Chimurenga Day
Volume 3 | Issue 4 - Landmarks
Article by Jack Barnes. Edited by Ellie Veryard. Additional Research by Ellie Veryard.
Chimurenga Day is celebrated across Zimbabwe on the 28th of April every year since the 1980s. It is a day on which the population can celebrate the beginning of the liberation struggle that overthrew an oppressive white minority government. Specifically, Chimurenga Day is a commemoration of the Battle of Sinoia, hailed by ZANU-PF, the ruling party in Zimbabwe, as the first of many great victories won in the Rhodesian Bush War between 1965 and 1980.
The Battle of Sinoia was the first of many military encounters between the white security forces of the white minority government of Rhodesia –led by the Rhodesian Front, and African guerrillas fighting to enact majority African rule. The area that was Zimbabwe has been occupied by British settlers since the 1890s; they had always been vastly outnumbered by the indigenous population. Some historians say for every white settler, there were thirty-five Africans. ZANU-PF hails the Battle of Sinoia as the first of many victories against the white security forces.
In April 1966, a group of 21 guerrillas from ZANLA, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army – the military wing to Robert Mugabe’s ZANU, infiltrated Rhodesia (as Zimbabwe was then called) to attack farms in the area and cut power lines. A sub-group of seven men, calling themselves the Armageddon group, were surrounded by Rhodesian security forces on a farm near Sinoia; all seven guerrillas were killed, while no white Rhodesian was even injured. The battle was a complete disaster for the guerrillas. In fact recent evidence shows that the seven guerrillas killed were actually working for the Rhodesian intelligence services, not the heroes of the Chimurenga as made out by ZANU-PF today.
If the Battle of Sinoia was such a disaster, why is it celebrated? First off, propaganda by Mugabe and his party ZANU-PF have consistently portrayed it as a victory for them. With the party running state television and radio services, so information to say otherwise is scarce so the victory myth has remained. The battle is also of great political value to Mugabe and his party. Sinoia was the first time African guerrillas had fought against the white security services in the Second Chimurenga, the name given to the Rhodesian Bush War by the guerrilla fighters. (The First Chimurenga happened in 1896, when the indigenous population rose up against white colonialists who brutally crushed it.).
Since the end of the War in Zimbabwe, and the victory of the guerrilla movements, Mugabe and ZANU-PF have been in power, taking full credit for fighting and winning the liberation war. During the Second Chimurenga there was a rival guerrilla movement led by a man named Joshua Nkomo, called ZAPU. Nkomo’s forces generally fought in the west of Rhodesia, while Mugabe’s fought in the East, never cooperating with one another- in fact in the first few years of the war these two rival guerrilla armies were as likely to fight each other as they were to fight the Rhodesians.
After the war ended and Mugabe was elected into power, he struck against Nkomo, Nkomo’s party – ZAPU – and also his army in the early ‘80s, in what was called Gukurahandi – a word meaning ‘the rain that blows away the chaff’. Mugabe’s forces killed within the region of 20,000 to 30,000 men, women and children in the Matabeleland region, the heartland of Nkomo’s support. Mugabe did not want any rivals to his power.
With his rivals physically destroyed, Mugabe then changed the ‘official’ history of the war. His party alone, ZANU-PF, was the force that won it. It was the force that beat the security forces of the white minority, no one else. So Chimurenga Day, the day for celebrating the liberation war that overthrew the white minority government of Rhodesia, was given a firmly ZANU-PF tint. By celebrating the Battle of Sinoia, it is implied that ZANU-PF started the liberation struggle on its own. Nkomo’s party ZAPU no longer played a part in the war in the history according to Mugabe. It doesn’t matter if the battle was a success or not, what matters is that it was the first contact between Rhodesian forces and guerrillas inside Rhodesia’s borders. Mugabe can claim that his forces started the war that led to independence from the white minority.
Therefore Chimurenga Day is not just about celebrating Zimbabwe’s liberation war. It is about cementing ZANU-PF’s position as the cause of the liberation.
• Chimurenga means ‘revolutionary struggle’ in Shona, the language of the Shona people of Zimbabwe.
• In Zimbabwe the First Chimurenga war is celebrated as ‘The First War of Independence’ whilst the Second is also called the Zimbabwe Liberation War. The first war ended with the unification of Matabeleland and Mashonaland as South Rhodesia.
• South Rhodesia remained a British colony until 1965 when Rhodesia became the only British colony aside from America which declared independence for itself.