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1 An introduction
What do we know about soldiers and soldiering in post-colonial Africa? Scholarship has been dominated by soldiers doing political violence on civilians, but less is known about the ways in which the state does violence on its own soldiers who serve it. In this book I argue that soldiers should not only simplistically be viewed as perpetrators but also as victims of barrack and state violence. This often happens in a context where a country is in deep political crisis. It is argued here that in the context of Zimbabwe, the state, and the political party which rules it, the Zimbabwe African National Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) had to work quite hard to mobilise soldiers to support it. It was never a given and easy for ZANU-PF to co-opt soldiers to do the work of violence as some scholars would think, rather in the army barracks ZANU-PF, through its political commanders, had to hoodwink, punish, and align junior soldiers into a particular political thinking which celebrates it. The army commanders devised forms of punishment for soldiers who were politically astray, but also forms of reward to those who were glorifying the ZANU politics respectively. The barracks became spaces of politics for men in combat uniform, a practice which is forbidden by the constitution. Soldiers were labelled as belonging to an opposition political party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai, now led by Advocate Nelson Chamisa. While some soldiers remained in the barracks, others deserted. They were deeply disappointed by the erosion of professional ethics in the Zimbabwe National Army (especially the ways in which the army had become de-professionalised) and found refuge in neighbouring African countries.
This book therefore explores soldiers barrack experiences of being tormented by their political commanders. This political practice was and is hardly known to the public domain; such realities of living and working in combat under ZANU-PF army commanders has never been an easy task for men whose voices are presented in this book. This is despite that the Zimbabwe National Army draws much of its military training approach from the British, but in practice it does the opposite of what a professional army is expected to do. Inside the Zimbabwe army barracks politics grimed and soiled junior soldiers’ daily living: soldiers could only eat one meal per day: supper. I explore these in the book in greater detail.
Apart from hunger in the barracks, the political commanders manipulated and deployed the Defence Act to intentionally prosecute and detain soldiers. Interestingly, none of the commanders who sought to interpret the Defence Act had knowledge of the law and its application. The Act was a weapon to discipline and control soldiers’ activities. Almost on every day, soldiers were brought before the officer commanding for the said offences, which were in all respect politically charged. None of the soldiers could contest and /or appeal a charge against them, as this was deemed to be an insubordination of command. The barracks were therefore centres of political power in which ZANU-PF ideology was perpetuated and inculcated by all means.
The book draws on soldiers who, since 1980, had joined the Zimbabwe National Army and so served in post-independence Zimbabwe and deserted the army in post-2000. They differ from former liberation guerrillas who were incorporated into the Army after independence. For the latter the military at the time had a political meaning and goal for and of liberation. The deserters joined the Army mainly because it was an opportunity to serve the country as well as secure paid work.
There has been no such kind of work on this category of soldiers. The only approximate and detailed account is that of Alexander (1998) who studied soldiers who deserted from the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) in 1982. The 1982 deserters were former liberation war fighters from the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), an armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union party led by Joshua Nkomo. On integration into the new Zimbabwe National Army they were motivated to desert because of ethnic-based political tensions within the army and the country at large. Most of them were Ndebele compared with the majority of Shona people in Zimbabwe. Long before and after their desertion, their relations with the government deteriorated and their political leaders, for example Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku, were jailed. These deserters were called ‘dissidents’ (Alexander, 1998) based on claims that they planned to subvert former President Robert Mugabe’s government and had retained arms caches. Some of the latter were apparently discovered but were a ploy by Mugabe’s army and security personnel in Matabeleland in 1982 and were seen as an indication of a plan to overthrow the government of Mugabe (CCJPZ, 1997).
Unlike Alexander’s (1998) article, which attended only to Ndebele soldiers who deserted when they were politically as well as ethnically targeted and persecuted in the army, I focus on Ndebele and Shona-speaking soldiers who joined the ZNA in post-independence Zimbabwe between 1986 and 2001 and subsequently deserted or resigned and went into exile in South Africa. Contrary to Alexander’s (1998) study, my participants did not participate in the liberation war for Zimbabwean independence. They were deployed in post-independence wars, i.e. in Mozambique (1986–1992) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC; 1998–2002). Apart from Alexander’s study, there has not been any other account that explores the experiences of disillusioned Zimbabwean soldiers who left the army, including those who seek refuge in South Africa. The reasons for abandoning the military and migrating to South Africa, as well as their lives in this host country, have thus far remained obscure.
