Fidel Castro's 1977 Southern Africa Tour: A Report to Honecker
FIDEL CASTRO'S 1977 SOUTHERN AFRICA TOUR:
A REPORT TO HONECKER
Editor's Note: In early 1977, Cuban President Fidel Castro took a an extensive tour of Africa and then continued on to Europe and the USSR. During a stop in East Berlin, Castro recounted his experiences to East German Communist leader Erich Honecker. The record of those discussions was located in the archives of the former ruling Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) by Christian F. Ostermann (CWIHP/National Security Archive).
The following excerpt--from a discussion on 3 April 1977 at the House of the SED Central Committee in East Berlin--contains Castro's impressions of the situations in several southern African countries, (e.g., Tanzania, Angola, Mozambique, People's Republic of the Congo), and several guerrilla or liberation groups in the region, such as the African National Congress (ANC), then struggling for power in South Africa, and two groups fighting to rule Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African Political Union (ZAPU). Also included are Castro's assessments of individual political leaders, remarks about coordination with Moscow, and an over-all conclusion that Africa was the place to inflict a major blow against world imperialism. (For Castro's remarks at this meeting on the situation in the Horn of Africa, see the excerpts printed later in this issue of the CWIHP Bulletin.)
Transcript of Honecker-Castro, Meeting, 3 April 1977 (excerpts)
Minutes of the conversation between Comrade Erich Honecker and Comrade Fidel Castro, Sunday,
3 April 1977 between 11:00 and 13:30 and 15:45 and 18:00, House of the Central Committee, Berlin.
Participants: Comrades Hermann Axen, Werner Lamberz, Paul Verner, Paul Markowski (with Comrades Edgar Fries and Karlheinz Mobus as interpreters), Carlos Rafael Rodriguez, Osmany Cienfuegos, Raul Valdez Vivo, Jose Abrantes
[Honecker welcomes Castro, invites him to take the floor--ed.]
Fidel Castro: [sections omitted--ed.]
We visited Tanzania because of an old commitment. We have built three schools there, sent a medical brigade, and given help in other ways. Nyerere had invited us to talk about economic matters above all. The rise in oil prices had affected Tanzania tremendously. Tanzania needs 800,000 tons of oil a year. The entire harvest of peanut, sisal and cotton crops has to be used for the purchase of oil. The Chinese are still present in Tanzania. They have built a few things there, in particular the railroad. The armed units of the ZANU are trained by the Chinese. Tanzania also carries some responsibility for the split of the liberation movement of Zimbabwe into ZANU and ZAPU. In South Africa armed fighting has begun.
The ANC fighters are trained in Angola. The Chinese had also offered training here. Tanzania considers the developments in Zimbabwe in terms of prestige. [Its involvement] allows it to negotiate with Great Britain and the United States over Zimbabwe and to define a role for itself.
The ZANU has 5000 men in fighting units trained by the Chinese. The liberation fighters in Namibia are also trained in Angola, however. Cuba and the Soviet Union have both set up training camps for this purpose. The ZAPU is supported by Angola.
We flew directly from Tanzania to Mozambique. There used to be differences between us and the FRELIMO, going back to the times when FRELIMO was in Tanzania and Che Guevara had spoken to [Mozambique Liberation Front head Eduardo] Mondlane there. At the time Mondlane did not agree with Che and said so publicly. Thereafter news articles against Mondlane were published in Cuba. Later Mondlane corrected himself, but only internally and things remained somewhat up in the air. FRELIMO took good positions during the liberation struggle in Angola. But in our opinion they were not sufficiently combative. For a time FRELIMO got close to [Tanzanian President Julius] Nyerere. [Cuban Vice President] Carlos Rafael [Rodriguez] had spoken to [Mozambican President] Samora Machel in Colombo[, Sri Lanka, at the Nonaligned Summit Conference in August 1976]. After that we sent a Cuban delegation to Mozambique and I was invited to visit. FRELIMO accepted all of our suggestions for the visit. It was kept discreet, which was convenient for me. Samora Machel was really a surprise for me. I learned to know him as an intelligent revolutionary who took clear positions and had a good relationship with the masses. He really impressed me. We spoke with each other for one and a half days. We support Mozambique. Machel asked us to send 300 technicians. He was interested in Cuba's experiences, especially economic ones. Before this we did not know for sure what influence the Chinese had on him. Now he is getting closer to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. He got a loan from the Soviets for weapons of 100 million rubles. In particular, the Soviets deliver aircraft and anti-aircraft batteries. We were very pleased with our visit to Mozambique. I want to say that we consider this very important.
[Zambian President Kenneth] Kaunda also wanted me to visit him. I had been in Africa for a long time, however, and did not want to extend my stay. Besides which the imperialist penetration has advanced far in Zambia. In the Angola matter, Zambia took a very wrong position, in spite of the fact that she was not forced to do so. We had agreed with Angola not to visit Zambia. A few days before my visit to southern Africa the Katanga [Shaba] battles had begun and [People's Republic of the Congo President Marien] N'Gouabi was murdered. I had been invited to Madagascar, but did not want to stay in Africa any longer. During a press conference in Dar Es Salaam I had categorically denied that Cuba was in any way involved in the Katanga battles. I explained that the situation in Angola was different from those in Zimbabwe and Namibia. I had answered all questions in very general terms. Things are going well in Angola. They achieved good progress in their first year of independence. There's been a lot of building and they are developing health facilities. In 1976 they produced 80,000 tons of coffee. Transportation means are also being developed. Currently between 200,000 and 400,000 tons of coffee are still in warehouses. In our talks with [Angolan President Agostinho] Neto we stressed the absolute necessity of achieving a level of economic development comparable to what had existed under [Portuguese] colonialism. Over 300 Cubans are working in the health system. Fishing is recovering and the sugar plantations are almost all back in production. The reconstruction of the transport system is to be completed within 6 months. In education a lot is being done as well. The MPLA [Movement for the Popular Liberation of Angola] is doing a good job with mass organizing. Women are politically very active. There are no grounds for dissatisfaction there. Angola has good hard currency earnings. Oil revenues are about 500 million dollars a year, without them having to do anything. They also generate about 300 million from coffee. Now they are setting up a Party in Angola. The fundamental decisions in domestic and foreign policy are correct. We are still concerned about one area: the development of the Army. The Defense Ministry is doing hardly anything to fight bandits in the north and south of the country. The bands are particularly active in the center of the country. With our help they could deliver heavy blows against them. The Soviet military advisors are active at the highest levels. Our advisers are active at the Brigade level and we are helping them with the training of military cadres and the fight against the bandits. The Angolan Defense Ministry underestimates the fight against the bandits [and] they are not deploying regular troops against the bandits. We understand that the Soviet military advisers are primarily requested to help them to organize the regular army and are not interested in helping in the fight against bandits. It is difficult for us to fight against the bandits on our own. Our comrades have had a lot of difficulties and have spent many bitter hours fighting them. The Cubans cannot do it alone. The state of the army unsettles us. In one region a brigade has been without a commander or chief of staff for a long time. Until now the Cuban units have been the only ones fighting the bandits. The major share must however be carried out by the Angolans themselves. The Cuban troops are above all concentrated in Cabinda and in the defense of the capital, Luanda. I spoke with Neto about the situation of the army and told him that things had to change. The Defense Minister [Cdr. Iko Teles Carreira--ed.] is a good old fighter with the MPLA, but that hasn't helped. An army general staff does not really exist. The country may have 70,000 men under arms but the army is practically not organized. The Soviet advisers are primarily concerned with planning. Neto wanted us to take the entire army in hand. In practical terms that might have been the best solution, but not politically. The Soviet Union is the chief weapons supplier and the Angolans must speak directly to the Soviets. Neto himself must solve these problems. We also cannot commit our troops to the fight against bandits because women and children are being killed in these battles and we cannot take on such a responsibility.
Neto made a very good impression. He is an outstanding personality, very clever and decisive. He is increasingly the leading figure in the Angolan leadership. There are also opportunists in Angola, however. Sometimes they try to approach us or the Soviets and to spread certain opinions. We are very clearly taking a line in favor of Agostinho Neto. There is also evidence of black racism in Angola. Some are using the hatred against the colonial masters for negative purposes. There are many mulattos and whites in Angola. Unfortunately, racist feelings are spreading very quickly. Neto has taken a balanced position here, naming both whites and mulattos as ministers. Neto is of course ready to contribute to this question decisively. He is open to suggestions and arguments. The Defense Minister is not as strong. He does not have high standards. Because of this a lot of cadres do not have the right attitudes. There are cases in which the military commanders have not visited their military district for five months. Many ministers were appointed because they were old war comrades of Neto's. A fact remains: the army and general staff are not working properly. Cadres overall are being developed well throughout Angola, but the Army is the most important. Things are going well, with the exception of the army.
