Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA: 1964–1979

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Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA:1964––1979Gerald Chikozho Mazarire aa Department of History, University of Zimbabwe

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Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA:

1964–1979*

Gerald Chikozho Mazarire

(Department of History, University of Zimbabwe)

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.

Introduction

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

ISSN 0305-7070 print; 1465-3893 online/11/030571-21q 2011 The Editorial Board of the Journal of Southern African Studies DOI: 10.1080/03057070.2011.602896

*This article was first presented to a panel on ‘Discipline and Punishment’ at the African Studies Association (UK)annual conference in Oxford in September 2010. I am grateful to the organizer Professor Jocelyn Alexander for hersupport and critical input throughout its formulation and revision. I also wish to thank the Journal of Southern AfricanStudies for the generous grant that made this possible, and Professors Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger for kindlyavailing to me some critical sources on the subject matter from their personal collections. Equally, I wish toacknowledge the access I was given by the ZANU-PF Department of Information and Publicity to their Archiveswhich went a long way in determining the scope of this article.

Journal of Southern African Studies, Volume 37, Number 3, September 2011

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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.1

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.

1 ZANU(PF) Draft Constitution, Presented to the Second People’s Congress by the Central Committee, 8–13August 1984.

572 Journal of Southern African Studies

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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.2

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.3

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.4

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.5 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.6 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).7 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.8

2 E.Z. Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle (SAPES Books, Harare, 2007), p. 62.3 See D. Martin and P. Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe (London, Monthly Review Press, 1981), p. 10 and

D. Cowderoy and R.C. Nesbit, War in the Air: Rhodesian Air Force 1935–1980 (Alberton Galago, South Africa,1987), p. 43.

4 The Ranger Papers, Doc. Ranger 00272, I. Chigwendere, ‘The Political Roots of ZANU’, n.d., available atwww.aluka.org.

5 ZANU, ‘ZANU’s Political Programme’, Mwenje, No. 2., Lusaka, Zambia, 1 August 1972, in C. Nyangoni andG. Nyandoro (eds), Zimbabwe Independence Movements: Select Documents (Rex Collings, London, 1979),pp. 249–51.

6 Chigwendere, ‘The Political Roots of ZANU’.7 ZANU(PF) Archives, ‘Table of Hierarchies’, n.d.8 Phelekezela Mphoko, ‘The Joint Military Command: Mbeya Tanzania March 1972 and the Zimbabwe People’s

Army, September 1975’, unpublished mimeo. See also Retired Air Marshall Josiah Tungamirai’s account inC. Makari, Magamba EChimurenga (Gweru, Mambo Press, 2005), Chapter 10.

Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA 573

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‘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.9 The

new programme was codenamed ‘Mwenje No. 2’ (mwenje meaning light, and the number two

meaning ZANU’s second strategy).10

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’.11 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.12 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!’13 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’.14 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 1973.15

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.16 The guerrillas, who were the implementing arm of

the military wing needed to lead by example by displaying familiarity with party ideology

9 Interview between Ngwabi Bhebe and William Ndangana, 1984, Zimbabwe Oral History Trust (ZOHT)Collection; National Archives of Zimbabwe (NAZ), Oral History Collection (OHC) (Unclassified), ‘Capturing AFading Memory’ Collection, Interview with Emmerson Mnangagwa, August 2006.

10 See Z.W. Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution: Challenging Colonialism and Settler andInternational Capital (Woodbridge, James Currey, 2011), p. 14.

11 ZANU, ‘ZANU’s Political Programme’, pp. 249–51.12 Ibid., p. 252.13 Ibid.14 Ibid.15 R.G. Mugabe, ‘ZANU Carries the Burden of History’, Zimbabwe News, 10, 2 (May–June 1978), p. 56.16 ZANU, ‘ZANU’s Political Programme’, p. 253.


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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.17

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.18 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.19 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.20 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.21 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.22 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.

17 Ibid., p. 254.18 Interview with Cde. Dzinashe Machingura (Wilfred Mhanda), Sunridge, Harare, 1 May 2011.19 Based on ‘Political Education in ZANU’, Abridged notes prepared and authorised for publication by ZANU

Chief Political Commissar Mayor Urimbo, Zimbabwe News, 10, 1(10 January 1978), p. 57.20 M. Sithole, Zimbabwe: Struggles within the Struggle (Harare, Rujeko Publishers, [1979] 1999), p. 103.21 Interview with Dzinashe Machingura.22 Mphoko, ‘The Joint Military Command’.


