Dingo Firestorm (12 page)

FRELIMO managed with difficulty to transport 1 000 ZANU recruits 115 kilometres south to Chimoio. As the trucks neared the town, Mugabe and Tekere would have noticed many empty farmsteads, recently abandoned by white farmers in their panic to flee Mozambique ahead of the FRELIMO takeover. Machel would later publicly rue scaring the white people away with his threats to nationalise everything, including domestic houses. The sudden vacuum created by the exodus quickly turned Mozambique into a basket case.

Ironically, it was Machel who, five years later, would pressurise Robert Mugabe and ZANU to delete the heady socialist clauses from their election manifesto to avoid the mistakes he had made himself. As it turned out, Mugabe did largely heed Machel’s advice for nearly 20 years before he purged Zimbabwe of not only most of its white citizens, but also vast numbers of black people who fled the economic and political mayhem and one of the world’s fastest economic collapses.

In another twist of irony, white Zimbabwean commercial farmers thrown off their land by Mugabe would be invited by the Mozambican government to resuscitate and farm the fertile Chimoio area.

Tekere describes what he and Mugabe saw when they arrived at Chimoio: ‘There we found about 3 000 more recruits. And for the first time we encountered females.’ The recruits were completely un-trained; the only thing binding them together was a romantic ideal to join the Chimurenga. The FRELIMO area commander, a man called Jehovah, was nervous about the ever-expanding recruit population in Chimoio Town, all needing to be fed, cared for and kept out of trouble. FRELIMO decided it was best to get them out of the town, so the commander took Tekere on a real-estate tour of abandoned Portuguese farms and small army camps between the Mombezi and Massua rivers about 20 kilometres north of Chimoio, offering this prime land and infrastructure to ZANU on a plate. The area selected stretched nine kilometres from the abandoned De Sousa family farm in the west to the Monteiro farm in the north-east.

Tekere centred the new ZANLA complex on three old farms: the Adriano Antonio farmstead in the middle, flanked by the De Sousa farm, just under two kilometres to the west, and the Graça farm, lying the same distance to the east. The modest Antonio farmhouse and outbuildings were surrounded by lush trees, orderly palms and a pleasant garden, with its front gate right on the dirt road to Chimoio Town, only 17 kilometres away. The old Graça farm was also very pleasant, with big tobacco barns and several outbuildings. Tekere was spoilt for choice, but he made a decision: the old Antonio farmhouse would be the new ZANLA headquarters in Mozambique. The Graça farmstead would form the main storage complex, known as the national stores, and the De Sousa farm would be turned into the main convalescence centre. These three farms and the surrounding buildings became known collectively as New Farm, but many just called it Chimoio. It became the nerve centre of ZANLA, from where Mugabe, Tongogara and Nhongo would direct the war.

Over the next year, the complex grew exponentially and soon incorporated a registry; a holding camp for recruits due to be trained abroad and another for housing fully trained guerrillas bound for Rhodesia; vehicle-repair garages; massive ammunition stores; a college for training political commissars; a school for the children of those based permanently at the camp; and other support structures. The recruits undergoing training were housed in a large camp just over six kilometres to the north-east of the HQ building.

Given the sheer length of the border with Rhodesia, it was difficult to channel all the new recruits to New Farm, so Tekere was taken on another real-estate tour to the Monte Nhamapaco area, 50 kilometres north, where he was offered more land. Tekere chose a picturesque spot in a horseshoe bend of the Rio Nhazonia, also known as the Nyadzonia River. He would later deeply regret this choice of location for a recruit camp, calling it a ‘death trap’ after the Selous Scouts attacked the camp in a daring vehicle-borne daylight raid.

The new Chimoio HQ complex acted like a magnet attracting not only increasing numbers of new recruits and their families and hangers-on, but also trained, experienced ZANLA guerrillas from the north-east theatre. According to Tekere, future Zimbabwean vice-president and wife of Solomon Mujuru, Joice Mujuru, using the
nom de guerre
Teurai Ropa Nhongo, gave the first military instruction at Chimoio. Teurai Ropa (‘Spill Blood’) taught Tekere how to handle a gun.

FRELIMO were wary, however, about too many armed people running around, so they restricted the distribution of weapons to ZANLA. Trainees used drill sticks, pick handles and shovels as gun substitutes.

