by LUKE ZUNGA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – “AT night on 31 July 1967, some 80 guerrillas from Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) crossed the gloomy Zambezi River into Rhodesia under the command of Charles Sotsha Ngwenya (JD).
The detachment marked the beginning of the Wankie Campaign, the first major joint guerrilla operation between the MK Luthuli Detachment and ZAPU’s military wing, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army ZIPRA.
MK were South Africans, Umkhonto we Sizwe, while ZIPRA were Zimbabweans, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army.
The plan was to split the detachments into two groups.
The first group, made up of MK cadres, would move towards South Africa to mobilise communities and establish underground structures in Zimbabwe.
The second group, consisting of ZAPU guerrillas and some MK cadres, would deploy into Lupane to mobilise the local population and establish operational bases within Zimbabwe.
This meant South Africans and Zimbabweans were positioning Zimbabwe as the country from which to operate bases to free both countries, and it happened as they had planned.
Before the crossing, the MK commander addressed the assembled guerrillas, Zimbabweans and South Africans, on the banks of the Zambezi River: “Today, we are beginning the long journey home, to those we left behind with the promise to return. We must each be determined to see our task through to the end. The enemy is strong; we must not underestimate his strength, but we, too, are strong. We are now trained and will meet their bullets with our own.”
This was the cementation of cousinship between Zimbabweans and South Africans. The relationship was built on history, over centuries.
From Mzilikazi and Soshangana, these two countries have been tied to the womb. Chief Albert Luthuli, one of South Africa’s prominent freedom fighters and President of the ANC in 1967, was born in 1898 at Solusi Mission in Zimbabwe.
In Chipuriro, or Sipolilo, now Guruve, Zimbabweans and South Africans operated together. All the nationalities in South Africa are also present in Zimbabwe.
Going into combat together was based on mutual trust and comradeship. This cannot be broken by empty-headed reactionaries today.
Only two months into independence, Zimbabweans carried weapons from the Zambian border to Limpopo and handed them to MK, often crossing the border to support MK fighters.
They took on the task immediately upon gaining independence. They suffered the wrath of the apartheid South African army, which attacked in Zimbabwe and closed the Mutare-Beira railway line, making it impossible to operate, to punish Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe had to deploy its army in Mozambique to defend the railway line from Renamo and South African apartheid military operations, at great cost.
South Africans had been fighting the apartheid regime for more than 30 years.
It took only 10 years for the South African apartheid regime to give up, as Zimbabwe was funneling weapons into South Africa from the northern border to intensify the struggle.
Zimbabweans did not say, “You are disturbing our newly won freedom. No foreigners here, you are disturbing our life, our freedom. We want to sort out our new life.”
The situations may be different now. The real problem is that black people are not yet free, although politically they lead governments.
The South African economy is in white hands. There were many white companies that left Zimbabwe to set up businesses in South Africa to consolidate.
Can we say South Africa disadvantaged Zimbabwe in this respect? It would be trivial. We must work together to find solutions, as countries.
Ensuring documentation should be part of the solution package, not on its own. If we work together, the expenditure of R14 billion on border controls would be minimised.
The comradeship between South Africans and Zimbabweans persisted, to research a new model of starting and sustaining factories which will create new products, jobs and opportunities.
From 2008, a group of 23 South Africans and Zimbabweans worked together to design a new model of economic participation, which will benefit not only South Africans but all Africans when it is rolled out continentally.
That model will be tested in the High Court, Pretoria, this year.
South Africans and Zimbabweans are standing together before the courts in South Africa to force it through.
The great spirit of Ghanaian Kwame Nkrumah, Algerian Ahmed Ben Bella, Ethiopian Haile Selassie, Nigerian Nnamdi Azikiwe, Kenyan Julius Nyerere, Zambian Kenneth Kaunda, and later leaders, must continue.
We should reject paper reactionaries. When South Africans departed to fight for freedom, they had no permits. Africa did not reject them.
They asked, what is the problem? They sought to deal with the problem, which was apartheid, and fought with the South Africans to remove apartheid.
But South Africa chooses to spend R14 billion on border controls and refuses to seed R200 million to its citizens to start industrialisation for the black masses, abandoning the masses to white business.
Many South Africans do not have firsthand information about what Zimbabwe was doing for South Africa because military operations were secretive.
Many South Africans do not know that many South Africans were travelling on Zimbabwean passports.
Something sinister has happened in the minds of some South Africans who think they are being disadvantaged by Zimbabwe.
The same happened between Ghana and Nigeria, with each expelling the other but solving nothing. Documents or no documents, there is a bigger critical issue which South Africa alone cannot solve.
It is that black people have no control of their economy, which is still in white hands. This is the issue to be resolved because it transcends the continent to a large degree.
There is no blueprint for the solution. It is not found at universities or in technical minds or government departments.
Black people think they have no capital and fight for a spot in a white or Asian business. South Africa, at the start of its freedom, thought it had a better way forward.
Zimbabwe made the same mistake. Right now, it is clear that both countries do not have the solution in agriculture, industry and trade, compounding problems with job creation and poverty alleviation.
From this research, now in court papers, the economic landscape has to be redefined, and this is not caused by politicians. The solutions lie in the offices of technocrats.
– CAJ News