The Guns of Matabeleland

Preface

Since the British imperialist-colonialist forces defeated King Lobhengula in 1893 and 1896 the Kingdom of Matabeleland in the then Southern Rhodesia, then Rhodesia, Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and finally Zimbabwe, knew no peace.

Conversely, the violence in Matabeleland could have started when Mzilikazi ka Mashobana from Zululand in South Africa invaded the land, overthrew the local king and militarized the state. After his death, his son Lobhengula continued the military style rule, till the British overthrew him in 1890 and colonised the country.

To overthrow King Lobhengula the British introduced new weapons with which to subdue his warriors. That was the first time a machinegun was used in Matabeleland, to mow down warriors who swarmed the battlefield. Legend has it that the warriors advanced at the Maxim guns, with orders to reach the muzzles and stuff skin skirts into them to stop them spitting fire, which was called ukuvala ngebheshu. Over a hundred of them were cut down until some reached the machine gunners and stabbed them dead with their assegais.

According to Ndebele folklore, King Lobhengula never died as the British historians say. Tradition demands that everyone must believe and say that he ‘vanished.’

That turned out to be good spin from the king’s spindoctors, for it spurred the warriors to fight on, regardless of the odds they were facing. That also contributed to the famous Shangani River massacre of British Major Allan Wilson’s unit, which had been sent to capture the king. The butchering of the British troops was carried out in one of the canniest ambushes in the history of warfare.

After the failure of their rebellion against colonial rule in 1896, most of the warriors bowed to British rule. But some of them refused to live under the white man’s government, and preferred to live as animals in the forests and mountains, with the hope that some miracle would remove the British from power and restore their kingdom.

Those warriors, armed with assegais, knives, axes and sometimes guns, lived in the forests as fugitives and survived through stealing from local communities. Their lawless lives often ended up with them being sought for more serious crimes that included rape and murder.

The colonial government considered them as mere bandits, and its British South Africa Police, the BSAP, spent much time hunting for them in the forests and mountains. The colonialists also circulated propaganda among the indigenous population to reduce sympathy for the so-called bandits. In time the locals lost understanding of the real cause of the warriors, and referred to them as obhinya, in local lingo, and sometimes helped the colonial police apprehend them, get them tried and often sentenced to hang.

One of those obhinya legends was an old warrior called Sibuyakhona ka Zidlekhaya ka Ngalonde umfoka Zingeni ka Gatsheni wase Nkandla, who, as a younger man had been a colonel with King Lobhengula’s crack Insukamini Regiment, which was credited with wiping out British Major Allan Wilson’s unit at Shangani, in one of the most memorable battles of those days. Aged about 50 in the 1920s, Sibuyakhona was holed up in the Dolo Mountain range at the fringes of the Filabusi or Insiza and Mberengwa districts; armed with a muzzle-loading Winchester rifle, an assegai, knobkerrie and a panga.

Sibuyakhona was said to have invaded the fields that lay near the mountainside and reaped supplies of food, and also stole chickens and goats from the villagers, which he stored in his hideout in the mountains. He also raided the lands of white farmers, where he rustled cattle and sold them to secret customers in the black communal lands. The warrior murdered those who tried to stop or apprehend him, and terrorised the villagers he believed were informing on him to the colonial police.

The BSAP relentlessly hunted for him in the mountains, but failed to catch him. The Filabusi police chief would not believe that Sibuyakhona was actually armed with a gun, largely because his government did not acknowledge that the warriors could be that sophisticated. So the policemen he sent out to hunt for Sibuyakhona were only armed with batons and handcuffs. At one moment when they surrounded him he pinned them down with fire from his Winchester rifle, killed one and wounded two cops, and escaped.

Then at one time he abducted a woman and took her to his hideout. He lived with her as his wife in his cave for years, and raped her countless times till they bore a baby girl. Sibuyakhona further infuriated the woman by attempting to murder the baby, because it made enough noise to attract those who were hunting for him.

The woman then brewed some beer for him, which she laced with a narcotic herb called mligazigone. The bandit drank the concoction and got hopelessly drunk. As he snored in drunken stupor she left the cave and went to report him to nearby villagers, who in turn called the Filabusi BSAP and he was subsequently arrested.

However, Sibuyakhona escaped from the Filabusi police station before the cops locked him up. It was said he simply dashed out of the charge office, outran those who pursued him, leapt over the six metre high perimeter fence and disappeared into the woods.

After that he abducted another woman from the nearby village, and lived with her in a cave on the Jenda Mountain at Sanale in Filabusi. In an intense hunt for him the police surrounded the mountain and its foothills, but all they found was the traumatized woman.

The BSAP never found him alive. All they eventually came up with was his corpse, which they found in a cave at Nyamimi Mountain near Silalatshani in the west of the district. It was believed he had been bitten by a mountain cobra and died from the poisoning.

This continued up to the late 1920s; when the threat from the old warriors diminished as most of them died of old age. That phenomenon nonetheless never ended with the death of the aged warriors. There were also reports that they sometimes recruited younger men into their ranks, especially those on the run from the colonial police. Throughout the 1920s and up to the late 1940s the old warriors’ legend lived on.

