Nkala says Mahachi was murdered in 2001
HARARE – Former finance minister, Enos Nkala on Saturday made startling allegations that former defence minister, Moven Mahachi, was assassinated, apparently at the behest of President Robert Mugabe.
Mahachi, a close ally of Mugabe, died in a car crash on May 26, 2001. He was 49 years old.
The Range Rover vehicle he was travelling in reportedly collided with another car as he travelled from Mutare to Nyanga after he attended a Zanu-PF Manicaland provincial meeting.
He was declared a hero and buried at the national heroes’ shrine.
But Nkala, who also served as defence minister in the then Prime Minister Mugabe’s cabinet soon after independence, claimed the death of one of his successors was not through a car accident as was widely reported.
“My dear young man,” Nkala said to Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara at a press conference Saturday, “you are young and do not know anything about this man. I know him better.”
Nkala was referring to President Mugabe.
The press conference, which was attended by politicians and representatives of civic organizations, was convened by Mutambara at the completion of a two-day convention to formulate Zimbabwe’s Vision 2040 blueprint.
Nkala then asked the president of the Council of Chiefs, Chief Fortune Charumbira, an ally of Mugabe to organize a meeting with the president, saying he would confront him for lying.
“If you want to know more about Robert Mugabe, seek for a day when you call Mugabe, (former Zanu PF secretary general, Edgar) Tekere and myself with some respectful people sitting there. He will chicken out. Why, because he knows we will dress him down and tell him who he is. I am not back-biting. Organize a meeting.
“I can even tell you how Mahachi was liquidated. I know all that nonsense.”
The former minister did not say why he has not made the threatened revelations over the past eight years. Nkala, who said he was not afraid of being killed for exposing Mugabe, was quickly stopped by Mutambara and Sekai Holland from revealing more details.
Mutambara and Holland, co-minister of Zimbabwe’s newly incepted national healing organ, said Saturday’s forum was not about this particular subject. This is not the first time Nkala has threatened to expose Mugabe.
Nkala has announced that he is writing a book in which he is going to make dramatic revelations about Mugabe. He said, however, that the book would be published after his death.
In November 2006 an online publication posted an article by Nkala in which the controversial former minister declared that he was not scared of Mugabe.
“President Mugabe talks, imagines and believes that he and he alone brought about the freedom of Zimbabwe. He believes that some of us were sleeping at home with our wives while he was fighting, this nonsense must come to an end.
“I am ready to spend the last days of my life in Mugabe’s prisons in defence of the legal, constitutional and civil rights of the precious people of Zimbabwe. I wish to end thus far until he responds to this statement. Mugabe must go now before the situation consumes him.”
Mugabe did not respond to Nkala’s article.
On Saturday Nkala claimed he had personally introduced Mugabe to politics at a time when he was a school teacher.
Nkala was a firebrand politician and was Defence Minister at the height of the Gukurahundi campaign when thousands of innocent civilians in Matabeleland and the Midlands were either killed or disappeared mysteriously in a campaign mounted by Mugabe’s Five Brigade troops in the early 1980s.
Victims estimated at up 20 000 supporters of former Vice President Joshua Nkomo’s PF-Zapu party were killed by the army in the holocaust, the darkest period in Zimbabwe’s post independence history.
Nkala a known political rival of Nkomo was widely accused of instigating the conflagration.
Nkala was ignominiously ejected from government in 1989 when he was forced to resign from his positions both in the cabinet and Zanu-PF politburo following his widely publicised involvement in the WiIlowgate Scandal.
Nkala was one of several top government officials who were exposed by The Chronicle newspaper for making unauthorized purchases of new motor-cars directly from the Willowvale Industries and reselling them at exorbitant mark-ups.
Nkala was forced to resign for committing perjury after he lied to the Sandura Commission appointed by Mugabe to investigate the allegations published by The Chronicle.
The fiery Nkala went underground after his political career was brought to a dramatic crash.
On Saturday he accused Mugabe of abusing the national Heroes Acre to reward those prepared to flatter him at the same time settling scores with foes and critics who might be deserving of recognition.
He said Mugabe had used the public media to distort history and monopolise credit for the liberation struggle.
“He talks as if he and himself alone fought the liberation war,” Nkala said.
“Where were we ourselves? Were we sleeping in our houses when he was prosecuting the war? He has muzzled the media. All they sing about is Robert Mugabe.”