We are giving Angola a great deal of military support. At the end of the liberation war, 36,000 Cuban troops and 300 tanks were deployed. The South African mercenaries were quickly demoralized. The USA talks about 12,000 Cuban soldiers. We are reducing our troop strength continuously. This year we plan to leave 15,000 men stationed there. By the end of 1978 there should be only 7,000, although it's probable that the reductions won't proceed quite as rapidly. The main force is stationed in the south. If the Cuban military were not deployed in Angola the situation would be a lot more complicated.
The number of our civilian advisers and experts will rise to 4,000 this year. Until now this aid has been provided free of charge. Starting in 1977, however, Angola is committed to paying for the living expenses of our specialists, with an additional increase in financial responsibilities scheduled for 1978. Our military aid will remain free of charge. The Soviet Union has committed itself to supplying the entire material needs of the Angolan and our units.
While in Angola I also dealt with the question of the liberation movements in Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. Namibia's liberation fighters are good, they are also helping Angola with the anti-bandit battles. The South African ANC is a serious organization. Its president, Oliver Tambo, is a serious politician. Three quarters of the ANC Central Committee membership is communist. They have a very clear political position with regards to Angola, the Soviet Union, and other socialist countries. The people have taken up the struggle in South Africa, in time the ANC will be a serious power.
The situation is most complicated in Zimbabwe. The ZANU have 1,000 armed fighters. The Chinese and Nyerere are influential with the ZANU. The ZAPU, however, haven't had any military forces of their own. The best man in the ZAPU, General Secretary [Jason] Moyo, was murdered [in Zambia in January 1977]. During the Angolan war of liberation, the Angolan leadership could not give its support to the liberation movement in Zimbabwe. At the time Mozambique was leaning against Tanzania and supported the ZANU. Today things are different. Angola's influence is increasing and Mozambique is growing closer and closer to Angola. The Patriotic Front in Zimbabwe is made up of both the ZANU and the ZAPU, but this is only a formality. [ZAPU leader Joshua] Nkomo is supported by Angola, the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries. [ZANU leader Robert] Mugabe is supported by Tanzania and the Chinese. Now there are possibilities for depriving the Chinese and the Tanzanians of their influence in Zimbabwe. Zambia is supporting the Zimbabwean liberation movement for the prestige factor that's involved and because it wants to counteract Angola's influence with Nkomo. With the positive development of Angola and Mozambique the prospects of the liberation movement in Zimbabwe can only improve. It is possible that Angola, Mozambique and Zambia will move forward together. The ZAPU must establish its own armed forces as soon as possible. There are today 6,000 ZAPU men in Angola, and one could make an Army out of them. That would facilitate uniting the ZAPU and the ZANU. I told Neto about this and he agreed. Above all that would be a way to roll back China's influence. Nkomo also understands this. He is very intelligent and talks to Samora Machel a great deal. Unfortunately he is very fat, and so his health is not good.
I told him and others that the personal safety of all the liberation leaders was in danger. The imperialists would be moved to try and murder them all. They've already murdered N'Gouabi and Moyo. Because of this it is absolutely necessary to take steps to increase security measures for the leaders.
The liberation struggle in Africa has a great future. From a historical perspective the facts are that the imperialists cannot turn things back. The liberation struggle is the most moral thing in existence. If the socialist states take the right positions, they could gain a lot of influence. Here is where we can strike heavy blows against the imperialists. The liberation army in Katanga [Shaba] is led by a general. These people used to favor Katanga's secession from Zaire. Later they went to Angola, were trained by the Portuguese and fought against the MPLA, until they went over to Neto's side; now they could not fall out with Neto. They are good soldiers. Its military leader is a general in the gendarmerie who now wants to make a revolution in Zaire. These people are now saying that they are good Marxist-Leninists and that they no longer advocate the secession of Katanga. They went off in four different directions with four battalions. We didn't know about this, and we think that the Angolans didn't either. The frontline states were split 50/50 in favor of supporting the Katanga liberation movement. We gave them a categorical explanation that Cuba was in no way involved in this. The armed groups are marching forward. Their commander sends an open [public] daily telegram to the Angolan leadership and to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Luanda describing his advances and asking for support. The Yankees are wavering. They know very well that there are no Cuban units involved. Carlos Rafael Rodriguez is charged with speaking to the French and Belgian ambassadors to protest against their countries' involvement and to pressure them to stop. We want them to be worried, so when they are organizing their mercenaries, and to think that our troops are very near.
Angola has a certain moral duty, and a desire, to support the Katanga liberation movement. They also desire it because the Angolan leadership is angered by [Zairian leader] Mobutu [Sese Seko]'s behavior. Angola has asked us and the Soviets to give them weapons for delivery to the Katangans. We should wait for developments, however. Mobutu is an incompetent and weak politician. It's possible that he will not survive this crisis. The frontline states are now in favor of supporting Katanga, while Angola favors direct aid. We don't want to be involved in order not to give the USA an excuse to intervene. As I mentioned we will try to put pressure on Belgium and France.
It will be a great event if Mobutu falls.
In the People's Republic of the Congo there is a confusing situation following N'Gouabi's murder. The interior and defense ministers are competing for the leadership. There are also pro-Westerners in the military council. It is practically certain that the rightists murdered N'Gouabi. But the left wing was also dissatisfied with him as well. In other words there was a relatively uncertain situation there. We sent Comrade Almeyda to the funeral, and hope that the situation will stabilize. We were also asked to send a military unit to Brazzaville. The internal problems of the country must be solved by the Congolese themselves however. We have stationed a small military unit in Pointe Noire, and another one in Cabinda.
There were several requests for military aid from various sides: [Libyan leader Moammar] Qadaffi, Mengistu, and the Congolese leaders. During our stay in Africa we sent Carlos Rafael Rodriguez to Moscow to confer with our Soviet comrades and to Havana for consultations with our leadership. In order to find the best solution we must think through this question quietly and thoroughly and consider it in terms of the overall situation of the socialist camp. Above all we must do something for Mengistu...[section on Ethiopia printed in "Horn of Africa Crisis" section--ed.] ...With regard to military aid for the PR Congo and the Libyans we have not yet come to a decision.
I had consultations with [Houari] Boumedienne in Algeria and asked for his opinion. He assured me that Algeria would never abandon Libya. Algeria is very concerned with the situation in the Mediterranean because of its security interests. It is in favor of supporting Libya, as long as military aid is confined to the socialist camp. That is not only a question between Cuba and Algeria. If we are to succeed in strengthening the revolution in Libya, Ethiopia, Mozambique, the PDRY [People's Democratic Republic of Yemen] and Angola we must have an integrated strategy for the whole African continent.
Angola is becoming closer to the socialist camp. It bought 1.5 billion rubles of weapons from the Soviets. Boumedienne thinks that [Egyptian President Anwar] Sadat is totally lost to us. In Syria there is also no leftist movement any more, especially after the Syrians defeated the progressive powers and the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] in Lebanon.
[Indian President] Indira Gandhi gambled away the elections.
In Africa we can inflict a severe defeat on the entire reactionary imperialist policy. We can free Africa from the influence of the USA and of the Chinese. The developments in Zaire are also very important. Libya and Algeria have large territories, Ethiopia has a great revolutionary potential. So there is a great counterweight to Sadat's betrayal in Egypt. It is even possible that Sadat will be turned around and that the imperialist influence in the Middle East can be turned back.
This must all be discussed with the Soviet Union. We follow its policies and its example.
We estimate that Libya's request is an expression of trust. One should not reject their request. Cuba cannot help it alone.
[subsequent sections omitted--ed.]
[Source: Stiftung "Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der ehemaligen DDR im Bundesarchiv" (Berlin), DY30 JIV 2/201/1292; document obtained by Christian F. Ostermann (National Security Archive); translated for Carter-Brezhnev Project by David Welch with revisions by Ostermann; copy on file at National Security Archive.]
