The Sunday News
Foster Dongozi, Correspondent
FORMER Zimbabwe National Army soldier and Zipra freedom fighter Cde Alfred George Bango, whose war time pseudonym was Drawman Mabhena passed away in Bulawayo last week and was buried at Sontala in Kezi, his rural home yesterday.
Cde Bango was declared a liberation war hero. Known to family and friends as Frank, Cde Bango served in the public relations department of the ZNA in his last years of service to the country.
According to a biography provided by the family, Cde Bango was born to Ngebedu Mgutshini and George Bango on 15 August, 1946. After formal education at Sontala, the young Alfred, like most of his peers, sought employment in Bulawayo and from the early 60s was employed at Alpha Steel.
Before long he became involved in Zapu nationalist politics and activism that was sweeping across the country. After the infamous Unilateral Declaration of Independence ( UDI) by Ian Smith in 1965, Cde Bango excelled in recruitment and organising party members and young people to undergo military training to end settler rule through the armed struggle.
By 1977, he was in Zambia at Nampundu Transit Camp having navigated his way via Botswana. That same year Cde Bango received military training in conventional warfare in Muammar Gaddaffi’s Libya alongside other liberation movements such as uMkhonto weSizwe, the armed wing of South Africa’s African National Congress, Zanla, the armed wing of Zanu and Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO).
After having excelled in Libya, Cde Bango was deployed by Zipra commanders for further military training in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) then led by Leonid Brezhnev. Upon his return from the USSR, Cde Bango was sent to Chinyunyu Camp in Zambia where he received further training in artillery.
Cde Bango was later deployed to the war front in Matabeleland North and Midlands and after the Lancaster House agreement, he was part of a group of guerrillas that prepared for the grouping of freedom fighters into different assembly points.
In 1981 he was attested into the Zimbabwe National Army and was posted to Guinea Fowl in Gweru. He was transferred to serve in different areas and he attained the rank of Sergeant at the School of Infantry at the then Llewellin Barracks, now called Lookout Masuku Barracks, where he served for 15 years before being posted to Mbalabala School of Infantry as a public relations officer before his final posting to Josiah Magama Tongogara Barracks as a public relations officer.
He retired in 1995 to his home in Kezi. Cde Bango was later diagnosed with diabetes and hypertension which claimed his life.
