A VISIT to Zimbabwe will not be complete without a tour of the country’s iconic Eastern Border Highlands.
Below we chronicle a journey we made recently to the little settlements of Odzi, Old Mutare, Honde Valley and Nyanga.
The Odzi River originates from the summit of the Eastern Highlands around the Juliasdale area.
It first flows for a very short distance due west and then suddenly turns and flows due south.
On its southward journey it is crossed by Harare/Mutare highway at a point about 38 kilometres from the city of Mutare itself.
At this Odzi River/Harare highway junction is a little settlement called Odzi. Some people even call it “Riverside”, although the official name is Odzi.
While Odzi was just an ordinary township during the racist Rhodesian days – and it is still a township today- the Rhodesians, for some reason, used the sleepy place as one of their major bases to fight the Zimbabwe liberation war and the Mozambican government as we shall show.
It is the settlement of Odzi we visited first from Harare on our recent tour of the Eastern Highlands.
We were interested to see where the bandit organisation, RENAMO, was born and operated from.
When the Liberation war became very difficult for the Rhodesians to handle, they decided to blame someone else for their losses.
The Frelimo government of Mozambique, who supported ZANLA by giving them bases to operate from in Mozambique, was the easy scapegoat.
The Rhodesians decided to create a bandit organisation to destabilise Mozambique.
The bandit organisation got the name RENAMO and for some strange reason the Rhodies found a home for them at the little settlement of Odzi.
“The Rhodesians based their RENAMO operations out of an old abandoned tobacco farm. It consisted of the main house that was used as the headquarters, stores building and instructors’ housing while the old tobacco barns were used to house and feed the RENAMO soldiers. The camp was bordered by a 20 foot high earth embankment and security fencing. It was referred to by the locals as the “funny” farm. RENAMO were trained at the farm in physical fitness, marksmanship, guerrilla tactics and field craft, laying ambushes and sabotage operations. By September 1977, RENAMO was able to put 76 fighters in the field, rising to 288 at the beginning of the New Year and ultimately reaching 914 by the end of 1978. They found their main camp in the Gorongoza Mountain area inside Mozambique”.
The RENAMO bandits trained at Odzi, carried out sabotage activities in Mozambique, spied on ZANLA as well as attacked them.
Inside Mozambique the RENAMO bandits were given food by Rhodesians using Dakota planes which dropped the food from the sky.
The Dakota planes took off from Grand Reef Airbase near Odzi. And the Rhodesian soldiers who supervised RENAMO in the field in Mozambique took off by helicopter from Odzi as well.
We were taken on a conducted tour of the “funny” farm by a local who had full knowledge of that cradle of RENAMO.
The high wall and security fence are no more there.
It is interesting to note that besides Odzi being used as the home of RENAMO, that little place was also used as an important base whenever Rhodesians carried out huge operations against ZANLA in Mozambique.
For example, when the Rhodesians carried out the massive Chimoio attack, they used Grand Reef Airforce Base at Odzi as their recovery base.
Furthermore when the Rhodesians fought the biggest battle of the entire liberation war at Mavhonde , they used Grand Reef Airbase at Odzi as their main command post.
On a positive note it is also important to remember that ZANLA successfully attacked Grand Reef airbase as revenge for the attack on Chimoio by Rhodesians.
There is no question about it. Odzi is a very interesting place to visit from a Second Chimurenga point of view. Go out there and tour it!
From Odzi we visited “Old Mutare” where Africa University is today located. This is the place which the Rhodesians had chosen as the site for their City of Mutare.
Then Cecil John Rhodes began building his railway line from Beira. When the railway line got to where the present Mutare Central Business district is located, Rhodes’ engineers told him that it was not possible then to have the railway line climb the Christmas Pass mountain range to old Mutare.
Rhodes, with a wicked smile, declared there and then that if the railway line was not able to get to the town of old Mutare then the town was to come down to the railway.
This is why Mutare Central Business District (CBD) is where it is today.
We toured the Old Mutare area because of its historical importance.
The Rhodesians had first sited Mutare at Old Mutare for the simple reason that they wanted to eventually swallow and devour the old city of King Mutasa and the King himself.
The King’s city was based at the nearby Bingaguru Mountain. We toured the old city and climbed the mountain itself.
Once at the top you get fantastic vista far and wide. Here on that old city is where the English and the Portuguese declared war on each other over the prize of the whole of present Manicaland.
The war was eventually fought at a place called Machekeche inside Mozambique. The Rhodies won the war and so Manicaland became part of Zimbabwe.
We left Bingaguru for the Honde Valley.
This valley is mesmerising.
The Honde Valley escarpment has three brilliant falls that originate from it down into the valley.
The most spectacular is the Mutarazi falls which drops over 762 metres. We had the privilege of touring those falls and the whole Honde Valley and had a real good outing.
But don’t let the beauty of the Honde Valley fool you.
The valley was one place where lots of bitter battles were fought between the Rhodesians and ZANLA.
ZANLA was very successful here because of the favourable terrain so much so that in the end Rhodesians resorted to torture of villagers and the use of dirty methods of warfare such as poisoning and radio “bombs” to try and salvage something out of a hopeless situation.
Here, one of the Rhodies confesses to the torture they carried out on local villagers.
“During this time I witnessed other interrogating techniques. An Australian corporal in Sergeant Taylor’s stick was particularly fond of forcing suspects to lie naked on the ground.
He would then, with the aid of a fine sjambok, lash the soles of the victim’s feet for a prolonged period.
He would only move up to the genital area once he could no longer see what he was whipping through the bloody pulp”.
Out there in the Honde valley, the Rhodies, having failed to defeat ZANLA in battle, resorted also to using poison. And here they used their Special Branch to do the dirty work.
“Special Branch poisoned food, cigarettes and clothes in the rural stores (of Honde Valley) .
They also bugged radios with homing devices and planted them in vulnerable stores.
As a variation Special Branch also booby-trapped radios, packing them with explosives and connecting detonators to switches”.
Civilians and sometimes Freedom fighters were blasted to death by these.
But despite all these evil tricks the Rhodies lost the war in the Honde Valley.
Their base camp right at the border called Ruda was always hit hard by Freedom fighters. By the time the liberation war came to an end the Rhodies had left Honde Valley.