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Administering Discipline in ZANLA

The Dare and High Command: Elections, Demotions and Executions or How ‘TheGun 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 1973.23

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’.24 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.25 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.26 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.27 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

23 See for instance L. White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe (Bloomington,Indiana University Press, 2003); F. Chung, Re-Living the Second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe’sLiberation Struggle (Harare, Weaver Press, 2007); and Sithole, Zimbabwe.

24 Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution, p. 46.25 Sithole, Zimbabwe, pp. 66–7.26 Chung, Re-Living the Second Chimurenga, p. 89.27 Makari, Magamba EChimurenga, pp. 95–105.


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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.28 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.29

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’.30

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

28 White, The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo, p. 22.29 Ibid., p. 37.30 Ibid., p. 28.


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his complicity with the rebels, despite his being a senior member of the Dare.31 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.32 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.33 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.34 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.35

31 R.J.N. Gumbo, ‘Reflections on my Role in the Liberation Struggle of Zimbabwe’, unpublished manuscript,ZOHT Collections, p. 15.

32 Chung, Reliving the Second Chimurenga, p. 93.33 See for instance D. B. Moore, ‘The Zimbabwe People’s Army: Strategic Innovation or More of the Same?’ in

N. Bhebe and T.O. Ranger (eds) Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War (University of Zimbabwe Publications,Harare, 1995) and, more recently, Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution.

34 Gumbo, ‘Reflections on My Role’, p. 9.35 T.O. Ranger, Peasant Consciousness and Guerrilla War in Zimbabwe (London, James Currey, 1985), pp. 206–7.


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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270093450_Peasant_Consciousness_and_Guerrilla_War_in_Zimbabwe?el=1_x_8&enrichId=rgreq-d0f411fe-27fe-48ca-9502-39c56b37c693&enrichSource=Y292ZXJQYWdlOzIzMzExOTMyMTtBUzoyNjg5MDE2MjM3OTE2MTZAMTQ0MTEyMjU1MTIzMA==

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.36 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.37 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.38 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.39 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.40

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’.41

Crafted by ZANLA Officers in Mgagao, Tanzania, in October 1975, it rejected the political

efforts emanating from the detente 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

36 D.B. Moore, ‘Democracy, Violence, and Identity in the Zimbabwean War of National Liberation: Reflectionsfrom the Realm of Dissent’, Canadian Journal of African Studies, 29, 3 (1995), p. 389.

37 Moore, ‘Democracy, Violence, and Identity in the Zimbabwean War of National Liberation’, p. 90.38 Interview with Cde. Dzinashe Machingura.39 Moore, ‘Democracy, Violence and Identity in the Zimbabwean War of National Liberation’.40 Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution, p. 38.41 Ibid., p. 22.


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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.42 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 1975.43 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.44

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.45 Pardon Humanikwa (Cde. Pardon Patiripakashata) remembered a trick

42 Doc. 31, ‘The Mgagao Declaration By Zimbabwe Freedom Fighters ca. Oct. 1975’, in Baumhogger, The Strugglefor Independence, vol. II.

43 Interview with Cde. Dzinashe Machingura.44 Sadomba, War Veterans in Zimbabwe’s Revolution, pp. 22, 27. Sadomba cites the case of Morrison Nyathi, a

senior ZANLA commander from the Chitepo era, who was demoted by a review committee and defected to theRhodesian Forces in bitterness.

45 Rtd. Major Alex Mudavanhu, ‘The War Memoirs of Cde Feya Muchabvuma: A ZANLA Combatant’s Story ofZimbabwe’s Liberation War’, unpublished manuscript, Masvingo, 2007, p. 56. Cited with the permission of theZOHT.


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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’.46

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 thatone had to remain with only one pair. On the other hand thefts of other people’s clothes whileasleep also increased. So this act was equalled to counter-revolutionary activity by the chefs. Ofcourse we saw it differently, apart from the beer drinking and womanizing that was nowhappening, the activity was caused by sheer hunger.47

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.48 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.

46 Interview with Pardon Humanikwa (Cde Pardon Patiripakashata), ZANU PF HQ, Harare, 14 February 2007.47 Mudavanhu, ‘The War Memoirs of Cde. Feya Muchabvuma’, p. 58.48 Ibid., p. 59.


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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.49

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.50 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.51

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 1978.52

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.53 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

49 See N. Kriger, Zimbabwe’s Guerilla War: Peasant Voices (Harare, Baobab Books, 1992), Chapter 5.50 See Chung, Re-Living the Second Chimurenga, Chapter 11.51 Much of the content of this education is elaborated in the Commissariat Lecture series, which were serialised in

the Zimbabwe News from 1978 onwards. See for instance ‘Political Education in ZANU’, Zimbabwe News, 10, 1(1978), pp. 53–9.

