[DEBATE] : His Excellency Comrade Robert: How Mugabe's ZANU clique rose to power | Links

[Patrick Bond]

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His Excellency Comrade Robert: How Mugabe's ZANU clique rose to power

By Stephen O’Brien

Towards the end of 1975 a movement of young radicals organised in the 
Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA) took charge of Zimbabwe’s liberation war. 
ZIPA’s fusion of inclusive politics, transformational vision and 
military aggression dealt crippling blows to the white supremacist 
regime of Ian Smith. However, it’s success also paved the way for a 
faction of conservative nationalists led by Robert Mugabe to wrest 
control of the liberation movement for themselves.

The fact that Mugabe, a former rural school teacher, and his cronies 
would become the ruling capitalist elite of Zimbabwe by crushing a 
movement of young Chavista-style revolutionaries doesn’t sit well with 
their anti-imperialist self-image.

The ZIPA cadre emerged from the wave of young people who, experiencing 
oppression and discrimination in Rhodesia, decided to become liberation 
fighters in early 1970s. Unlike many of the first generation of 
fighters, they volunteered to join the respective military wings of the 
Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National 
Union (ZANU)[i]

In 1975, key nationalist leaders -- such as Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, 
Ndabiginini Sithole, Jason Moyo, Herbert Chitepo, Abel Muzorewa, James 
Chikerema and Josiah Tongogara -- had become entangled in factional 
rivalry and long-running and fruitless peace talks with the Smith 
regime. The young recruits who would shortly form ZIPA sought to 
reinvigorate the struggle as the war stalled and as the old leaders 
became marginalised.

A group of ZANU officers based at training camps in Tanzania consulted 
widely among the liberation forces. They approached President Julius 
Nyerere of Tanzania and Samora Machel, soon to be president of newly 
liberated and independent Mozambique, for support to restart the war 
against Smith. Both Machel and Nyerere had initially supported peace 
negotiations and the resulting ceasefire with Rhodesia, but by October 
1975 had lost patience with the whole process, and listened with 
sympathy to the ideas of the young officers.

ZIPA formed

The ZANU officers also sought unity with ZAPU, the long-standing rival 
organisation from which ZANU had split in 1963. ZAPU agreed and in 
November 1975 ZIPA was formed with a combined High Command composed of 
equal numbers from both ZAPU and ZANU. The alliance with ZAPU 
disintegrated after a few months partly because ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo 
had continued to negotiate with Smith. Nevertheless, it was an important 
attempt at unity which defied the prevailing trend of division.

ZIPA’s nominal head was Rex Nhongo (later known as Solomon Mujuru he 
would become head of the Zimbabwe Army under Mugabe), but strategic and 
tactical leadership came to be held by his young deputy, Wilfred Mhanda.

Wilfred Mhanda

Mhanda had been a typical recruit to ZANU and its military wing, the 
Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA). He had been involved in 
school protests and on leaving his studies helped form a ZANU support 
group. Like many who were to become part of ZIPA, Mhanda had been 
influenced by the youth radicalisation of the 1960s. In 1971, with the 
special branch in pursuit, Mhanda’s group skipped the border into 
Botswana and joined ZANLA. He took the war name of Dzinashe Machingura. 
He was later sent for training in China and progressed through the ranks 
to became a military instructor, political commissar, commander of the 
Mgagao camp in Tanzania and then member of the High Command.[ii]

ZIPA theory, tactics

Theory influenced ZIPA’s tactics. Its fighters were not regarded as 
cannon fodder, lines of retreat and supply were secured, 
counter-offensives anticipated and strategic reserves made ready. Senior 
ZIPA commanders visited the front. ZIPA’s aims went beyond winning 
democracy, to the revolutionary transformation of Rhodesia’s social and 
economic relations. The previous conception of the old-guard 
nationalists had tended to regard armed struggle as a means to apply 
pressure for external intervention to end White minority rule.