Some consequences of the First and Second World wars bolstered the resistance to British colonialist rule among the indigenous population. In 1916 colonial army officials visited the villages and recruited hundreds of men to join the newly formed Rhodesia Native Regiment. The recruits were trained in modern warfare and issued with uniforms, a khaki bush hat, shirt and jacket, and short trousers. Boots were not issued to them, the colonial commanders considered them more agile when barefoot, taking a cue from Zulu King Shaka’s military policies.

Those men fought alongside their white counterparts in the jungles of East Africa. They suffered and died together, and also understood that they were fighting the Axis forces to prevent them from taking over their countries and enslaving their people. That regiment was disbanded soon after the end of the war, in 1919.

However, soon after the Second World War broke out, the ‘native’ regiment was reinstated in 1940, renamed the Rhodesia African Rifles, popularly known by its acronym, the RAR. Again the black men from the villages fought the Nazis alongside their white counterparts, in the harsh deserts of Egypt and the treacherous South-east Asian jungles of Burma, the country now called Myanmar.

When the world war ended, those who had taken part in fighting Hitler’s forces preached that if the British took up arms against Germany to defend their freedom, they could similarly challenge the British to end colonial rule. That went down the generations, till it reached a stage when that advice was implemented.

In the late 1960s there emerged a sophisticated type of ubhinya, who was armed with an AK-47 or a semi-automatic Russian Simonov rifle, grenades and shells, and told the villagers that he had come to liberate them from British colonialist rule. That one said the colonialists would be overthrown and replaced with a Marxist-Leninist government of the people, as it had happened in China, the Soviet Union and other communist lands, from where he got the weapons he was carrying.

The colonial government’s spindoctors once more switched on their propaganda machine, often through the native mouthpieces, the African Times newspaper and the African Service of the Rhodesia Broadcasting Corporation. The government argued that those armed bandits were nothing more than any other common criminal.

Later it lamely added that Soviet Russian and Chinese communists had provided them with deadly weapons for the sole purpose of killing their own people, for no reason at all. Soon after that the colonial government referred to them as communist terrorists.

The BSAP played seek and hide with the bandits, and the terrorists. In the early 1970s, the Rhodesian government of Ian Smith announced with apparent amazement that the terrorists did not hesitate to ‘shoot first’ when confronted by police or other government armed forces.

The terrorists killed several policemen who tried to arrest them in those days, which led to the government deploying the army to hunt them down. Some of the terrorists were captured in horrendous firefights, and upon interrogation the Smith government learned with shock that those men had received advanced military training in other African states and overseas communist lands.

Later on the government forces were confronted by larger bands of the terrorists, who were armed with even more sophisticated and deadlier weaponry that included the latest version of the AK-47, the AKM; RPD and PKM machineguns, mortar and RPG rocket launchers. They also mined the roads that were used by government forces, rendering them extremely dangerous and unusable. That was the time when real fighting resumed in the Kingdom of Matabeleland, and in the rest of the country for that matter.

The terrorists, who were actually guerilla fighters sent by the Zapu and Zanu liberation movements, engaged the Rhodesian forces in increasing violence that ended up a conflagration that engulfed the whole country in a full-scale civil war. That brutal war ended in 1980, after about a hundred thousand people had been killed and maimed, and thousands more displaced.

The fighting was stopped after the historic Lacanster House conference in London among the two liberation movements, the British government and Ian Smith’s Zimbabwe-Rhodesia ‘puppet’ government delegation that was led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa. From that meeting the bickering politicians agreed to hold elections to determine who seizes the reins of power. They also agreed to a ceasefire and the demobilisation of irregular armed forces, which included the Zapu and Zanu guerillas.

Zapu and Zanu had earlier agreed to a joint representation in the polls, but the latter later changed its mind and decided to go it alone, and went on to win the 1980 elections. Many people in Matabeleland, the Zapu stronghold, were infuriated by the results of the elections.

Various reasons were postulated for Zapu’s loss of the election in places outside Matabeleland and the Midlands. Some were allegations that the British were bent on installing Zanu in government because it had weaker links to communism, and could in the future be persuaded to abandon its Maoist ideology, the Chinese brand of communism. Having been supported by China, it was said that the British considered Zanu a better devil than Zapu, which was supported by the dreaded communist superpower, the Soviet Union, and would impose communism in a dictatorship that would ‘seize private property and plunge the country into chaos.’

Most Ndebele people had known little or nothing about Zanu as a formidable political and liberation movement. They had grown up knowing Zapu as the sole movement that would eventually unseat the colonial government. That had been drilled into their heads by the Zapu spindoctors, to the extent that they considered their leader Joshua Nkomo as the country’s sole president or prime minister-in-waiting, and sort of worshipped him.

Soon after the elections some people claimed that truckloads of ballot boxes filled with Zapu votes were cast into the flooded Limpopo River, and washed away into the Indian Ocean. And one Zapu guerilla was said to have crushed his transistor radio with his boots as it announced the results of the polls.

