Linkundla came across a letter written by DR. JOSHUA M. NKOMO to Prime Minister OF Zimbabwe R. G. Mugabe, published by Nehanda Radio and decided to share on this platform.
DR.
JOSHUA M. NKOMO
2 Stevenage Road
East Ham E6 2WL
London E6 2WL
United Kingdom
7th June, 1983
2 Stevenage Road
East Ham E6 2WL
London E6 2WL
United Kingdom
7th June, 1983
INFORMATIVE
LETTER TO PRIME MINISTER MUGABE
Dear
Robert,
1.
I write to you as a citizen of Zimbabwe and one of the leaders of our
country, to you not just as one of the leaders of Zimbabwe, but above
all, as Prime Minister of the Government of Zimbabwe as provided for
by the Constitution, that you and me, as well as other leaders signed
in December 1979.
Joshua
Nkomo
2.
I write because I feel that our country is in danger of complete
disintegration, to the detriment of all its citizens now living and
of generations to come.
3.
Not least, I write to you because I am convinced that you believe I
am the main contributory factor to this dangerous situation.
4.
You have stated publicly on several occasions that I have plotted,
and continue to plot, to overthrow you and your government, that I
have conspired, and continue to conspire, with South Africa to do
that, that I have organized and continue to organize dissident groups
for the purpose of destabilizing the country and finally to overthrow
you.
5.
You now say I have run to Britain, ostensibly because I thought my
life was or is in danger, but that I have done so for the purpose of
recruiting mercenaries and/or assassins to wrest power from you.
6.I
also know that you and your party believe that because ZAPU lost in
the last election we feel wounded, and therefore plan to wrest power
from you by means, fair or foul.
7.You
say we did all I have stated above despite the fact that we agreed to
take part in your Government when you as Prime Minister, invited us
to.
8.
This whole series of accusations against me and ZAPU, which are false
and without any foundation whatsoever started on the 6th February,
1982 when caches of arms were discovered at Escort Farm, and later at
Hampton Farm, both of which were owned by Nitram, a private company,
I assisted former ZIPRA combatants to form for occupation and use by
those of them who were not incorporated into the (ZNA) Zimbabwe
National Army and the (ZRP) Zimbabwe Republic Police.
9.
The discovery of arms on the 6th February was followed by a number of
categoric and definitive statements, by yourself, to the effect that
arms were discovered in Nkomo and ZAPU owned properties and that the
cache of arms were part of a plot to overthrow you and your
government; and that all those properties were being used for
subversive purposes.
You
said in Marondera on the 14th February, 1982: “ZAPU had bought more
than 25 farms and more than 30 business enterprises throughout the
country. We have now established they were not genuine business
enterprises, but places of hiding military weapons to start another
war at an appropriate time”. You added, “Dr. Nkomo was trying to
overthrow my government”. “ZAPU and its leader, Dr. Joshua Nkomo,
were like a cobra in a house.
The
only way to deal effectively with a snake is to strike and destroy
its head”.
10.
You will remember that you met me and three of my colleagues at your
official residence on the 5th February to discuss a number of issues,
and at the end of that meeting I mentioned to you that I had received
a telephone message from Bulaway to the effect that two Nitram Farms,
Ascot and Woody Glen Farm had been invaded by the police the previous
night and you said, you had also got information and you would inform
me later what it was all about.
11.
That evening I traveled with two of your Ministers on a plane to
Bulawayo, Emmerson Munangagwa and Sydney Sekeramai. Little did I know
that you had sent these two men to Bulawayo to display to the press
arms allegedly unearthed in one of those farms, namely Ascot Farm.
12.
I would have expected that as Minister under you, you would, after
finding arms in Nitram owned properties, to have summoned me to your
office to find out from me as to whether I knew anything about the
arms.
13.
I would have expected further, that you would have instructed me to
have joined Munangagwa and Sekeramai in an attempt to uncover
information about those arms.
I
am sure, you realize how important it was for me to have physically
seen the location, the quantity and nature of the arms that was
discovered, especially at a time when I was still Minister. While I
do not dispute that arms were found on these farms, how else would I
have been expected to believe the quantity, and nature of the arms
unearthed and displayed to the press were authentic.
14.
As it is now, I cannot be made to believe that the quantities,
quality and nature of arms presented to the press were in fact all
unearthed just in those two farms. It is quite clear for the
discovery to make an impact on the people of Zimbabwe and the world
in general, it was necessary for those who assisted you, to ferry
arms from elsewhere so as to make this accusation of a plot to
overthrow the government to appear real. To quote a statement made at
a press briefing at Brady Barracks on the 8th February 1982: “Arms
and ammunitions so far recovered in the joint police and army search
operation in Matebeleland are sufficient to equip a force of 5,000
men”. Note, in ‘Matabeleland’ and not in Ascot and Hampton
Farms. However, this is neither here nor there.
15.
By Monday the 15th February 1982, the two properties owned by Nitram,
the only properties on which arms were found, together with
properties owned by ZAPU and those owned by companies whose members
were ZAPU, including properties owned by me and my family, were
confiscated under the notorious Unlawful Organisations Act, which was
was enacted by settler regimes to suppress liberation organizations.
16.
I would like to emphasise that no other property, even those others
owned by Nitram, which were all confiscated, had any arms found on
them.
17.
Having reminded you that arms were discovered in only two Nitram
owned farms, Ascot Farm near Bulawayo and Hampton Farm near Gweru,
let me further remind you that in the course of your marathon
speeches round the country, telling the story of having found caches
of arms meant to perpetrate a plot to overthrow you and your
government, you said among other things, “If all arms cached by
ZIPRA were found in or near Assembly Camps only, my government and I
would not have minded”. “But that”, you continued, “a large
quantity of arms was found in ZAPU owned properties, it is clear they
were intended for use against my government”. You said this because
you knew that ZANLA had cached a lot of arms in and near their former
Assembly Camps, and there was the question of a trainload of arms
that had disappeared between the [Mozambiquean] border and Mutare.