Nkala said he would not want to be buried at the national shrine when he dies.
“I am not going to Heroes Acre,” he said. “It is Mugabe’s shrine.
“I don’t want any person to sit and declare me a hero. History written by objective people will decide who I am.
“If you can’t look after me when I am still alive, why do you want to look after my bones? I am not going to have anyone have my bones in that thing.”
He said he would want to be buried next to his late parents in Bulawayo.
Tekere has also declared that he will not be buried at the National Heroes’ Acre.
Tekere, in fact, became the first of Mugabe’s cabinet minister to fall from grace. He was forced to resign his cabinet post following his conviction for murder following the brutal shooting of a commercial farmer.
The High Court was unanimous that Tekere was guilty of murder. He was, however, deemed to have acted in “good faith” and was, therefore entitled to indemnification under a law that former Prime Minster, Ian Smith, enacted to protect Rhodesian security forces during the war of liberation.
Tekere, who was Zanu-PF secretary-general, became a harsh critic of corruption in the Mugabe government. He was expelled from the party in 1989 and immediately launched his own organisation, the Zimbabwe Unity Movement. The party lost both the parliamentary and the presidential elections in 1990.
Nkala says Mahachi killed for diamonds.
BULAWAYO – Former fiery politician, Enos Nzombi Nkala, has revealed that his successor as Defence Minister, Moven Mahachi was eliminated for his robust opposition to Zanu-PF leadership’s unbridled looting of diamonds in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
In an exclusive interview with the Zimbabwe Times, Nkala, formerly the Minister of Finance, National Supplies, Home Affairs and of Defence expanded on allegations he made last week that Mahachi, was assassinated, apparently at the behest of President Robert Mugabe.
Nkala was sparing on the actual details of the alleged assassination other than to say Mahachi opposed the illicit trade in diamonds which enriched the army top brass and senior government officials, allegedly including President Mugabe. During the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) a United Nations panel named current Defence Minister Emmerson Mnangagwa and then commander of the Zimbabwe National Army, Vitalis Zvinavashe, now late, as being among individuals who plundered the natural resources, especially diamonds, of the war-torn central African country.
“Moven was an outsider in an exclusive club – the Committee of 26 – comprising politicians of Zezurus and Korekore origin. This committee of looters have controlled the army, the police, the CIO and appear to think that they went to war for self enrichment,” Nkala said.
The late Mahachi was Manyika.
“To them,” Nkala said, “Mahachi was an obstacle in their quest to amass wealth using the pretext of fighting a prolonged war to restore sovereignty in the DRC just as they had done in Mozambique during the military campaign against Renamo. So he had to go.”
Mahachi, (49) at the time of his death in a car crash on May 26, 2001, was one of Mugabe’s loyal confidantes.
The all-terrain vehicle Mahachi was traveling in, a Range Rover, was officially reported to have collided with a smaller car as he travelled from Mutare to Nyanga after he attended a Zanu-PF Manicaland provincial meeting in his capacity as National Political Commissar.
Nkala questioned why it was only in Zimbabwe that a large number of high-profile people had died in “mysterious” car crashes since independence in 1980 and not in any other neighbouring countries in the region such as Zambia, Botswana, Mozambique , Namibia and South Africa.
But Nkala was expected to provide answers, as promised, not to ask questions.
“This phenomenon can be traced to Hebert Chitepo, Josiah Magama Tongogara, Chris Ushehokunze, and others like Sydney Malunga, Border Gezi and lately Elliot Manyika,” said Nkala.
“The irony of it all is that Mugabe declares his victims national heroes. He is an opportunist who has used “amafikezolos” (Johnny-come-latelies) to do his dirty work if he feels surrounded by strong personalities whom he fears might eclipse him.
“Maurice Nyagumbo was haunted by top people in Zanu-PF and the CIO who were just as culpable in the Willowgate Scandal into committing suicide because of his strong personality in criticizing Mugabe and his murderous henchmen’s actions. “Nyagumbo was a Manyika and did not fit in the Zezuru-Korekore clique.”
Nyagumbo committed suicide at the height of the Willowgate Scandal after he, Nkala and four other ministers were found guilty of perjury after they lied under oath before the Wilson Sandura Commission of Inquiry.
