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Christopher Farai Charamba Correspondent
While the sheer macabre brutality of the Rhodesian forces was legendary and has often been the subject of several books and even documentaries in the post-independence era, it is always a spine-chilling experience to physically visit certain places where these heinous acts were meted out against the valiant sons and daughters. One such place that evokes disquieting emotions lies on the peripheral eastern side of Rusape in Manicaland popularly known by the locals as Magamba Township. It is where the Provincial Heroes Acre is located in the Makoni District.

The place was known as Castle Kopje camp during the colonial period but locals infamously dubbed it “the butcher”. It is at “butcher” that white Rhodesians used African “prisoners” as effigies for shooting practices by young cadets. These effigies were captured guerrilla fighters and war collaborators of the liberation struggle.

A few hundred metres from where the Provincial Heroes Acre are the remains of a brick and stone structure used as court martial for captured liberation fighters. The so-called court martial was literally a slaughterhouse as it was rare for captured individuals to come out alive.

Now covered by golden grass and tall trees, the rugged grey walls stand roughly half a metre from the ground. Within the confines of the rugged ruins are pieces of metal poles still stubbornly intact in the ground. These were the metal poles that the comrades were tied on during the hearings that sealed their fate.

Cde Mushamari Mazikana (58), a war veteran who joined the war at the age of 18 in 1976 and whose Chimurenga name was Dididi Munadzi Shumba Yemabhunu recounted the history of the infamous “butcher”.

“The butcher was a terrible place. Many of our brave brothers and sisters were savagely slain here during the liberation struggle. It was the place where young Rhodesian soldiers were taught how to kill.

“When they captured a guerrilla or a collaborator, they were first brought to this makeshift court where they were tried and sentenced, often to death. The courts were just a formality because the result was most certainly execution,” he said.

Up the road from the court is an open grassland littered with trees. As one moves towards the rocky boulders in the near distance he/she is confronted by a huge concrete platform built into the ground. Below it is a trench spanning approximately 20 metres wide and three metres high.

Meandering through the trees on the western side, a smaller gully flowed out from this trench. A few metres in front of the platform are more fragments of rusted metal poles still stuck in the ground. Six of them in total, all strewn with bullet holes at their base.

“This is where the killing would take place. Those comrades deemed to be extremely dangerous were chained to poles and a firing squad of young trainees stood 10 metres away and executed them.

“Over in the trench was a crane like contraption where those who were captured were strung up by the neck using chains and hooks. This machine would hold six people at a time. It was raised off the ground above the height of the concrete platform.

“The training cadets would then shoot at the hanging comrades. They used their bodies as target practice firing at different parts of the body until their limbs had fallen of and the corpse was unrecognisable.

“Blood would flow out in a stream from the trench following the gully dug through the trees,” Cde Mazikana explained. This was only part of the horror that took place at the butcher. “In other instances after the court hearing some of the comrades were falsely told that they had been acquitted and were free to go. The men and women would then run off into the bush to get away from the camp as fast as possible.

“Hiding in the bushes where trainees who would then shoot at the fleeing comrades. This was also part of their target practice as they were training to hit a moving target. Many of the comrades who were killed in this way were just left in the bush to rot,” he said.

Scattered in the bushes are shell casings from the bullets that were used to murder the guerrillas and collaborators. The worst part is that even if one was detached from the liberation struggle he/she could still be victim of the butcher.

“I remember in one incident a woman told us that her brother just happened to be passing by the camp on his way somewhere. The machine that was used to hang those to be killed was short of one person and so it would not go up. “The white soldiers grabbed the man and hung him to the machine to make the sixth person and he was executed with the rest,” shared Cde Mazikana.

Under the concrete platform was a space where some of the younger cadets and other Rhodesian soldiers would stand to protect themselves from the flying bullets. On the wall were written names of the young men who were trained to kill. These names have since been erased after the wall was re-plastered.

“The men who stood under the platform would clean, remove whatever remained of the bodies and pour water in the ridge to flush the blood out via the gully. The bodies were then thrown into plastic and dumped in mass graves.

“The whites would throw acid into the plastic as a means of destroying the body further. About 25 bodies would fit into these mass graves and there were many of them around the camp,” the war veteran said.

Today many of the mass graves have been located and dug up. In 2013 the Fallen Heroes Trust of Zimbabwe (FHTZ) undertook an exercise to rebury many of the comrades who died at the butcher.

One of the individuals who worked on that project, Cde Gilbert Paya said it was important that those who were killed during the war and in such a brutal way were treated with respect and given a decent and respectful burial.

“The Magamba area was erroneously allocated as residential land and so some people have been living here. In 2013, some of the bodies of the comrades killed at the butcher were discovered.

“As the FHTZ we took it upon ourselves to rebury the bodies that we managed to exhume. The whole process took nine months to complete and we were able to finally bury them properly in November 2013. In total we managed to find 140 bodies many of them in mass graves.

“There are still many more comrades around this area that we have not yet exhumed. Some are even in the foundations of these houses that were built here. “In one place we dug up 15 bodies. Some of whom were covered in plastic that had been doused with acid. However, we were shocked to find the body still intact” he said.

The 140 bodies were buried to the left of where the Provincial and District Heroes were buried. According to Cde Paya the bodies were buried according to rank of the comrades from the commanders at the top to the collaborators at the bottom.

“When the bodies were exhumed we had some of our spirit mediums with us. The individual would then tell us whether he was a commander or just an officer and we would know where to bury him. In some instances, the comrade would tell us that he would want to be buried with his people and we would facilitate for him to be transported to his home,” Cde Paya explained.

What took place at the butcher is a harrowing part of our liberation history. It shows the callous disregard that the white Rhodesians had for black Zimbabweans lives. Those who lost their lives at this wretched place were part of the many heroes who made a heroic effort to liberate Zimbabwe from colonial rule.