18.
It appears to me you have conveniently forgotten that Ntumbane in
Bulawayo, was in fact an Assembly Point for both ZIPRA and ZANLA,
that after the first Ntumbane disturbances every type of weapon not
allowed there, was found in that assembly point.
The
same happened after the second disturbances there; heavy weapons were
found in both ZIPRA and ZANLA camps in Ntumbane. Why then did you
find it surprising to have found arms at Ascot farm which is hardly
seven miles from Ntumbane assembly point? 19. The same applies to
Hampton Farm which is not far from Connemara Barracks where there
were disturbances at the same time as there were disturbances in
Ntumbane the second time. As a matter of fact, Comrade Munangagwa on
26th February, said, “Four caches of arms including 600 G3 rifles
stolen during the mutiny in Connemara more than a year ago were
discovered on a farm near Gweru”.
20.
Over and above what I have stated regarding arms caches I quote a
statement by (PF) ZAPU Central Committee held in Bulawayo on the 15
February, 1982, “The Central Committee is dismayed at the
deliberate attempt to build a case on an issue whose background the
Prime Minister very well knows emanates from a war situation. The
Central Committee denies the allegation that ZAPU had any prior
knowledge of the arms caches anywhere. The administration of the army
and all military issues, including former combatants’ assembly
camps, were placed under the responsibility of the Joint Military
Command, thus removing ZAPU and ZANU of responsibility over military
affairs. We wish to categorically deny the allegation of a plot to
overthrow the government. On the contrary, PF ZAPU did everything,
and still does for the consolidation and success of our independence”
(Herald).
21.
On Thursday, February 17, you announced at a press conference that I
and three of my colleagues, J.M. Chinamano, J.W. Msika and J.G. Ntuta
were dismissed from your government. You made your announcement at a
press conference and we learnt of our dismissal from your government
by press, television and radio. I was completely flabbergasted and
astounded by your accusations, your actions and the manner in which
they were made. What stunned and bemused me even more is that I was
convinced that you knew in your heart of hearts that all accusations
were false.
22.
I was also convinced that you could not have been unaware of the
repercussions of your statements and actions on former ZANLA and
ZIPRA combatants in the National Army and in the police, and the
feelings of divisiveness and hostility they would arose.
23.
You must know that it was soon after your initial statements and
actions that there was talk of polarization of ZANLA and ZIPRA former
combatants within the National Army.
Mutual
suspicion and mistrust was maximized, and clashes between the two
groups became commonplace.
24.
Meanwhile, former ZIPRA Commanders were summoned by the Army Command,
at your instruction, for questioning and investigation. This was
done, it is said, by the military police and/or the C.I.O. Later,
ordinary former ZIPRA men, irrespective of rank were also taken for
investigation.
25.
Information has it that during these investigations there was a lot
of beatings and torture of all types, that a number of these young
people were killed and others maimed.
26.
These actions were followed by desertions and defections from the
National Army not only by former ZIPRA combatants, but also by former
ZANLA.
27.
It was then that we learnt from your public speeches, and those of
your Ministers, that a number of armed robbers and bandits in the
country was growing, especially in the Western Province of
Matabeleland.
28.
Later your public statements and those of your Ministers began to
stress that these armed bandits were infact politically inspired
dissidents.
29.
Information has it also, that some 300 or so ZIPRA combatants and a
few ZANLA who were arrested after the troubles in a battalion camp
near Karoi were detained secretly somewhere near Harare and are taken
in small batches to be court martialed and executed, with no right of
appeal and without informing their next of kin. It is further known
that the last of these executions that has come to light took place
on February 14, 1983.
30.
It was when in your Parliamentary Speech you openly and blatantly
accused me personally and ZAPU as a party of organising, maintaining
and directing such armed dissident activities that I met you, and
after thorough discussion, that I thought you accepted our position
that we were not in any manner connected with these elements.
31.
I found it necessary to meet you because despite the fact that I had
continuously and persistently denounced and condemned the activities
of these dissidents and had demanded that you appoint a Parliamentary
Select Committee, without success, to investigate who these
dissidents are and who succours them, instead you found it necessary
to accuse us in parliament the way you did.
32.
During December, overtures on unity between ZAPU and ZANU were ma de
to me by your emissaries in the persons of President Canaan Banana
and Minister Enos Nkala. After two meetings with them I thought we
had made progress and suggested to them that the next meeting should
be with yourself.
33.
A meeting between us was accordingly held at State House, Bulawayo
early in January 1983. The meeting did not go as well as I had
expected because it appeared to me that you were averse to what I
discussed with President Banana and Enos Nkala. However, despite
that, we agreed between ourselves to form a Committee of 6,
comprising three ZANU and three ZAPU representatives.
34.
Although nothing much was achieved at the meeting between us, I
believed nonetheless that moves towards an understanding between ZAPU
and ZANU were making progress.
35.
Yet on Tuesday, the 25th of January [1983], I received information
from people who were fleeing from Mbembesi that mass beatings and
killings were being perpetrated by young men in camouflage uniforms
who were calling themselves the ‘Fifth Brigade’.
36.
By the 26th January, the numbers had grown and the information given
us was that more people were being brutally beaten and killed by
these young men.
37.
On the 27th of January, I decided to take 12 of the people, who had
themselves experienced violence at the hands of members of the Fifth
Brigade, to Harare so that they may themselves explain to government
what in fact was talking place.
38.
When I arrived in Harare, I presented the matter to Comrade Muzenda
who, in the absence of the Prime Minister, was acting Prime Minister.
After I informed him of the situation in Mbembesi, which by that time
had spread to Bubi and Tsholotsho, the acting Prime Minister
delegated his Minister of Home Affairs, Ushewonkunze, who had
expressed ignorance of these happenings, to go and meet the afflicted
people in Highfields.
39.
