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Just comrades-in-arms

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THERE was no routine, nothing for granted, in the liberation struggle.

You could wake up engaged in the ‘everyday business’ and then the next moment experience the totally unexpected.

In my case, the everyday business was schooling in Botswana and, the next unexpected experience was Cde Chademana coming from Mozambique with the horrid details of the Chimoio massacre, how Chindunduma was decimated and class after class of children were buried in bomb blast after blast.

That a foreign people should just leave their country from across the seas and claim yours as theirs, was unconscionable, something had to be done. 

The struggle was the only logical option.

As my decision crystalised in Botswana, thousands of kilometres away near Jichidza Mission in Zaka, Masvingo, something else was happening. 

It was dawn, a pungwe had just ended and the comrades had just dismissed the masses when they were attacked. Helicopters swooped on the mountain side but ZANLA fought valiantly. 

Unfortunately quite a number of combatants died in the battle. 

Two girls, siblings, who were in Form Two at Jichidza Mission, on learning of the battle and that some of their beloved comrades had died in the battle, made a decision: they would join the liberation struggle. 

They could only have been 14 or 15 years of age at most.

This was the way it was with us, with any Comrade. There was not much else to consider, the injustice was unacceptable, so, corrective decision was needed.

So it was, even with the very young. they could not countenance the oppression and exploitation of Rhodesia, so they left for the armed struggle, walking from Gokwe to Zambia as in the case of John Mbaira.

The decision to join the armed struggle was cast in stone, it came from the depths of the soul. Once that decision was made, nothing else mattered: the liberation of Zimbabwe became the whole meaning and purpose.

The decision to join the armed struggle was not made by a female or male, an adult or a child, it was made by souls that would not allow foreigners to own our land while we lived in bondage.

Thus, when we all got together in the struggle, it was a family of kindred spirits, with one purpose, one mission. 

In the struggle, we were the children of Murenga (still are), bound by our commitment to die for Zimbabwe.

Hence to us, the word ‘comrade’ meant ‘shamwari yeropa’, one to whom I am bonded by the irrevocable oath to die for Zimbabwe. 

This is what guided everything, this is what determined our code of conduct. 

We never said, ‘I am female’, ‘I am male’ or ‘I am a child so I cannot join the struggle’, but rather said, ‘I desire my country to be free so I lay down my life’. 

So, in the struggle we lived, cognisant of only one thing, only one identity, a comrade. 

In the struggle I was never identified as a female comrade, it grated on the soul just to say so: neither did I ever hear of male comrades, it equally grated on the soul just to say so.

So when a journalist accosts me, a war veteran, and asks: “How were you treated as a female in the struggle?” 

A terrible dissonance occurs. 

I cannot relate to that question.

The question of being ‘treated’ is mischievous. 

Treated by who? 

We were all comrades pursuing the same cause.

If the insinuation is by males, then it is out of context: there were no males there, we were just comrades.

It is important for those interested in the truth of Zimbabwe’s armed struggle to understand this underlying inalienable truth: we were all comrades in the struggle, nothing more, nothing less. 

We were not organised in separate groupings of male and female, in our detachments we were both male and female. We were fielded according to capacity not according to whether we were male or female.

We were given tasks each according to ability. 

Some went to the front while others worked as medics. Some specialised in security and still others were teachers. The Party decided who would contribute best in what capacity, not which female or which male. 

The young comrades were put in schools because, according to their ability, they could not yet be trained as fighters.

I, for example, was convinced I should join the military department but was told we told my Forte was in the Education Department as a researcher because of my educational background and training.

Each comrade’s needs were met according to the ability of the Party to do so, according to the available resources, not according to whether you were male or female.

Throughout my years in the struggle, I never, for a moment, thought of myself as a female, only as a comrade. My consciousness throughout was of a combatant bent on freeing Zimbabwe, never what everybody seems to be obsessed with in the capitalist citadels of the world.

It is most disturbing to be asked: “Were you abused during the struggle?” 

It is distressing because it is light miles away from what the struggle was about …heaven and hell are worlds apart.

The temptation is to retort: “Of course not!” 

But the correct thing is not to dignify such a preposterous supposition because it is out of context. 

We know where it comes from: the West cannot conceive and will not concede that something so special happened, a war pursued for such a lofty and noble cause.

In any family, there can be errant members or deviants. A recalcitrant fringe, but that’s all it is, just a fringe, can be found in any grouping: it is dealt with by the laws of the family, the group or the society as is amply demonstrated in what happened to one Take Time as documented in ZANLA Comes to Town, a documentary by Zimbabwe Heritage Trust (ZHT) and to one Chapungu Chehondo,also documented by ZHT.

The decision to die for the country was not a light one, it was a decision to end everything ever known or loved for the gravest cause. 

You did not take that decision lightly.

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