By Irvine K Sibhona aka Barbartone Muzwambira
Introduction
The formation and development of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZPRA) as a force cannot be narrated without the context of an element of sabotage by three elements. These elements were as follows.
Firstly, the Tanzanian government which had a bone of contention with ZAPU, in which, particularly the president of Tanzania, who wanted ZAPU crushed but could not do it directly as ZAPU was recognised by OAU.
Secondly, the Smith Regime which was obviously our enemy. Thirdly, ZAPU’s internal crisis from 1969 to 1971, which led to the party split as the deputy party leader, James Chikerema, openly declared he would sink the ship, after which he split the party on tribal lines.
ZPRA as a liberation force had started under the party’s control and by then it was still called a Special Affairs.
It remained under the party’s direct control until the internal crisis, which was mostly due to divisions caused by tribal politics. The leaders of Shona extract believed they were the majority, so they could not be controlled by the minority Ndebeles.
However, this short sightedness did not lead to anything productive other than reducing the party and the Special Affairs force to a bare minimum. In the end, poetic justice prevailed as the perpetrators of the divisions were the losers.
James Chikerema ended without anything politically. The whole force he departed with ended up splitting, with some also joining ZANU’s armed wing, ZANLA.
Those who remained under the loyal stewardship of Jaison Ziyaphapha Moyo and Alfred Nikita Mangena were left with the daunting task of having to rebuild the fighting force from scratch, a task they carried out admirably.
There was a time in 1971 when ZPRA had only nine operational soldiers in its ranks, and the whole force had only a few trained soldiers, as the result of Chikerema’s destructive shenanigans became clear.
Rebuilding ZPRA as a new entity after the Chikerema tsunami was a tremendous task carried out by a few. After the crisis, some cadres had to be smuggled from Tanzania for deployment into the front. Their missions were to be the first efforts to register the presence of ZPRA after the Hwange Battles of 1967-1968 since Nyerere’s Tanzania had kept a stranglehold on ZAPU.
The creation of ZPRA and its first operations in 1972 were in equal measure a strategy that had something to do with recognition by the OAU after ZANLA’s North Eastern incurssions of 1972 in Concession and Mount Darwin.
The background to this was that the feared Rhodesian Police Anti-Terrorism Unit (PATU) had been deployed in Mount Darwin to deal with ZANLA menes. Furthermore, to compound matters, the South African Army had been deployed along the Zambezi Valley since 1967, where it operated almost freely.
Against this background, after the reconstitution in the aftermath of the crisis, ZPRA had to prove that they were truly fighting the Rhodesian government, which was important in order for the OAU to take note of their participation in the war in particular and the struggle for independence in a broad sense.
This recognition was important to ZAPU and ZPRA for a few critical reasons. It would result, among other things, in the OAU providing ZPRA with much needed material support through the liberation Committee, through which arms from solidarity were channelled to liberation armies.
Secondly, that recognition created opportunities for other forms of support, the most critical of which was states in Africa and beyond granting ZPRA places to train cadres in their territories. For instance, that recognition made it possible for states like Libya, Algeria, Angola, Cuba and others to offer training facilities for both military and civilian training programmes. On the civilian side, ZAPU was keen on training the highest possible number of its recruits in areas such as customs and police duties, in preparation for running the state after independence.
Establishing a Regular Force
ZPRA, like other liberation armies, had been established as a guerilla movement mainly for tactical and strategic purposes. However, as ZAPU began to plan for independence, and as the force became bigger with more and more recruits joining, it became imperative to think about a regular force. This force would make it easier to manage the troops that were swelling the ranks. It would take the armed struggle further, but would also prepare for when independence was won. Alfred Nikita Mangena, the Commander of ZPRA, therefore embarked on the necessary plans, focusing on what the modus operandi would be.
Furthermore, during this period, it had been decided that big weapons needed to be introduced, if ZPRA were to make the necessary damage against the enemy.
But the big weapons on their own meant nothing without the trained soldiers. In 1977, training of commanders and company commanders in big conventional weapons commenced.
Specialist arms training was conducted in the Soviet Union and other friendly countries like Angola, with Cuban and Russian instructors.
The training of these forces was now specifically concentrating on the regular force and their involvement in the next phase of the war.
The Zambian government generously offered some of their training facilities and also oversaw the commissioning of officers. Some of the officers who were produced by the programme later served with the Zimbabwe National Army(ZNA) for a long time.
Unfortunately, during this period ZPRA lost some of the leading forebearers of the struggle, who had been instrumental in building the armed wing to be the formidable force that it had become.
In January 1977, a dark cloud engulfed not only the ZPRA forces but also ZAPU and the entire liberation movement when one of the most iconic leaders of the revolution, Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, popularly known as JZ died. JZ’s death was even more painful as he was assassinated through a parcel bomb, in front of comrades such as Dumiso Dabengwa . In February of the same year, ZPRA’s Chief of operations, John Dube also died during a visit to Nigeria.
ZPRA Regular Army deployment
The setbacks caused by the untimely deaths of perhaps the JZ and JD notwithstanding, the deployment of the ZPRA regular army started in earnest in early 1978, under the guidance of Commander Alfred Nikita Mangena. This was shortly before the devastating Rhodesian bombardment of FC Ccamp near Lusaka Zambia and Mkushi Girls Camp in Zambia.
ZPRA had proved that it was undeterred by the deaths of the two leaders. Instead, it had been emboldened. As the Commander and chief organiser of the armed wing, Mangena was the mainstay of not just the whole ZPRA operation, but also oversaw the transformation into the regular army.
In June 1978, ZPRA suffered another devastating blow when Alfred Mangena’s vehicle was blown up by a landmine, which killed him instantly. His loss was immense, and probably irreplaceable. His death, therefore completely torpedoed most of his plans and plunged the ZAPU and the liberation movement into shock.
A meticulous strategist, Mangena’s carefully laid plans were meant to culminate into a short sharp war in which the element of surprise was going to be employed to overwhelm the enemy. In the next issue, we will explore how those plans proceeded after the demise of the master strategist.