There was a surge of despondency and disillusionment among many of the former Zapu guerilla fighters soon after the elections, who were still armed. A compounded situation later developed, leading to some of them refusing to live under the new government. Just as their elders in times gone, they took up arms and lived in the forests and mountains, determined to lead lawless lives as the latest brand of obhinya.

Government intelligence services, headed by the Central Investigations Organisation, the CIO that was inherited from the ousted Rhodesian regime, deliberately or mistakenly exaggerated such action by the former Zapu guerillas as a calculated move to overthrow the newly installed government. As the numbers of armed dissidents grew in the southern parts of the country, the Zanu government announced that the armed bandits were actually Zapu’s Zipra soldiers in a concerted bid to topple it. As the turbulence continued some Zapu leaders were put on trial on charges of helping the dissidents, but were often acquitted because of the absence of proof that they and their party had any organizational role with the insurgents. And conversely, they were often rearrested when the state claimed to have fresh evidence against them, and kept them in custody without charges laid against them.

Soon after independence the guerilla armies of Zanu and Zapu had to be integrated into the newly formed Zimbabwe National Army, but that proved to be an almost insurmountable task. Some of the ex-combatants did not trust the agreements their political leaders had made with the British colonialists, which had ended the war.

One of the agreements was that the guerrillas be confined to camps that were called ‘assembly points’, and be gradually disarmed. The Rhodesian Army would be confined to its barracks, and not necessarily disarmed as it was said to be the recognised country’s army.

Many of the fighters were wary of that set up; as they feared that he Rhodesian soldiers would surround and massacre them while they were grouped together. Under those circumstances some of them refused to disarm and hid their weapons, just in case they would need them.

There was the case of a train load of weapons that mysteriously disappeared between the Mozambican border and Mutare, which baffled investigators. However, analysts said the weapons were hidden by Zanla guerillas because they did not trust the Rhodesian army.

In some instances rogue Zipra and Zanla elements had to be hunted down by their own comrades, who sometimes had to kill them. That slowed up the process of integrating the armed forces, and by the end of the first year only about 15 000 of the 70 000 ex-guerillas had been absorbed into the new army.

Shortly later the government moved some of the Zanla and Zipra guerillas to cantonments in the Entumbane suburb of Bulawayo. In November 1980, following an address by a fiery Zanu politician, who threatened to unleash his fighters on Zapu supporters, fighting erupted between the two armies.

The battles spilled over to the other suburbs of the city, filling the streets with fiery tempered AK-47 wielding gunmen. The Western Suburbs reverberated with gunfire and scared the hell out of city dwellers who had not witnessed the earlier bush war. The Entumbane mayhem ended two days later after the ex-Rhodesian army’s RAR soldiers chased the guerillas out of the city, to the loss of scores of civilian lives and millions of dollars worth of property.

Two months later the Zanla and Zipra fighters based at the Entumbane cantonments turned on each other again in raging battles that lit up the evening sky with gunfire. The fighting quickly spread to the rest of the city, and other bases where there were former Zanla and Zipra soldiers together, like in nearby Glenville and Connemara in the Midlands.

At the peak of the Entumbane fighting, Zipra regiments who were based at Gwayi River Mine set out for Bulawayo to join the carnage. That was a particularly combat starved unit that had been trained in regular warfare by crack Cuban instructors in Angola. After the training the unit had not been deployed during the war, because at that time the situation demanded personnel trained in guerilla warfare. When that unit moved to a base called MTD in Zambia, the frustration of its members over being battle-starved was manifested by constant shootouts among comrades.

Legend has it that when that unit left its Gwayi River Mine base, its commander aimed to seize Bulawayo city and declare it an independent enclave, to claim recognition after being ignored for so long.

The unit’s tanks rumbled along the Victoria Falls Road heading for Bulawayo, followed by a convoy of APCs filled with some of the best trained and armed Zipra soldiers. About fifty kilometres later their convoy was ambushed by former Rhodesian army and air force units. Paratroopers, fighter jets and attack helicopters attacked the Zipra men, blowing up some of their Russian T52 tanks and armoured cars, and drove them back to their base.

When the fighting in Bulawayo ended, about a thousand people had been killed, and about half the city’s residents had fled. Months later there were reports of grenades killing residents when they dug their gardens in Entumbane suburb; and of boys playing with real AK-47s and live ammo, which they picked up in the woods at the edge of the suburb, near the Victoria Falls railway line.

Soon after that Zipra men in military camps complained that some of their colleagues were systematically being taken away and murdered secretly. They also felt they were being treated badly, where their Zanla counterparts were favoured for senior positions. A short while later many Zipra men deserted the army, taking their weapons with them.

In February 1982 weapons caches were found in Zapu owned properties of Ascot Farm near Bulawayo and Hampton Farm near Gweru. At first it seemed ordinary for hidden weapons to be found, as it had been happening throughout the country, as the war ended only a year before.

But soon after that Zanu politicians charged that Zapu had actually bought the farms in order to store the weapons in them, which they said were enough to arm a whole brigade to be used in a swift move to overthrow their government.