When Ushewonkunze failed to turn up until Friday afternoon, I decided
to call a press conference and informed the conference of the mass
killings by the Fifth Brigade; by that time the numbers reported
killed by the Fifth brigade had risen to 95.
40.
The following week a government spokesman made much play of the fact
that Josiah Gumede; who I had told the conference that I understood
by reports from Mbembesi, was among those who were killed; but
because he had survived his ordeal, the spokesman completely ignored
the fact that many more other people were killed, a fact Gumede
himself had made known to you and president Banana.
41.
During the first week of February a censure motion was presented to
parliament by the chief whip of ZANU-PF against ZAPU and its
leadership because of exposure of the carnage by the Fifth Brigade.
Almost every ZANU member who spoke abused and scorned ZAPU, and more
particularly myself, for having exposed the killings, which now had
spread to Nkayi and Lupane. It was quite evident that ZANU-PF had
full knowledge of what was happening but was not prepared to
intervene or call a halt to those most barbarous actions which the
Fifth Brigade, in the name of security, perpetrated against fellow
citizens of Zimbabwe in the so-called ‘curfew’ areas.
42.
On Saturday February the 19th, I was prevented from traveling to
Prague to attend an executive meeting of the World Peace Council
(which your press called Soviet sponsored) and which was to take
place on the 21st and 22nd of that month. My ticket and passport and
those of my three colleagues who were traveling with me were seized
by the police when we were arrested. When I was released seven hours
later, my three colleagues remained in custody and were later issued
with detention orders which remain in force to this day.
43.
On the 19th February, I was taken to the Bulawayo Charge Office where
the police demanded that I make two ‘Warned and Cautioned’
statements to the effect that they were investigating the possibility
that I had committed certain crimes: under the Law and Order
Maintenance Act, because they had found on me, two sets of notes
containing: (a) a statement I made in Parliament in connection with
the serious situation in Matebeleland Province created by killings
and other atrocities, and (b) notes prepared for a meeting I was to
have had held with you about the same situation but did not come off.
2.
That they were investigating a possible contravention of the Currency
Exchange Control Act because they found on me $300 Zimbabwe dollars;
meant for my wife, but in the packing rush was forgotten in my brief
case.
Later
that day, I was called back to the Charge Office and told that they
(the police) had received a telegram from the Harare police to the
effect that I should make another ‘Warned and Cautioned’
statement in reply to a possible charge that the police in Harare
were investigating a possible contravention of the Precious Minerals
Act in that the police had found emeralds in my Highfields residence
when they were searching for arms in that house on the 5th October
1982.
44.
About three weeks earlier, I had been made to make a ‘Warned and
cautioned’ statement by the Harare police to the effec t that they
were investigating a possible breach of the Law and Order Maintenance
Act when I addressed a press conference in Harare, in which I had
revealed the killings of people in Mbembesi, Bubi and Tsholotsho.
45.
I made those ‘Warned and Cautioned’ statements denying those
possible charges. It was clear to me, as it could be, to any
responsible person that these were trumped up possible charges
designed by your government to harass and embarrass me.
46.
Is it reasonable for anybody to believe that possession of a copy of
a speech made in parliament and an unpublished notes to be used in a
meeting with the Prime minister could be a breach of the Law and
Order Maintenance Act? Is it reasonable for anyone to believe that I
would export from the country $300 Zimbabwe dollars. To what purpose?
Is it reasonable to believe that the so-called possession of emeralds
in early October, 1982 could still be for investigation by the police
in mid-February, 1983? What investigation after four months of
physical so-called ‘possession of emeralds’.
47.
On Sunday the 27th February, 1983, I received a letter from the
police informing me that before leaving my house for any place, I
should report to the Police Station. I refused doing this because I
had no charge preferred against me, and could not understand why the
police should have been so interested in my movements.
48.
About the 1st or the 2nd of March, 1983, security forces, including
the Fifth Brigade, were deployed in Bulawayo western suburbs and on
the 5th March, 1983: my house was raided by the Fifth Brigade. Three
people were killed and property, including three cars, was vandalized
by the raiders. It was after this act that I realized why the police
were interested in my movements.
49.
I then decided to leave the country for the time being as it was
clear to me that my life was threatened.
50.
During the weeks that followed the deployment of the Fifth Brigade in
the Western Province of Matebeleland, right up to the day I departed
from Zimbabwe, hundreds of brutally assaulted people from the
so-called ‘curfew’ areas of Mbembesi, Nyathi, Nkayi, Lupane and
Tsholotsho had come to my home and related horrible accounts of
brutal beatings, mass rapings, mass killings, maiming of hundreds of
innocent unarmed, unresisting men, women and children as well as
looting and burning of villages and houses.
51.
Before leaving my house and finally Bulawayo on the 8th March, 1983,
reports had come to me of untold brutalities and inhuman and
degrading treatment of people within Bulawayo itself and of people
being marched in their hundreds to the adjacent bush areas on the
outskirts of Bulawayo, to be shot and their bodies left rotting and
some taken away to unknown destinations and never to return.
52.
Now that I have attempted to give an account of some of your publicly
expressed opinions and beliefs about me and ZAPU, and have also tried
to summarise the more important events that took place as well as
actions or non-actions during the course of the three years since our
independence, and have some bearing on your attempt to impose a one-
ZANU Party State on the people of Zimbabwe, I give hereunder my
reactions.
53.
In retrospect, I now believe that I and ZAPU were deceived and
cheated by you and your party when you talked of unity,
reconciliation, peace and security. I now honestly and sincerely
believe that when you invited us to take part in your government you
believed that we would reject your offer and set ourselves up in
strong opposition to you and thereby label us disgruntled rejected
plotters.
54.
I can now see that your insistence on establishing assembly camps in
Bulawayo and Harare, and of your Ministers Nkala and others coming to
Bulawayo to make inflammatory statements which sparked off the first
Ntumbane incident, was all part of a plan and strategy to destabilize
the country, especially the Western Province of Matebeleland, so that
you could use incidents there as an excuse for using military action
to crush me and my party.
