Safeguard Zimbabwe's Independence, Says Former Women Combatants

Former Zimbabwe Vice President Simon Muzenda’s widow Amai Maud Muzenda (right) talks to Cde Emmy Ncube during a meeting of female ex-combatants in Harare last week., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Safeguard Zim’s independence, say female ex-combatants

Monday, 02 April 2012 00:00
Herald Reporter

FEMALE ex-combatants and wives of the fallen liberation struggle heroes have urged Zimbabweans to safeguard the country’s independence.

They said this at a gathering at in Harare last week.

The meeting, arranged by former fighter Cde Raymond Mazorodze to allow the women to tell their stories, drew 22 women from all over Zimbabwe.

They included Amai Maud Muzenda, widow of Vice President Simon Muzenda; Zanu-PF MP for Chipinge Central, Cde Alice Chitima and the only surviving female ex-detainee at Gonakudzingwa Jane Lungile Ngwenya.

Amai Muzenda, who chronicled the challenges she went through as her husband was arrested or was outside the country, said: “Let us remain strong and shun these other parties that are bent on returning the country to the whites.”

Cde Chitima, who together with her husband Shadreck, were instrumental in helping cadres to get to Mozambique through Chipinge as well as providing food and medicines to fighters, castigated those advocating Western-driven regime change in Zimbabwe.

“We do not want to hear about selling out. These people are destroying the country that we fought for,” she said.

Cde Emmy Ncube from Bulawayo said Government had achieved what the country’s liberators fought for but such gains were being threatened with reversal.

She said: “We fought against oppression when we had no freedom in our own country. It pained us and we decided to take up arms.

“What pains me most is that some people want to return the country to the whites. I wish I was young again and I would go to war and defend the gains of the liberation struggle.

“We have the land that we fought for and for which some people died and some lie unburied but some people say they will reverse the land reform programme when they get into power.

“This will make me continue to talk about politics even when I had wanted to rest.

“Young people need guidance,” she said.
Cde Ngwenya castigated those who want a return to Rhodesia.

“It is a fool that takes a rope, walks to a tree and hangs himself,” she said.

“The white man that is sponsoring regime change laughs behind the walls because he knows he had succeeded in making fools. Whites can tell you to hit your mother because they would have killed your reasoning.”

Mr Mazorodze said it was important that women told their own stories, apart from the male dominated narrative.

“Women had an important role as they went to jails and collected information and they kept the party and families intact,” he said.

“There should be equality in narrating liberation war history,” said Mazorodze.