In a February 14, 1982 address in Marondera, Prime Minister Robert Mugabe said: "Zapu bought more than 25 farms and more than 30 business enterprises throughout the country. We have now established they were not genuine business enterprises, but places of hiding military weapons to start another war at an appropriate time. Dr Nkomo is trying to overthrow my government. Zapu and its leader are like a cobra in a house. The only way to deal effectively with a snake is to strike and destroy its head."

A few days later Zapu leaders were expelled from government, some were arrested and charged with treason. Their trials however provided no evidence to convict them. They were acquitted, discharged, but rearrested and detained without charges nevertheless. The Rhodesian government imposed state-of-emergency was still on at that time.

After that larger numbers of Zipra men left the army, their main reason being fear for their lives. Soon the province of Matabeleland was crawling with heavily armed men who answered almost to no one. They however often claimed to be led by Zapu, and to gather more credence and support from the traditionally Zapu support base, some of them wore the Father Zimbabwe badge that featured the smiling face of Zapu leader Dr Joshua Nkomo, which was largely manufactured by semi-skilled craftsmen and readily available in street vendor stalls and shops all around the country.

Later research revealed that some of the dissidents were not former Zipra cadres. Some were mere criminals on the run from the law, and some were youths who hardly had any military or weapons training. All they had been able to do was lay their hands on a gun, and there were plenty guns and other dangerous weapons lying around at that time.

Some of them were even unarmed, they carried unloaded rifles as they could not obtain the bullets. Their sole means of acquiring the bullets was to attack government troops or police; for which they first needed to have the bullets.

Some of the armed dissidents were believed to be hitmen hired by Zanu politicians, to spoil the image of Zapu and pave the way for the ‘one party state’ they were calling for. The 1986 massacre of missionaries in Matopo was largely blamed on that kind of dissidents; especially because it was common knowledge that the deceased took no sides in the conflict, which the politicians regarded as siding with the rebels. Zapu politicians dismissed as fabricated the official announcement that the missionaries had been murdered in a dispute with the insurgents over land.

Some of the armed dissidents were believed to be government secret service operatives and police undercover men; modelled in the ex-Rhodesian Selous Scouts style, which specialised in impersonating guerillas during the liberation war. Nonetheless, the government vehemently denied that.

Several times the Zapu party denied responsibility for the violence in Matabeleland. Its leader, Dr Joshua Nkomo publicly denounced the armed dissidents and urged his supporters not to support them. He reminded his followers that they had needed to sacrifice themselves to overthrow the colonial government of Ian Smith in the 1970s; but then there was no more need to suffer the violence all over again.

As a solution he advised the government to use the police, and not the army, to track the armed dissidents and arrest them. But ruling politicians argued that he wanted it done that way to protect ‘his men’ from being captured or killed, and so that they would consolidate their operations.

Nonetheless, soon after that the dissidents lost most of their meagre support in the province, which made them turn against the population. They made matters worse for themselves when they raped women, brutally assaulted and murdered people they suspected of selling them out to the government.

They systematically destroyed government property and committed series of armed robberies on long-distance buses and shopping centres. They also murdered government officials, policemen and soldiers, and both Zapu and Zanu supporters in a chilling campaign of violence.

The core of the rebels was essentially small groups of armed ex-Zipra fugitives who hardly had any political leadership to direct them, and to whom to be answerable. They instinctively conformed to the Zipra code of conduct under which they had been trained during the liberation war, hoping for a miracle to save their souls. The others, who included some over-enthusiastic local youths and criminals on the run from the law, often joined up, and the distinctions among them became very narrow.

There were also Super Zapu rebels, who were said to be infiltrated into the country by the South African apartheid regime’s secret service, to add to the confusion, in its concerted bid to destabilize the Southern African region. Those were believed to be mainly former Rhodesian security special forces personnel who sought to gain the trust of the population through the ensuing chaos.

However, those were not supported by the ex-Zipra dissidents, largely owing to the Zipra men’s Marxist indoctrination against South Africa’s capitalism and apartheid. The South African secret service intensified its search for former Zipra men to join it. It did manage to get a few men, but were not enough to influence the opinion of the other Zipra dissidents.

That lack of cooperation and trust between the two armed sides played a major role in the disintegration of the Super Zapu outfit. That ultimately prevented the development of an outright imbroglio, to the magnitude of the one responsible for the chilling bloodshed that was in Mozambique and Angola at that time, and the Zipra dissidents clinched credit for that, albeit never publicly acknowledged.

There were also those who operated as individuals, lone gunmen who were often extremely dangerous criminals who committed heinous murders and rapes. Sometimes those were also being hunted down by the other rebels for one reason or another. That manifested the disorganization the armed dissidents faced, and the general commotion in Matabeleland and the Midlands.

The government deployed a special army unit, the Fifth Brigade, ostensibly to fight the rebels, but it focused on massacring civilians, in some of the most chilling bloodshed the world had ever witnessed.

When the fighting ended under the March 1988 amnesty for the insurgents, only a hundred and twenty-two rebels surrendered. The government maintained that plenty more had been killed and captured. It was also reported that many more had fled into Botswana and South Africa, as they still would not trust promises of safety from the politicians.

