The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube, Sunday News Reporter
AS we bring to a close our series to commemorate the Manama Mission School mass recruitment of January 1977, this week we go through some of the articles that appeared in some of the world’s leading newspapers.
The recruitment which saw over 400 pupils being taken to neighbouring Botswana notably made international headlines as never before had such a huge mass been recruited to join the armed struggle.
The group also included teachers, school staffers and nurses from the nearby Manama Mission Hospital.
Not only was the world watching but the Rhodesian government, which was caught unawares was left panicking as this served as symbol that they had largely become unpopular with more and more blacks wanting to join the struggle for independence.
Many regard that 1977 incident as the turning point of the liberation struggle as it saw thousands more black Zimbabweans crossing over to either Zambia or Mozambique to train as freedom fighters to help fight colonial bondage.
The Washington Post : 31 January 1977
Headline: Rhodesia Says 400 Students Taken as Guerrilla Recruits
Story by James MacManus
In the Manama Mission incident, the proximity of the Botswana border has ruled out any military operation to return the children.
The school’s headmaster, Jeffias Diza (39) said that the incident began when an armed insurgent burst into his office demanding school fees for the current term that had been collected that morning.
“After I had got the money together from my house where my wife had hidden it, I stepped outside and saw the whole school streaming through the gates,” Diza said. “There was no violence, but the terrorists were shouting and saying that everybody had to come and join the Zapu army. One of them said he would kill those who didn’t come but I couldn’t really tell whether the children were going of their free will or not.”
Five of the students later managed to escape and return to the mission. Two of the teachers also left the group, which was led off toward the Shashe River separating Rhodesia and Botswana.
The incident is the latest in a series of recruitment raids mounted in south-western Rhodesia by Zapu (Zimbabwe African People’s Union) guerrillas loyal to nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo.
This recruiting campaign began in October during the Geneva Conference. The government claims that all recruitment in the area has been conducted at gunpoint. The guerrillas say that they are merely tapping a huge and willing reservoir of young would-be insurgents.
In the past, guerrillas have regularly led recruits across the border on foot to village pick-up points in Botswana. The recruits are trucked to Francistown and flown to Zambia where they are taken to Zapu camps for training.
It is officially estimated that around 1 000 African youngsters have left or been taken from southwest Rhodesia for training in Zapu camps since October.
In the previous 15 months, only 600 left the same area for Botswana.
Botswana has frequently denied that it allows guerrillas use of the country as a base for attacks on Rhodesia. But there has been little attempt to conceal the fact that guerrilla recruits. Rhodesian army deserters and those generally on the run from Rhodesian authorities use Botswana as a convenient escape route.
Although the level of guerrilla activity in the southwest has been low compared to the east, there has been a steady increase over the last three months of incidents involving Zapu insurgents.
Zapu has traditionally used Zambia as a jumping-off point for these attacks, but there is circumstantial evidence that Botswana is now prepared to allow guerrillas the freedom to operate from its territory.
Desert Sun (California) 1 February 1977
400 Black students kidnapped in Rhodesia
A mission school principal says the black guerrillas who kidnapped 400 black students during the weekend told him they wanted to force the teenagers to join their army.
Rhodesian security forces said the captives — 230 male and 170 female students, plus five adults were forced to march 16 miles through a thick bush country on Sunday to neighbouring Botswana.
The principal, whose name was withheld at the request of military authorities, said the guerrillas identified themselves as members of the Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union and said they were taking the students “to build up the army.”
Military officials said Zapu may be trying to increase its size to match the rival Zimbabwe African National Union. Both are nationalist groups fighting to overthrow the white-ruled government of Rhodesia.
The incident underlined the current guerrilla campaign to win control over Rhodesia’s rural black population through terror, intimidation and abduction. Last week, 185 black Rhodesians were abducted by guerrillas in a nearby district. Foreign Minister Pieter van der Byl said the latest abduction was one more incident “complicating our relations with Botswana.”
He said it proved guerrillas are operating out of Botswana despite that country’s denials. The principal said the incident began when about five guerrillas burst into the Lutheran Mission in south-western Rhodesia and threatened to kill him if he didn’t turn over the school’s money.
He said he gave them $20 930 in school fees collected during the weekend.
United Kingdom Parliamentary debate on 3 February 1977
Point of order raised by Conservative Member of Parliament Sir Ronald Bell
On Sunday evening, a small band of armed guerrillas came to the Manama Mission School of the Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Mission and at gunpoint rounded up 384 children, five teachers and two priests.
In order to show the parity of their motives, the guerrillas broke open the mission safe and stole £1 300 and marched the children, teachers and priests off towards the Botswana border.
Four children and one priest escaped fairly quickly from their captors, possibly on the long journey to the frontier.
Ten more children and two teachers have since escaped and returned. About 370 children remain somewhere in Botswana. All these children are minors and should be in the custody of their parents.
Appeals have been made to the Botswana government and to the International Red Cross, so far without result.
The Botswana government are reported to have said that the children had fled to Botswana to escape death at the hands of the Smith forces, who, the spokesman said, shot innocent people to maintain a killing quota of 10 guerrillas to one Rhodesian soldier.
That seems to be the “contradictory” account from Sir Seretse Khama’s government which the Foreign and Commonwealth Secretary referred to yesterday and which was his excuse for inaction. I suggested yesterday, Mr Speaker, in my submission to you, that even if that remarkable explanation were believed — I wonder whether anyone does believe it — it quite ignored the fact that these were children and that they have parents.
But how much plausibility is there in the Botswana story? Here is the relevant part of the report in The Times on Tuesday from its own correspondent:
“The pupils had been rounded up from their dormitories where they had been before”—”
With the Manama recruitments making headlines one thing for certain is that the Rhodesian government was now on panic mode and it was now more clear that the black Africans now wanted their freedom which eventually led to the Lancaster House agreement of 1979 and subsequently the country’s independence in 1980.
The Rhodesian government tried to spread the “abduction” rhetoric but the truth of the matter was that this was more of a recruitment as Blacks were getting tired of the white minority rule.
