Dingo Firestorm (11 page)

While a rift was developing between the South African and Rhodesian governments, the Fireforce was mauling ZANLA in the Hurricane area, and the SAS and air force were hitting them hard in Tete. Then, in April 1974, an event thousands of miles away dealt a savage blow to the Rhodesian strategic military effort: the Carnation Revolution in Portugal.

After decades of authoritarian rule and costly wars in their African colonies, the Portuguese were impoverished and wanted change. Events came to a head on 25 April 1974 with a
coup d’état
that overthrew Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano’s government. The coup became known as the Carnation Revolution, as supporters of the revolution in Lisbon wore red carnations.

The new left-wing leadership was anxious to end Portugal’s five-century-old African colonial hegemony as soon as possible. The Lisbon government entered into dialogues with its former enemies, the guerrilla groups in Mozambique, Angola and Portuguese Guinea. The objective was to hand power over to them as quickly as possible.

Rhodesia and South Africa suddenly had to face up to the fact that soon there would no longer be a friendly Portuguese power along their vast eastern borders with Mozambique. Instead, the unfriendly Marxist guerrilla movement FRELIMO, under their commander, Samora Machel, would take over. The Rhodesians knew full well that ZANU and FRELIMO were allies. ZANLA would now be free to move about Mozambique, enjoying moral and material support from the new FRELIMO government. In a stroke, the strategic advantage swung from the Rhodesians to ZANLA.

With the collapse of the Caetano government and the need to deal with new Marxist neighbours in Mozambique and Angola, Vorster’s mind shifted to one objective – protecting South Africa’s interests. So he accelerated his strategic gamble of détente and stepped up the dialogue with selected African leaders. To gain credibility with his newfound friends and to shift the international focus away from South Africa, Vorster had to offer something in return.

Rhodesia would be that something – the sacrificial lamb.

Vorster’s plan was simple: he would pressurise Ian Smith into engaging in dialogue with the nationalists, while President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and Tanzanian president Julius Nyerere would bring pressure to bear on ZAPU (Nkomo) and ZANU (Sithole) to sit around a negotiating table with Smith.

The South Africans held all the cards, their ace being Rhodesia’s vital supply lines through their country. What Smith did not know was that Vorster had already indicated to Kaunda that he would secure both a ceasefire and the release of the key political prisoners in Rhodesia. After a tense meeting in Pretoria, an unhappy and cynical Smith went back to Rhodesia to announce a ceasefire on 11 December 1974, just two years after the Altena Farm attack.

Smith ordered the release of Mugabe, Nkomo and all the nationalist political prisoners, who had spent the last 11 years in detention. Rhodesian forces could only sit and watch as the badly mauled and demoralised guerrilla forces picked themselves up and headed to Mozambique and Zambia to regroup and rearm.

At the time, ZANLA were down to less than 100 trained men in Rhodesia. But probably more significant was the loss of face for the Rhodesian government in the eyes of the peasants, many of whom saw the release of the political leaders as a sign of weakness. Serious damage was done to the Rhodesian cause.

Despite the unexpected gift of a ceasefire, ZANU was falling apart. The problems began four years before the ceasefire, in 1970. First, the ZANU vice-president, Leopold Takawira, died in prison of diabetes, which shocked the jailed ZANU leadership badly. Takawira’s death and the strain of six years in prison took their toll on Ndabaningi Sithole, the ZANU president. His erratic behaviour prompted a coup by his fellow inmates in Que Que Prison. They met secretly in a cell and voted to sack him. Had Takawira still been alive, he would have automatically succeeded Sithole as leader. So the next man in line, the party’s secretary general, was appointed interim leader until the party held its next conference. That man was Robert Mugabe.

Meanwhile, on the front, the Rhodesian CIO was sowing mayhem among the guerrillas. By interviewing numerous ZANLA captives, the CIO became aware that the front-line guerrillas were badly demoralised from the pounding they had taken in Rhodesia, and by a serious lack of fighting equipment. They were also disillusioned with their leaders, whom they hardly ever saw anywhere near the front.

The CIO also learnt of serious tribal differences pulling ZANU apart. Two rival Shona clans, the Karanga and Manyika, were battling for supremacy in ZANU. The Karanga had provided the bulk of recruits for ZANLA, and they had fought more battles and lost more fighters than any other group. Consequently, they felt that their clan should carry most weight on the Dare reChimurenga.

