“I still remember while it was early in the morning, we wake up and we wash our face, we go to school, while we are at school we are learning, we saw one aeroplane pass through and it indicates while it was in the middle of the camp, then others helicopters, mirage, and the camp was bombed, there were more, one of the class was bombed, all no-one was… they were all teen agers… we ran away I was with my friend who injured the hand blood and others dead my friends were dead, then we go at the front we saw paratroopers.” — (I can hear Zimbabwe Calling: 1980)

JUSTICE CHAUKE’s voice breaks as he narrates the Chimoio attack in which his friends perished right before his eyes.
This same child was at Nyadzonia.
He was only 11 at the time of the Chimoio attack.
Talk about human rights, crimes against humanity, Rhodesians are guilty all round.
The British, Europeans and Americans made it possible.
They sustained this utter criminality despite being the loudest pontificates of human rights and justice.
They perpetrated this and provided the Ian Smith regime with intelligence and war arsenal, directly and indirectly, through South Africa to ensure the regime had sufficient capacity for such a massive genocidal massacre in which thousands perished.
The Rhodesian contingent consisted of 98 Special Air Service (SAS) forces, 48 Rhodesia Light Infantry forces, 40 heliborne forces, 30 paratroopers, four medics and one doctor.
Their air force was a formidable arsenal, made up of four canberra B-2 bombers, eight Hawker-Hunter fighter jets, 12 Lynxes, 42 Alouette helicopters, six Dakotas for para-trooping and an SAAF Mirage 3 squadron.
General Peter Walls was the overall commander circling above the camp from a Dakota.
A civilian DC 8 was used as a decoy, it was painted in Red Cross design to completely deceive.
Contrary to what the Rhodesians, who claimed the Chimoio raid of November 23 codenamed ‘Operation Dingo’ was against a ZANLA guerilla stronghold, they, in fact, targeted children, women, the sick and the disabled (amputees).
This was their forte, attacking the defenceless.
Dr Felix Muchemwa notes that: “In the Chimoio raid of November 23 1977, the Rhodesian security forces had deliberately avoided hard guerilla targets such as the nearby Chimoio ZANLA operations base and instead concentrated on very soft targets consisting of heavy concentration of refugees patients women, children and the disabled.”
This base was an unassailable fortress with more than 2 000 guerillas.
According to Dr Muchemwa: “Among them commandos and artillery regiments equipped with anti-air, recoilless guns, and RPG-7s dug inside zig-zag trenches and bunkers, so they avoided it.”
Thus, it was a deliberate dastardly strategy to brutalise the defenceless in the hope that ZANLA would be so traumatised as to never rise from the ashes of such a hell.
It would still have been criminal enough for the Rhodesians to attack the military base, the ZANLA Chimoio operations base, because there is no law against fighting to repossess what the enemy robbed you of.
But what was the worst crime was for the Rhodesians to butcher the vulnerable, the most defenceless.
This week, we focus on the Rhodesian massacre of children on November 23 1977 and we will draw narratives from the book Schools in the Struggle.
At Chindunduma school:
“The first plane to be spotted was like Red Cross plane.
It hovered low and noisily over the camp displaying its big red cross over its body.
Most of the people came out in the open to watch it go.
It was around 7:30am in the morning.
The children who were late eaters were still at the ‘guzunya’ eating their porridge.
Most were seated under their specific tree which represented their specific classrooms.
Little did we know that, that Red Cross plane was leading many bomber aeroplanes flying in echelon.
Before we realised what was happening the whole school was exploding in bombs.
Bombs and bullets were being thrown indiscriminately on and on.
A whole class and its teacher would just perish in one bomb. Those who escaped this first bombardment started running in all directions out of the school camp.
Many also died as soon as they were out of the school camp because the aeroplanes had also deployed a ground force on all possible escape routes.
Thousands of innocent, young children died on November 23 1977.
Many teachers died with them.”
There was a deliberate ploy to mislead by painting their plane like a Red Cross plane.
To the Rhodesians, the end justified the means.
But killing children is sacrilege.
No one can stomach the suffering of a child, but the Rhodesians had no compunction.
Rhodesians were on the rampage and their victims were schoolchildren.
They bayoneted those who survived the bombing.
Some, they shoved head first into pots of boiling porridge. And what could be worse, the children who had survived the cluster bombs and napalm bombs on morning parade met the worst fate imaginable.
Dr Muchemwa says: “Around midday, the SAS quickly advanced towards the tented base and children who had survived the morning bombing had rushed crying for help, and almost every one of the children got a pistol bullet between the eyes.”
Confronted by such an arsenal and so many forces, the children had no chance.
In the aftermath of this most terrible massacre, the late Cde Edson Zvobgo said: “As these youngsters started running in all directions, they were bayoneted.
“I will never forget the sight of the little kids at the school where the bombs were dropped with their pencils and paper outside, their little bodies scattered everywhere, it was so Brutish it was incredible they killed the sick, dragging them from ambulances and beheading them.” (ZANLA Comes to Town: 2015)
And the late ZANLA Chief of Defence, General Josiah Magama Tongogara commented: “What some of us are fighting for is to see that this oppressive system is crushed.
“There was no other way about it.”
As we commemorate this 41st year of this sacrifice for our country by thousands of people, let us remember why they were so brutally murdered.
Children were killed so mercilessly because the British and their kith and kin, the Rhodesians, coveted our country’s untold riches — and for that, they would commit any crime.
Today, for this same covetousness, they will do the same.
Let us guard Zimbabwe with our everything for our future and to honour those who died and suffered so excruciatingly for us.
Aluta continua!