3. Severe Conflicts: Frustration-Deprivation
5.4. Constructed Nationalism: Producing a Normative Experience
189 being offered and given various government portfolios (President, Minister of Home Affairs, and Minister without Portfolio) over that time. Some analysts and indeed Nkomo himself argued that these portfolios were mostly in name only and had little to do with meaningful function. The position of President which was eventually filled by Canaan Banana was ceremonial in nature. And it was during Nkomo’s tenure as Minister of Home Affairs that the Fifth Brigade was trained and deployed in Matabeleland without his knowledge. This he considered a great affront and an undermining of his authority to oversee the internal security of the nation.
“Minister of the Patriotic Front and Minister without Portfolio, Mr. Joshua Nkomo complained over the weekend that he had not been consulted about the formation of the brigade. He charged that the unit would be used to impose a one- party State in Zimbabwe. But the Prime Minister reiterated that one-party state would only be introduced if the people wanted it.”517
ZANU-PF’s rituals of leader worship entrenched the political power of a few solitary leaders by widening the chasm between the broad-based citizenry and the unattainable positions of a small cadre of revolutionary leaders. Coupled with this, it also bred a spirit of fear in the peasant masses and spirit of arrogance in the leadership. In essence, this leader veneration left no space for substitutability of leadership which would explain the continual tension between the ZANU-PF and ZAPU and the well-harnessed drive of the ZANU-PF regime to monopolise the national political landscape as a one-party state.
190 However, if the national leadership has aligned itself to a particular preferred reality of its own devising (ideology), it can use its socio-political power coupled with the state
resources and instrumentalities at its disposal to produce a normative national experience, thereby imposing a ‘favourable’ constructed reality from which it can govern out of.
According to this study, it would seem clear that ZANU-PF was engaged in this strategy of ‘producing a normative national experience’ from the time of independence through to the 1980s, if not beyond.
This section will argue that there were three pivotal yet highly controversial events that gave the ZANU-PF the framework to hang its nationalist narrative upon: the violent clashes that erupted between ZANLA and ZIPRA forces in Entumbane
demobilisation camps, the ‘discovery’ of arms caches in a number of ZAPU-owned farms, and the supposed ‘dissident’ kidnapping and murder of a group of six white tourists. At the same time these particular events were also the nucleus from which counter-narratives were being incubated and eventually birthed. These multiple, oppositional narratives set in motion a disordering function imbibed with an intrinsic sense of resistance and propelled by a determination to hold up an alternative truth to the dominant narrative of Zimbabwean independence sweeping the country and the world at that time.
These three incidences served a number of critical purposes for ZANU-PF’s nationalist agenda. Firstly, these events provided the public with the necessary ‘evidence’
that ZANU-PF needed to motivate for the implementation of Operation Gukurahundi.
Three major streams of narrative discourse surfaced around Operation Gukurahundi with each one vying for the public’s attention: ZANU-PF maintained that the Gukurahundi exercise was a justified response to a state emergency, an issue of state security under threat. For oppositional formations and many members of civil society, it represented a means for wiping out the opposition (ZAPU’s) support base and enforcing a one-party state. Lastly, for the masses on the ground in Matabeleland it appeared to be a violent revenge of genocide proportions; retribution for historical ethnic grievances and
‘punishment’ for the Matabele majority who did not vote for ZANU-PF in the polls in 1980 or in 1985. Certain conspiracy theorists link the 1980s massacres in Matabeleland to the printed mention of ‘Gukurahundi’ found in ZANU political documents dated in 1979,
191 thereby claiming that this onslaught against the Ndebele people was motivated by and planned for even before the events of dissidence that conspired in the post-independence era518. Despite the official pronouncements of justification given by ZANU-PF, many questions remain as is clear from the below transcription:
“Maybe I’ll begin by saying what led to the Gukurahundi as narrated in the book [Breaking the Silence]’; the training of the Fifth Brigade by the Koreans, it wasn’t just by accident, it was done quietly. One would have queried if it was integration, the British were also the integrating force of the training. Why was Britain not in charge of this brigade, what was so special about it being trained by the
Korean[s]? Who was this enemy whom they are supposed to have fought [against]? Why then now when it is unleashed, it is unleashed to this people [Matabele]? Then, the issue of the weapons being discovered, arms caches being discovered on the farms. One would have said that was common knowledge because they were armies. They could still be hiding some of the things. I don’t know whether the independence of religion in the forces would actually leave them where they were, I don’t know. Or alternatively some of these arms caches could have been actually planted, I don’t know. But these are areas people could have actually dialogued. But the way it was handled was like it was... they [ZAPU/dissidents] were already enemies and they did not weigh it out. And it also talks about ... I mentioned the run-up to the Brigade coming to existence under cloudy reasons, and then when it actually came out, it was deployed in the rural areas where food distribution was stopped. Those who had been injured could not go to the hospitals…And there was a clampdown on news from that particular area, why was there such a clamp-down? I was also not allowed in so that I can make an independent report.”519
Secondly, these three events produced the shadow screen behind which to hide, or at least distract from the severe violence being meted out by the ZANU-PF-sponsored Fifth brigade. A cloud of mystery surrounds the origins of this special task brigade that was devised outside the parameters of the already established police and military strictures in place at that time, trained by North Koreans before the ‘dissident’ violence erupted in Matabeleland, and was mandated to account directly to the Prime Minister’s (Mugabe’s) office alone.
