STARTING this week, as we build up to our Independence anniversary celebrations due in the middle of next month, we shall be writing a series of stories in this column on various aspects of the Second Chimurenga.
These stories will be centred around ZANLA camps and battle sites.
Our young people, and Zimbabweans in general, must never to forget our glorious liberation war history.
The Government and people must visit the former freedom fighter camps, in and outside the country as well as some famous battle sites inside the country, as one way to grow our tourism product.
We must develop our eco-tourism to great heights.
It is embarrassing to note that people from England flock to visit Cecil John Rhodes’ gravesite while we are doing very little to expose the camps and battle sites where the freedom of this country was decided.
This week we are looking at the story of the ZANLA camp called Chifombo.
If you ask kids and adults alike which ZANLA Second Chimurenga camps they know, nine times out of 10, they would tell you about Chimoio.
If you ask them about Chifombo, they are more likely to shake their heads wondering whether you are talking about a former ZANLA commander or maybe a big gun in the same family as the bazooka.
Chifombo was not a bazooka, but a very important camp in the early days of the Second Chimurenga which was the real nerve centre of ZANLA operations in the field.
For many years now after Independence, this writer has been trying to find directions to the former ZANLA camp called Chifombo without success.
I knew that it was roughly somewhere on the Mozambique/Zambia border north of the Zambezi River, but I didn’t know the exact location. The break-through finally came when I bumped into a veteran ZANLA freedom fighter, one Nhapata, who coincidentally wanted to visit the old Chifombo Camp Site where he once stayed to revive his memories as he is writing memoirs based on his days as a ZANLA cadre.
Nhapata said although he doesn’t know the overland route from Harare to Chifombo, once we got to Kanyemba on the Zambia/Zimbabwe border, he would know the route to take to Chifombo.
And so, one morning in January, we left Harare for Kanyemba from where we were to look for the best route to the old ZANLA Camp called Chifombo.
When we got to Kanyemba we decided to stay for a day or two at the District Administrator’s fishing camp, right on the banks of the mighty Zambezi River, during which time we were going to ask people in the area to show us the way to Chifombo.
Then while we were at the DA’s camp, heavy rains fell.
It poured down in torrents resulting in floods and we could not proceed with our journey to Chifombo.
However, on the plus side, Nhapata, through his good narration, took me on a different journey to Chifombo as we sat on the banks of the mighty Zambezi River. Here is his story.
From a ZANLA point of view, especially in the early days of the Second Chimurenga, Chifombo was like the Cape of Good Hope was to early European explorers in their effort to get to India.
If a European sailor got to the Cape of Good Hope, the chances of getting to India were guaranteed.
On their way back, if again the explorers got to the Cape of Good Hope, their chances of getting back home were assured.
Chifombo was ZANLA’s Cape of Good Hope.
Anyone desirous of getting to the training camps in Tanzania using the overland route through the north east of Zimbabwe ended up at Chifombo.
It is at Chifombo that all recruits in the early days originating from the country ended up.
Those coming back from training first got to Chifombo before they got deployed to the battlefield.
And those injured on the battlefield ended up at Chifombo.
Yes, Chifombo was the nerve centre of all ZANLA’s operational activities as far as fighting the war in the early days was concerned.
The Rhodesians tried destroying Chifombo using their bombers.
Below we hear from one of their pilots who was sent to bomb Chifombo, but failed in his mission.
“I was operating deeper than before and close to the Zambia/Tete border averaging about 3 000 feet above ground. I had just started picking up the signs of considerable human activity when I was astounded to see hundreds of green and red tracer rounds flying upwards. I looked towards the sky again and they were as thick as before. Another crack sounded behind me by which time I was weaving left and right in a high-speed descent towards a huge terrorist base. There were hundreds of people firing small arms so close that I knew I was about to die.
“I had been looking for the big ZANLA base known as Chifombo but had not expected such a hot reception when I found it. It took a little while longer to pull myself together and register that the flight control instruments had all been rendered useless.”
The above bombing mission was one of many directed at Chifombo which came to naught.
Eventually when FRELIMO won its independence in 1975 and invited ZANLA to move over from Zambia to operate from Mozambique into Zimbabwe, Chifombo finally closed.
One can correctly say it was born again in Mozambique as Chimoio, which eventually became the new nerve centre of ZANLA’s operations.
Places like the Old Chifombo need to be visited by Zimbabweans, especially the youth.
Monuments need to be constructed at this former ZANLA camp to remember the great work that was carried out at such places.