In the end all that costly confusion was blamed on overreaction to a perceived threat to the state. The people of Matabeleland were left grieving after about thirty thousand of their folks had been killed during a period of chilling bloodshed and mayhem.

Chapter One

The whole of the previous week an incessant downpour had threatened to flood the whole of the Midlands province in Zimbabwe’s central highlands, and almost played havoc onto the maize and cotton crop that was sprouting in the fields.

One of the farmers in that area, Simon Gwesela had tilled that land in the Zhombe area since he was a young man. Now seventy-five years old, with a persistent backache and stiff joints, the spirit was still willing, but the body was now rebelling.

That morning he surveyed his farmland in his plot, which he had bought for one pound fifteen shillings and twenty pence, during the British colonial administration’s land allotment to black farmers, in what was called the African Purchase Area, according to the Land Tenure Act of those days.

That was not really fertile or reliable land, especially if compared to what white farmers got in the crest of the highveld. But Gwesela had as a policy that he should work as hard as he could, with whatever he had, to satisfy the needs of his family. From that land he had managed to feed his family of two wives and nine children, and also send all his six daughters and three sons to school.

His children had all reached high school and attained tertiary education. Three of the girls were nurses; two were schoolteachers and one a housewife married to a respected farmer in the same area. One of his sons was an accountant with a reputable firm in the nearby city of Gweru, then called Gwelo; and another was a clerk with the colonial government’s Ministry of Native Affairs.

The other of his sons, who was called Rich, had attended a farming course at Domboshawa Agricultural College and passed with flying colours. Simon Gwesela was very proud of Rich because he believed that he took directly after him, by loving the land just as he did. He often said he had noticed that in Rich by the time he was born, and that was why he named him Rich, because he would grow up to be a successful, rich and famous farmer.

However his pride was dented soon after Rich graduated from agricultural college. Young Rich had returned home after graduating and was keen to display his farming skills, which would also challenge his father’s traditional methods. He was also in line to get employed as an agricultural demonstrator with the local district administrator’s Native Lands Department.

But at that time war had broken out between the nationalist liberation forces and the colonial or Rhodesian UDI government of Ian Smith. In the next week soldiers stormed the home and took Rich away for interrogation as a suspected guerrilla recruit.

Simon Gwesela’s son did not return home since the Rhodesian troops seized him and took him away. When old Gwesela was hoping to see his son back the soldiers came looking for Rich, saying he had escaped from their custody. They threatened to burn down his home and grain bins if he did not reveal his whereabouts, but old Gwesela had no clue. They then took him to their base and tortured him, which included shocking him with electricity, but when they realized he knew nothing about his son, or when they got fed up with the evil action, they released him.

When the war ended six years later Simon Gwesela’s son returned home alive and complete. He told him how he had escaped from the Rhodesian soldiers and went on to swim across the crocodile infested Zambezi River, then crossed into neighbouring Zambia.

There he was welcomed by the Zapu liberation movement, which enlisted him into its Zipra army. The Zapu guerilla army then trained him in basic guerilla warfare at one of its instruction centres called Emagojini Base. Six months later he was sent for more rigorous military instruction in Angola, Libya and Cuba.

Rich also told his father the blood curdling stories of his exploits as a guerilla fighter with a crack regiment of the Zipra army, which he claimed never lost or drew a battle throughout the war.

Old Gwesela thanked his ancestors for protecting his son from all those chilling dangers of the war, and for bringing him back to him unharmed, to resume his career in farming. For that he slaughtered an ox and had his younger wife brew forty gallons of the traditional Seven days beer to celebrate the occasion.

In one of those days old Gwesela was happy as he watched his son driving the old Fiat tractor, a disc plough turning the soil upside down to reveal the rich loam in which he would plant the maize.

Rich stopped the tractor at the end of the field and jumped down to have a drink of the traditional mahewu that was brewed by his ageing mother. His father was collecting the tools he had been using to repair the perimeter fence that surrounded the field.

Gwesela looked at his son and said: I’m so proud of you, son. When I die this entire plot will remain yours because you’re the only one interested and capable of taking care of the land. Even the spirits are happy that you’re there to further our tradition and their wishes.

Rich said: Thank you dad, I always wanted to be like you in all ways. I love the smell of the rich, freshly turned loam; I love it much more than I would love any woman in this world.

His father grinned, exposing the gaps in his gums, and said: I’m sure you love the land my boy, but don’t compare it with the love of a woman, that’s something very different as you’ll soon realise.

Father and son laughed, then Rich climbed back onto the tractor, revved up the coughing engine and started off into the land. At the end of the field Rich turned the tractor into the next furrow, heading for the other end of the field where he had left his dad.

As he did that he noticed a motor vehicle that had just parked at the other end of the field. It was a green van with a matching canvas cover over its canopy, a Land Rover of the kind generally used by government departments, which had been inherited from the Rhodesian British colonial administration.

He wondered who that government official would be. Could it be the recently appointed district agricultural officer coming to inspect the land, or wanting to hire his services, as he was known at the lands offices to be a qualified farmer? He drove the battered tractor ahead till he reached the end of the field.

