THE first temptation was to say “shut up you motor mouth Acie Lumumba”, because somehow that boy just doesn’t sound real. In fact, Lumumba doesn’t look like the real Zanu-PF deal, but no the boy should not shut up.

On the other hand, I want to congratulate Youth, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Minister Patrick Zhuwao for owning up to his childish behaviour a few weeks ago. Power rakanga rabuda mutsinga kwakupinda mumusoro, but good going to the youthful minister because sense has finally prevailed.

But then Lumumba is clearly angry with Minister Zhuwao and since these guys have been buddies for long, it may be good for a former friend to tell us kwavaiswera, uye nani and vachiitei. We may have found one of the keys to the puzzle.

Lumumba is using the social media to hit back at his former friend saying: “We have public officials in this country, Minister of Youth Development, Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Patrick Zhuwao, who is abusing public office for personal gain and I got fired for that.”

Quite interesting information and the tone of Lumumba tells you that there is more information coming in the coming days. Go Acie! Go Acie!

For those not in the know, Lumumba is angry because Minister Zhuwao fired him from the Zimbabwe Youth Empowerment Strategy for Investment. The angry Lumumba was fired by his good friend Zhuwao hardly a week after the appointment as the chairman of the youth body. But Zhuwao so, shuwa munhu asati atombolumawo here? Haaa, you tend to understand the overreaction from Lumumba.

Lumumba is boasting that he will spill more information if Minister Zhuwao tries to dispute any of his allegations adding that he will release more damning secret recordings that also implicate other unnamed top Zanu-PF officials.

This Lumumba guy has wetted our appetites and I can’t wait to hear what is contained in those secret recordings and I can’t wait to hear him naming names.

I said the puzzle is fast falling into place. Some of us thought all this would happen much later in our political lives but hey, Lumumba is determined to fast-forward the developments.

If indeed G40 and Lacoste exist, then revelations by Lumumba could be very interesting because so much has been happening under the cover of darkness in recent weeks.

But then wait a minute, didn’t I say this Lumumba guy doesn’t look the real deal? Should we trust him? Is he saying the truth? Does he have those secret recordings or he just wants a scared Minister Zhuwao to give him a panic call? Something tells me we are being taken for a ride by an angry joker.

If Lumumba indeed has the secret recordings, the first question to ask is, so this friendship with Minister Zhuwao and these other unnamed top Zanu-PF officials was suspect from the word go?

Kutambana tsoro muchiti muri mese? The second question is, if he has the recordings, why threaten to release them? He should just release them, unless he thinks he can hold the country to ransom.

Anyway, lets see how Lumumba handles this one because unknowingly, he has put himself on the firing line and his integrity will soon be put to test. What is however undeniable is that something really bad happened between these two friends.

While Lumumba is ranting and raving, Minister Zhuwao is refusing to be intimidated — well, not quite but he is putting a very brave face. Asked about the allegations, Minister Zhuwao said:

“I don’t spend too much time looking at those allegations because I primarily believe in terms of Section 61 of the Constitution which says everybody has a right to expression and freedom of the media . . .

“I absolutely have no idea what triggered him to say that. I wish i was a prophet. If there is any impropriety, he must report me to the authorities and I am investigated if there is anything I did wrong. You must never threaten to be a person of integrity. It is something you can never threaten. He has an obligation as a citizen to reveal more.”

Well, not exactly convincing, but its ok. You get the feeling that somewhere between the lines, Minister Zhuwao is appealing to his friend saying “hindava kani iwe Acie, huya titaure.”

Speaking to one of my congregants yesterday and in reference to the fallout between Minister Zhuwao and Lumumba, I said “ndiko kutanga kwazvo,” but this church member was adamant that “aiwa ndiko kupera kwazvo.” Well, dear reader make your own conclusion.

Like I said above, it was so refreshing to hear Minister Zhuwao accepting that he had messed up things a few weeks ago. “I am appointed by the President and as I take directions, it is quite possible that I can misinterpret certain things. I must be able to listen to my boss when my boss explains that I am misinterpreting certain things.”

Indeed, as they say, humility is something that is gained and practised as we grow in wisdom and grace.
According to Easton’s 1897 Bible dictionary, humility is defined as a prominent Christian grace. It is a state of mind well pleasing to God; it preserves the soul in tranquillity and makes us patient under trials.

Minister Zhuwao seems to be learning lessons in humility very fast and we hope he is opening a new chapter in his political life. But then Lumumba is trying to spoil it all.

“Good friends we have, and good friends we have lost,” sang Bob Marley.

Bishop is out!

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Last week, Cde Lovemore Rugora whose Chimurenga name was called Cde John Pedzisa narrated how he together with a group of other freedom fighters hit Altena Farm farm in 1972, signalling the start of the sustained Second Chimurenga. After the attack, the Smith regime went on a massive manhunt for the group.
As his group was retreating, some of his comrades were shot dead while Cde Pedzisa was shot in the leg. In this interview with our team comprising Munyaradzi Huni and Tendai Manzvanzvike, Cde Pedzisa narrates how he later managed to escape and how he was later appointed by Cde Tongogara to be the Zanu representative at Mbeya, in Tanzania.
Read on . . .

SM: So what happened after you took cover at this bushy area?
Cde Pedzisa: The next morning, the Rhodesian forces came back to the area with helicopters. I saw them loading something into one of the helicopters and I think when I returned fire, I killed one or two of them and they had come to collect the bodies. I saw it all from this position.
They then made an extended line to comb the area and they started walking in my direction. One of the soldiers had a sniffer dog but fortunately he was a bit far away from where I was hiding. I crawled further into the thick bush and they walked past. My heart was pounding.

I still had my gun and was ready to fire if they had discovered me. Ndakanga ndakakoka kuti ndofa nevangu.
I remained in this position the whole day. In the evening, I started walking along the river. I was in excruciating pain. In the morning, I took cover and rested. I would only walk during the evening.

On the third day, that’s when I saw some cattle and knew that there must be some villages nearby. I walked to the village and they first prepared porridge for me. I managed to eat three teaspoons of porridge. They started treating my wound and later gave me sadza. Ndakangoita musova mitatu ndikati ndaguta. You know ukanyatsoita nzara chaizvo, you won’t eat lots of food.
These villagers said they were going to look for my other comrades in the area and when they made this suggestion I said yes, you should do so but as you do that I will find somewhere nearby in the bush to go and hide.

These villagers were afraid to keep me for long because they feared someone could sell them out and the Rhodesian forces were ruthless to anyone who assisted us. I remember the Rhodesian forces at one time vakasungirira munhu mupenyu pahelicopter and they flew the helicopter with this villager hanging. By the time the helicopter landed, the villager was dead. So this instilled fear into the villagers. After a day, the villagers took me to my fellow comrades on a bicycle.

SM: You are talking about moving from this place to that place but we are talking about moving in thick forests here. How were you coordinating all this?
Cde Pedzisa: Like I told you, during training, the Chinese taught us that we were the fish and the people were the water. The povho made the co-ordination easy. They were our means of communication. So you see mvura iri kufambisa fish.
The teachings of Mao say that akabata pfuti mudiki kupovho. It meant that whatever we were doing, we were supposed to put povho in front. As freedom fighters, we were servants of the people.

So when I was taken to my fellow comrades, that’s when I started receiving proper medication to my knee. Unfortunately, mushonga wacho had expired and the needle yacho yakanga isisabaye zvakanaka. Vaindibaya vachiita zvekutsindira kuti ipinde. That’s why up to this day, you can see gomba riri paknee pangu. (Showing the knee with tears running down his cheeks). Kubaiwa zvekuita kunge pfumo. I can’t and won’t forget the pain.
Later, these comrades told me that they had a letter from Cde Tongogara saying I should return to the rear in Zambia. I was carried on a stretcher, we used to call it wachanja, and taken to Zambezi river then crossed into Zambia.

SM: When you got to the rear, what happened?
Cde Pedzisa: I was taken to Cde Tongo who told me that the Zanu representative in Mbeya in Tanzania, Cde Kuraowone had passed on and I was supposed to replace him. I first got treatment in Zambia and when I got better, that’s when I was taken to Mbeya to become the Zanu representative. This was now in 1974. I was in Mbeya till 1976. In 1976, that’s when Mgagao camp was closed and Nachingweya camp was opened.

SM: As the Zanu representative in Mbeya, what were your duties?
Cde Pedzisa: I would receive recruits from Zambia and facilitate all their clearance and logistics before they proceeded to Mgagao. I would also do the same for the comrades leaving Mgagao going for deployment. There was also an armoury at Mbeya and I liaised with the OAU officials for all the logistics regarding ammunition.

SM: Some comrades have told us that so many disturbing things happened at Mbeya between Zanu and Zapu cadres. Did you see this during your time there?
Cde Pedzisa: I didn’t see this during my time there but what I can tell you is that I was in good books with my Zapu representative at Mbeya. Its unfortunate I can’t remember his name. However, I don’t want to say nothing of that sort happened. It’s possible it happened.

Mbeya was a transit camp and it’s possible some bad things could have happened without us knowing.
From Mbeya, I went to Mozambique in 1976. I was later made Camp Commander at Doroi which was near Chimoio camp in Mozambique. At Doroi we would receive recruits from home and vet them to see those who had the qualities to be sent for military training.

By this time, thousands of people were joining the struggle and we had to vet them strictly.
Cde Tsuro was my security man. Machokoto was kueducation. There were others but I can’t remember their names. We had several departments, like logistics, medics and so on that were under my command.

We were given food by the OAU through the Mozambican government. I was at Doroi for just a year, that’s until 1977.
From Doroi I went to Tembwe until 1978. I was later made the commissar at Tembwe with Cde Makasha as the commander. In 1979, I was transferred to Maputo because of my seniority but still as commissar.
I need to tell you that it was in Mozambique when many recruits kept coming that comrades started falling in love. As commissar ndakatochatisa vakawanda.

SM: Really, how would you do it?
Cde Pedzisa: There was no rice and all that pomp and fun fair. The couples would come to me and I ask each one of them kuti iwe une chokwadi here kuti uyu wamuda? If they all say yes, yes, I would make them sign on paper and that was their marriage certificate. I would remain with this certificate.

SM: Briefly tell us of the role of the commissar during those days?
Cde Pedzisa: Commissar ndiye anodzidzisa gwara rechinhu chese chinenge chichida kuitwa. The main role was to politicise people and make them understand why and how the struggle was being carried out.
We would teach the comrades how to relate with povho, remember the song “Kune Nzira Dzemasoja”. It talks about how a comrade should behave and relate to the masses. The masses were never supposed to fear macomrades. A commissar convinces people through talking to them with respect. Zanu was formed to free the masses. It’s unfortunate that some comrades who were trained later didn’t receive proper political orientation leading to stories of abuse of povho. Hondo yakanga yakura so control was also now a problem.

SM: So after the liberation struggle, where did you go?
Cde Pedzisa: After the death of Cde Tongo, we were selected by Cde Rex Nhongo together with 11 other commanders and our deputies to come into Rhodesia to oversee our assembly points. Later, Cde Nhongo withdrew me from these commanders after he realised that I had an injury. My knee had not yet completely healed. I remained in Maputo.
We later came to Zimbabwe the day President Mugabe came back. Our plane was the first one to arrive then the one carrying President Mugabe later arrived.

We went and stayed in Highlands. I was later arrested after I addressed some Zanu meeting because police was saying we had not sought clearance. Some Zanu youths protested but I spent one week in prison. During this time, some people thought I had died because the Smith regime was secretly killing comrades during these days. I was later transferred to Masvingo still as commissar until elections, where I was arrested again and released after a week.
This was in 1980, and the Rhodesians were using intimidation to scare us from campaigning for Zanu.

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JUST been reading the book, “The Empire Writes Back” by Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin and the book tickled me to critically think about the on-going and well-funded project by ex-Rhodesians. Borrowing from the title of the above book, I think the project should be called “Unrepentant Rhodies Write Back to Our Struggle.”
Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle is on the onslaught because after defeat at the battlefront, ex-Rhodies have in recent years revived their fight through publishing volumes and volumes of books that seek to portray the losers as the winners of the Second Chimurenga War. What they failed to win through the gun in the bush, they want to win it through text in the media. This is the tragedy that confronts us as Zimbabweans because the victors haven’t yet told their story.

Fortunately, in their bid to present themselves as victors in a war they lost in embarrassing ways, these ex-Rhodies are exposing themselves in shocking ways and also in the process revealing to the world what Zimbabwe’s gallant freedom fighters were up against. Reading some of the books by these ex-Rhodies, one can easily conclude that Zimbabwe is a miracle country because while the Rhodesian forces were armed to the teeth, they were fighting an ill-equipped guerilla force. On paper, there was no way these ill-equipped pockets of freedom fighters could defeat the heavily equipped Rhodesian army.

Maybe Zimbabwe’s Second Chimurenga clearly illustrates the point that weapons don’t fight a war. A war is fought by the heart of men and women.

One of the writers who is at the forefront of trying to portray the losers as winners is Peter Baxter and his 2011 book, “Selous Scouts: Rhodesian Counter-Insurgency Specialists,” published under the “Africa @ War Series is an interesting read. In the book, Baxter tries to present the Selous Scouts as a mean machine, but dismally fails to do so as he succeeds in exposing the numerous weaknesses of the Rhodesian forces.

Allow me to quote some sections from this book which is a loud call to veterans of the liberation struggle to come out and tell their stories because the distortions, misrepresentations and outright lies contained in the book are just too glaring.

On the cover page of the book, the Rhodesian Selous Scouts are described by one Lt-Col Robert Brown who is said to be a Soldier of Fortune, as “Undoubtedly one of the most, if not the most, effective counter-insurgency units in the history of warfare.”

Well, this “most effective” counter-insurgency unit was exposed by the gallant freedom fighters who outsmarted it to an extent that the Rhodesian forces foolishly concluded that the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo had some “muti” to disappear after they failed on several occasions to assassinate him.

In his foreword, Baxter starts by giving a context of how and where the name Selous came from. He writes about Frederick Courteney Selous as one of the “most fascinating characters of imperial Africa, and doubtless one of the greatest of the white sons of Rhodesia.”

Already, Baxter is trying to create a hero from a bloodthirsty colonialist who was at the forefront of plundering Africa’s resources. He goes on to describe Selous as someone who “epitomised to a generation of avid imperial youth the ‘Great White Hunter’ creed.” This supposed “Great White Hunter” was killed in very simple ways “by a sniper on the Rufiji River on 4 January 1917.” This great fighter? Dead, just like that?

Tracing the formation of the Selous Scouts, Baxter narrated how the Rhodesian forces succeeded for a while to keep the Zipra and Zanla forces in Zambia and Mozambique.

“To achieve this, the Rhodesian security forces relied heavily on a collection of unique and rather unconventional special force units. The army for example, made practical use of mounted infantry, versatile platoon-sized police reserve tracker units, conventional special forces in the form of the Special Air Service (SAS), the compact and deadly Rhodesia Light Infantry, and of course the enduringly iconic Selous Scouts…

“By the beginning of the 1970s, however, the situation had deteriorated significantly with the advent of fully fledged armed incursions beginning to take place from bases in Zambia and the Tete province of Mozambique…” writes Baxter.