518 Ndebele, Z. 2007. Gukurahundi: A Moment of Madness, a DVD production. While the ZANU document in question has been established by date and is photographed in the DVD the context in which the phrase
‘Gukurahundi’, a Shona word which means ‘the early rain which washes (blows) away the chaff (dirt or trash) before the spring rains’ is used is not clear. From a reading of text it would seem to indicate that ZANU was using this same phrase as a code name for its general offensive against the white Rhodesian regime. There is no definite articulation linking this reference to the Ndebele people at that time (1979).
519 Interview: JN1, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – 29/03/07 – (Ndebele teacher and activist working for the Catholic Commission on Peace and Justice CCJP in the 1980s).
192
“[T]he events leading up to the establishment of the Fifth Brigade weren’t really uncovered fully until ironically the publication of the Zimbabwe Defence Force’s magazine in 1992, which recounted the history of the Fifth Brigade, and showed that Mugabe had gone to see Kim Il Sung as early as I think August 1980 and signed the agreement which led to the deployment of North Koreans here in about October 1980. Now, we didn’t know that until 1992. And we also didn’t know the details of the graduation, the training of the Fifth Brigade. And indeed we didn’t know what Mugabe had said at the pass-out parade in November 1982. So we have the benefit of that, that hindsight which mitigates, I suppose, to a certain extent the West’s failure to intervene.”520
“From hindsight it would seem to me that this was a well-planned activity that probably didn’t just happen by itself. Cause if I understand it correctly, the contract for the North Koreans to train this particular brigade was signed somewhere in the ‘80’s, I mean somewhere in 1980, thereabout or before …of course implemented a bit later than that. But it looks like the plans were already in place, you know. So for me it seems to be something that was well-
orchestrated…”521
“It [Fifth brigade] was in fact conceived before 1982, but as what? Which means there is missing information. The missing information in my view has to do with ZANU PF or with Robert Mugabe’s perspective of a post-Independent
Zimbabwe; a socialist one-party state, or in the mould of North Korea, really. So, you are seeing the beginnings of putting up that project in the form of the Fifth Brigade. But then matters overtake him in Matabeleland as the dissidents come in.
We also need to look at, in fact, who were the dissidents?”522
Robert Mugabe insisted that this special ‘crack’ force was solely for internal security measures initially defining its existence as protection from outside invasions of Zimbabwe’s borders: “The brigade it should be noted, is being trained and equipped purely for the purpose of defence and not for any external use”523. To extrapolate on this further ZANU-PF played on the people’s fear and paranoia of attacks from the
Mozambican ‘rebel’ movement RENAMO and incursions from the white South African Apartheid regime and their known destabilisation policies in the region.
520 Interview: DC1, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe - 13/09/07 (White Zimbabwean Human Rights Lawyer and politician).
521 Interview: DN3, Johannesburg, South Africa – 30/10/07 – (Ndebele NGO peace worker facilitating trauma healing and reconciliation among rural Matabeleland communities and survivors of Gukurahundi violence).
522 Interview: JM1, Johannesburg, South Africa – 26/02/08 – (Shona Professor of Political Science in Zimbabwe).
523 ‘Koreans here to train a brigade’, (1981) The Chronicle (Bulawayo) 14 August.
193
“The location of the training ground has given rise to speculation that the brigade will be involved in defending the area along the sensitive Mozambique
border…The Post quoted an unnamed source as saying local Africans told him that the Koreans claimed they were sent not to train the army but to ‘wipe out’ the Mozambican rebels.”524
“So you got this sense that there was a culture of terror. And if you dared oppose whoever was in charge, something really nasty could happen to you, and you could disappear…So all of those things happened, so you got a sense of real fear of a number of things; you feared upsetting the ruling party, you feared an invasion by the dissidents, and you feared racist South Africa, or as they called it the Pretoria regime.”525
Other sources would point to the resistance to the formation of the Fifth Brigade from within the ZANU-PF government ranks as evidence of the dubious motivations of this undertaking: “No, No. It was also part of the resistance of people like Solomon Mujuru.
