6 - ‘We Are Free … We Are Here’

Summary

This chapter discusses Mujuru’s leadership in the 1979-80 Rhodesia/Zimbabwe ceasefire, which was managed by Britain and the Commonwealth Monitoring Force (CMF). The chapter argues Mujuru was important to the ceasefire’s success because he filled the leadership vacuum created by the ZANLA commander Josiah Tongogara’s sudden death on the eve of the truce in 1979. Literature on the ceasefire elides (erroneously) Mujuru’s effectual leadership of ZANLA in the aftermath of Tongogara’s death. Mujuru ensured ZANLA guerrillas’ participation in the ceasefire, although he ordered many of them to remain outside the Assembly Points as contingency in case the truce collapsed and for the purposes of campaigning for ZANU PF in the independence election from within their operational spheres. The chapter makes an additional corrective to the literature by drawing attention to the neglected import of the politics of race and class and subjective ideas about generalship in shaping relations between ceasefire leaders.