He goes on to accept that the watershed year for Rhodesia was 1972 when, as reported last week by this publication in its Second Chimurenga Chronicles, Cde John Pedzisa and a group of other freedom fighters hit Altena Farm.

Baxter agrees that the new war strategy by Zapu and Zanu which was anchored on the “tried and tested revolutionary principles drawn from Mao tse Tung’s Red Book brought a new dimension to the liberation struggle and the Rhodesian forces were forced into action.

“As the 1960s drew to a close and the armed insurgency appeared to subside, an aura of apparent peace settled on the land. The Rhodesian security and intelligence services relaxed somewhat, allowing themselves to be lulled by the notion that the nationalists had been defeated.

“However, under the surface, Zanu political commissars had been very busy moving among the population of the northeast in an effort to inform the masses of the coming revolution. This process typically involved an intoxicating mix of Marxist orientation and extreme violence,” says Baxter in clear reference to the success of the Pungwe meetings that freedom fighters held during the night with villagers.

“The preparation for this new phase of the war went on right under the noses of the Rhodesian security services,” he said showing the effectiveness of the strategy by the freedom fighters. He continued: “The local population was siding with the revolution, hearts and minds were being lost and a drastic review of military strategy was urgently required.

“The solution was partly home-grown and partly borrowed. The borrowed element can be traced to the British counter-insurgency operations in Malaya during the uprising in that colony that began after the Second World War.”

Baxter reveals that although the Rhodesian Special Branch was in place, it was not enough to deal with the freedom fighters who kept sneaking into Rhodesia and causing all sorts of mayhem. He said facing with the continuous attacks by the freedom fighters, the Rhodesian forces resorted to “pseudo operations” which were an innovation of the civilian intelligence community.

Baxter goes further saying Rhodesian director general of the Central Intelligence Organisation, Ken Flower is sometimes touted as the midwife of the concept of the Seous Scouts but “no single organisation or person can realistically lay claim to the original idea of the Selous Scouts.” In a way, this is an acceptance that the Rhodesian security forces had been thrown into disarray and there was no time to properly think of how to counter the strategies by the freedom fighters.

“Concern at the higher levels of command suddenly became acute and the need for intelligence urgent. . . Meetings were held every evening at the Centenary Joint Operation Centres. . .

“On one particular evening the discussion centred around plans to deal with a local medium carrying the pseudonym Nehanda who was active in the liberation movement in Mozambique,” said Baxter. So even the Rhodesian forces acknowledged the role of the spirit mediums during the liberation struggle.

Some of the early recruits into the Rhodesian Selous Scouts were Andre Rabie and Stretch Franklin who were considered to be ruthless veterans of war. However, despite trying to portray these two as brave soldiers, the death of Rabie exposed the lies. He was killed in a shoot-out with freedom fighters after he walked straight into a trap. “A second tragedy occurred just a month later with the death in action of territorial officer Lieutenant Robin Hughes,” said Baxter.

What is interesting is that in all these deaths, Baxter writes with no reference to the fact that these Rhodies were shot by freedom fighters. It’s as if they shot themselves. The first commanding officer of the Selous Scouts was Captain Ron Reid-Daly, a close friend of Lieutenant-General Peter Walls who was the commander of the army at the time. The then Prime Minister’s Office and CIO came up with the terms of reference for this new unit.

The directive when it was complete read as follows:
“The unit came into being following a directive issued by the Prime Minister to the director-general of the CIO who in turn promised the full cooperation of the Commissioner of Police and the Army Commander to staff and equip the same. It was tasked to carry out operations of a clandestine nature wherever it may be called upon to serve, drawing manpower from the combined services and other less obvious channels while receiving instruction from the OCC, Director-General CIO, Service Commanders and operational JOCs. . .

“Ken Flower would remain overall commander of pseudo operations, undertaking to appraise the commissioner of police on all operations, while Walls would assume responsibility for military logistics and personnel. Mention was made of the role of proposed unit in the clandestine elimination of guerillas both within and without the country. Special branch liason officers were accounted for, most notably Winston Hart, who were to be commanded by Superintendent Mac McGuinness. . .

“The original Selous Scout home in an isolated corner of Trojan nickel mine near Bindura remained the home of the Special Branch Selous Scouts…

“Initial proposals were that the unit should be of company strength, perhaps 120 officers and men. The command element would be all white, with the highest rank to which a black soldier could aspire then being a colour sergeant.”

The principal modus operandi of the Selous Scouts, according to Baxter were to “effectively impersonate black, communist-trained guerillas operating within their own social medium. . .”

When all had been set, Baxter says “the party was held, the food eaten and the drink drunk, after which the first fellowship of the Selous Scouts stepped into the world to do maximum damage.” Maximum damage meant the ruthless and wanton killings of freedom fighters.

The Selous Scouts relied heavily on what they called Fireforce which according to Baxter in simple terms meant a “standby force located at various forward airfields scattered around the operational areas.

“It consisted typically of three Alouette III helicopters, or G-Cars, armed with door-mounted machine guns and configured primarily for troop deployment and support, and a fourth Alouette III, called a K-Car, which was armed with a formidable mounted 20mm cannon. . . As of 1977, an additional complement of 16 to 20 troopers could be deployed from the venerable C-47 Dakota transporters.

“Air support was usually available from one of the Rhodesian air force’s multi-functional Cessna Lynx aircraft and a squadron of Hawker Hunters should all this still prove inadequate. The key to the success of Fireforce was speed, accuracy and aggression,” said Baxter who went on to reveal how the coordination was done for Fireforce to be effective.

Clearly the Rhodesian forces had weapons that could flatten a mountain within seconds and understandably many didn’t give freedom fighters any chance to win, but using guerilla tactics, the war raged on. Baxter admits that the Selous Scouts were ruthless and even suggests that some of their operations went overboard. He quotes Ken Flower to illustrate his point. Flower said:

“Certainly, the unit contained individuals who performed heroic feats and fought with the greatest honour and distinction. . .but it also attracted vainglorious extroverts and a few psychopathic killers.”

According to Baxter, British historian and journalist, David Caute, commenting in his 1983 book, “Under the Skin” about the decline of white Rhodesia, the Selous Scouts were “upstarts in a hurry to describe themselves as legendary.”

As the freedom fighters kept pushing into the country, the Rhodesian forces came up with all manner of operations from Operation Hurricane, Operation Thrasher, Operation Repulse, Operation Tangent, Operation Splinter and Operation Grapple among other operations.

The Rhodesian forces even recruited some freedom fighters like Morrison Nyathi, a former Zanla fighter who they turned into a spie and accompanied Rhodesian soldiers as they massacred comrades at Nyadzonya and camp.

Baxter writes about another Selous Scout spie, Allan Brice saying he was “an agent embedded in Lusaka and surrounds, who had since the mid-1970s been responsible for generating a great deal of mayhem in the capital, including the March 1975 assassination of Zanu political chairman Herbert Chitepo. Allan ‘Taffy’ Brice, an ex-British SAS soldier and an extremely able and dangerous operative, had remained undetected to the extent that, until the publication of his biography in 1985 by Rhodesian war historian Peter Stiff, there had been no clear evidence linking anyone with the assassination.”

Baxter goes on to make several revelations exposing the inefficiency of the Rhodesian security system and the failure by the Rhodesian army to contain the freedom fighters as the war escalated. The Smith regime employed all dirty tricks in the book including mounting raids into Zambia and Mozambique but the struggle was unstoppable.

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Hon Mike Bimha
Two weeks ago, I briefed Cabinet on the status of our industry for the period October 2015 to March 31, 2016. The report shows that though we have challenges, there are a lot of positives in the manufacturing and industrial sectors.
Contrary to some pronouncements, there is no crisis; we are actually improving!
Yes, we still have challenges here and there in our manufacturing sector, and some of those challenges include, for instance, the effects of drought on raw materials and agro-processing.

Most industries that are dependent on agriculture and mining have suffered.
There is also the rand depreciation against the United States dollar, which has South African products on average becoming almost 15 percent cheaper.

When imports are cheaper, our products are less competitive, especially as the imports we bring into Zimbabwe are mainly finished products.

The other issue is utility and infrastructure gaps. Once you have these gaps, it leads to increased costs of doing business.
We also have an influx of cheap imports due to smuggling aided by the porosity of some of our borders.
Mitigation

One of the things we are doing in this regard is supporting local industry by managing imports.
This has been done through a number of Statutory Instruments that have already been gazetted to remove a number of products from the Open General Import Licence.

If a product is removed from the Open General Import Licence, one will have to get an import licence if he/she wants to import.
And before one gets that licence, we have to be satisfied that the targeted product is not available locally. There are items like clothes and shoes, blankets, sugar and cooking oil, among others. Another measure is resource mobilisation; putting out money for industry.

We still have the Distressed and Marginalised Areas Fund, Zimbabwe Economic Trade Revival Facility and a Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe fund that targets various sectors and companies.

In addition, we get money from Africa Development Bank for certain sectors, and have submitted projects under the US$60 billion China facility for Africa. These projects include Sunway City Hitech, Sunway City Medical Park and a motor vehicle assembly plant.

The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa also has a regional support mechanism that will facilitate a cotton and clothing strategy and another strategy for leather.

There will also be capacity building support for Government and quasi-Government institutions.
Government doesn’t operate in isolation.

As such, we are supporting the Buy Zimbabwe Campaign, and the ministry will soon carry out retail surveys to determine to what extent our retail outlets are balancing imports and locally-produced products.

Our teams will assess whether it is necessary to have certain imports or not.
This assessment will help us gather information for potential investors pertaining to what areas are best to invest in.
We also have measures relating to ease of doing business

Agro-processing
Cairns Foods Limited has invested in a new factory in Mutare which was commissioned on March 31, 2016. This is going to increase capacity utilisation from 15 percent to 80 percent.

To date, well over 100 people have been recruited in the last quarter as a result of that.
Furthermore, the company launched an outgrowers scheme which will benefit almost 1 760 farmers in Manicaland province.

There is also Associated Foods of Zimbabwe; it’s in the processing of peanut butter and jam. Capacity utilisation is expected to increase from 49 percent to 65 percent by year-end.

The company envisages introducing a small scale outgrowers scheme for groundnuts worth US$500 000. This is expected to benefit 1 000 families in the next three years.

Nestle has commissioned a new plant from the production of milk powders and Cremora. The upgrade will see Cremora output increasing from 6 000 tonnes to 8 000 tonnes per annum.

We have a company called Surface Wilmer whose recent capital injection has improved capacity utilisation for cooking production to around 100 percent thus producing a total of 5 000 tonnes a month. The company will be commissioning oil refinery equipment in May as well as a new packaging plant for cooking oil.

There is a group called Willowton Group, which was approved in 2015 and is in the process of setting up a cooking oil processing and soap manufacturing plant in Mutare. Equipment has so far been procured.

United Refineries Limited in Bulawayo is now averaging 90 percent capacity production.
There is also a new joint venture company called Lessaffre comprising the French and Anchor Yeast of Gweru. They are looking at production of Anchor Yeast not only for Zimbabwe but for Africa.

There is also Trade Kings Zambia which will establish detergent manufacturing plants for both soap powder and paste in Harare.
Delta Beverages commissioned a second line of Maheu Plant, employing 147 workers in December 2015. The plant is currently operating at 65 percent capacity utilisation and has capacity to supply the region in future.

There is also a company called Best Food Processors, a joint venture between Beitbridge Juicing Company and Arda.
It is involved in the processing of tomatoes, citrus and passion fruits and is in Norton.

More than 100 people are expected to be employed directly and over 3 000 farmers are set to benefit indirectly.
Chemicals and plastics

Sinoma – a joint venture company between the Industrial Development Corporation and Sino Cement Zimbabwe – will diversify into brick and tile manufacturing.

It is set to be commissioned this year.
PPC Zimbabwe is currently constructing a cement milling plant in Harare which is expected to be commissioned during the last quarter of 2016.

Sino Zimbabwe, which produces cement in the Midlands through its investment in early 2016, has increased its capacity to 80 percent.

ZimPhos also secured a US$10 million loan which will be used both for Dorowa and buying equipment for the plant and part of it will go to Msasa to rebuild the sulphuric phosphoric acid plants.

Prior to securing this funding, Dorowa was operating at 15 percent capacity. As a result of this funding, it’s now operating at full capacity.

Motor industry
Quest Motor Corporation intends to introduce new brands. Early this year, the company invested in kits and jigs. Capacity utilisation has increased from three percent to 12 percent.

Deven Engineering and Uton of China signed an agreement worth US$15 million in 2015 for bus assembly. They are expected to make another capital injection on the importation of completely knocked down kits which will increase capacity utilisation from 1 percent to around 15 percent.

Electricals and metals
We have SanZim, a local version of Samsung. They have set up a television and refrigerator manufacturing plant, and will also set up an engineering academy.

Setwave Technologies is a company which intends to set up a geyser manufacturing plant in Zimbabwe, with capacity to produce one million vacuum tubes, 500 000 heaters and 100 water heater stands.

Zimasco stopped operating in October 2015, but has managed to court a South African-based investor, Portnex, under a lease agreement for its five furnaces.

Buy Zimbabwe
A Chinese company will join Government in resuscitating Caps Holdings; they should be coming on board soon.
Archer and Paramount, which had really gone down, but are now up, are in the process of revitalising their factories.

The new operations have resulted in capacity utilisation rising to 17 percent.
The interesting thing is that because of the measures we are taking to manage our imports, some of the suppliers and manufacturers from South Africa, for example, who have seen that, have taken the step to come here and invest into local industries.

There are quite a number of them.
These sectors that I have spoken about don’t represent all sectors of manufacturing. They just represent those that we picked.
But those that we picked are also in various categories, and are not the only ones.

The recommendations that we made are that we are going to work on two main issues. The first issue is managing imports.
We are not just talking of protecting our industries, but promoting them by making sure that the companies in certain fields make progress.

For example, we are going to expect companies that we are protecting to perform and reduce prices so that they become competitive.

The second issue is local procurement.
This means Government and the private sector should have a habit of procuring from our own. We had manufacturers telling us that if Government alone was to procure from them, they would operate at 100 percent capacity.

◆ Honourable Mike Bimha is the Minister of Industry and Commerce. He shared these views with The Sunday Mail Chief Reporter Kuda Bwititi in Harare last week.

3,388 total views, 467 views today

Tendai Chara
Concession Hill is one of the busiest roads in Chegutu. Trucks heavy-laden with gold ore negotiate dangerous curves, their drivers dodging recklessly-driven pirate taxis that ferry panners to and from mining claims further up the road. As one approaches Pickstone Mine, 23km from Chegutu, a small but densely forested hill springs into view. Known as Concession Hill, this landmark is of historical significance and yet remains fairly unknown to the generality of Zimbabweans.

Locals believe this is where King Lobengula’s indunas and British colonial magnate Cecil John Rhodes’ agents held the first of a series of meetings that led to Zimbabwe’s invasion.
Charles Rudd, James Rochfort Maguire and Francis Thompson led the party that paved the way for the Rudd Concession that led to the colonisation of this country.
This is the colonial equivalent of Golgotha.

