The enablers of Shona hegemony and enemies of Mthwakazi's peoples' emancipation from the MLF President

Greetings to all!,

The compilation of this article identifies the enablers of Shona hegemony among others as the so-called "ZPRA Legacy Group". This group is comprised of charlatans who are in shape and form, enemies of Mthwakazi peoples' emancipation. Recently, I published an article identifying this group (with its use of the acronym "ZPRA", instead of ZIPRA, as a ploy that is used by the ZANU-PF regime to rewrite history.

This "ZPRA Legacy Group" is nothing, but a group of mercenaries, without a constituency. It is comprised of people who claim to have been intelligence commanders within the ZIPRA High Command structure. Just like under ZIPRA, where these so-called intelligence commanders had no constituency for which to provide intelligence, today this so-called "ZPRA Legacy Group" says it is national, but without an identified nation. They say ZIPRA was formed to fight tribalism, yet they do not say which tribalism.

To them, the concept of a tribe is just a slur that once you are painted bad, then you must be bad. They have no allegiance, neither do they have any alliance. Their argument is very weak, as they are just afraid of being painted bad by their master, the ZANU-PF regime. In fact, it is a grave and unforgivable insult to say that the people of Mthwakazi lost hundreds of thousands of lives (under both European colonialism and Shona hegemony) in order to abolish tribalism. Are these people real? Was this the insanity that qualified them as intelligence commanders?

In the case of a legacy, they have not spelled out what kind of legacy they want our people to hold on to. What is this legacy? Is it only their acronym "ZPRA" that they want to be passed on as a legacy to the next generation? What do they say about the "pasi naye" legacy? Is it not tribalism? Must we pass this legacy to the next generation? These so-called ZIPRA intelligence gurus were told many years ago to abandon "Tumbuguru" (Joshua Nkomo). Indeed, they complied, as they were subsequently deployed by ZANU commanders (and not by ZIPRA commanders). According to some of them, they were deployed to the front in then Rhodesia by ZANLA commanders in Mozambique. But for what reason then, do they want to hold on to a so-called "ZPRA Legacy"?

What values do these former ZIPRA intelligence commanders want to be passed on to the next generation? Do they want the experiences of the first Gukurahundi at Mgagao and

Morogoro accepted by the next generation because to challenge those experiences will result in being painted tribalists? Or must the next generation simply accept that those massacred during that time, including under the successive Gukurahundi episodes that continued after Zimbabwe gained independence as carnages that happened because of "Tumbuguru" (Joshua Nkomo)? What are the things that must die and what are the things that must live and be passed on to future generations? Is this the legacy of destruction of the Mthwakazi nation and not of reconstruction? Why does it appear only as the legacy of cowardice, a legacy of being sent without knowing, and a legacy of robot soldiers? To me it is as clear as daylight that this so-called "ZPRA Legacy Group" is selling the people of Mthwakazi donkey meat with their eyes wide open.

The complex field of intelligence is fraught with a multiplicity of challenges. My own suspicion is that the intelligence department of ZIPRA was infiltrated and led by Rhodesian spies. I remember for example, as I have stated in my book, The Trials and Tribulations of a ZIPRA Soldier, how the Chief of Military Operations, Mr Enock Tshangane (birth name, Jevana Maseko), instructed us not to test our weapons to check if they were in working order because ZAPU had no ammunitions manufacturing factory. He clearly told us that "one bullet for one enemy soldier". Although in my case, I could not obey such a deadly instruction, others took instructions (so-called orders) without any questions asked, from these killers within ZIPRA and as a result were captured or killed after crossing the Zambezi River, because they could not engage the enemy, only for them to discover that the firing pins of their guns had been filed off, effectively rendering them toys.

Others who were deployed to missions at the front, had their routes effectively mapped out for them from their bases to the operational areas by some members of the high command. Many died along the way. I describe a similar situation in my book where the Rhodesian forces were effectively based around the Death or Casualty Front (DK) in Zambia a few kilometres from the Zambezi River. And all evidence pointed to the fact that they were being assisted by the ZIPRA regional commander, Mr Tangwena (nom de guerre, I assume) and how his assistance lured many cadres to death ambushes. Furthermore, I describe in my book, how later when I returned from the front, I disarmed Enock Tshangane when he came to take me with my comrades from Nampundu Camp to be killed. Tshangane was a very big man and ugly as Idi Amin; and he liked to be feared. But on that day when I disarmed his bodyguards, he peed on himself. These facts can be verified from those surviving ZIPRA cadres at the time, such as Comrades John Gazi and Fidelis Ncube. I did not kill him because I was never trained to be a cold blooded killer, neither would I agree to be one, like ZANU- PF butchering psychopaths who exterminated our people in Mthwakazi with impunity.

