HomeOld_PostsChimoio attack and ZANLA’s revenge: Part Two

Chimoio attack and ZANLA’s revenge: Part Two

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By Chakamwe Chakamwe

ZANLA was not the kind of army which would spend days with its face buried in both hands crying and feeling sorry for itself because its main military headquarters at Chimoio had been destroyed by the racist Rhodesians.
Once the numerous freedom fighters who had died had been buried, the ZANLA High Command sat back, put everything into perspective and in the end decided to hit some Rhodesian targets inside the country to restore morale in the troops.
After looking at various targets, they finally settled on hitting airbases in Manicaland.
The racists’ destruction of Chimoio using their airforce had turned Rhodesian fighter aircraft enemy number one of ZANLA freedom fighters.
After Chimoio had been destroyed, a large number of trained freedom fighters went and established a new base camp to the west of the old Chimoio camp.
There was a hill to the west of the old camp where the new camp called ‘Ogaden Desert Camp’ because the founders thought it was like the Ogaden Desert of Somalia.
It was there that a company of freedom fighters who had come from training in Tanzania and two other companies were constituted to go and attack Rhodesian targets inside Zimbabwe to avenge the Chimoio attack.
The company that had come from Tanzania had specialised in artillery and were nicknamed ‘Fanya Haraka’ meaning the fast paced ones.
Before the two companies left for Zimbabwe, as expected they had to undergo retraining to create co-ordination and sharpness.
The retraining took place not at Ogaden Desert camp itself, but at another newly established base camp christened ‘Bhesi Remimengo’ – the ‘mango trees base camp’ because there were a lot of mango trees near that camp.
The two companies retraining commenced once the company from Tanzania had arrived at Bhesi Remimengo.
The course was to be carried out over two weeks and as it turned out it was more intense than the one the freedom fighters involved had experienced during their training.
Since the two companies’ main mission was to go and attack an airbase and hopefully destroy some aircraft they concentrated on artillery weapons.
The ZANLA freedom fighters at the retraining liked firing the three types of bazookas they were going to use, the M90, the RPG7 and the RPG2 and seeing them uprooting trees and bushes, throwing them into the air.
That really energised them.
However, the most popular weapon turned out to be the 82mm mortar whose explosions send tremors all round and clouds of dust into the air.
If they managed to get to an airbase and gave it the 82mm mortar treatment, there was no doubt the Rhodesian racists were going to get a taste of their medicine they thought.
The men also got retraining in attacking and retreating with the massive 75mm recoiless rifle, mortars, heavy machine guns, anti-aircraft guns and their bread butter weapons the AK47s and SKS rifles.
The training was thorough with rehearsals on advancing and attacking and once that was over, came the quick retreats.
Attention to details, focus and more focus.
Since they were going into Zimbabwe carrying a lot of heavy weapons and lots of shells and ammunition, at night the two companies embarked on terrible hikes deep into the Mozambican jungle carrying very heavy loads and covered long distances. Yes, it was as good as murder.
Then besides the punishing hikes the fighters were put through other difficult tests.
For example, they would be ordered to sleep one hour then they would be woken up to go on a forced march the next hour, after which they would be ordered to go back to sleep again for another hour then woken up again for another hour – one hour up the next hour down and so on until the next day.
With the commanders happy that the two companies were ready, it was now time for action.
And so one evening, the men climbed into ‘Scania’ lorries and left for the Zimbabwe / Mozambique boarder.
At about 9pm they were dropped about 10 kilometres from that border after which they assembled underneath a huge tree and the overall commander of the two companies who was a member of the ZANLA general staff, one Chitsato addressed them.
“Comrades, we are going to cross the border into Zimbabwe very soon and hike all night across the mountains into Manicaland.
“Our mission is to go and hit the Rhodesian airbase called Grand Reef near Odzi to the West of Umtali.
“We are also going to bomb the white surburb of Umtali called Morningside.
“This means once we are near the targets we shall split, with one company going to Grand Reef and the other to the city.
“In the end once our mission is over these two companies will completely spilt up into single sections which shall go their separate ways to join our fellow ZANLA freedom fighters who are already fighting the racist enemy in various parts of the country.
“This is all for now.
“More details will be given to you once we get near the targets.
“Any questions?
“None.
“Since there are no questions.
“Nhabo Magirinya!” (Let’s now go on the march comrades!)
Next week we look at the actual attack itself.
We are sorry it is not this week that we are looking at the attack itself as we promised last week.

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