Chief Ngezi Mupawose, under whose jurisdiction Concession Hill falls, said: “It is a known fact that the actual Rudd Concession was signed in Bulawayo. However, the first meeting between Cecil John Rhodes’ agents and King Lobengula’s indunas was held here. This is a historical fact that has never been disputed and a good number of people are not aware of.”
Seventy-one-year-old Sekuru Avira Musinami, who has lived in the area since 1961, said the place was of historical importance.

“The Concession Hill story is one of the few historical accounts which are undisputable. Both oral and written historical accounts point to this hill as the place where initial contact between Rhodes’ agents and King Lobengula began.”

Rhodes set his sights on mineral and farmland-rich Southern Africa following the continent’s partitioning by Europe.
Bent on invading the territory, he duped the black population in Zimbabwe via the Rudd Concession of October 30, 1888 which gave him commercial and legal powers, including sole rights to mine countrywide.

Rudd misled King Lobengula into believing Rhodes had British government support and that the concession would guarantee his kingdom protection from other colonialists.
Although the King dispatched envoys to protest to Queen Victoria, it was too late. Five years later, Rhodes annexed the country.

An account by William “Curio” Hervey Brown, a hunter who was collecting wildlife skins and skeletons for the Smithsonian Museum in the 1880s, chronicles a meeting between Rhodes’ representatives and King Lobengula’s indunas at Concession Hill.

Hervey Brown’s account makes references to the exact location and geographical features.
The National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe has requested more time to verify the accuracy of the accounts.

3,325 total views, 471 views today

Shamiso Yikoniko
Zimbabwe celebrated a landmark surgical achievement in April 2014 when a team of health professionals led by Mr Bothwell Mbuvayesango successfully conducted an operation to separate Siamese twins Tapiwanashe and Kupakwashe Chitiyo at Harare Central Hospital. The twins, who hail from one of Harare’s oldest suburbs, Highfield, turned two last week, and their birthday served as another reminder to their parents of how precious life is.
The Sunday Mail visited their home in Western Triangle, Highfield in the wake of this familial bliss, and oh, what happiness!
There was joy all around, palpable jubilation.

One could not miss the spurts of infectious laughter that Mrs Agnes Chitiyo let out as she related the story of her boys’ eventful two years on Earth.
“I am grateful to Almighty God for blessing us with such a rare gift. When I gave birth to them, conjoined as they were, I never imagined they would survive until now,” she said, her voice taking a more serious tone.

“If it hadn’t been for the fact that I’m struggling financially, I would’ve loved to hold a huge party for my twin boys. It would have given me great joy to see them being surrounded by other children, merry-making.”
The twins were conjoined from the lower chest to the upper abdomen and shared the same liver.

They were delivered through Caesarian section at Murehwa District Hospital and were later transferred to Harare where a team of at least 50 health professionals joined forces to separate them.

Their parents did not know whether they would survive.
But after eight hours of surgery, Mr Mbuvayesango and Co. emerged to tell them the good news.
A star shone brightly over Harare Central Hospital, bidding multitudes to harken to this miracle.

President Mugabe and First Lady Amai Grace Mugabe went to see the newborns and the team that helped them survive.
The twins’ name speak of thanksgiving to the Lord.

“The twins’ scars haven’t completely healed yet, and we are still expected to give them some medication. This wound management is expensive for us since we are supposed to apply new treatment every day,” said Mrs Chitiyo.

“When push comes to shove, I just wash the used bandage and reuse it, though this isn’t recommended for fear of infecting the children. But what is a mother to do when my only hope is to see my children completely healed?”

Siamese twins result from either fission where a fertilised egg splits partially, or fusion in which a fertilised egg completely separates, but stem cells search for similar cells on the other embryo and fuse the twins.

Their occurrence is estimated to range from one in 50 000 births to one in 200 000 births globally.
They are known as “Siamese twins” after the famous pair of Chang and Eng Bunker from Siam, now Thailand.

The only known local operation on Siamese twins was a “very minor” one successfully done at Harare Central Hospital in the 1980s.
Zimbabwe has had five documented cases of conjoined twins since independence and only one was referred outside the country, while in two instances, the babies died before surgery.

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Hon Priscah Mupfumira
Zimbabwe joins the international community in celebrating Worker’s Day. For the past decade, workers have taken it upon themselves to finance and organise this important day’s events.  As Government, we have deeply regarded this recurrence and ceased ourselves with the obligation to serve the workers during these annual commemorations.

The worker is an important and indispensable asset in the labour market.
Without the contributions of labour, economies cease to function.

This May Day, we want the workers to take a back seat, relax and allow us as a nation, to show our appreciation for their self-less commitment toward socio-economic success.

Your sacrifices as workers, amidst a plethora of challenges, are most appreciated.
Every drop of sweat from the workers is credit to our ZimAasset and other initiatives set at boosting economic growth.

To all Zimbabwean workers, we want to say “thank you, mazvita, siyabonga!” have a blessed 2016 Workers Day. — Hon Mupfumira is Minister of Labour Public Services and Social Services.

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Alfred Makwarimba
Compatriots, as we are celebrating this Worker’s Day, let us also celebrate some achievements and strides that have successfully been enshrined in the Constitution to protect our interests as workers at all times. Fellow compatriots, I congratulate you today as we commemorate together with our Government the International Labour Day commonly referred to as May Day.

Compatriots our May Day theme for this year is self-explanatory to what we are eagerly agitating for in line with the Government Economic Blue Print the ZimAsset vis-a-vis the Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Policy.
Fellow workers we are saying rise up and demand your space in the economic play fields right across the whole enterprises spectrum of our industrial domain.

Colleagues and compatriots it is now high time workers accelerate the acquisition of Employee Share Ownership Dividends in each and every company that we dwell in whether private entity or public entity.

Compatriots, the mentality of what profit must I get must be discouraged in all our economic industrial endeavours.
It must be replaced by the mentality of what benefit or what loss will be obtained by the people who make up this great country Zimbabwe.
Compatriots never lose focus of the fact that we are the vanguard of our country’s economic background.

As ZFTU, we are committed to the philosophy of African Socialism and the principle of human equity at all times.
Our major concerns therefore compatriots must be to prevent and discourage outrightly any systems or practices that bring the growth of class super structures in our society like what is happening now in our midst.

Compatriots, there is no short cut or easy solutions towards reviving our industries, safeguarding our jobs let alone revamping our economy.
Government and business must make huge sacrifices and implement all the policies that have been enunciated towards economic revival and industrial revamping.

Compatriots, as we are celebrating this Worker’s Day, let us also celebrate some achievements and strides that have successfully been enshrined in the Constitution to protect our interests as workers at all times.

We thank Government for initiating the Constitution making process which led to the enshrinement of rights to collective bargaining, right to salaries and wages, right to strike among others as constitutional obligation.

As ZFTU, we do understand that economic revolutions do not just happen, but demand scientific and objective thought.
Economic development in any given country demands reasoned application of basic principles.

We will not from now on allow a handful of individual capitalists to put our nation into jeopardy economically nor allow them anymore to reduce efforts being sacrificed by thousands of our workers in safeguarding and preserving our economic power base.
We have stood up, let us take charge of our countries’ economic narratives.

Here in Zimbabwe as workers we continue to be threatened by formidable life threatening forces from both public and private capital which manifest themselves in such ways as :-
1. Unfair termination of employment on a massive scale.
2. Insecure employment continuity through the now widely adopted fixed term contracts which are terminable as and when the employer wishes.
3. Persecution of Trade Union activists despite it being recognised in the constitution.
4. Expensive and protracted dispute resolution system designed to shield the unfair employer from prosecution and to frustrate the aggrieved worker.
5. Inequitable remuneration structures and salary payment systems whereby the majority of our lower paid workforce is paid less than 30cents per hour while the management is paid 90dollars per hour.
6. Non-payment of wages even for work done and the goods services sold.
7. Unsafe and unhealthy working environments.
8. Corruption and mismanagement on a colossal scale in the most enterprises both public and private enterprises.

Fellow compatriots this is our time and life we not going to fail our Government let alone our country our vigilance is now needed most.
ZFTU would like to strongly urge the Government to urgently Democratise share ownership in all corporates on an agreed capitalisation threshold by prioritizing workers.

Government should finalise labour reform before September 2016 to ensure that the widespread unfair terminations are stopped, we also urge our Government to ensure that collective bargaining is accessed by all workers and strikes are not being criminalized at law.

Lastly, compatriots we appeal to the Government to institute a commission study of the economic impact caused by the skewed income distribution, remuneration structures in our companies both private and public where the management and shareholders are taking disproportionate shares from the little wealth currently created by the Zimbabwean workers.

It is time Government starts creating employment in the agriculture sector through robust scientific planning on land sizes, title tenure and production financing and opening new markets within our boarders and the rest of Africa.

I want to again thank our Minister for Public Service, Labour and Social Services for affording us an occasion to share and exchanging ideas for a conducive worker friendly environment.
Long live workers in Zimbabwe.
Long live the Informal Employment Sector in Zimbabwe.
Long live our Reverend and astute leader of our country Cde R.G. Mugabe.

Long live Z.F.T.U —Alfred Makwarimba is President of the other ZFTU

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As the competent amongst us await their share of the promised two million jobs, government must make itself wary to a prospective analysis of job creation.
Government must follow a structured planning method of occupational evaluation, cognizant that uncertainties in global economy have varying effects on the value contribution and output potential of occupations.

A prospective analysis of respective occupations serves to enable Government to accurately forecast which jobs will remain valuable in future and what level of contribution they will add to our national output over time.

This is no easy task. Job creation is much more difficult than conventional discourse portrays, and it requires detailed analysis of as many possible work tasks involved in multiple sectors in the economy.

For instance, in manufacturing, a global labour intensity benchmark must be traced in order for a Government to have an idea of how many labour jobs it can create whilst challenging for productivity competitiveness.

In the last 15 years, labour intensity of manufacturing a dollar of output amongst developed economies now costs 11 cents less.
In this same period, manufacturing nominal output shot up more than 54 percent.

This means that productivity output is significantly increasing at the same time manufacturing processes are finding capital intensive alternatives to labour.

For developing economies, only a few decades ago it was believed to be advantageous to have inexpensive, low-skilled labour as a key ingredient to manufacturing industrialization.

Granted it worked in East Asia, it was a timely strategy not to be replicated today.
Evidently, modern capital intensive alternatives have erased that low cost advantage through enhanced productivity output.

Government must then ask itself: what are the implications for Zimbabwe in considering job creation in the manufacturing sector?
Labour neither serves as a low cost advantage nor does it compete in terms of output.

Thus, for astute Government, job creation in the manufacturing sector cannot be leveraged on labour intensity.
Similar trends are occurring in the services sector.

According to a Citigroup report released last week, roughly 60 to 70 percent of retail banking employees are currently doing manual processing driven jobs.

With the increased use of financial technology, all these current manual processing jobs can be replaced by automation within the next decade.

We can predict this in Zimbabwe as well.
The central bank is encouraging a shift to mobile platforms and increased use of plastic money. It follows that financial services will see a decrease in the value contribution of manual jobs. Particular attention must be focused on the agrarian economy.

It is estimated that over 70 percent of our workforce is involved in agriculture. As we push for greater productivity and efficiency in agri-business, value chains will become leaner and frugal. The utility of labour will be scrutinized and inevitably transferred to capital intensive means of production.

All these trends show that in future, work is to be inherited off technological platforms. Therefore, Government must assess whether our economy’s technology infrastructure is conducive for greater employment.

We cannot talk about creating two million jobs without initially creating the technology infrastructure to assimilate two million workers.

As such, an astute question would be to ask, does our economy have adequate capacity of technology infrastructure?
This informs my rather skeptical assessment of having a STEM policy. It is not that our economy does not produce enough STEM professionals, we do and they leave the country.

The challenge for Zimbabwe is that we do not have adequate capacity of technology infrastructure to hire more STEM workers!
For example, there is a need for biochemistry in agriculture and our food processing industries. Our universities already produce these professionals.

However, there are not enough research labs to employ more biochemists within our economy. Our STEM pains are an effect of a deficit in technology infrastructure, not worker availability. We must enhance are metrics within technology infrastructure such as increased mobile penetration, broadband access and technical facilities!

What seems apparent is that when government conducts a prospective analysis of job creation, technology infrastructure is fundamental.

Technology infrastructure dictates how work is to be done and how enterprises perceive the value contribution of workers.
Another significant aspect of Government’s prospective analysis must be the inevitable changes to economic design as job creation is led by technology infrastructure.

For instance, hopefully as our economic culture matures, we will create a basic income for all citizens – of course that cannot precede fixing our currently structural deficiencies.

Consider that while we have a deficit of technology infrastructure to assimilate already skilled workers into work processes, we still have a significant proportion of our population under skilled to fit into that technology infrastructure.

Sure, we are churning out thousands of graduates every year.
But we are having higher numbers of drop-outs who neither access higher education nor vocational training.

Just consider that average O’Level pass rates for the past decade have been below 40 percent. This means that while we can increase capacity of technology infrastructure to assimilate our skilled workforce, a large population on the other end will still not qualify for work.

They will not fit into manufacturing, banking, or agriculture assuming our economy operates at a competitively high level of capital intensity.

They will require a basic income. Technology infrastructure increases competitiveness and high level employment, but it completely erases low level jobs.

Government must seek to understand technology’s influence on jobs and economic design.
It is inconceivable to create as many as two million jobs without carrying out an in depth analysis of the necessary technology infrastructure to assimilate those jobs.

Moreover, our economic design must be one that can sustain the inevitable realities technology will bring.

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Howdy folks!
So it is again — Workers’ Day!
And the struggle for decent working conditions continues. If we are to take stock of where we are right now, just where should we start from?

Perhaps we may have to start from what matters most — 54 workers lost their lives at workplaces last year, an average of one worker dying every week.

And 5,380 were injured, an average of 15 workers being injured per day.
Some part with permanent injuries and are unable to work again.

These are just the reported cases we are talking about.
And in a highly informalised economy such as ours, where only six percent of workers are employed in the formal sector, chances are that the numbers could be much higher.

Reported incidents often come from the formal sector.
We should talk workers’ safety on this momentous day.

Zimbabwe’s working environments are just unsafe and unhealthy, as the National Social Security Authority has proven year-in year-out through its Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates.

It appears as if we are fine with it; that workers can be exposed to terrible environments as long as profits are being made and salaries are being paid.

This can only be the perfect explanation why only 18 percent of local companies have occupational, safety and health (OSH) policies.

The rest do not. Yet, every employer is required by legislation to provide a safe and healthy working environment, while also fostering that the work process does not affect the safety and health of workers.

The consequences of the status quo are certain — 88 percent of accidents at the workplace are attributable to human error, as Nssa says.

Because there are no concrete OSH policies in place, human errors are inclined to happen.
Government should, therefore, step up its efforts to ensure the safety of workers is safeguarded at the workplace.

Workers can only be productive in environments where they feel safe; that is when they can only do their best. So, employers who do not have OSH policies are in a way shooting themselves in the foot.

It boggles the mind why some employers complain that labour in Zimbabwe is not productive, but pay no attention to the fundamental imperatives.

The other reason, of course, is that due to the high informalisation of the economy, many Museyamwa’s who arise don’t submit their returns to Nssa.

They always play cat-and-mouse with Nssa, and do not even have guidelines on establishing OSH policies.
And worse still, they are not part of the Worker’s Compensation and Accident Prevention Scheme.

