The Sunday News
Rtd-Lt Col Stanford Moyo
I first met the late Cde Eddie Sigoge Mlotshwa at Morogoro in Tanzania in 1976. He used to train us on obstacle crossing and sometimes he would take us on long route marches.
The second time I saw him is the day the late commander of Zipra forces Rogers Alfred Nikita Mangena died. Cde Sigoge was among the command element which had come to bury the lost comrades together with Mangena near Kapanga Mission.
He had accompanied Cde Mangena together with Enoch Tshangane (Jevan Maseko) and other senior commanders.
That was the only time in which I had the opportunity to discuss with both the late commander Mangena and Sigoge on military operations. I spent over 12 hours with them. The commander had promised a lot of activities for us as we were coming from our area of operation in Lupane and we were in Zambia to replenish our supplies. Unfortunately he was killed early the next morning when his Land Rover hit a landmine. Cde Sigoge was injured in that mine incident.
We left him for dead for almost two hours. He had just survived being captured by a whisker or the Rhodesian forces could have finished him off.
What happened was that after the mine blast Cde Sigoge was thrown about 50 metres from the impact of the mine. Myself and the late Cde Donki came out unscathed because when we were thrown out we fell on soft soil along the graded road. We were the first to attend to the injured.
We first removed the commander who was crying for help under the wreckage. After attending to all the injured we decided to first take away the injured and leave the dead for later burial. Among the counted dead was Cde Sigoge. He was lucky in that when we were about five kilometres away we realised we had left Cde Sigoge with a pistol. Cde Matiwaza and I went back with the intention of collecting the pistol.
When I reached for Cde Sigoge I started untying his belt to remove the pistol. He asked chi chirikuitika, I understand he had the tendency of switching languages at will and this time he spoke in Shona. I responded and said there was nothing happening. We took him away to waiting Zambian military vehicles who took the injured to hospital.
As I have stated above I had little time with Cde Sigoge and by that I cannot comment on his character. Only what I usually hear from some comrades are a lot of controversial stories about Cde Sigoge. However, I do not know whether the stories are true or false.