I also describe in my book how after Mugabe became Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, with Joshua Nkomo as Home Affairs Minister, my father came to look for me in Zambia, after I had informed him through good Samaritans that I was still alive. This trip also took him to Zimbabwe House in Lusaka, where coincidentally, John Nkomo (Mugabe's cousin, so I am made to believe) had returned to Zambia on ZAPU party duties from Zimbabwe where he already held a ministerial position. I was in the company of my father as he was still looking for his other son, my elder brother George Mhlabuvelile Guduza, who had been brutally killed on the orders of ZIPRA's High Command. My father floored John Nkomo with his fist after he had made an insensitive comment about my late brother. But like father and son, my father did not kill John Nkomo. It is a question of genes that runs through our family simply that we are not cold blooded killers. This is a value bequeathed to me by my forebears (my late father included), and it is a value that I hope to pass on to my children.

Clearly, those who claim to have occupied strategic positions within ZIPRA and its intelligence department, let them write their books and tell us what it is that they did and what contribution they made to ZIPRA's struggle for liberation, instead of hiding under this nonsense of the acronym of "ZPRA" and its so-called legacy of ending "tribalism". Surely, it is baffling and disturbing, to recognise that in this day in age, this legacy group still does not understand that the notion or concept of "tribalism" is synonymous with political differences in any political dispensation, and has nothing to do with any ethnicity, existentialism of a people, nationhood or their nationality? Political parties of Zimbabwe are tribes, so are political parties of Botswana, South Africa, and elsewhere, including in the developed countries of Europe and the Americas. Zimbabwe will never, even in the dreams of this so- called "ZPRA Legacy Group", ever become a nation state, because it was imposed on the people of Mthwakazi through violence, slavery, subjugation, domination and what Jonathan Maphenduka has termed, "rule by conquest". Therefore, until Mthwakazi is freed from this rule by conquest, Zimbabwe shall forever remain a "state nation" born out of violence, and not a "nation state".

There is a chronology, if not a litany of other examples, of why this so-called intelligence department of ZIPRA either was simply incompetent, non-existent, existing by name only, or plain rigid stupid. Firstly, they could not anticipate the Chikerema crisis that resulted in the formation of FROLIZ (Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe). Secondly, they had no intelligence about the disastrous participation of ZIPRA in the formation of ZIPA (Zimbabwe Peoples' Army), which marked the beginning of the first Gukurahundi, when ZIPRA cadres were massacred by ZANLA at Mgagao and Morogoro. At no time during these periods was any formation commanded by ZIPRA personnel. This command structure bias in favour of ZANLA (and Shona hegemony) continued from that time in Tanzania until this very day 42 years after Zimbabwe gained independence. The fact that the current commander of the Zimbabwe army (Lt. Gen. Phillip Valerio Sibanda) was trained by ZIPRA, is not different at all from his predecessors, Rex Nhongo and others. Is this the legacy that these so-called intelligence commanders want to bequeath to our children? Shame on them!

Thirdly, this so-called ZIPRA intelligence department had no intelligence about the bombardment of several ZIPRA camps (all housing refugees) in Zambia on the same October day in 1978 at Freedom Camp, Mkushi Camp, Solwezi Camp and Nampundu Camp) with thousands of innocent lives maimed and injured. Fourthly, this same intelligence department had no intelligence about the consequences of the Lancaster House so-called settlement agreement, the second Gukurahundi.

Fifthly, they had no intelligence about the plans of the ZANU-PF regime to exterminate the people of Mthwakazi from the face of the earth, once it came into power. Sixthly, they had no intelligence about the consequences of disarming ZIPRA at the same time that the third Gukurahundi (Five Brigade) was being trained.

Seventhly, they had no intelligence about the arms that were planted by the ZANU-PF regime in order to destroy ZIPRA and confiscate its properties under Smith's Unlawful Organisations Act. Eighthly they had no intelligence about the arrest and incarceration of ZIPRA's commanders, Lookout Masuku, Dumiso Dabengwa and others, at Chikurubi prison for several years. Ninthly, they had no intelligence about the then Shona hegemony attempts at the life of their Commander-in-Chief, Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, and his subsequent flight to exile. Tenthly, they had no intelligence about the scale of the devastation of the people of Mthwakazi from Gukurahundi's killing fields, rape and other horrible crimes.

