For Mugabe, The Chimurenga Continues

Here in the UK, the apparent apathy over what is happenings in Zimbabwe today is only sadistically balanced with a total ignorance of what life was really like in Rhodesia, though often stained by the bush war raging around us.

I am obviously unable to speak of the bush war with any authority as I never participated in it, but the wounds of those many years ago are still apparent today. The injuries, whether mental or physical, still live with many of those that fought in the bush - from either side.

Watching the men heading out in police and army trucks gave us schoolkids an amazing feeling of pride, and then we would hear those terrible words on the radio announcing the deaths of our soldiers in the numerous battles in the African tundra. Men - black and white - being killed by those who insisted on calling themselves 'freedom fighters'...

freedom fighter MSeql 16744

Incredibly sad times as we heard sometimes the names of those who were senior to us at school be announced as amongst the dead.

It was a bloody and bitter war, laced with the sadness of the loss of many thousands of people, from both sides. But in an armed conflict, deaths are sure to result. Both sides believed in their goal and the conflict ensued.

Yet, with all the dead, armed or not, why were the vast majority of those killed during the bush war members of the Rhodesian citizenry? If ZANLA and ZIPRA were fighting the minority white governance of Ian Douglas Smith, then why was there a necessity to kill their own?

Why did his fighters target the soft underbelly of the black population in Rhodesia? Their argument was with the white government - why visit their anger on the indigenous population, the same people that they pretend to be defending and assisting today?

As you know, immediately after independence, I joined the ZRP and you are probably aware of the life I led with the Gukurahundi raged all around. Almost déjà vu for me.

Since when, in an ostensibly peaceful country, are policemen shot at, civilians killed - by the dozen, and the whole world sits on their hands and does nothing?

The Gukurahundi was a nasty time in Zimbabwe’s history, but Mugabe used it as a means to an end - and that end was to swallow ZAPU completely, which he finally achieved in 1987 with the signing of the Peace Accord. With Joshua Nkomo effectively sidelined, Mugabe could get on with the real business of self-enrichment and the bankrupting of Zimbabwe.

Since that time, has Zimbabwe flourished as Mugabe promised it would? No. It has metamorphosed into the dust bowl of Africa from the bread basket of the continent.

Mugabe hasn't changed his stance one bit since the chimurenga, or the Gukurahundi. He is still at war against the black population of the country. His is a stand for total and absolute power.

He may blame the Zimbabwean whites, was handed the country on a platter by the Thatcher Conservative government in 1979/80, but in his mind the war continues. The enemy remains the same - the goal remains the same. Victory - at any cost...

And right now that cost is being paid for in Zimbabwean blood.

Nothing that I have mentioned above is hidden fact - it was just plain and simple fact. Not hidden and a sad reflection on the country that once was...

Robb WJ Ellis

The Bearded Man