Tongogara died in a car crash in Mozambique on Christmas Eve in 1979 soon after the Lancaster House Conference. He was travelling north from Maputo to visit the Zanla guerilla camps and explain the outcome of the just ended conference and the beginning of preparations for the journey back to Zimbabwe and independence.
“I know who killed Tongogara,” Nkala said but refused to disclose any names.
“If he had come back, the whole army of liberation forces who hero-worshipped him would have agitated for “Tongo” to become the country’s leader and Mugabe knew that pretty well.
“Tongogara was eliminated because of his close liaison with Dumiso Dabengwa, the former ZIPRA military intelligence supremo.”
In an interview bristling with innuendo, Nkala was by implication suggesting that President Robert Mugabe was behind the death of Tongogara. This theory is not new, however. It has been the subject of speculation over the past 30 years but has so far remained confined to the realm of speculation.
Nkala said he had not spoken before about Mahachi’s death and other issues which he says are revealed in detail in his forthcoming book. He says the book “chronicles goings-on in ZANU since its formation and the chicanery that led to the crafting of the Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland and the Midlands in the early 1980s”.
The four-year military campaign by a Korean-trained elite unit – Five Brigade -resulted in the death of innocent civilians variously estimated at up to 20 000.
The government declared a state-of-emergency and placed the affected areas under curfew. The massacres were then carried out under an effective veil of secrecy as the affected areas became inaccessible to the media.
“Gukurahundi had its seeds sown during our long years of detention in various detention camps,” Nkala said.
“It was not a spontaneous reaction to lies about ZAPU wanting to overthrow the government or Mugabe wanting to establish a one-party state as widely believed.”
“It was premeditated ethnic cleansing, which had been simmering since our early years in detention. The arms caches on ZAPU properties were a perfect excuse to unleash the notorious Five Brigade on the Ndebeles to avenge what their ancestors had done to the Shona people.”
Nkala, a Ndebele politician who was rejected by his own people during the 1980 general election in favour of ZAPU and his bitter rival Dr Joshua Nkomo, is openly accused of being a leading instigator of the Gukurahundi atrocities against his own Ndebele people in retaliation for their rejection of him at the polls and in a bid to ingratiate himself with Mugabe and the Zanu-PF leadership.
He said he was often accused of being part and parcel of the massacres but explained that during that period he was Minister of Finance before being assigned to the newly created National Supplies ministry.
But what ever ministerial portfolio Nkala held he regularly held weekend rallies in both Bulawayo and rural Matabeleland where Nkomo was denigrated while his supporters were forced to make a bonfire of their ZAPU membership cards before being issued with new Zanu-PF cards. While carrying Zanu-PF cards they still voted overwhelmingly for PF-Zapu in 1985.
As Minister of Home Affairs Nkala made widespread use of the dreaded Police Internal Security and Intelligence unit (PISI), a counterpart of the Central Intelligence Organisation, but operating within the police.
PISI terrorised and incarcerated scores of ZAPU supporters.
“I became Minister of Home Affairs after the 1985 elections and was succeeded by the late Herbert Ushewokunze when I became Defence Minister in 1988 after the Gukurahundi massacres,” Nkala said.
He said all this was explained in his book.
He insisted in the interview conducted in his Bulawayo home on Wednesday that the book will be published only after his death.
He said he needed to “protect people named in it from possible victimization or elimination”.
Nkala said the manuscript was “salted” abroad for safety.
“The book opens a can of worms,” he said. “Before its publication, I challenge people like Emmerson Mnangagwa, Sydney Sekeramayi who have headed the Security and Defence ministries, Robert Mugabe and me to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission about the atrocities that have been committed by this government. The commission will not be presided over by a local judge because the judges have been compromised.”
He said in the event of his death before he had completed the book he has instructed his publishers to release the book.
Nkala denied ever suggesting that Chief Fortune Charumbira should arrange a meeting between him and Mugabe.
“I don’t know where that came from,” he said. “I don’t even know Chief Charumbira other than reading about him in the papers.”
He reportedly told a press conference after a seminar to formulate Zimbabwe’s Vision 2040: “If you want to know more about Robert Mugabe, seek for a day when you call Mugabe, (former Zanu PF secretary general, Edgar) Tekere and myself with some respectful people sitting there. He will chicken out. Why, because he knows we will dress him down and tell him who he is. I am not back-biting.”
Nkala was referring to President Mugabe.
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