Solomon Mujuru refused the Gukurahundi project, and he was the Commander of the Army. So the Fifth Brigade were not part of the Zimbabwean National Army. They were recruited specifically for that project.”526 Nkomo as an oppositional minister in the ZANU-PF protested the creation of the brigade on numerous occasions:
“The Minister without Portfolio, Mr. Joshua Nkomo, yesterday criticised the creation of a Fifth Brigade that will deal with internal troubles, saying Zimbabwe had adequate and efficient forces of law, including the civil police to handle any internal problems… ‘It cannot be for anything else [one-party state], because we have an established army with instructors accepted publicly by all our government organs. The so-called Fifth Brigade is obviously a separate army, since it has different instructors from those we all publicly know,’ he said.”527
Thirdly, these three events furnished the plot, stage, actors, props, audience and script necessary for ZANU-PF to manufacture a set of well-rehearsed performances that reinforced their grand drama of national dominance that they so desperately wanted to secure (see Diagram 1, page 54). In spite of the official discourse to the contrary, a host of counter-narratives are thriving today, infused with suspicions that ZANU-PF had its hands in, if not actually orchestrated each of these happenings to ensure the outcome they
524 ‘Korean troops set a riddle’ (1981) The Chronicle (Bulawayo) 18 August.
525 Interview: TM1, Johannesburg, South Africa – 01/11/07 – (Shona Businessman whose relative was a prominent leader in the ZANU-PF government).
526 Interview: JM1, Johannesburg, South Africa – 26/02/08 – (Shona Professor of Political Science at a prominent Zimbabwean university).
527 ‘Nkomo queries fifth brigade’ (1981) The Chronicle (Bulawayo) 25 August.
194 desired: “Yeah, I mean, it’s a clever way of eliminating your opposition… But we know for certain that the emotions of the people have always been raged by creating incidents by ZANU-PF. ZANU-PF has survived like that; it creates incidents… Purely from a community analysis point-of-view, yes, there’s quite a lot that is also stage-managed.”528
In his insightful work on the Sierra Leone civil war, Paul Richards describes violence as both a practice and a performance529. As practice, violence and counter- violence responses are not thought out or planned in advance, but instead are ‘discovered’
along the way as violence is acted out. In the words of Richards, “Practice theory takes the standpoint that knowledge…is a product of context and action as well as of cognition and training.”530 In other words, there is not a strategy, the violence learning evolves and morphs as it is practiced. As performance, violence is seen as a well-orchestrated event or a series of events aimed at simulating a specific experience that in turn produces a desired response from those involved and affected by the violence. Richards clearly states it:
“…performance theory tries to understand how people make power through violence and terror as expressive resources.”531 In the Matabeleland context, the three national events being studied in this section (Entumbane, arms caches, and the tourist killings) are conceived as possessing dramaturgical significance (theatrical acts) and displaying both the dimensions of violent practice and performance at play. The narratives swirling around these events indicate that both the ZANU-PF and the various forms of resistance evident in Matabeleland were reactive (a form of practice) to events as they unfolded in the wake of independence. However, it is also clear that ZANU-PF who had control of State resources harnessed these instrumentalities to invent scenarios of violence in order to substantiate their nationalist agenda for the future; represented by an undeterred claim and scramble to solidify life-long power.
5.4.1. Act I: Entumbane Clashes: ZAPU/ZIPRA as ‘Sore Losers’
The first of these incidences was the combat skirmishes that broke out between ex-ZANLA and ex-ZIPRA soldiers at the Entumbane Assembly Points in Bulawayo in
528 Interview: PK1, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – 30/03/07 – (A prominent member of Ndebele Royal Family).
529 Richards, P. 1996. Fighting for the Rain Forest: War, Youth & Resources in Sierra Leone. The International African Institute, Oxford: James Curry & Heinemann Publishers, xxi-xxii.
