Loyalty and liberation: the political life of Zephaniah Moyo

ABSTRACT

Southern African liberation movements in and out of power have been bedevilled by a politics in which loyalties are uncertain and histories of division cannot easily be shed. I use the story of Zephaniah Moyo, who was over his lifetime both loyal to and accused of treachery by all three armed adversaries in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle, to argue that the disruptive power of histories of division cannot be reduced to the binaries of loyalty and betrayal, heroes and traitors. Its enduring disruptiveness is rooted in contestations over the purposes of political lives and the complex content of loyalties that are sedimented in institutions, ideas and individual agendas over time and across space. Moyo’s narrative allows a deep excavation of these histories. He locates his loyalty in a vision of political order, founded in an unlikely embrace of Rhodesian bureaucracy and professionalism, and reified in the governance of the military camps in Zambia and in the violent state-making of 1980s Zimbabwe. While his is an individual story, its telling is situated in a collective critique of arbitrary rule and the claims of a heroic nationalism, and it describes a specifically Zimbabwean history of bureaucracy as political ideal. This biographical excavation allows a reevaluation of the possibilities – often foreclosed – of the political project of liberation.

KEYWORDS:

• Loyalty
• collaboration
• treason
• nationalism
• Zimbabwe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. A fascinating, deeply rooted, study in this vein is Giblin’s A History of the Excluded.

2. In a large literature, see especially Melber, Limits to Liberation and Southall, Liberation Movements in Power.

3. Thiranagama and Kelly, “Introduction: Specters of Treason,” 1–23.

4. A point made by Rich Dorman, “Post-liberation Politics in Africa,” 1095 and passim.

5. For in depth southern African studies, see Williams, National Liberation; White, The Assassination, chapter 2; Mazarire, “Discipline and Punishment;” and Dlamini, Askari. More broadly, see Sapire and Saunders, Southern African Liberation Struggles. For a reminder of how different such contests are in other regions, compare to Branch, “The Enemy Within,” on Mau Mau.

6. See Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 19 and passim, in which he makes a plea for political history attuned to the ‘historical context in which concepts emerged, the debates out of which they came, the ways they were deflected and appropriated’.

7. The disputed meanings of liberation struggles are vividly inscribed in a range of Zimbabwean political memoirs, in all of which betrayal is writ large. See Nkomo, Nkomo; Nyagumbo, With the People; Chung, Re-Living the Second Chimurenga; Tekere, A Lifetime of Struggle; Todd, Through the Darkness; Mhanda, Dzino; and Smith, The Great Betrayal.

8. The stories that individuals tell about the past are inevitably shaped by the dominant narratives of the present, but they may also find the capacity to tell alternative stories through newly made or alternative political and cultural communities. See discussion in Summerfield, “Culture and Composure.” Compare to the ethnographic work on memory of Werbner, “Smoke from the Barrel of a Gun,” and Giblin’s critical engagement with Subaltern Studies in A History of the Excluded, 4–12.

9. ZAPU is the Zimbabwe African People’s Union. It succeeded a sequence of banned parties. Its armed wing was the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). ZANU is the Zimbabwe African National Union. It broke away from ZAPU in 1963 and won the elections of 1980 as ZANU(PF), the PF standing for Patriotic Front, the name of its brief alliance with ZAPU. Its armed wing was the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army.

10. This is a pervasive feature of the politics of memory in areas dominated by ZAPU after 1980. See Alexander, McGregor, and Ranger, Violence and Memory, chapter 11. Compare to Williams on Namibia, National Liberation, chapter 7.

11. This was a collaborative research project: Alexander, McGregor, and Ranger, Violence and Memory.

12. White and Larmer, “Introduction: Mobile Soldiers,” 1274.

13. McCracken, “Coercion and Control.”

14. Moyd, Violent Intermediaries, 1–22.

15. On evictions from this area, see Ranger, Voices from the Rocks.

16. Interview, Moyo, Bulawayo, 2 October 2008. All interviews are by the author and were undertaken in English, unless otherwise noted.

17. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

18. Interview, Moyo, Bulawayo, 19 August 2015. Most post-World War II white recruits to the Rhodesian police were from Britain while many of the black police instructors were products of the Central African Federation. See Stapleton, African Police, 5, 101.