About Me
- Beaver Shaw
- Nairobi, Kenya
- I an ex member of both 7 and 8 Squadron's of the Rhodesian war spending most of my operational time on Seven Squadron as a K Car gunner. I was credited for shooting down a fixed wing aircraft from a K Car on the 9 August 1979. This blog is from articles for research on a book which I HAVE HANDED THIS MANUSCRIPT OVER TO MIMI CAWOOD WHO WILL BE HANDLING THE PUBLICATION OF THE BOOK OF WHICH THERE WILL BE VERY LIMITED COPIES AVAILABLE Contact her on yebomimi@gmail.com The latest news is that the Editing is now done and we can expect to start sales and deliveries by the end of April 2011
Monday, April 27, 2009
WOMEN AND THE RHODESIAN WAR
The Discourse on Zimbabwean Women in the War of Liberation and the Land Reform Programme: Myth and Reality
by Emmanuel Chiwome and Zifikile Mguni (University of Zimbabwe)
This paper focuses on images of women in discourse on Zimbabwe's war of liberation and the land reform programme. The discourse is part of myths in Zimbabwean history. The paper contributes to research that has attempted to deconstruct myths generated mainly by male politicians on the role of women soldiers in Zimbabwe's liberation war, and the condition of the generality of women in post-colonial Zimbabwe.
Women in the War of Liberation
On the importance of understanding the dynamic Zimbabwean socio-historical environment, Bhebe and Ranger (1995) in their general introduction to Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume One say:
Zimbabwe needs to remember and to understand the war: to understand it at the level of high analysis and to understand it at the level of suffering and trauma. We need to understand it for reviewing policy, for making the record more complete, for healing memories (Bhebe and Ranger 1995a:1).
They further note that:
there has been strange silence of the guerrillas since 1980¼ Many reasons have been suggested for this. Some scholars - such as Richard Werbner in south-western Zimbabwe - have found ex-combatants reluctant to talk about traumatic wartime experiences. Others have argued that for ZIPRA veterans, at least, and even for former members of ZIPA or the "left" groups within ZANU, it has not until recently been safe to do so. Yet others speak of the marginalization of even ZANLA ex-combatants... and of the creation of an "official" version of the war which gives all the glory to political leaders and to generals, many of whom are safely dead. For whatever reason, publishers have been reluctant to accept guerrilla life-stories. The result of all this has been that guerrilla experience has come to us through fiction rather than through history and autobiography (Ibid: 3).
Further to that, in Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War, Volume Two, which tries to unravel the socio-historical environment in which the war against colonialism took place, the same historians observe another information gap:
There have not so far been any fully satisfactory gendered accounts of the war and its aftermath. Instead there have been too many attempts to produce a heroic "herstory" of the war: attempts which have over-estimated the number of female guerrillas and over-stated the emancipatory mobilization of women (Bhebe and Ranger, 1995b: 26).
Zimbabwean accounts of the war of liberation that began in the late 1960s and ended in 1979, are coloured with a romantic hue that derives from socialist rhetoric and feminism. These factors shape the conception of war and independence which in turn impact on the image of women soldiers in the war.
Between the mid-1960s and the 1970s, young women found themselves leaving their communities for the promise of glory and success that lay beyond the village. In the excitement that came with the promise of patriotic adventure, as well as the threat of incarceration by the Rhodesian army, very few people had the full awareness of the imponderables of joining the war.
At independence in 1980 as part of nationalist triumphalism, politicians constructed romantic images of themselves and other participants of the war as official history. Like men, women were portrayed as larger-than-life figures who embodied all the values of patriotism as could be distilled from the war. In these accounts, women soldiers fought heroically alongside their male counterparts. The following romantic extract typifies the image of women soldiers:
They were women of a new generation who wore trousers like men and could aim just as steady. They were women who killed. They were fit and strong, running through the bush and brandishing AK 47's and machine guns. These were women who crept into the village¼ on their backs, they carried not runny-nosed babies but the hope of a new generation¼ They were as foreign to our traditional image of women as Eskimos (Maraire, 1996: 168).
This image is in line with myths that were constructed by men and women in top government positions, while the generality of the women who had survived the war, like most of their male counterparts, waited for their rewards. Spread by guerrillas as part of mass mobilisation in the rural areas, the propaganda was transmitted using oral traditional devices like songs. The narratives were embellished in hyperbole to make them memorable oral historical records. During the war, the myths were useful in keeping the morale of the masses who supported the war high, in an environment that was characterised by mass suffering, destruction and death.
The larger-than-life image of women created by the male-dominated political environment was part of the 1980s independence celebrations. First and foremost, it was used by the elite that emerged from the war to prove to the rest of society that the revolution had indeed been worthwhile, as it had put both men and women on an equal footing. It was envisaged that the new dispensation had indeed ended the oppression of women. Feminists, human rights activists and African womanist organisations which worked alongside the government embraced the same image to consolidate the emancipation of women in socio-economic and political spheres.
As a result of the economic hardships that followed in the wake of massive economic mismanagement, a series of droughts as well as global economic recession in the mid 1990s, it then became abundantly clear that the benefits that appeared to have accrued to women during the celebratory years had steadily been eroded. To make matters worse, the government abandoned the growth-with-equity socialist economic thrust in favour of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme. In the resultant mass discontentment, society divided itself into interest groups to fight for the dwindling economic resources. Women used many fronts to get their fair share of the cake. They protested that they had been discriminated against while society generally favoured male nationalist politicians and other emergent civilian interest groups.
One of the responses of government to these accusations was to give women token political appointments in the bureaucracy. Since the benefits accruing from these appointments did not trickle down to the rank-and-file of the women, those at the bottom became increasingly vociferous. This led to the breaking of the silence surrounding their actual experiences during the war, thereby revealing inner aspects of the war environment that still impact on social progress today. The personal experiences constituted counter-discourse to official narratives about nationalist triumphalism which had been popularised by male politicians and guerrillas.
Some of the personal experiences of women are reflected in Women of Resilience: The Voices of Women Ex-combatants (2000). The book, which contains interviews with women ex-combatants and a chimbwido (errand girl) in the war front, represents a significant shift by the publishers, Zimbabwe Women Writers, from fictional images of women in society towards women in history. The women are interviewed by fellow women, who probe areas on which history has hitherto been generally silent. The fact that women talk tête-à -tête creates a congenial atmosphere for the exploration of subtle realities. However, the fact that the interviews are published with the actual names or guerrilla war pseudonyms of the interviewees may have lead to the filtering or editing of personal experiences. While a few of the questions appear to elicit answers that validate official war stereotypes, most of them do not pre-empt answers.
One of the interviewees, Marevasei Kachere, was forced to join the war because of the suffering she experienced in the notorious "protected villages" (referred to as "keeps" by villagers) of the Rhodesian era. These were guarded by soldiers round the clock in order to cut them off from guerrillas who could not operate effectively in isolation. Evident in the interview is gender discrimination in the recruitment process:
At first they [guerrilla leaders] refused to take us and said they were taking boys only, and that though they had taken girls before, they did not encourage those who were young to go. But we insisted that we were not going back to the keep to be beaten to death (185).
Guerrillas expected men rather than girls to join the war. It would appear that women were expected to stay at home performing chores which were customarily prescribed as the domestic domain. Catherine Nyamandwe, another interviewee, remembers being advised by guerrillas to return home because if girls left for Mozambique no one would cook for male freedom fighters. During the war, women's roles were extended to cooking for freedom fighters and bringing them blankets. Girls were expected to forego their quest for freedom in order to attend to the needs of their fighting male counterparts. Therein lay the paradox in the conception of freedom during the era in question. The reservations expressed at the front were later reflected at the rear.
Another ex-combatant, Maureen Moyo, a product of a broken family, sheds more light on other factors that might have driven girls to join ZANLA forces in Mozambique:
In those days I thought it was a way of punishing the people that were cruel to me - people like my father; if I came back with a gun... to punish him for leaving us... (Moyo, 160)
The conditions within the family were so bad that the youngster was forced to flee to an environment that she perceived as better. Contrary to the official version, she perceived the war in childishly domestic terms, and not in the context of oppression at national level.
Children who were traumatised by family problems swelled the ranks of guerrilla recruits. Added to this was the problem of poverty, as evident from some of the interviews. By the 1970s, it had become quite clear to many African people that employment was more of a privilege than a right. The educational pyramid ensured that only a few people got to the top while the majority dropped out to join the ranks of the unemployed youth. Besides, education was differentially offered; only a few families per community could afford to pay for it, thus forcing many young people of school-going age to go to Mozambique and Zambia to join the war.
