Gerald Chikozho Mazarire. Journal of Southern African Studies. Volume 37, Issue 3, September 2011.
Introduction
Discipline is a subject more referred to than examined in the history of Zimbabwe’s liberation war. While there are references to the administration of punishment in specific circumstances or, more often, contemptuous remarks by Rhodesian soldiers regarding the unprofessional conduct of guerrillas in general, few studies have investigated the systematic deployment of disciplinary structures in Zimbabwe’s guerrilla movements. Drawing on internal sources, this article explores this subject by focusing on the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA), the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), in the 1960s and 1970s. These sources show that there was a thin line between the party and its army. The rules governing both were mutually interchangeable under the principle that the ‘vanguard party’ should guide the gun. The orthodox view regarding the ‘triumph of the military’ in ZANU is confirmed, but the article goes further to demonstrate how the ZANU High Command gained the capacity to determine the management of discipline and the administration of punishment such that it was, in practice, the gun that guided the party. With time ZANU became highly militarised. The article identifies three phases of this process. Towards the end of the war, and after ZANU and ZANLA had undergone a series of internal crises, they faced a serious challenge of ‘anarchism’ in the operational zones. This required ZANU’s renewed Central Committee to organise a strategy to restore order. This strategy, spearheaded by the Departments of Defence and of the Commissariat, inadvertently elevated these two units as the party’s most influential and powerful organs, a legacy that haunts ZANU to this day.
ZANU was formed on 8 August 1963 as a breakaway party from the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). Its first People’s Congress was held at Munhumutapa Hall in Gweru, Southern Rhodesia, from 21 to 23 May 1964. The Congress empowered the Central Committee to do all things necessary for the ‘successful liquidation of colonialism [in the] country through armed struggle’. Immediately after the Congress, ZANU President Ndabaningi Sithole issued ‘the clarion call to war’, a call detailing how ‘the masses’ should prepare for armed struggle. It was accompanied by what was supposed to be ZANU’s implementation strategy, a ‘5-point plan’ that remains a secret to this day. ZANU was banned by the Southern Rhodesian government on 26 August 1964 and by the end of that year nearly all the ZANU leaders within the country had been detained. The Central Committee, now confined to Sikombela Detention centre near Que Que, issued the ‘Sikombela Declaration’ in 1965, thereby giving the exiled ZANU leadership in Zambia and elsewhere the power to organise and direct the armed struggle.
The first part of this article explores ZANLA’s formation and the evolution of its strategies. It emphasises that, although ZANU’s ideology from this point on was firmly rooted in the principle of ‘Democratic Centralism’ in which the military was subordinated to the political goals of the party, the structure of the relationship between ZANU’s Supreme Council, the Dare (an elected body of political functionaries), and the Military High Command (an appointed body that participated in the elections of the Dare) tipped the balance in the military’s favour. The military gained influence through this electoral system, to the point of leading and determining the affairs of the party. As a result, the ZANLA High Command became an unaccountable and undisciplined unit. This led to the first internal rebellion in the army, led by Thomas Nhari. It was contained initially by demotions and then by military executions in which the politicians had little say. This section of the article explains the conduct of the rebels as driven by the rules of Democratic Centralism. It uses a rare account by one of the three members of ZANU’s first ‘Disciplinary Committee’, set up to deal with the rebellion. This first phase of military supremacy was replaced by the ideologically inspired movement of ZIPA (Zimbabwe People’s Army) guerrillas. They took over after the arrest and detention in Lusaka of ZANU’s Dare and High Command following the assassination of ZANU Chairman Herbert Chitepo in March 1975. ZIPA’s quest for a ‘National Democratic Revolution’ opened up space for new disciplinary values that were nurtured through an ideological school, Wampoa College, and that incorporated political structures amongst the masses in the operational zones. ZIPA was able to stretch the operational fronts and had a good reputation for discipline.
The release of the members of the Dare and High Command from the Zambian prisons in late 1976 and their return to the ZANLA camps after the Geneva Conference signalled the tragic end of ZIPA, the reassertion of the old ZANLA High Command, and the elevation of Robert Mugabe to the party’s presidency. This section of the article considers arguments that point to the political intelligence and magnanimity of Mugabe in manoeuvring and managing ZANU in this fractured state, as well as those that point to his vulnerability and subordination to the military. It identifies a growing tendency within ZANU to celebrate the ‘gun’ under the guise of restoring order and ‘cleaning up the rot’. Another rebellion, led by Henry Hamadziripi broke out as a result, and threatened to cripple the war for most of 1978. The rebellion affected the war front where serious disciplinary challenges such as desertions and ‘anarchism’ amongst the ZANLA rank and file emerged. The article concludes with a consideration of the debate on the disciplinary situation in ZANU’s enlarged Central Committee. The military measures that were taken to re-establish order were led by the Departments of Defence and of the Commissariat in the last phase of the war, and this shaped ZANU as a political party in the following years.
Beyond Sikombela: The Evolution of ZANLA
The Formative Stages: 1966–1971
Using the powers given to them by the ‘Sikombela Declaration’ the exiled leadership constituted itself into a ‘Revolutionary Council’ under the Chairmanship of Herbert Chitepo. The Council was initially composed of seventeen people, five of whom had direct military responsibilities. A formal military organ emerged in 1966, the Military Planning Committee, headed by the Secretary of Public Affairs (Noel Mukono) and an Assistant (Josiah Tongogara) who controlled a secretariat of three departments: Reconnaissance (Clayton Chigowe), Camps (William Ndangana) and Logistics and Supplies (B. Mutuma). This committee cut its teeth in coordinating the training and deployment of three groups of 20 cadres that infiltrated Rhodesia in 1966, seven of whom perished at the battle of Sinoia.
According to Ignatius Chigwendere, after the Sinoia battle there were calls within the party to review the situation. Consultation was carried out among leaders in prison and in exile. They agreed to a mechanism of bi-annual conferences that would work out a machinery to facilitate the struggle. In order for the Revolutionary Council to be effective, its members were to be elected and made answerable to mini review conferences that could in turn elect new officers. This arrangement took into account the positions of the imprisoned Central Committee members who were considered dormant but who might become active as and when they were freed.
In February 1969 a meeting was called in Lusaka, Zambia, at which the Revolutionary Council was replaced by a new body called the Dare ReChimurenga or Supreme Council as the top external authority of the party. The eight elected members of the Dare were charged with prosecuting the armed struggle and revolution started by ZANU and continued by the Revolutionary Council. Immediately below the Dare was the party general staff, comprising all party functionaries, including party representatives. The High Command, operating under the Chief of Staff, was a war machine, expected to conduct the war on behalf of the Dare ReChimurenga. The High Command changed little in the 1969 re-organisation, save that the Camps Department was renamed the Training Unit and headed by a Chief of Training (Ndangana) and two deputies (Sheba Gava and Mayor Urimbo). The structures were less elaborate at this stage than later because recruitment was a serious problem in Zambia and both ZANU and ZAPU had to rely on press-ganging or chikuwa operations aimed at Zimbabweans living in Zambia or on luring students in Rhodesia with promises of scholarships.