52 See for example, ‘Rhodesian Mercenary Pilot Captured’, Zimbabwe News, 9, 4 (1977), ‘Confessions ofWonderful Mukoyi, Captured Selous Scouts’, Zimbabwe News, 9, 5–6 (1977), and ‘Confessions of JohanneKambanje Kaodza’, Zimbabwe News, 10, 1 (1978), p. 19, among others.

53 Gumbo, ‘Reflections on My Role’, p. 45.


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time to the party headquarters in Maputo’.54 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.55

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 1976.56 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.57

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’.58 It may have been the first

54 I. Mandaza, ‘Edgar Tekere and Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Independence’, in Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle, p. 13.55 Chung, Re-Living the Second Chimurenga, pp. 180–81.56 See, ‘Excerpt of Letter from J.M. Tongogara/K. Kangai/R.N. Gumbo to R. Mugabe’, 24 January 1976, Doc. 35,

and ‘Dare ReChimurenga Leadership’s Declaration on Mugabe’s Leadership of ZANU’, 24 January 1976, Doc.36, in Baumhogger, The Struggle For Independence, p. 29.

57 Ranger Papers, Doc. R00325, ‘E. Zvobgo’, Classified as ‘Unknown ZANU’, available at www.aluka.org. Seealso Zimbabwe News from 1977 onwards.

58 E. Tekere, ‘The State of the Party’, Doc. 450, in Baumhogger, The Struggle for Independence, Vol. III, p. 499.


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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.59 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’.60 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.61

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’.62 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 rightthings . . . It is a stage of individual development that resolves the contradictions within anindividual . . . The pull to be selfish is counterbalanced by a greater pull to be selfless, the pull todrunkenness is countered by one of moderation, the pull to disobedience is negatived [sic] by that toobedience, the pull to sexual givenness [sic] yields to sexual restraint, deviationism is corrected bycompliance and individualism by collectivism. The individual must comply with order laid downby the group. Our group is the party called ZANU. ZANU has an order, rules and regulations whichmake its system – the ZANU system of behaviour. When an individual cannot subject himself todiscipline, then external discipline must apply. The party must compel him to conform. This iswhere punishment comes in. We who are members of the central committee, have to demonstrateby our own actions that we are entitled to demand of others compliance to rules of discipline. Let agreater consciousness of the tasks that confront us grow within us. Lets us deserve to be ZANU. 63

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.64 The military reinforced his

59 Tekere, ‘The State of the Party’.60 Ibid.61 See R.G. Mugabe, ‘Opening Address to the First Zimbabwe Women’s Seminar’, Zimbabwe News, 11, 1

(January–June 1979), p. 80.62 R.G. Mugabe, ‘Defining the Line’, Speech delivered at a Central Committee Meeting at Chimoio between August

31 and September 8, 1977, in R.G. Mugabe, Our War of Liberation: Speeches, Articles, Interviews 1976–1979(Gweru, Mambo Press, 1983), p. 33.

63 Mugabe, ‘Defining the Line’, pp. 37–8.64 ZANU(PF), ‘Presidential Address to the Plenary Session of the Enlarged Central Committee’, 27–29 December

1978.


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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.65

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 theleadership 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 militantsas they did in Zambia in 1974.

d.) . . . Tongogara and Nhongo have prevented political education from being carried out in thearmy. The closure of the Chitepo Ideological School and the harassment of political commissarsfrom 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 forthe leadership. Our forces are scattered all over the Manica Province because of dissatisfactionwith the way things are.

f.) . . . there is too much corruption and drunkenness in the party particularly at theleadership level.66

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

65 Gumbo, ‘Reflections on my Role’, p. 42.66 NAZ, File MS939, H. Hamadziripi, Chimoio Prison, to Aquina Braghanza [Aquino de Braganca], Director of

African Studies, [Eduardo] Mondlane University, 23 February 1978.


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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.67 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.68 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!’69

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’.70 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 1977.71

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’.72 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 23people. 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 ZANUidea– the gun idea.73

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 moreof ZANU or ZANLA can be in doubt as to who has on the spot authority to get things done. We arenot 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 guaranteedour survival and relentless growth. Perfection is not here yet, but it remains our most desired goal.74

67 Gumbo, ‘Reflections on My Role’, p. 45.68 For Muzenda’s role see Bhebe, Simon Muzenda, p. 220.69 Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle, pp. 102–3.70 Ibid., p. 102.71 Gumbo, ‘Reflections on my Role’, p. 46.72 E. Zvobgo, ‘The ZANU Idea’, Programmatic Speech and Article, 8 August 1979, Doc. 28, in Baumhogger, The

Struggle For Independence, Vol. II, p. 23.73 Zvobgo, ‘The ZANU Idea’. Emphasis in original.74 Ibid., p. 24.


