The SB selection of Nhari was no mistake. He happened to be a highly respected leader who treated his men well and protected them from the bully elements amongst ZANLA’s field commanders. Once convinced he should take action against his seniors in Lusaka, it took little time for him to gather together a suitable force for a task he liked to believe was entirely of his own making. The SB did not expect Nhari to succeed; in fact they hoped he would fail.
Nhari’s rebel force first secured ZANLA’s main base in Mozambique. This was at FRELIMO’s HQ base, Chifombo. Any resistance to his leadership was handled by burying his detractors alive. Nhari then set out for Lusaka to overpower the ZANU hierarchy and ZANLA’s ruling committee, the DARE. Fighting broke out in the streets of Kamwala in Lusaka as the Nhari rebel force tried to gain control. Tongogara’s wife and a number of ZANU and DARE officials were kidnapped. As had been hoped, Nhari botched the job and, together with many of his followers, died for his efforts; but not before bringing about serious repercussions within the high command and drawing down on ZANU the displeasure of the Lusaka Government.
The ‘Nhari Rebellion’, as it became known, caused serious disruption in ZANLA ranks and it took the remaining elements of the DARE some time to regain control and neutralise all of Nhari’s followers. The SB was well pleased with Nhari’s achievements and even misled Lusaka with trumped-up intelligence reports to capitalise on the rebellion and further undermine Zambian relationships with ZANU.
CTs prepare to resume war
THE PRESIDENTS OF THE FRONTLINE States had been misled by ZAPU and ZANU into believing there could be no accommodation with the Rhodesian Government, so they pressurised ZAPU and ZANU into establishing a unified political front. Presidents Kaunda and Nyerere also insisted that ZIPRA and ZANLA must go back to war as one unified force.
A few ZANLA commanders, and particularly Josiah Tongogara who was still in prison, saw the sense of unification. They had seen that, following Angola’s independence, the split interests of four guerrilla forces was already developing into a civil war that was certain to last for years; and they did not want to see this happen in ‘free Zimbabwe’. ZAPU and its military wing ZIPRA were still intact and enjoyed total support from the Zambian Government. For ZANU things were not so rosy, particularly with Tongogara and his DARE still ensconced in a Zambian prison. Sithole had been rejected as the political figurehead in favour of Mugabe, but for the time being Mugabe was out of reach.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe was fifty-one years of age when he and Edgar Tekere broke parole in March 1975. Then, acting on instructions from the ZANU Central Committee in Lusaka, Chief Tangwena smuggled them across the border into Mozambique. Mugabe was one of the few academics in ZANU and for some years had been recognised as a revolutionary activist whose thoughts and ideals were deeply rooted in Marxist teaching.
Mugabe’s task in Mozambique was to regroup ZANLA’s forces, receive large numbers of school children pouring into Mozambique for training and resume the war with all haste. Though he and Tekere commenced work immediately, they were limited by FRELIMO who, not realising these men were high-ranking officials acting under mandate from ZANU’s executive, took them away from the ZANLA camps and confined them to the coastal town of Quelimane. Whilst there, Mugabe was appointed President of ZANU by the DARE members still in prison in Zambia and this was confirmed by ZANU forces in Mgagao in Tanzania. But it was not until early 1976 that Mugabe’s appointment to the leadership of ZANU became known to FRELIMO, after which he was free to exercise his authority in Mozambique. By that time the war had already resumed under the leadership of Rex Nhongo.
Mugabe’s leadership of ZANU, and therefore of ZANLA, would not have occurred but for his release from detention to satisfy the Vorster-Kaunda détente initiatives. Even so, he might never have gained ascendancy had tribal rivalries and personal ambitions not plagued the nationalist cause with continuous unrest. In 1975, for instance, there existed a number of organisations. These were the ANC, ZAPU, ZANU and FROLIZI. The ANC was supposed to be the umbrella organisation under which the three independent opposition formations were expected to unify. But, as with any unification attempts in Africa, the ANC failed to overcome never-ending jostling for personal power.
ZAPU, for its part, attempted to capitalise on its politically stronger position to gain the upper hand by insisting that the unified force sought by the Frontline presidents must fall under ZAPU’s control. Mozambique’s Samora Machel saw through this and concluded that military leaders must control fighting men. He ruled in favour of ZANLA and, on 12 November 1975 in Maputo (previously Lourenço Marques), forced ZIPRA into signing an agreement for the formation of a new Zimbabwe Liberation Army (ZIPA) under overall control of ZANLA’s Rex Nhongo.
ZIPA was supposed to launch its offensive before Christmas Day 1975. Three sectors of Rhodesia’s long eastern border were to be penetrated simultaneously by ZIPA with the aim of spreading Rhodesian forces as thinly as possible. The northernmost push was to be through ZANLA’s Takawira sector towards the old battlegrounds of the Chaminuka and Nehanda sectors. The central push was to be along the mountainous border region centred on Umtali, and the third through the flat lands of Mozambique’s Gaza Province in the south.
ZAPU reneged on its agreement by sending only 100 men to the ZIPA force instead of the thousands promised. When eventually they entered into Rhodesia, the ZAPU elements promptly deserted their ‘ZANLA brothers’, dumped their weapons and uniforms, and made their way to Matabeleland and thence through to Botswana back to Zambia. So much for the unified force! ZIPA never got off the ground. The SAS had severely blunted ZIPRA’s plans but ZANLA was refreshed and, although its political organisation was in a shambles, many armed men were ready to move into the country.
At about this time I read an article in the American Time magazine reporting an incident in one of the American cities. This had absolutely nothing to do with Rhodesia but it struck me how much the reported incident illustrated the situation that was about to befall us.
The report told of a woman who was refuelling her own motorcar. Having placed the fuel nozzle into her vehicle’s filler neck, she set it to run and went to check the engine’s oil level. Whilst she was doing this, the nozzle dislodged from the filler neck and fell to the floor still spewing fuel. Somehow the fuel ignited, making it impossible to get to the nozzle or the pump-stand. The car caught alight and burning fuel poured into a shallow water drain along the main road. Many people, including the owner of the petrol station, panicked and rushed in with fire extinguishers from adjacent stores but theirs was a no-win situation. The fire continued to worsen until a sensible old man arrived on the scene. He immediately asked for directions to the station’s electrical control box. He went quietly to the box and switched off the electrical mains switch. This stopped the flow of fuel and the fire burned itself out quickly.
The analogy of this story with Rhodesia is that the continuously flowing fuel represented the terrorists. The panicking people fighting the burning fuel represented the Rhodesian Government and our security forces. The sensible old man represented senior military officers who sought to turn off the switch by striking every external structure involved in supporting the flow of trained CTs. But access to the switch was barred by South Africa.