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Authors’ attempt to belittle liberation struggle

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Women Of Resilience: The Voice of Women Ex-combatants (2000)
Published By Zimbabwe Women Writers
ISBN 0-7974-2002-09

WAR is ugly.
Wars seem to bring out the worst in people and one heinous crime that has been committed in every war is the crime of rape.
In 2013 the Obama administration after promising to release pictures of American soldiers raping female detainees and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan did not keep their word.
His reasons were, “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”
While there is so much noise about how women are raped in the DR Congo, there is very little said about the brutality of the white soldier in different wars.
The same accusations were heard again in Bosnia and Syria.
The Zimbabwean war was no different more so because it was a guerilla warfare.
In such a war, manpower is very important especially if the enemy has sophisticated weapons, numbers become the guerrilla’s weapon.
During the war, numbers were so important that the white government is said to have recalled retired soldiers and recruited teenagers.
In the black camps, the situation was no different.
They did not have the luxury of selecting combatants based on character; academics, revolutionaries and people running away from crimes they had committed found themselves in the same trenches.
Twenty years into independence and at the height of the Land Reform Programme in which the war veteran took centre stage, Chiedza Musengezi and Ireen McCartney nee Staunton bring together women writers and nine ex-combatants to tell the tale of the war through the female lens in the book Women of Resilience – The Voice of Women Ex-combatants.
In the revealing tell-all text, the female comrades in many instances throughout the book portray themselves as victims under the guidance of the interviewees.
Maureen Moyo a combatant interviewed by Ireen says, “Every girl was supposed to sleep with them, a comrade.
“Not in the sense of sex: they touch your breasts, and kiss you.
“You were supposed to just take anybody that came.”
Prudence Uriri says she was called by the big bosses, but managed to escape and there were no repercussions.
Ultimately, the book ceases to be about the colonial enemy, but a black on black case.
The women interviewed are bitter except a few.
But the dominating tone of the book is that the war was not worth participating in.
Many declare if called they would never go back to the war the coordinating authors write that the intention of the book is to, “remind us that war is never a glorious: and hope that war will never be an option in Zimbabwe”.
Again the reader should recall that in 2000 the war veterans began to talk about the Third Chimurenga and again there were fears especially in the white community that was outnumbered.
The book could have been a way for the new generation to dispel any thoughts of taking arms and fighting a cause that even some of the combatants felt was not worthy anymore.
Maureen further says, “There is more damage than good that came with that.
“The truth is never said.
“But here are lives like my own damaged lives that will never be repaired, because of the trauma.”
Twenty years after some like Prudence in the text now condemn the war saying it was not worth fighting.
Women of Resilience, becomes a book that focuses on the brutality of black on black and less about the common enemy.
Non-governmental organisations especially those sponsored under the land reform platform, in which the war veterans took centre stage, have probed in the war to try and dispel any revolutionary claims by the veterans.
It cannot be denied that in the camps there was violence on both males and females which every interviewee concurs.
Again it cannot be disputed that in such camps rape was bound to happen, but that should not be made to belittle the bigger and nobler objective of the war: Freedom for the oppressed African.
There has been the age old colonial myth that the black man is a notorious or serial rapist.
Unfortunately the book tends to hone this colonial myth to perfection.
No offence to the Coloured community, but not all were as a result of romance, but many were a result of rape yet there is an incredible silence about this historical aspect that produced a significant population.
Today there are many books written by Rhodesian soldiers of their conquests and many write tales of rescuing women from black soldiers but there is never mention of sexual violence of white on black.
There have been tales whispered of how even in prisons the black male was often the victim of sodomy from the white captors.
The full tale of the war cannot be surmised and told in one generation, but it is a story that continues to trickle in.
In conclusion I pose a challenge to the authors of the book to write about the brutality of the white soldiers on black women and males in the villages.

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