Published by the government of Zimbabwe
16 March 2009
Harare — Starting today, The Herald will serialise key parts of an interview between the late national hero Retired General Vitalis Musungwa Gava Zvinavashe, whose Chimurenga name was Sheba Gava Fox, and the late prominent author and researcher David Martin.
The interview took place in 2004 and in it the late national hero talks of his early life, how he joined the struggle, the years of the Second Chimurenga and the post-Independence period.
I WAS born in Masvingo Province, in Gutu District on September 27, 1943 and I am proud to be a Zimbabwean, living in Zimbabwe.
Coming from a poor family, depending on farming in the rural areas, we had to first go to the fields before attending classes.
That is how I was brought up.
The estate where I went to school was strictly for tea. I can pick tea, I can plant it, and so I was even a farmer by then, even so young, knowing that the soil has got everything.
My father was called Musungwa. He passed away in 1947, and my mother is still alive. We originally came from the Mberengwa area, but that was in the 19th century.
It's a long time back.
I was my mother's third child. Vitalis is a Christian name, that means that I had been baptised.
My name was Thompson, that was my first name, but Vitalis is a Christian name, and I belong to the Roman Catholic Church.
My revolutionary name is Sheba Gava, or Fox.
We grew up in the rural areas, not on a farm.
The system governed how many cattle you could have, how many goats you could have.
In early 1957, it is right to talk of that as when poverty really started, we were forced to start selling livestock because of the system that resulted in a shortage of land for blacks.
So we could not talk of family wealth because of that but my parents managed to make sure that everybody went to school.
My mother worked hard for her children and I give much credit to my mother.
That is the same thing that we are doing for our kids, that's the foundation, and that is how we were brought up.
We put education first, that is how I was brought up.
The next step was to get employment.
It wasn't easy to get employed. Where? What job?
To settle in town, Salisbury, one needed papers and accommodation.
The way I went to Zambia was just the way I joined the revolution.
I decided to follow my elder brother, Steven, who went to Northern Rhodesia in 961-62.
I went by rail.
Before I joined the revolution, I spent three or four years working in Northern Rhodesia.
We witnessed the coming of independence in Zambia in 1964 and we saw blacks taking over.
That was part of our early political education.
It was a ceremonial surrender by the British authorities, through demonstrations. That was the struggle for Zambia to get independence.
We thought it might be the same in Southern Rhodesia; if we demonstrated we could also reach a point of getting independence.
It created a situation where we said: "Why can't we do it?"
So the younger generation of Zimbabweans, who were in Zambia, joined the struggle.
When they joined Zanu, we were taught a policy. What was the policy? We are our own liberators.
What does that mean? It means that it is you and me who should liberate ourselves. That was the policy.
So how do we liberate ourselves?
We use whatever equipment we have as a weapon to fight the enemy.
That was now the politics that we were talking about.
Structures were now in place.
The party congress that took place in Gweru 1964 elected the Central Committee members.
We also had some representatives from Zambia at the Gweru congress.
I don't recall who in particular could have come to Zambia at that time to organise the party, but I could see individuals organising the party.
This is where you first talk of Josiah Magama Tongogara, he was one of the organisers.
In Lusaka, I ended up overseeing security in the youth structures.
Some sabotage groups went into Zimbabwe but they were arrested.
Then came the group in 1966 that we fought what we call the Sinoia battle.
The group that had come across the Zambezi was very small, and for recognition by the Organisation of African Unity, we needed a larger number.
We would only get OAU support if we had enough forces in camp.
So the Tanzanians started training us and helping us set up a military organisation.
I took the name Sheba Gava when I was at the border with Tanzania in 1968, crossing over to go to Chunya for training.
Why did I choose to be Sheba Gava? It was a good name.
It is a fox.
Zvinavashe and Gava are brothers.
In the early 1960s, we used our real names but later changed after the colonial system started tracking down our families back home.
We were 38 at Chunya Camp.
On arrival, I was appointed political commissar at the camp.
The training consisted of small arms and artillery training, and then anti-aircraft.
I was trained by William Ndangana.
The Tanzanians supervised and made sure things were done properly.
Later came the Chinese.
The people of Tanzania, culturally, are really united, they are very beautiful people. So that was very inspiring.
If these people are sacrificing to assist me, what is it that they want to see? What really are we going to give them tomorrow?
They wanted to make sure Zimbabwe is a free country, that's all.
The training was about the political mobilisation of the people.
Why do we talk of political mobilsation? Our own people who had gone to China knew that a guerilla war could only be done with the full support of the population.
We also learnt from the experience of the Battle of Sinoia.
They fought bravely and got killed. Then what next? There was something wrong somewhere.
A gun is a weapon that takes you where you want to go, but politics is the key.
Those were some of the lessons we learned.
We learned sacrifice.
We used to sign what we called a vow. The vow was that, if I die, I die for the people of Zimbabwe.
We are not talking of which region one comes from, no.
We are talking of a Zimbabwean is a Zimbabwean, to say we are one, with the objective to fight for the country as one person.
We left Chunya Camp for Lusaka as a group of 10.
Our mission was now different from the 1966 group, the Sinoia group that made some battles in the Karoi area, and other small groups since 1967.
Our mission was to re-organise a revolution.
The group of 10 was tasked to divide itself into various areas along the Zambezi River where we then created three operational areas, what we called provinces, along the Botswana, Mozambique and Zambian borders.
For you to cross the Zambezi River, you must work with the local people, using their boats at night.
The Rhodesians used to patrol with their boats along the Zambezi, almost 24 hours. But the people who lived along the Zambezi knew what time the Rhodesian boats passed here.
But after you crossed the Zambezi there was no communication with the rear.
So we carried 200 rounds of ammunition, with a gun, a hand grenade and your kit.
By that time they used to be given a little cash as well.
The purpose of the provinces was to recruit people from Rhodesia.
Their task was then to take equipment into Rhodesia.
So I operated under the BBZ province (Botswana Border Zimbabwe) from 1969 to 1972. I was in charge of Botswana.
I know Botswana, I know the languages, I nearly got married there.
The person that I used to work with was Archie Mogwe, later foreign minister.
He was then in President Seretse Khama's Office.
When I got arrested, the police would say, oh, we caught a very big fish.
And Mogwe would say, no, it's not a big fish.
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