Contextualising soldiers in Zimbabwe
The Zimbabwe National Army was promulgated and formed at independence in 1980. Its formation mainly involved the integration of two former liberation armed groups: the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army – an armed wing of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front led by former president Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwe Patriotic Revolutionary Army, an armed wing of the Zimbabwe African Patriotic Union, as well as members of the former white Rhodesian Security Forces. In the early 1980s the army was professionalised and regularised with standardised principles, policies, organisation, uniforms, training, etc. through the advice, supervision, and involvement of the British Military Advisory and Training Team (BMATT; see also Alao, 1995; Tendi, 2013). Until the departure of BMATT in 2001, the Zimbabwe National Army was still professional – though with some political challenges, especially following the disturbances and the Matabeleland massacres of the early 1980s under Gukurahundi (see White, 2007; Alexander, 1998). In the late 1980s the Zimbabwe National Army recruited the first cohort of soldiers who had not participated in the liberation war (Young, 1997). The reasons for such recruitments were twofold: first, to support an aging group of veteran soldiers who had served in the liberation army and second, for deployment in armed conflicts in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In the later years, the army became much more politicised, publicly supporting former President Robert Mugabe, while denigrating the opposition political party (see Chapters 3–8).
A brief description of the armed conflicts abroad, as well as the political crisis in Zimbabwe – in which these soldiers were involved – is needed to understand what they went through and why they deserted from the army. While soldiers who fought in the Zimbabwean liberation war from the 1960s to the late 1970s joined the army for political reasons (Alexander, 1998; Alexander & MacGregor, 2004; Chung, 2006; Kriger, 2003; Mhanda, 2011), the former soldiers, who participated in this study, did so mainly to find employment. They joined the ZNA from 1986 onwards, when the Zimbabwean government embarked on the mass recruiting of soldiers to support the Mozambican government (1986–1992) against the Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) rebels (Young, 1997).
The Zimbabwean soldiers were deployed to protect the oil pipeline, stretching from Mozambique to Zimbabwe, against rebel attacks. Subsequently, ZNA soldiers were also deployed, between 1998 and 2002, to support the war of the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) against a rebel group, which was backed by Rwanda and Uganda’s National Army. In 2003, after the cessation of this war, the Zimbabwean troops returned to barracks in Zimbabwe. From there, they operated in internal deployments. Scholars have described the Zimbabwean situation at the time as a multiple crisis (Crush & Tevera, 2010; Hammar & Raftopoulos, 2003; Raftopoulos, 2009; Worby, 2003) exacerbated by internal state-sponsored political violence. This violence became known as jambanja, which refers to an uprising, chaos, disorder, and a general loss of political morality, as brutality grew against opposition party supporters (Chaumba et al., 2003). Muzondidya (2009) notes that ZANU (PF) political party, led by President Robert Mugabe, deployed its militant youth to shore up support during elections and marshalled state resources and institutions such as the army and the police to ensure electoral obedience. The soldiers became perpetrators and victims of jambanja. They were politically deployed to threaten and commit violence against civilians (defined as members of the opposition political party) and against perceived enemies of the State, including white farmers (Sachikonye, 2011). This created acrimony and a social distance between soldiers and a large part of the civilian population. All soldiers were viewed as oppressors, like the ZANU PF, especially as a result of the violence committed by soldiers during these operations. Thus, while Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2009) argues that former president Mugabe has never been tolerant, Ranger (2004) notes that Mugabe shifted from ‘nationalist historiography’, which advocated a welfare agenda and reconstruction, to ‘patriotic history’, which divides the nation into black and white, ‘patriots’, and ‘sell-outs’.
The Zimbabwean army remained politicised. In the post-2000 crisis, the army publicly supported former President Robert Mugabe (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009). This phenomenon has been described as the ‘politicisation of the military’ in post-colonial Zimbabwe (Rupiya, 2011). Politics centred on Mugabe and every political action was undertaken in support of his regime. This is what Ranger (2004a) called ‘Mugabe-ism’ (see also Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009). Thus, in Zimbabwe, soldiers are perceived as anti-democratic beneficiaries of former president Robert Mugabe’s patron–client relationship, a perception reinforced by the involvement of the army in political violence.
Soldiers were deployed in rural and urban areas, for instance during the land reform programme and during election periods (Alexander, 2003; Hammar, 2005; Hammar et al., 2010; Solidarity Peace Trust, 2009), as well as during Operation Murambatsvina (‘Clean the filth in all cities’) in 2005 (Fontein, 2015) in which the filth was the opposition political members. Elections were approached by ZANU-PF as ‘battles’ and political opponents were viewed as enemies to be annihilated rather than as political competitors (Muzondidya, 2009). According to Raftopoulos (2009) most of the political violence against civilians was directed by the Joint Operation Command (JOC) of the armed forces. At the time, amidst the political and economic crisis from the year 2000, a large number of soldiers were positioned around the country to ensure the implementation and success of different government political actions, forcing people to chant and celebrate President Robert Mugabe’s slogans and songs, harassing and flogging civilians (Sachikonye, 2011; Hammar & Raftopoulos, 2003; Hammar, 2008; Raftopoulos, 2009; Solidarity Peace Trust, 2008). This was done to ensure a solid bloc of votes for President Mugabe against his opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
In the post-2000 crisis, the continuing political violence and economic decline of the country profoundly affected soldiers in the barracks. Many became frustrated and, with rampant inflation, their salaries could not meet their basic needs. In some cases their monthly salary was insufficient to enable them to buy the staple food. The return of Zimbabwean soldiers from the DRC war in 2003 coincided with the political and economic meltdown of Zimbabwe. The market was considered to be kupenga (‘mad’ in ChiShona; Jones, 2010b).
