The Sunday News
THE NATIONAL Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe is working on adopting and turning into national monuments, prison cells where nationalists and freedom fighters were held as political prisoners during the country’s struggle for independence.
Executive director of the National Museums and Monuments, Dr Godfrey Mahachi told Sunday News last week that his office was working with the Ministry of Justice Legal and Parliamentary Affairs on the programme.
Dr Mahachi said efforts were underway to identify various prison cells in all the country’s prisons, where nationalists and freedom fighters were detained during the liberation war.
He said the objective of the project was to retell the country’s liberation story from the perspective of political prisoners who endured the cruelty of the Rhodesian government, while they were in detention for opposing white minority rule.
“Our prisons are endowed with a lost interesting stories about the liberation war. What we intend to do is to identify specific cells where our nationalists where detained during the struggle and preserve these cells as national monuments.
“The whole idea is to tell the story of the liberation struggle from the angle of political prisoners. So right now what we are doing is to move around the country’s prisons, identifying those cells where our nationalists were held,” he said.
Dr Mahachi said after identifying the cells, his office would engage the Ministry of Justice Legal and Parliamentary affairs on the modalities of preserving the cells and giving members of the public access to cells for educational visits.
“So far I have visited Harare Central Prison and Khami and I have managed to identify specific cells where our nationalists were held during the war. There is an old section at Harare Central Prison which they wanted to demolish but had to stop after we requested them to.
“I will have to tour all the other prisons on a similar mission and after identifying the cells we will then engage prison officials and the Justice Ministry on how best we can go about the project,” he said.
“The challenge we are likely to face is how we are going about balancing the interests of different parties, that is the prison officials, prisoners and members of the public. Our idea is that after people have been taught, through oral means the history of political prisoners during the liberation war, it would be prudent to then physically visit those areas.
“The challenge now is that those facilities are being used and are security areas. So we will continue engaging the relevant stakeholders to see how best we can model the project. We are really interested in preserving these cells as national monuments.”
Early nationalists and freedom fighters from Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi (then known as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland), were detained at various prisons around the country for opposing white rule.
Former Malawian President Hastings Kamuzu Banda, fomer Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, President Robert Mugabe, the late vice Presidents Cde Joshua Nkomo and Simon Muzenda are some of the luminaries of Southern Africa’s liberation who were detained at various prisons around the country.
Last week a group of students, war veterans and ex-political prisoners visited Khami Prison in Bulawayo, where the ex-political detainees gave accounts of their experiences during their detention at the facility.
Excessive hard labour, torture, general ill treatment, hunger and perennial disease outbreaks were some of the horrors that the former liberation war detainees said they experienced during the time they were detained at Khami.
Justice and Legal Affairs Minister Cde Emmerson Mnangagwa and Minister of Home Affairs Cde Kembo Mohadi, Cde Moffat Hadebe, Cde Xaviers Muchemwa and Cde John Maluzo are some of the surviving former political prisoners who were detained at Khami Prison.