Three men were talking to his father, and as he came closer one of them signaled to him and shouted: Hey! Cut off the damned engine and come here! Hey, make it quick!

Rich wondered who that was, who would display such arrogance without even greeting him, in his father’s plot. Nevertheless, Rich had learned to calm down in some of the hottest circumstances; he switched off the engine and remained perched in the driver’s seat.

The man came over to him and said: Are you Rich Gwesela?

I am; what do you want? Rich answered.

We’ve come to collect you, you’re wanted at the police station, the man said. You’ve to come with us right now.

What for? Rich asked.

You’ll be told there. Get down and let’s go, quick!

You’ve to tell me what you want me for! You’re not even in police uniform, how am I to tell who you’re?

The man moved closer, whipped out an identification card from his jacket pocket and stuffed it beneath Rich’s nose. That’s if you can see and read, the man said. If you can’t do either, just get down and let’s go before you waste our time and get us rough with you!

Rich did not need to read more than the large initial letters to realise that the man was a secret service agent of the Central Investigations Organisation, the CIO, a remnant of the colonial Smith regime’s intelligence machinery, the new government had retained.

He also noticed the unmistakable foresighted barrel of an AK-47 protruding from the man’s jacket. Then he said:I thought you’d say you’re the CID cops, but you’re CIO! What do you want me for?

I said you’ll be told at the police station, you deaf? I also tell you for the last time to come with us without wasting our time!

As Rich calmly got down from the tractor his father said to the man: He’s my son, I believe I have the right to know whether he’s committed some crime. What is he being arrested for?

"Mudhara, are you deaf as your son? I said that will be told to him at the police station, and if you’re so curious you can also come along with us. I guess you’ll be of much help telling us what else he does, besides pretending to be driving that useless tractor."

I’m certainly coming, the old man said. And don’t say my tractor is useless, it helps feed plenty people!

I believe so, well, right now there’s no more space for you in my van, but I’ll certainly come to pick you up very early tomorrow morning, the CIO man said. I can promise you that.

The man turned and marched towards their Land Rover, where his colleagues were already shoving Rich inside.

Old Gwesela considered that his son had been taken away from him, again at a time when he was expecting him to display his farming skills. He wondered whether his ancestral spirits were really on his side, especially after he recently slaughtered an ox and had his younger wife brew forty-four gallons of African beer for them.

As the Land Rover jolted on in the rutted dirt road Rich again asked the CIO men what that was all about. One of the men, who had not spoken before, said: Shut up!

I can’t shut up while you put me through so much trouble, for a reason you don’t even want me to know! What’s this? If it’s a kidnapping tell me what it’s all about!

But the man shut up.

Then the one who had spoken to him earlier said: You must know better, you’ve been implicated in a horde of crimes that include armed robberies, murders, rapes, possession of arms-of-war and high treason. I couldn’t tell that to your ailing dad because he would collapse and die of shock at the gravity of the plenty crime charges you’re facing. I wouldn’t want to feel responsible for his death.

Who says I done all that?

It’s not for me to say, I just been sent to collect you; so no more stupid questions! the man said.

The old Land Rover roared on till it reached the Kwekwe bound road, drove on and passed the iron mining town, whereupon Rich realized that they were not going to the local police station.

Which police station are you taking me to? Rich asked his captors.

Shut up! the man barked. Open your stinking mouth once more and I’ll put a bullet into it!

They drove on for a few more hours and reached the city of Kadoma. They then drove into the town centre, passed a few streets, then turned into the local central police station.

The CIO men handed him over to the police, who promptly locked him up, without telling him what he was being charged with. When he insisted from the cell bars to know what his charge was, the burly policeman said: I didn’t bring you here, ask those who did.

But it’s you who’s locking me up in this cell! Tell me why you’re locking me up therefore! Rich insisted.

I can’t, the cop said. But the state of emergency allows people to be locked up for as long as I don’t know without any charge.

Rich retreated to the interior of the cell as the cop banged the steel door closed and locked, then locked again with his foot-long keys. Rich was further dismayed that he was alone in that cell.

Shortly later three CIO men, dressed in smart and expensive business suits, long neckties sticking onto their necks, dark glasses obscuring their eyes; came to the cell block accompanied by the burly policeman. The big cop noisily unlocked the heavy steel cell door, swung it wide open and said: Get out!

From there the secret service men herded Rich to a block of offices at the far end of the police station that was called Section C, over a hundred metres away from the rest of the station’s buildings. He was then ushered into an office, in which a balding and bespectacled man sat behind a huge mahogany desk, which was littered with thick and thin books, booklets and files. One of the titles was A thesis of treason, and the man was called The Professor.

As soon as the men who had ushered Rich in left, The Professor said to him: Excuse me a while my friend, I know I’ve to get you out of the trouble you’re in with those boys. I just have to make a call to my wife; you must know how it is to be a husband and father.