More than five million workers are not registered with Nssa, meaning the majority of them do not have social security.
If we do not reflect on these realities on a day like this, then we will be showing lack of seriousness about the lives of workers.

Last Thursday, it was the United Nations World Day for Safety and Health at Work, and this year’s theme was: Workplace Stress — a collective challenge.

In coming up with this theme, the United Nations noted that many workers are facing greater pressure to meet the demands of modern working life.

“Psycho-social risks such as increased competition, higher expectations on performance and longer working hours are contributing to the workplace becoming an ever more stressful environment,” it noted.

Zimbabwean workers are not immune to stress at the workplace, folks.
And this has been proven in a paper by Industrial Psychology Consultants titled “Distress and other Mental Health Problems in the Zimbabwean Working Population”.

The study established that 43 percent of working Zimbabweans experience symptoms of distress.
It also says 27,2 percent of the working population is depressed to the extent of “feeling that things are meaningless, and they can’t see a way of escaping from their situation, life is not worthwhile, they would be better if they were dead, they can’t enjoy anything anymore, wishing they were dead”.

And there is always a cost aspect to it.
Based on the study results, it is estimated that companies are losing over US$107, 520,000 per year in wages and productivity through mental health or stress-related absence from work.

Again, this is something we have to deal with.
A combination of unhealthy, unsafe environments and stress is surely a recipe for disaster.

We always ask why Zimbabweans are unproductive when they are educated and very literate, and yet these are the issues we neglect when we ask that question.

As long as an employee is hard-pressed — left, right and centre — by all these adversities, the employer will always have to pay the price at some point.

The worker is, however, not a saint in all this.
We have some who just get in their offices to tuck their jackets behind their chairs, then leave as if the jacket will do the work for them.

And when month-end comes, they get their full salary. In other words, the pay they get is not proportional to the quantum of work they put in.

And that is unfair.
We all have to reap what we sow, otherwise we will be promoting laziness. Labour is hired to be productive, folks!

Even in that Biblical parable of talents, don’t we learn what happened to the servant who was given one talent and chose to bury it underground?

The master instructed his aides: “Cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 25vs30)

We should start to measure tasks at our respective workplaces, and have workers rewarded according to what they have achieved, not according to the time one’s jacket stays on their chairs.

The workplace is not an environment for miracle money.
Workers must be accountable for their productivity, if Zimbabwe is to progress.

Again, on a day like this, we should seriously be provoked to think about the desperate unemployment situation in our country. An unemployment rate of 90 percent or 11 percent, depending on your definition and methodology, is surely not sustainable for a country such as ours; with the highest natural resources per capita index in the whole world.

It now appears as if it’s a curse to be heavily endowed with natural resources in Africa, as countries that are prospering are the ones that do not have natural resources!

Zimbabwe needs robust strategies on how to effectively utilise its natural resources to create employment for its people, especially the youths who are daily bearing the brunt of the sting of joblessness.

There is also need to reverse the perennial de-industrialisation that has been taking place since 2011.
With the existing infrastructure in the manufacturing sector, we can actually create more jobs if we were to increase capacity to 100 percent — before we even think about creating new companies.

The manufacturing sector employs about 250,000 workers at 34 percent capacity utilisation.
If that capacity is increased to 100 percent, then about 600,000 additional jobs will be created.

This is why I implore Government, through the Industry and Commerce Ministry, to come up with a practical industry policy, when the current one completes its course this year.

As we commemorate Workers’ Day, may it also be an opportunity for us to seriously ponder on the issues affecting workers in Zimbabwe.

Shinga mushandi shinga!

Later folks!

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A FEW weeks ago, we promised to publish a narration of who Cde Soul Sadza, born as Arthur Magaya, was following a plea from his son Dr Dennis Magaya who says he wants to know where his father died during the liberation struggle.
Dr Magaya who was born in 1969 and has a brother Custon (born 1972) say they never saw their father and this haunts them adding that knowing where their father died would console them a lot, 36 years after the attainment of independence.

Cde Soul Sadza left Rhodesia in 1972 to join the liberation struggle but briefly went to Botswana to lecture at the University of Francistown. When he joined the liberation struggle, he became director of finance and was one of the first commanders.

He went to Tanzania where he became an instructor and was part of the team that drafted Mgago Declaration.
He died at the war front in Manica Province in June 1976. His remains were never found.
The Sunday Mail will soon publish the intriguing story of Cde Soul Sadza.

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Tazorora Musarurwa
In 2010, while giving the key note address at the opening of the legal year, then Judge President Rita Makarau removed kid gloves.
The state of decay in which the judiciary had found itself operating, no longer required the business as usual approach.
She opened her speech by congratulating the principals of the Government of National Unity for forming such a government, something that had been urged in the previous year’s speech of opening the judicial year. She, however, made it very clear that she did not believe for a second that it was such calls that urged the parties to finally come to a consensus.

What the learned judge was in fact making sure was that this speech would not be like the usual run of the mill speeches which only end in the courtroom, but will be heard in all the corridors of power.

The extracted excerpt from the learned judge’s speech clearly puts into perspective what was going through the mind of the judge at that time:

“Allow me to digress briefly and express a view that has exercised my mind for quite some time and I must confess, a view that should not ordinarily occupy the mind of a judge.

Zimbabwe subscribes to the doctrine of separation of powers amongst the three organs of state. We in the judiciary have no role in matters of the executive and of the legislature. The reverse should also hold.

However, I am of the view that the doctrine of separation of powers has been applied against the judiciary to place it in an isolation that is neither splendid nor beneficial to anyone.

AS citizens, we in the judiciary witnessed debates held at political levels as to the number of legislators that can effectively represent the population in the sphere of law making and providing oversight over government spending and government activities.

The result of that debate was the creation of the second chamber to cater for the needs of the populace. It is a welcome development as it seeks to enhance efficiency and a better service to the populace.

We even hear of late that the legislature is to erect a state of the art parliament that will cater for the increase in the number of legislators and one that will include on site accommodation for legislators coming from outside Harare, in the form of a motel. Again as citizens, we witnessed debates on the creation of the Government of National Unity.

Ministers were appointed to various ministries and we have seen the careful thought that has gone into ensuring that every aspect of the executive function has a responsible minister or two overseeing it. Again we applaud the development as it seeks to enhance efficiency on the part of the executive.

Resources were found to cater for the increases in the legislature and in the executive, to ensure that these two arms of state deliver effectively to the populace.

As we speak, four Governors and Resident Ministers and a host of Senators and Members of Assembly serve the same population that the three judges in Bulawayo attempted to serve during the year 2009.

A convenient answer from the politicians will be that different considerations apply amongst the three organs of state. This is indeed correct. But should service to the populace not be the paramount consideration?

Separation of powers surely does not mean separate development of the organs of state? Or does it?
I have no further submissions to make on the digression”

In the same speech Justice Makarau lamented the fact that the Judicial Service Act that had been enacted in 2006 was still not in operation as it was waiting to be put into operation by the President. For this reason, she decried at not being able to give a full overview of the entire judiciary as the magistrates, who hear most of the cases, still fell under the Public Service Commission.

This seemed to be a Waterloo speech because after its pronouncement a number of changes came into effect.
On 18 June 2010, the Judicial Service Act came into operation. This was a milestone for magistrates.

I remember back in 2007 when I was a junior magistrate in Murewa, my then superior, one Mr Magwagwa (MHSRIEP) cajoling me not to consider resignation because the Judicial Service Act was going to improve our conditions of service. We would even get a station vehicle, he would say. Unfortunately, I could not wait for that and I resigned later that year to pursue postgraduate studies.

In May 2010, just before the bringing into operation of the Act, Justice Makarau had been promoted to the Supreme Court and was now a Judge of Appeal.

I stand corrected, Justice Makarau, although having sat on the Supreme Court bench, has never written a Supreme Court judgment.

This is so because soon after her appointment, Makarau was appointed the Acting Secretary of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC).

Clearly, the authorities wanted Makarau to be responsible for fixing that which she claimed had been harming the judiciary.
Her failure would leave no one to blame. Considering the political and economic environment, she has done well.

Before proceeding let me take a little time to explain what the JSC is and why it is such a vital cog in the administration of justice and our constitutional setup.

The JSC is a constitutional body and not a statutory one. While it is a constitutional body, both the old and new constitutions delegated parliament with the responsibility of enacting a law that gives the JSC additional functions.

This is why the Judicial Service Act becomes of paramount importance.
Section 190 of the current constitution gives just three main functions to the JSC which are:

i. To tender advise to the government on any matter pertaining to the judiciary which advice must be regarded by the government;
ii. To promote and facilitate the independence and accountability of the judiciary;

iii. To make regulations in consultation with the Minister of Justice
The new constitution also mandates the JSC with the task and procedure of nominating judges including acting judges.
Unlike the old constitution, the new constitution makes it mandatory for magistrates to fall under the JSC and makes it mandatory for there to be an act of parliament providing for such.

The JSC further has the important task of recommending to the President to establish a tribunal to look into the question whether a judge has committed an act of misconduct or remains suitable to hold the office of a judge.

The constitution also seems to give the JSC the same oversight role with regard to the office of the Prosecutor-General. These are also new powers given to the JSC by the new constitution.

These powers have been recently flexed and I will comment briefly on the use of these powers within this article.
The JSC, in consultation with the Ministers for Justice and Finance and with the approval of the Presidents, sets the salaries, allowances and benefits for all judicial officers.

In addition to these powers the JSC must be consulted by the President when he makes appointments of Chairpersons of other constitutional commissions such as Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, Zimbabwe Human Rights Commission and Anti-Corruption Commission.

The appointment of a Prosecutor-General must also be with consultation with the JSC.
What is clear from the above is that the JSC not only plays a key role as custodian of judicial services in Zimbabwe but is given a status higher than all the other independent commissions as it is participates in the appointment of the chairpersons of those commissions.

This status results from the fact that judges are eminent persons in society and their decisions, although not above rebuke, are considered to be made rationally without the imperfections of politics, bias, prejudice or such other forms of discrimination.

The JSC could be said to be the church of the political state in Zimbabwe – where all the other organs go to in search of wisdom and untainted advice.

Unlike South Africa and other jurisdictions, Zimbabwe’s JSC is not constituted by members of parliament or politicians.
It is constituted by judges and other eminent legal persons.

The JSC thus has the onerous task of being perfect. While perfection remains a Utopian ideal, Society expects it anyway from certain people and institutions.

We are all sinners but people do not expect their church leaders to sin. That is the position the JSC finds itself in.
It is a super commission and society does not expect anything less. The JSC is aware of this onerous task and it is for this very reason it promulgated the Judicial Service (Code of Ethics) Regulations, 2012.

The Code of Ethics regulates judicial life not just in the court room but outside as well. Members of the judiciary are required to maintain high standards of integrity wherever they are.

A reading of the Code makes it very clear that our judiciary is alive to the high standards expected from them by society. This brings to fore the fact that this high standard is expected not only from individual judicial officers but from the JSC as an institution with overall responsibility over those judicial officers amongst other responsibilities.

This is a fact which the JSC is also alive to. This can be seen by the transformation of the judiciary ever since Makarau took over in 2010. Members of the public may have noticed an improvement in the provision of judicial services post 2010. For instance, there is now signage clearly identifying the courts.

The High Court in Harare has had significant renovations. The toilets are no longer living stink bombs.
There is abundant stationery. Clerical staff can confirm the provision of teas. (Tea is very important in the civil service.) Courts and offices now have new furniture restoring dignity to the courtrooms and support offices.

There are also innovations that have been introduced. The High Court’s now scan all documents filed and store them in an electronic database.

There is therefore an electronic record and gone are the days when an entire record could go missing and little could be done about it.

To be continued next week

Tazorora TG Musarurwa is a lawyer in private practise and writes in his personal capacity. He can be contacted at tazorora@gmail.com

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TODAY Government and business join labour in appreciating the crucial role that the latter plays especially in expressing capital into development for Government and profit for business.
It must be appreciated that International Workers Day was born out of the triumph of labour over business in rightfully declaring the eight-hour working day.

The resolve of workers to fight against the excesses of capital, which at times conspired with government officials, is crystallised in the Hayfair Massacre on May 4, 1886 in Chicago, the United States of America, where police gunned down labour workers who were picketing for their rights. Naturally, the fallen workers became martyrs. As Thomas Jefferson (1743 -1826) once said, the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

The workers who were in the trenches were mainly strengthened by ideologies of both socialists and anarchists.
Zimbabwe is fortunate enough because it is was given birth to by revolutionaries who were inspired by the same socialist ideologies that mainly seek to advance the interest of the workers.

It is the same DNA that the incumbent Zanu PF Government carries.
It is the same DNA that drove Government to intervene to stop the wholesale dismal of workers, particularly after the July 17, 2015 Supreme Court ruling that allowed business to terminate employment contracts on notice.

In order to provide a safety net for many workers who ordinarily could have walked away empty-handed if business had its way, Government tweaked the Labour Act to ensure that they were paid two weeks’ salary for each year served.

It therefore restored natural justice in a labour market that had become undemocratic. But obviously the employer concerns cannot be ignored. This is precisely the reason why Government is now consulting with its tripartite partners in order to hammer out a new Labour Act that caters for the interest of all the stakeholders.

It is safe to conclude that the current consultations will certainly result in a modern Labour Act.
By removing ambiguities to the Labour Act and introducing ground rules that have the buy-in of all the parties, Government is creating a platform where a stable labour market can thrive.

Such an environment allows labour to spend most of its time working rather than picketing knowing fully well that their interest are well protected by the force of the law. Such an environment also attracts investors and provides room for business to thrive knowing fully well that both its interests and investments are protected from potentially restive workers by the force of the law.

Also, a well regulated labour market affords Government the time to concentrate on the development agenda rather spend time arbitrating the disputes between business and labour.

It must also be appreciated that by making the labour market efficient, Government is essentially priming the local economy for growth, as it guarantees the efficient allocation of labour. Experts often claim that an environment that is characterised by worker stability ensures that corporate resources are directed towards research, technology development and global positioning.

Equally, in an environment where Government is in the process of refining local systems to ensure the ease of doing business for local and foreign investors, the reform of the Labour Act should also be considered within the context of one such intervention that makes the local market attractive.

So, these are wholesome and committed reforms from a Government that is showing a willingness to grow the economy.
Granted, the ranks of formally employed workers continues to decline, but there now exists a modicum of stability that can only have the positive effect of attracting investments and, by extension, more opportunities for employment. As workers commemorate a day that is set aside to celebrate their victory and value, they must do so with the absolute assurance of a Government that has all along been a fair arbiter in advancing the interests of the labour movement.

1,787 total views, 459 views today

WE all love our birds, don’t we? But Environment Minister, Cde Oppah Muchinguri-Kashiri should get real and a bit serious. We can actually call her Minister vezvihuta!

Did you see her on television and in the newspapers a few days ago talking, very seriously by the way, about quail birds? She was saying something to the effect that Zimbabweans should not be fooled about the richness of quail meat as no research has been done to prove this blah, blah, blah.