The Zimbabwe People’s Army relocated its troops from Tanzania to 
Mozambique and in January 1976, 1000 guerrillas crossed into Rhodesia. 
The entire eastern border of Rhodesia became a war zone as the guerillas 
launched coordinated and well-planned attacks on mines, farms and 
communication routes, such as the new railway line to South Africa.

ZIPA established Wampoa College to help institute its vision and ran 
Marxist-inspired courses in military instruction and mass mobilisation 
for its fighters. It educated its cadre against the sexual abuse of 
women and sought to win the support of the Zimbabwean peasantry through 
persuasion rather than coercion.

Historian David Moore’s study of ZIPA notes: ``The students made their 
political education directly relevant to the struggle, so that Marxism 
could better direct the war of liberation.’’[iii] ZIPA’s political 
approach lead to it becoming known as the Vashandi, a word which means 
worker in the Shona language, but which, according to Mhanda, took on a 
broader meaning as the revolutionary front of workers, students and 
peasants.

Smith’s regime reeled under the offensive. Repression was intensified, 
``psychopathic’’ counter-insurgency units such as the Selous Scouts were 
deployed, so called ``protected villages’’ intensified control over the 
population and raids were launched against refugee camps in neighbouring 
countries. Rhodesia was forced to borrow 26 helicopters from apartheid 
South Africa, and in order to deploy 60% more troops, increased the 
military call-up for whites. In his memoirs, Ken Flower, head of the 
Central Intelligence Organisation under Smith (and later under Mugabe), 
recalls that by July 1976 ``Rhodesia was beginning to lose the war.[iv]

Geneva talks

Concerned about the growing influence of the young Marxists in Zimbabwe, 
Henry Kissinger, the United States’ Secretary of State, sought to resume 
the dormant negotiations by organising a round of talks in Geneva in 
October 1976.

The legal basis for the talks centred around Rhodesia’s technical status 
as a British colony. Rhodesia had made a Unilateral Declaration of 
Independence (UDI) in 1965, partly to quell the nascent nationalist 
movement and to forestall any British demand that ``legal’’ independence 
include guarantees for equal rights for the black majority.

Kissinger’s proposals centered around a supposed timetable for a 
transition to black majority rule (these days they say ``road map’’) 
with the intention that the talks would provide an opportunity to 
sideline or eliminate the radicals.

ZIPA was opposed to negotiations. On numerous occasions, especially 
after Portuguese colonialism collapsed in 1974 and Frelimo started to 
take control of Mozambique, Smith had used talks to exploit divisions 
and ideological confusion in the nationalists’ ranks.

ZIPA leaders were also wary of the old leadership. When Samora Machel 
pressed them to nominate the political leader with whom they most 
closely identified, in a decision which was to have fateful 
consequences, they nominated Robert Mugabe. In his struggle to depose 
the ZANU president Ndanbiginini Sithole, Mugabe was careful to identify 
with the guerillas, unlike Sithole who unsuccessfully attempted to place 
them under his control. This influenced the ZIPA leaders and they 
thought that, although they did not support Mugabe, they could work with 
him.

Disunity had long plagued the nationalist movement. When ZANU had split 
from ZAPU in 1963 the acrimony turned violent in the townships at a 
certain point and Smith’s police stood by while it took its course. 
Since then, guerilla revolts against what were perceived to be 
incompetent leaders, such as ZAPU’s March 11 Movement (1971) and ZANU’s 
Nhari Rebellion (1974-1975), had been brutally suppressed.

It was during the fallout from the Nhari rebellion that Herbert Chitepo, 
the ZANU chair, was assassinated in Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. In 
response, Kenneth Kaunda, the Zambian president, who had hosted the 
liberation forces in Zambia, banned Zimbabwean nationalist organisations 
and detained hundred of their leaders and supporters, including Josiah 
Tongogara, the ZANU military commander.

However, so that they could attend the Geneva talks, these leaders were 
subsequently released along with Mugabe, who had also been in detention. 
Mugabe had fled from Rhodesia to Mozambique in April 1975 after his 
release from ten years in Smith’s jails to participate in an earlier 
round of talks. Mozambique, along with other pro-liberation states, had 
initially regarded Mugabe with suspicion because of his opposition to 
Sithole and had placed him in open detention.

