The ZIPA moment: Dzino, Mugabe and Samora Machel

Abstract

This article underscores the importance of the relatively brief life but historically noteworthy emergence of the Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA) within the struggle for Zimbabwean liberation in the 1970s. For ZIPA was a movement that offered both a serious military challenge of its own to Smith’s UDI regime but also the long-term possibility of a far more meaningful liberation than anything achieved since by ZANU’s ‘old guard’ under the orchestration of Robert Mugabe. The roles played by Mugabe, Machel, Kaunda, Kissinger and Crosland in ensuring ZIPA’s defeat are all emphasised, with a key source for the paper’s reinterrogation of ZIPA’s role being the recent autobiography of Wilfred Mhanda (aka Dzino Machingura), entitled Dzino. A link is also made to Lionel Cliffe’s writing of the time (in ROAPE issue no. 8), in particular to his own experience while incarcerated in one of Kaunda’s Zambian jails.

Déjà vu with difference: A Gramscian interpretation of Zimbabwe’s 2023 elections and their pasts

“…The fate (three years' in Mozambique's prisons) of the 'Young Turks' that inspired Saul to deviate from his theory of class determination exemplifies what happened to whoever Mugabe thought were pretenders to his precarious throne. It serves as a warning to today's young generation (Mhanda 2011;Moore 2014b;Saul 2016) in an interregnum of a different type. The petty-bourgeois leaders of past nationalisms are now well on their way to ruling class status.…”