In some cases, peer group influence played a major role in making young people join the war. Mavis Nyathi, another interviewee, joined the ZIPRA forces because she and her age-mates idolised and romanticised freedom fighters. They wanted to follow the path that had been taken by their acquaintances. There was sheer excitement about discovering what exactly happened when people joined the liberation struggle (131-132).
The war further promised girls an opportunity to equal men in terms of achievements, as evident in Nyathi's observation:
Yes, putting on that camouflage uniform, having a gun, feeling macho -especially for a woman. You feel a man in that attire. People would talk about their dreams... (159).
There were many accounts of young people who could become gun-wielding heroes that were needed to tame the cruel Rhodesian soldiers. In that sense, the gun promised adventure and freedom in a youthful sense.
Nyathi concludes that their reasons for joining the war "were not good enough". The motive was not to liberate "our country... It was more for selfish gain... I was not patriotic, I never looked at it that way" (161).
Evidently, Nyathi still has not reconciled her latent reasons for going to war with manifest ones given by nationalist politicians. The discrepancy between official reasons and private reasons which she rates as not "good enough", appears to have accounted for the silences of individual participants who were expected to make their biographies of war conform to official records, like all party faithfuls. In reality, the difference between "selfish gain" and the patriotic act of liberating "fellow sisters" has so far been a theoretical one; one of trying to differentiate between romance and reality. In independence, there has been more evidence of "selfish gain" than patriotism among the emergent political elite.
To their utter disillusionment and disbelief, upon crossing the border, the young people discovered that the reality about war was going to be different from the romantic escapades they had in mind. The ugly reality, which included, among other things, squalid living conditions, intense boredom and homesickness, starvation, disease, incessant attacks by the Rhodesian army and constant vigilance, was in contradistinction to idyllic expectations harboured by the young recruits.
As revealed in the interviews, the would-be-liberators lived as prisoners. The whole idea of using prison facilities to assist people who are recruited to fight for freedom presents a conceptual contradiction. Young people expected the war environment as part of the liberating process to offer conditions that would have been a prelude to the joys of independence.
Contrary to expectation, the youths were transformed into food gatherers who lived on the grain substitutes of traditional communities (187). While there is nothing wrong with the food provided by nature, the young recruits had been brought up to associate social advancement with the abandonment of tradition. The interviewees reflect a sense of remorse over the descent into this supposedly early stage of evolutionary life. In instances where familiar food was available, the diet was below the basic expectations of rural people:
[I]n the morning we had plain porridge, in the afternoon sadza and matemba or beans, or sometimes just plain sadza - plain sadza with nothing. We used to take our plain sadza, go to the river, put some water in the sadza and eat. Or sometimes, if we were lucky, and there was sugar then we put sugar on our sadza... (145).
Contrary to the dictates of African custom and the expectations of women, trainers were equally tough with both male and female recruits:
[G]enerally the whole training process was an unhappy event. During training you would hate all the instructors, all of them. But afterwards you realize that they were only doing their duties (142).
The fact that the training was tolerated only because it was the duty of the trainers undermines the ultimate value of the military training: the quest for freedom.
Women in particular found life in the camps intolerable. Yet, tragically, as in death, one could not return to warn those at home to change their view of the war. Prudence Uriri's experiences at Tembwe, Mozambique, made her conclude that:
I had made a mistake to go and join the war. I felt that what I had heard about it - what was going on - and the intention of this whole war was not really what was happening for me. So there were people who tried to run away and they were caught before they could go very far... (67-68).
The cultural shock tempted many recruits to escape back to Rhodesia. The reaction of the authorities to desertion was comparable to their incensed reaction to infiltration by Rhodesian spies:
[T]here was a lot of beating up. People actually had wounds that would go many centimetres deep into their flesh... (68).
Camps were very unsafe for the recruits, specially the women who were rarely deployed to the front:
I had never thought of the possibility of dying in a battle before. During my training I had imagined an exchange of gunfire, but nothing more. I had never seen a dead person, but now I saw so many. As we ran to the river I had stepped on the bodies of those who had died, and the thought of that experience horrified me (Kachere, 188).
This is also confirmed by Bhebe (1999) who states that recruits were regular targets of the Rhodesian army. The experience of the surprise bombings by Rhodesian security forces at Mkushi in Zambia and Nyadzonia in Mozambique proved to be the very opposite of the romantic battles of heroines and heroes in the propaganda at home. The trauma lives on in the lives of the survivors who witnessed the perishing of young people who had envisaged war as a fair exchange of gunfire. A feeling of emptiness pervades the survivors.
Although portrayed from the viewpoint of women, the problems outlined so far affected both men and women. There were however, problems that were peculiar to women, which made the lives of women more difficult than that of men. The worst problems appear to relate to sexuality. In this case men were the problem. In the absence of normal social structures, men in positions of responsibility exploited the military discipline that required subordinates to obey their seniors, and imposed their will on women of their choice:
[W]hen there is a rape or somebody has been raped, there was no mother to tell that somebody had abused you. There was no law, there was no justice where you could report to, there was no court of law... If you fell pregnant no one assisted you (126).
The licentious behaviour of the male superiors undermined the personal freedom of women, and threatened to render the struggle against social injustice meaningless.
Trips outside the camp appear to have given the generality of guerrillas space to engage in socially unaccepted sexual activities. That way the struggle for liberation lost its human face:
And as women we never got special treatment - we were the highly oppressed people. We were never even allowed to use contraceptives... (Dongo, 125).
In the war front, male guerrillas similarly exploited the civilian population. One of the chimbwidos confesses that many freedom fighters used pungwes (night-long meetings in which guerrillas politicised villagers) as opportunities to sexually assault women and girls. The girls had to contend with:
different men every week, every month... As a result, your body becomes nothing. And you lose respect for yourself as a woman... It is something that normal women, woman, cannot do.
We were not allowed to say "no" (Moyo, 168).
Thus, freedom fighters used guns that were perceived as tools for liberation by the villagers among whom they operated, to undermine the authority of community elders who normally regulated the sexual activities of young people. In this way, they seriously violated traditional African values which were part of the cultural environment of the masses who hosted the war. The women were also sexually assaulted by Rhodesian soldiers as punishment for supporting freedom fighters.
For those women who fell pregnant by guerrillas, paternity became a problem since it was difficult, if not impossible, to establish the true identity of the fighters. Guerrilla names like Bazooka and Sub (sub-machine gun) could not help any woman get a newly-born child affiliated to its father's lineage as required by Shona or Ndebele customs, of which most women were part. Besides, the constant threats issued to women did not allow them to identify the biological fathers. As a result the war caused a moral dilemma in rural communities.
Contrary to nationalist propaganda at home and women's expectations, men had problems allowing women to participate in spheres that the latter had hoped to operate in. Women's contribution was largely confined to carriers of ammunition and undertakers of victims of common illnesses. In spite of going through the same rigorous military and political training as their male counterparts, women would not be trusted to confront the enemy. Real battles were fought by men:
Our role as women was that we were carriers of ammunition. It was actually heavier than instituting the war itself... (Dongo, 127).
There was a tendency to say the women's speciality is in the kitchen... Women and men received the same military or political training... It is only [when it came to] power sharing, or making decisions, that women could not participate... (Dongo, 129).
Thus, women were expected to perform chores which are customarily ascribed to them in rural life, although they were denied the freedoms that rural women in a normal subsistence social environment would have enjoyed. The resultant overwhelming sense of powerlessness and oppression rendered meaningless men's claim that they were training women to liberate society back home. Women had no experience of the very freedom they were trying to establish at home. This appears to have been one tragic dimension of the war.
After independence, men who participated in the war were never keen to allow women to spell out to society their side of the war: As one interviewee puts it, male politicians "will try to make it out to be as nice as possible so that they would remain the so-called trusted party cadres. They do not want this country to have the proper history of what actually transpired during the war" (126).
The confession of the truth would have shocked society into reducing the moral and political stature of the fighters whom it had idolised in the first decade of independence. For those who materially benefited from the war, the revelation of the truth would have been considered as unpatriotic and subversive. Attempts were made to sweep the unpleasant truth under the carpet.
Tragically, prior to these published accounts, women had not disclosed that they had not fought in the sense that official narratives had claimed. The problems that arose from fighting a just war outside a properly supported moral environment created problems that spilled into independence. With the breaking of the silence, people are slowly realising that the aspirations of independence were based on false premises.