‘The Party Should Guide the Gun’: ‘Mwenje No. 2’ and Democratic Centralism, 1972–1975
In 1972, ZANU adopted a new political programme, which was seen as a development of its 1964 ‘clarion call to war’. Although the clarion call might be considered a publicity stunt coordinated by the party’s Secretary General, who literally identified young men for training and gave them money to buy basic weapons such as knives and knobkerries, or linked them with people who could supply them with mine explosives, it was a confidence trick that worked in that it registered ZANU’s entry into armed struggle. The results were the ill-planned and amateurish campaigns in the period 1964 to 1966: the Crocodile Gang, Emmerson Mnangagwa’s sabotage of the Fort Victoria railway, and the Sinoia battle. The new programme was codenamed ‘Mwenje No. 2’ (mwenje meaning light, and the number two meaning ZANU’s second strategy).
This strategy established the party as the supreme authority. The party was to be the ‘vanguard of the revolution’ and through it the revolution was to ‘be planned, waged and prosecuted and finally consolidated’. The party worked through ‘the people’, who would be united by the goal of liberating the country. The party was supposed to be the instrument for articulating the people’s grievances, not simply those of the leaders or a privileged few. The party’s leadership would come from the people through the practice of periodic elections, and was supposed to work on the basis of a clear set of principles and goals, and to show integrity, honesty and dedication. The programme stated, ‘Corruption of any kind betrays the revolution and must be punished!’ The leadership was answerable to the masses through the institutions of the party. In carrying out its mandate as the vanguard of the revolution, the party was empowered to ‘discipline offenders after a full investigation’. Lastly, Mwenje No. 2 called for the application of scientific socialism and Marxism-Leninism to the objective and subjective conditions in Zimbabwe. It was on the basis of this clause that the ZANU Dare, in consultation with the imprisoned Central Committee members, adopted ‘scientific socialism’ and the basic tenets of Maoist thought as the official party ideology in 1973.
At the time of Mwenje No. 2, ZANU was suffering serious recruitment challenges, which had almost crippled its military activity. Subordinating the military to the party (perceived as the people) was seen as necessary to address this issue. Under this arrangement, the military laid great emphasis in political mobilisation and recruitment, working through political cadres who nurtured a network of cells throughout the country. ZANU’s military wing sought to combine its combat operations with an aggressive programme to prepare and initiate local ‘revolutionary guards’ whose function was to sustain and safeguard the gains of military campaigns. These ‘homeguards’ were to protect the civilian population against enemy retaliation and to sustain the cell system. The guerrillas, who were the implementing arm of the military wing needed to lead by example by displaying familiarity with party ideology and conducting themselves in a disciplined way. Together with the ‘homeguards’ they were to form the nucleus of ZANLA and to transform it into a people’s army.
This political programme was difficult to implement because ZANU was in exile and, although it had an army, it did not have a political constituency in Rhodesia or easy access to build one. According to Dzinashe Machingura, one of the ZANLA commanders at the time, although ZANU realised the need for political education in the war, the office of the political commissar was only represented in the Dare and not in the army. When the office of political commissar was introduced into the High Command after 1973 it had more contact with the masses in the operational zones than the Commissar of the Dare, to the extent that the latter became almost irrelevant. In addition, as the war progressed and ZANLA’s recruitment troubles vanished, the work of commissars in the training camps and operational zones expanded and the political strategy swayed towards the position that the party (and its people) should be guided by the gun.
In strategic terms, Mwenje No. 2 should be understood as a step in implementing the Marxist-Leninist concept of ‘democratic centralism’ or consensus based decision-making facilitated by a top-bottom and bottom-top consultation process. This process rested on three pillars: discussion of all the issues by all concerned until a general consensus was reached; when a decision was taken by the central organs of the party, it was incumbent on all members to abide by that decision; and criticism and self-criticism of the leaders by the members and the masses, and among the leaders themselves. This was also the means by which the disciplinary procedure in ZANU was supposed to operate. However, as Masipula Sithole argues, democratic centralism can be organisationally innovative and efficient and can ensure discipline but, at the same time, it can be destructive to an organisation if any unit within its hierarchy chooses to be conservative, defensive or reactionary. ZANU appreciated the ‘democracy’ in democratic centralism in the context of decision-making as outlined above and it appreciated ‘centrality’ in the sense that such decisions were implemented by a central authority in the leadership of the party. This approach, with all its strengths and loopholes, stood at the core of the administration of discipline within the party and the army.
Although there were brief occasions when the ZANLA High Command had to merge with similar structures in ZAPU’s armed wing, as in 1972 when they formed the Joint Military Command (JMC) and later in 1975 when ZIPA was formed, it was never dissolved. It continued to exist in the background and was in fact the primary reason for the failure of these mergers. In the end, the ZANLA High Command became more powerful than the party: control over it meant control of the party. The main reason for this was that it was an anomaly in ZANU’s concept of ‘democratic centralism’. Its members were not elected. They were appointed by the Chief/Secretary of Defence. Nonetheless, members of the High Command participated in the elections of the Dare, thereby giving the Chief of Defence and the members of the High Command disproportionate influence in the Dare and hence the party. The year 1973 was decisive in this regard because, after the bi-annual elections, Josiah Tongagara replaced Noel Mukono, the Executive Secretary of Defence, and assumed the new office of Chief of Defence. This office subordinated all the arms of the military structure and made the High Command a semi-autonomous unit whose power and influence was then increased further by ZANLA’s expanding military activity that year.
Administering Discipline in ZANLA
The Dare and High Command: Elections, Demotions and Executions or How ‘The Gun should Guide the Party’
The Dare was an elected body and, as highlighted above, the High Command was represented in it through the office of the Secretary or Chief of Defence. A great deal of ink has been spilt on the uneasy coexistence of these two structures, which were meant to coordinate the execution of the armed struggle. Many have suggested a military take-over of ZANU by the High Command. Major proponents of this argument tend to focus on the composition and conduct of the High Command after the election of Tongogara as Chief of Defence in 1973.
The periodic elections to the Dare acted as a self-regulating mechanism and a means of implementing party discipline. Zvakanyorwa Sadomba’s recent study of ZANU celebrates this pre-1975 period as the golden age of ZANU, which he terms the ‘Chitepo Phase’, ‘where leadership positions were openly contested’ and ‘leadership change was not viewed as an attempt to wreck the organisation’. Naturally, the jockeying for positions also made the Dare an arena of competition within the party. However, until the Nhari rebellion of 1974, not once did the Dare or High Command constitute itself into an organ for administering punishment to transgressors of party protocol. What the elections did initially was to eliminate those who opposed the popular party line. For instance, in the elections of the August 1971 bi-annual conference members of the Dare that favoured unity with James Chikerema’s ZAPU were voted out. This is how Nathan Shamuyarira (Secretary for External Affairs), T. Mutizwa (Secretary for Publicity and Information), and S. Parirewa (Secretary for Welfare) lost their positions in the Dare. They later formed the cohort that established the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI) in 1971.