55.
It is now obvious to me that when you demoted me from the Ministry of
Home Affairs which you knew was negotiated for a purpose at the time
you invited us to take part in your government; that while you knew
that we felt it was necessary for us to take part in one of the
security ministries (Defence or Home Affairs) so that the former
ZIPRA men drafted into the ZNA and ZRP may feel confident, thereby
solidify both the army and the police, you deliberately took that
action. It is clear you wanted us to pull out of your government at
that time so as to destabilize the army and the police, create
dissidents out of the deserting ZIPRA men and then call us plotters
against your government.
56.
It is clear you thought you had struck a political bonanza by the
arms caches fiasco and you handled it the way you did, to achieve the
following: To make the country believe that I and ZAPU wanted to
overthrow your government.
That
the world at large should view us as a group of people who had lost
the elections and now wanted to wrest power from you and your
government.
To
polarize the population into bad guys and good guys and so
destabilize the country.
To
polarize the former ZIPRA and ZANLA combatants both inside and
outside the army and police, so as to create a former ZIPRA grouping
to be labelled dissidents.
To
create within ZAPU a group that would believe there was a group
within the party, that in fact, was plotting to overthrow the
government.
As
a pretext, to use discredited and archaic settler imperialist
legislation, the Unlawful Organisations Act, to confiscate ZAPU
supporters’s property.
57.
When you announced the confiscation of ZAPU and Nitram properties,
property belonging to Companies of individual ZAPU members and to me
and my family, you said it was because all these properties were
acquired for hiding arms. Now that it is known no arms were found on
any property other than the two farms belonging to Nitram, Ascot and
Hampton Farms, how do you justify the blatant and arbitrary forced
acquisition of all these properties? 58. Even the confiscation of the
two farms on which arms were discovered is questionable.
Nitram
as a Co-operative company, whose membership was more than 4,000
former ZIPRA combatants, who had contributed towards the purchase of
these farms, and therefore, could not be held responsible for action
or actions of a few people, who have not been identified even at the
High Court trial that ended in the acquittal of six of the seven
people accused of treason and caching arms.
59.
With regards properties owned by ZAPU formed companies as well as
those formed by us individuals, I can only say your action against
them was even much more obscure. I do hope Mr. Prime Minister, you
realize the harm inflicted by your ill-considered action on these
properties including those owned by Nitram. Thousands of people were
thrown out of resident-employment; this includes former combatants as
well as former employees of those farms, who had become members of
co-operatives established there. The Herald of 17th February, 1982
says, about projects at Mguza, “The co-operative venture and
Secretarial training centers for women ex-combatants have been hailed
by several people, including the Minister of Finance, Enos Nkala, as
a model of its kind”.
60.
All this is gone; with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of
movable property of all types including over-head irrigation
equipment worth $700,000 [Zimbabwe dollars] is ruined and some of it
missing. Other movable property which was looted from Mguza Complex
is what Dr. Sekeramai referred to as, “The other equipment, such as
a very modern operating theatre lamp with its own generator, and a
sophiscated dental unit, in excellent condition and not used at all
was found”. This equipment meant for the College and co-operative
farm inmates and people who attended a co-operative clinic there.
61.
Among the most important properties of ZAPU that were taken away by
the army and the C.I.O. from the Nitram farms, i.e. Nest Egg, were
ZAPU Archives which were stored there for safe-keeping. They
contained all ZAPU records covering the whole period of our struggle
outside and inside the country, including the list of all ZAPU and
ZIPRA war casualties. As a result of this, no names of ZIPRA dead
were available for inclusion at the Heroes’ Acre Roll of Honor list
on the 10th and 11th August, 1982.
This,
you will agree is a very serious matter.
62.
What disturbs me most, is that when you banned the companies that ran
various properties and projects you said, “ZAPU had bought more
than 25 farms and more than 30 business enterprises throughout the
country. We had now established they were not genuine business
enterprises, but places to hide military weapons to start another war
at an appropriate time”, (Sunday mail, 7th February, 1982). This
was a deliberate distortion.
63.
At the time you made the above statement ZAPU had only 2 farms, one
near Harare and the other near Gweru; and had only 5 business
enterprises, 2 in Harare, 2 in Gweru and 1 in Masvingo. If by ZAPU
you meant farms and businesses run by companies such as Nitram and
those owned by individual members of ZAPU: the position is as
follows: Nitram had only 4 farms and 4 business enterprises.
Companies owned by individual members of ZAPU had 3 farms near
Harare, 2 near Bulawayo and two business enterprises in Bulawayo and
1 in Mbalabala. All these ventures Mr. Prime Minister, cannot be said
to be, “throughout the country”, nor, “more than 25 farms and
more than 30 business enterprises” as you said in your statement.
64.
You deliberately gave the impression to the country that, projects on
those properties were run clandestinely; and yet you knew, I had,
without success, several times invited you, to visit Nijo Products,
1.2 million dollar ZAPU Composite Agricultural Project, just outside
Harare. I said your visit to that particular project was important
and necessary because I felt it could be used as a model for
resettlement purposes.
65.
You were aware further that the Mguza Secretarial Training College
was officially opened by Minister Shaba and that that College and the
Mguza Co-operative Farming Project were visited by President Banana
and Enos Nkala a few weeks before your banning order was issued. I am
certain, you must have been aware that the Lido Motel in Queens Park,
Bulawayo was being used as a hostel for over 300 former ZIPRA war
disabled, as government had failed to house them anywhere.
66.
You will remember when I met you in your office in August, 1982, you
made known to me that the involvement of my family property Walmer
Ranch, where we built our Makwe home, would be revealed in evidence
during the Masuku, Dabengwa trial at the High Court. The trial has
come and gone, Masuku and Dabengwa acquitted. However, I was told by
a defence lawyer of a bizarre story about some military training
supposed to have been conducted at Makwe Farm which was presented by
the prosecution and was later unconditionally withdrawn by them
without argument. You will know that our home at Makwe has been
surrounded by the army and police ever since you made your
announcement of the 16th February, 1982. All meaningful activity came
to a complete halt and incalculable damage was done to all we were
trying to do there.