He said that as he punched the numbers on the phone. Soon he spoke to someone in a manner that made Rich doubt that whoever that was, was his wife, or was even female at all. After ending the call and replacing the telephone receiver The Professor turned to Rich and said: My good friend, I’m told you’re in some trouble with those boys who brought you here. What’s it all about?

I don’t know nothing, answered Rich. They took me off the fields where they found me working, and brought me here. They said I’ll be told here what it’s all about.

You mean that’s all? The Professor looked straight into his eyes.

They say I commit armed robberies, but honestly I don’t ever do that, Rich said I don’t have any time for anything other than cultivating my dad’s land. And I don’t even have a gun.

Why would they do that to you, eh Rich?

I don’t know, answered Rich.

I think you must know, The Professor said. I don’t think they can just pick on you among millions of people in this country, just for the fun of it. Can they?

They must’ve just done that.

Oh yes they have, The Professor said. You’ve to understand that their job is to deal with people who commit serious crimes and threaten the stability of the state.

How can I threaten the state by merely working in the fields? It’s the only thing I do in my life, which in any case improves the well being of the community, and ultimately that of the state! said Rich.

The Professor said: I don’t doubt that you’re a man of above average intelligence, but you’ve to know that I’m not called The Professor only for these spectacles I’m wearing.

Are you called that for charging innocent people with crimes they didn’t commit? Rich asked.

The Professor did not answer that one. Instead he opened one of the files that lay on his massive desk, studied it for a while and said: Now just listen to me telling you about your real world; the one that doesn’t disguise you as a tractor driver, listen carefully.

I’m not a tractor driver, I’m a farmer. What’s all this about?

The Professor adjusted his seat and leaned forward.Ignoring that response he said: Besides all else as to where you were born, where you attended school and the like, I’ll tell you about your exploits during the liberation war, which are quite impressive.

After a pause The Professor glared at him through his spectacles, then he opened his mouth and said: You commanded a group of crack Zipra guerilla fighters, who often wiped out any other military units who dared challenge them. Is that right?

What does that have to do with all this? I thought it all ended with the end of the fighting! I didn’t even start that war!

Okay, The Professor continued. Your group was also implicated in the shooting down of the two civilian Viscount planes near Kariba, where you also mowed down survivors with machinegun fire.

I’dnever do anything like that! Is that what I’m being held for?

Not at all, we’re coming to that. The Professor then seized another file, opened it slowly, as if careful not to tear the pages, then studied it briefly. After that he said: It’s not to do with the war, but what you did when it ended, and continued to do till you got arrested today.

I don’t understand. What’s that? Rich asked.

The Professor patted his gun in his hip, for a reason that passed unclear to Rich. Then he proceeded.

When the war ended you went to an assembly point that was at Saint Luke’s Mission in Lupane, where there were five hundred of your Zipra pals. Do you remember that?

Why, of course I do.

You left the camp before you were officially demobilised or discharged, and avoided being integrated into the national army.

Rich did not respond to that, so The Professor proceeded.

According to our very accurate records you left fully armed, with an AK- 47 submachinegun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, grenades and a loaded pistol. Where are those weapons right now?

I didn’t take any weapons with me. It wouldn’t have been possible for me, even if I had wanted to; the MPs there were very strict.

You were undoubtedly smarter than them. What was your reason for deserting your comrades, not joining the national army or going through the normal demobilization process?

I didn’t want to become a soldier; neither did I want to waste my time there, where we spent months doing nothing. I went out to resume my farming career.

What nonsense! You say you didn’t want to be a soldier when you were already one, and a very experienced and skilful one at that! What would you do with an AK-47 and grenades in your farming career?

I already told you I never took any goddamned weapons out of that assembly point! Even if I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have succeeded in smuggling anything like that out of there. Ask any of the guys who were commanders at the camp, or just anyone else who was there at that time, they’ll tell you that!

I’ll do that later, The Professor said. But now tell me where you keep the money you get from robbing buses and shops, and also give me the name of the person you eventually hand it over to.

I never robbed anyone! I couldn’t do anything like that. I told you, as my family and the whole of my neighbourhood can witness, I never left the land, I worked...

Who orders you to commit the robberies and shoot up police and army patrols? The Professor asked.

I never did that! answered Rich.

Of course you weren’t willing to do it because you wanted to settle as a farmer, as records show that you did well in training as a farmer at Domboshawa, but there’s this someone who wants you to be his gunman. All you need is just give me his name, and I’ll ensure you get released, to get back to your land, or did you say it’s your dad’s.

There’s no such thing, I don’t know what you’re talking about!

Tell me, what do you know about Super Zapu?

Nothing, it’s the first time I hear the word.

Are you sure of what you’re saying?

Of course, why not? Rich said.

Well, I don’t have time to waste, said The Professor. "I’ve tried to help you pursue your farming career, but you’re so darn stupid you want to suffer for the sins of the people you hide from me, who just want to use you for their selfish ends! You want to do it like Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for other people’s sins?

From here you’ll be taken to the place where you’ll meet The Devil, who’ll roast your balls on hot coals and feed them to his dogs, or stuff them down your throat, if you’re still alive. Are you ready for that?

Rich just stared at The Professor and said nothing.