Ironically, when the first major disciplinary case presented itself in the form of the Nhari Rebellion in 1974 it pointed to indiscipline and corruption amongst members of the Dare and High Command. Although the primary grievance of the rebels, who were led by Thomas Nhari and Dakarai Badza, was shortage of arms and general neglect of the cadres fighting in the front by the High Command, the rebels were quick to point to the self-indulgent excesses and luxurious living of the members of the Dare and High Command in Lusaka. Fay Chung submits that the diversity of recruits that had poured into ZANU camps in Zambia, ranging from illiterate peasants to university graduates, and the shortage of food and supplies made them a volatile and undisciplined lot. Some of the ZANU leadership were accused of diverting funds meant for the liberation struggle and hence creating the crisis of supplies, while others were accused of taking advantage of their power to abuse women recruits. Nhari, who had allegedly lost his wife to Tongogara, took exception to these abuses and to the ways in which they compromised the military on the battlefield.
It is important to observe that the Nhari Rebellion did not start with the march to take over Chifombo, the main ZANLA camp in Zambia on the border with Mozambique, as others have argued. Nhari’s case is a mixed bag. On the one hand, he followed procedure and due process as enshrined in the ZANU concept of democratic centralism by airing his grievances and those of his colleagues through letters to the High Command. On the other hand, Nhari had earlier courted trouble with the High Command by masterminding the foiled abduction of students from St. Albert’s Mission in Centenary, which was against ZANU policy, while his accomplice and co-accused Dakarai Badza had attempted to shoot one of the ZANLA commanders, Rex Nhongo. However, it is critical to note that because the grievances were levelled against the High Command, the High Command conveniently interpreted the very act of questioning its actions as insubordination. It responded by demoting Nhari and Badza from commanders and members of the General Staff to ordinary soldiers, rather than responding according to the precepts of democratic centralism and facilitating a consensus-based decision on their case. Demotion was an important and visible form of punishment exercised by ZANLA in this period, although it was principally used to suppress dissent not encourage correction. Luise White reasons that demotions of this nature made everyday negotiations of discipline and deference ambiguous and difficult amongst the ZANLA rank and file as it meant the operational zones were populated with people accustomed to giving rather than receiving orders, thereby disturbing the common soldiers’ sense of order and discipline.
The varied versions of the course of the rebellion show that Nhari initially attempted to engage the High Command by re-asserting the concept of broad-based dialogue. When that failed, he tried to force dialogue upon a captured audience, thereby violating the principle he was advocating. His first raid targeted and captured members of the High Command, including William Ndangana, Sheba Gava, Josiah Tungamirai, Joseph Chimurenga and Charles Dauramanzi, to whom he recited the grievances. He killed none of them, only using them as ransom for an audience with the Dare. When the Dare proved indifferent and failed to act, Nhari went after members of the Dare itself. The rebellion was made and broken by this continuous quest for a dialogue. Nhari himself was trapped by the concept of ‘democratic centralism’. When he at last secured the dialogue he wanted, he was accused of not ‘following the proper procedure of presenting grievances’.
Nhari presented a serious disciplinary challenge for ZANU. He was the first to use execution as a means of eliminating those who disagreed with him, having shot or ordered the killing of nearly 70 guerrillas who refused to join him. Nhari and Badza were killed in the recapture of Chifombo by a ZANLA contingent from Tanzania. It was after the Nhari rebellion that the first ‘disciplinary committee’ met. It is known in some circles as the ‘committee of three’ and was set up initially as a Commission to investigate the Nhari rebellion, with Herbert Chitepo as chair and Rugare Gumbo and Kumbirai Kangai as members. Rugare Gumbo, who was Secretary of the Commission, remembered that the Commission had two sittings. The first was in Lusaka where the first witness was Lonhro executive Cornelius Sanyanga, who was understood to be part of a plot led by his boss Tiny Rowland to win over guerrilla leaders like Nhari and end the armed struggle in favour of a capitalist takeover of Rhodesia under moderate nationalists. He was rude and arrogant and they got nothing from him. The second sitting took place at Chifombo. The Commission heard evidence from John Mataure (ZANU Political Commissar) and Chemist Ncube and established that the rebellion involved Rhodesian agents. The only disciplinary action that the Commission took was to suspend Simpson Mutambanengwe, Noel Mukono and Stanley Parirewa. Mataure’s suspension was to be confirmed after the finalisation of his case. The Commission adjourned, never to meet again. Soon after its departure, John Mataure was executed at point blank range by a member of the High Command for his complicity with the rebels, despite his being a senior member of the Dare. In February 1975, the trials of the rebels proceeded. They were chaired by Chitepo. Although he reprimanded the rebels for killing their comrades-in-arms, he recommended that they be punished by the tried and tested ZANU method of demotion in military rank, and ordered that they be handed over to the Mozambican authorities for further punishment. Soon after, however, Tongagara and the High Command took the rebels and secretly executed them without the consent of the Dare. This action, and in particular the execution of Mataure, caused a good deal of friction between the political and military leaders. As Fay Chung put it, this tension was compounded by the fact that four members of the Dare, including Chitepo, had been implicated in the rebellion. He and the remaining three, Mukudzei Mudzi, Kumbirai Kangai and Rugare Gumbo were unable to discipline Tongogara and the military.
The gun had thus not only triumphed over the party but a new form of punishment – execution by the gun – had been popularised, and was only to be curtailed by the arrest of members of the Dare and High Command after the assassination of Herbert Chitepo.
Discipline by Ideology: ZIPA and the Quest for a ‘ National Democratic Revolution’, 1975–76
As the Nhari rebellion and its aftermath unfolded, the idea of party ideology had receded into the background. The basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism were observed in the breach, and it was not clear what sort of socialist revolution was envisaged or what place the various social classes within it would occupy, be they peasants, workers or intellectuals. The chaos of the 1974–75 period caused by the killing of Chitepo and the subsequent arrest of members of the ZANU Dare and High Command in Zambia, risked reducing ZANU to an organisation that simply sought to overthrow the white settler regime. This lack of a clear leadership and political programme had a spill-over effect on the cadres in the operational zones who engaged in all forms of indiscipline, including abusing the civilian population. The circumstances surrounding the unification of ZANLA and ZIPRA combatants into a joint army, ZIPA, have been well documented by David Moore and others and do not need to be repeated here. What is crucial to note is that this union, although short-lived, nurtured a crop of guerrillas who fused their military activity with doses of Marxist-Leninist thought. The ZANLA cohort of this army interpreted the goals and praxis of the revolution in a new way and sought to extend the frontiers of the war on a more sound ideological footing. They viewed the struggle as a ‘National Democratic Revolution’ that combined all classes – workers, peasants, the petit-bourgeoisie – and out of which a nucleus of committed revolutionaries would emerge to lead the national liberation movement. The challenge for ZANU was that it had failed to establish strong links with the rural peasantry, as ZAPU had done in the 1960s. One of the fundamental challenges of ZANU’s war, writes Terence Ranger, was that it had to first dismantle well-established ZAPU structures in its operational zones before it could establish its own and effectively start fighting.
