THIS week, all African patriots, especially Zimbabweans, remember the great African hero, Samora Machel, who was brutally murdered by the dark forces of racist imperialism on October 19 1986, when his plane was brought down in the middle of nowhere in South Africa.
It is the aim of this article to commemorate the late Machel’s passing on by looking back at the great support that the late great hero’s party and Government of FRELIMO gave to ZANLA during Zimbabwe’s liberation war.
Before Mozambique became independent, Machel’s FRELIMO was already helping ZANLA with their liberation war effort.
The racist Rhodesians themselves tell us the story:
“Two years before the Altena Farm attack was launched, things had begun to happen in Rhodesia’s (Zimbabwe) north-eastern border area as FRELIMO advanced south across the Zambezi River and the Mozambique war started to spill over into Rhodesia (Zimbabwe).
At that early stage there had been whispers of a possible tie-in between FRELIMO and ZANLA in Mozambique.
Rhodesian Special Branch knew that large numbers of ZANLA terrorists (freedom fighters) were being recruited and sent for training in Tanzania and the escalation had to be through Mozambique.
Information of a ZANLA presence in Mozambique continued to filter into Special Branch until in March 1972, detective section officer Peter Stanton heard from a source that there were ZANLA ‘comrades’ at a FRELIMO base known as Matimbe, close to Nura Store in the vicinity of Gungwa Mountain in Mozambique.
In October/November 1972, a large group of ZANLA terrorists (freedom fighters) entered Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) from Mozambique and walked upstream along the Nyamandombo River and established a substantial arms cache in a border-strewn Kopje in the Ngarwe Tribal Trust Land north-east of Mutoko.”
Not only were ZANLA fighters now in Mozambique.
Together with FRELIMO, they began planting landmines on roads from Zimbabwe into Mozambique, just in case the Rhodies ventured into Mozambique looking for them.
The freedom fighters were 100 percent spot on.
The Rhodies did cross the border into Mozambique looking for them and in the process detonated the landmines and got hurt.
They explain:
“A Rhodesian light Infantry support Cammando vehicle detonated a terrorist (freedom fighter) landmine inside Mozambique opposite Mukumbura.
The occupants were the first Rhodesian soldiers to be blown up by a landmine. Corporal Trevor Wentzell, Lance Corporal Len Moorcroft and Trooper Meyer died in the explosion while Sergeant Chris Gough, Trooper Charles Hallows and Trooper Mile Wigg survived, although they were all hospitalised with their injuries.”
When Cde Machel’s FRELIMO Party finally won their independence in 1975, they immediately invited ZANLA to set up their bases in their country to operate full time against the Rhodies from there.
This writer, who joined ZANLA in Mozambique sometime after 1975, brings to life the great support ZANLA got from the late Cde Machel’s Government in fighting Zimbabwe’s liberation war in his memoirs yet to be published on the Zimbabwe war titled, ‘The bite of the black mamba’.
“We arrived in Tanzania in 1976, from a University in Nigeria.
Our aim was to train as ZANLA freedom fighters in that country.
However, as soon as we had arrived, we were told that we were going to train as soldiers in Mozambique and not Tanzania.
And so within a week we left by road in two Mercedes Benz military trucks for Mozambique via Lusaka, Zambia.
From Lusaka, we took the Great East road which brought us to a town called Katete which is located at a place where Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia meet.
We spent the night in Katete town.
Early the next day, we crossed the border into Mozambique and immediately parked our trucks beneath the canopy of a big tree.
Our leader, one Cde Tinoda Hondo, who had been a wonderful fellow all the way from Tanzania, all of a sudden became a real beast as far as we were concerned.
He told us that from then on, although we were not yet trained soldiers we were, however, expected to behave like fully fledged fighters.
Therefore all silly talk, noise, laughter etc were banned.
We were only to do that which we had been authorised to do by Cde Tinoda Hondo, that’s all.
Yes, our civilian life was over.
Whoever was going to violate the military rules laid out by Tinoda Hondo was going into the soup.
Having been given the military orders by Cde Tinoda Hondo we were ordered back into our trucks to wait for new developments.
Thirty minutes later, two military trucks arrived on the scene, coming from the southern direction; FRELIMO fighters.
Those FRELIMO soldiers’ military vehicles came and parked near our two trucks.
The men in the military truck were all in camouflage and many of them carried assault rifles with banana-looking magazines.
Four or so of them carried what appeared to be rockets to me.
I later learnt those weapons were popularly called ‘bazookas’.
Tinoda Hondo and the FRELIMO soldiers had a short chat after which a few of the soldiers joined us in our two trucks while the rest of the men remained in their trucks.
Moments later we formed a column of four vehicles.
One of the FRELIMO trucks led the column.
Our two trucks occupied the middle of the column with the other FRELIMO vehicle bringing up the rear.
Seconds later we were on our way deep into Mozambique at a town called Tete to our south.
We spent the entire morning travelling from Katete to Tete with several stops on the way.
At 4pm we arrived at a FRELIMO military camp called Chingodzi which is at the edge of Tete town.
Here we were given a square meal – lots of fish called Bakayawa and rice. After our meal, we were driven to the town centre, which straddles the mighty Zambezi River which looked blue and majestic.
We crossed the Zambezi River by way of a long high colonial bridge and soon after, we turned right into a camp called ‘Battaliao’ which was right on the banks of the mighty river.
During colonial times, that camp once belonged to an elite unit of the Portuguese army.
When the Portuguese were defeated by FRELIMO and Mozambique became independent, the generous FRELIMO of Machel gave ZANLA that camp to use.
There was also another ZANLA camp in the Tete area which was much bigger than the Battaliao Camp where the training of ZANLA soldiers took place.
It was called Tembwe.
We spent the night at Battaliao Camp whose overall commander on the day of our arrival was Cde Fox Gava.
Early the next day we left Tete for Chimoio to the South where we arrived in the evening.
Chimoio town itself was not our final destination.
Our final destination was our own military camp also called Chimoio, which was 15-20 kilometres north-east of Chimoio town.
There we arrived after sunset.
Chimoio Camp was the main military headquarters of ZANLA in Mozambique and was popularly called ‘kuHQ’.
It was several camps in one – Percy Ntini, Chaminuka, Garage, Chindunduma, Osibisa, Mapinduzi etc.
ZANLA had been given a lot of land by FRELIMO to establish their Chimoio Camp for training, logistics, health etc.
The political headquarters of ZANLA was based in Maputo, the capital of Mozambique.
It was from the Chimoio ZANLA camp that ZANLA’s war against the Rhodies was planned and prosecuted.
There were still more ZANLA camps throughout Mozambique as well as forward bases which were used by ZANLA in fighting the Rhodies.
The logistical support that the FRELIMO Government gave to ZANLA is beyond measure.”