67.
I am certain you should recall what I told you when we met in your
office in August, that what I had at Makwe outside the working of the
farm was a big gathering where I met members of the Gwanda Community
Co-operative, to discuss a grand settlement scheme in which the Makwe
Irrigation Scheme and our Makwe farm would be the core of the
project.
White
farmers had been approached to either donate or sell at very reduced
prices their farms within the area, and the response was promising.
This scheme had been forwarded to the Ministry of Lands and
Resettlement by the Gwanda Co-op through the local district council
machinery. It was hoped that the Scheme would be presented to
Government through appropriate channels for funding through ZIMCORD.
68.
You must have known through your respective Government departments,
local authorities and your various devices of information collection,
that Kennellworth-Carisbrook Farm near Harare, Lingfield near Gweru
and Mbalabala Village near Esigodini were all being processed to be
handled in the same way as above, and as the Mguza complex had shown,
be it in a small way, that it was feasible to implement such schemes,
it was believed that the Makwe Project would succeed.
69.
All these schemes were in the spirit of what I had discussed with you
in December, 1981. I had made it plain to you Prime Minister, when I
met you in your official residence; that your Resettlement policy was
a national disaster, and you agreed with me. These schemes were meant
to present practical approach models, to both rural and peri-urban
resettlement, that would embrace everybody and not just a few who are
said to ‘qualify’.
70.
But, with full knowledge of all this, you chose to tell a crowd of
more than 18,000 people at the Rudaka Stadium in Marondera on the
13th February, 1982, that, “We desire a new richer life for all …
and we wish to see changes in people’s way of living standards and
economic status. But in the midst of all our endeavours our
colleagues in Government, were stockpiling and building enough
weapons of war to arm 20,000 men”.
71.
What baffles me even more, is that, you said all the above when you
knew that less than 2 months prior to your Marondera meeting, I had
offered myself to take over your Ministry of Lands and Resettleme nt
in an effort to assist you and through you, the country to make a
success of its most vital development programme. You turned down my
offer, saying I was too old to handle that Ministry, however, you
said you would invite me to be one of the members of a resettlement
Ministerial Committee you were about to institute. To you all this
meant plotting.
72.
You also had knowledge that on December 29, 1982; while I was on
holiday, I was requested by Brigadier Chinenge to assist him to
demobilize more than 5,000 former ZIPRA combatants at Gwaai River
Mine Assembly Point and willingly drove over 150 miles to help. How
could I have done all these things if I was bent on overthrowing you?
Who do you think I would have called on to use all those arms after
assisting to integrate some ZIPRA combatants in the ZNA and ZRP and
assisted in dispersing others to their respective homes.
73.
It is now very clear to me that you were very unhappy with the extent
of my cooperation and that of ZAPU because you did not want peace and
tranquility. You did not want stability, progress and development,
because such conditions would not give you the turmoil and
instability you required for your political-military action to
liquidate those you chose to, and thereby impose your one-ZANU Party
State.
74.
It is obvious to me why you decided to form the Fifth Brigade outside
the structure and command of the National Army, so that you may use
it as a party and Tribal Brigade for eliminating and liquidating, as
you have many times said, those you chose to destroy. As a matter of
fact, when I questioned the formation of the Fifth Brigade outside
the Zimbabwe National Army without consultation, you angrily replied
and said, “Who are you to be consulted? This Brigade”, you said,
“has been formed to crush those who try to subvert my government,
and if you attempt that, they will crush you too”.
75.
You took action against what you called ZAPU sponsored dissidents.
But because you wanted to maintain this show of subversion, you have
not, for almost one year and 4 months, arrested and put on trial a
single dissident. Yet you have continuously, for all this period,
persistently accused the ZAPU structure and those who support that
structure for organising, maintaining, feeding and directing the
dissidents so as to justify an armed attack on the masses.
76.
It is known through information given by the masses in the affected
curfew areas, that in fact the people who go about killing, maiming,
raping and burning government property are in fact organized
provocateurs planted by ZANU-PF in the form of undercover pseudo-
dissidents. … It is further known that government property
destroyed by dissidents was property used by district councils who
were made up of 100 ZAPU members, who were known to have worked hard
to use this equipment for developing their areas vigorously and with
great enthusiasm.
77.
It is known that about 90% of the victims killed by dissidents were
either top ZAPU officials, ZAPU businessmen and teachers, ZAPU local
government officials and generally ZAPU supporters. The remaining 10%
appear to be white people. Not a single ZANU supporter was killed
during this period. Does not this fact speak for itself? One does not
know what the position is or would be after the Fifth Brigade’s
bloody escapade in the Western Province of Matebeleland.
78.
It can be said without hesitation that to have used the police as if
they were ZIPRA officers in the Dr. Bertrand case was an abominable
and fascist like attempt to portray to the country and the world at
large that former ZIPRA combatants had plotting tendencies so as to
blemish the name of ZIPRA.
79.
I believe that the notes that were purported to have been sent by
former ‘ZIPRA dissidents’ to the police, when foreign tourists
were abducted near Bulawayo in July 1982, were in fact an effort to
show ZAPU and former ZIPRA combatants in bad light.
Having
said that, I would like to make it clearly understood that former
ZIPRA combatants are not the responsibility of ZAPU but of the
Zimbabwe government, like anybody else. Despite this I found it
necessary to activate and involve the masses in the areas where it
was thought kidnappers may be hiding with the tourists, but before I
concluded the exercise government declared a curfew in those areas,
making them no- go places, causing an abrupt end to that effort. Why
that was done I do not know to this day.
80.
