The Sunday News
IN our today’s Lest We Forget column we continue the interview with former Zipra regional commander for the Northern Front 2 (NF2) Retired Lieutenant-Colonel Ernest Sibanda pseudo name Cde Phebion Mutero.
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda’s area of operation covered Lupane, Nkayi, Silobela, Zhombe, Gokwe and Lower Gweru. Today Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda speaks about the expansion of operational areas, sabotage of Rhodesian government economic activities and the mobilisation of villagers to support the war. Below are excerpts of the interview with our Assistant Editor Mkhululi Sibanda:
MS: Last week Cde Sibanda you were still telling us about your first operations. You said within a week you had already made your presence felt by carrying out an attack on the Rhodesian army convoy along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road and the raid on Sothani Farm. Can we pick up our conversation from there. What happened next?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: We didn’t rest because our aim was to make our presence felt and also show the villagers that we meant business. So we set for Mbuma in Nkayi where there was a thriving timber logging firm. We chose a Saturday where everyone would be in the compound. We arrived at the sawmill at around 10am. After reconnoitring the place we went straight to the premises of whites where we found a maid who told us that her bosses were away. From those whites’ houses we found combat kits and FN ammunition. We then set running around the sawmill, ordering everyone to gather at one place. We were still the four of us, Stanley Donga, Silas and Potters. There were many workers there, a few at the mill while the rest were at their compounds.
MS: Was it easy to round up all those people? Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: That was a big challenge as some of those people were openly resisting. Remember it was the first time for them to come across guerillas. During those days there were many people who still believed the nationalists forces had no chance against the Rhodesians, so among those workers there were some who were very skeptical.
MS: In such a situation what did you do?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: We realised that if we did not become hard on those people there was a chance that some would even try and challenge us physically. We were four and we did not want to fire any shots as our mission from the start had been to capture the whites we would find at the firm and then sabotage the timber logging activity.
MS: You are saying you became hard on those workers, meaning what?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: We told them that there had been surrounded as some of our comrades were in the nearby bushes, which was a lie of course. We then started beating them up using sjamboks and that is how we managed to subdue them. On seeing that we were serious and we could easily physically harm them they all started co-operating. We then ordered them to douse the machinery and the timber with fuel. In no time the whole firm was up in smoke. It took us less than 30 minutes to subdue the workers and set on fire the whole facility. Among the workers were some who were excited and they asked how they could join the war. We told them to go to Botswana and some left on that day. It was a very successful operation.
MS: While the four of you were doing all this work, where were other members of your group? Last week you told us that when you arrived in the country you were 17.
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: Remember the comrade who deployed us in Lupane, Gilbert Khumalo (Nicholas Nkomo) returned to Zambia. We had those two who were not part of us but we came together, those two passed through Lupane and moved to their operational area and I never met them up to now. As for the other 10, they were operating as a group of five each. The other group concentrated along the Lupane-Nkayi Road while the other moved to Nkayi. They were also carrying out operations, hitting soft targets and laying ambushes. We had our GP after three weeks.
MS: Turning to your group, after the Mbuma operation what did you do?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: The attitude we got from some of the workers at the Mbuma Sawmill taught us that there was a need not to take the villagers for granted. However, we had been told in Zambia that we had to work with the Zapu leadership on the ground and so we started doing that. Now our approach was two pronged, fight the enemy using guns and politicise the masses. We activated the party structures, started addressing meetings which we called rallies. However, those rallies did not take more than 30 minutes. We would go to a village and ask the youths to run around and tell the villagers that there was a meeting and we would then address the villagers.
MS: What was the message?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: The message was that we were their children and we have come to fight the Rhodesian government against its racial injustices. We also told the masses that we expected co-operation from them and that if the enemy forces came for their safety they should not deny that they had seen us, but what we did not want were sell-outs. We also told the masses that the situation would get tricky with many people likely to get injured and some dying because we were in a war situation. We further told them that everybody had to sacrifice so that we win the war and that our welfare was in their hands, they had to clothe and feed us. Within a short period of time we had won their hearts. At the same time we were hitting soft targets such as the district assistants (DAs), those people who were ill-trained and poorly equipped. When we got to Lupane we found the DAs guarding the infrastructure such as dip tanks and dams. We sent villagers to go and tell them that they should leave those places, failure to which we will kill them.
MS: Did they take heed of your warning?
