“Seka urema wafa.” – Shona proverb

THERE was something funny about Cde Kufa, but then I am not a psychiatrist or psychologist so I cannot make an informed diagnosis of the real problem.
Worse still we are now several decades adrift of those tumultuous years of blood, pain, perpetual suffering when death stalked you every second of your living days. The only redeeming factor of those explosive days is the cause: these were the days of the struggle: the Second Chimurenga. Many of us have endless memories that simply refuse to go away, memories of triumphs, tragedy of lost comrades, days of hunger, sickness and pain.
These are experiences enough to fill a lifetime that are tightly compressed into five, six short years.
Some memories fade into the haze of time, collecting cobwebs in some dark forgotten corner of the mind.
Others especially any close brush with death remain bright, sharp, vivid, fresh as yesterday’s battle.
Such memories even carry the same smells of singed hair, burnt flesh, the sickly smell of napalm and cordite.
Images of bloated bodies clothed in that sickly green fly called the green bomber pop up in the mind like some obstinate little icon that refuses to be removed from a computer screen.
Psychologists have sometimes called such painful recollections ‘Post Traumatic Stress Disorder’ (PTSD).
Some of these medical explanations remain unclear.
Much research has been conducted on PTSD in other parts of the world, but we have not paid much attention to this condition.
The problem is not unique to veterans of Chimurenga, but for all wars.
Probably more important is that there are elements of indigenous knowledge and spirituality that we have been conveniently ignored.
Some of these problems are best explained by our Pasichigare and those of Nyikadzimu.
Combat can do funny things to the human mind.
Probably so much, because of the horror, that smell of death, the sickening smell of cordite and the brutal carnage.
It is traumatising to see a life extinguished like a candle and you count casualties and not deaths.
Every time you heard gunfire and the sickly chopper hugging to the tree tops like some green Gorgon from the throes of hell, you waited for the inevitable: the reports of casualties.
Each province, sector, detachment, has its sad string of narratives of how comrades went down fighting often overwhelmed by the numbers, technology and air power of the enemy.
In many cases you did not get the chance to give the last respects and conduct the rituals of a funeral because you were busy preparing for the next battle or you were on your way to rear bases for more arms and ammunition.
There was never time to go on leave, that was a luxury for the Rhodesians and the professionals.
For us, vana vevhu, it was action 24 hours round the clock kusvika nyika yasununguka.
There were the long gruelling hours of marching to the rear to collect war material and return laden with the heavy caixha, that notorious ammunition box that every comrade dreaded and detested.
But then that was the only way to bring to war material to the front: on your back. Every bullet was precious, every shell was not wasted, it was bravely borne on some comrades back, up steep slippery slopes and impassable rivers and many were drowned as they tried to cross.
In Dande and Gaza there were vast plains and dry lifeless valleys to be traversed without a single drop of water and no peasants to provide food.
Where wild animals would have been a threat they were companions who welcomed us.
They were an effective security bequeathed by the ancestors… the atheist and Western religion would say bequeathed by mother nature.
Most dreaded were the minefields of cordon sanitaire.
In some sectors of operation all the peasants had been herded into the notorious ‘keeps’ by vasinamabvi where they lived under subhuman conditions.
I recall this as I try to place myself in Cde Kufa’s mind.
Cde Kufa was quiet and soft spoken.
I do not claim that I understood him, but one could spend a day, a week with him. It required considerable depth of character to spend a long time with Cde Kufa. Given a choice, many people would not have managed it, but this was a struggle, this was Chimurenga, we had a common enemy to engage, every comrade was precious and had a role to play.
The redeeming factor was that each of these comrades had left behind the comfort and safety of home to liberate a nation.
Young people of his age fit and strong had flatly decided not to take up arms against varungu, but elected to wait for others to do the job.
They remained in the safety and comfort of school corridors and comfort of their homes while comrades like Kufa almost lost their minds as they took the war to a ruthless enemy who openly declared ‘not in a thousand years’.
Others joined the ranks in the bush, but after training feigned illness or deliberately injured themselves to avoid going to the battlefront.
This is what made Cde Kufa special.
He was in the thick of things, amidst the blazing guns.
But then one would wonder as what role could a person like Cde Kufa play given his state of mind?
I managed to live with him for some four months towards the end of the Second Chimurenga.
Four months in combat without a break is a very very long time because even one day is very long in a life and death situation that Chimurenga was.
I do not know when he came to the front.
Either in late 1976 or early 1977 because by the time I saw him briefly in August 1977, as a raw cadre coming into combat from the trenches of Takawira I at Chimoio, he was already a battle-hardened veteran.
I always associated him with Cdes Sauso and Nobody- these always made it clear that they were born and bred in places such as Mabvuku and Mufakose.
They often exuded this touch of urbanity which if not properly handled suggested an air of superiority.
There was something urbane about him, but I could not identify it, I could not pin it down.
Somehow in his quiet way you could tell he grew up in the streets of some ‘township’ in Harare.
Despite his quietness, at least his slang gave him away.
That he survived the endless air raids, ambushes and surprise attacks had nothing to do with any tactical brilliance … It was only that the Ancestors still wanted their son of the soil to keep on carrying the sacred task that he had been ordained to do: liberation of the people.
In those four months I lived with Cde Kufa, I learnt a few things, some of which I still hold dear.
In his quietness, in the wisdom of hindsight, I see so much knowledge and keen insight that impatience of youth and the lightning speed of events in combat can never appreciate.
I now see a calm mind that could remain unruffled even at the height of a summer storm with all its deafening peals of thunder and blinding flashes of lightning.

l To be continued