Other nationalist delegates to Geneva included Nkomo and Bishop Abel 
Muzorewa of the Rhodesian based United African National Congress. The 
ZIPA commanders treated the whole Geneva negotiations with suspicion and 
issued a statement which declared: ``None of the Zimbabwe delegations 
there represents ZIPA’’.[v]

Mhanda, who was in effect the central ZIPA figure, explains that ZIPA 
members regarded many of the old leaders as being out of touch. They 
thought that leaders such as Mugabe and Nkomo, having been in jail for 
many years, did not fully understand changes brought about by the youth 
radicalisation and the Vietnam War. Where the older generation was 
motivated by a desire to force negotiations that would usher in ``one 
man one vote’’, the ZIPA comrades were ``fighting for the total 
transformation of the Zimbabwean society’’.[vi]

Marxist ideas

Some of the young radicals had experienced and even sought out Marxist 
ideas during their training. Mhanda describes the delight he and a group 
of comrades felt when they discovered Marxist classics in the library at 
their training camp in Tanzania.[vii] Making the most of the opportunity 
they ran study classes on Marxist-Leninist philosophy, polemics and 
historical materialism. In contrast, while a few of the old guard had 
encountered communists, and even Trotskyists in South Africa,[viii] many 
of them had little direct experience with Marxism. The socialist 
tradition in Rhodesia was fleeting. During its brief existence, the 
Rhodesian Communist Party had been a tiny white enclave.

Britain was anxious that the ZIPA commanders attend Geneva, and thus be 
away from their troops. Recent research in British archives has revealed 
that Britain offered an interest-free loan of £15 million to Machel’s 
government to ensure that the ```young men’ controlling Mugabe attended 
Geneva’’.[ix]

Heavily dependent on the support of Machel for access to the supply 
lines and infiltration routes through Mozambique, the ZIPA leadership 
had little choice but to attend.

In Geneva, ZIPA unsuccessfully tried to unite the various nationalist 
delegations. They sought to create a united front against Smith and 
demand that the racists unconditionally surrender power. However, the 
various nationalist delegations were incapable of uniting and rejected 
this proposal.

 

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Mugabe, for his part, allied with the recently released military chief 
Tongogara, and Solomon Mujuru. The nominal head of ZIPA, Mujuru had 
never really shared the strategic vision of his deputy political 
commissar Mhanda. He also blocked with ZAPU’s Joshua Nkomo and his 
deputy Jason Moyo to create the Patriotic Front. This helped strengthen 
Mugabe against the right (Abel Muzorewa and Ndanbiginini Sithole) and 
against the left, the increasingly politically independent ZIPA.

Historian David Moore has suggested that Mugabe was not really committed 
to the talks at Geneva as he first needed to deal with ZIPA and gain 
control the army before he entered serious negotiations. The talks 
adjourned indefinitely just before Christmas 1976.[x]

ZIPA suppressed

After the collapse of the talks, the ZIPA leaders were sidelined into 
undertaking solidarity duties in Europe. Mugabe, Tongogara and Mujuru 
rushed back to Mozambique. In January 1977, with Machel's support they 
started to impose their control. The radio and print media were taken 
over, Wampoa closed and ZIPA officers placed under arrest. When Mhanda 
and the rest of the ZIPA delegation returned from Geneva they were faced 
with a changed reality. Mhanda and other leaders who refused to be 
co-opted joined their comrades in prison.

Prosecution of the war took second place while Mugabe continued to 
impose control. Pawns, a novel about the war by Charles Samupindi, 
describes the new atmosphere:

The Vashandi, the young kids as …[Tongogara] …calls them, are now all 
safely behind bars in Frelimo prisons in Beira. But, he says, some of 
them are still among us. Some may be with us here at the parade. He 
wants to know who they are. Things are never the same again.[xi]

Until at least August 1977, there were mass denunciations, torture and 
beatings. Three-hundred junior Vashandi were executed.[xii]

When Machel enquired what had happened to the prosecution of the war, 
Mugabe was evasive and avoided Machel’s suggestion that the jailed 
leaders be allowed to fight.