Rtd Lt-Col: You know those people were full of themselves as they thought they were special. You know if a fool goes around carrying a gun, his thinking is that he is powerful and that was the attitude of the DAs. So one day we waylaid them and they were riding on a tractor. We asked them to surrender but they tried to be funny and started shooting at us. There was a quick exchange of fire and we hit two. They died on the spot and the rest fled from the scene. This incident happened at Matshiye Dam in Lupane. We recovered their weapons, two 303s. After that they stopped guarding those places. We felt we were gaining ground. The reason why we first warned the DAs without attacking them was that we did not want to kill blacks.
MS: Exactly what were your objectives? What were the things that you wanted to achieve within a short space of time?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: We did not want the enemy forces to just roam around the villages, that is why we had to deal with the DAs and also we did not want free movement of the commercial and enemy traffic along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls and the Lupane-Nkayi roads. The other issue was that by the end of 1977 we should be dominating the area and that we should have moved very close to Lupane and that is why we were having a presence at Shabula, a village which is near Lupane Centre.
Those were the instructions Gilbert had left with us when he deployed us. After the operations against soft targets such as the DAs and ambushes we were carrying out, the villagers were excited as they realised that we meant business. They started having confidence in us. In the first three weeks of our operation we were very busy. However, we were not the only ones, there was a group which had oMafutha labo Driver at Mzola and Dandanda, also in Lupane. Some were part of the Group of 800, we had trained together at Morogoro in 1976. We had also the other 10 members of my group, who were also doing well along the Lupane-Nkayi Road and in Nkayi District itself. Then after three weeks we had our GP (gathering point ) at Matshiye Dam with the other 10 members of my unit. We had used youths to co-ordinate our communication. We had not suffered any casualties and that is when we reviewed our operations and we were satisfied with what we were doing.
MS: Now you had settled down, what was the next move?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: Immediately after that we received a reinforcement, we were joined by 30 other guerillas who included comrades like Jack Hlongwane. Those guerillas brought with them weapons such as PKM, other machine guns, bazookas and so on. I then divided them into smaller groups, eight joined my group but from my initial group I moved Cde Silas to Nkayi and he took with him 11 of the newly arrivals to beef up that unit which was in Nkayi. Silas was replaced by a new guerilla and the unit I was moving with, we were now 12 from the four. My group had fewer troops because we were concentrating on the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road where the movement was becoming erratic. So the other two units had a strength of 16 each, which of course was further split into smaller units or remained the same depending on the situation or mission at hand. We then decided to expand our operations to places like St Luke’s, Daluka and Lupanda. Lupane Centre was now surrounded by our forces and we were itching to attack it.
MS: Do you think the number of forces was adequate for the two districts?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: For a guerilla group it was fine. Guerillas operate in small groups which thrive on high mobility and surprise attacks. The space we had was a good one and we were highly mobile. What we wanted to do was to stretch the enemy forces with those small groups that is why we were hitting soft targets and laying ambushes where we would engage the enemy briefly then move, hit bridges, do the same in another area, all this was done to make the enemy believe the guerillas were all over. We did not have specific boundaries at that time as there were times we would go to Sipepa in Tsholotsho or lay an ambush on the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls railway line. The area west of the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road was under NF1 which was under the command of John Nyampungiza (Retired Colonel Tshipa). We had also started recruiting people at strategic places such as hospitals and police stations so that we were abreast with the movement and pending programmes of the enemy. At St Luke’s we went there one night where we met the sister-in-charge, who was called MaDube and she accepted to work with us. From time to time we were getting medicine from her while at Lupane Police Station we had our informer who was a policeman. We also had a contact at Halfway Hotel called Mbodlomane. He was a Zapu member working for Mr Brumberg who was a Rhodesian Front MP.
MS: Tell us Cde Sibanda, were you happy with the operations and if you were what tangible things had you achieved?
Rtd Lt-Col Sibanda: We were very happy because we had forced the traffic along the Bulawayo-Victoria Falls Road to move in convoys and at some stage the traffic had specific days it moved. This was because the Rhodesians were now afraid that they could be attacked at anytime. Even in some cases we attacked the convoy and that forced the Rhodesian government to deploy an aircraft to escort the convoy. We also stopped certain bus companies from plying their routes, although we later relaxed that as we wanted supplies in the form of clothes from bus crews and information about the situation along the highway and what was happening in Bulawayo. Going deep into the villages we did not want any movement of traffic. If there was a vehicle that was to move it was to belong to the enemy so that we hit it nicely. Also later on we expanded our operations to Inyathi, which is in Bubi District.
We round up the interview with Lt-Col Sibanda’s next week with him speaking about re-organising the guerilla structures, surrender of more than 100 auxilliary forces, his promotion to regional commander, moves by the Selous Scouts and failure by certain guerilla groups to obey orders from the High Command.
