Cde Mayisa: I continued teaching and visiting Bulawayo on weekends. At the end of the year, I told them that I was leaving the teaching profession as I felt I was not being treated well. My luck was that at the end of 1958, I met Aaron Ndlovu, a trade unionist in Bulawayo, we boarded a bus at Stanley Square going to Njube where I stayed. Along the way Aaron asked who I was and what I did. I told him that I was a teacher but I had tendered my resignation for the following year, he was happy and said they were looking for young people like me as they were in the trade union. He said they needed us to organise and educate people but first they would send us out of the country for further education. In 1959 I looked for another job and found it at Supersonic, where we were to be taught on how to assemble a radio. I was corresponding for the Junior Certificate and I was considered. I got in with Johnson Mnkandla the former magistrate, Lucas Khumalo who is a chief now, Chief Mtshane, they were coming from Inyathi Mission.
At Supersonic we were not treated the same with white colleagues yet we did the same job. I then looked for Ndlovu and we spoke and he advised us to form a trade union that would assist us. We formed the radio and television workers union and I was the chairman and my secretary was Samuel Sipepa Nkomo, our organisation grew and in the other year Nkomo was elected chairperson and I was his secretary. At the trade union, we had attended nationalist meetings and being in the trade union made me understand our nationalist politics. It made me appreciate the bad things the whites were doing to us. I then joined the Youth League, initially I didn’t understand it but after some meetings I became a member.
NT: You were now into politics fulltime?
Cde Mayisa: Yes. When the National Democratic Party (NDP) was formed in 1961, I was in the Njube Youth League structure with the likes of Mthimkhulu whose father had a shop in Njube, he was our chairperson. Our main task was to organise for rallies for politicians, we would go to bars carrying placards advertising NDP meetings. We had running battles with the police over that. When the NDP was banned, I moved to Mpopoma South and formed a branch with Enos Mdlongwa, now that late Mayor of Bulawayo, Mlotshwa, Sikhanyiso Ndlovu, Fletcher Dulini Ncube, Callistus Ndlovu who was a teacher at the time and Billy Tshuma.
When Zapu was banned we then resorted to “umtshetsha phansi” and were led by a man called Mazonko who urged us on. When we threw stones he would stand at a distance to supervise us. We formed a group called Umgandane of youths throwing stones, we grew and later organised that people do not go to work and embark on strikes and also block roads. When the Unilateral Declaration of Independence was proclaimed by the whites we decided to fight the white man directly. Fortunately, when that happened, those who were in Lusaka, the likes of Dumiso Dabengwa, Luka Mhlanga and Sikhwili Moyo found small explosives and sent us, later there came Mbambo and John Maluzo from training and they taught us how to make petrol bombs, throwing small grenades and how to do ambushes.
We used to throw petrol bombs in the city. I was almost arrested when we threw a bomb at a shop at 6th Avenue and Fort Street, we would also go and throw petrol bombs at the farms of the whites. We discovered that the whites did not understand what we were doing and in early February 1966 we decided to attack a train, at the time carrying whites only, that was leaving Bulawayo at 8pm for Salisbury. The planning meeting was held at my house in Mpopoma, we invited a number of youths and teachers and assigned each other duties. Some would look for petrol and some would throw the bombs.
We set a date to lay an ambush to the train that carried whites only. We organised ourselves into two groups, one to the east of the bridge led by Mordecai Mlotshwa and another to the west of the bridge led by Enos Mdlongwa where I was. We had collected stones in the afternoon and placed them at strategic locations. When the train came, the first group started the attack and the driver started ringing the bell, when it got to us we pelted it with stones and threw petrol bombs. In the attack I saw an old white woman jumping off the burning train. The train stopped at the Mpopoma Station as it was burning.
NT: At that stage how did you react to the situation?
Cde Mayisa: We fled to our homes. Nothing happened the next day, by luck, I was called to Lupane as my mother was sick and while I was at St Paul’s, the youths were rounded up by the police. I spent one night in Lupane before returning to Bulawayo. On my return I learnt that Mdlongwa and many youths had been rounded up and arrested. I did not sleep at my house but at a friend’s place. I then moved to Tshabalala at a friend’s house. My friend locked me inside his house as he went to work. When he returned at night, I went to Mpopoma to my friends who were not involved in our movement and asked one of them to check if there was any activity to which they affirmed. I spent a week sleeping at different places as I was known very well in the area.
