The Sunday News
THIS week we are unable to continue our interview with Cde Kenny Sibanda aka Dallas Nyamukapa, but the conversation will continue when he becomes available. Therefore what follows is an interview by Pathisa Nyathi (PN) with Mrs Virginia Nyathi(VN), nee Dube held at Amagugu International Heritage Centre in Matobo on 29 December 2019
PN: Please tell me who you are.
VN: I am Virginia Dube, born in 1960 at a place called Osabeni east of Plumtree Town. When I joined the liberation struggle in 1977 I was given the war name of Leader Gonde. I attended Osabeni Primary School till the end of 1976 and was looking forward to proceeding to do secondary education. It was not to be.
PN: Tell me, what then happened which militated against your doing Form 1?
VN: We were, on the fateful day, weeding in our crop field. All of a sudden, we saw armed men approaching us. We immediately realized these were ZPRA guerrillas as there were many operating in the area at that time. We ran for dear life in the hope we would escape the dragnet.
PN: So you did not survive the dragnet?
VN: As we ran towards a small river west of our crop field, we went straight towards another group of ZPRA guerrillas who already had rounded up other girls. There was no way out.
PN: How many ZPRAs were there?
VN: There were seven(7) altogether. There were 11 of us who got rounded up, all of us being girls. This was the time when ZPRA was rounding up recruits for training in Zambia. I was at Nampundwe when I discovered that there were pupils from Manama Mission together with us from the southern part of the country.
PN: Then the long journey began. Please tell us about it.
VN: Our home area is not very far from the border with Botswana. The long journey began which took us across the border river, Ramakwebana. Already we could see, above us, a spotter plane which was clearly observing and pursuing us. The comrades would instruct us to lie down to avoid detection. Soon we found ourselves in Botswana and began the long march towards Francistown. The distance was long.
PN: So you had to put up for the night along the way?
VN: Yes. The first stretch got us to Tshesebe where we spent the night. The place was camp like in structure. For food, we had bread and soft drinks. The comrades left us in one room and we did not know where they spent the night. Early in the morning, we resumed our journey which took us to Francistown.
PN: Once in Francistown, what happened next?
VN: Now there were many of us. There was a camp where we were taken to. It was a prison complex. Food was prepared for us and we were well fed. We never starved. We stayed in Francistown for about a month before moving on. An aircraft came to pick us up en route to Lusaka in Zambia. We arrived there in the late afternoon.
PN: From Lusaka where did you go?
VN: We were taken to a transit camp known as Nampundwe, west of Lusaka. That was the beginning of the process of transformation in more ways than one. We had several instructors including the pioneering girls that had been trained in Morogoro in Tanzania, alongside their male counterparts. These included, inter alia, the following, Belinda, Jane and Audrey. There was one short girl among them whose name I have forgotten. She spoke with a TshiVenda accent and had two pairs of parallel incisions below her eyes, a pair below each(amaleveni). These girls were among our instructors in various disciplines. One male instructor whose name that I remember was Thodlana.
The political commissars taught us political education. We thus became physically fit and politically conscious in order to sustain the long campaign that lay ahead of us. Nampundwe Camp was situated in a forested area. We lived in make shift barracks. We used pit latrines. There were no beds at the camp.
Physical exercises were a major component of our training curriculum. I should have pointed out that upon arrival at Nampundwe we were lined up and given war names that we were going to use. The names were written on a piece of paper and then given to us. It was at that point that I became Leader Gonde. Early in the morning around 2am or 3am, we were woken up and went to the parade square to do toyi-toyi over a long distance. We carried wooden logs in place of guns. We yelled the toyi-toyi chant, lifting and lowering our toy guns.
PN: What sort of exercises did you do?
VN: There was one known as Number 9. This was a rigorous exercise where we were expected to jump like frogs. Number 9 came to a point where we were said to be going to meet up with Joshua Nkomo. In essence, it was some sort of transformative graduation as this time we went up a hill and ended at some ravine. There was no Nkomo to meet up with. There was another exercise referred to as No 6. This one involved press-ups which were not easy either. One sweated and in the end the sweat dried up leaving one’s skin liberally coated with a white substance. In all these exercises pupils from Manama Mission were with us. It was very common to have some of the girls getting spiritually possessed during the rigorous exercises.
I recall one day when I was not feeling well. Our instructors told me to return to the kitchen. Along the way I met instructor Thodlana who did not take kindly to my story and bahaviour. He made me roll on mud from the pig sty . From there I proceeded to the parade square.
PN: How long were you at Nampundwe?
VN: We stayed at Nampundwe for quite some months though I am not sure of the exact number of months. Remember we arrived in January 1977 at a time there were increasing numbers of new recruits including pupils from Manama Mission and Thekwane Mission. Before the end of year, it was realized that boys and girls should be kept at separate transit camps. Victory Camp(VC) was then established and would be home to the girls and old people. We were involved in clearing the camp in readiness for occupation. We slashed the tall grass and did general sprucing up of the area. Cecil was Camp Commander. Our female instructors from Nampundwe went with us to VC.
Physical exercises continued, so did lessons in political education. The physical exercises were aimed at equipping us with survival skills in case we were confronted by enemy forces.
PN: What happened after VC?
VN: Beyond VC, training was more militarily oriented and more professional. It was time, once again, for us to move to a new site and establish the first training camp for girls. ZPRA trucks came to collect us. It was a long haul that took us beyond Kabwe in the north-easterly direction from Lusaka. The new military camp was named after a river in the vicinity-it came to be known as Mkushi 1 which was occupied by us the first batch of women trainees at Mkushi. After graduating we left to establish Mkushi 2, as we opened space for the second batch of women trainees which came after us.
PN: Tell me more about the location of the military camp where you underwent military training.
VN: The proposed military camp was located in a bushy area with mountains forming some kind of defensive ring around it. Both the distant mountains and the nearby river came in handy when we were attacked during the airborne Rhodesian cross border campaign in which paratroopers took part in October 1978. Our priority upon arrival was to clear the bush just the way we had done at VC. Emphasis this time was on military training and, for the first time, we were issued with guns; AK rifles and Simonov rifles. We were trained how to dismantle the rifles, clean and reassemble them. Heavy weapons were used by men who performed guard duties at the camp. Anti-air weapons were among the defense battery. We donned military combat during training and when we graduated we were issued with khaki camouflage. The pioneering women military instructors that we first met at Nampundwe were still our instructors at Mkushi1. In addition to them, there was Nathan and Sylvester.
PN: Did you undergo target shooting during your training?
VN: Yes we did. We were taken to a shooting range outside the camp where dummies were erected as target objects that we used during our training. We were taught how to roll on the ground while holding our guns. This was a necessary defensive skill in case we came under heavy and sustained attack where retreat became the only option. We were taught how to take cover in order to avoid being targeted by enemy firepower. We resorted to camouflaging ourselves so that we melted into the terrain in which we found ourselves. We used tree branches to camouflage ourselves. The nature of the terrain determined the sort of camouflage that we chose to avoid detection. Grass and leaves were chosen as demanded by the nature of the terrain.
■ Continued next week
