The story of Charles Mukudu aka Cde Dust Fog Makuva

IT was all in our eyes.
The arrogance, the swagger and the ignorance.
It was August 1976.
Guerrilla operations were heating up after the 1975 Détente’ exercise that had almost brought the struggle to a standstill, as Smith had hoped, but the hopes were dashed.
Front-line leaders had met in Dar es Salaam in July 1975 where Samora Machel, of newly independent Mozambique and Julius Nyerere of Tanzania concluded that talks with Rhodesia were going nowhere.
With people like Nyerere expressing sentiments such as: “You people seem to think that power comes from the barrel of the mouth instead of the barrel of the gun,” the zeal to fight had increased.
And the Rhodesians like the proverbial ostrich had their head in the sand, they believed then, genuinely or wishfully, or for propaganda purposes to allay the fears of their citizens that there were only a few guerrillas in the country.
They were wrong.
At this stage the resolve to fight had intensified.
There were more of us infiltrating the country.
In 1976 Rhodesia’s eastern border had been divided into three operational war zones by the Rhodesians codenamed, from the north to south Hurricane, Thrasher and Repulse meant to cover guerrilla onslaught from Tete, Manica and Gaza provinces.
Thus in August, the month we celebrated ZANU Day, we found ourselves in Sector Two of the Gaza Province, in Chivi.
There were nine of us.
And our main objective in the area was to conscientise the masses.
We were at Mupagamuri Primary School, near Runde River where we ‘loosely’ interacted with the people.
We were in accord with the people of the area who were well versed with the history of the Pioneer Column.
The Column had passed through the area, crossing the shallow bed of the river on its way to raising its Union Jack in Chief Hwata’s area which they then called Salisbury.
As we carried out our duties Rhodesian soldiers were deployed in the area.
We tactfully retreated.
They began intimidating and harassing people.
It was all in our eyes.
Spotter planes hovered in the sky but they were not like the ominous vultures but desperate birds circling and circling but failing to spot prey.
All day we trailed them, the Rhodesian soldiers.
There were 12 of them.
At 4pm they made camp at Mupagamuri Primary School.
Rhodesian soldiers usually made camp at Government facilities that included dip tanks if they did not have a base or camp in an area.
We moved closer to the camp and took battle positions.
This was going to be a surprise attack.
The Rhodesians, as we prepared and checked our guns, were busy stirring their pans and pots preparing supper.
We determined it would be their last supper.
Some were playing music on small portable radios.
They would soon understand what war meant and that we meant business, at least their friends and relatives and importantly their racist government would, since these particular soldiers were not going to walk away.
Strategically they thought they were safe as they had walls of school buildings behind them providing them what they thought perfect cover
They were sitting ducks, perfectly lined up.
We calmly waited for darkness to envelope us.
We were not a bunch of trigger happy ‘terrorists’ but a well trained unit that wanted to effect maximum damage in a grand effort to totally cripple the enemy.
The only person who appeared to have his wits about him was the radio operator.
He remained at the fringe of the camp.
And we wanted to get him first.
The radio operator was the man who called for backup whenever a battle ensued.When we deemed that it was dark enough to make our positions ‘mysterious’ we opened fire.
Our positions were such that the enemy felt he was totally surrounded.
The enemy received a salvo of bullets from all angles.
And this was with deadly precision for more than an hour we had our guns trained on the Rhodies.
Prior to releasing the safety catches of our guns, each and every one of us had already decided on our targets.
We had had the time to do that.But we missed the radio operator.
He scurried for cover at the first sound of gunfire.
Desperately they lit floodlights to scare us.
We were not moved.
We knew exactly how many they were.
Though we could at that moment not really know whether we had hit the radio operator we were not worried.
Aeroplanes, the only form of support that could get to them much faster, would be useless in the dark. Thus we fired. This was not a hit-and-run. It was a demolition.
And we would only retreat when their guns were silent.
We were ferocious and eventually there was no more return of fire.
And we walked away.
None of us had been hit or injured by the enemy bullet. The battle lasted not more than 20 minutes.
Compiled by Evans Mushawevato