Many wartime promises, for instance, giving women ex-combatants preferential treatment in the formal employment sector failed to materialise after independence. To make matters worse, many women ex-combatants who entered into marriages were similarly frustrated:
Many marriages of the female ex-combatants did not last. There is a lot of prejudice to overcome. People say a woman who used to kill will bring a bad influence into the family (Saungweme, 53).
In Zimbabwean society, it would have been perceived as unbecoming of a woman to fight to kill, the very thing that those women who had gone to war were exalted for. Ironically, those women who were accorded the heroine status were considered unfit for marriage as their perceived vicious qualities made them too grotesque for marriage in the same society that idolised them. That contradiction has remained unresolved. Paradoxically, among all those interviewed, no woman appears to have engaged in battle in a way that could have directly resulted in killing.
Sexual harassment and victimisation by men haunted many women who tried to settle down into married life, as the latter were viewed as "prostitutes; [who] belonged to comrades, [who] slept with them" (176).
The stigma attached to the women ex-combatants "makes it very difficult for us to come out confidently in most places..." (148-149).
It is clear that many women ex-combatants perceive themselves as victims rather than heroines of the war. Some of them have had to seek psychiatric treatment to rid themselves of the ghosts of the war period. Ironically, some have recovered partly by rejecting the romantic image of heroism which denies that brave heroes could also be victims of trauma.
Women and the Land Reform Programme
The foregoing observations apply largely to women who are defined as former freedom fighters. In reality, so-called former freedom fighters comprise a small part of womenfolk who participated in the liberation of the country. The role played by girls in the villages (chimbwidos) and elderly women whom Irene Staunton regards as "mothers of the revolution" (1987) , is not part of nationalist rhetoric on independence.
The chimbwidos provided such services as preparing food, keeping the male fighters entertained and singing songs of war. Their mothers, who according to tradition, own such assets as chickens and goats, provided these delicacies for the fighters. Without their chickens, the fighters would have performed poorly at the war front, much like their counterparts who faced starvation in the rear bases. Yet, independence did not give due recognition to the majority of peasant women who parted with chicken, goats and sheep to support a collective cause. It is common knowledge that chickens and goats are vital assets in the rural subsistence economy (Mararike, 1999). The fact that peasant women and their families got only rare nominal tokens at independence yet they offered the war a base, means that the new ruling elite subverted the rural economy. These women, joined by an equally exploited class of women celebrated by nationalists as patriots, found themselves continuing in the underdeveloped rural society established through colonisation.
By 2002, the generality of peasants suffered economic deprivation as a result of natural and man-made causes such as frequent droughts, corruption and mismanagement of the economy. However, in international patriarchy-dominated elitist conferences, representatives of government continue to make high-sounding speeches about strides made in improving the lot of women including the issue of giving land to landless women who have borne the burden of producing food in unproductive land, most of which is not fit for human habitation. The following are highlights from the exposition by a Zimbabwean representative to the United Nations based in New York:
a. gender inequality still impedes social and economic development
b. women constitute 51% of the population, 86% of whom live in rural areas
c. there a is need to improve conditions in rural areas through land redistribution, and land ownership by women
c. women contribute 70% of agricultural labour
d. female-headed households make up the majority of the rural poor
The state functionary acknowledges the importance of rural women in creating a better society, and, therefore, the need for gender sensitivity in land redistribution. He goes on to make the following claims, which cannot be substantiated by the reality on the ground:
a. "women in Zimbabwe have mobilised themselves to form savings and credit cooperatives and village banks governed by the communities themselves¼ Efforts are underway towards the establishment of a women's bank"
b. there are efforts towards socialising the girl child in the home, school and community in order to improve her condition in an otherwise patriarchal society (Mutumbike, 2000).
These pronouncements are in line with official rhetoric on women and the land reform programme.
Having realised the need to tighten its grip on power after its shock defeat in the February 2000 Constitutional Referendum, the ruling Zanu PF party resorted to one of its long-neglected wartime promises to equitably redistribute land. In 2000, President Robert Mugabe promised that in order to redress colonial imbalances, women, particularly those in female-headed households, would get 20% of the total land identified for redistribution under government's controversial fast-tracked resettlement programme. This despite the fact that women's organisations had lobbied government to allocate women 35% of land identified for resettlement purposes (Mgugu, Daily News, Friday 8 November, 2002). The subsequent policy document came as a disappointment to women as it failed to match government rhetoric on the need to empower women through land redistribution. Although the ruling party's Presidential campaign was centred on land redistribution, as evident in its many political rallies, "women's access and control of the land" were not enhanced. There has been no attempt by government to provide legal and administrative frameworks to implement a gender-sensitive land reform programmes in Zimbabwe (Mufundikwa, 2000).
The violence surrounding land reform has also made it difficult for women to compete fairly with men, resulting in the director of a leading women's organisation remarking that:
Because of the violence accompanying land reform, many potential female beneficiaries of the programme ¼ are afraid to apply or take up land in the few instances where they have been lucky enough to be approved for resettlement (Mgugu, 2002).
There were numerous press reports that depicted thousands of women as silent and invisible victims of rape, torture and murder in the name of empowering them through giving them land. Tragically, these women face a dilemma as the social stigma attached to rape makes it difficult for its victims to openly articulate their ordeal. In the words of Mufundikwa (2000), "cultural taboos around the issue of rape have silenced women".
In communal lands, customary law, which quite often reflects the attitude of colonial legal officers and African male patriarchs rather authentic African customs (Bhebe, 2000) is still used in land allocation and use. The anti-women colonial land tenure arrangements, which deny women land tenure rights, have failed to accommodate the needs of women in relation to "land and related resources as well as the formulation of policies even at village level¼" (Mufundikwa, 2000). Men who are often the heads of households are given land rights and women benefit as dependants of men.
Contrary to high-sounding pronouncements by government officials, "Section 23 (1) of the Zimbabwean Constitution, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, does not prohibit sex discrimination" (Zigomo-Nyatsanza, 2000). The Constitution recognises the primacy of customary law, which places emphasis "on customary considerations" in land inheritance. The discrimination is also evident in family laws, and rights to property in marriage or divorce and on death.
There is still no provision for "vulnerable groups" like women, the poor and child-headed households in the law which is enshrined in the Constitution. The law has so far failed to accommodate the strategic needs of women.
Conclusion
The change of discourse on the war is a result of changes in the politico-economic environment. The one-sided interpretations of war experiences which belong to the war period and the euphoric days of the early 1980s are slowly being challenged by multiple-voiced interpretations of social history, precipitated by a pervasive sense of disillusionment with the surrender value of independence. Like other sectors of society, women have become increasingly disgruntled with elitist discourse which tries to monopolise the charting of the nation's history. Counter-discourse demonstrates that women, and indeed all other people in society, can speak for themselves, about themselves. The rejection of the romantic-heroic images of the war in favour of more down-to-earth images is indicative of the fact that a nation cannot successfully forge into the future without taking thorough stock of its past, of its gains and losses. A more just and humane environment can only emerge from an honest reflection on the mistakes of the past. There is a sense in which the romanticising of the war in itself is tragic, as it is essentially a celebration of organised violence whose many fronts brutalise the host society.
In the post-colonial era, the claims by the government of Zimbabwe that it is "making efforts to ensure that land is distributed equally and fairly to all those in need" have not been substantiated in the recently completed land reform programme. Despite the fact that women constitute the majority of Zimbabwe's population, and also contribute a large percentage of agricultural labour, they have not benefited from the land reform programme. The 16th Amendment of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, which provides for the fast-track programme, does not deal with gender issues at all. The official version of the significant strides that have been made to improve the condition of women runs contrary to the reality of the condition of women in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe.
References
Bhebe, N. 1999. ZAPU and ZANU Guerrilla Warfare and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe. Gweru: Mambo Press.
Bhebe N. and Ranger, T. 1995. Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume One. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.
Bhebe, N. and Ranger, T. 1995. Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume Two. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.
Maraire, J.N. 1996. Zenzele: A Letter to my Daughter. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Mararike, C. G. (1999). Survival Strategies in Rural Zimbabwe. Harare: Mond Books.
Mutumbike, C. 2000. Statement presented during the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly entitled, "Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century", New York, 2000.
Staunton, I. 1987. Mothers of the Revolution. Harare: Baobab Books.
Zimbabwe Women Writers (Eds.) 2000. Women of Resilience: The Voices of Women Ex-combatants. Harare: Zimbabwe Women Writers.