ZIPA guerrillas observed that ZANU lacked ZAPU’s organisational continuity as well as coordination between its guerrillas and masses in the countryside. David Moore observes that if there were any links between ZANU, its exiled nationalists and the people amongst whom the guerrillas were fighting, those links were at a high level and the masses had no input in shaping them. Moore’s informants, some of them former ZIPA commanders, confessed that ZANU guerrillas had not set up new branches in the operational zones. ZIPA’s role was to change all this by establishing internal nationalist structures that would articulate the needs of the war and eventually become the apparatus that would replace the settler system. ZIPA embarked on serious commissariat work and believed that ‘political education’ of the masses was needed before any ‘political work’ to transform the status quo could be done. In this endeavour, it took advantage of the military victories it was scoring in the battlefront to show that armed struggle could achieve political independence. In this way the victory of the gun preceded the history of ZANU, the party, in most of ZIPA’s operational areas, and a new practice in which the ‘party followed the gun’ was sold to the masses in the countryside. In many cases, ZIPA cadres testify that a significant amount of coercion of the masses had to be used to accomplish this goal. As explored below, it was the management of this use of force that was to become a serious disciplinary concern after ZIPA’s demise, and ZANU’s forces in the operational zones had grown. For its part, ZIPA sought to institutionalise the National Democratic Revolution by establishing a rigorous ideological training programme administered through the Wampoa Ideological College. The fruits of this work were rapidly visible in the field as testimonies about the general good behaviour and professional conduct of ZIPA combatants abound.
The ZIPA story has a sad ending. The release of the ZANU old guard from the Zambian prisons heralded the demise of intellectualism, the arrest of ZIPA commanders and their sympathisers, the closure of Wampoa College and the takeover of the training camps by a resurrected old guard High Command under Tongogara. Witch-hunts, summary trials and the imprisonment of the remaining Marxist-Leninists followed. A new order of discipline emerged, expressed in the idea of the ‘parade’, as explored below. The ZANU old guard took advantage of ZIPA’s military gains and at the same time used the two powerful organs of the High Command (Security and the Commissariat) to purge remaining ZIPA ideologues. In this process, Rex Nhongo played an important role. Having loyally relinquished his position to Tongogara, he lured his ZIPA colleagues into a trap that sent them to prison. He was rewarded with the position of Chief of Operations. This process fortified the position of the army. Sadomba draws our attention to the key role played by the security department in this regard: it was left under the charge of illiterate but ruthless peasant recruits of the Chitepo era, who used all means at their disposal to purge any intellectual pretensions.
The Rank-and-File Parade and Chikaribotso: A Cadre’s Truth Lies in His Buttocks
ZIPA cadres often refer to the Mgagao Declaration as their ‘foundational sacred text’. Crafted by ZANLA Officers in Mgagao, Tanzania, in October 1975, it rejected the political efforts emanating from the détente exercise of 1974, which had resulted in the formation of a coalition of Zimbabwean nationalist parties under an umbrella organ led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa and known as the United African National Congress (UANC). Although it tried to form a joint army, the Zimbabwe Liberation Army (ZLA), it was torn apart by a leadership wrangle, pitting Joshua Nkomo and Muzorewa. Both had entered into separate talks with Ian Smith by the end of 1975. The result was that the army suffered and elements loyal to ZAPU and ZANU turned their guns on each other in the camps that they shared in Zambia. The Mgagao document became the basis of an appeal to the Organisation of African Unity’s (OAU) Liberation Committee and the Frontline States to support an initiative by ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas to resume the war without the bickering nationalists. It also became the instrument that moved ZANLA military camps to Mozambique.
Within ZANLA, there were still some differences between the older and uneducated veterans and the young university graduates within the leadership. One ZIPA commander held that the old generation, who had worked with FRELIMO (the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique) in Tete Province, had become accustomed to the Portuguese chef mentality in which military commanders had unquestionable authority and were not answerable to lower ranks, a cult that had been partly responsible for the chaos within ZANU between 1974 and 1975. The Mgagao document set out the principle that those closest to the operations (the soldiers) should be directly involved in decisions concerning the war, without the interference of politicians. Such decision were made by the ‘military committee’, and politicians could not regulate or reverse them. Disciplinary matters, including those involving senior commanders were dealt with through open ‘review committees’, which could demote officers if needed.
After the demise of ZIPA, however, many former ZANLA rank and file recall the practice of administering and managing discipline in the training camps. The rigorous training routines were not usually accompanied by adequate supplies of food. Food and other shortages increased with time as the number of recruits grew after 1975 and as the camps were relocated to Mozambique. In this period, new arrivals were usually first put in holding camps manned by FRELIMO officers. Mozambique did not allow ZANU to establish or control bases too close to the border with Rhodesia. These bases also served as screening points for potential saboteurs. Anxiety and fatigue gripped many potential recruits as it could take long periods for ZANLA officers to fetch them for training. The screening process often involved interrogation to weed out spies, and endurance tests to determine recruits’ staying power by going for days without food despite routine exercises and drills. Ironically, one was considered eligible for training on the basis of one’s physical state, which would have naturally deteriorated in these circumstances.
In an effort to get out of these camps, cadres organised themselves to find their own way to the actual training camps, or as a last resort they tried to return to Rhodesia, a choice that attracted the wrath of the Rhodesian authorities, FRELIMO and ZANLA. In his unpublished memoirs, the late Retired Major Alex Mudavanhu (Cde. Feya Muchabvuma) recalled escaping from Machaze holding base with a group of friends and finding their way on foot to Nyadzonia after realising that no training would take place if they did not take matters into their own hands. Pardon Humanikwa (Cde. Pardon Patiripakashata) remembered a trick that got him on the truck to proceed for training at Chimoio from the Doroi holding centre: ‘They were calling people’s names and we all used nom de guerres so I realised it was first-come, first-serve and I responded to somebody else’s name before the owner of the name did. That way I went and he was left behind’.
The food shortages gave rise to a practice the cadres loosely termed ‘individual initiative’ or chirenje. Cadres scavenged in nearby Mozambican villages or traded their items such as clothes or shoes for food. When they ran out of items to trade they, at times, stole from each other. This led to a variety of ills that the camp authorities descended on heavily in public displays of punishment normally executed at the camp ‘parade’. The ‘parade’ has an iconic place as an institution for the administration of discipline and punishment in ZANLA training camps, especially in the period after the ZANU old guard regained control of the camps and embarked on mass recruitment after 1977. Although basic training involved morning and evening runs, drills, weapon handling and tactics among other things, all camp activity began with the parade. It was here where announcements were made and the training companies were given their duties. Most importantly, it was at the ‘parade’ that all the so-called counter-revolutionaries – including thieves – were punished or eliminated. Many young cadres were puzzled as to why it should be considered counter-revolutionary or even sabotage to undertake chirenje in search of food. Major Mudavanhu reasoned;
the sabotage part of it was that to get food or beer one had to sell some clothing. This meant that one had to remain with only one pair. On the other hand thefts of other people’s clothes while asleep also increased. So this act was equalled to counter-revolutionary activity by the chefs. Of course we saw it differently, apart from the beer drinking and womanizing that was now happening, the activity was caused by sheer hunger.