A serious Minister spending her energy talking about quail birds? Shuwa shuwa Minister kutomira kuita zvimwe zvese vachitaura about quail birds. For those not in the know these quail birds in Shona are called zvihuta. Shuwa shuwa Minister kutotadza kuita zvinemusoro vachiita zvezvihuta? Ahh, come on asikana! Leave zvihuta eaters alone.

The other person who should get serious is one Acie Lumumba.
That boy needs some growing up because he sounds so full of himself but then the tragedy is that hapana kana scopedhonoro, as my sekuru Matope would say.

After being booted out of some organisation, which we hear is a club for Minister Zhuwao’s boys and girls, Lumumba got very angry and started accusing the Minister of being corrupt and so on.

He threatened to reveal more and some people thought “here goes the full stop.”
Even Bishop Lazarus thought Lumumba would reveal more, but a week later, the boy is still threatening to reveal more.

That boy is a joker if you ask me, but I warned last week that we should not make the mistake that Zanu-PF made by taking people like Lumumba seriously.

Up to this day Lumbumba claims he has hard evidence but Bishop Lazarus now know why even if he has the hard evidence he can’t release it. In that hard evidence, his name is featuring so one would be a fool to expose himself in a bid to fix a former friend.
Asi Zanu-PF so? Mamwe marara ainongokumba so? It’s really sad.

Enough about these jokers. If there is one guy we should take seriously its Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa.

Yesterday Malema’s EFF filled Orlando Stadium in South Africa to capacity as they launched the party’s manifesto in preparation for municipal elections set to be held in that country.

Look I know Zanu-PF is caught up in a catch 22 situation with regards how to handle Malema because that boy really sounds Zanu-PF, but then is fighting against Zanu-PF’s historical cousin ANC, but let’s give it to him, Malema has managed to shake politics in that supposed Rainbow nation. Rainbow nation my foot! Mandela a hero my foot! Let me not stray into that kind of politics.

As he launched the manifesto, Malema showed what real opposition should be and be about. Not the micky mouse nonsense in our backyard led by Tsvangirai and now being confused by Joice Mujuru.

EFF is real opposition which is grounded in the interests of South Africans. It’s not an imperialist project dressed in black. Malema is a breath of fresh air to opposition politics in Africa. He is showing that one can still be popular without dirty funding from imperialists.

Whites in South Africa must be wetting their pants wondering what will happen to them if Malema were to wake up one day in power. What happened to some of them in Zimbabwe will be a picnic.

And the shivering whites are fully aware of this. They are trying to checkmate Malema by sponsoring politics in the ANC through that Cyril Ramaphosa fellow.

One hopes theirs is not a project too late because the horse has bolted.
Still with Malema, our little boy the maverick Themba Mliswa was at the launch of the manifesto and as he spoke yesterday, I could see the boy had been put in an awkward situation.

He wanted to attack President Mugabe, but then we all know how South Africans love Gushungo. Some South Africans actually wish they could import Gushungo.

“Just give us Bob for a day and you will see how we will transform South Africa,” some South Africans say.
So when poor Themba started talking about President Mugabe, he was ignored completely and he quickly noticed it. Like a clever boy, poor Themba took a U-turn and told Malema that the atmosphere in the stadium was electrifying.

He quickly sat down atoona kuti zvekuhumana against Bob was a non-starter.
But away from the manifesto launch, what are Zimbabweans politicians learning from Malema? KEEP WITH THE PEOPLE, SPEAK THE PEOPLE AND BE THE PEOPLE. The temptation is to say “Go Jujuju Go!” but then the cousin over here won’t be impressed.

The Malema issue got me thinking about something else. Seeing Malema speaking on television, I asked myself — what is the relationship between the youths and war veterans in Zimbabwe? How is Zanu-PF handling the relations between the youths and war veterans?

Clearly, we have gotten to that stage in our politics where these questions demand answers.
Things are slowly but surely deteriorating between the vanguards of our struggle and those who are supposed to be the future of this country.

The words of Zanu-PF deputy youth secretary Kudzai Chipanga are haunting me.
“We will not wait for the so-called ideological lessons (from war veterans) while the party, the President and the country are under threat.” This Chipanga boy is very reckless with his talk. Very reckless and disrespectful. And very stupid also!

Chipanga needs lots of the ideological lessons because, empty as he is, he can’t defend anyone including himself.
However, what is good about his recklessness is that we get to know the relations between the youths and the war veterans.

Something has obviously gone wrong. Slowly, ideologically bankrupt youths are invading Zanu-PF and if Chipanga can say that rubbish now, imagine what the youths will be saying in say five to ten years?

It’s scary. In the immediate, Zanu-PF has to reign in deviants like Chipanga but in the long run, the party has to come up with a clear strategy to doze today’s youths with proper ideology.

What is nauseating is that these ideologically bankrupt youths are being fooled by some opportunists in Zanu-PF who have sinister agendas.

It’s a shame really, but somehow Zanu-PF inozosvipa such people, although the party takes it’s good time to do so. Can’t wait for that day.

Bishop is out!

2,175 total views, 522 views today

THE truth always has a way of coming out. While Peter Baxter, wrote the book “Selous Scouts: Rhodesian Counter-Insurgency Specialists,” with the hope of painting Rhodesians as victors in the liberation struggle, his narration exposes the ineptness of the Rhodesian forces.
Clearly, the Rhodesian forces had lots of resources to fight against the freedom fighters who in the beginning of the struggle used the “pepesha”, a very basic and simple gun to execute the struggle. However, as is always said, “weapons don’t fight a war.”

Despite their superiority in terms of ammunition, the Rhodesian forces were outsmarted by the freedom fighters.
The following narration by Baxter, which exposes how the notorious Selous Scouts made several attempts to assassinate the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo, is enough to show how the Rhodesian forces were outsmarted by the freedom fighters.
The following is a narration by Baxter. Read on. . .

In the meanwhile, events within Rhodesia reached a nadir when, on 3 September 1978, Air Rhodesia flight 825 was shot down by a surface-to-air missile soon after take off from Kariba. The aircraft crashed into cultivated field, killing 38 of the 56 passengers on board with ten of the survivors being bayoneted and gunned down by a ZIPRA unit that arrived on the scene soon after.

The Rhodesian public was shocked to the core by this event (which indirectly motivated the ‘Green Leader’ raid, or more correctly, Operation Gatling). Global reaction to the outrage was predictably muted, which served only to deepen the sense of isolation felt within the country.

The feeling was magnified even further by ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo, who responded with an amused chuckle on a BBC interview, admitting that his forces had been responsible for the outrage.

The Rhodesian government had in fact been engaged in a love-hate relationship with the ZAPU leader, dating more or less from after his 1974 release from detention. Nkomo was seen in many quarters as the lesser of a number of political evils, particularly once Robert Mugabe had emerged as the leader of ZANU.

If at least one of these hard-line nationals was needed to authenticate any internal settlement, then rather it be Nkomo than Mugabe. Later, however when Nkomo was proved complicit in the shooting down of flight 825, he had to be viewed with nothing less than vengeful wrath.

What to do about Nkomo in the aftermath was debated passionately at various levels of government. The decision to assassinate him was made, and in his most notable coup so far, the job was given to Reid-Daly and the Selous Scouts to take care of.

The first dirty puddle that Reid-Daly stepped into was in recognising the fact that somewhere in the system there was a security leak. This fact, in the years since the onset of war, had become more or less established. The British undoubtedly had a mole in the CIO, and Ken Flower’s name, rightly or wrongly, has often been suggested.

That Reid-Daly suspected something like this at the time shows that he was a lot sharper than many people suspected. The fact that he sought to exclude a number of high-ranking military men, some exceeding him in rank, from the ‘need to know; circle, irritated many of them. His relationship with Peter Walls was also in very conspicuous use at this time.

The operator chosen to undertake the mission was Lieutenant Anthony White, a well-seasoned Selous Scout with all the attributed of guile and courage a task such as this would require.

Nkomo was known to be a slippery character and extremely alert to the risk of assassination. A year earlier his deputy, Jason Moyo, had been killed by a parcel bomb; in 1975 ZANU Chairman, Herbert Chitepo, had been obliterated in a car bomb explosion. With the Air Rhodesia atrocity so fresh in the minds of white Rhodesia, an attempt on his life would be almost inevitable. He was also notoriously fond of foreign travel and could be found junketing abroad as often as the ZAPU purse would allow.

It was decided that a radio-detonated car bomb would be the most suitable tool for the job. An appropriate model was located and adapted in the Selous Scout workshops before being transported north via Botswana. White was, in the meanwhile furnished with a finely crafted cover and flown to Zambia from Johannesburg via Kenya, posing as a British taxidermist on the lookout for business opportunities in Zambia.

From the onset, however, the operation was dogged with bad luck. A comprehensive reconnaissance revealed that Nkomo was careful to select random routes and timings in his movements through Lusaka. Seven attempts to preposition the car bomb were thwarted, along with frustrating bouts of inactivity occasioned by Nkomo boarding an aircraft and disappearing for indeterminate periods. White began to run out of money, was anxious that he was beginning to attract attention and in the end opted to abandon the project, destroy the car and follow a pre-prepared extraction deal.

Even this was thwarted. He was required to make his way through the countryside to a location that would be under daily air surveillance by Rhodesian aircraft. Unfortunately, after walking some 30 miles through the bush, he began to suffer from symptoms of dysentery, complicated by encountering a native poacher who attempted to apprehend him, suspecting that a reward might accrue should he succeed. He did not succeed.

After a short but vicious brawl the poacher was dead and White was left with no choice but to cautiously make his way back to Lusaka. From there he nervously boarded a scheduled flight and left the country.

Reid-Daly grasped the nettle and briefed ComOps on the failure. He assured the committee that the operation was still viable and was given a second bite of the apple.

This time Reid-Daly decided to augment the undercover-agent principle with something more in keeping with that the Selous Scouts did well. Another operative would be infiltrated into Zambia, but this time purely for the purpose of surveillance. Once it had been established that Nkomo was in residence, the killing blow would be struck by a conventional military assault mounted against his home.

The plan was simple. Surveillance would be kept on Nkomo’s movements to establish his presence in Lusaka, while at the same time a suit ale landing zone would be identified close to the capita; form where an assault team would be helicoptered in for the purpose. The operative chosen for the task was Mike Borlace, an ex-Royal Air Force pilot and one of the more daring of a fearless breed of Rhodesian air force helicopter pilots. Borlace had sought a commission in the Selous Scouts in the hope of “interesting work”, a request now about to be granted.

Interesting, in fact, would be an understatement. Borlace made his way to Zambia while an eight-man Selous Scout assault team led by Lieutenant Richard Passaportis went on standby at Karoi.

A vehicle-a Land Rover, some might say a questionable choice if a reliability is required-was chosen and customized and sent north, but was stopped at the Zambian-Botswanan border and turned around because the driver lacked a visa. A third attempt was made which at last succeeded. Borlace collected the vehicle in Lusaka after cooling his heels for two weeks and began in earnest to lay the foundation of the plan.

And then, to add to this catalogue of petty frustrations, Borlace began to run out of money. He was able to borrow locally but it all served to draw attention to himself, which was not in the least bit helpful. While reconnoitring a possible landing zone he ran into a Zambian military reserve and was detained briefly by a well-intentioned commanding officer who served him tea. Then Joshua Nkomo abruptly left the country, as was his habit, returning to Lusaka a few days later.

Now Nkomo was home, the message was relayed and that evening two laden helicopters took off from a forward airfield in Karoi with the bristling eight-man attack force aboard.

Borlace, however, en route to the pre-arranged rendezvous, ran up against the obstacle of two washed-away bridges thanks to heavy seasonal rain and was unable to keep the appointment. For their part the Selous Scout assault force was landed in no less trouble. An accidental shooting resulted in the serious injury of one of the members, which required a second operative to stay with him while the remainder of the team pressed on. Their movement was constrained by heavy bush that had grown as was usual in the late season and the steady rain and mud was a backdrop to it all. They arrived at the rendezvous but found it deserted. Shortly after, they and the wounded man were uplifted and returned to Karoi.

Back at Inkomo the plan was rehashed and two days later the Scouts were airborne once again. This time Borlace arrived at the rendezvous on cue but found no sign of the attack team. Passaportis and his mean had become weighed down by wet seasonal conditions and arrived at the site only at first light. There, to their horror, they discovered that they had blundered right into the midst of a Zambian army exercise. They took cover as a Zambian army patrol came into view and stumbled on their tracks, radioing in immediately for backup. At this the Scouts wisely took to their heels. They managed to stay ahead of their pursuers, eventually outrunning them before being uplifted back to Karoi.

The whole episode began to appear surreal. The blacks said Nkomo had a muti stick that protected him from harm. Most of the white Scouts laughed at this, but there were some who did not. Whatever might be at the root of it, this was a devastating run of bad luck. For Borlace waiting at the ‘sharp end’ it was particularly unnerving. Each day his face became better known and his ongoing money problems were increasingly drawing attention to him as any one of a million possible scenarios of capture began to plague his mind.

Meanwhile, the plan was again rehashed and simplified; the strategy was now to parachute onto a golf course adjacent to Nkomo’s house, staging the attack and then navigating out of Lusaka on foot for a pre-planned rendezvous for a helicopter uplift.
Time, however, had run out. The attack force set off in the belly of a C-47 Dakota transporter ready to leap out over the metropolis and assassinate the ZAPU leader. Over Lusaka, however, there was no sign of Borlace. The mission aborted and returned to Rhodesia.

In the meanwhile, something had taken place that had convinced Borlace that it was time to leave. Reid-Daly received word form a fellow passenger on a scheduled flight that Borlace had been called in and detained by Zambian officials. A few days later the grim truth was confirmed: Borlace was in a Lusaka prison and could expect things to get very unpleasant, as indeed they did.
Reid-Daly and the rest of the Rhodesian high command were consternated. The Rhodesian security community was small, as was the Selous Scouts itself, and such things did not happen without it affecting the entire service. For Reid-Daly it was particularly bitter.

His subsequent exchanges with ComOps and General Walls have never been recorded, but it is likely he was kept very busy putting out fires, as one attempt after another to free Borlace was aborted. This time, however, he was ordered to lend Lieutenant Anthony White to the Supers because the SAS had been given the job.

Not least, it was the wounded pride that stung the heart of both the commanding officer at the Selous Scouts and his regiment, aggravated by crippling antipathy that had been generated against the unit over the last five hard-fought and glorious years of war.

Reid-Daly lobbied hard and gallantly for a reversal of this decision for clearly in his mind was a desire to get to Lusaka by one means or another in order to break Borlace out of prison. He pleaded with Walls the wholly impractical suggestion that the Scouts just fly in and he damned, do the job and get Mike Borlace put of there! Walls refused. Borlace, he said, had now to be considered as a casualty of war.

There was nothing that could be done but sit back and see how the Supers handled it. Theirs was a stylish scheme to land several Sabre Land Rovers on the Zambian side and drive to Lusaka, stage a strike against Nkomo’s home and drive home. This they did with a high degree of precision. Nkomo’s house was more or less demolished and a large number of ZIPRA personnel killed but Nkomo himself escaped.