With its most experienced commanders out of action, ZANLA failed to 
learn from previous lessons and Smith launched another devastating 
attack on the camps in Mozambique. On November 23, 1977, the ZANU base 
at Chimoio in Mozambique was razed leaving more than 1200 casualties.

After the suppression of the radicals, the old leaders maintained, and 
even stepped up, the left discourse popularised by ZIPA.

Mugabe `lays the line’

In August 1977, Mugabe felt strong enough to call a special ZANU 
congress and have himself appointed party president. In his congress 
speech, later published as ``Comrade Mugabe Lays the Line’’, Mugabe made 
it clear that henceforth the ``given leadership’’ was in control.[xiii]

The trappings of a personality cult started to emerge. One of his 
biographers writes that in his Maputo office, Mugabe’s ``subalterns 
…would click their heels or stamp a foot to attention when they went to 
see him’’.[xiv] Party documents were now embellished with the slogan 
``Forward with Comrade President Robert Mugabe’’.[xv]

Undisciplined habits among ZANU apparatchiks, which had been a factor in 
the Nhari rebellion, re-emerged. Machel had to complain to Mugabe about 
the ``heavy drinking and the womanising that some senior ZANU men 
indulged in at the capital’s nightspots, like the Polana Hotel’’.[xvi]

Discipline weakened as the preoccupation with ``dissidents’’ meant that 
there was inadequate ideological and military training. Sexual abuse 
became common and even pro-ZANU historians mention the ``rampant 
raping’’ carried out by senior commanders.[xvii] During 1977 to 1979 
some observers even expressed concerns that the deterioration of the 
guerillas’ behaviour in certain areas could cause a ``collapse of rural 
support’’.[xviii]

Astute leadership was especially needed when the political situation 
became confused. Smith took advantage of the disunity of the 
nationalists. He cut a deal with the conservative wing of the 
nationalists, represented by Ndabiginini Sithole, James Chikerema and 
Bishop Abel Muzorewa, to establish the puppet state of Rhodesia-Zimbabwe 
under nominal black majority rule.

Known as the ``internal settlement’’, the pact prolonged white 
domination by two more bloody years. During this time both Sithole and 
Muzorewa set up their own armies and fought ZANU and ZAPU, while white 
Rhodesians and mercenaries, especially in the Selous Scouts, massacred 
at will while masquerading as guerillas.

However, the weight of popular discontent, international presssure and 
ZANU and ZAPU’s military pressure eventually forced Smith, on behalf of 
the tiny white minority, to return to the negotiating table.

In December 1979, at the Lancaster House talks in Britain, Smith finally 
surrendered. In the elections held for the black seats the following 
February, ZANU won 57 seats, ZAPU 20 and Muzorewa’s United African 
National Council, three. While the end of white political domination was 
achieved, the radical transformation as conceived by ZIPA certainly wasn’t.

Origins of ZANU elitism

While ZANU formally adopted ``Marxism-Leninism-Mao TseTung thought’’ at 
its 1977 Chimoio Congress, this left talk ``was ultimately a disguise 
for classically authoritarian nationalism’’.[xix]

This orientation can be traced back to the intellectual formation of 
many members of the 1950s and 1960s generation of nationalists. At this 
time the vast mass of the people was restricted to the rural areas and 
had little access to education. A significant number of the first 
nationalists were educated at church and colonial schools which had been 
designed to create a tiny educated layer who would ``lead’’ the black 
masses on behalf of the white minority. They later found work in 
intellectual occupations such as teachers (Mugabe), preachers (Sithole 
and Muzorewa), journalists, clerks, social workers and trade union 
officials (Nkomo).

Many of them adopted the view that their role, and that of the black 
middle class, ``was to aid the government in its `civilizing’ programmes 
of development and industrialisation’’.[xx] This was reflected in the 
fact that trade union officials and the educated elite played an 
ambivalent role in such popular struggles as the general strike in 1948, 
the bus boycotts of 1956 and the mass protests which thwarted the 
undemocratic Anglo-Rhodesian settlement proposals of 1971.

