The story of Ernest Mabhoyi

IT was early 1973 when war broke out at a sparsely populated mountain in the Village of Maodzwa in Mashonaland Central.
The villagers, who lived peacefully carrying out their agricultural and domestic activities did not think that one day they would wake up to sounds of machine guns.
The man Ernest Mabhoyi, a tobacco farmer and a pig keeper who lived in Maponga Village some three kilometres south of Maodzwa Village had brought the war to the heart of Mashonaland Central.
As fellow villagers slept, Mabhoyi and partner, one Ginatsio from Mt Darwin, were busy planning how to bring freedom fighters from Mt Darwin to a base that had been set up in the nearby Gonhi Mountain.
To avoid suspicion from fellow villagers whom they feared would sell them out to Rhodesian authorities, Ginatsio who had relatives in the area would pretend that he was on a mission to negotiate a cattle sale deal with Mabhoyi.
Thus nearly every day he would leave for Mabhoyi’s homestead at night only to return at dawn.
However, their luck ran out after a nearby Forrester Estate Farm store was burnt down by armed guerillas.
Rumours of the presence of ‘terrorists’ quickly spread.
The Rhodesian authorities then deployed troops, black and white soldiers, to track down the armed guerillas and their collaborators.
Unfortunately, Mabhoyi was sold out.
On the day the Rhodesians invaded Mabhoyi’s home, he was supposed to spend the day with the village cattle in the bush (kujana).
And villagers on noticing that it was nearly 9am and the cattle were still locked in their pens, worried neighbours, one by one, decided to visit Mabhoyi’s homestead to investigate.
To their dismay, they found the place infested with heavily armed soldiers who immediately detained them at the homestead on suspicion that they were also war collaborators.
The soldiers who had surrounded Mabhoyi’s home threatening to burn down the whole village forced Mabhoyi to show them the ‘terrorists’ base.
Driven in a convoy of armoured trucks and Land Rovers, the closely guarded Mabhoyi decided not to go straight to the base, but led the soldiers through the nearby Forrester Estate some four kilometres west of his home.
Leaving some vehicles at the farm they trekked down the rugged terrain towards Gonhi Mountain range.
Some 100 metres away from the cave where armed guerrillas were staying Mabhoyi pointed to the place and tactically took cover and disappeared.
The Rhodesian defence forces fired the first shots with their G3 and FN riffles.
The freedom fighters retaliated with an explosive bazooka and an AK47 riffle that shook the nerves of villagers within a 10-kilometre radius.
Mabhoyi had led them to a spot that gave the guerrillas a vantage position.
In no time the sky was filled with Air Force war planes and helicopters.
Truckloads of ground force reinforcements came.
The war raged the whole day and most Rhodesian white and black soldiers lost their lives.
Local elderly villagers were rounded up and forced to carry corpses and help load into the helicopters.
Mabhoyi was eventually captured and sent to Hwahwa Prison only to return shortly after independence (1981).
Sadly he did not live long as he succumbed to a short illness and died.
Up to this day Mabhoyi remains one of the many unsung heroes and heroines who played a pivotal role in the liberation struggle.
Compiled by Kizimai Masango