Joshua Nkomo

Warfare

It has to be said that it was Nkomo's ZAPU forces that committed two ultimate acts of terrorism, that in this day in age would cause huge outcry and international trials. His troops shot down two Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount civilian passenger planes with surface-to-air missiles. The first, on September 3, 1978, killed 38 out of 56 in the crash, with a further ten survivors executed by Nkomo's ground troops. The eight remaining survivors managed to elude the guerrillas and walked 20km into Kariba (where the flight had originated; it was headed for Salisbury), some with serious injuries, where they were picked up by local police and debriefed by the Rhodesian army. The second shootdown, on February 12, 1979, killed all 59 on board. Still no one has been brought to trial or charged for these crimes, as has no one on either side of the Liberation war due to the amnesty laws passed by both Smith and Mugabe. In a televised interview not long after the first shootdown, Nkomo laughed and joked about the incident while claiming ZAPU had indeed been responsible.

Related Topics:
Air Rhodesia - Vickers Viscount - Surface-to-air missile - 1978 - Kariba - Salisbury - 1979

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Nkomo was detained by Smith's government in 1964, with fellow revolutionaries Mugabe and Sithole, until 1974, when they were released due to pressure from South African president B.J. Vorster. Following Nkomo's release, he went to Zambia to continue the liberation struggle through the dual process of armed conflict and negotiation. Unlike ZANU's armed wing, ZANLA, ZAPU's armed wing ZIPRA was dedicated to both guerrilla warfare as well as conventional warfare. At the time of independence ZIPRA had a modern military stationed in Zambia and Angola, consisting of Russian-made Mig fighters, Russian-made tanks and armoured personnel carriers, as well as a well trained artillery units. Though many of the historiography of the conflict has concentrated on the importance of ZANLA's guerrilla units in finally forcing the Smith regime to negotiate, in addition to this guerrilla threat was ZIPRA's conventional military strength which would have had the strength to overpower Rhodesia's miitary forces, depleted after years under constant attack.

Related Topics:
1964 - Mugabe - 1974 - South Africa - B.J. Vorster - Zambia - ZANLA - ZIPRA - Guerrilla warfare - Angola

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After ZANU used the state to terrorize and kill the citizens of Matabeleland (estimates go up to 10,000 innocent civilian deaths), Nkomo finally gave in to Mugabe's demands and allowed ZAPU, the party he had built and run for much of his life, to be dissolved into ZANU-PF.

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When asked late in his life why he allowed this to happen, he told historian Eliakim Sibanda that he did it to stop the murder of the Ndebele (who supported his party) and of the ZAPU politicians and orgnziers who had been targeted by Zmbabwe's security forces since 1982.

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Joshua Nkomo died of old age and obesity in 1999, at the age of 81.

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