A SURVIVOR of the Rhodesian army’s bombing of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army’s (Zipra) Mkushi Camp in Zambia has told her story for the first time.
BY KHANYLE MLOTSHWA
Mkushi, a camp for female Zipra combatants, was ambushed and bombed by the late former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith’s regime on October 19, 1978, leaving thousands dead or injured.
Addressing nearly a hundred people at an Ibhetshu LikaZulu-organised public meeting on Wednesday, Enita Mlilo, whose liberation war name was Joyce Dube, recalled the horror of being bombed, shot at and surviving crocodile attacks.
“We were attacked at lunch time, when we were gathered in the kitchen area,” she said.
“The kitchens were areas that were swampy, as we were near a river. The (bombing) planes came from a direction that forced us to flee towards the crocodile-infested river. We had no choice, but to run to the river believing that we would cross it. Most people died there at the river.”
Mlilo said she was with three others and they found shelter in a cave, where they were troubled by small creatures, something she said they were able to live with in the face of the bombings.
“Three soldiers came looking for survivors and there was one black one among them,” she said.
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“They sat on one of the rocks near where we were and the black soldier saw us, but he warned us to be still. He didn’t tell his colleagues about us.”
The veteran of the liberation struggle said when they tried to leave the cave, they came under heavy attack from the Rhodesian soldiers.
“We ran back to the river,” she said. “And the soldiers came and one of them threw a grenade into the water. They were convinced that I had died and they left. That is how I survived,” she continued.
“I carry this sadness that a lot of people died in that raid by the Rhodesians. Even today, they are not recognised and no one speaks about them.”
The meeting was organised to commemorate the Mkushi Camp bombings of October 19, 1978.
Zephania Jeconiah Moyo, a former director of intelligence in Zipra, who now organises visits to grave sites in Zambia, said Mkushi was supposed to be “a support brigade once we half liberated the country”.
“We put the women there believing that the Rhodesians will never know that there was such a camp,” he said.
“We underestimated the efficiency of the Rhodesian army. We didn’t know that General Peter Walls had worked in Zambia after World War II and knew the area very well.
“It is true that all the people who died in that attack have not been respected in any way. There are 10 mass graves at Mkushi and a perimeter fence that is falling apart, as it has been vandalised. There is an 11th grave, which is unfinished; and there is a skull in the open on that grave.”
Moyo said Zambian villages are extending into the area and from time to time, as they plough their fields, they come across bones and skulls that they surrender to the authorities.
Former Zipra cadres often lament how their role in the liberation struggle has been airbrushed out of history.
