What he had said in the ‘interview’

The following are the relevant aspects of historically revisionist “interview” that Professor Jonathan Moyo granted to the private media as published last week. ***

IN 1975 I was in high school and nowhere near Mgagao as they allege.

I went to Mgagao in mid-June 1976 as part of a contingent that was ferried in the Organisation of African Unity trucks from the Liberation Centre in Kamwala, Lusaka.

I got ill on the way and arrived in Mgagao mid-June 1976 when I could hardly walk or sit.

One of the OAU officers put me on a bed which, it later turned out, belonged to one of the camp commanders who — on his return from wherever he had been — was so incensed to find me on his bed that he picked me up and threw me down like a stone.

I screamed like a baby and the OAU officer who had left me on that bed came to my rescue. Later that night I learnt that some two or so weeks earlier on June 6 1976 there had been a massacre of Ndebele speaking Zipra cadres at Mgagao.

Because I did not know any Shona then, I feared for my life purely on account of what I was hearing. I pleaded with the OAU officer to take me to a hospital.

The next day he and a Tanzanian army officer took me for treatment at Iringa, which was the nearest town to Mgagao.

I was in Mgagao for no more than 24 hours. In Iringa, I pleaded with the OAU officer not to return me to Mgagao.

. . . The OAU army officer and his colleagues from the Tanzanian army asked if they should take me to Morogoro, a Zipra camp and I wailed in protest and pleaded to be returned to the Liberation Centre in Lusaka.

After multiple interrogations by different officers I was handed over to the Tanzanian police who escorted me to the Tunduma border with Zambia where I was handed over to Zambian police who did their own interrogations before escorting me to police headquarters in Lusaka where I was subjected to further intense interrogations before being handed over to the Liberation Centre in Lusaka where I chronicled my 24 hour Mgagao ordeal of June 1976.

After a month, I was redeployed back to Tanzania with a new contingent of comrades first to Kibaha and then to Mwananyamala holding camp where I learnt my Shona.

I remained in that camp until February 1977 when I was assigned to assist with organisation for Festac 77 which was held in Lagos, Nigeria.

I first met Dr David Parirenyatwa there, he was a student.

After Festac, I was sent to train as a radio producer at the All Africa Council of Churches Communications Centre in Nairobi, Kenya where my lecturers included Oliver Chimenya and Lucas Chideya.

After that course, I was earmarked for deployment in Uganda to broadcast to Zimbabwe when the UNDP facilitated my travel to the US in November 1977 to complete my high school.

During that time I worked at the Zanu office in New York under the late Tirivafi Kangai, who was the party’s representative in America, and the late Edison Shirihuru until I started my undergraduate study at the University of Southern California in September 1978.

So I was at Mgagao for no more than 24 hours, not in 1975 but in 1976 before I went to America in late 1977.