The standard procedure was that the culprits were paraded and their crimes recited to the rest of the parade. They were then made to wear a pair of tight long johns and to lie on a platform with hands and feet tied. Normally, two or more people were picked from the crowd to administer the punishment with sticks, and if they failed to offer a thorough beating to the culprit, the tables would be turned and they would be beaten instead. To avoid this, those administering the beating had to be thorough. The normal indicator of a thorough beating and a signal to stop the beating was when one soiled himself. Some camp commanders insisted that ‘MaComrades, hatimuregedzi kusvika aridza emergency yenhunzi‘ (‘Comrades we won’t stop beating him until he is rescued by an “emergency” of flies coming for his waste’). After the beating, one would have to display the soiled pants to the public, if he could still manage to do so. In most cases, ‘counter-revolutionaries’ were not treated at camp clinics, where medicines were often in short supply at any rate, so they had to be nursed by colleagues. This could be dangerous in itself, given the stigma associated with the ‘saboteurs’.
Mudavanhu’s account distinguished between normal and ‘special’ parades. Special parades were known as ‘parade yekudhuutsa zvimbambaira‘ (‘a parade for detonating local landmines’), meaning a parade with the special function of exposing sell-outs suspected of aiding the enemy. Most camps were littered with cadres from ZANLA’s security or seguranza department, and they were deployed to sniff out potential saboteurs and sell outs. This network of spies was responsible for some of the ‘detonations’ at parades in order to have something to show for their work. At special parades, a cadre would come out of the crowd and chant a slogan ‘Icho!‘ (There it is!) and say ‘so and so is an informer, a former Rhodesian policeman or soldier’, or simply allege that ‘so and so had a two-way radio.’ The culprit would be expected to approach the platform and defend him or herself in public. Failure to do so meant instant justice was meted out, as was often the case. The parade, like the pungwe (all night mobilisational meetings) in the operational zones, became a theatre of inter-cadre rivalry used to settle scores.
Despite this routine violence, there were fewer executions in this period as compared to the Nhari phase, in part due to the intervention of the Mozambican government. ZANLA slowly turned to a policy of ‘rehabilitating’ offenders and instituting mechanisms for correction through ‘re-education’ regarding the path of the party’s struggle or gwara remusangano. Among other things, this involved instruction in ZANU’s revolutionary ideology, the character of the enemy and his motivation, the class structure of Zimbabwean society, the objectives of waging the armed struggle and, above all, the risks of selling out. Special treatment appears to have been accorded prisoners of war. ZANU and ZANLA had long waxed lyrical about the civilised treatment they gave their prisoners of war. A case in point is Gerald Hawksworth, a Rhodesian Land Development Officer captured in the first ZANLA campaign in the Centenary area in 1973. In addition, several pages of ZANU’s official organ, the Zimbabwe News, carried pictures of ‘re-educated’ former Rhodesian operatives well into 1978.
Treatment of prisoners drawn from within ZANU and ZANLA was, however, not so ‘civilised’. Although there is very little detailed material on this matter, ZANLA maintained special cells for such prisoners. These were known as chikaribotso and were pit structures usually measuring six feet by six feet by nine feet. Prisoners were kept in the pits under guard for the entire day and night throughout their sentence. They were only allowed out of the pits in the morning and in the evenings to relieve themselves. These were the means used to contain the coup plotters of 1978, of whom more below. Before turning to the coup, it is necessary to appreciate the process through which ZANU re-established its control over the training camps in the period after the Geneva Conference and the demise of ZIPA.
The Triumph of the Military, Robert Mugabe and ‘Gun Justice’ 1977–78
The Chimoio Conference of 1977 and Party Re-organisation
A number of studies of Zimbabwe’s struggle have argued that the tension between the military and political sections of ZANU permeated the party and remained a permanent feature of its DNA even after independence. Two scholars have recently pursued this argument forcefully, albeit differently. In his introduction to Edgar Tekere’s biography, Ibbo Mandaza challenges the notion that Mugabe’s rise to the helm of the party in 1977 was an independent, political development. Although acknowledging the indispensability of Mugabe and the political leadership of ZANU on the diplomatic front, where Mugabe was growing in stature, Mandaza argues that ZANU’s military achieved political ascendance in this phase of the war while the political leadership became an ‘appendage that was confined for most of the time to the party headquarters in Maputo’. Mandaza brings our attention not only to the enhanced power of Tongogara following the purge of ZIPA and the coup plotters of 1978 but also to the increasing tension between Tongogara and Mugabe. Fay Chung presents the argument of the military takeover differently. She argues that ZIPA’s opposition to Mugabe’s leadership strengthened his standing amongst the old members of the ZANU High Command released from prison in Zambia. She calls them the ‘veterans’. Mugabe depended on the ‘veterans’ for his power base. The ‘veterans’ no longer trusted any educated politician for fear of being used as ‘cannon fodder’ and ‘gun carriers’ for political ends. In his uneasy alliance with Tongogara, Mugabe had to throw his Marxist-Leninist pretensions out of the window or he would be purged like the rest before him.
An analysis of the structural changes and rhetoric of the party during this period points to an increased militarisation of ZANU from the Chimoio Congress in August 1977. Mugabe was elevated to the ZANU presidency ironically by the ZIPA military leadership through the Mgagao Declaration cited above. A letter from Tongogara, Rugare Gumbo and Kumbirai Kangai from Mpima prison in Zambia in January 1976 claimed that the guerrillas in Mgagao were operating on instructions from the Dare, although the Dare itself did not issue its declaration on Mugabe’s leadership until the end of January 1976. Mugabe made the release of all the ZANU leaders detained in Zambia a precondition of his attending the Geneva conference in 1976. When the Frontline States complied, a Tongogara-Mugabe alliance was formed. While this relationship was nurtured at Geneva, Mugabe took the initiative to populate his political wing with intellectuals with little or no military background as a counter-balance to the military. Eddison Zvobgo, Hebert Ushewokunze, Canaan Banana, Dzingai Mutumbuka, and Sidney Sekeramayi among others were appointed. The instrument that qualified the much desired equilibrium between the military and the political wings of ZANU was the 1977 Congress. Before considering it, it is necessary to explore the manner in which ZANU’s department of Information and Publicity projected the image of Robert Mugabe as a morally upright and disciplined leader to prepare his acceptance by ZANU followers and sympathisers at home and abroad, and to convince them he could restore order in ZANU. This began with a campaign by Eddison Zvobgo in 1975. He wrote, ‘Robert (Bob) as a very intense, single minded, inflexible, unswerving and brilliant human being … who is the most acceptable for the job of commander-in-chief of the legions of ZANU armies’. This view flooded the pages of the Zimbabwe News before and soon after the Geneva Conference.
Mugabe not only won the support of the army but was complicit in making it more powerful after Geneva. Notwithstanding the recent purging of ZIPA, the ZANU leadership, under the pretext of re-organising the party ‘to make its leadership all-embracing in order to adequately cope with the demands of the war efforts [and] achieve revolutionary uniformity in its political and diplomatic fronts’, embarked on a series of gatherings that brought about far-reaching changes. The first was a joint meeting of the Central Committee and the military command in March–April 1977, which agreed to combine the Central Committee and the military command into one expanded central committee. This was dubbed ‘an historic and revolutionary departure from the traditional separate concepts of military leaderships’. It may have been the first exercise in formalising the cooptation of Mugabe into the military, and as will be seen below the rhetoric of the party swung in the direction of the power of the gun at the same time.