Zigomo-Nyatsanza, L. 2000. "Legal Framework: Constitution Provisions of Accessing and Controlling Land", Paper presented at the Women's and land Rights in Southern Africa Regional Conference, 27-28 November, Harare, Zimbabwe.
by Emmanuel Chiwome and Zifikile Mguni (University of Zimbabwe)
This paper focuses on images of women in discourse on Zimbabwe's war of liberation and the land reform programme. The discourse is part of myths in Zimbabwean history. The paper contributes to research that has attempted to deconstruct myths generated mainly by male politicians on the role of women soldiers in Zimbabwe's liberation war, and the condition of the generality of women in post-colonial Zimbabwe.
Women in the War of Liberation
On the importance of understanding the dynamic Zimbabwean socio-historical environment, Bhebe and Ranger (1995) in their general introduction to Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume One say:
Zimbabwe needs to remember and to understand the war: to understand it at the level of high analysis and to understand it at the level of suffering and trauma. We need to understand it for reviewing policy, for making the record more complete, for healing memories (Bhebe and Ranger 1995a:1).
They further note that:
there has been strange silence of the guerrillas since 1980¼ Many reasons have been suggested for this. Some scholars - such as Richard Werbner in south-western Zimbabwe - have found ex-combatants reluctant to talk about traumatic wartime experiences. Others have argued that for ZIPRA veterans, at least, and even for former members of ZIPA or the "left" groups within ZANU, it has not until recently been safe to do so. Yet others speak of the marginalization of even ZANLA ex-combatants... and of the creation of an "official" version of the war which gives all the glory to political leaders and to generals, many of whom are safely dead. For whatever reason, publishers have been reluctant to accept guerrilla life-stories. The result of all this has been that guerrilla experience has come to us through fiction rather than through history and autobiography (Ibid: 3).
Further to that, in Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War, Volume Two, which tries to unravel the socio-historical environment in which the war against colonialism took place, the same historians observe another information gap:
There have not so far been any fully satisfactory gendered accounts of the war and its aftermath. Instead there have been too many attempts to produce a heroic "herstory" of the war: attempts which have over-estimated the number of female guerrillas and over-stated the emancipatory mobilization of women (Bhebe and Ranger, 1995b: 26).
Zimbabwean accounts of the war of liberation that began in the late 1960s and ended in 1979, are coloured with a romantic hue that derives from socialist rhetoric and feminism. These factors shape the conception of war and independence which in turn impact on the image of women soldiers in the war.
Between the mid-1960s and the 1970s, young women found themselves leaving their communities for the promise of glory and success that lay beyond the village. In the excitement that came with the promise of patriotic adventure, as well as the threat of incarceration by the Rhodesian army, very few people had the full awareness of the imponderables of joining the war.
At independence in 1980 as part of nationalist triumphalism, politicians constructed romantic images of themselves and other participants of the war as official history. Like men, women were portrayed as larger-than-life figures who embodied all the values of patriotism as could be distilled from the war. In these accounts, women soldiers fought heroically alongside their male counterparts. The following romantic extract typifies the image of women soldiers:
They were women of a new generation who wore trousers like men and could aim just as steady. They were women who killed. They were fit and strong, running through the bush and brandishing AK 47's and machine guns. These were women who crept into the village¼ on their backs, they carried not runny-nosed babies but the hope of a new generation¼ They were as foreign to our traditional image of women as Eskimos (Maraire, 1996: 168).
This image is in line with myths that were constructed by men and women in top government positions, while the generality of the women who had survived the war, like most of their male counterparts, waited for their rewards. Spread by guerrillas as part of mass mobilisation in the rural areas, the propaganda was transmitted using oral traditional devices like songs. The narratives were embellished in hyperbole to make them memorable oral historical records. During the war, the myths were useful in keeping the morale of the masses who supported the war high, in an environment that was characterised by mass suffering, destruction and death.
The larger-than-life image of women created by the male-dominated political environment was part of the 1980s independence celebrations. First and foremost, it was used by the elite that emerged from the war to prove to the rest of society that the revolution had indeed been worthwhile, as it had put both men and women on an equal footing. It was envisaged that the new dispensation had indeed ended the oppression of women. Feminists, human rights activists and African womanist organisations which worked alongside the government embraced the same image to consolidate the emancipation of women in socio-economic and political spheres.
As a result of the economic hardships that followed in the wake of massive economic mismanagement, a series of droughts as well as global economic recession in the mid 1990s, it then became abundantly clear that the benefits that appeared to have accrued to women during the celebratory years had steadily been eroded. To make matters worse, the government abandoned the growth-with-equity socialist economic thrust in favour of the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme. In the resultant mass discontentment, society divided itself into interest groups to fight for the dwindling economic resources. Women used many fronts to get their fair share of the cake. They protested that they had been discriminated against while society generally favoured male nationalist politicians and other emergent civilian interest groups.
One of the responses of government to these accusations was to give women token political appointments in the bureaucracy. Since the benefits accruing from these appointments did not trickle down to the rank-and-file of the women, those at the bottom became increasingly vociferous. This led to the breaking of the silence surrounding their actual experiences during the war, thereby revealing inner aspects of the war environment that still impact on social progress today. The personal experiences constituted counter-discourse to official narratives about nationalist triumphalism which had been popularised by male politicians and guerrillas.
Some of the personal experiences of women are reflected in Women of Resilience: The Voices of Women Ex-combatants (2000). The book, which contains interviews with women ex-combatants and a chimbwido (errand girl) in the war front, represents a significant shift by the publishers, Zimbabwe Women Writers, from fictional images of women in society towards women in history. The women are interviewed by fellow women, who probe areas on which history has hitherto been generally silent. The fact that women talk tête-à -tête creates a congenial atmosphere for the exploration of subtle realities. However, the fact that the interviews are published with the actual names or guerrilla war pseudonyms of the interviewees may have lead to the filtering or editing of personal experiences. While a few of the questions appear to elicit answers that validate official war stereotypes, most of them do not pre-empt answers.
One of the interviewees, Marevasei Kachere, was forced to join the war because of the suffering she experienced in the notorious "protected villages" (referred to as "keeps" by villagers) of the Rhodesian era. These were guarded by soldiers round the clock in order to cut them off from guerrillas who could not operate effectively in isolation. Evident in the interview is gender discrimination in the recruitment process:
At first they [guerrilla leaders] refused to take us and said they were taking boys only, and that though they had taken girls before, they did not encourage those who were young to go. But we insisted that we were not going back to the keep to be beaten to death (185).
Guerrillas expected men rather than girls to join the war. It would appear that women were expected to stay at home performing chores which were customarily prescribed as the domestic domain. Catherine Nyamandwe, another interviewee, remembers being advised by guerrillas to return home because if girls left for Mozambique no one would cook for male freedom fighters. During the war, women's roles were extended to cooking for freedom fighters and bringing them blankets. Girls were expected to forego their quest for freedom in order to attend to the needs of their fighting male counterparts. Therein lay the paradox in the conception of freedom during the era in question. The reservations expressed at the front were later reflected at the rear.
Another ex-combatant, Maureen Moyo, a product of a broken family, sheds more light on other factors that might have driven girls to join ZANLA forces in Mozambique:
In those days I thought it was a way of punishing the people that were cruel to me - people like my father; if I came back with a gun... to punish him for leaving us... (Moyo, 160)
The conditions within the family were so bad that the youngster was forced to flee to an environment that she perceived as better. Contrary to the official version, she perceived the war in childishly domestic terms, and not in the context of oppression at national level.
Children who were traumatised by family problems swelled the ranks of guerrilla recruits. Added to this was the problem of poverty, as evident from some of the interviews. By the 1970s, it had become quite clear to many African people that employment was more of a privilege than a right. The educational pyramid ensured that only a few people got to the top while the majority dropped out to join the ranks of the unemployed youth. Besides, education was differentially offered; only a few families per community could afford to pay for it, thus forcing many young people of school-going age to go to Mozambique and Zambia to join the war.
In some cases, peer group influence played a major role in making young people join the war. Mavis Nyathi, another interviewee, joined the ZIPRA forces because she and her age-mates idolised and romanticised freedom fighters. They wanted to follow the path that had been taken by their acquaintances. There was sheer excitement about discovering what exactly happened when people joined the liberation struggle (131-132).
