3. Severe Conflicts: Frustration-Deprivation
4.2. Ethnicity: pre-Colonial Era – Narratives of ‘Victor and Vanquished’
4.4.2. Narratives of Internalisation: The Enemy from Within
While the organizational scaffolding of the Zimbabwean Liberation Struggle was founded on a platform of unified ethnic representation, after the split of ZANU from ZAPU in 1963 a ‘natural’ ethnic rift began to occur. Most researchers speak of this as an unintentional consequence that unfolded as each of the two main liberation structures began to recruit and operate almost exclusively within the geographical locations of their own ethnic boundaries.
“…which leaves ZAPU now even more predominantly Ndebele than it happened in 1963; the few Shona that are there you see them moving out. This is not to say all the Shona moved out, no, but I think it’s a process of ‘Ndebele-isation’ of ZAPU. And so even when you have this Patriotic Front, its two parties, but what are they in essence? One is representing Shona side of things, the other one Ndebele. And even the infiltration itself. You’ll see ZAPU infiltrating largely from the North, from the West, and South-West, but ZANU perhaps enjoying a
371 Interview: SD1, Johannesburg, South Africa - 18/08/2006 – (Shona Human Rights Lawyer).
372 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. 2008: 43. See also, Sithole, M. 1995. “Ethnicity and Democratization in Zimbabwe: From Confrontation to Accommodation” in Glickman, H. (ed.) Ethnic Conflict and Democratization in Africa, Atlanta: The African Studies Association, and Sithole, M. 1999. Zimbabwe:
Struggles within the Struggle - Second Edition. Harare: Rujeko Publishers.
138 bigger border. I know some people now don’t even realise that ZAPU was there in Chimoio, all that area.”373
However, other views are much less forgiving on this ‘organic’ ethnic parting of ways and instead paint this split as a decided acting out of historic ethnic factionalism:
“So, the issue of the fact that the Ndebeles conquered the Shonas when they arrived…it was something brought on by the Shona intellectuals in the 60s.
Because now it was okay, ZAPU has been formed, and they had recruited, it was both Shonas and Ndebeles who said, ‘okay, we need to fight the settlers.
And…some among them said ‘no, are we going back to the 1800s now, being led by the same Ndebeles?, I mean come on. Let’s form our own party’. So they did split and form there own party.”374
Differing ideological and training allegiances (ZAPU/ZIPRA trained by the Russians and ZANU/ZANLA by the Chinese), with conflicting modes of operation in combat (ZIPRA emphasized conventional warfare and ZANLA guerrilla tactics) and opposing styles of relating to the rural peasant support base all fed the appetite of the ever-widening gap between the modes of operation of ZAPU and ZANU:
“…but for me, I hate ZANLA forces…even if I was very young. And even the whole village they used to kill. They used to burn the homestead, you know, they will burn the whole homestead. ‘So you people, you are supporting ZIPRA forces?’ They will burn, they will kill people. Even Ndebele-speaker being killed by someone who is a Shona. The wall of my property being burnt by a Shona.
Sometimes they used to kill even the cattle, you know, these cows, they shoot. So you’ll come to the extent of thinking that ‘why does these ZIPRA forces not doing the same thing?’, ‘why is it this people that speak this other language, doing this to us?’ So to me that hatred…I think the ZANLA forces started by harassing, forcing people to speak their language, torturing people, forcing people to cook for them, beating old-aged people. So I think from there…I think I grew up with that.”375
“But the military which came from Mozambique and Zambia, we could tell that these people are not united, the ZIPRA and ZANLA. ZANLA forces will ask for food, especially meat, they wanted special food. But the ZIPRA forces will at anything that you have…if they found you had cooked something, they will eat with you there. And the ZANLA, they will have bases in the bush, in the mountains, then there children…young girls were raped. Because in the bush
373 Interview: PN1, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe – 30/03/07- (Ndebele historian, author, researcher and archivist).
374 Interview: DL1, Johannesburg, South Africa – 11/08/06 – (Ndebele Journalist employed as a business editor for a prominent newspaper).
375 Interview: RM1, Johannesburg, South Africa – 14/09/06 – (Ndebele former security officer for opposition party and survivor of severe torture as a political prisoner under the ZANU-PF government).
139 there; they will have sitting rooms, bedrooms, kitchens. So in the bedrooms, only young girls will go to the bedrooms. Only girls, just imagine…young girls were raped. And with ZIPRA forces, they were not for bases, to take people
from…eating with the girls, no. So we realized that this training is different; the ones coming from Mozambique…they used to torture people…destroying schools…ZIPRA was not destroying anything. And ZIPRA, they had discipline, they would ‘propose’ a girl, rather than ZANLA forcing.”376
Within the above narrative paragraphs above, the reader uncovers traces of political ideologies that endorse fear and terror (force) as means of modifying the collective behaviour, the resultant production of ‘enemy’ mind-sets and a display of the gripping, emotive power of traumatic memory (including gender violence). This raw discourse begs the question, how can two closely aligned groups who supposedly share a common cause fall from the heights of unity (if ever attained) into the abyss of factional hatred and hostility? Ngwabi Bhebe captures a glimpse of the longer view in regard to the disordering effects of historical rivalry between the armed wings of both political
movements even during the time of exile.
“The reader saw how ZAPU and ZANU followers started killing each other when they were dumped together at Mboroma by the Zambian authorities. The ZIPA [Zimbabwean People’s Army] experiment in Mozambique collapsed for just that same reason. In Libya, ZAPU and ZANU were put in the same training camps and they killed each other. The reason was very simple. These young men and women were trained to hate each other by their leaders, who wanted to justify the separate existence of their parties. Each party had its own Commissariat
Department, whose task was to teach recruits the history of the party, how the party was different from each other, who the leaders were and how they were different from the less revolutionary or sell-out leaders of the rival party. Thus, the cadres were brought up to hate.”377
The open hostility between ZIPRA and ZANLA did not remain confined to the
battlegrounds of exile. It resurfaced with a vengeance after the 1980 Independence in the military demobilisation camps.
“The first crisis that hit the post-colonial nation-building project had to do with ethnicity and integration of military forces. A crisis which began in the ranks of
376 Interview: JD1, Johannesburg, South Africa – 15/09/06 – (Female Ndebele NGO activist advocating or women and refugees rights).
377 Bhebe, N. 2004. Simon Vengayi Muzenda and the Struggle for and Liberation of Zimbabwe. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo Press, 256. Note: For some scholars this explanation may be too simplistic. They would argue that the collapse of ZIPA was exceptionally more complicated than simply the result of historical rivalry.
140 the military, involving open exchange of fire between the triumphant and Shona- dominated ZANLA and the Ndebele-dominated ZIPRA in Connemara (Gweru) and Entumbane (Bulawayo)…”378
These flash-points of violence in the demobilisation compounds will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5 of this study as part of the ‘Nationalist project’ of the ZANU-PF.
This tragic ‘tale of two brothers’, ZAPU and ZANU who ended up becoming arch enemies beguiles a bitter story full of textual parody and irony.