The meeting also set a minimum total membership of the Central Committee at 30, comprising twelve Executive Committee Members, ten Deputies, six others drawn from any area of party activity, and two Female comrades. The enlarged Central Committee went into session between 31 August and 8 September 1977. It ratified the supplementary constitution under arms (a symbolic oath with guns and arms raised in the air) and proclaimed Robert Mugabe President of the party and Commander in Chief of ZANLA. A conspicuous result of this reorganisation was the emergence of two departments as the most powerful units in ZANU: the Departments of Defence and of the Commissariat. In addition, in the period between March and the August 1977, the numerical strength of the High Command was more than doubled by new appointments while the General Staff was increased more than seven-fold, ostensibly ‘in order to cope with the diversity of expanding military operation along the widening front and deepening thrust’. Another outcome of the 1977 modifications of ZANU, was that a Political Commissar was introduced at every level of the organisation and in all the executive committees.
Cleaning up the Rot: Discipline and the Place of the Gun
In his inaugural speech as party President in Chimoio, Mugabe quickly raised his concerns about discipline in the party. By this he meant principally that the party structure itself was not disciplined. As a first step he called for ‘structural consolidation and a clear definition of departmental functions and a systematic streamlining of appointments so that the entire Party machinery can be geared to greater efficiency and effectiveness’. Mugabe was also convinced that ZANU had not inculcated respect for discipline: ‘It cannot be denied that right from the central committee down to the smallest Party unit indiscipline pervades our entire structure’, he said. His conception of discipline was shaped by two dimensions – the external and the internal. Internal discipline was the more important of the two:
Internal discipline is a state of order within a person that propels him constantly to do the right things … It is a stage of individual development that resolves the contradictions within an individual … The pull to be selfish is counterbalanced by a greater pull to be selfless, the pull to drunkenness is countered by one of moderation, the pull to disobedience is negatived [sic] by that to obedience, the pull to sexual givenness [sic] yields to sexual restraint, deviationism is corrected by compliance and individualism by collectivism. The individual must comply with order laid down by the group. Our group is the party called ZANU. ZANU has an order, rules and regulations which make its system – the ZANU system of behaviour. When an individual cannot subject himself to discipline, then external discipline must apply. The party must compel him to conform. This is where punishment comes in. We who are members of the central committee, have to demonstrate by our own actions that we are entitled to demand of others compliance to rules of discipline. Let a greater consciousness of the tasks that confront us grow within us. Lets us deserve to be ZANU.
In 1978 Mugabe spent a lot of energy, in his own words, ‘cleaning up the rot’, which almost precipitated a coup, from which he was rescued by the military. The military reinforced his faith in the arrangement in which the army occupied the centre stage, yet we need to read more into the circumstances of this coup plot and how it was quashed. Two testimonies from the alleged coup plotters are worth considering. Rugare Gumbo’s version is that the Chimoio conference was a tumultuous affair and a watershed: ‘there was a lot of suspicion and mistrust of each other afterwards’. The main bone of contention, he maintains, was an argument over joining forces with ZAPU. Mugabe and Gumbo had a heated exchange over the matter, which subsequently divided the party between Mugabe, Tekere and the military on one side, and Gumbo, Hamadziripi, Crispen Mandizvidza, Ray Musikavanhu, Mukudzei Mudzi and others on the other. Realising the growing tension in the camps, and the attempt by the Mugabe group to isolate Gumbo and his group, a document was drafted and sent to the FRELIMO authorities asking them to intervene. President Machel called a joint meeting of top FRELIMO officials and the ZANU Central Committee to resolve the matter but to no avail. A meeting of the Central Committee was held in January to select delegates to attend the Malta Conference. All those who were to be implicated in the plot were left out, including Gumbo who was the Party’s Secretary for Information and Publicity. Soon thereafter Tekere is said to have ordered the arrest of Hamadziripi, Crispen Mandizvidza, Ray Musikavanhu and Gumbo by FRELIMO police, who duly complied and took them to Chimoio Prison. According to Gumbo’s account, it was this arrest that caused pandemonium in the camps and made Cletos Chigowe and some commanders take matters into their own hands and capture Tekere and Ushewokunze.
In a letter to a colleague at the University of Eduardo Mondlane written from Chimoio Prison, Henry Hamadziripi concurs that their arrest followed the sending of the document on the state of the party to President Machel and FRELIMO. He was, however, more forthright about the damage to the party that was being caused by the conduct of the military leaders. He summarised some of the key areas as follows:
b.)… Tongogara and Nhongo block the [party] leadership’s control of the army, as a result the leadership is not only isolated from the fighting forces but also cannot check the war.
c.)… Tongogara and Nhongo are engaged in a terror campaign to eliminate progressive militants as they did in Zambia in 1974.
d.)… Tongogara and Nhongo have prevented political education from being carried out in the army. The closure of the Chitepo Ideological School and the harassment of political commissars from this school are classic examples of the denial of political education to the fighters.
e.) Lack of political education in the party has resulted in massive indiscipline and disrespect for the leadership. Our forces are scattered all over the Manica Province because of dissatisfaction with the way things are.
f.)… there is too much corruption and drunkenness in the party particularly at the leadership level.
The group at Chimoio prison was recalled to the camps after the return of the ZANU leadership from the Malta Conference in March 1978. After being paraded in front of the fighters, and almost a month of interrogation, they were tried for plotting a coup in April. A number of other alleged suspects and sympathisers joined them, among them some military commanders such as Pirato Makiwa and Stephen Chocha (present day Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri). The trial proceeded in much the same way as that of the Nhari rebels in 1974, with Mugabe as presiding officer. There are conflicting reports as to whether Tekere or Emmerson Mnangagwa was prosecutor. According to Rugare Gumbo, the trial was a Kangaroo Court, chaotic and disorderly. They were tried by the ZANU Central Committee, High Command and Members of the General Staff, totalling nearly 100 people. They were all found guilty and sentenced to death, save for Kumbirai Kangai who was acquitted. There are also competing reports as to whether Simon Muzenda or Tekere saved the prisoners from execution. Tekere’s account is interesting from the point of view of the changing conceptions of punishment in ZANU. The Nhari rebellion had introduced execution as a form of punishment that became fossilised in ZANU, and led to the chaos that landed the leadership in the Zambian prisons. Tekere argues that neither Muzenda nor Mugabe intervened to stay the execution of the prisoners until he addressed the people assembled at the trial, saying, ‘May I implore you not to carry out this judgement. Let us agree now that we stop this execution and any other attempt to kill each other. The spirits which guide us in this war do not agree with these killings. Please let’s stop!’
