The Sunday News
We continue our interview with Bulawayo Town Clerk, Retired Major Christopher Dube pseudo name, Cde Edmos Ngulube who joined the armed struggle at the age of 17 years. Rtd Maj Dube in our last instalment spoke about he found himself entangled in political activities while in Form Two at Mpopoma High School in Bulawayo, resulting in him being pressurised by the school authorities to leave his studies, which were at their infancy.
He was to find employment at Consolidated Textiles now National Blankets before quitting for the war in January 1977. Last week in his conversation with our Assistant Editor Mkhululi Sibanda (MS), Rtd Maj Dube was still talking about how difficult life was Nampundwe Transit Camp in Zambia. He resumes the conversation from there. Below are excerpts of the interview.
MS: You are speaking about the situation at Nampundwe like shortage of food, what about the military side of things?
Rtd Maj: That is where the elementary or basics of military science were taught. We were made to wake up early in the morning to do physical exercises. That is where people were taught the famous toyi-toyi. It was very tough. I managed to pull through that situation young as I was. I remained a member of the crack force that is a grouping set up by the commanders at Nampundwe to look out for those regarded as exhibiting deviant behaviour and so on. Then came the time to go for military training at Luso in Angola under the Cubans. We were the second group to go there. The commanders at Nampundwe felt I was ready for training as I was deemed fit and strong despite my age. However, some guys who had not been chosen managed to sneak into the group that had been chosen.
MS: How did they manage to do that?
Rtd Maj Dube: They sneaked out of the camp and waited for the trucks at some point a little distance from the camp where they were allowed to board the trucks. I remember I was part of the advance team to Angola and our group was made up of 300 comrades but because some people had managed to sneak out of the camp, our number rose to 330. So at the end of the day we travelled in a group of 330. Others followed later as when we started training in Angola as the second group we were around 2 000. But travelling to Angola itself was an uphill task as we were packed in those Cuban trucks like sardines on a rough journey.
MS: What made people sneak out, was it the fascination to hold the gun?
Rtd Maj Dube: No. It was the zeal to fight for our motherland, it was the zeal to free our country from colonial bondage. The revolutionary spirit was all over. We had that feeling to fight and free this country.
MS: Then tell us about the situation in Angola.
Rtd Maj Dube: Our training was delayed a bit as we had to wait for the translators. As you might know the Cubans speak Spanish, which we called Spinoro. However, they finally arrived and we went through a rigorous training in the capable hands of the Cubans. We were divided into 10 companies and myself I specialised in infantry. We finished our training in early 1978, but we could not immediately return to Zambia. We were supposed to go by road again but there were intelligence reports that the Rhodesians were planning to attack us along the way. It was then decided that we would be flown to Zambia to avoid being ambushed by the Rhodesians.
MS: When you returned to Zambia where were you taken to?
Rtd Maj Dube: When we got back to Zambia this time as fully fledged soldiers we were taken to the Freedom Camp (FC), which at some point served as the Zipra Headquarters. We stayed there for some time while some were being deployed and others sent for further training. Myself and others of course we were taken emagojini, that is at the CGT2, which then was under the command of Cde Tekenya while the current commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces, General Philip Valerio Sibanda who operated under the name, Ananias Gwenzi commanded CGT1. Those camps were near the Great East Road. Those camps were heavily fortified. It was while we were there that FC and Mkushi, a camp for women combatants were bombed on the same day. That was in October in 1978. However, a funny incident happened before the bombing at Mkushi and FC, which could have been disastrous to us emagojini as well.
MS: Ooh, take us through that incident.
Rtd Maj: You know on the eve of the bombings at FC and Mkushi, two very senior commanders of Zipra, in fact members of the High Command, they are both late now visited our camp and addressed us. They told us that the party president, Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo was going to visit our camp the following day, so during the visit we were not supposed to be armed. We were told that we had to lay down our arms when Dr Nkomo was within the vicinity. That shocked us because as soldiers we felt it was suicidal not to be armed no matter how important the person was. We did not understand what was happening, but as you know in a military set-up an order is an order.
MS: Before you go on who were those two senior commanders?
Rtd Maj: It’s a fact so there is no reason why I should not name them. It was the late Brigadier Charles Grey who operated under the name Mike Reynolds, and the other was Retired Lt-Colonel Harold Chirenda who was known as Elliot Masengo during the war.
MS: So, you really laid down your arms?
Rtd Maj Dube: Yes we did the following day except those who were in charge of the security of the camp. If the Rhodesians had laid a siege and bombed our camp I shudder to think what would have happened, we would have been wiped out.
MS: Then what happened on the next day where Dr Nkomo was said to be paying you a visit.
Rtd Maj: Dr Nkomo never came, but we saw military aircrafts flying by and we thought ngezika Kaunda, uKK. We thought they belonged to the Zambian Government. It never crossed our minds that they belonged to the enemy, the Rhodesian Airforce. We were to learn later that FC and Mkushi had come under heavy attack from the Rhodesians, resulting in the death of hundreds of comrades. Comrades started having that feeling that Cdes Reynolds and Masengo were up to some mischief. It then became easy to understand the suspicions of the troops that there were Rhodesian moles within the command element of our army.
However, it’s also possible that the order from those two senior commanders coincided with the bombings, and they were not up to anything bad. We were not told why Dr Nkomo did not turn up. We were left hanging there. But at the end of the day comrades felt we were being prepared to be given the enemy on a silver platter. It’s still the feeling of comrades up to now, to avoid suspicions and speculations, an explanation could have been made so that comrades understood what really was being planned.
MS: But was your camp raided?
Rtd Maj: Not as such, but what happened was that after bombing FC which was in the morning and later on Mkushi around 11am, the Rhodesian planes coming from that callous exercise flew over our camps. I think guerillas based at CGT1 fired an anti-air weapon which could have been a surface to air missile (SAM7), commonly known as a strellar. The aircraft seemed to have caught fire and we were ordered to go and check what had happened to it. We thought it was going to crash, but along the way we found stumbled upon drums of fuel. It was a makeshift Rhodesian forces refueling site.
To be continued next week with Rtd Maj Dube talking about what happened to those drums of fuel, the treatment of guerillas trained in countries seen to have been too close to the Soviet Union like Angola and how the battalions were formed in preparation for the final onslaught on the Rhodesians. Rtd Major was in the third battalion that was commanded by Cde Jackson Matiwaza. The first battalion was commanded by Retired Major-General Stanford Khumalo whose pseudo name was Cde Madliwa.