Bango then told me that I was a wanted person and it was best that I escape. I worked well with Bango and had accompanied him before to get weapons from Zambia and he said things would go south if I was caught. Before my escape, I decided to visit my father at Fort Rixon but I told Bango that I was going away. I was accompanied by some colleague to Ntabazinduna and I was left at the Fort Rixon turn-off. I used a phone owned by my father’s employer to check the situation in Bulawayo and after a week I returned to Bulawayo to arrange for my travel. I organised with a taxi driver Remmy Moyo to provide me with transport. I then went to Bango and told him that my initial trip did not succeed as I encountered the police along the way. I asked him to talk to the owner of Pelandaba Bus Services to transport me to Shashe via Manama so that I could proceed to Zambia. Pelandaba agreed.
I was staying with my cousin Davies Zwane whom I went with because if I left him behind, the police would have interrogated him leading to the arrest of many people. Remmy took us and left us in Matobo at Duly’s Farm. Bango told Pelandaba that we were at a certain location that he should instruct his driver to collect us. They took us but they said they were not going to Manama but Ntepe. They said another bus going to Manama would come two days later. We asked the bus crew to leave us in Gwanda and the other bus would collect us from there. There was a man I knew in Gwanda who accommodated us.
The following day, there was a bus from Bulawayo going to Masase, there was a friend of mine in Masase, I decided to go and see him and, on my return, I would get to the bus going to Manama. He was working at a school called Jordan, when I got there, he told me that a member of the CID had come looking for me on three different occasions. I spent the night and the next morning before I left but I did not tell my friend about my trip to Zambia.
NT: You were now in a tricky situation, but did you manage to return to Gwanda?
Cde Mayisa: Yes, when I got to Gwanda, the bus that was going to Manama was there and we got in. I had never been to Manama, they said the bus would make a turn at Takaliyawa near Shashe River where there is an irrigation and when you cross over you would be in Botswana.
They handed us to a man called Msimanga, a Zapu member who was employed at the irrigation who would help us to cross to Botswana.
There was another man from the area who had a lot of cattle, he was also told that we needed to be assisted to cross into Botswana. When we got to Botswana in Gobajao we went to a Mutsumi who arranged that we get transport to Bonong where we were meant to get transport to Francistown. When we got there, there was no car to proceed to Francistown as it was during the Easter Holidays. We were then told that there was a vehicle going to Mahalapye transporting members of a local church and arrangements were made that they go with us there where would catch a train to Francistown. I was seated at the front and the driver asked me where we were going and I told him, he said they were not going to reach Mahalapye but would leave us at an area close to the church as they were going to where there were trucks ferrying quarry.
He said there were some Ndebele-speaking people employed as drivers and it would be easy for them to assist us. By stroke of luck we found Davies’s older brother working there, even Davies did not know where exactly his brother worked only that he was employed in Botswana. He was so happy to see us and took us in, we did not proceed that day as he said we must wait until the holidays were over.
After the holidays, we went to Francistown and when we disembarked from the train, we looked for the nearest police station. We were referred to a South African man who took us to the police station. He warned that if we went unaccompanied, the police would take us back to Rhodesia because the British were ruling Botswana and worked closely with Rhodesia. At the police station, we found a very nasty white man who threatened to return us to Rhodesia.
I told him that we were British subjects and not Smith’s people who had declared the UDI. I told him that we were under the Queen as the Smith regime was illegal and that if he insisted on taking us to Rhodesia, we would appeal to the Queen’s Council that they wanted to take us to a rebellious country to the British. He called me all sorts of names before making some phone calls. When he returned, he told a policeman to take us to the cells so that they could facilitate our documents as refugees. We didn’t sleep at the cells but were taken to a place called White House where we spent a month. Lusaka was already aware of our presence in Botswana.
Next week Cde Mayisa shares how he left Botswana for Zambia and later the Soviet Union for training.