ZANU reorganised the external wing of the party in 1973, with the lion’s share of posts going to the Karanga, leaving the scraps of power to the Manyikas. The exception was Herbert Chitepo, a Manyika, who remained leader of the external ZANU organisation. However, his post had become largely symbolic. The real power lay with Josiah Tongogara, a Karanga, who controlled all the key levers of power.

In a brilliant piece of counter-espionage, the CIO managed to meet discreetly with the ZANLA commander of the Nehanda Sector, a Manyika, Thomas Nhari, near Mukumbura. By feeding him information about the lavish lifestyles enjoyed by the Karanga leadership, the advent of détente and jobs for the Karanga, Nhari was provoked to rebel.

Nhari and his rebels planned to muster support from the large ZANLA training and transit base at Chifombo, on Zambia’s border with Mozambique. They would then march to Lusaka in a show of force. Not all those at Chifombo, however, supported the rebellion and some refused to join. Nhari’s response was brutal: he rounded up his main opponents and executed them. A few days later, on 9 December 1974, Nhari and his band of rebels arrived in Lusaka to air their grievances, embarrassing Kaunda, who was in the middle of the détente dialogue.

Chitepo was willing to hear the rebels’ grievances, but Tongogara saw them as traitors and was dead against negotiating with them. To show they were serious, the rebels kidnapped a number of ZANU leaders, including Kumbirai Kangai and Tongogara’s wife, and took them back to the Chifombo camp as hostages.

Fearing the hostages would be executed, Chitepo quickly changed his mind and supported a plan by Tongogara to retake Chifombo by force, without delay. Tongogara quickly raised a force of 300 guerrillas from ZANLA’s Mgagao camp in Tanzania. Led by Rex Nhongo, they attacked Chifombo and quickly defeated the unsuspecting Manyika rebels, killing nearly 50 of them and capturing many more. A tribunal, headed by Chitepo, was convened on 22 January 1975 to try the captured rebels.

It was a trial of vengeance. Many of the officers were found guilty within minutes and executed outside, including the rebel leader, Thomas Nhari, who had been one of Tongogara’s most successful commanders. The executions were carried out in full view of the remaining camp inhabitants, including women and children. It didn’t end there. A wave of reprisals aimed at rooting out any potential Manyika rebels left many more dead.

As a Manyika, Chitepo became the meat in a very hostile sandwich. The Karanga blamed him for sparking the uprising in the first place, whereas his fellow Manyika felt he had betrayed them. His position as ZANU’s external leader had become untenable.

Neither Chitepo nor Kaunda realised that the real threat was the Rhodesian CIO. On the morning of 18 March 1975, barely two days after meeting with Kaunda, Chitepo got into his blue Volkswagen Beetle parked outside his house in Lusaka. When he turned the ignition, the car exploded. The car bomb was so powerful that it uprooted a tree next door and threw parts of the Beetle onto the roof of his house. Chitepo died instantly.

Kenneth Kaunda was incensed by the assassination. He believed Chitepo was an essential ingredient in the détente initiative. Kaunda immediately set up a commission of inquiry consisting of officials from 14 African countries. Tongogara, meanwhile, fearing that he would be blamed for Chitepo’s death, fled to Mozambique with many of his leading commanders. Immediately after Chitepo’s funeral, Kaunda’s men rounded up senior ZANU personnel and demanded that FRELIMO send Tongogara and others back to face the music. When they arrived in Lusaka, Kaunda jailed them.

With Chitepo dead and Tongogara in a Zambian jail, ZANU was decapitated. Ken Flower recalled: ‘The extent of the reaction in Zambia to the death of Herbert Chitepo astounded even the CIO.’ The guerrilla movement was at war with itself, while its most effective leader and military strategist languished behind bars.

The timing of Chitepo’s assassination made it hard to believe that it was a Rhodesian plot. The popular perception was that it was an all-ZANU conspiracy, directly related to the Nhari rebellion. Hence the rebellion, the executions and the assassination of Chitepo left a deep and permanent scar on ZANU. These events would shape the politics of Zimbabwe well into the twenty-first century.

Another significant, but unintended, consequence of the Chitepo assassination was that it opened the leadership door to Robert Mugabe. A further consequence was the ascendancy of Mugabe’s fellow Zezuru-clan comrade, Rex Nhongo, who stepped into Tongogara’s shoes after his arrest.

When Mugabe heard the news of Chitepo’s assassination, he believed the external leader had paid the price for standing in the way of Kaunda’s détente plans, and that the Zambian government was behind Chitepo’s assassination.

