BY DALE T. McKINLEY
HARARE — For a man who might soon find himself facing the life-threatening wrath of a former comrade turned despotic head of state, Dzinashe Machingura shows amazingly little concern. Maybe that's because Machingura is better placed than most to know exactly who and what he is dealing with.
Machingura (aka Wilfred Mhanda) goes a long way back with Robert Mugabe. One of the second generation of liberation movement leaders, Machingura was arrested and put on trial by Ian Smith's white supremacist regime in 1971, jumped bail and escaped the country to join the exiled structures of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU).
While Mugabe (one of ZANU's political leaders at the time) was still languishing in Smith's goals, Machingura had risen through the ranks of ZANU's military wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), and by 1975 had taken up a position on the ZANLA high command in charge of political and military training. Soon after, he joined other leaders from ZANLA and the rival Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA was the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union led by Joshua Nkomo) in forming the unified, but short-lived, Zimbabwe People's Army (ZIPA).
It was as a leader of ZIPA that Machingura first experienced Mugabe's political opportunism and dictatorial approach. Despite making major strides towards unifying the two camps of the liberation movement, resurrecting what had been a dormant armed struggle, assisting in Mugabe's escape from Smith's grip and securing his subsequent release from house arrest in Mozambique, Machingura and the majority of the ZIPA high command found themselves victims of Mugabe's machinations. Having failed to sideline ZIPA during the aborted negotiations in Geneva (where Mugabe tried to sell the British a plan for getting rid of more "radical" elements of the liberation movement), Mugabe resorted to outright thuggery.
In what continues to be a "forgotten" part of Zimbabwean liberation history, Mugabe succeeded, by early 1977, in having Machingura, along with hundreds of troublesome ZIPA field commanders and cadres, either incarcerated or killed.
Besides destroying the nascent political, ethnic and military unity of Zimbabwe's liberation movement, Mugabe merged his personal authority with that of the entire "movement" and then proceeded to present himself as the saviour of the Zimbabwean people. As the saying goes, the rest is history, but it is a history that is only now beginning to reveal itself fully.
Machingura and many other liberation war veterans who managed to survive Mugabe's unrelenting campaign for unquestioned personal power were eventually released after independence in 1980. Consistent with past principle and practice, most made public calls for political unity, a "crime" that was punished by another stint in jail. Released after the intervention of the late Joshua Nkomo, Machingura and other "survivors" slid into the relative safety of political and social obscurity, where they have stayed until very recently.
While a long time in the making, the majority of Zimbabweans have, over the last 2-3 years, had the unenviable experience of being "victims" of Mugabe's and the ruling ZANU-PF's insidious love affair with the accumulation of both narrow personal and class political and economic power. The full-scale "outing" of this love affair during the 2000 elections, especially the manipulative use of so-called "war veterans" and the land issue, led Machingura and other genuine war veterans to feel confident enough to launch a new organisation, the Zimbabwe Liberators Platform (ZLP), to publicly oppose, expose and eventually remove Mugabe.
According to ZLP chairperson Machingura, the ZLP represents the majority of real liberation war veterans, including a substantial number who hold middle and high-level ranks in the army and the Central Intelligence Organisation. Accordingly, the ZLP seeks to expose the lies behind the role of the so-called "war veterans" being used as Mugabe's personal storm troopers and to "rescue the ideals and freedoms that informed the liberation struggle".
Machingura pulls no punches about the extent of the challenges. "The Zimbabwean people are not yet free", he states, "we do not have meaningful self-determination and independence. Mugabe has been putting on a mask all along and ZANU-PF has become his personal tool which he is using as a 'liberation' smokescreen".
The facts, said Machingura, are that Mugabe and his ZANU-PF club of elites have a dominant stake in almost every major industry and sector of the economy, including land, and that the government's campaign for "indigenous empowerment" is another "smokescreen for personal and particular class enrichment and gain". Workers have been "left to fend for themselves" and the present "economic meltdown hurts the urban working class and the rural peasantry, that ZANU-PF claims to represent, the most".
For Machingura and the ZLP, Mugabe's increasingly shrill white bashing is completely hypocritical since "a majority of government controlled companies and other enterprises are managed by whites with his blessing".
It is not surprising that the ZLP views the ANC-led government in South Africa's approach to Zimbabwe as completely misguided. "We have been disappointed with the South African comrades", said Machingura. "They need to understand that Mugabe hijacked the revolution and that he is not serious about any of his supposed 'revolutionary' activities — we are not counting on the South Africans as allies."
On the home front, Machingura referred to the "inexperience and naivety" of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, but said that the ZLP is not hostile to it. The ZLP acknowledges that the MDC has managed to create "an alternative power base" with which tactical alliances can be made to remove Mugabe.
While the longer-term political aims and economic objectives of the ZLP remain hazy, Machingura makes clear that its immediate task is to mobilise people to get rid of Mugabe. "Mass action is the route to go and the people are ready", said Machingura. "Anything short of a new revolution will be inadequate to dislodge Mugabe."