Zimbabwe: Keep Up the Good Work Our Defense Forces

13 August 2024

The Herald (Harare)

The Zimbabwe Defence Forces are an important part of the national society, which goes far beyond their insurance value of deterring would be aggressors and protecting the territorial integrity of the country, or rather, with all our neighbours, our friends, contributing to the regional security of the whole SADC area.

That in itself is an important and traditional role. In the early years of independence, when the dying apartheid regime was striking out and creating bandit forces across the region, and for the ZDF those in Zimbabwe and Mozambique were the ones it had to deal with, the forces were in action almost all the time.

As liberation came to the whole region, the emphasis shifted militarily, with one of the most crucial changes being a decision by SADC Heads of State and Government that we would help each other to combat threats.

This has been gradually implemented, the latest occasion being when Mozambique sought assistance for insurgency in the extreme northeast and the neighbours met and chipped in.

Zimbabwe's contribution was training, where the ZDF has a strong reputation, as can be seen in almost all advanced and degree training courses it runs with the slice of places reserved for friendly foreign forces snapped up.

As time goes on, we will probably see ever more integration of regional forces in an effective military alliance, which would allow most of the regional states to continue keeping their defence spending in balance.

But the ZDF has other roles. The Commander, General Philip Valerio Sibanda, brought up recently in an interview the crucial one of emergency support in natural disasters. The ZDF had always assisted, of course, assigning helicopters for casualty evacuation and helping out in ordinary cyclones for example.

But Cyclone Idai, the worst cyclone to strike the country in many decades, was a whole order of magnitude. Worse and similar cyclones are expected and some very bad ones have already hit others in the region as climate change worsens. One effect of a warming earth is warmer oceans, providing more energy for cyclones.

The ZDF was able to improvise and helped out a lot in the aftermath of Cyclone Idai, with army engineers clearing blocked roads and erecting temporary bridges for example.

Fairly obviously when such natural disasters occur, the military usually have personnel skilled in the necessary relief work and they have the equipment.

This can be everything from engineering works to clearing roads, those military bridges designed for rapid erection on battlefields, specialist signals units who can provide emergency communications, transport units, an ability to deploy largish groups of highly disciplined men and women if such manpower is needed, and the traditional support of helicopters and air transport.

The ZDF has taken the lessons it learned in that Cyclone Idai disaster to heart to build up its capability, improve its reaction times and the work done, and even to prepare the staff and command levels with degree studies at the Zimbabwe National Defence University, as Gen Sibanda noted.

In other words, the defence forces have now moved civil and disaster assistance to the nation and its communities into a primary role that they may be called upon to perform, and so have added it to their training and planning.

Defence forces need to plan and train for a lot of events, some likely some less so, largely because when action is needed there is no time to start working out what to do. Those reacting have to already have worked it out.

The Zimbabwe Defence Forces are also involved in a lot of community work, a deliberate policy building up on the crucial concept that the military in Zimbabwe are not special cast separate from the people they defend, but are from the people and of the people. Joining the army or air force is a career open to all.

From its very origins, the ZDF has spread its barracks and units rather than concentrating forces in a separate huge military mini-city.

This means that off duty soldiers and air force staff are more than likely to be with civilians, shopping with them and involved in similar recreation.

What was the military maxim of the liberation forces, that they needed to swim in the sea of the people, has been maintained in the modern age.

And with backing from the top, the normal desire to help these local communities where they live, their communities, has been able to cement the ties still further. There are several ZDF schemes.

A common one is lending skilled artisans to a community to help build a school or clinic.

As is now the norm, many rural developments involve a lot of inputs: local materials collected by the community who also provide the basic labour; other materials being bought with devolution funds, and in quite a few cases the skilled artisans coming from the army or air force and so avoiding the need to hire people from some distance away, an expensive option.

There are other specific schemes, all designed to have the defence forces assist their communities.

The work of the defence forces, their equipment and perhaps even their structure, will change over time as new needs arise, older threats diminish and new threats arise.

But what needs to stay the same is that sense of belonging to the country and all its people, and that eagerness to be a useful and creative part of the national society.