The Sunday News
IN today’s Lest We Forget column we round up our interview with former Bulawayo regional magistrate and former Zapu regional chairman for Matabeleland Cde Johnson Mkandla who in 1974 found himself facing the death penalty after his arrest for recruiting “terrorists” and being found in possession of arms of war.
Cde Mkandla was charged together with now Vice-President of Zimbabwe, Cde Kembo Mohadi and Cdes Solomon Mathenjwa Moyo, Leonard Solomon Nkomo and Elkana Sibanda. He gives us an account of the events that led to his arrest, trial and time in prison in an interview with our Assistant Editor Mkhululi Sibanda. Below are excerpts of the interview:
MS: May you please give us an account of the events that led to your arrest.
Cde Mkandla: What happened was that Mohadi and Elkana as well as those intelligence officers who worked under people like Ethan Dube and Dumiso Dabengwa, which was later on transformed into the National Security Organisation (NSO), were planted among the population like I said before. And they lived with the trusted party cadres. While Kembo Mohadi was covering the Beitbridge area in Matabeleland South and surrounding areas, Elkana was staying at Ncube’s place who was the treasurer of Barbourfields branch. Then one day the Rhodesian Special Branch officers came to me at my house, that time I was living in New Magwegwe and they took me to their headquarters, which is situated along Fife Street here in Bulawayo.
They took me to an office which was teeming with white officers.
MS: Were you physically harassed?
Cde Mkandla: No! They were playing mind games with me and I only realised later when I had been arrested what those people were really up to.
While facing those white Special Branch officers they told me that they knew I was harbouring terrorists and I was keeping them in some safe houses.
They told me that I was doing that as the chairman of Zapu in Matabeleland and they said they knew I had planted many people so they said “for now we don’t want to arrest you as yet but what we ask of you is to remove those people that you have planted because we want peace, so you know under normal circumstances we would have arrested you but we haven’t because you are a leader”. The motive was to make me panic and that’s what I did so they let go of me that day and I started thinking that these people had a lot of information about us because indeed we had those guerillas in areas such as here in Bulawayo, Beitbridge, Plumtree and other parts of the country like the Midlands. Also those guerillas had also cached some firearms and there was a small arms cache even at my New Magwegwe house. I went into panic mode. Those who were planted were the ones in charge of fixing the guns and making sure that everything was set since for us we were only politicians, they did all the logistics.
MS: What course of action did you take?
Cde Mkandla: I really panicked and after being told to remove the terrorists I then went to Ncube’s house at BF. I was driven there by now former Bulawayo United Residents Association chairman and also an ex-detainee, Edward Simela. During that time Simela did not know anything as I only told him that I was visiting a friend and it was an emergency. We drove to BF at around 12 midnight. When I got to BF I woke up Ncube to tell him what had transpired with the white Special Branch officers and I told him that they said the guerillas were now so many and they didn’t like it. So I said since he was the one in charge of Elkana as he was staying at his house I told him that I feared for my life and there was something that should be done urgently, so we got to an understanding that Elkana should move out immediately and we had to come up with a strategy to find a way of making him escape without being noticed by the white men. And Elkana did leave the house. While we all were doing this little did we know that the Special Branch was monitoring us. So that meeting I was called for at their headquarters was meant to make us go into panic and lower our guard so that in our panic situation we will lead them to where the guerillas were.
MS: Then take us through what happened after that.
Cde Mkandla: It looks like after Elkana left the home of Ncube, the Special Branch were on him. I was to learn later from him that from Ncube’s home, he decided the following morning to get into town like any other shopper but with the intention of later on going to Renkini to catch a bus to Lupane.
After moving around town he proceeded to Renkini and when he got there he got on a bus, but after a brief period left for another one, he did the same thing on the second bus as his intention was to board a third. All the first two buses were just decoys. However, while doing all those things the Rhodesian spies were monitoring him. Finally the bus left Bulawayo but the Special Branch had set up a roadblock along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road near that service station in Richmond that is where Elkana was captured. After being subjected to severe torture that included electrocution and thorough beatings, he spilled the beans and pointed fingers at me. I was then arrested. When I was being questioned I denied everything that Elkana had told them but when I finally saw him, how he had been beaten I was shocked. This was after they took me to where they were keeping him. Blood was just oozing from his body. Wayengakhangeleki. They had tied his body to something and so he was suspended just like what butchers do to beef carcasses, with his head facing downwards. Since I was denying everything they took Elkana to my house to look for the hidden weapons. At the time I was also in leg irons.
MS: Then they went to your house.
Cde Mkandla: When they went to my house they found my relatives drinking traditional beer and one of the people who was among my relatives was another guerilla, Black Swine, the late Tshilisi Booker Mnyamana who was later captured by the Selous Scouts in the Pandamatenga areas while on a mission to take delivery of three motor vehicles that Zapu had obtained from Botswana. However, on that day Black Swine survived because he looked just like any other local and so they ignored him. At my house there was a small arms cache in the yard where the Rhodesians recovered a few pistols and grenades.
MS: What about Cde Mohadi?
Cde Mkandla: I was locked in a dark cell at the Khami Maximum Prison. After two weeks they removed me from the dark cell but because I had been kept into that dungeon I couldn’t walk or do anything. After seven days from that I was shocked to see Cde Kembo Mohadi being chained at Khami and I got scared. I knew the game was over. After that the five of us went to court and appeared before Chief Justice Hugh Beadle who was located in Bulawayo. Our defence counsel was led by Advocate Chris, instructed by Cantridge, May and Leo Baron. It was a strong team indeed. I was accused number one, Solomon Mtenjwa Moyo, number two, Leonard Solomon Nkomo accused number three, Cde Mohadi number four and Elkna number five.
MS: You spoke of torture, how was Cde Mohadi treated?
Cde Mkandla: That one is very brave. He denied everything and they failed to crack him. He is a hard nut.
MS: So tell us about the trial.
Cde Mkandla: The trial went on for at least six months and it was held at night. We were taken from Khami at around 11pm when we were going to court and returned early morning the following day. We escaped the gallows because they couldn’t prove anything. They didn’t have proof of the guns as they were corroded and as for my part the lawyers argued that Mkandla did not know how to use a gun, it was a powerful argument from Mr May.
After failing to nail us although you could tell that Mr Beadle wanted to convict us and send us to the gallows, they still kept us in detention until the ceasefire. While Mohadi remained at Khami I was moved to Wha Wha, Connemara and other prisons until the ceasefire period. However, while we were still at Khami something interesting happened. Elkana managed to escape and that was disturbing to us.
MS: Where did he escape to?
Cde Mkandla: He returned to Zambia but when he got there he was immediately detained by the comrades. However, he returned home after Independence and died some years later. I never managed to get his full story on how he managed to escape from that heavily fortified Khami Maximum Prison.