I now understand why you have maintained legislation such as the Law
and Order Maintenance Act, the Unlawful Organisation Act and the
Emergency Powers Act; which was enacted by former regimes
specifically for the suppression and oppression of the black
population of Zimbabwe, and for use against their effort to struggle
for independence, social justice, enjoyment of freedom and human
rights. You now seem to enjoy and justify the use of these notorious
laws to deny your own people that which they fought and died to
achieve.
What
is it that makes you believe that this independence, which you and I
and indeed the masses of Zimbabwe fought for, for so long should now
be maintained and protected by this type of legislation? Don’t you
think there is something wrong? 81. I am not surprised that you have
decided to maintain a state of emergency which was declared by Ian
Smith on the 5th November, 1965 in preparation for his illegal action
to declare, control and protect his type of independence.
82.
During the protracted war our people were subjected to every kind of
cruelty and oppression. No man’s life was safe, it was the frequent
fate of an innocent villager to be shot out hand, to be arbitrarily
arrested and often to be tortured, to suffer the burning of his
village, the massacre of his women and children, the destruction of
crops and livestock, to suffer long years of imprisonment or to
endure the pangs of long exile. The legal basis of this campaign of
terror was the ‘State of Emergency’.
83.
You well know that in point of fact the Law and Order maintenance Act
was used to undermine and subvert law and order to quite a horrendous
degree, and the declaration of a ‘state of emergency’ itself was
instrumental in creating an acute state of emergency by unleashing
forces which inflicted a wave of murder and brutality upon our people
which, in its savagery and disregard for humanitarian considerations,
had no precedent among our people.
84.
Taken together, these facts indicate clearly that for many years an
unparalleled campaign of barbarism and terror was waged against the
masses. Yet this campaign failed; our people did not submit, they
fought back until finally victory was won and independence achieved.
But
what in fact has been achieved? It is painful to ask this question,
for it springs from events which have increasingly darkened the
horizons of Zimbabwe over the past year or more, events I am trying
to summarise in this letter.
85.
You knew that having created the confusion, you would then be able to
take military and legal action against deliberately created
‘political and armed dissidents’; hence the arrest of men like
Lookout Masuku, Dumiso Dabengwa and others, and decided to charge
them with treason. It is a shame to all of us who fought for liberty,
freedom and the rule of law, to see Dumiso, Masuku and others being
immediately arbitrarily detained after acquittal by the High Court.
86.
It is a well known fact that in Zimbabwe today, there are more people
detained without trial than in fascist South Africa. Most of these
people are also without formal detention orders and the next of kin
have no idea as to whether they are alive or dead.
These
people are not enemies of Zimbabwe, but patriots who have suffered,
like us and many others, in the struggle to free their country,
Zimbabwe, peasant men, women as well as young men and women who only
happen to be caught, in a conflict the government itself created.
87.
The double tragedy of Zimbabwe today is, firstly, that the routine
and administrative use of detention, torture and arbitrary repression
has been adopted by an independent government, and secondly, that
this government uses the very same mercenaries and torturers as the
former regime used against the struggling people. In fact the
situation today is in some respects is even worse, as our government
has abandoned even those standards of bourgeois legality which the
Smith regime generally attempted to hide their repression behind.
Under that regime you could be detained but a least you were more
likely to be issued with a detention order. You were therefore, less
likely to simply disappear as is the case today. The mercenaries and
torturers used by the former regime are known and are very few, and
therefore their exclusion from our security organs could not have
disrupted those organs.
88.
There are, in Zimbabwe today, so many different groups of armed men
with power to do virtually anything to people. People get arrested by
the C.I.O., the Law and Order Section of the police, the so-called
ZIMPOLIS, the so-called ZANU Intelligence Service (which is not an
arm of government), the Military Police of the Zimbabwe National
Army, the Fifth Brigade (which seems to regard execution as the most
effective method of arresting people), the Youth Brigade (which is
also an arm of the party, but used as if it were part of the
machinery of government), the Militia, by ZANU party officials, by
undercover pseudo-dissidents – the list is endless. In fact, the
rights of the Zimbabwe citizen as defined in the Constitution are
meaningless.
89.
One of the most disgraceful and shaming aspects of our independence
which is difficult to defend, is that we have taken the methods and
men used to oppress, torture and kill our people and tried to use
them to consolidate our ‘independence’. You cannot take weapons,
methods and people designed to defend colonial fascism and try to use
to them defend the people. It is just not possible. Today in Zimbabwe
the same torturers that Smith used against the people are back in
business ‘defending a people’s government’. They must smile to
themselves when they are ordered to continue their torture of
patriots by an independent government.
90.
The methods of torture are also the same: electric shocks, beatings,
burning with cigarettes, suffocation using wet sacks, and
psychological torture. In the recent case of the State vs Dabengwa
and others, the government must surely have been embarrassed when the
activities of Fraser, Arnold (of CIO) and DSO Kaurayi were revealed
in court. These men whose record of torture and atrocities against
the people during the liberation war are well known, were brought
into this case by our government to use their same techniques against
the heroes of the liberation struggle.
91.
In court it was revealed that Fraser assaulted, tortured and
threatened ZIPRA men to tell lies against their commanders. DSO
Kaurayi did the same to workers on the NITRAM farms. Arnold, the
so-called chief of the investigation offered bribes and threats to
witnesses to try to get them to change their evidence. Fraser has now
run back to his masters in Pretoria. Arnold and Kaurayi remain to be
used again to prostitute justice and bring disgrace on the memories
of the fallen heroes of our struggle.
92.
Under the terms of the Indemnity Act, which we condemned as barbaric
and fascist during the liberation struggle, a citizen has no right of
appeal or redress against those who illegally torture, maim, kill,
destroy property or do any illegal act on him or against him. I am
sure you realize that the result of this use of Smith’s laws and
torturers has been to create in an independent Zimbabwe a climate of
terror and fear even more discriminate than that created by the Smith
regime. Remember, there is no war in Zimbabwe today.
