Obert Mazhandu

Obert Mazhandu
Obert Mazhandu
Born	Obert Mazhandu Between 1928 and 1929 [1]
Occupation	Ware Veteran

Obert Mazhandu is a Zimbabwean war veteran. He is known to have been part of the Dare ReChimurenga which was created to lead the war confrontation of the Zanu party against the Rhodesian government.

Liberation War

He went to Lusaka, Zambia in 1960 after countless arrests in Rhodesia where he joined Zanu, a year after it had been formed. About his involvement in the liberation struggle, Mazhandu has said:

I got involved in politics from a long time ago around 1958. I later went to Zambia where I stayed with one of my relatives, Percy Ntini and was introduced to politics by people like Mark Nziramasanga. In 1963, I came back home and was arrested on arrival. After the arrests in 1963, the Rhodesian government wanted to recruit me to be their spy in Zambia and they actually gave me some white contacts in Lusaka to relay information about the political activities by ZAPU and later Zanu. They promised me good money and for them to release me, I pretended I was in agreement with their plan. One of the contacts in Zambia was a whiteman called Hunt.

Stanley Parerewa, Morton Malianga and Peter Mtandwa were working at the Zanu office. I was later sent to Tanzania in 1964 for military training and went together with seven other comrades. After one week in Dar es Salaam, there was a clash between the Zambian government and Stanley Parerewa and John Mataure in Lusaka. The two were removed from the office and chairman Chitepo and Noel Mukono assigned me to go back to Zambia to work in the Zanu office because I could speak the Zambian language.

When I came back from Tanzania, I became the Zanu acting chief representative in Lusaka. Zambian government didn’t want to associate itself with Zanu. The only people in the Zambian government who associated with us were people like Dingiswayo Banda, Grey Zulu, and Kapwepwe. Kaunda didn’t like Zanu. One of my jobs in Lusaka was to organise meetings and rallies and recruit people to join the liberation struggle.

We would tell them that Zanu is a new party whose aim was to go and fight to liberate the country. We were emphasizing that Zanu is not about talking to the Rhodesian government. We wanted to fight the colonial system. We told people that some will die but eventually the country would be free.

(around 1967, 68 and 69) We were now abducting people. Kumanikidza vanhu chaiko because for OAU to support us we had to have a certain number of people in the training camps. Of course we would also tell people that they would go to school and some actually went to school, especially those who were very young. However, after political induction at the training camps, some would opt to join the struggle than go to school. We recruited most people from areas like Mumbwa and Kabwe where there were many Zimbabweans. From Livngstone to Chililabombwe. When head office of Zanu moved from Tanzania to Lusaka, that’s when Dare ReChimurenga was formed and I became the Chief of Recruitment in Dare.^[1]

References