The Sunday News
It’s 1976, and liberation struggle in Southern Rhodesia is at its zenith when the author and his best friend the late politician, Cde Obedingwa Mguni convince each other to join up. Both are idealistic about being part of the effort to rid Zimbabwe of its colonial masters, but when they arrive in Zambia for military training, they realise they could very well have bitten more than they could chew.
The author pens the book in an interesting style, alternating between first and second person to drive home the emotions and mental anguish they felt during their time in the bush.
At 15 years of age, the two boys from Plumtree arrive at the Lusaka Airport via Botswana before being whisked off to Nampundwe Transit Camp in a Russian-built military car where they join other Kijanas who left home to fight the white settlers.
The story is told using vivid imagery and first-hand experience making it key to unpacking the experiences of teen guerrillas, young people who sacrificed their lives for the liberation of Zimbabwe. This is by far the most telling story of a young boy’s wartime memories.
It gives a graphic description of the training camps, the road to the training camps and most important of all, the compelling nature of the liberation struggle seen from a child’s eye. It also shows the training methods and ideological education that made guerrillas feared by the settler regime.
The author manages to share with the reader how the ideology of ZAPU shaped his own thinking and measured his commitment to the liberation struggle in spite of his tender age, lessons that every Kijana and guerrillas needed to understand why they were fighting in the war in the first place.
Lungisani Ndlovu provides the reader with an insight into the liberation war that has not been told too often and when it has, has been laced with more fiction than fact.
Ukijana: The Liberator is the author’s first literary offering and though it has a few language errors, it is none-the-less a very good book by any account, tinged with a history that has long been missing. I rate this at 3 ½ stars!
A sweeping, multi-layered biography with vivid description of emotions and thoughts, by the Lungisani Ndlovu who risked all to travel to Zambia along with his dear friend to join the liberation struggle as a teenager. – @RealSimbaJemwa