The ZANU executive quickly convened a meeting at a hotel in the Highfield township of Salisbury and resolved that Mugabe, as the party’s secretary general, should leave for Mozambique to take over the reins until a new leader could be elected. Another member of the executive, his fellow prison inmate Edgar Tekere, would accompany him.

Mugabe and Tekere were spirited out of Salisbury, changing cars at Cold Comfort Farm in Ruwa. Their Volkswagen Beetle spluttered along the main road east towards Rusape, a small farming town 135 kilometres from Salisbury, where they stopped to refuel and buy snacks and refreshments.

Mugabe wasn’t known in these parts and went by unnoticed; Tekere, however, kept a low profile, as this was his backyard. From Rusape, they took the road east towards the Inyanga Mountains. The topography changed quickly to reveal spectacular, massive granite hills weathered over millions of years into amazing shapes. The hills gradually became mountains, and the flora thickened – a sign of regular rainfall. They were entering the beautiful Eastern Highlands, a part of the country that looks more like Scotland than Africa, where many Rhodesians had holiday cabins to escape from the summer heat.

Finally, they passed Troutbeck Inn, a delightful hotel boasting one of the prettiest mountain golf courses in the world. Shortly after Troutbeck and after passing World’s View, which affords a magnificent vista over Mozambique some 5 000 feet below, Mugabe and Tekere were dropped off and walked the rest of the way to Nyafaro, where they were fed and sheltered by a community of tribespeople led by Chief Rekayi Tangwena. Mugabe and Tekere spent a number of weeks there before crossing the Karezi River into Mozambique in early April 1975.

Mozambique had been in a state of flux since the coup in Lisbon a year earlier. The war between the Portuguese and FRELIMO was over, and by the time Mugabe and Tekere crossed the border, the Portuguese forces had already pulled out of much of rural Mozambique. Samora Machel and his FRELIMO guerrilla party would assume power two months later, on 25 June 1975.

ZANU was quick to use its new strategic advantage by going on a massive recruitment drive in the areas of Manicaland adjacent to the Mozambican border. Young men and women were encouraged to cross the border into Mozambique to join the struggle; they were promised quick training and a rapid return to Rhodesia, armed with the best weapons. But there was no planning, and soon vast numbers of recruits were pouring haphazardly over Rhodesia’s porous eastern border.

The sudden arrival of recruits worried FRELIMO, who were preoccupied with figuring out how they were going to govern their own country. Trying to bring some control over the situation, FRELIMO herded the recruits into abandoned Portuguese military camps at various locations along Highway 102, the main north–south road in Mozambique’s Manica Province.

This turbulent situation is what Mugabe and Tekere encountered when they entered Mozambique. After crossing the border, they were taken to a small FRELIMO camp in the Choa area. FRELIMO were quite unsure what to do with their new visitors, who, in turn, were miffed about not being given a hero’s welcome by their new comrades. Eventually, Mugabe and Tekere were taken on a long walk around the imposing Serra Nhatoa mountain to the nearest holding camp for recruits at Vila Gouveia on Highway 102. They were met by 400 hundred recruits.

‘The new recruits were all boys, who expected to immediately be given guns and go off to fight; they wanted to go off and kill all the whites,’ wrote Edgar Tekere in his autobiography,
A Lifetime of Struggle
.

Tekere knew that the recruits needed to be kept occupied, so he introduced physical exercise and drills. ‘Many were disappointed and frustrated and this led to insubordination.’

FRELIMO, playing pass the hot potato, moved the entire group to an old FRELIMO camp further north, where another 600 recruits had been herded together. Eventually it was decided that the safest option was to bring together the recruits and politicians in one place. They chose the provincial capital of Manica Province, Vila Pery, named after João Pery de Lind, governor of Mozambique, who turned the fertile Chimoio area into Mozambique’s top agricultural centre in the early 1900s.

Before the Portuguese arrived centuries before, the area was known as Chimoio, after the slain son of a paramount chief of the Moyo clan. With the rise of the Monomotapa kingdom in the Zambezi Valley, Arab traders began sailing their dhows up the Buzi and Revue rivers from Beira to trade gold, slaves and other merchandise with the Monomotapa people. They marked their routes by planting non-indigenous Palmyra palms along the way as navigation beacons. Many are still visible in the area, notably on Monte Zembe, a mountain landmark 24 kilometres south of Vila Pery. Samora Machel renamed the town Chimoio shortly after coming to power in 1975.