What is interesting in Tekere’s account, no matter how self-interested it may be, is his condemnation of the death penalty. He wanted to show these particular members of the Dare that it was they, ‘in the Dare re Chimurenga who had decided on the death penalty for coup plotters [in 1974] and they could not deny it’. Tekere claimed to be adhering to the rule that you do not ill-treat prisoners. In the end, FRELIMO intervened and took the prisoners in September 1978, sending them to Machaba Prison near Maputo where they stayed until April 1979 when they joined the ZIPA prisoners who had been confined in Balama near the Malawian border since 1977.
The consequences of this ‘clean up’ and the accompanying troubles that ZANU experienced were that the war was directly affected, albeit briefly, and the rhetoric of the party became increasingly militant. Eddison Zvobgo, who rose to the post of Secretary for Information and Publicity after the imprisonment of Gumbo, circulated a piece entitled the ‘ZANU Idea’, which he equated to the gun idea because ZANU always sought ‘confrontation’. ZANU, he said, barely attracted any followers in the early years because of this gun idea. He wrote:
We were few in 1963–64. The first ZANU public meeting in Highfield was attended by 23 people. By December 1963-we did not enjoy membership much in excess of 10, 000 nationwide. It was risky to be associated with ZANU. In the urban areas we were haunted out of buses, taxes, beerhalls upon suspicion that you might be ZANU. Homes were attacked, people were assaulted. All this was done not by the enemy regime but by African opponents and rivals of the ZANU idea–the gun idea.
Zvobgo argues that this ‘gun idea’ survived chiefly because of a strong ideology and sense of hierarchy and discipline. ZANU believed in its rules and the principle that rules bind all. He added:
We created and resolutely observe a system of operation hierarchy so that no group of two or more of ZANU or ZANLA can be in doubt as to who has on the spot authority to get things done. We are not militarists nor do we propose to regiment Zimbabwean society. We however cherish order, discipline, promptitude, and accountability. Right from the birth of ZANU these tenets guaranteed our survival and relentless growth. Perfection is not here yet, but it remains our most desired goal.
Although this was a fairly teleological view of such an idea of the ‘gun’, there is no doubt that the gun was now viewed as a weapon of liberation just as it was a weapon of internal control of the party. Robert Mugabe had been quoted earlier in the Zimbabwe News putting this idea more philosophically: ‘The justice of our gun is the justice of our cause, and the justice of our cause is the justice of our gun. Our fight is just because our cause is just. Equally because our cause is just, our fight is just’.
While there was a sense of reassertion of control in the party and in the camps, the effect of the confusion of this period in the operational zones began to surface as ZANLA registered growing reports of indiscipline and desertions.
The Challenge of ‘Anarchism’ or ‘Madisnyongoro’ in ZANLA 1978–80
Anarchism in the Operational Zones: The Case of Gaza Province 1978
A major development inside Rhodesia was the signing of the Internal Settlement Agreement between Ian Smith, Abel Muzorewa, Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Jeremiah Chirau on 3 March 1978. This facilitated the formation of an interim government to function until elections were to be held in February 1979. By then it was hoped Muzorewa and Sithole would have persuaded the guerrillas to surrender. The Rhodesian Military also came up with a secret military plan to facilitate the much needed surrender, dubbed ‘Operation Favour’. Under this plan, Rhodesian regular troops would retreat from operational areas and be replaced by pseudo operatives such as the Selous Scouts and by auxiliaries. When the guerrillas failed to surrender, a more aggressive phase of this operation was implemented, involving large-scale training of auxiliaries on crash courses lasting less than six weeks. A flood of ill-trained, armed youth was unleashed in the countryside, loyal to either Sithole or Muzorewa and potentially antagonistic to each other.
ZANU sought to deal with the threat of the Internal Settlement by launching a military offensive and pursuing vigorously the strategy of training people inside Zimbabwe in facilities in liberated and semi-liberated zones. In addition, after the Geneva Conference, and following the Smith government’s crackdown on the nationalists operating in Zimbabwe, resulting in the re-arrest of such people as Maurice Nyagumbo, ZANU decided to establish an internal front, called the People’s Movement, along the same lines as ZAPU’s People’s Caretaker Council (PCC) of the 1960s. The net effect of all these developments was an increasing number of militants and groups of people representing different factions of all the belligerents in Zimbabwe’s struggle, a ripe environment for confusion and indiscipline. ZANU began to register increasing reports of indiscipline in the front, a phenomenon that gradually came to be described as ‘anarchism’. It involved, among other things, abuse and wanton killing of the masses, abuse of women and rape, abuse of drugs and desertions such that a number of cadres became ‘lone rangers’.
Most reports coming from the Detachment and Sectorial Commissars in the Gaza province testify that from 1977 ZANLA had to embark on serious political education exercises in Gaza, introducing the party, its name, history, organs and aims in the manner that the ZIPA programme had advocated. However, from the middle of 1977, reported one commissar, there arose problems in such areas as Belingwe where there was, ‘insulting, assaulting and shooting the local masses without thorough investigation, most of whom were accused of being in possetion [sic] of communication radios and arms, but out of all those shot, no radio and arms got surrendered to prove to the commanders the truth in accusation [sic]’. In the Chibi area, a guerrilla claiming to be a svikiro (spirit medium) was said to have killed four civilians, accusing them of witchcraft. In Belingwe, again high levels of mbanje smoking were reported and there were two serious cases of desertion in 1977, when Cdes. Chapungu Chehondo and Togarasei Hama left their sections. Chapungu Chehondo is said to have objected to criticism of his womanising and mbanje smoking and left his group. He was killed by the Rhodesian Forces while in a girl’s dormitory at Chegato Secondary School. Hama is said to have taken mbanje in Chibi on 29 August 1977, left his section, and launched a mortar bomb at his comrades that same night. He became a bandit and was hunted down by his own section, which finally shot him dead.
Reports by commissars in Sector 3’s Detachments 3 and 4, which operated in areas such as Maranda, Mazetese and Filabusi, confirm a disciplinary situation that had become ‘incorrigible’ and ‘hard to solve’. One report read:
Our fighters in detachment 3 and 4 no longer acknowledge the three rules of discipline and the 8 points of attention. They are now disrupting the ZANU Party’s discipline… in short, they are practicing anarchism… [T]hey no longer know who is a commander. They are taking themselves as equal. The spirit of selfishness has emerged, everybody has to mobilise what he wants from the masses, in fact, they are now falling [sic] the ZIPRA way (pleasure seeking), drinking beer and bitching.
One of the ways through which discipline was maintained and regulated in the ZANLA operational areas was for commanders to call for meetings at regular intervals where section discipline, living conditions, working relationships with the masses, personal problems of the fighters and the fighters’ attitudes to their commanders were discussed at section, platoon, and detachment levels. The reports from Gaza seem to indicate that serious disciplinary problems were witnessed when there were fewer commanders coming from Mozambique to monitor the situation in 1978. They were much more pronounced in areas that were too far to be accessed by the commanders. In some cases, some sector commanders had developed tendencies towards factionalism. Towards the end of 1978, however, a new Provincial Commander for Gaza was appointed in the form of Freddie Matanga (now Retired Brigadier Benjamin Mabenge), a disciplinarian who came to ‘clean the rot’ and was famed for beating guerrillas in front of the masses as a form of punishment and means to restore order. In an interview, Matanga confirmed the serious disciplinary situation in Belingwe where he personally forced guerrillas to shave their beards and led operations with the object of identifying troublemakers.
