By Jeffrey Moyo

IT is deep in the villages of Mwenezi rural district, in Masvingo Province, far south of the oldest city in the country, yet the district to this day still testifies the liberation war ravages, with mangled pieces of a warplane still lying idle on the mountain called Madzidzi, close to my home. A helicopter was shot down by the guerrillas during the war against colonial rule and my father was there during the clashes that raged in Mwenezi. He said he was part of the guerrillas who shot down the Rhodesian army helicopter that flew over the villages in Mwenezi on one fateful morning in 1977. I recall my father telling me how the Rhodesian forces flew their monsters over the villages, sending villagers and guerrillas scampering for cover. He used to say those were days of real war and fighting. My father, Joram Moyo (now late), would never go for a day without reliving his memories of the armed struggle against colonial rule. One day he said the villagers were busy in the fields and a Rhodesian army helicopter appeared, flying low, soldiers pointing their guns downward, searching for the guerrillas. The whole drama happened as the guerrillas that included my father were gathered for a meeting at a hidden place close to Madzidzi Mountain. Describing the fateful incident, my father said he remembered the Rhodesian soldiers firing at random as they reached the vicinity of the guerrillas’ hideout. He said just close by, were some fields where ordinary villagers and civilians were tilling their land, preparing to plant crops. Father gave a heartrending description of how he witnessed some innocent civilians being shot down one after the other. I remember him telling us as a family, of course with my siblings, how they bolted out of their hideout, wielding their fully loaded AK-47 rifles, which they used to shoot at the Rhodesian army helicopter that hovered above them. He said the plane burst into flames in the sky after one of the guerrilla fighters operating a huge gun, which they called bazooka, opened fire and the powerful machine released a rocket that exploded the chopper into shreds of mangled pieces of aluminium sheets that landed at the foot of Madzidzi Mountain. To this day, the pieces of the plane still lie there, evidence enough that the colonial soldiers were trounced in an open war of gunfire with the guerrillas. My father said they were only 12 of them that day. Four guerrillas lost their lives in the clashes, which he said was sacrifice to the cause of the struggle. My father was one of the survivors, not because he was clever. He remembered the late comrades with their war names as Ropa Muhondo, Ushingi Chimurenga, Guramuvengi and Vurayayi Mubhunu, names that I still remember so sharply because my father would rarely go for a day without retelling that incident. He did not only tell us about how they fought against the Rhodesian forces, but also about how they used to be ill-treated during the time when they used to work for whites on their farms. My father decried the brutalities that prevailed on white farms, with white farmers using sjamboks to beat their black workers, sometimes kicking them with their heavy army boots, leaving blood oozing out of their mouths and some teeth clattering to the ground. He told of his own experience at a farm, a cattle ranch then owned by a white farmer called ‘Masiriri’, in Mwenezi, where he was employed as a herd-boy before he joined the guerrillas. My father said one day he did not bring back two calves that went missing far into the paddocks on the cattle farm. He regretted the day he had stepped on the ranch to work for the white farmer. He said his hands and feet were tied to a tree and he was flogged with so much brutality by the white farmer that he lost consciousness. He said when he regained consciousness, he was freed, but the farmer’s vicious dogs were set on him and almost mauled him to death before some angry farm workers caused a stir as they charged towards Masiriri, who — fearing an uprising at his premises —called his dogs to order. That was the last time my father worked for a white man until he died 13 years ago as a high school teacher.