19. See Stapleton, African Police, 3–4; Ranger, Revolt in Southern Rhodesia, chapters 2 and 3.

20. Stapleton, African Police, 78–9, and see chapter 6 on the history of segregation and hierarchy. On education levels among South African police in this period, see Goodhew, “Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea,” 31–4.

21. See Stapleton, African Police, chapter 1, on motivations for joining and staying in the police, and chapter 3 on education and mobility.

22. See West, The Rise of an African Middle Class, chapters 7 and 8; Stapleton, African Police, 53–8.

23. See detailed discussions in Stapleton, African Police, chapters 4 and 6.

24. See Flower, Serving Secretly.

25. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

26. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

27. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

28. Interview, Moyo, 2015; also Moyo, 2008.

29. West, The Rise of An African Middle Class, 201 and chapter 7.

30. See discussion in Alexander, “Political Prisoners’ Memoirs,” 403–6, and examples in Ranger, Writing Revolt, 76 and passim.

31. Nkomo, Nkomo, 144, 141–2.

32. See Alexander, McGregor, and Ranger, Violence and Memory, 166–79.

33. See Shutt, Manners Make a Nation.

34. Chaza, Bhurakuwacha, 125. Also see Stapleton, African Police, chapter 6; Shutt, Manners Make a Nation, 173.

35. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

36. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

37. Interview, Moyo, 2015; Moyo, 2008.

38. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

39. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

40. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

41. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

42. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

43. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

44. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

45. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

46. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

47. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

48. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

49. For the Rhodesian mythology, see Reid-Daly, Pamwe Chete. On ‘turned’ guerrillas more widely, see Ellis, “The Historical Significance,” 267–9.

50. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

51. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

52. See White, The Assassination, 32 and passim.

53. Interview, Moyo, 2015. Also Moyo, 2008.

54. Interview (with JoAnn McGregor), Moyo, Bulawayo, 9 December 2014. On the Soviet experience of ZAPU cadres, see Alexander and McGregor, “African Soldiers in the USSR.”

55. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

56. See Williams, National Liberation.

57. A growing literature has begun to explore these issues. See Ellis, “Mbokodo;” Mazarire, “Discipline and Punishment;” White, The Assassination; Macmillan, The Lusaka Years; and Trewhela, Inside Quatro.

58. The divisions in ZAPU that followed the joint military operations with the ANC in 1967/1968 had paralysed ZAPU’s war efforts into the early 1970s, with huge strategic costs. See Dabengwa, “ZIPRA,” 27–32. On guerrilla views of the ZAPU camps, see Alexander and McGregor, “War Stories,” 87–92.

59. A revealing insider account of this period is Ndlovu, “Some Critical Observations.” Also see Interview by Mary Ndlovu with Mtshana Ncube, 23 November 2011, South African History Archive, B11, available at http://www.saha.org.za/zapu/transcript_of_interview_with_mtshana_ncube_2.htm, retrieved 8 July 2016; Interview with NSO officer Zephaniah Nkomo, Bulawayo, 9 April 2012; Brickhill, “Daring to Storm.”

60. Interview, Dumiso Dabengwa, Bulawayo, 10 September 2013. Very little has been written about the NSO. See Brickhill, “Daring to Storm,” 54–5 and passim. There are parallels with ZANU’s creation of, in effect, a civilian intelligence hierarchy allied to the President in 1977, alongside military intelligence. Mazarire, “Discipline and Punishment,” 590.

61. Interview, Moyo, 2008. On Mboroma’s past, see SAHA, ZAPU, 79; Williams, National Liberation, 118–20; Macmillan, The Lusaka Years, 115, 307, fn 8; Martin and Johnson, The Struggle for Zimbabwe, chapters 9 and 10.

62. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

63. Wenela is the South African Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, which recruited mine workers throughout the region. Brickhill, “Daring to Storm,” 66, suggests that 10% of ZIPRA recruits came via South Africa, the vast majority in the last years of the war.

64. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

65. Interview, Moyo, 2008; Moyo, Bulawayo, 16 September 2013.

66. Interview, Moyo, 2008, 2015.

67. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

68. Interview, Moyo, 2013, 2015. All liberation movements in exile used coerced confessions as evidence of treason (as did both host and enemy governments). The content of the confession need not be convincing. See Hughes on the ANC, The Lusaka Years, chapter 10. In the SWAPO pits in Angola confessions were recorded on video and then circulated in Namibia. See Trewhela, “A Namibian Horror,” 140–58, and Williams, National Liberation, chapter 5. Compare to Wedeen’s discussion of ‘enforced confabulations’ in “Acting ‘As if’,” 514, 516.

69. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

70. Interviews, Moyo, 2008; Dabengwa, 2013.

71. Interview, Moyo, 2015.

72. Interview, Moyo, 2008.

73. See Alexander, “Nationalism and Self-government,” 556–66. The variable nature of politics across locations in the liberation struggle (camps, prisons, battlefields, townships) was echoed in other movements. On the ANC, see, for example, Buntman, Robben Island, and Suttner, “Culture(s) of the African National Congress.”

74. See Dabengwa’s views in Sellstrom, Liberation in Southern Africa, 212; Dabengwa, “ZIPRA;” and Brickhill, “Daring to Storm.” Also see Alexander and McGregor, “War Stories.”

75. Interview, Dabengwa, 2013.

76. Interview, Moyo, 2008. Zephaniah Nkomo (interview, 2012) vividly remembered training at Lilayi, including accompanying Zambian police on investigations.

77. Interviews, Dabengwa, 2013; Nkomo, 2012. Reforms were also mooted in ZANU: see Mazarire, “Discipline and Punishment,” 582, and White, The Assassination, 29–30.

78. Brennan, “Opposition in Exile,” 1–2, cited with permission of author.

79. For a historically detailed, triumphalist case that there are no ‘pleasant alternatives’ to ‘unity’ under ZANU(PF) rule, see Mugabe, “The Unity Accord,” 357–9 and passim.

80. For a recent view of this period, see Tendi, “Soldiers Contra Diplomats.”

81. The story of ZAPU’s fate in the 1980s is far more complex than the summary offered here. See Alexander, McGregor, and Ranger, Violence and Memory, chapters 8–11; Alexander, “Dissident Perspectives;” and CCJP/LRF, Breaking the Silence.

82. Edgar Tekere’s Zimbabwe Unity Movement won nearly 18% of the vote but only two parliamentary seats in 1990. ZANU-Ndonga won one seat in both 1985 and 1990. For an insider account of the Unity negotiations, in which ZANU(PF)’s quest for ZAPU’s total capitulation is clear, see Chiwewe, “Unity Negotiations.”

83. Dlamini, Askari, chapter 14.

84. Interview, Moyo, Bulawayo, 6 August 2010, 2008.

85. Interview Moyo, 2008, 2010, and 2015.

86. Interview, Moyo, 2008, 2010; Bulawayo, 9 February 2009.

87. See Ellis, “The Historical Significance,” 267–9, and Rousseau, “Counter-Revolutionary Warfare.”

88. Several defected to South Africa; others were eventually arrested. See Yap, “Uprooting the Weeds,” 122–5 and chapter 2.

89. ZANU(PF) delayed establishing relations with the USSR and then made them contingent on the USSR rejecting its relationship with ZAPU. Shubin, The Hot ‘Cold War’, 187 and chapter 14.

90. See Scarnecchia, “Rationalizing Gukurahundi,” which draws on South African Department of Foreign Affairs’ files to show the extent of diplomatic and intelligence cooperation between Zimbabwe and South Africa.

91. On ANC/ZAPU relations in the late 1970s and early 1980s, see Macmillan, “‘Past History Has Not Been Forgotten’,” and interviews, Moyo, 2009, 2010; MishekVelapi (the only man actually convicted in the ZAPU treason trial – for arms caching), Bulawayo, 27 February 2009; Zephaniah Nkomo, Bulawayo, 18 August 2010.

92. Interview, Moyo, 2015. On the steps taken by Nkomo and senior commanders to uphold the peace, see Alexander, McGregor, and Ranger, Violence and Memory, 185 and passim.

93. See Yap, “Uprooting the Weeds,” chapter 2.

94. Interview, Moyo, 2010.

95. Interview, Moyo, 2015.