Tofa, The Bible and the Quest for Democracy and Democratization in Africa17 1961 under the leadership of the late Joshua Nkomo but the settler
regime was hostile to nationalist politics that nationalist parties were
banned under the brutal Unlawful Organizations Act.
Under this Act, any organizations which were regarded as engendering
public unrest were declared unlawful. The colonial regime made exten-
sive use of an array of brutish legislations in order to guard against any
threats to its power. Most of these colonial legislations were not only
inherited by the post-colonial state but they were broadened in terms of
their reach. To evade the Unlawful Organizations Act, nationalist parties
operated from clandestine bases within the country or from exile. ZAPU
was therefore formed immediately after the banning of the nationalist
National Democratic Party (NDP).
However, the settler regime banned ZAPU in 1962, a move which was
instrumental in igniting the liberation struggle. ZAPU’s armed wing,
the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) together with the
ZANU wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA)
waged a fierce struggle against the colonial administration which inau-
gurated independence in 1980. Dissident activities erupted in the early
1980s in which some disgruntled elements from the Ndebele population
engaged in bombings, abductions, killings, harassment, torture and
raping of the local people particularly the Shona. Most of these activities
targeted the ZANU PF headquarters, the Prime Minister’s house and
other confessed and prominent supporters of ZANU PF.
The ZANU PF-led government attributed these activities to PF ZAPU
especially after the discovery of large arms caches to property which
belonged to PF ZAPU in Matabeleland in 1983. Relations between these
political parties became very tense. In an effort which was mainly in-
tended not to quench these activities but to co-opt PF ZAPU, the Prime
Minister unleashed the North Korean trained 5th Brigade to Matabele-
land. According to Ncube (1991) from the beginning of 1983, the people
of Matabeleland experienced terror which can be hardly distinguished
from that inflicted on the people of Zimbabwe by the Rhodesian state.^1
The celerity, ferocity and catholicity of the acts of indiscriminate killing,
raping, harassment, maiming, detention and torture which were perpe-
(^1) Welshman Ncube, “Constitutionalism, Democracy and Political Practice in Zim-
babwe,” in The One Party State and Democracy: The Zimbabwe Debate, eds. Ibbo Man-
daza and Lloyd Sachikonye (Harare: Southern African Political Economy Trust, 1991),
162.