Mugabe himself had been involved in the liberal multi-class and 
multi-race organisation, the Capricorn Society.[xxi] He only joined a 
nationalist party in 1960 when he was 36 years old, after having worked 
and studied abroad. Mugabe maintained his liberal contacts and could 
call on them to support his wife while in exile in Britain and petition 
the British government to grant her residency.

Despite its numerical strength, at least half a million by 1948, the 
organised working class did not play a central role in the later stages 
of the liberation struggle.[xxii] As a result, there was no significant 
social counterweight to the educated intellectuals who came to dominate 
the leadership of the struggle.

Disunity and rivalry was common among the middle-class nationalists. By 
the time the young ZIPA radicals arrived on the scene the divisions in 
the nationalist ranks were deep. Divisions existed between those who had 
been in jail, those who had fled into neighbouring countries to direct 
the guerilla war, such as Chitepo and Moyo, younger party members who 
had studied abroad and the generally more conservative Rhodesia-based 
nationalists, such as Muzorewa, who had remained ``legal’’ and largely 
out of jail.

Differences were reflected in questions of tactics, such as when and how 
to apply military pressure and to what extent outside powers be allowed 
to broker talks. Opposition to white rule was one of the few things that 
they had in common, and even that was negotiable for some.

ZANU in power

Lacking a complete military victory, and subject to pressure from their 
war-weary allies, in particular Mozambique and Zambia, the nationalists 
made significant and arguably generous concessions during the Lancaster 
House negotiations. Responsibility was accepted for paying the foreign 
debt the Smith regime had accumulated buying arms and mercenaries in 
contravention of UN sanctions. Even today Zimbabwe continues to accept 
and pay debts for which it has no moral obligation.

After independence, rather than being dismantled and transformed, the 
white state was merely taken over as it was. The first government 
included former supporters of Smith who were willing to help apply many 
of the same economic policies.

One of their first acts was to demobilise the ZANU committees and 
support groups, which had helped the party organise the rural 
population. The new government suppressed a spontaneous strike wave 
unleashed by an increasingly confident working class.

Mugabe broke the Patriotic Front, his nominal alliance with Nkomo, 
shortly before the 1980 election and both ZANU and ZAPU went to the vote 
separately. The split with ZAPU was to have dire consequences.

Ex-ZAPU members were increasingly purged from senior positions in the 
army and from government ministries. The army, having been retrained by 
British military officers, ``embraced the ideas, training, organisation 
and forms of force of the Rhodesian settler army’’.[xxiii] It had 
absolute loyalty to Mugabe above all and regardless of any 
constitutional and democratic considerations.

A separate brigade, the Fifth, composed exclusively of Shona speakers 
and ZANU veterans, was established and trained by North Korea. The Fifth 
Brigade was to unleash a brutal war of terror on Ndebele people, who 
were assumed to be ZAPU supporters and therefore dissidents. In what 
became known as Gukurahundi, between 1983 and 1985, at least 5000 people 
died in the Matabeleland and Midlands regions of Zimbabwe. At Nkomo’s 
funeral in 1999, Mugabe himself was to refer to the experience as a 
``moment of madness’’.

A paternalistic and authoritarian state kept the popular classes in 
their place. Significant spending on education and health in the early 
years of the government was matched by corporatist trade union 
structures. The cities were also kept under control and thousands of 
urban dwellers and squatters were regularly evicted from black 
townships. In the rural areas land reform was forever promised but not 
delivered, while rural wages were kept low to subsidise cheap food, and 
therefore lower wages, for the cities. As one commentator observed 
``poverty was structural; all the post-independence state did was 
‘humanise’ it’’.[xxiv]

By 1987, with the popular classes under control, ZAPU severely weakened, 
the old-time allies conveniently dead or purged (Tongogara had died in 
an accident on the eve of independence)[xxv] and with the armed forces 
and police under his control, Mugabe changed the constitution and 
appointed himself executive president.