Moments later the men who had brought Rich into The Professor’s office re- entered. They seized him, hauled him to his feet and dragged him out, the leg irons clanking loud in the passage.

They dragged him to a secluded part of the police station, far away from where ordinary cops did their work. They herded him to a block of cells that had no windows, from where sounds of human agony emerged, and into a long and dimly lit corridor that was lined with heavily barred cells.

When they reached the end of the passage they handed him over to a huge man who sported a forest of a beard, who filled up his tiny office. The man faced Rich and said: Welcome my friend, I’ve heard about you. I’m called The Devil and my job is to roast your balls with electricity, then drag your toenails off with a pair of pliers, cut off your ears, lips and fingers, which I’ll roast and stuff down your throat! That is if you really want me to do that, or you can get back to where you’ve been and talk it over with the guys who brought you here?

Rich just stared at The Devil without answering.

Do you understand what I say? The Devil asked him again.

You can do whatever you like, Rich said.

You’re right, besides the report here says you’ve failed The Professor, no one ever does that and lives, The Devil said. Your date is tomorrow morning at six; I won’t take chances with such a hardened nut like you. You go straight to the shooting range by the mine dump, that’s where you’ll end. The executioners will place your corpse in a body bag and mail it to your mother, or you can ask them to cremate it to save her the trouble of holding your pieces together, as that’s all that’llbe left of you after they’re through with you.

After that Rich was locked up in a single cell which had a jammed toiled that stank like bloody hell, and was so small he could touch all the walls standing in its centre. It was also infested with all kinds of unpleasant and aggressive insects, most prominent being mosquitoes the size of the queen bee, which promptly attacked him as if they had been trained and instructed to do so.

At the Connemara Military Base near Gweru newly promoted Major Sipho Bheshu had just completed overseeing the RSM drilling his men, and was now contemplating a cold beer at the officers’ mess. He strode off to his house to take off his military tunic, for he never wanted to drink while in uniform.

As he walked in his trained and measured steps the commanding officer’s adjutant intercepted and saluted him.

Yes, Lieutenant Chikauro, what’s it? he said to the man.

The CO wants to see you immediately, sir, the adjutant said.

Major Bheshu briskly marched ahead of the lieutenant towards the regiment commander’s office.

The commanding officer, Brigadier-General Tendai Makore was a short, stocky, middle-aged man who hated wasting time. That had been drilled into him throughout his decade long military career. He often told his men that a human lifetime is as short as the lifespan of a mosquito, so not even a second of it must be wasted.

Major Bheshu saluted Gen Makore, who in turn said to him: Report to Army HQ in Causeway9am tomorrow.

May I know what it’s about, sir, the major asked.

I haven’t been told.

Could it be about promotion?

I don’t know, major, but that’s likely. You get promoted once, you open up more opportunities for yourself; it’s how I rose through the ranks myself. But you still may have your rank stripped off, as you know how unpredictable a military career can be. Good or bad luck to you, said General Makore.

Chapter Two

In the early hours of that morning Rich Gwesela was still awake, having not slept a wink throughout the night in the stinking single cell at Kadoma police station. Birds were chirping outside and making all kinds of musical and other sounds around the area, as the dawncrept in. The sky was overcast, dark and massive clouds building up in persistent rumbling of thunder accompanied by a heavenly fireworks display of blinding lightning that crisscrossed the sky.

The darkness outside, punctuated by a few obscure stars which Rich saw through the only tiny and heavily barred window, made it seem it was still about midnight. He no longer had his watch, but guessed the time to be somewhere near The Devil’s six in the morning, the time he would be taken for summary execution.

He continued thinking about his predicament; wondering how his circumstances had somersaulted that way. He explored his situation on and on, but found no solution.

Metallic footsteps rang out in the corridor, however not accompanied by human voices. Then a jingling of keys and the clanking of the lock as a key turned in it. Next the door flew open and three men in business suits and dark glasses stood there. The men were armed with heavy calibre pistols that were visibly tucked into their belts, one of them sporting a folding butt AKM rifle.

Get out! one of the men barked.

Where’re you taking me to this time? Rich asked.

To the shooting range, said the man.

Why? Rich asked.

Shut up! the man barked.

You mean you’ll be executing me!

I said shut up, son-of-a bitch!

One of the men suggested that they handcuff him and also restrict him with leg irons again. But another said: We don’t need to do that, in fact I’d love to see him try to escape if he’s that adventurous. If he does that we won’t have to worry about him any more.

The one with the AKM prodded him on with the Russian weapon’s bevel pointed barrel as they herded him along the corridor. The rifle’s muzzle remained stuck onto Rich’s back as they headed for an olive green Land Rover that was parked in the courtyard.

The AKM man would not know what happened in the next moment.In a fraction of a split second Rich sent him flying backwards with a wild roundhouse kick, instantaneously and simultaneously snatching the pistol off the belt of the man next to him. The third man whipped out his revolver and fired. He did that in a fast cross draw that would be envied by many Wild West cowboys, but the shot was inaccurate. The bullet grazed Rich’s forehead and ploughed through