Apart from sending Provincial Commanders on missions to restore order, ZANLA also unleashed its security operatives from the seguranza department to pursue errant ‘lone rangers’ and bring them to book. One such mission in the Gaza Province was led by Dix Marxism (now Retired Major Dixon Dzora) to arrest and capture high-ranking ZANLA officer and Sector Commander Hector Muridzo. He recalls encountering Muridzo as he addressed a gathering of the masses. After telling him that he was under arrest, he resisted and claimed to have supernatural powers that would overcome them, but they proceeded to apprehend and disarm him, leaving him only with a grenade to carry with him on the route back to Mozambique. It was a difficult journey as Muridzo gave so much trouble that his behaviour led to several contacts with the enemy that claimed the lives of other members of the group, including a member of the ZANLA General Staff, Comrade Ziso.
In June of 1979, owing to increasing reports of indiscipline amongst ZANLA forces reaching him in Salisbury Prison, Maurice Nyagumbo wrote to Robert Mugabe and the ZANU Central Committee, appealing to them to make sure that the vakomana (the ‘boys’ or guerrillas) stuck to the object of the struggle. Nyagumbo wrote:
Please investigate reports of vakomana who are said to take liberties with women and married life, being high handed and arrogant towards the masses. Some are said to have resorted to pleasure seeking pursuits – beer drinking orgies, open terror and torture of suspects prior to a thorough and impartial investigation and proper analysis of individual incidents.
At the end of his appeal Nyagumbo suggested that,
The six-monthly-operation strategy at the end of which vakomana went back to Mozambique for appraisal and reorientation, if strictly observed would check and eliminate the above allegations if they have been practised. A process of reasoning with the masses should be inculcated and cultivated. Let us accept genuine criticisms and make amends in a democratic spirit but abhor unfair competition and the cult of the individual.
Nyagumbo’s concern as a member of the ZANU Central Committee with little if any capacity to manoeuvre in prison is a reflection of the growing worry over the deteriorating disciplinary situation. His sources were principally fellow prisoners coming in from the operational zones. They appealed to him as someone who could exert influence at the leadership level to rectify the problem, and indeed discipline rose to the top of the agenda of the subsequent high profile meetings within ZANU.
Debating Discipline in ZANU: Resolutions of the 1978 Enlarged Central Committee and Beyond
At its December 1978 meeting of the Enlarged Central Committee, Simon Muzenda, the Vice-President of ZANU and chairperson of the party’s Disciplinary Committee, drew laughter from his colleagues when he said his Committee had nothing to report because ‘there were no cases to try’. Even at this stage, it seemed that, although ZANU had the instruments of discipline incorporated constitutionally, it still faced operational challenges. Its Disciplinary Committee certainly did not have a clear mandate. The members of the Central Committee realised that there existed smaller committees in both Maputo and in the camps that carried out disciplinary functions and put offenders into chikaribotso, but it was not clear to whom they reported if the supreme disciplinary authority of the Central Committee was not functional. Although this arrangement engendered a disciplinary system, there was no disciplinary code stipulating which powers applied to which levels or organs. In his address to the central committee, Mugabe pointed out, quite correctly, that such a system emphasised only the punishment aspect of disciplinary work at the expense of the disciplinary functions of particular organs of the party. ‘What was important was teaching rather than punishment’, he said. Such a system gave undue power to the department responsible for investigating offences and administering punishment: the Department of Security and Intelligence, the notorious seguranza.
One committee member from the Health Department made a lengthy complaint about the conduct of the seguranza in the camps where they reportedly beat up paralysed patients as part of investigations. He noted that seguranza cadres were regarded with awe and fear by fellow colleagues. They enjoyed and abused this position, but it posed a serious security risk because they were ostracised from the people amongst whom they worked. The Department had also used new recruits as security agents, and they tended to wreak havoc amongst the trained personnel as vengeance. The problem was pronounced at lower levels where ‘occasionally departmental personnel are appointed as informers… Because he wants self-protection [a cadre] accepts the responsibility. He does his work and is ostracised by his colleagues for that reason. This is because security work at lower levels is viewed as a torture game… [and instead of] being security comrades they … end up as comrades of insecurity’.
Originally there existed two systems of intelligence in ZANU and ZANLA, a civilian and military one. The older and established system was the military one under the Chief of Intelligence who reported to the Chief of Operations. His position was the third most senior in the ZANLA High Command. When the position of the Special Assistant to the President was established after the Chimoio Conference in 1977, he also became the chief of civilian intelligence. In the absence of an established disciplinary structure, it was difficult to coordinate these units of intelligence such that they shared a common purpose. As a remedy to this confusion, and partly to control the excesses of the seguranza, it was proposed that a Disciplinary Committee composed of the departments of Defence, Commissariat and seguranza be tasked to prepare the ZANLA penal code to be used by the seguranza in handling different kinds of offences and setting a maximum punishment for each. Meanwhile, the post of Deputy Special Assistant to the President was created to be specifically occupied by the Chief of Security and Intelligence in the ZANLA High Command, then Sheba Gava (the late General Vitalis Zvinavashe). This move was not only meant to fortify the office of the President but to ensure a military presence and surveillance of it at the same time. The close and complex relationship between the security and the presidency has remained a feature of ZANU’s anatomy to this day.
It is not clear when the penal code became effective, or what was its scope and content. ZANU was only able to hold its next congress in 1984 when a formal disciplinary structure was incorporated in its new constitution. This structure bore the marks of this long history. It provided for a national disciplinary committee at the Central Committee level, chaired by the Vice President of the Party and composed of the Secretary for Administration, National Political Commissar, Treasurer General and the Secretary for National Security. This committee submitted its reports to the Central Committee whose decisions were final. Smaller disciplinary committees were also provided for at provincial, district and branch levels with a similar representation of offices. The constitution provided a code for punishment of offenders depending on the gravity of the offence as well as the instruments for appeal and or correction. How these structures worked in practice will have to await another study.
Conclusion
ZANU and ZANLA are inseparable. It is virtually impossible to deal with a subject that does not affect both. Discipline was enshrined in the founding constitution of ZANU as a party, but ZANU did not last for more than year in its original form, operating for most of its life as a liberation army. The management of discipline had of necessity to be revised to suit changing circumstances. It is not surprising that ZANU and ZANLA did not have a fixed disciplinary code during the war, but rather a flexible disciplinary system. This system facilitated the administration of punishment to offenders, but it was not coordinated nor was the nature of the punishment standardised. The various developments in the history of ZANU and ZANLA provided a fertile ground for military power and equally facilitated military control over the nature and form of punishment at these many and disparate levels. The result was that the implementing organ of such punishments, the seguranza department, became less an instrument of protection and security than a regulating authority. When its conduct and mandate was finally debated it found itself firmly established as a permanent feature of the highest office of ZANU, the office of the President. The seguranza was not only well positioned to regulate the presidency, it was deployed in all sections of the ZANLA cadreship through the omnipresent commissariat departments, confirming a heavily militarised ZANU.