This episode was one of the more intriguing of the more enigmas of the war. Nkomo claimed that he had been in the house but had escaped through a toilet window. Analysts, which everybody in Rhodesia was at that time, dismissed the suggestion.
The notion that the lumbering Nkomo, morbidly obese and barely capable of unassisted movement, might squeeze himself out of a toilet window in the midst of a ferocious firefight beggared belief. In all likelihood Nkomo had not been home, but claimed a narrow escape in order to increase the dramatic effect.

Now that we know what the freedom fighters were up against, next week your favourite Question and Answer Chronicles with the war veterans return to the pages of your favourite newspaper, The Sunday Mail.

2,202 total views, 519 views today

Dr Walter Mzembi
Tourism stakeholders, among them African policy-makers, were in Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire from April 19 to 21, 2016 for the 58th Meeting of the United Nations World Tourism Organisation Commission for Africa and the Sustainable Tourism Conference and Symposium on Accelerating the Shift towards Sustainable Consumption and Production Pattern.
Below is Tourism and Hospitality Industry Minister and UNWTO African Commission Chair Dr Walter Mzembi’s address to the gathering.
* * *

I wish to extend my profound appreciation to the Government of Cote d’Ivoire and its people for their warm hospitality extended to us thus far.

The warm hearts of the people of Cote d’Ivoire, and the beauty characterising the capital city of Abidjan are indeed reinvigorating.
I also want to pass my deepest condolences to the Government of Cote d’Ivoire on the sad loss of lives due to the horrendous and unjustified terrorist attacks that took place at Grand-Bassam Resort Hotels. We stand solidly in support of your efforts to ensure peace and security for this important destination.

As the Commission for Africa, we take it that an attack on one African destination means an attack to all of us, and hence notwithstanding what happened here, our collective presence and decision to proceed with the meeting in Abidjan.

Fear, which terror is merchandising, will not distract our vision on the pursuit of happiness which travel and tourism epitomises.
I am further delighted that the Secretary General, Dr Taleb Rifai, is leading in raising the profile of tourism to the extent that 2017 has been designated the “International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development”.

Congratulations!
This is a huge achievement and history will be written over this lifetime opportunity for us to engage global leaders at the highest level in the framework of the United Nations General Assembly to debate issues related to tourism.

I, therefore, urge member states to establish national working groups to prepare for 2017 and raise awareness on the critical issues in this sector for a serious conversation next year.

What comes to mind almost immediately are Sustainable Development Goals 8, 12 and 14 and how we align them to the discourse.

Your Excellencies, you will recall that in January 2016, I reported to some of you in Madrid on my African Union assignment, and my subsequent invitation to the AU’s Ministerial Retreat and Heads of State and Government Summit where I presented on African Tourism potential and wildlife conservation for mainstreaming into Agenda 2063 where it was evidently missing.

Our proposals were welcomed, and indeed, the AU has embraced absolutely all our suggestions even adding some that had escaped our attention like the launch of a “Visit Africa Campaign”.

To this end, the AU has since adopted a position to come up with a Continental Tourism Policy to which I invite you to make an input.

Our efforts have added impetus on the reform process at the AU and have started to bear fruits.
African leaders will start using an African passport from July this year, following the adoption of a proposal by Heads of State and Government in January 2016 to have all African countries allow a 30-day visa-free stay for Africans.

The introduction of the African passport will pave the way for the AU’s Agenda 2063 for “a continent with seamless borders” to help facilitate the free movement of African citizens.

It also aims to improve intra-African trade and to ease the movement of domestic goods between and among member states.
We need to push the frontiers further and urge the AU to quickly move to indicate when the African passport will be available to ordinary nationals of all member countries to ensure that our dream of seamless travel becomes a reality.

Coupled with this is our clarion call for an African visa so that we eliminate barriers in travel business.
Excellencies, allow me to, in the same perspective, congratulate Rwanda and Ghana for taking practical steps to our clarion call in facilitating travel among African nationals.

Rwanda now allows nationals of all African countries travelling to or transiting through that country to obtain an entry visa upon arrival. Ghana announced during commemoration of her 59th year of independence the introduction of a visa-on-arrival, which allows citizens of AU member states with stays for up to 30 days.

On the back of these positive developments, we have placed before the AU a cocktail of tourism proposals that include among others:
◆ A Continental Tourism Policy
◆ Visit Africa Campaign
◆ Brand Africa
◆ Structurally institutionalise tourism at the AU (Commission/substantive Directorate on Tourism, Biodiversity and Aviation)
◆ Build strong Regional Tourism Blocs
◆ Campaign for the adoption and use of the African Passport
◆ A common African visa regime
◆ Accelerated implementation of the Yamoussoukro Declaration of 1998
◆ Minimalistic support to tourism (1-5 percent of the total national budget).

Excellencies, I have just come from WTTC 16th Global Summit held from 5-7 April 2016 in Dallas Texas.
Peace and security in our destinations was topical.

My conclusion from the discussions was that we need to be alert to security issues in order for tourism to thrive.
The next Executive Council should, therefore, conclude the consummation of a Working Group on Tourism and Security, and feedback to member states as soon as possible.

While we have in the recent past witnessed isolated cases of terror attacks on human life in resorts, restaurants and hotels, Africa suffers more from the scourge of biodiversity terrorism.

Our pristine flora and fauna, which constitutes over 80 percent of our product base, has been under serious attack, depletion and degradation, which in itself poses a huge threat to our attractiveness.

We have had other insecurities such as communicable diseases that have had the net negative impact of undermining Brand Africa. I call upon member states to debate these issues, and for this meeting to discuss what we can do together with support from various international partners to resolve these challenges.

Certainly, we need to harness international goodwill in supporting our initiatives towards sustainable management and conservation of our biodiversity on both seascapes and landscapes without losing focus on the current debate on terrorism threats to our sector.

May I make an appeal going forward for heightened efforts towards universal membership to the United Nations World Tourism Organisation by UN member states as it is increasingly becoming clear that all of these countries have tourism economies and that by collectively looking at the challenges of our contemporary times, security included, we have a better chance of resolving them.

UNWTO, in partnership with other co-operating partners, has the capacity and ability to champion peace-building and fostering social harmony, including prescribing crisis management solutions and compelling peer review mechanisms in the application of Article 6 of the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism.

Climate change is impacting Africa negatively.
El Nino-induced droughts have become more frequent, making our communities vulnerable.

Energy supply has plummeted to record low, yet our sector is a significant consumer of energy in powering establishments. Apart from energy deficits, you recall that we celebrated World Tourism Day under the theme: Tourism and Water: Protecting our Common Future.

It is now apparent that we have a crisis in this aspect which extends itself to food insecurity to a point where it is undermining our Community-Based Tourism Enterprises as part of the supply management chain into the industry.

Excellencies, I propose that we conceive climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies in the tourism industry and I suggest that we create a working group that works on this.

Excellencies, Africa is the new global opportunity characterised by a new sense of resource nationalism that emphasises industrialisation, value addition and beneficiation.

In this new thrust, tourism will play a critical role in the Visit-Trade-Invest Value chain.
In the recent past, we have noticed a huge surge in business reconnaissance missions into Africa (individual, group and institutional) which should prompt us to review the role of Tourism Ministers going beyond just being merchandisers of destinations to business brokers given our frontline role.

This calls for a paradigm shift in repositioning the tourism industry as a new frontier for transformation towards the “Africa We Want” as aptly captured by Agenda 2063, which requires a paradigm shift and a new way of doing business in this great continent.

Thank you.

12,225 total views, 3,299 views today

Peter Kwaira
The National Pledge, according to the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education, was derived from Zimbabwe’s Constitution and the essence of that pledge is highlighted in the supreme law of the land.
However, there seems to be debate stemming from the content. From my own point of view, there is nothing wrong with the National Pledge because what it stands for is purely Zimbabwean and cuts across political or religious views.
If the content in the National Pledge was wrong for us as a country, it should have been rejected during the constitution-making process, because the National Pledge is derived from that same Constitution.
This also means that consultations on the National Pledge was done during the national constitution-making process and the curriculum review because it stems from recommendations of the Nziramasanga Commission.
Chapter 27 of the report by Dr Nziramasanga recommends educating citizens on history and culture especially at school levels, thus what Government is now doing is implementing from consultations done in previous years.
Many people are having a problem with the mentioning of the liberation struggle in the schools pledge, but they are forgetting that in the constitution making process they included an acknowledgement of the role of the liberation struggle.
But any sane person would question: which country in the world would forget its own history? Everyday our liberation heroes are dying, so are we saying they should go without inculcating values?
There are pledges, oaths or code of ethics in the army, the police, education sector and even in the medical profession not only in Zimbabwe, but world over.
Moreso, if one looks at the National Pledge, it promotes honesty and hard work. It begins by acknowledging the Almighty, that fact alone shows we are Christian nation.
The inclusion of our forefathers and mothers shows that we are multicultural, and ways of worshiping differ and we should respect that and cannot in way deny that it. Any country would want its youth to be protected and instil pride in them.
We should be proud of our history and we should not feel inferior about where we come from. The problem might come if children recite the National Pledge without knowing what it means. So what might be needed now is educating the nation, especially the children, what the national pledge means.
The Pledge must unite people and help children have a sense of belonging, it should not alienate them, but help them relate with other people well. The problem that the National Pledge faces is the same faced by the National Youth Service. These issues partly emanate from colonial mentality, ignorance and lack of identity.
We have people who feel inferior and apologise for being African; and all these issues lead to the rejection of issues such as the National Pledge. The debate surrounding this issue is very healthy, but we should debate with focus and let the best ideas take us forward. The truth of matter is that we cannot go back to consultations, neither can we stop the Pledge from being recited in schools.
What we should be talking of now is how to make sure the whole school’s curriculum review is a success.
At this moment I urge the nation to have positive debate and stop this culture of just rejecting things because they have an axe to grind with certain authorities.

Dr Peter Kwaira is a lecturer with the University of Zimbabwe’s Department of Technical Education

Constitution preamble

We the people of Zimbabwe,
United in our diversity by our common desire for freedom, justice and equality, and our heroic resistance to colonialism, racism and all forms of domination and oppression,
Exalting and extolling the brave men and women who sacrificed their lives during the Chimurenga/ Umvukela and national liberation struggles,
Honouring our forebears and compatriots who toiled for the progress of our country, Recognising the need to entrench democracy, good, transparent and accountable governance and the rule of law,
Reaffirming our commitment to upholding and defending fundamental human rights and freedoms,
Acknowledging the richness of our natural resources, Celebrating the vibrancy of our traditions and cultures,
Determined to overcome all challenges and obstacles that impede our progress,
Cherishing freedom, equality, peace, justice, tolerance, prosperity and patriotism in search of new frontiers under a common destiny,
Acknowledging the supremacy of Almighty God, in whose hands our future lies,
Resolve by the tenets of this Constitution to commit ourselves to build a united, just and prosperous nation, founded on values of transparency, equality, freedom, fairness, honesty and the dignity of hard work,
And, imploring the guidance and support of Almighty God, hereby make this hereby make this Constitution and commit ourselves to it as the fundamental law of our beloved land.

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CDE JOEL Samuel Siyangapi Muzhamba, born June 6 1942, whose Chimurenga name was Cde Joseph Khumalo is a veteran freedom fighter who was part of the Group of 36 which was the first group under Zanu to go for military training in Ghana in 1964. He was part of the team in Lusaka that decided to “abduct recruits” as it became apparent that Zanu had fewer comrades than Zapu.

His family had moved to Zambia in 1959 in search of fertile farming land. While in Zambia, he met people like Cde Percy Ntini, Cde John Mataure, Cde Noel Mukono and Cde Mazhandu who were actively involved in politics. Cde Percy Ntini approached him to join Zanu and in no time, he was on his way to Ghana to recieve military training. By this time, Cde Josiah Tongogara had not yet joined Zanu as he was working at a golf club in Lusaka.

Without mincing his words, in this interview with our team comprising Munyaradzi Huni and Tendai Manzvanzvike, Cde Khumalo narrates how issues to do with regionalism and tribalism derailed the struggle well before the war started in earnest. He talks about the sellouts in the Zanu leadership in Lusaka who sold information to the Smith regime, the friction that was caused by the formation of Zanu’s High Command and the trouble causers in the party.

Cde Khumalo narrates how Zanu was planning the war on a zero budget and why they were instructed to go and see spirit medium of Mbuya Nehanda before starting the war.

Read on . . .

***

SM: Before going to Ghana in September 1964, can you briefly explain to us when you joined Zanu during these early stages of its formation, what did the party stand for?

Cde Khumalo: Remember, before Zanu was formed in 1963, there was Zapu and other political parties that were advocating for the rights of blacks in Rhodesia. However, despite these efforts, it was discovered that there was no real change on the ground with regards to the treatment of blacks by whites. During these days kwakamboita Chimurenga chekutema fodya yevarungu, chibage and even mombe dzevarungu. All these were efforts to free blacks in Rhodesia, but nothing really changed because of the whiteman’s superiority complex.

So after all this, in August 1963, Zanu was formed and it’s position was that we are done trying to talk to the colonial regime. We now want direct confrontation with the whites to free ourselves. Negotiations are not taking us anywhere. It’s time to take up arms and fight the regime.

At that time, the person who was president of Zanu was Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole. The deputy was Cde Leopold Takawira while Cde Chitepo was the chairman. President Mugabe at that time was the secretary general.

These leaders and others like Morton Malianga said let’s take up arms and fight the colonial regime. The motto was as Zanu, we are our own liberators.

The party then decided that there should be a body that leads in the direct confrontation with the colonial regime. That is when Dare ReChimurenga was formed to lead the armed struggle. This Dare ReChimurenga was being led by Noel Mukono. There were people like Mataure, Mazhandu, Hamadziripi, Percy Ntini and others I can’t remember their names.

That is when the party started recruiting people who were going for military training because most comrades who had gone for military training, had gone under Zapu.

That is how our group in Ghana became the first group to receive military training under Zanu. The Rhodesian regime knew that Zanu wanted direct confrontation and they knew the party was going to send some comrades for training, so the recruitment of members of our group from inside Rhodesia and us in Zambia was done very secretly. The Rhodesians sent some of its black policemen to join the Zambian police so as to detect what was going on.

Even as our group went for military training in Ghana, at this time there was no one who has thought of the idea of establishing training camps in Zambia and Tanzania. There was also need for political orientation so that before we started the war, we would politicise the masses so that they could support us. The people were supposed to understand that war meant death, tears, blood and sacrifice. This group in Ghana, about 36 of us, we were all volunteers.

SM: Tell us of the military training in Ghana. How was the training?

Cde Khumalo: The first training constituted drills. Left, right, left, right – about turn, right turn – marching. Then we were taught how to shoot and how to assemble a gun. We were doing all this, but we still didn’t have guns.

We wanted to be taught how to make explosives but Ghana didn’t have that expertise. That’s how instructors from China came. At first we were at a camp called Half Asini then we were taken to another camp called Oben Masi where there were instructors from China.

The Chinese first took us through political orientation lessons – how to start a war? A war with a well equipped army? The Chinese taught us how they started their guerrilla warfare. They said because of our few numbers we could not receive training in regular warfare which is fought by battalions, platoons and companies. We didn’t have all this. The 36 of us we were just a platoon.

So we were taught guerrilla warfare which could be fought by very few people in small groups. The aim of guerrilla warfare is to take the enemy by surprise and to paralyse the enemy operations.