With an increasing orientation to international capital, the country 
slipped further into corruption and debt. Nonetheless, ZANU continued to 
pretend that it sought ``to establish a socialist society in Zimbabwe on 
the guidance of Marxist-Leninist principles’’.[xxvi]

People started to realise that the fruits of the liberation struggle had 
been appropriated. In Echoing Silences, by Alexander Kanengoni, a war 
veteran suffering post-traumatic stress disorder has a dream in which 
Chitepo and Jason Moyo are discussing how the struggle has lost its way 
and wondering ``how the politics, wealth and the economy of the entire 
country was slowly becoming synonymous with the names of less than a 
dozen people’’.[xxvii]

Exhausted nationalism?

The Vashandi, according to Moore, had ``hoped that full electoral 
freedom would enable them to mount a radical challenge to Mugabe's empty 
nationalism’’.[xxviii] However, the patterns and tools of political 
repression, established with the suppression of ZIPA, were too well 
entrenched to make this a possibility.

The detained ZIPA members were only released from detention in 
Mozambique, and allowed to return to Zimbabwe, after independence. When 
former ZIPAs publicly advocated unity with ZAPU, they were promptly 
arrested again, and only freed on the intervention of Nkomo.

Mhanda was warned that his presence in Zimbabwe was dangerous and he was 
obliged to spend several years studying in Europe. The ZIPA movement was 
effectively dispersed. In 2000, along with other ex-combatants, Mhanda 
helped form the Zimbabwe Liberators’ Platform to organise and fight for 
the rights of the country’s genuine war veterans.

Mugabe had proven to be apt in suppressing the threat from the left and 
employing the language of people such as Mhanda's ``to practice the 
worst of Third World socialism – and then the worst of Third World 
neo-liberalism’’[xxix] essentially to allow his cronies to enrich 
themselves with the ``privileges and subsidies that white exploiters had 
enjoyed’’.[xxx]

However, even before the end of the first decade of independence, it was 
clear that Mugabe’s version of patriarchal nationalism had exhausted any 
progressive content and the first steps towards a political break 
between the people and the ZANU elite were developing.

Once again it was young people, university students who had grown up 
under independence, supported by a new general secretary of the Zimbabwe 
Congress of Trade Unions, Morgan Tsvangirai, who began to challenge the 
dominant system of inequality and repression and open up a new phase in 
Zimbabwe’s still unresolved struggle for national libereation.

[Stephen O'Brien is a member of the Democratic Socialist Perspective, a 
Marxist tendency within the Socialist Alliance of Australia. He writes 
on Zimbawean politics for Green Left Weekly.]

Notes

[i] Up until the early 1970s nationalists had to forcibly conscript 
Zimbabwean youth to fight against Smith. See Chung, F. (2006) Re-living 
the second Chirumenga. Memories from Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. 
Stockholm: The Nordic Africa Institute in cooperation with Weaver Press, 
p. 77

[ii] Mhanda, W. (2007) Interview with Wilfred Mhanda by Stephen O’Brien 
August 2007. Harare

[iii] Moore, D. (1990) The Contradictory construction of hegemony in 
Zimbabwe: Politics, ideology and class in the formation of a new African 
State. PhD dissertation York University, Toronto. p. 335.

[iv] Flower, K. (1987) Serving secretly. An intelligence chief on 
record: Rhodesia into Zimbabwe 1964-1981. London: John Murray. p. 131. 
Flower also admits that the Selous Scouts attracted ``psychopathic 
killers’’, p. 124.

[v] Moore, D. (1990) p. 359

[vi] Moore, D. (1990) p. 309

[vii] Julius Nyerere, the then leader of Tanzania, had close ties to 
China and pursued a Tanzanian version of socialism.