The war further promised girls an opportunity to equal men in terms of achievements, as evident in Nyathi's observation:
Yes, putting on that camouflage uniform, having a gun, feeling macho -especially for a woman. You feel a man in that attire. People would talk about their dreams... (159).
There were many accounts of young people who could become gun-wielding heroes that were needed to tame the cruel Rhodesian soldiers. In that sense, the gun promised adventure and freedom in a youthful sense.
Nyathi concludes that their reasons for joining the war "were not good enough". The motive was not to liberate "our country... It was more for selfish gain... I was not patriotic, I never looked at it that way" (161).
Evidently, Nyathi still has not reconciled her latent reasons for going to war with manifest ones given by nationalist politicians. The discrepancy between official reasons and private reasons which she rates as not "good enough", appears to have accounted for the silences of individual participants who were expected to make their biographies of war conform to official records, like all party faithfuls. In reality, the difference between "selfish gain" and the patriotic act of liberating "fellow sisters" has so far been a theoretical one; one of trying to differentiate between romance and reality. In independence, there has been more evidence of "selfish gain" than patriotism among the emergent political elite.
To their utter disillusionment and disbelief, upon crossing the border, the young people discovered that the reality about war was going to be different from the romantic escapades they had in mind. The ugly reality, which included, among other things, squalid living conditions, intense boredom and homesickness, starvation, disease, incessant attacks by the Rhodesian army and constant vigilance, was in contradistinction to idyllic expectations harboured by the young recruits.
As revealed in the interviews, the would-be-liberators lived as prisoners. The whole idea of using prison facilities to assist people who are recruited to fight for freedom presents a conceptual contradiction. Young people expected the war environment as part of the liberating process to offer conditions that would have been a prelude to the joys of independence.
Contrary to expectation, the youths were transformed into food gatherers who lived on the grain substitutes of traditional communities (187). While there is nothing wrong with the food provided by nature, the young recruits had been brought up to associate social advancement with the abandonment of tradition. The interviewees reflect a sense of remorse over the descent into this supposedly early stage of evolutionary life. In instances where familiar food was available, the diet was below the basic expectations of rural people:
[I]n the morning we had plain porridge, in the afternoon sadza and matemba or beans, or sometimes just plain sadza - plain sadza with nothing. We used to take our plain sadza, go to the river, put some water in the sadza and eat. Or sometimes, if we were lucky, and there was sugar then we put sugar on our sadza... (145).
Contrary to the dictates of African custom and the expectations of women, trainers were equally tough with both male and female recruits:
[G]enerally the whole training process was an unhappy event. During training you would hate all the instructors, all of them. But afterwards you realize that they were only doing their duties (142).
The fact that the training was tolerated only because it was the duty of the trainers undermines the ultimate value of the military training: the quest for freedom.
Women in particular found life in the camps intolerable. Yet, tragically, as in death, one could not return to warn those at home to change their view of the war. Prudence Uriri's experiences at Tembwe, Mozambique, made her conclude that:
I had made a mistake to go and join the war. I felt that what I had heard about it - what was going on - and the intention of this whole war was not really what was happening for me. So there were people who tried to run away and they were caught before they could go very far... (67-68).
The cultural shock tempted many recruits to escape back to Rhodesia. The reaction of the authorities to desertion was comparable to their incensed reaction to infiltration by Rhodesian spies:
[T]here was a lot of beating up. People actually had wounds that would go many centimetres deep into their flesh... (68).
Camps were very unsafe for the recruits, specially the women who were rarely deployed to the front:
I had never thought of the possibility of dying in a battle before. During my training I had imagined an exchange of gunfire, but nothing more. I had never seen a dead person, but now I saw so many. As we ran to the river I had stepped on the bodies of those who had died, and the thought of that experience horrified me (Kachere, 188).
This is also confirmed by Bhebe (1999) who states that recruits were regular targets of the Rhodesian army. The experience of the surprise bombings by Rhodesian security forces at Mkushi in Zambia and Nyadzonia in Mozambique proved to be the very opposite of the romantic battles of heroines and heroes in the propaganda at home. The trauma lives on in the lives of the survivors who witnessed the perishing of young people who had envisaged war as a fair exchange of gunfire. A feeling of emptiness pervades the survivors.
Although portrayed from the viewpoint of women, the problems outlined so far affected both men and women. There were however, problems that were peculiar to women, which made the lives of women more difficult than that of men. The worst problems appear to relate to sexuality. In this case men were the problem. In the absence of normal social structures, men in positions of responsibility exploited the military discipline that required subordinates to obey their seniors, and imposed their will on women of their choice:
[W]hen there is a rape or somebody has been raped, there was no mother to tell that somebody had abused you. There was no law, there was no justice where you could report to, there was no court of law... If you fell pregnant no one assisted you (126).
The licentious behaviour of the male superiors undermined the personal freedom of women, and threatened to render the struggle against social injustice meaningless.
Trips outside the camp appear to have given the generality of guerrillas space to engage in socially unaccepted sexual activities. That way the struggle for liberation lost its human face:
And as women we never got special treatment - we were the highly oppressed people. We were never even allowed to use contraceptives... (Dongo, 125).
In the war front, male guerrillas similarly exploited the civilian population. One of the chimbwidos confesses that many freedom fighters used pungwes (night-long meetings in which guerrillas politicised villagers) as opportunities to sexually assault women and girls. The girls had to contend with:
different men every week, every month... As a result, your body becomes nothing. And you lose respect for yourself as a woman... It is something that normal women, woman, cannot do.
We were not allowed to say "no" (Moyo, 168).
Thus, freedom fighters used guns that were perceived as tools for liberation by the villagers among whom they operated, to undermine the authority of community elders who normally regulated the sexual activities of young people. In this way, they seriously violated traditional African values which were part of the cultural environment of the masses who hosted the war. The women were also sexually assaulted by Rhodesian soldiers as punishment for supporting freedom fighters.
For those women who fell pregnant by guerrillas, paternity became a problem since it was difficult, if not impossible, to establish the true identity of the fighters. Guerrilla names like Bazooka and Sub (sub-machine gun) could not help any woman get a newly-born child affiliated to its father's lineage as required by Shona or Ndebele customs, of which most women were part. Besides, the constant threats issued to women did not allow them to identify the biological fathers. As a result the war caused a moral dilemma in rural communities.
Contrary to nationalist propaganda at home and women's expectations, men had problems allowing women to participate in spheres that the latter had hoped to operate in. Women's contribution was largely confined to carriers of ammunition and undertakers of victims of common illnesses. In spite of going through the same rigorous military and political training as their male counterparts, women would not be trusted to confront the enemy. Real battles were fought by men:
Our role as women was that we were carriers of ammunition. It was actually heavier than instituting the war itself... (Dongo, 127).
There was a tendency to say the women's speciality is in the kitchen... Women and men received the same military or political training... It is only [when it came to] power sharing, or making decisions, that women could not participate... (Dongo, 129).
Thus, women were expected to perform chores which are customarily ascribed to them in rural life, although they were denied the freedoms that rural women in a normal subsistence social environment would have enjoyed. The resultant overwhelming sense of powerlessness and oppression rendered meaningless men's claim that they were training women to liberate society back home. Women had no experience of the very freedom they were trying to establish at home. This appears to have been one tragic dimension of the war.
After independence, men who participated in the war were never keen to allow women to spell out to society their side of the war: As one interviewee puts it, male politicians "will try to make it out to be as nice as possible so that they would remain the so-called trusted party cadres. They do not want this country to have the proper history of what actually transpired during the war" (126).
The confession of the truth would have shocked society into reducing the moral and political stature of the fighters whom it had idolised in the first decade of independence. For those who materially benefited from the war, the revelation of the truth would have been considered as unpatriotic and subversive. Attempts were made to sweep the unpleasant truth under the carpet.
Tragically, prior to these published accounts, women had not disclosed that they had not fought in the sense that official narratives had claimed. The problems that arose from fighting a just war outside a properly supported moral environment created problems that spilled into independence. With the breaking of the silence, people are slowly realising that the aspirations of independence were based on false premises.
Many wartime promises, for instance, giving women ex-combatants preferential treatment in the formal employment sector failed to materialise after independence. To make matters worse, many women ex-combatants who entered into marriages were similarly frustrated:
Many marriages of the female ex-combatants did not last. There is a lot of prejudice to overcome. People say a woman who used to kill will bring a bad influence into the family (Saungweme, 53).