93.
As it is in Zimbabwe, everyone faces this fear. It is a fear created
by the fear the government itself obviously feels. What is it that
the government is in fear of is not very clear, but the fact that our
government lives in daily fear cannot be doubted.
Ministers
fear to walk the streets without armed men around them, roads are
sealed off, convoys of armed men race through the streets sirens
wailing announcing this fear.
94.
The real victims of this climate of fear are the people themselves.
How can the people get on with the vital task of building the nation
when all around them they feel this insecurity and fear? At any
moment they know that this machinery of fear and repression may be
turned against them. The people of Murewa may have not yet felt the
bayonets of the Fifth Brigade, but they have already heard the
stories. In their faces is the fear that one day this party army may
be turned against them. It is certain that some ZANU members fear
that the Fifth Brigade may be turned against ZANU and that it may
even turn against its creators. Is this the climate of a confident,
free, proud and independent people and government? You do not teach
young people to be contemptuous of human life and expect them to
respect yours.
95.
Mr. Prime Minister, as I have mentioned above, the way the sec urity
organs of Government in their generality is being used has created
fear and despondency in the minds of a wide section of our people.
But, let me stress, that the activities of the Fifth Brigade in
particular are something I never expected could happen in Zimbabwe. I
could not make myself believe that such activities could have been
carried out with your knowledge and approval.
96.
It was when you were reported to have given an astounding declaration
at a rally in Zhombe that I realized you support what the Fifth
Brigade has done and continue to do in Matebeleland; quote “When
men and women provide food for dissidents, when we get there we
eradicate them. We do not select who we fight, because we cannot tell
who is a dissident and who is not ” (Financial Times, Telegraph and
The Times, 15.4.83).
97.
Comrade Prime Minister, you know that about two weeks before election
day in March 1980, then Governor of Southern Rhodesia, Lord Soames,
called all leaders of political parties contesting in the election
and told them that “because of the security situation in the
eastern Districts of Zimbabwe there could be no free and fair
election there”, which meant election would in fact not take place.
98.
You will remember, I am sure, that about four or three days before
polling day, Lord Soames unilaterally and without consultation,
announced that elections will take place in all districts in the
country, including the Eastern Districts. I am sure you will agree
with me that, with all the goodwill in the world, the Good Governor,
could not have made the ‘Security Situation’ in the Eastern
Districts so stable in less than two weeks, to be able to conduct
‘free and fair elections’.
99.
You know as well as I do, that the unstable and dangerous security
situation in the Eastern Districts was caused by your party, ZANU
(PF) which maintained armed former ZANLA combatants throughout that
area; who terrorized by beatings, tortures and even killing anyone
who did not comply with ZANU (PF) directions. It was made impossible
for any party other than ZANU (PF) to operate in the Eastern
Districts area.
100.
We in ZAPU tried to canvass support for elections in those districts,
and ended up with two candidates killed, 18 party workers killed and
several others severely beaten up, some of them permanently maimed,
and while others disappeared to this day. I approached you and told
you what your party was doing with little or no effect at all on the
situation there.
101.
Now that the 1985 elections are approaching ZANU (PF) has begun using
the same tactics as were used in the Eastern Districts before and
during the 1980 elections.
This
time the Fifth Brigade is being used as state machinery to terrorise
and coerce the people in Matebeleland. Some believe that you are
doing all this not just for electoral advantage, but that your aim is
genocide.
102.
As an effective coercive stunt, the Fifth Brigade was deployed in the
area ostensibly to root out dissidents but in fact to terrorise the
masses by beatings, torture, killings, rapings, looting, burning of
villages, and literally doing anything atrocious on such a large
scale as to instill fear into the people, not only in the affected
areas, but that the effects of the action would pervade the entire
population of Zimbabwe.
103.
This has been followed by maintenance in every area of sizeable
groups of the Fifth Brigade and reinforced by armed Youth Brigades in
areas like Gokwe and Zhombe to organize forced ‘Pungwes’ (rallies
held from dusk to dawn) at which the old and the young are forcibly
given doses of ZANU (PF) indoctrination. This group has continued to
carry out selective beatings, torture, killings and kidnappings in
their respective areas. In areas like Nkayi, Lupane and Tsholotsho
only sizeable groups of the Fifth Brigade are maintained. It is
general practice during these ‘Pungwes’ that young women,
schoolgirls and residents’ wives are forced to have sexual
intercourse with Brigadiers.
104.
District Councillors, Chiefs and Headmen are o rdered by these armed
young men to give numbers of people under them, and then given
corresponding number of ZANU (PF) membership cards and told to return
with cash and lists of names on a given day.
These
are the methods used for organising rallies for ZANU (PF) Ministers
and other officials.
105.
I know and accept that the Fifth Brigade was deployed in these areas
after the murder of about 200 people in about a year and the
destruction of thousands of dollars worth of government equipment by
dissidents. But Mr. Prime Minister, I am sure you appreciate the
absurdity of trying to protect people who have had 200 of their
number killed in 12 months by dissidents while the Fifth Brigade in
the process of that protection kills 3,000 to 5,000 people in six
weeks.
106.
I know that you have denied that any such things have taken place in
Matebeleland, but the fact is that the evidence of this is
irrefutable and based on the testimony of numerous first- hand
witnesses, not least on that of many of the victims who survived.
These victims include teachers, nurses, District Councillors, etc.
Apart from victim witnesses, there are among others well known
international aid organizations who were friends of Zimbabwe during
the war and after independence, came to work with our people on the
ground level. Added to these witnesses are different Churches which
work in the affected areas. I would refer especially to the testimony
of no less than 6 Catholic Bishops who were moved to issue a joint
signed pastoral statement at their Easter 1983 conference. They did
this, I would remind you, after I made my own disclosure at a Press
Conference and in parliament late in February.
107.