While Tekere organised logistics, Mugabe focused on delivering political lectures to the recruits, subtly raising his profile within the military wing of the party. Then one day, out of the blue, FRELIMO arrived with orders to remove the two ZANU leaders from the Chimoio area.

Samora Machel was deeply preoccupied with trying to run his new government. The OAU, however, was pressing him to support ZAPU. So instead of welcoming Mugabe and Tekere as friends, Machel had them trucked off to the small coastal town of Quelimane in central Mozambique, a serene but sweltering settlement on the banks of a picturesque lagoon that empties into the warm Indian Ocean. They were effectively under house arrest.

Mugabe was deeply unhappy. He knew that while he lingered in Quelimane, time was slipping by and there was the risk that Sithole would make a comeback as ZANU’s leader. Some 16 months had passed since Mugabe and Tekere had entered Mozambique, when, in August 1976, a respected senior ZANLA commander, Wilfred Mhanda, whose
nom de guerre
was Dzinashe Machingura, arranged to quietly slip Tekere, and later Mugabe, back to New Farm for military briefings.

He did not think much of Mugabe, and later publicly criticised him as being ‘too conservative’. Mugabe reacted by having Machingura and his allies jailed in Mozambique for the rest of the war.

Machingura would later tell the BBC in an interview: ‘When Mugabe takes a dislike to someone, he becomes vindictive and never changes his mind.’ Tekere would learn the same lesson a few years later when he too fell foul of Mugabe.

With Chitepo dead, Tongogara in jail and Mugabe confined to Quelimane, Vorster’s détente initiatives were going ahead at full steam. Ian Smith recalled a meeting with Vorster at Libertas, the South African prime minister’s official residence, in which Vorster described the warm reception he was receiving from black leaders in Africa.

‘I’ve got them eating out of my hands. They have promised that if I can help them solve the Rhodesian problem they will acknowledge South Africa as we are today,’ he said.

Smith asked, ‘With your apartheid intact?’

‘Certainly,’ replied Vorster.

‘But you don’t believe them?’ Smith asked.

‘My dear friend,’ said Vorster, ‘you’ve been out of touch with the world around you for so long that you are unaware of the changes which have taken place.’

Smith could hardly believe the man’s naivety, but he knew Vorster was deadly serious.

To show how serious he was, Vorster started to hint that he was about to pull the South African Police (SAP) out of Rhodesia, even though just two days before Christmas in 1974, four SAP men had been gunned down in cold blood in a ZANLA con trick on the Mazoe high-level bridge. This murder had taken place two weeks after the ceasefire agreed by Vorster and Kaunda.

Ignoring his men’s bitterness towards ZANLA, and to make sure Smith would be cooperative, Vorster slowed down ammunition and fuel supplies to Rhodesia. Ken Flower wrote in a memorandum in November 1974: ‘Since [October] there have been two meetings of the Rhodesian and South African Prime Ministers … Prime Minister Vorster made it clear to Mr Ian Smith that he must get a settlement, and get it quickly, or South Africa would cut off our water …’

According to Flower, the relationship between Smith and Vorster finally broke down irreparably in early 1975. Then, in August of that year, without even telling Smith, Vorster ordered the SAP to pull out of Rhodesia during the hours of darkness.

‘I received an early-morning phone call,’ recalled Smith, ‘informing me that the South Africans were pulling out.’ By the time Smith got to his office, the vanguard of the massive convoy of SAP trucks had already reached the border at Beitbridge.

The gloves were off. Vorster had withdrawn his policemen and then he told Smith that he would soon be attending a conference with the black nationalists to solve the Rhodesian problem.

Vorster and Kaunda had been working hard behind the scenes to lay the ground for a conference to settle the Rhodesian issue. In August 1975, Smith, Nkomo and Sithole were ordered to show up. In the hope of gaining wider support within Rhodesia, they also invited Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who had formed a new party in Rhodesia, the United African National Congress, to lead the delegation.

Mosi-oa-Tunya, or the ‘Smoke that Thunders’, is the traditional name of the world’s largest waterfall. This is where the mighty Zambezi River, dividing Rhodesia and Zambia, tumbles into a deep, time-eroded geological fault at a rate of more than a million litres per second. This was the conference venue.