The training went well and I am sure other comrades have already spoken about the spie who was planted by the Rhodesians in our group Simon Bhene. We finished training with him and on our way back, he disappeared in Kenya. He resurfaced in Rhodesia as he was now selling out other comrades who had been deployed to hit certain targets. With the help of Bhene, the Rhodesian Selous Scouts arrested many of our comrades.

What pains me is that some amongst our leaders knew that Bhene was a spie but they chose not to tell us.

SM: Why would they do such a thing?

Cde Khumalo: They say money is the root of all evils. Money is devil. Like I told you, these were the early years of Zanu and some of our leaders were in it for the money. They were being used by the Rhodesians. If you check, some of the leaders we started with fell by the wayside. Vamwe vakazopanduka kukasara people like Cde Chitepo, Cde Noel Mukono, Felix Rice Santana, Percy Ntini who were dedicated to fight for their country.

SM: Who are some of these leaders who later abandoned the struggle?

Cde Khumalo: Ummmm, that I won’t tell you. Some of them are still alive. People like Hamadziripi, Rugare Gumbo, Mdara Mandizvidza and others later left Zanu. What I can tell you is that there were sellouts within the party during these early stages. Some of us think that someone from within the party sold out Percy Ntini as he was accompanying some comrades to come to the front. He died in a car accident and it shows the Smith regime knew his whereabouts. How did they know? Some leaders in Dare ReChimurenga were selling information to the Smith regime.

Again, if you check most comrades who were deployed from 1964 up to 1966, most of them would be arrested by the Smith regime. Somehow information was leaking to the Smith regime and records show most of our comrades were arrested.

Our biggest problem was that during these formative stages we didn’t have people who were trained in intelligence and counter-intelligence. As a result, it was easy for the Rhodesians to infiltrate us.

The other thing was that during these early days, there were no proper checks, no background checks because takanga tinenyota to deliver. I am talking about 1964, 65, 66, 67 up to 1969. The party would just appoint people without checking because we thought tiri tese.

After our training, we went back to Lusaka in May 1965 and we were addressed by Cde Chitepo. Our leader was Cde Shadreck Chipanga, deputised by Cde John Makwasha. In Lusaka we were divided into groups. We were not staying at the same place for security reasons. As we were put into these groups, those who were in Dare ReChimurenga already had targets that each group was supposed to go and hit in Rhodesia.

At this time, Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere had offered Zanu and camp to start training more freedom fighters. Our first training camps in Tanzania were in Intumbi with the first instructor being Cde Bernard Mutumwa with assistance from Felix Rice Santana and Cde William Ndangana.

I was also there in Intumbi but I was not full time in training because my main job was to identify recruits in Zambia and take them for training. As Zanu we had to quickly find the recruits because the OAU was saying Zanu has no fighters so it should its members should rejoin Zapu because it had more freedom fighters. We didn’t want that.

SM: Why were you against rejoining Zapu because clearly you were outnumbered?

Cde Khumalo: Yes, Zapu had the numbers but it was organising an army that would be set up in a free Zimbabwe that would have come through negotiations, not war. As Zanu we were saying our army would be formed by the freedom fighters who would have fought the Rhodesians.

To be very frank with you, during these days people like Hashim Mbita, the secretary general of the OAU’s Liberation Committee were against Zanu. We started working with Captain Mwambora in Intumbi and he was the one who understood what Zanu was trying to do. He helped us a lot together with Dr Kasiga who was a doctor for all liberation movements. President Nyerere also supported us. In 1969, we were removed from Intumbi and relocated to Kongwa where there was a strong Zapu presence. The main aim for this move was to make us rejoin Zapu. Some countries didn’t even support Zanu like Zambia. To be frank with you Zimbabwe is blessed to have President Mugabe as its leader. If a person like me had become the president in 1980, we wouldn’t be in good books with the Zambians because Kaunda didn’t like Zanu at all. The only official who supported Zanu in Zambia was Kapwepwe.

SM: We really want to track your journey. When you came back from Ghana, where exactly did you go?

Cde Khumalo: Like I said, Felix Rice Santana, Bernard Mutumwa and William Ndangana were sent to Intumbi while other comrades were given tasks by Noel Mukono to go and hit certain targets in Rhodesia. Percy Ntini was responsible for securing transport to smuggle comrades into Rhodesia. To do this, he would write letters under Ford Motors to make it appear as if freedom fighters who were being deployed, were employees of Ford Motors. I can’t say much about these deployments because Noel Mukono is the one who really knew the targets and those he sent there. Like I said I was assisting in the recruitment of other comrades in Zambia as someone who was familiar with many places in that country.

SM: How difficult was it to recruit comrades during these early years of Zanu?

Cde Khumalo: Most Zimbabweans who were in Zambia were people who had gone there mainly for farming. They were not into politics. So it was very difficult to recruit people from Zambia. These people were now saying Zambia is now our country. Up to this day, there are some Zimbabweans in Zambia who think Zambia is now their country.

It was an uphill task recruiting people from Zambia but we soldiered on. From 1965 up to 1969, per month we could get four or five recruits in Zambia. Because of these problems we opened a camp which we called Chimbi Chimbi which was in Kafue to give these recruits some training as we were waiting for the numbers to grow so that we could transport them to Intumbi. Realising these challenges, we sat down with Felix Rice Santana, Noel Mukono, William Ndangana and Cde Kanoyera asking ourselves how we could get more recruits. The OAU was giving us pressure because Zapu had more comrades. We then decided kuti vakomana pano pava kutodiwa chimwe chimurenga muno muZambia. That’s when we decided that anyone we can across talking Shona, we used to call them ‘vana herehere, nana xa, xa, xa’ we would see where these people were staying. We were later joined by Cde Tongo and Cde Mupunzarima and some Zanu youths like Gwauya as we started abducting people and forcing them to go for military training. We would drive these recruits to Mbeya.

The other problem was that Zapu was denouncing Zanu as rebels and to make matters worse, as Zanu we didn’t have resources. We were relying on well-wishers.

SM: You were now abducting people in a foreign country. Didn’t you have problems with the Zambian government?

Cde Khumalo: Indeed, there were problems. The Zambian government was saying Zanu has no supporters that’s why its resorting to abductions. Some of the official in the Zambian government, except for people like Kapwepwe and Harry Kumbula were against us openly. This compromised our security.

That’s why I said, if some of us had a choice, hataimbofa takawirirana naKaunda. He hated Zanu to the ground that’s why years later he ordered the arrest of our leaders.

Some of the comrades in the famous Group of 45 which came and made a huge impact in Rhodesia were actually abducted in Zambia. When this group started, they were about 160 recruits when they left Lusaka. When they got to Tunduma, the Zambian border with Tanzania, some of the recruits escaped from Kombayi’s car and came back to Lusaka. So from 160 only 45 went for training at Intumbi. This group of 45 convinced some leaders in Tanzania that Zanu was really serious about fighting the armed struggle.

SM: You said Zanu depended mainly on well-wishers in Zambia. Who were some of these well-wishers?

Cde Khumalo: People like the Mazhandu brothers, Kanongovere, Patrick Kombayi and others. These would use their resources to source food for Zanu comrades and most of them stayed with some of the comrades. But I need to say that the Mazhandu brothers are the ones who did a lot, especially the big brother.

SM: Listening to what you saying, one gets the impression that Zanu was operating on zero budget?

Cde Khumalo: That’s very true. No cent. Chakaita kuti Zanu ibudirire, people like John Mataure, Felix Rice Santana, Percy Ntini, Mupunzarima, William Ndangana and Noel Mukono worked a lot for the party. These people helped us a lot in Lusaka because they were well-known. I focussed mainly in Mumbwa.

There was also an Indian called Patel who helped us a lot in terms of cash. He donated lots of money to the party together with people like Kanongovere, Chuma and Moyo Zamuchiya. These people later organised themselves to form a district that was donating resources to Zanu. That’s how Zanu grew in Zambia because these comrades went around explaining to others what the party was all about and what we were doing.

SM: Don’t you think this operating on zero budget and relying on these well-wishers was one of the reasons why the Rhodesians found it easy to infiltrate Zanu?

Cde Khumalo: Yes, to an extent that’s true. But some of these businesspeople were very genuine. What I think is that it was in the party where the Rhodesians found easy targets to use against the liberation struggle.

Later, I was made the Zanu representative in Mbeya, receiving recruits from Zambia and Rhodesia. Sometimes I would be sent on missions in Lusaka and so on because we were very few so one person could be given many tasks.

The other big task was to try and secure ammunition so we had to run around. Because of this, that’s when some people went for military training to different places under different names.

We were still very few but we wanted to create the impression that our numbers were growing so any country that requested comrades to train, we would sometimes send the same people who would have come back from training under different names. If you check most comrades from these early days had different names. We were using this to get support and ammunition from these friendly socialist countries like Yugoslavia, Romania, Cuba, China and so on.

SM: When you were sending these comrades for training over and over again, didn’t this affect their morale?

Cde Khumalo: That’s why you see that during these years, the liberation struggle was put on hold. After the first training the comrades were itching to be deployed but we couldn’t do that because in the first instance we didn’t have enough ammunition, we had not politicised the masses and at the same time we wanted to create an impression to these countries and the OAU that our numbers were growing.

This got to a point where some of these countries started asking why our trained soldiers were not going to the war front.

However, it was also a tactical move to put the war on hold, especially after the 1966 Battle of Chinhoyi. This was because the black people in Rhodesia by this time could not believe that we could really fight a war with the Smith regime. They would compare the ammunition of the Rhodesian army and ours and to them it was unthinkable that we could win the war. I remember at one time, some povho in Mash Central saying ‘uuummmm, muri kuda henyu kurwisa varungu, but tupfuti twenyu utwu munosvikepi? By this time we were using those very basic guns called tuma pepesha that Felix Rice Santana had brought from Congo. Some people in Mash Central only started believing that we could fight the whites after Cde Pedzisa’s group hit Altena Farm and when some school children were taken from St Alberts in the province.

Zanu only got to make a real impact in Rhodesia when the group of 45 was deployed into the country around 1972 to 1974. By this time Zanla forces now had structures and the population, especially in Mash Central had been politicised. By this time, 1974 the struggle was still being directed by Dare ReChimurenga. Members of the High Command came after the group from China that compromised people like Cde Tongogara returned from training. That’s when the High Command was formed to led the war. Dare ReChimurenga and other members of the Central Committee led by Cde Chitepo in Zambia were then given the task to mobilize resources and run the party in Zambia.

SM: Reports say the formation of the High Command caused some friction in the party?

Cde Khumalo: The formation of this High Command caused a lot of squabbles. The issue of regionalism and tribalism reared its ugly head in Zanu. Cde Chitepo fought a lot against regionalism and tribalism but he could only do so much. Even Noel Mukono tried his best but some people who were there vechiKaranga, vechiZezuru were saying since the president of the party, Reverend Sithole and chairman, Cde Chitepo were from Manicaland, so Manyika could not take this and that post. Noel Mukono who was Chief of Defence ended up also being accused of regionalism and tribalism as he tried to sort things out. These things started from the early stages because people had no focus.

That’s why later Noel Mukono was dribbled and Cde Tongo took over as Chief of Defence. This move was orchestrated by people like Chigowe, Mutumbuka and so on. The idea was to later move Cde Tongo to become deputy president of the party since Cde Takawira had died. Joseph Chimurenga was supposed to then take over as Chief of Defence. This was the plot by the Super Karangas. So many wrong things happened at this time.

I remember after I came back from Nanking in China and I was appointed as political commissar by Cde Chitepo taking over from Cde Mataure who had been given another task in reconnaissance.

By this time, Cde Tongogara was still working together with Cde Noel Mukono as his deputy. Even Cde Enerst Kadungure, Cde Mapunzarima were now also in the party. The people who really caused tribalism and regionalism in Zanu were Cde Hamadziripi, Chigowe and Cde Mandizvidza. They were coming from the UK and they came with this talk saying “know your way?” At first we didn’t know what they were talking about. Later we got to know they were talking about “iwe unobva kupi, unoyera chii?” They started dividing people on regional and tribal lines. Cde Tongo was dragged into this unknowingly when he came back from training.

Cde Chitepo tried to address this issue warning us that this would destroy the party. On 28 February 1968, Cde Chitepo called most of the leadership of the party and spoke strongly against regionalism and tribalism. I will forever remember this day because that meeting was heated but Cde Chitepo maintained his cool as Cde Hamadziripi and his colleagues made all manner of accusations.

Things got to a point where we were having what were called ‘Super Zezurus and Super Karangas.’ These were Zezurus and Karangas who were in leadership positions in the party. I actually think one of the reasons why despite the role that I played since these early years of the struggle, I didn’t rise up the ladder of Zanu was because I am Tonga, but shuwa ndogeza rudzi rwangu here? I can’t.

SM: Let’s go back to 1966 and from there on, it looks like due to the need to impress the OAU, Zanu made quite a number of mistakes?

Cde Khumalo: Indeed, we were training people but during these years we never thought about the safety of the deployed comrades. That’s why from 1966 up to 1968, most comrades who were deployed were either arrested or were killed. We didn’t have expertise in security to protect our comrades.

SM: So why did Zanu keep on sending groups into Rhodesia when it was clear that they would either be arrested or killed?

Cde Khumalo: Mao Tse Tung said “where there is war there is sacrifice,” and he went further saying, “fight, fail, fight, fail until you succeed.” That’s why Zanu said chero zvikaoma sei, we will keep pushing because our aim is to free Zimbabwe. We knew that after some while, the people of Zimbabwe would wake up and support the struggle.

SM: Does it trouble you, do you sometimes think about it that you sent fellow comrades for slaughter during these early years?

Cde Khumalo: (long pause) Comrade zvamuri kutaura zvinorwadza. My young brother akafa achipiswa nemagetsi abatwa nevarungu in 1974. Of course I look back. Dai varungu vakabva nepfuti, as we wanted to march from bush to office, I don’t think we would be having any whites in this country. Up to this day I see visions of my fellow comrades. You don’t ask a real comrade such a question? That’s why when people look down upon war veterans, my heart bleeds. People now say “makanga matumwa nani”? (Pause) Ok, takaenda hedu tisina kutumwa and we brought you the country, ko chaipa chii? Motitukirei? (Pause) Zvinorwadza.

SM: Comrade Khumalo, we also understand that before the war started, you were instructed to go and see the spirit medium of Mbuya Nehanda. Tell us about the role that the spirit mediums played before the liberation struggle started.

Cde Khumalo: We need to go back in time a bit. Around 1968, kwakaita masvikiro akatangira kuTanzania akatungamirwa nemumwe mudhara ainzi Mhofu. I don’t know where he is but I was once told he is now living in Midlands. Svikiro iri rekuTanzania rakataura rega pacharo kuIntumbi after pabikwa doro richiti ‘ndiri kuona kwamuri kuenda mberi uko mutungamiri wamuri kuti munaye, ndaona haasiye mutungamiri wenyu. Ndaona mutungamiri arikuuya mukati memusangano wenyu. Mutungamiri uyu paachabuda munyika menyu achabuda nekumabvazuva. Mutungamiri uyu achange aina mambo anendoro pamhanza. Ndiye achava mutungamiri wenyu weparty and ndiye achazova mutungamiri wehurumende.

