By Freddy Mutoda
Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa is desperate to succeed President Robert Mugabe to an extent that he is rewriting the liberation struggle history casting himself as an integral party of the liberation war narrative and in the process lying about his heroic roles and, at the same time, denigrating the involvement of others like the late Father Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo.
Mnangagwa — is in some frantic attempts at portraying himself as an integral player in the liberation struggle, juxtaposing and elevating his role to that of Mugabe — has been trying not only to overinflate the role he played by appending it on Mugabe’s purported heroics but is also subtlety implying that the part he played went further than that of Mugabe.
Apart from being Mugabe’s bodyguard, confidante and errand boy, Mnangagwa is desperately trying to portray himself as an accomplished guerrilla fighter hence the lie that he was part of the Crocodile Gang.
What does not add up in Mnangagwa’s narrative is his claim that he has always been by Mugabe’s side for 52 years while, at the same time, claiming to have been at the front engaging in real armed combat when it is a fact that Mugabe was nowhere near the realm in which guns were fired.
How then was Mnangagwa part of the Crocodile Gang and at the same time being Mugabe’s aide when Mugabe never commanded any armed detachment at any point during the liberation struggle?
What is also interesting is Mnangagwa’s choice of news organisations to propagate his fables. He has chosen some British-based news organisations,
The New African Magazine to do his public relations by claiming that “he is well set to be the next President” and also propagate the lie that his nickname is because of his involvement with the Crocodile Group not from the alleged ruthless manner in which he is known for when dealing with black political opponents using coercive state apparatus.
The Reuters online article published on September 24, 2015, claims that Mnangagwa, “during a function at his farm in Kwekwe last year” said “his Crocodile nickname relates to his good timing when he was leader of a group of freedom fighters known as the Crocodile Gang which carried out acts of sabotage against the white minority government in the early 1960s”.
While it might be true that Mnangagwa got his moniker, Ngwena (Crocodile), for the brutal way he dealt with his political adversaries, it should be stated clearly that these enemies were never the white racial supremacists but black opponents in independent Zimbabwe.
People in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces associate the name Ngwena (Crocodile) with the brutal and savage attacks on hapless and unarmed civilians by the Central Intelligence Organisation operatives under Mnangagwa and the North Korean trained Zimbabwe National Army unit called Firth Brigade that the regime unilaterally unleashed on these citizens during a time in the history of our country that Mugabe now chooses to call “a moment of madness”.
This is the correct context in which the name Ngwena should be understood not some form of contrived association with a freedom fighters outfit called the Crocodile Gang which comprised Cdes Amos Kademaunga aka Sipho Ncube, William Ndangana, Victor Mlambo, Master, and Dhlamini.
I spoke to the only surviving member of the group, Kademaunga who was 16 years when he was arrested in 1964 in Mutare and escaped hanging because of his age while two other members of the group, Mlambo and Dhlamini were arrested in Chipinge in November 1964, sentenced to death and hanged in 1968.
The other two, Ndangana and Master managed to escape back to Zambia from Mutare where they had been transported to by Ndabaningi Sithole’s first wife who had given the gang of five a ride from Harare.
Kademaunga vividly reckons that never at any point was Mnangagwa a member of the group, let alone its leader and revealed that the leader of the group was Ndangana and there is no way Ndangana could be mistaken for Mnangagwa or vice versa.
Kademaunga believes that Mnangagwa’s spirited but dubious attempts to associate his nickname with the group only help to unmask him as a liar and political opportunist who wants to minister to his narcissism by deliberately distorting historical facts about the war of liberation.
The renowned surviving member of the Crocodile Gang reckons that Mnangagwa is now desperate to cleanse himself of his involvement in that dark part of our national history where innocent civilians in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces were butchered by the psychopathic Fifth Brigade soldiers.
But trying as he might, deliberately lying that he got his Ngwena nickname from his involvement with the Crocodile Gang puts him in the group of what Jonathan Moyo, in his November 2, 2006, Gukurahundi Bill, calls “a Gukurahundi denier” who should be charged and if convicted, “shall be liable to a fine not exceeding level fourteen or to imprisonment not exceeding 10 years or to both fine and such imprisonment”.
What is particularly nauseating is that Mnangagwa chooses to lie about being a member of the Crocodile Gang when we still have a surviving member of that gang with us today who has categorically denied; in several conversations we have had with him on the subject, that Mnangagwa was not part of that group.
Kademaunga is alive, of sound mind and can testify that Mnangagwa was never part of his group and that there was no other group called the Crocodile Gang other than the one with Kademaunga, Ndangana, Master, Mlambo and Dhlamini.
If the vice president can lie on such an issue where we still have surviving witnesses, what more of several other things that he claims to have done where we have no witnesses?
While Mnangagwa’s propaganda machine is desperately trying to attach some crocodile attributes of patience and accuracy in terms of timing attacks to his resume, it is clear from what has been happening in Zanu PF politics that the man they call Ngwena possesses none of the crocodile attributes that his propagandists want to associate him with.
While a crocodile is patient and attacks its prey at the opportune moment, it is clearly evident that Mnangagwa’s prey has been Mugabe’s seat and while he has been patient, he has not shown the courage to go for the throne and wrestle it from Mugabe while he is still alive in a typical crocodile style, but he has rather chosen to be a vulture, circling around the 91-year-old until he is incapacitated then go for his throne in a typical scavenger fashion of feeding on carcasses that other animals or God would have killed.
In Shona they say garwe haridye chakafa chega (a crocodile does not eat meat from an animal that succumbs to natural causes) but what Mnangagwa has shown concerning succeeding Mugabe is typical vulture tendencies.
This makes Mnangagwa more of a vulture (Gora) not a crocodile (Ngwena) and to then attempt to give him leadership of the Crocodile Gang is a serious indictment on the qualities that the real Crocodile Gang members, Kademaunga, Ndangana, Master, Mlambo and Dhlamini possessed. Daily News