By Dr Tony Monda

TWO of the most atrocious military attacks on indigenous Zimbabweans by the Rhodesian forces occurred at Nyadzonia and Chimoio in Mozambique.
On August 9 1976, a Rhodesian attack on Nyadzonia Camp resulted in the death and injury of over 1 000 people; many of them innocent civilians.
On November 23 1977, the Rhodesian armed forces attacked Chimoio.
During the three days that followed over
3 000 people were killed.
These included hospital patients, schoolchildren and pre-school children, young and old women.
Their bodies were thrown into mass graves.
Thirty-seven years later, in August 2014 an art exhibition opened in commemoration of a similar massacre which was uncovered in a mineshaft at Chibondo in Mount Darwin, stands as a surreal facsimile of the carnage of war.
The gruesome story is told of tormented cries emanating from deep within a mineshaft.
The few people that heard the cries were the relatives of the victims that had been tortured and then dumped.
The villagers nearby became restless and the elders and spirit mediums were summoned, investigations were called for, and ‘Monkey’ William mineshaft was identified as the centre of the callous massacre of indigenous population – demeaned even in death.
At Chibondo, formerly Monkey William Farm – a maize and tobacco croft, eerie shafts tunnel deep into the earth.
From the bowels of this disused mine, the remains of over 750 innocent civilians which included combatants, women and children were exhumed and recovered together with personal items.
Gnarled skulls, hairless and decimated stare at the viewer from photographs on the walls as a horrific reminder of the war.
Some of the skeletons belong to children as young as 12 years old.
Other items such as Rhodesian currency, pay slips, identity documents, newspaper articles and Envoy cigarettes were recovered from pockets of many the victims.
Included in this disordered farrago were personal love mementos such as rings and handkerchiefs embroidered with vows of love which were a common feature in the 1970s.
These items facilitated the estimation of a time frame of the killings and were used to build a chronology of the events.
At the mine, exhumations of 849 bodies were undertaken in 2011, by a civic society pressure group called the Fallen Heroes Trust of Zimbabwe (FHTZ).
The mangled corpses found at Chibondo exemplify the impunity with which the white Rhodesian government attempted to suppress the struggle for our liberation.
The mine was strategically positioned at the heart of a ‘European designated’ farm area, roughly 180 kilometres from Harare, in the Mount Darwin area of Zimbabwe.
Mount Darwin sits at an altitude of 965m above sea-level in the Mashonaland West-Central Province.
It is said to be one of the first places in pre-colonial Zimbabwe to be visited by Christian missionaries.
In 1560 a Jesuit priest Father Da Silvieria was travelling into the country (Zimbabwe) from Mozambique to visit the Emperor Munhumutapa with the intention to spread his Euro-centred Christianity.
Erroneously named Mount Darwin by the hunter and colonial mercenary Frederick Courtney Selous (1851-1917), after the renowned biologist Charles Darwin; the area was later to become a Rhodesian farming stronghold, strategically lying between Kandeya and Mukumbura communal lands in the north and east respectively-growing vast supplies of burley tobacco and maize.
The British-born hunter-mercenary Frederick Courtney Selous served as a ‘sniffer dog’ guide to the notorious Pioneer Column in 1896, and served in both the 1893 Raid of Matabeleland and in the First Chimurenga of 1896-1897, as a major adversary to the African uprising.
It is absurd and illogical that today we still have schools, streets, towns and places named after this war-mongering hoodlum, who was later killed in action in 1917, in Tanzania.
His name also became the inspirational moniker for the notorious Selous Scouts.
Formed in November 1973, in the face of the escalating war for independence; this notorious posse of ‘scouts’ were initially a band of roughly 120 in number recruited mostly from army trackers; ultimately, reaching over 1 500 in strength.
The Selous Scouts were a barbaric force of unfettered mercenaries, and part of a larger Rhodesian psychological warfare system; some of its members posed as liberation fighters to penetrate the indigenous civilian population in order to discredit the freedom fighters.
Their mandate included curfew orders, torture, surprise pre-dawn attacks, cross-border raids, indiscriminate bombings, killing, maiming and poisoning water bodies, fruits, crops and innocent civilians and perpetrating a biological warfare that affected more than 10 000 people with Anthrax and Cholera.
With the coming to power of the Rhodesian Front Government in 1964, the policies and staffing of the Rhodesian Broadcasting Corporation (RBC – now ZBC), were controlled by the government’s Department of Information and subsequently radio and television media were used substantially as instruments of propaganda for the Rhodesian regime.
This enabled information authorities of the regime to apportion the blame of their offensive brutality, via official media communiqués, on the liberation war fighters.
Remains of the exhumed bodies and the associated incriminating evidence unearthed from Chibondo’s mineshaft, approximately 90 metres deep, together with scientific analysis undertaken and collaborative oral evidence confirmed the genocidal nature of the Chibondo massacres.
A fair percentage of the remains exposed evidence of hospitalisation before death.
This was borne out by a number of bandages, some of which were thickly stained by ointment; drip tubes and containers as well as syringes and medication containers were also present as evidence.
Unfortunately for the aggressors, over the years the mixture of acid and the water assisted in the preservation of the victims’ bodies and other evidence.
Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD. in Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA (Doctorate in Business Administration) and Post-Colonial Heritage Studies. He is a writer, musician, art critic, practising artist and Corporate Image Consultant. He is also a specialist Art Consultant, Post-Colonial Scholar, Zimbabwean Socio-Economic analyst and researcher.
E-mail: tonym.MONDA@gmail.com