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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’.75

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.76 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.77 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.78 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’.

75 R. Mugabe, ‘Imperialist Plotting to Create a Neo-Colonialist Buffer Zone in Zimbabwe’, Address to TheZimbabwe Nation over Radio Maputo’s Voice of Zimbabwe on the eve of his return from the Malta ConstitutionalConference on 24 February 1978, Zimbabwe News, 10, 1 (1978), p. 6.

76 H. Ellert, Rhodesian Front War: Counter-insurgency and Guerilla Warfare 1962–1980 (Gweru, Mambo Press,1993), pp. 179–95.

77 Major Gen. T. Mugoba, ‘ZANLA Operations in Gaza Province: Reflections on the Futility of the FightingDoctrine of the Rhodesian Security Forces 1976–79’ (BA Honours Thesis, University of Zimbabwe, 1995),makes reference to the existence of such bases in ZANLA’s Gaza operational province in Mberengwa andGezani, although he warns that talk of well-established training bases could be an exaggeration.

78 E. Tekere, ‘The State of the Party’, Doc. 450, Baumhogger, The Struggle for Independence, Vol. III, p. 499.


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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]’.79 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.80

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 8points of attention. They are now disrupting the ZANU Party’s discipline . . . in short, they arepracticing anarchism . . . [T]hey no longer know who is a commander. They are takingthemselves as equal. The spirit of selfishness has emerged, everybody has to mobilise what hewants from the masses, in fact, they are now falling [sic] the ZIPRA way (pleasure seeking),drinking beer and bitching.81

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.82

79 ZANU(PF) Archives, ZANU Operational Department, Department of Defence (ODDD), ‘Political ReportCovering Part of the Southern Front as per Sub-Area: Sector 2: Matibi 1 and Belingwe’, 4 June 1978.

80 Ibid., p. 8.81 ZANU(PF) Archives, ZANU Operational Department, Department of Defence (ODDD), Political Report for

Gaza Sector 3, p. 11.82 Interview with Retired Brigadier General Benjamin Mabenge (Cde Freddie Matanga), Linguistics Sound Lab,

University of Zimbabwe, 24 February 2007. For Matanga’s reputation, see J. Nhongo-Simbanegavi, ‘ ZimbabweWomen in the Liberation Struggle: ZANLA and its Legacy 1972–1985’ (D.Phil. Thesis, University of Oxford,1997), p. 192.


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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.83

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 marriedlife, being high handed and arrogant towards the masses. Some are said to have resorted topleasure seeking pursuits – beer drinking orgies, open terror and torture of suspects prior to athorough and impartial investigation and proper analysis of individual incidents.84

At the end of his appeal Nyagumbo suggested that,

The six-monthly-operation strategy at the end of which vakomana went back to Mozambique forappraisal and reorientation, if strictly observed would check and eliminate the above allegationsif they have been practised. A process of reasoning with the masses should be inculcated andcultivated. Let us accept genuine criticisms and make amends in a democratic spirit but abhorunfair competition and the cult of the individual.85

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 Committeeand 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’.86 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

83 Interview with Retired Major Dickson Dzora (Cde. Dix Marxism), ZANU(PF) Headquarters, Harare, 15February 2007.

84 Ranger Papers, Doc. Ranger 00103, Maurice Nyagumbo, Salisbury Central Prison, to Robert Mugabe and theZANU Central Committee, c. June 1979, available at www.aluka.org.

85 Ibid.86 ZANU, ‘Detailed Minutes of the Third Plenary Session of the Enlarged Central Committee’, 27–29 December

1978.


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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.87 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’.88

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.89

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).90 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

87 Ibid.88 Ibid.89 Ibid.90 Ibid. The only other addition to the ZANU Structure apart from this was the post of Administrative Secretary, to

which Nathan Shamuyarira was appointed after some shortcomings were identified in the department ofAdministration falling directly under the office of the Secretary-General.


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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.91

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.

GERALD CHIKOZHO MAZARIRE

Department of History, University of Zimbabwe, PO Box MP 167, Harare, Zimbabwe.

E-mail: [email protected]

91 ZANU Draft Constitution, August 1984, pp. 6–7.


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Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA: 1964–1979

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Transcript of Discipline and Punishment in ZANLA: 1964–1979