[viii] For example See Nyagumbo, M. (1980) With the people. Salisbury: 
The Graham Company. p. 78-86 and Bhebe, N. (2004) Simon Vengai Muzenda 
and the struggle for and liberation of Zimbabwe. Gweru, Zimbabwe: Mambo 
Press, p. 49-68

[ix] Moore, D. (2008) ``Todays' imperialists were those who nurtured 
Mugabe’’, Sunday Independent, 20 January.

[x] Moore (1990) p. 361 suggests that Mugabe deliberately stalled as 
Geneva as he needed to deal with ZIPA and gain control the army before 
he entered serious negotiations with Smith.

[xi] Samupindi, C. (1992) Pawns. Harare: Baobab Books, p. 97.

[xii] The figure of 300 executions is cited by Astrow, A. (1983) 
Zimbabwe, a revolution that lost its way? London; Totowa, N.J.: Zed 
Press, p. 107. For more information on the suppression of ZIPA see Moore 
(1990) p. 367 and Nhongo-Simbanegavi (2000) For Better or Worse: Women 
and Zanla in Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle. Harare : Weaver Press, p. 102.

[xiii] Moore, D. (1990) p. 400

[xiv] Smith, D., Simpson, C., & Davies, I. (1981) Mugabe. Salisbury: 
Pioneer Head, p. 99

[xv] Nhongo-Simbanegavi, J. (2000) p. 202

[xvi] Smith, D., Simpson, C., & Davies, I. (1981) p. 106

[xvii] See Bhebe, N. (2004) p. 224, Chung, (2006) p. 125-128. For 
women’s testimonies see Musengezi, C. (Ed.) (2000) Women of resilience. 
The voices of women ex-combatants. Harare: Zimbabwe Women Writers and 
Nhongo-Simbanegavi, (2000) and Tekere, E. (2007) A lifetime of struggle. 
Harare: SAPES Trust, p. 94.

[xviii] Kriger, N. J. (2002) Zimbabwe’s guerilla war peasant voices. 
Harare : Baobab Books. p. 128.

[xix] Bond, P. (1998) Uneven Zimbabwe A study of finance, development 
and underdevelopment (PDF version) Trenton: Africa World Press, p. 339.

[xx] Moore, D. (1990) p. 124

[xxi] Smith, D., Simpson, C., & Davies, I. (1981) p. 18

[xxii] Low wages, import substitution industries and sanctions busting 
during UDI helped further develop railways, mines, light manufacturing 
and agricultural processing and contribute to the growth of the working 
class.

[xxiii] Campbell, H. (2003) Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The exhaustion of the 
patriarchal model of liberation. Trenton, NJ. Asmara, Eritrea: Africa 
World Press. p. 273

[xxiv] Tandon, Y. (2001) Trade unions and labour in the agricultural 
sector in Zimbabwe. In B. Raftopolous & L. Sachikonye (Eds.) Striking 
back: The labour movement and the post-colonial state in Zimbabwe 
1980-2000 (pp. 221-249) Harare: Weaver Press, p. 229.

[xxv] Maurice Nyagumbo, Enos Nkala and Edgar Tekere, who had supported 
Mugabe in deposing Sithole, all fell out with Mugabe. Tekere (2007) p. 
84, a key Mugabe henchman, was to later admit that ZIPA was ``absolutely 
correct’’. In 1978 a group of ZANU ``radicals’’, lead by Henry 
Hamadziripi and Rugare Gumbo, appearing to have had second thoughts 
about ZIPA, unsuccessfully tried to challenge the ZANU leadership. After 
being sentenced to death by ZANU they were detained by Mozambique.

[xxvi] The ZANU (PF) and PF ZAPU Agreement. Appendix 1. Cited in 
Sibanda, E. M. (2005) The Zimbabwe African People’s Union 1961-1987. A 
political history of insurgency in Southern Rhodesia. Trenton: Africa 
World Press.

[xxvii] Kanengoni, A. (2001) Echoing silences. Harare: Boabab Books. p. 87

[xxviii] Moore, D. (2001) How Mugabe came to power. London Review of 
Books, 5 April, p. 23.

[xxix] Moore, D. (2001) p. 23.

[xxx] Campbell, H. (2003) p. 272.