In Zimbabwean society, it would have been perceived as unbecoming of a woman to fight to kill, the very thing that those women who had gone to war were exalted for. Ironically, those women who were accorded the heroine status were considered unfit for marriage as their perceived vicious qualities made them too grotesque for marriage in the same society that idolised them. That contradiction has remained unresolved. Paradoxically, among all those interviewed, no woman appears to have engaged in battle in a way that could have directly resulted in killing.
Sexual harassment and victimisation by men haunted many women who tried to settle down into married life, as the latter were viewed as "prostitutes; [who] belonged to comrades, [who] slept with them" (176).
The stigma attached to the women ex-combatants "makes it very difficult for us to come out confidently in most places..." (148-149).
It is clear that many women ex-combatants perceive themselves as victims rather than heroines of the war. Some of them have had to seek psychiatric treatment to rid themselves of the ghosts of the war period. Ironically, some have recovered partly by rejecting the romantic image of heroism which denies that brave heroes could also be victims of trauma.
Women and the Land Reform Programme
The foregoing observations apply largely to women who are defined as former freedom fighters. In reality, so-called former freedom fighters comprise a small part of womenfolk who participated in the liberation of the country. The role played by girls in the villages (chimbwidos) and elderly women whom Irene Staunton regards as "mothers of the revolution" (1987) , is not part of nationalist rhetoric on independence.
The chimbwidos provided such services as preparing food, keeping the male fighters entertained and singing songs of war. Their mothers, who according to tradition, own such assets as chickens and goats, provided these delicacies for the fighters. Without their chickens, the fighters would have performed poorly at the war front, much like their counterparts who faced starvation in the rear bases. Yet, independence did not give due recognition to the majority of peasant women who parted with chicken, goats and sheep to support a collective cause. It is common knowledge that chickens and goats are vital assets in the rural subsistence economy (Mararike, 1999). The fact that peasant women and their families got only rare nominal tokens at independence yet they offered the war a base, means that the new ruling elite subverted the rural economy. These women, joined by an equally exploited class of women celebrated by nationalists as patriots, found themselves continuing in the underdeveloped rural society established through colonisation.
By 2002, the generality of peasants suffered economic deprivation as a result of natural and man-made causes such as frequent droughts, corruption and mismanagement of the economy. However, in international patriarchy-dominated elitist conferences, representatives of government continue to make high-sounding speeches about strides made in improving the lot of women including the issue of giving land to landless women who have borne the burden of producing food in unproductive land, most of which is not fit for human habitation. The following are highlights from the exposition by a Zimbabwean representative to the United Nations based in New York:
a. gender inequality still impedes social and economic development
b. women constitute 51% of the population, 86% of whom live in rural areas
c. there a is need to improve conditions in rural areas through land redistribution, and land ownership by women
c. women contribute 70% of agricultural labour
d. female-headed households make up the majority of the rural poor
The state functionary acknowledges the importance of rural women in creating a better society, and, therefore, the need for gender sensitivity in land redistribution. He goes on to make the following claims, which cannot be substantiated by the reality on the ground:
a. "women in Zimbabwe have mobilised themselves to form savings and credit cooperatives and village banks governed by the communities themselves¼ Efforts are underway towards the establishment of a women's bank"
b. there are efforts towards socialising the girl child in the home, school and community in order to improve her condition in an otherwise patriarchal society (Mutumbike, 2000).
These pronouncements are in line with official rhetoric on women and the land reform programme.
Having realised the need to tighten its grip on power after its shock defeat in the February 2000 Constitutional Referendum, the ruling Zanu PF party resorted to one of its long-neglected wartime promises to equitably redistribute land. In 2000, President Robert Mugabe promised that in order to redress colonial imbalances, women, particularly those in female-headed households, would get 20% of the total land identified for redistribution under government's controversial fast-tracked resettlement programme. This despite the fact that women's organisations had lobbied government to allocate women 35% of land identified for resettlement purposes (Mgugu, Daily News, Friday 8 November, 2002). The subsequent policy document came as a disappointment to women as it failed to match government rhetoric on the need to empower women through land redistribution. Although the ruling party's Presidential campaign was centred on land redistribution, as evident in its many political rallies, "women's access and control of the land" were not enhanced. There has been no attempt by government to provide legal and administrative frameworks to implement a gender-sensitive land reform programmes in Zimbabwe (Mufundikwa, 2000).
The violence surrounding land reform has also made it difficult for women to compete fairly with men, resulting in the director of a leading women's organisation remarking that:
Because of the violence accompanying land reform, many potential female beneficiaries of the programme ¼ are afraid to apply or take up land in the few instances where they have been lucky enough to be approved for resettlement (Mgugu, 2002).
There were numerous press reports that depicted thousands of women as silent and invisible victims of rape, torture and murder in the name of empowering them through giving them land. Tragically, these women face a dilemma as the social stigma attached to rape makes it difficult for its victims to openly articulate their ordeal. In the words of Mufundikwa (2000), "cultural taboos around the issue of rape have silenced women".
In communal lands, customary law, which quite often reflects the attitude of colonial legal officers and African male patriarchs rather authentic African customs (Bhebe, 2000) is still used in land allocation and use. The anti-women colonial land tenure arrangements, which deny women land tenure rights, have failed to accommodate the needs of women in relation to "land and related resources as well as the formulation of policies even at village level¼" (Mufundikwa, 2000). Men who are often the heads of households are given land rights and women benefit as dependants of men.
Contrary to high-sounding pronouncements by government officials, "Section 23 (1) of the Zimbabwean Constitution, as confirmed by the Supreme Court, does not prohibit sex discrimination" (Zigomo-Nyatsanza, 2000). The Constitution recognises the primacy of customary law, which places emphasis "on customary considerations" in land inheritance. The discrimination is also evident in family laws, and rights to property in marriage or divorce and on death.
There is still no provision for "vulnerable groups" like women, the poor and child-headed households in the law which is enshrined in the Constitution. The law has so far failed to accommodate the strategic needs of women.
Conclusion
The change of discourse on the war is a result of changes in the politico-economic environment. The one-sided interpretations of war experiences which belong to the war period and the euphoric days of the early 1980s are slowly being challenged by multiple-voiced interpretations of social history, precipitated by a pervasive sense of disillusionment with the surrender value of independence. Like other sectors of society, women have become increasingly disgruntled with elitist discourse which tries to monopolise the charting of the nation's history. Counter-discourse demonstrates that women, and indeed all other people in society, can speak for themselves, about themselves. The rejection of the romantic-heroic images of the war in favour of more down-to-earth images is indicative of the fact that a nation cannot successfully forge into the future without taking thorough stock of its past, of its gains and losses. A more just and humane environment can only emerge from an honest reflection on the mistakes of the past. There is a sense in which the romanticising of the war in itself is tragic, as it is essentially a celebration of organised violence whose many fronts brutalise the host society.
In the post-colonial era, the claims by the government of Zimbabwe that it is "making efforts to ensure that land is distributed equally and fairly to all those in need" have not been substantiated in the recently completed land reform programme. Despite the fact that women constitute the majority of Zimbabwe's population, and also contribute a large percentage of agricultural labour, they have not benefited from the land reform programme. The 16th Amendment of the Constitution of Zimbabwe, which provides for the fast-track programme, does not deal with gender issues at all. The official version of the significant strides that have been made to improve the condition of women runs contrary to the reality of the condition of women in colonial and post-colonial Zimbabwe.
References
Bhebe, N. 1999. ZAPU and ZANU Guerrilla Warfare and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Zimbabwe. Gweru: Mambo Press.
Bhebe N. and Ranger, T. 1995. Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume One. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.
Bhebe, N. and Ranger, T. 1995. Society in Zimbabwe's Liberation War Volume Two. Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications.
Maraire, J.N. 1996. Zenzele: A Letter to my Daughter. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Mararike, C. G. (1999). Survival Strategies in Rural Zimbabwe. Harare: Mond Books.
Mutumbike, C. 2000. Statement presented during the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly entitled, "Development and Peace for the Twenty-first Century", New York, 2000.
Staunton, I. 1987. Mothers of the Revolution. Harare: Baobab Books.
Zimbabwe Women Writers (Eds.) 2000. Women of Resilience: The Voices of Women Ex-combatants. Harare: Zimbabwe Women Writers.
Zigomo-Nyatsanza, L. 2000. "Legal Framework: Constitution Provisions of Accessing and Controlling Land", Paper presented at the Women's and land Rights in Southern Africa Regional Conference, 27-28 November, Harare, Zimbabwe.
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