A luxury South African Railways coach, parked on the middle of the Victoria Falls Bridge, which straddles the Zambezi Gorge and the two countries, formed what surely must have been the most spectacular conference setting ever. The massive plume of spray from the great waterfall provided relief against the flat landscape of bush and baobab. At either end of the conference coach was a buffet car.

Vorster, relishing what he thought would be his moment of African political glory, inspected the conference facility, and then walked across to Zambia for a meeting with President Kenneth Kaunda. Later the black delegates walked on foot to the coach from the Zambian side as the white Smith delegation approached from the Rhodesian side. After a brief opening ceremony, Vorster and Kaunda retired to another coach to await developments. The delegates were left to get on with negotiating a settlement.

In their naivety, the two leaders failed to take heed that most of the delegates were at the Victoria Falls conference simply because they had been ordered to attend. Muzorewa opened the contest by claiming one man, one vote was the central issue and then he went on to list a series of demands.

Smith was flabbergasted. He had been categorically assured by Vorster that Kaunda and Nyerere had agreed there would be no preconditions. He made it clear that the Rhodesians would not accept one man, one vote, and would fight an all-out war to prevent it.

The talks never got beyond the procedural stage. Smith called a recess; he told Vorster what had happened and left the way open to resume talks. Vorster’s massive public relations stunt had failed, and the dejected South African prime minister left Victoria Falls for Pretoria, while Kaunda felt humiliated by Vorster’s inability to get Smith to bend.

On the way to the airport to board Air Force One, a World War II–vintage Dakota, Smith stopped at the bridge to see if there was a chance of talking any further. He commented: ‘Apart from the train crew and the security personnel, the place was deserted. We were informed that within about an hour our “friends” had drained their saloon dry of its contents, and had weaved their way across the bridge to their cars on the north bank.’

Soon after the failed talks, the front-line presidents (Nyerere of Tanzania, Machel of Mozambique, Kaunda of Zambia and Masire of Botswana) met in the Mozambican coastal town of Quelimane to discuss the way forward. Kaunda, who feared a Marxist government in Rhodesia – hence his energetic efforts at détente – told the meeting that his patience with Smith was exhausted and he also believed that ‘majority rule must now be decided on the battlefield’.

Vorster’s détente exercise with Kaunda was not only futile, but also seriously damaging for the Rhodesians. The ceasefire had given ZANLA and ZIPRA precious time to regroup and the failed Victoria Falls conference inadvertently opened another door for Robert Mugabe to become ZANU’s party leader.

Mugabe was still confined in Quelimane when the front-line leaders met there, and he was allowed to hover in the background. This lifted his profile somewhat, although the presidents regarded Sithole as the ZANU leader.

After the leaders had departed, Mugabe leveraged the failed Victoria Falls conference to full effect. He spent hours on his typewriter in his room in Quelimane tapping out letters to the guerrilla leaders in the camps, sending them a simple, but effective, message denouncing Sithole, Muzorewa and Nkomo as ‘negotiators with the enemy’ and ‘sell-outs’. Mugabe’s prime target was Ndabaningi Sithole, the man stubbornly getting in his way to become the undisputed leader of ZANU.

Pasi naSithole
.
Pasi nevatengesi
(Down with Sithole, down with sell-outs) was Mugabe’s war cry.

Slowly, his message got through to some of the key ZANLA commanders in Mozambique and Tanzania.

Another big factor in Mugabe’s favour was that he was from neither the Karanga nor Manyika clans: he was a Zezuru, which allowed him to adopt a middleman position in the Karanga–Manyika power struggle. In October 1975, Mugabe’s first big break came. The officers of the largest ZANLA guerrilla camp, at Mgagao in Tanzania, issued a declaration that they sent to the OAU. The declaration supported the ‘struggle’, condemned the negotiators and declared that the officers believed Mugabe should lead the party, as he was ‘the only person who can act as a middleman’.

It would take Mugabe two more years and then a marathon meeting of the entire ZANU leadership at the ZANLA HQ at New Farm near Chimoio to realise his quest for power.

Despite his setback with Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda following the collapse of the Victoria Falls conference, the South African prime minister, John Vorster, was still firmly wedded to his strategy of facilitating the creation of friendly, non-communist, black governments in Rhodesia and Angola. Vorster still believed this would be a good political heat shield for South Africa.