Asi mutungamiri uyu ndaona akakura asiri mutungamiri we munyika menyu chete. Mutungamiri uya ndiri kuona ari mutungamiri wevese veganda dema nekuti arikuda kusunungura vese veganda dema. Handikuudzei zita asi muchamuona paanouya. Achauya nemumwe mutungamiri pamwe namambo wendoro chena.

We didn’t know what this spirit medium was saying and most people dismissed him.

In 1970, as we were carrying materiel (ammunition) taking it to Zambezi River in preparation for war, Cde Mayor Urimbo, Cde Joesph Chimurenga and Cde Mataure had gone into Rhodesia for reconnaissance. I was now under commissariat but as we were carrying the materiel I was changed and given the responsibility to look after the materiel deputising Mdara Homba. He later died in Marondera. There was no High Command by this time. There was only the general staff.

We were in charge of all the materiel that was used during the liberation struggle during these years. While we were carrying this materiel, another spirit medium came from a place that we used to call Kumabanana on the Mozambican side of the border.

This spirit medium said as you are preparing to go and fight your war, have you consulted vemweya in your country? We had not done that and we didn’t know anything about it. The spirit medium then told us that even in Mozambique before Frelimo started its war against the Portuguese, they consulted spirit mediums in that country.

The spirit medium then said kune muchembere anonzi Nehanda, you should consult her before you start your war.

SM: Did you believe what you were being told by these spirit mediums?

Cde Khumalo: We said aahh, munhu anopenga uyu. Nehanda died a long time ago, but the spirit medium insisted that we should consult this Mbuya Nehanda. The spirit medium then told us that before you go to meet Mbuya Nehanda, pachasvika mumwe mudzimu that will lead you kuna Mbuya Nehanda. We were really vexed because this was completely knew to us, especially me. I am a Seventh Day Adventist and all this didn’t make sense to me. Takatoti hameno vano believer zvemudzimu ndezvenyu izvo.

After a week, pakasvika munhu aisvikirwa neshavi rebveni ainzi Sekuru Chipfeni. He came akapfeka machira matema around Kakwidze area. This spirit medium said kune vana vari kupinda munyika umu saka ndati regai nditaure navo vasati vatanga zvavari kuda kuita. Joseph Chimurenga was the commander at that time. We sat down with this spirit medium and were told about homwe ya Nehanda Nyakasikana. We were told that before getting into Rhodesia to fight the war, we were supposed to go and consult this spirit medium but before going to consult Nehanda Nyakasikana, we were told to go and see Chief Chiweshe.

Next week, Cde Khumalo continues his narration where he will give graphic details of the meeting between the Zanu leadership and Mbuya Nehanda. At that meeting, some leaders were told why they would not see a free Zimbabwe. It’s scary stuff. Don’t miss your copy of The Sunday Mail.

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Minister of Truth
Cde Jason Zhuwao

They say if you can’t beat them join them. In the case of Morgan Tsvangirai, it’s if you can’t beat them arrange to have them beaten.
But first, let me tell you a small story.
When I was about 15-years-old, my father Robert and I made one of the biggest deals in my life at the time.
He said if I passed Mathematics in the end of year exams I would get a car for my 16th birthday.
I never got the car. If wishes were horses, that’s one horse I would have rode.
Morgan Tsvangirai last week told journalists that his MDC-T party would rather win an election all by themselves than to link up with other opposition minions and hope for a coalition victory – though an alliance remained a possibility.
His comments came a few days after MDC-T secretary-general Douglas Mwonzora declared they were not keen on coalescing with other opposition parties.
Here is where Tsvangirai’s headache starts.
The chances of him winning against Zanu-PF – whether in a coalition or individually – are nil.
Zanu-PF has great support, having won 61,09 percent of the vote after getting 2 110 434 votes in 2013.
All other parties shared the remainder.
Tsvangirai is basing his delusions of victory on the breakaway of Joyce Mujuru and her cronies from Zanu-PF. But he needs to be reminded that Zanu-PF’s structures have about a million registered people.
No other party comes anywhere close.
Lest he overstretches his wild imagination, he should recognise that some people previously allied to Mujuru are now begging for readmission into Zanu-PF.
And many of those who remain with Mujuru only became “bigwigs” because they were cloaked by Zanu-PF.
Alone, they are nothing.
Ask yourself: who will vote for Didymus Mutasa? Or Rugare Gumbo? It’s a laugh!
For years Zanu-PF has proved its dominance.
It does not need coalitions with lesser political mortals to scrounge for votes.
Tsvangirai should wake from his sleep and stop hallucinating in public like he did in Gweru.
He needs to deal with his non-electability headache which a coalition cannot cure.
He should accept that he is a failure.
Since the formation of his party in 1999, there is nothing positive that has come out of him.
He has not won a single election – even as a councilor of a rural authority.
We all saw his abyssmal performance when President Mugabe made him Prime Minister in that doomed inclusive Government.
The people remember and will not want to see him in public office again.
Tsvangirai has shown time and again that he is not his own man and is a mere puppet of the West.
Now that the West has found a new puppet in Mujuru, Tsvangirai is trying to make all the right noises so that donor support comes back his way.
That is why he did that very useless march in Harare a few weeks ago, a march that is rapidly fading from memory.
Morgan Tsvangirai knows many MDC-T supporters have lost faith in his leadership given the number of years they have invested in him for zero returns.
The votes are lost.
The donor lucre is gone.
Tsvangirai’s headache is fast becoming a migraine.

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Sharmine Narwani

“Who else is willing to put the brakes on Nato, disengage from lousy alliances, hook up with Putin and others to fight terrorism the right way, prioritise diplomacy over military options? Not Clinton, no way,”

Although the era of US global hegemony is coming to a close, the Middle East more than most regions , is still reeling from the nasty last jabs of that Empire in decline.

It is little wonder, then, that the US presidential election season is scrutinised carefully in all corners of the Mideast.

Over here, the debate over the likely victor is less about economic, political and social projects than it is about which candidate is least likely to launch wars against us.

Anecdotally, there seems to be a consensus that Hillary Clinton would be the worst for the region, though of course like in the United States that perception changes dramatically when the conversation is with regional elites and “liberals”.

And just like their American counterparts, Middle Easterners get bogged down in arguments about Donald Trump’s “racism”, Bernie Sanders’ “viability” and Clinton’s “hawkishness”. Media, after all, have never been more uniform in their pronouncements we all, universally, receive the same talking points.

But US presidential election 2016 means a lot more than US polls in decades past. From the Levant to the Persian Gulf to North Africa, borders have never been so frayed, terrorism so pervasive, security and resources so threatened.

The Middle East is a wretched mess. And at the heart of each and every one of these quagmires stands the United States, imposing itself, its military “expertise” and its humanitarian “do-gooding” into our suffering. Ironically, perhaps, there are few problems in the Mideast that have not been caused or exacerbated by the destructive hand of US foreign policy.

The last playground

The Middle East is the last global playground where the US can act with impunity.

Part of the reason for this is that most of the two dozen states that make up the region are still headed by US-backed dictators and monarchs, American proxies that prioritise Washington’s interests over those of its citizenry.

The US plays hard in this region because it wishes to maintain this remarkably favourable status quo, which it has lost virtually everywhere else.

Even as the Cold War was drawing to a close vanquishing the old Soviet bloc proxy leaders in the Mideast and replacing them with US-friendly ones the 1979 Iranian Revolution flipped the region once more, ushering in a new framework for independence from the “Anglo imperialist”.

In the aftermath of Iraq’s war with Iran, which had placed Iranian aspirations on hold for eight long, destructive years, Tehran began to forge regional relationships that formed the underpinnings of a new Axis of Resistance to US and Western hegemonic ambitions.

The US expanded its military role in the Middle East mainly to eradicate this “Shia” thorn in its side but it has not only failed to do so with each consecutive US administration, it has willfully unleashed the well-contained demons of sectarianism to achieve this goal.

Hello, Sunni Wahhabi fundamentalism. Hello, Al-Qaeda. Hello Isis.

Why even get into this recent history? It’s important for one main reason.

Even as the US now turns its guns on the Frankenstein monster it created from its invasions of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and now its intervention in Syria … Washington also has its guns aimed at Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and other entities that are fighting this very terrorism.

When Trump debuted his foreign policy vision, he pointed out that current US policy was “reckless, rudderless and aimless”, “one that has blazed the path of destruction in its wake”.

It’s all we’ve heard in recent years  certainly since the start of the Arab “uprisings” with pundits and commentators alike scratching their heads in confusion over US goals in the region.

American policy is not confused, it is very deliberate.

Get your head around this: Washington seeks to thwart the Iranian-led axis by unleashing sectarian, Wahhabi-influenced extremists into parts of the region viewed as Iran’s strategic depth, and it seeks to counter the proliferation of these extremists by reaching out to Iran, tactically,  hence the sudden P5+1 nuclear deal in the midst of all this conflict.

This is what I call America’s “strategic dissonance” playing both sides to engineer protracted conflict in an effort to gradually drive the two sides into extinction.

Only problem is the unpredictability of it all and the ensuing chaos, destruction and terrorism that has now poured over these borders into Europe and beyond.

Mr America vs Ms Beltway

It is clear that this strategic dissonance has once more led to an American “unintended consequence”.

It is equally clear that it will take nothing less than a sledgehammer to alter the destructive bent of US foreign policy.

What’s interesting about this election year is that voters have put their backs behind unlikely candidates Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, mostly, it seems, to buck the establishment.

The two long-shot candidates have delivered scathing reviews of Beltway politicos and the ‘interest groups’ that prop them up both foreign and domestic, both.

By contrast, Hillary Clinton, the “deserving” establishment candidate who was a shoo-in until a few short months ago has had to fight for every vote in her contests with Democratic Party newcomer Sanders.

And the easiest blows against Clinton have been in the foreign policy arena, where the Beltway hawk has a long record of backing the wrong plan  in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria.

In the Mideast, Clinton’s militaristic leanings scuttle any goodwill one would otherwise have for a Democratic Party candidate. Egyptians lobbed tomatoes, shoes and water bottles at her motorcade when the then-secretary of state made an appearance after the ousting of longtime US ally President Hosni Mubarak.

It was under her stewardship at the department of state when “foreign hands” began to make their marks on the Arab uprisings none to the benefit of the Arab masses.

Her support for the ill-conceived US invasion of Iraq, which led to the establishment of Al-Qaeda in that country, is a constant refrain here in the Mideast much as it is in the United States. And her refusal to acknowledge the disastrous consequences of US military intervention in Libya remain proof that she never learned from Iraq.

Like him or not, Clinton’s maniacal laughter over Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s violent death as she sanguinely declared “We came, we saw, he died,” has been forever imprinted on our collective memories.

We have since learned that US president Barack Obama’s decision to militarily intervene in Libya came down to her vote. Libyan blood cannot be washed off those hands.

And now Clinton wants to escalate in Syria by carving out a “safe zone”  which is how her Libyan adventure started.

If Clinton suffers from a likeability problem in the US, she is downright reviled in the Mideast except among the usual suspects which include dictators, monarchs and other super-wealthy elites who have either contributed to the Clinton Foundation or are desperate to maintain their cushy positions within a US-dominated region.

Then there’s Trump

The highly controversial billionaire businessman Donald Trump has been roundly bashed in this region for his prejudicial comments against Muslims, but there’s a quiet parade of thinkers in the Mideast from Arab nationalists to progressives to intellectuals who have been casting coy second glances his way.

“Trump can turn the system upside down,” says a leading Lebanon-based Arab nationalist. “He’s his own man, he will not be dragged into the trappings of the deep state,” says an influential writer.

“Who else is willing to put the brakes on Nato, disengage from lousy alliances, hook up with Putin and others to fight terrorism the right way, prioritise diplomacy over military options? Not Clinton, no way,” a college student rants.

There is that.

Unlike Clinton, there’s not much we know about Trump. He has no foreign policy record, except of course his non-stop reminder that he opposed the US invasion of Iraq and warned that it would be a “disaster”.

But if you’re going to take a chance on a candidate, if you’re going to try to read between the lines of campaign promises . I suggest taking the unconventional, risky declarations more seriously than predictable, voter-friendly platitudes like “I support the state of Israel unconditionally.”

And Trump has some doozies.

On key US ally Saudi Arabia, arguably ground zero for the militant extremism rampant in the region – and a country that former defence secretary Robert Gates says was prepared to “fight the Iranians to the last American”. Trump warns that he might halt purchases of Saudi oil unless Riyadh commits ground troops to the ISIS fight.

His comments mirror those of Gates  as disclosed in a 2010 Wikileaks cable , who said of the Saudis that it “is time for them to get in the game”.

“If Saudi Arabia was without the cloak of American protection, I don’t think it would be around,” suggests Trump, quite correctly.

On Russia, Syria and US support of rebels: “Putin does not want Isis. The rebel groups … we have no idea who these people are.

We’re training people, we don’t know who they are … we’re giving them billions of dollars to fight Assad … If you look at Libya, look what we did there, it’s a mess. If you look at Saddam Hussein, with Iraq, look at what we did there, it’s a mess…”

In what seemed like a swipe at US support of questionable militants in Syria and elsewhere, Trump says: “We need to be clear sighted about the groups that will never be anything other than enemies. And believe me, we have groups that no matter what you do, they will be the enemy. We have to be smart enough to recognise who those groups are, who those people are, and not help them.”

Asked if the Mideast would be more secure if Saddam and Gaddafi were still around and Assad were stronger, Trump boldly declares: “It’s not even a contest … Of course it would be.”

And this: “I like that Putin is bombing the hell out of Isis. Putin has to get rid of Isis because Putin doesn’t want Isis coming into Russia.”

In short…

Trump is an unknown quantity, but he is delivering some home truths to restive voters in an unconventional election year.

Clinton is the quintessential establishment candidate, the sure-thing that voters wish they could like, who is running for president at the wrong time for a beltway insider.

Trump has defied all the odds thus far, and there is no reason he can’t continue to do that all the way to the White House.

Whether or not he can keep surprising once he is there is anyone’s guess. Will he become co-opted by the system? Will he strike down entrenched Washington dogmas with his trademark arrogance?

Nobody knows.

If Trump runs against Clinton, his campaign mantra has to be “Clinton: tons of experience, no judgment”.

It’s pretty much the only way he can compete with a seasoned politician who is sure to throw his inexperience back in his face at every opportunity.

For the Mideast, this is not the time to pick the ‘devil we know.’ We know how that story ends every single time: destabilisation, chaos, terrorism.

Trump is definitely the lesser evil, whichever way one looks at it. He simply cannot be worse than her.

But there is one solitary upside to a Clinton presidency. If Hillary Clinton is the next president of the United States we will see the world shift decisively into a new multi-polar order.

The battle over Syria became a red line for the Russians, Chinese and Iranians, and they placed protective arms around key states, in turn forging closer relations with each other some of these, military dimensions and with a number of other “middle powers” that threatened to up-end US hegemonic ambitions once and for all.

Imagine then, the reactions of Russia, China, Iran, Brazil, South Africa and other states irked by US-backed destabilising campaigns, if a hawk like Clinton is ensconced in the White House.

We’ll slip into a new world order faster than you can say “Goldman Sachs”. — Russia Today

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Russia Today

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