It has to be appreciated that, a Bishop of the Catholic Church,
indeed any Christian Bishop, is a person who has devoted his life to
the service of God. In order that his ministry shall be effective, he
has an obvious interest in maintaining friendly and cordial relations
with the government of the day. It is certainly not in his interest,
or that of his flock, to act in any way which will make such
relations difficult or discordant. We may conclude therefore that
when he is so moved he acts from a deep sense of personal conviction
and from motives which can scarcely be said to spring from
self-interest.
108.
The following is an extract from their statement: “We entirely
support the use of the army in a peace-keeping role. What we view
with dismay are methods that have been adopted for doing so. Methods
which should be firm and just have degenerated into brutality and
atrocity. We censure the frightful consequences of such methods.
Violent
reaction against dissident activity has, to our certain knowledge,
brought About the maiming and death of hundreds and hundreds of
innocent people who are neither dissidents nor collaborators. We are
convinced by incontrovertible evidence that many wanton atrocities
and brutalities have been and are still being perpetrated. We have
already forwarded such evidence to the Government”.
109.
I would remind you of the basis on which this testimony is made. It
stems from the first- hand reports of numerous parish priests,
priests who are articulate and responsible officers of their church
and who are in close daily contact with the people of their parishes.
Again
in the interest of their work they have everything to gain from
maintaining good relations with the government of the day, and much
to lose from a failure to do so.
110.
Hence their testimony is surely to be judged to be disinterested,
just as their motives for offering it can spring from nothing but a
desire to serve their people. In this light is it possible for anyone
in a position of authority and hence responsibility for these
outrages, and possessed of the merest sense of human sensibility and
compassion to feel other than a deep sense of shame and a desire to
make amends for all this grievous suffering? 111. I was amazed and
bewildered when Dr. Nathan Shamuyarira dismissed the Catholic
Bishop’s statement as ‘irresponsible, contrived propaganda’.
But I thought because as Minister of Information, he would swallow
what the Bishops in their well-considered statement said about his
government -controlled mass media which has, to quote the same
pastoral statement: “singularly failed to keep the people of
Zimbabwe properly informed of the facts which are common knowledge,
both in areas concerned and outside them through the reports of
reliable witnesses. The facts point to a reign of terror caused by
wanton killings, woundings, beatings, burnings and rapings. Many
homes have been burnt down. People in rural areas are starving, not
only because of the drought, but because in some cases supplies of
food have been deliberately cut off and in other cases access to food
supplies has been restricted or stopped. The innocent have no
recourse or redress, for fear of reprisals”.
112.
I was shattered when you as Prime Minister said of the Bishops’
well thought and constructive pastoral letter: quote: “The seven
Catholic Bishops’s pastoral statement sermonizing my Government on
the morality of our military operations in Matebeleland as they
affect human rights and our policy of reconciliation is the latest
pronouncement on the subject.
You
further said the Bishops were playing to the international gallery
and you are mere megaphone agents of your external masters” –
“this band of Jeremiahs”. “In these circumstances, your
allegiance and loyalty to Zimbabwe becomes extremely questionable”
Considering that the Church in general and the Catholic Bishops in
particular on the Question of human rights, were very outspoken
during our war of independence, one wonders where we are being headed
to.
113.
Looking at your attitude towards this most serious occurrence in your
country, it appears that for many of our people the result of a
15-year armed struggle has not been to achieve the liberties for
which they fought, but an increase in the oppression against which
they took up arms in the first place. I agree completely with the
Bishops when they declare, “These brutal methods will have the
opposite effect to what the Government is intending to achieve”,
and we would add that terror did not work under Smith and it will not
work today under us.
114.
As a direct result of Government terrorism thousands of people have
fled into neighbouring territory and many, many more have left their
villages and gone into hiding. In keeping with the worst excesses of
the Smith era there has been the burning of villages and other
barbarities referred to in the report, as well as the widespread
practice of extortion and attempts at compulsory indoctrination as
stated in preceding paragraphs.
115.
This is not government, it is the abuse of government, an abuse which
transforms the rule of law into the law of rule. As such it cannot
lead to a free, united, peaceful and prosperous Zimbabwe. But to one
in which oppression, division, violence and poverty will shadow all
our hopes, and make a mockery of the freedom struggle in which so
many heroes gave their lives.
116.
In the final section of their statement the Bishops appeal to the
Government to use its authority to stop these excesses and call for
the establishment of a judicial commission. We fully support this
call. But I feel that the problem facing us in Zimbabwe today
requires an approach much more resolute, much more embracing than
ever attempted by ZANU and ZAPU before. A judicial commission as
proposed by the Bishops should be a part of wider machinery composed
of a wide spectrum of our society, who should examine our composite
problems together with government, seek and find solutions which
should be implemented jointly by the people and government. If the
people of Zimbabwe and their government fail to find a solution to
this serious situation in which we find ourselves, our enemies will
exploit the situation and destroy us.
117.
Remember, Prime Minister, Zimbabwe and the people have to defend the
country from these enemies. But today Zimbabwe is defenceless because
the people live in fear, not of these enemies, but of their own
government. What has happened to the brave and determined, confident
and fearless people of Zimbabwe and their soldiers of liberation, who
showed the world that no power on earth could prevent us from
achieving our freedom? That was a time when even our enemies had to
admire us for our courage and determination. Today our enemies laugh
at us. What they see is a divided, confused and frightened people,
led by a divided, confused and frightened government.
Government
which has the love, respect and confidence of the people does not
have to use the laws and weapons of colonial regimes to protect
itself. The people themselves will protect their government if they
have full trust in it. Fear is a weapon of despair, used by those who
fear the people. This is the time and opportunity to rebuild trust,
find the solution to our problems and defend the country as a united
people.
Yours
sincerelyJoshua
M. Nkomo
The
Hon. Robert Gabriel Mugabe
The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe
Milton Buildings, Causeway,
Harare
Zimbabwe
The Prime Minister of Zimbabwe
Milton Buildings, Causeway,
Harare
Zimbabwe