RHODESIANS had planned to go one up over the Chimoio Massacre, but they did not have their way.

In a previous article in this paper, I wrote about the Pasichigare attack of July 16 1978. 

It took place exactly seven days after we had left Gondola. The main holocaust, however, took place the same morning at Gondola where the Rhodesians still believed the children who had survived the Chimoio attack were based. 

This clearly demonstrates how advanced ZANU intelligence was, for by moving the children from Gondola in the moment Rhodesians planned to attack the camp, the Party avoided a most horrific massacre.

The children would have been decimated; all would have been killed had they still been at Gondola when the Rhodesians came for them that ill-fated Sunday morning of July 16 1978. 

As I said in the previous article, the Rhodesians bombed Pasichigare Camp in a flurry, in about 10 minutes they had blasted the camp with massive bombs.

However, they did not stay or bring the ground force as they believed the camp to be the headquarters of ZANU Defence and Security and therefore too petrifying to countenance and that is how the children survived, although, sadly, we still lost 10 children.

The Rhodesians were totally disconcerted to see children running out of a camp they believed was purely a military base; ZANU was ahead.  

In the aftermath of the Pasichigare attack, the Smith regime retorted that it could not be accused of murdering innocents when in the midst of a campaign against military camps, children run out of the camps instead of the military. 

The truth, however, is that Smith’s conscience was not troubled about killing children because, concurrent with the Pasichigare attack, he bombed Gondola, viciously where he still believed the children to be encamped. 

He was just venting steam because ZANU had outwitted him. His intention in bombing Pasichigare was to distract the military from coming to the aid of the children he believed he was eliminating at Gondola but there was no-one at Gondola.

Because ZANU knew that an attack on the children was imminent, that Sunday morning of July 16 everybody had been sent deep into the forests for cover. 

Indeed the previous evening (July 15) I had taken an evening walk with two friends and we stopped by one of the guard posts to chat with the security comrades who had made a fire to ward off the July night chill and just then, a Rhodesian spotter plane had flown over the camp, passing directly over us. 

The security comrades, scanning the star-lit skies had commented:  “Tinoritamba bhora pano mangwana.” We all knew we could be attacked anytime but we did not realise how accurate the statement was.

The Party must have known that not only was an attack imminent, but also that July 16 was the holocaust day.

A senior commander later told me that Comrade Tongogara had been at Pasichigare on the eve of the attack.

That Sunday morning, at the 8am parade, I noticed that there were very few people and I asked where everybody was; I was told everyone had been sent for cover.

I commented, lightly: “Ndizvo tife tiri vashoma,” I did not know that in less than two hours I would have my baptism of fire, perhaps my spirit knew, intuition!

It was around 10am, Comrade Morris, the camp commissar and myself were under a tree just outside my posto. Comrade Morris was giving me a lesson as part of my orientation when the jets came. 

He did not finish the sentence: “Ours is not a war of attrition…” when the first bomb fell. It was targeted at the anti-aircraft position mounted on a hillock just behind us, a few metres from where we were.

The next few bombs hit the parade ground, ejecting gusts of dark grey clouds with so much pressure it threw us on the ground coughing and gasping for breath. 

They blasted other parts of the camp, killing 10 children before leaving.

Around 4pm, the Rhodesians came back to drop time bombs to entrap anyone who might come back to the camp, either to collect the dead or injured or to liberate some supplies.

I shall not go into more details of the attack or how I survived uninjured because I have already done so in the previous article I referred to above. 

The Party, however, did avert a massacre at Gondola. The Rhodesians had come to finish off the children. 

Their helicopters combed the grassy plain around the camp, cropping the grass to the ground so that no child could escape. The orange trees were also cropped and reduced to stumps. They bombed the pine trees, setting them on fire. They also bombarded the buildings, their bombs exploding into fragments as big as ploughshares; such fragments were meant to slice through the bodies of little children. 

The Rhodesians were in a rage. They could not believe the children were not there, they had to be somewhere. They could not let it be; they scoured the camp and the surrounding areas, but the children were not there. ZANU had spirited them away to safety seven  days before the murderers took off from their terrorist air bases.

This time, their diabolic mission was a total failure unlike at Chimoio where they had mercilessly butchered several hundred schoolchildren. 

There were less than 10 comrades who had been left at Gondola to guard some supplies which were still to be taken to Pasichigare. 

Miraculously, none of them were killed but one of the comrades sustained a massive burn to his neck from a napalm bomb.

After the Pasichigare attack, we encamped at New Stores Base, not too far from Pasichigare, also within the Chimoio area. 

At this new camp, I had my first experience with the bateleur eagle (chapungu), shiri yehondo. 

From our arrival at New Stores, the bird would fly over the camp beating its wings together, emitting its characteristic cry. Those who had been in the war longer said that it was an omen, foretelling an imminent attack. 

As this continued, the senior commanders knew that all was not well.

On the third day, indeed, Rhodesian spotter planes flew over the camp in broad daylight. 

It was unnerving that they were hard on our heels; in less than a week they had traced our retreat from Pasichigare to New Stores. From then on, the Rhodesians flew over the camp regularly.

Whenever this happened, we would take cover in the surrounding forest but we were in no doubt an attack was imminent. 

The Rhodesians were relentless; these children had to be eliminated.

The children and their commanders were not armed; their security depended on units deployed by ZANLA to protect them, so it was not an easy situation; thus taking cover was an important part of our defence and of course running was our most immediate recourse in case of an attack

While we were thus assembled in this uneasy situation one evening just before dark, I took a walk in the camp, and as I got to the periphery of the camp, I stumbled on a hair raising yet exhilarating sight. 

Many armed ZANLA were enmeshed in the foliage, barely visible, armed with submachine guns, heavy machine guns, belts of bullets slung across their chests, it was a formidable sight, the best assurance one needed in our situation. 

There was total silence, they said nothing, and I could not say anything though I was totally excited, I wanted to jump, sing; whenever I ensconced with ZANLA my world became one, totally peaceful, but in that moment I was dead quiet, I realised that something too serious was taking place. 

I continued with my slow paced walk and just as soon, ahead of me, I saw several seven-ton or is it nine-ton Lorries parked by the road out of the camp.

Yes, indeed ZANLA had come to take us away from Chimoio, from Rhodesia’s favourite killing zone to Tete Province.

In the dead of the night, we were on our way to Tete Province, to start another life with the children of ZANU.

While we had worried about the Rhodesian planes circling over us on a daily basis, our party leaders had not slept a wink. They were busy planning something to secure this most precious arm of the struggle, vana veChindunduma.

The party took our security very seriously, they gave it the highest priority.