Eleventh, they had no intelligence about how the people of Mthwakazi would scramble for a living outside their motherland, Mthwakazi, whilst their land, homes, villages and wealth were taken over and pillaged by the new Shona hegemony colonialists and vampires (fourth and continuing Gukurahundi). The list goes on and on about why in retrospect, no person can reasonably argue that ZIPRA had an intelligence department, let alone a unit. Not least, they had no intelligence of how, what they call their country, Zimbabwe, would look like not only in 42 years' time, but within a year after the ZANU-PF regime and Shona hegemony assumed power.

A view of intelligence as being concerned with the national interests of a people in the struggle for liberation, especially their security and defence, dictates without any shadow of doubt that the overriding goal at all times is to counter any hostile moves or plans of the enemy. There can be no intelligence system in any liberation movement (or in any government for that matter) that operates and acts in a vacuum, or outside the goals of power and security, "order and justice", and ultimately war and peace that determines life and death of the those involved in a liberation struggle as well as after that particular struggle.

From the above, it is quite clear that the so-called intelligence department of ZIPRA had no constituency for which to provide security, defence, order, justice, war, peace, prosperity, and ultimately defend in times of life and death. It simply had no population to defend, apart from imagined robotics of a population. This is very shocking and incredibly alarming, given that a constituency in the name of Mthwakazi identity and statehood existed all along, in plain sight of these charlatans, so-called intelligence gurus.

These charlatans operated in violation of the standard and national interest of Mthwakazi, comprising its physical, political and cultural identity. Yet, this is not surprising at all, because since the demise of Mthwakazi as a state, following its destruction by the forces of colonialism and imperial penetration and domination about 129 years ago, there has been many dodgy characters and charlatans, who have continued in various forms and shades to work against the national interest of Mthwakazi statehood.

Whereas ZAPU (Zimbabwe African Peoples Union) represented an utopian perspective, or rather a pie in the sky dream, that could never be realised in practice as well as in terms of the politics of power and security (due to its overwhelming Shona leadership composition), one expected its military wing, ZIPRA (Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army) to do much better in projecting realism against the politics of dominance and dependence that placed the Mthwakazi question at a perpetual disadvantage.

There can be no question therefore, that for anybody who joined ZIPRA and was subsequently promoted to the ranks within its high command structure that such persons had been aware of the historical roots of domination, subjugation and humiliation of their own people, not only as a theoretical assumption, but as a socio-economic, political and cultural existential reality on the ground. Yet these characters or indeed charlatans, are today so obsessed by identifying themselves as people who occupied intelligence briefs within ZIPRA's high command, but entirely ignorant as to why they rose through the ranks to occupy those positions. My own take is that these characters or charlatans, had been appointed to those high ranking positions within ZIPRA, not because they had any capabilities or anything positive to offer, but because they were usable material that had to be flushed away once they had been used.

Clearly, it is their conception of intelligence that must die, and replaced by that which identifies the people of Mthwakazi, as real human beings, real people with a long history of struggle for liberation, freedom, justice, peace, defence, security and statehood. Similarly, the domination, subjugation and humiliation of the Mthwakazi people by the Shona hegemony must die together with this so-called "ZPRA Legacy Group".

As a point of departure, these so-called intelligence gurus must tell us the exact nature of what their role was within the ZANU-PF regime, not simply that they are retired this and retired that. My own suspicion is that they worked tirelessly with ZANU from inception right through the killing fields of ZIPRA soldiers, as active participants, from Tanzania until their retirement with army ranks from the Zimbabwe army. They must also come clean as to what the late ZIPRA's commander, Rodgers Alfred Nikita Mangena stood for. Some of us can attest to the fact that he was against any notion or concept called Zimbabwe as he used to flag it down with a downward backward hand slash, instead of the upward forward hand slash in every slogan with the name Zimbabwe.

Finally, it is high time that the so-called "ZPRA Legacy Group" smelled the coffee and realised that the Mthwakazi vision and its statehood outcome is unstoppable. This vision is based on the realisation of power, security, order, justice, life and death as well as the defence of the people of Mthwakazi who will succeed in achieving their statehood. Their legacy which is based on a false acronym "ZPRA", cannot be bequeathed to any present and future generations as it cannot advance the aspirations of Mthwakazi people in achieving their security and self-determination.

I thank you.

Dr Churchill Miyesizwe Guduza

MLF President & Federal Republic of Mthwakazi Acting President