Subsequently, the economic crisis deepened, with unprecedented levels of hyperinflation. Jones (2010a) described Zimbabwe’s economy at the time as kukiya-kiya, which points to an indescribable scenario where normal strategies of life are rendered useless. People resorted to illegal strategies to survive. Hanke (2008) observed that, by November 2008, the annual hyperinflation index rate was close to 90 sextillion per cent (sextillion: 1 followed by 21 zeros). There were virtually no cash transactions taking place and the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange had stopped trading. Former President Robert Mugabe tried to control inflation by using what Tendai Biti, the former Minister of Finance called ginyanomics – the controlling of inflation by arresting industry and commerce leaders and imposing price-control monitors on shops. When presenting the 2013 national budget, Tendai Biti emphasised that the economy had become feja-feja (a game of dice). The actors in the Zimbabwean economy were using random and at times criminal strategies, most of which fell outside what was normal, in a collapsing economy (Nyamunda, & Mukwambo, 2012).
Jones (2010b) observed that by February 2009, immediately before the Zimbabwean dollar was replaced by the US dollar, an egg cost two trillion Zimbabwean dollars. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe had printed a hundred trillion (Zim-dollar) note and, along with ordinary civilian Zimbabweans, the soldiers faced financial disaster when the Zimbabwean dollar collapsed. The continuing economic crisis destroyed the livelihoods of soldiers and other civil servants; their monthly salary was at the time equivalent to US$10.00.
At the same time, in the barracks, many junior soldiers were increasingly victimised by the military intelligence, military police, and paranoid veterans of the former liberation struggle. Furthermore, army generals were re-directing soldier’s food rations for their own use and hunger and strife were common in the barracks. Faced with such an economic crisis and severely suffering from political victimisation, a number of soldiers decided to end their contracts or, because of the stringent conditions associated with resigning, simply deserted from the army and sought refuge in South Africa.
Some of the soldiers stated explicitly that they deserted from the army because of an increase in cases of persecution and the indefinite detention of troops by the Zimbabwean military police, the Special Investigation Branch (SIB), and military intelligence. This usually followed on suspicion that the soldiers supported the opposition political party, the MDC led by the late Morgan Tsvangirai, issues that are dealt with in this book.
Book structure
Chapter 1 contextualises the political and economic conditions through which soldiers were made to live just like any of the people in Zimbabwe. This provides a vantage point in framing the ways in which the crisis permeated the army barracks.
Chapter 2 presents how soldiers were trained. The chapter asserts that the relationship between soldiers and the state is made through military training. However, even though the military training was more British in its approach, ZANU-PF had to find ways to recruit man who could neither read nor write, a clear testimony to fulfil its political mandate of reaching out to its support base, especially in the rural areas.
Chapter 3 explores the everyday victimisation of soldiers in the army barracks. Thus, while there has been voluminous scholarship on how soldiers perpetrate violence against civilians, the chapter reveals how soldiers lived as victims of political violence perpetrated by their partisan commanders. These and others were the reasons for soldiers to desert the Zimbabwe army.
Chapter 4 reveals how soldiers were subjected to hunger in the army barracks and the ways in which soldiers tried to find alternative ways to deal with lack of food in the barracks. The chapter argues that the absence of food in the barracks and in some cases the provision of sub-standard food to soldiers represented a state failure, especially to soldiers who served it. The army responded by giving soldiers ma off ezhara, meaning soldiers were given time off to go home because of hunger in the army barracks.
Chapter 5 analyses the political promotion of army generals while junior soldiers were demoted of their ranks. The chapter examines the public speeches made by these army generals supporting former president Mugabe while denigrating the opposition political party, the MDC. I analyse these speeches as a political space which made the generals visible in politics but also as a way of seeking promotion within the army.
Chapter 6 examines the ways in which the military infringes the social and political rights of soldiers. I explore the prosecution and punishment of soldiers through the draconian Defence Act: Chapter 11:02. The chapter presents and discusses what soldiers perceive as inhumane within the military, particularly the application of the Zimbabwe Defence Act and the ways in which punishment was executed.
Chapter 7 focuses on how the army deserters respond in their present life in exile to their past military experiences as both perpetrators and victims of their involvement in the political violence in Zimbabwe. The chapter analyses how army deserters continue to re-live and re-enact their military past lives in exile in South Africa.
Chapter 8 comes back to the more recent political events in Zimbabwe, the November 2017 military coup. The chapter reveals some of the events in the barracks: the 2003 and 2007 all battalion campaign by the director of military intelligence and military police and General Chiwenga’s crusades in the barracks respectively. The chapter also examines the difficulties of expecting a retired army General to behave like a civilian politician.
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2 Recruitment and training *
