DURING a trip to Bulawayo to cover the ZANU PF Annual National People’s Conference in December 2011, the late great Alexander Kanengoni told me of how his parents were harassed days after he left the country to join the liberation struggle.
“It was a nightmare for my parents but the determination to fight for the country was there in abundance for me,” said Cde Kanengoni with his typical permanent chuckle.
Every April, Cde Kanengoni would be full of stories of that period just before and after independence.
The affable gentle giant is no longer with us to tell the liberation story the way only he could.
He is no longer there to tell the story of the gory nature of the dreaded Rhodesian secret security service, the Special Branch.
As the battle to write something about this year’s independence anniversary confronted this reporter, the words of Cde Kanengoni had yet another dance in my heart and mind and the task became an easy one.
In a simple way, the veteran of the struggle explained the abuse of his parents by Rhodesians after he ventured forth to the unpredictable world of war.
But even as Cde Kanengoni tried to make light of his explanation of the torment his parents went through, I could tell there was anger in his heart.
There were the fears of the unexpected by parents whose children went to free the country.
There was always that fear that their children would not return from the bush.
But within that fear was hope, faint hope, given the killing spree the Rhodesians embarked on during that tumultous period of the struggle.
Indeed many parents suffered the indignation of being tortured and losing their children to the war.
The parents provided food for the comrades.
They provided cover.
They provided motivation.
While the Second Chimurenga has become an important aspect of the history of Zimbabwe in general and a reference point to the efforts of the liberation fighters, the story of the role played by peasants in this fight is yet to be fully told.
It is a miasma that has often been arrested by the euphoria that normally engulfs the nation each April 18 in Zimbabwe.
Then there is that other group of parents who lost their land, animals, dignity and homesteads.
Rhodesian Internal Affairs Minister, Jack Mussett in late 1974 described these actions by his kith and kin thus:
“By taking tribesmen to ‘protected villages’ we are saving their lives.
I dont think we can be expected to do more than help them to help themselves.”
The shuffling of these people was confinement not protection.
It was simple detention.
According to a 2012 paper by Mediel Hove titled War legacy: A reflection on the effects of the Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF) in South-Eastern Zimbabwe During Zimbabwe’s War of Liberation 1976 – 1980, the Rhodesians used this method of Protected Villages to seperate the peasants from freedom fighters.
“In addition, the establishment of protected villages (PVs), impoverished people of south-eastern Zimbabwe who lost a lot of wealth such as farming equipment (tractors, trailers, disc harrows, ox-drawn and tractor drawn ploughs, shovels, picks, mattocks and hoes), livestock (goats, cattle, donkeys, horses, pigs, sheep, ducks and chickens), cooking utensils, boreholes, homes, fence and orchards.
In 1976 when people were forced to relocate to the PVs, they were permitted only five bags of grain, clothes and no livestock or farm machinery was allowed into the PVs (Mapengo, 2002).
The farming equipment was lost and homes were set on fire.
The PVs are therefore a place where memories of violence, impoverishment, home destruction, separation of the ZANLA guerrillas and acts of cruelty occurred.
All the native purchase areas of the Gonakudzingwa area from farms number one to 29 were razed to the ground.
The people of Matibi II Reserve had their homes destroyed as everyone was compelled to join the PVs (ZANU PF Archives, Operational Department, Department of Defence, Southern Province, Gaza).
The PVs had poor sanitary facilities and other PVs had no sanitary services at all and the levels of morally decadent behaviours such as prostitution rose alarmingly,” (Mapengo, 2002).
Ian Smith later acknowledged that guerillas remained undetected for a long time.
As we celebrate independence, let us take time to remember vabereki who helped the country attain freedom.
Let those with ears listen.