530 Ibid: xxi.
531 Richards, 1996: xxii.
195 November 1980 and again in February 1981.532 These outbursts of violence were
condemned by both the ZAPU and ZANU leadership and were understood as an unfortunate yet possibly ‘expected’ complication in the administration and
implementation of the demobilisation process. Being that this was the first hint of problems in the newly acquired independence of the nation, both ZAPU and ZANU leaders kept a public presence of cordial calm. However, the word on the ground was different. For ZANLA supporters this was seen as ZIPRA wanting to settle the score after losing the Elections. For ZIPRA supporters the counter-narratives questioned the
demobilisation process and birthed numerous conspiracy scripts of suspicion. A cloud of mystery shrouds this historical event compounded by the fact that the Dumbutshena Report, a government-instituted commission of inquiry mandated to investigate the Entumbane incidents has to date never been made public.533 The national and regional press explained Entumbane to the public as follows:
“The first shock to the nation came in November, when riots in Bulawayo turned into full-scale battle between ZIPRA and ZANLA guerrillas housed in the city’s Entumbane Township. For days, thousands of heavily armed men rocked the city with machine gun, mortar and rocket fire. About 60 people were killed, and more than 400 hundred wounded, before the National Army managed to regain control of the area. Most of the casualties were civilians. At three National Army bases – one in the Midlands and two in Bulawayo – former ZIPRA guerrillas turned on their ZANLA colleagues, and defied government orders to surrender. The fighting once again spread to Entumbane, and in what Mr. Mugabe claimed was ‘the sinister pattern’ of a master plan, armoured ZIPRA brigades converged on Bulawayo. The country seemed on the verge of civil war.”534
In the above media discourse, the blame for Entumbane is clearly laid at the feet of disgruntled ex-ZIPRA combatants. Already, early on in the news coverage, the reader will notice that Mugabe, speaking for the ZANU-PF, identifies what he terms a ‘sinister pattern of a master plan’. Contrary to most evidential research conducted since that time, this utterance by Mugabe appears to be the first of many aimed at shaping public opinion to serve the dominant ZANU-PF narrative which coloured the ZAPU-ZIPRA opposition
532 There were also incidences of violence that erupted at Assembly points in the Midlands area over this time. For purposes of this study, the Entumbane clashes will be the focus as they represent the most serious of these outbreaks in terms of casualties and duration of time.
533 Breaking the Silence, 1997: xv.
534 Motjuwadi, S. 1981. Zimbabwe’s First Traumatic War, in Couzens, T. (ed.) Zimbabwe – The Search for Common Ground, From the pages of Drum Magazine, Harare, Zimbabwe: NatPrint, 317-321.
196 as a dangerous enemy of the State bent on destroying the newly formed Zimbabwe. In contrast, Joshua Nkomo and a number of ex-combatant voices describe the same scenario from their perspectives, placing the fault squarely on the shoulders of ZANU-PF leaders such as Enos Nkala (a provocative, fiery Ndebele politician who was a staunch supporter and founding member of ZANU-PF) and the ex-ZANLA military contingents who were stationed in the demobilisation camps:
“The first fighting occurred in Bulawayo early in November 1980. Zanu organized a party rally at the White City stadium in the western suburbs of Bulawayo. The speakers, including several Zanu ministers, insulted Zapu, insulted me as its leader, and said that all minority parties should be
crushed…Immediately afterwards rifle shots were fired into the Zipra camp at Entumbane nearby. Zipra fired back into the neighbouring Zanla camp. The soldiers of both forces had been allowed by agreement to keep their personal weapons. But Zanla now brought out and used heavy weapons, mortars and rocket-launchers, which they were not entitled to possess. Civilian lives were lost and much damaged in the firing. Sixty people on all sides were killed.”535
“The fighting at Entumbane – well, the whole thing was provoked by politicians. I wouldn’t say it was provoked by the comrades themselves. Because I remember on the day when the first incident occurred, there was a rally which was organised by Enos Nkala at the White City Stadium, where he actually made some very bad remarks about Zapu and Zipra. And then, after that rally, some ex-Zanla
combatants came back to the camp. They visited a local beer hall at Entumbane where civilians were drinking. The started beating up the civilians. So these civilians ran away and came to our camp, that is the Zipra camp. And they said,
‘No, these people are at Entumbane, they are beating us.’ Some were bleeding. So when we went to the beer hall to actually check what was happening, that’s when the shooting started. People still had their weapons.”536
“Right, right, I‘ll tell you the story. My father’s house is in Jube, I was off. Then this man, Enos Nkala, made a rally. He only announced that ‘everyone who belongs to ZIPRA is going to be finished today. Anyone who follows under
Nkomo is going to be suffocated today. All small ethnic groups, I’m going to wipe them’. ZANU has got Youth, also ZIPRA, the Youth came direct to us. I was in the house, just a small boy. They said ‘ah, do you know what Nkala said today?’ I said ‘no’. ‘He is going to beat you today, go to the camp!’ I went to the camp.
Unfortunately these ZANLA boys started to fire guns. It was a terrible time. So many people disappeared. I almost lost my younger brother. I lost him. So the British [Rhodesian soldiers] did the same thing, I’m just worried about these people, Mr Man. They deployed their Army along this road to defend Mugabe and the city, they were waving heavy weapons to us, instead of defending us.
535 Nkomo, J. 1984. Nkomo – The Story of My Life. London: Methuen, 219.
536 Yap, K. 2001: 136.