07 May 2014

There is a ward in Mapoka village called Botshabelo. The mere mention of Botshabelo, a seemingly straight-forward name, stirs up a whirlwind of emotions from the residents, particularly the older generation.

Though similar to other wards in many respects, there is one distinct feature that sets it apart from them and Batswana’s age long skill of preserving memorable events by naming places or events after them has always worked wonders.

Eighty-year-old Elijah Muzila might have forgotten some of the things he has witnessed in life, but he says what happened on May 16, 1976 will forever be etched in the octogenarian’s memory.

Muzila had prior to the fateful day that led to the ward being called Botshabelo spent the night in Vukwi, another village in the North East district. “I had started my day quite early as I had a long trip to the copper mining town of Selebi Phikwe to check on my child who was sick,” he says in an inbterview.

And as would be expected, a responsible husband could not embark on such a long journey without bidding his family in Mapoka goodbye. He had to make sure that all was well in his household before departure. His arrival in Mapoka was however met with some unusual news.

Airplanes were said to have been spotted hovering along the border line. Vehicles, seemingly on some patrol mission were also reported to have been seen moving one way or the other along the Botswana/Zimbabwe border.

Shocked by the strange occurrences, Muzila says he was simply lost for words.“My faculties seemed to momentarily fail me as I could not make head or tail of what I had just been told,” he remembers.

Before he could fully digest the report, he heard the sound of an airplane. Quickly scanning the direction from which the sound came, he saw its source; an airplane coasting rather too low for his liking.

To him, this bizarre incident was something totally out of this world. He watched perplexedly as the airplane landed, soldiers alighted, quickly looked around, boarded the plane and took off.

Muzila’s Selebi Phikwe expedition just could not be; not under the circumstances that prevailed. He had to guard his family with his own life.
The first thought that came to his mind was to dash to his uncle’s home to warn him about the impending danger. Within minutes he was at his uncle’s palce.

However, just as he wrapped up his brief mission, two airplanes flew past, forcing him to beat a hasty retreat back to his homestead. There definitely was no time for pleasantries. On his way back, five vehicles drove past and later came to an abrupt stop.

Muzila, who was on his bicycle veered into nearby ploughing fields which were bustling with ripe sorghum that seemed to be begging to be harvested. A prolific subsistence farmer himself, he could not stop even for a split second just to admire the bounty in these fields.

In one of the fields, he found an old woman picking bean pods. Without the usual exchange of pleasantries, he hastily informed the old woman of what he had witnessed.

Together they decided to run for dear life and whoever they met as they ran had no other way but to add on to the growing number of fleeing individuals. When he reached his home, Muzila had no idea what had swallowed his entire family during his brief absence.

Not wanting to entertain any thoughts of any gloom that may have befallen his family, he packed the family clothes, throwing any piece of clothing that he could lay his hands on onto a bed sheet stretched out on the floor of one of the mud huts.

It was only when trying to exit the hut that he noticed the folly of what he had done; the bundle of clothes was too huge to be forced out of the small door.
He had to quickly undo the ‘ball’ and lessen the number of items he had thrown in.

By the time he made his way out of the hut, the fleeing villagers he had amassed on his way from alerting his uncle was nowhere in sight. Dazed by it all, he realised that without doubt horror had struck. By this time the sound of airplanes had filled the atmosphere beyond the horizon, and as if sprouting out of the belly of the earth, army vehicles were all over the place.

Airplanes began dropping what he believed to be bombs, while the sound of gunfire from the vehicles seemed to be equally competing for his attention.

Before he could clearly make out the direction to which he was fleeing, a bullet missed him by mere inches, hitting and reducing to an earth mound a hut a few feet from him.

He ran on, but within seconds, a second bullet landed just in front of him, covering him in a huge cloud of dust as he slumped down, all hope of life drained out of him.

“Ka ingaralatsa o kare ke sule. Ha ke ntse ke sisibetse hoo, leeba la tswa koo la tla la nkotama mo phatleng. Le lone ke a bona le ne le tshogile. Ke ne nka seke ke tshikhinyege ka ke ne ke sa batle gore ba bone gore ga ke a swa,” he explained, elaborating how while he was sprawled face-up on the ground a terrified dove came and perched right on his forehead.

Not wanting the invaders to notice that he was not dead, he had to just lie there and enjoy his newfound friendship with the bird. In the meantime, the army men came marching towards him, enveloping within their small squadron ‘a prisoner of war’ in Freddy Gunda, Mapoka’s sole shop owner at the time.

Noticing from the corner of his eye that they were almost upon him, Muzila knew that only divine intervention would suffice. And as if controlled by some force outside of them, the soldiers quickly and in complete unison made a detour.

This gave Muzila an opportunity to gasp for breath, for the first time making him realise how air-starved he had been.   He thought the gush of air would force his lungs to collapse!

When the soldiers had disappeared out of sight, the old man says he mustered all the strength to get up and run for the safety that seemed ever so elusive.

While trying to run for cover, he met a man, and, mistaking the stranger for a soldier, he threw himself to the ground in total surrender. Little did he know that all the man wanted to ask was if he had any knowledge of what was happening in their village.

Upon realising that he was a colleague, together they ran for their lives. They then came upon some men at a borehole with whom they shared the calamity that had befallen people who resided near the border.

Wanting to alert others, they all then went to a home nearby where there was a wedding; and alas, there was not even one soul in sight. Pots of all kinds of delicacies remained untouched.

Even dogs seemed uninterested in the unmanned feast. Muzila says he grabbed the opportunity to follow them to check if his home had not been razed to the ground.

However, the Botswana soldiers would not let him go with them, threatening to whip him if he continued to trail them.That night became the creepiest of Muzila’s life, he reminisces adding that spending a night with no idea as to what had happened to his family was torture beyond words.

The day after the attacks by Ian Smith’s soldiers, some Mapoka residents retraced their steps, albeit timidly, to their homes to salvage whatever they could lay their hands on as they moved further inland.

Muzila’s wives and children also returned, and the whole family relocated alongside other families. For Hildah Habangana, the day in question was of utter terror. A teacher and treasurer at the village primary school at the time, Habangana recalls running back into her house to take the school money she had forgotten.

“Ke ne ke belege ngwana. Ha re ise re ye kgakala ka gakologelwa gore ke tlogetse madi a sekolo mme ka boheho ka a boela,” noted the 87-year-old grandma on how she quickly ran back to the house to take the money before fleeing with other villagers.

Her family spent that fateful night in hiding, not knowing what fate would further happen to them. Habangana and her family returned to their home the next day. Gladly, things were exactly the way they had left them. Nothing had been destroyed.

The family even proceeded to cook and enjoy the beans and other produce they had brought from their ploughing fields the previous day just before they were forced to flee their homes.

The old woman recalls with pride how on the day of the incursion, Rhodesian forces hastily retraced their steps back across the border after finding local soldiers ready and on high alert in Mapoka.

According to Muzila, the sight of fleeing soldiers sent chills down the spines of many, forcing the now defenseless villagers to abandon their village. Though some calm returned to the village after the terror of May 16, 1976, Muzila’s family, alongside many others could not go back to their homes.

All the villagers who had all along stayed peacefully a stone’s throw from the border relocated to where present-day Botshabelo ward is, a considerable distance from the border line.

And to capture the essence of the events of that day, they aptly named the place Botshabelo, a place to which they sought refuge from the hailstorm of gunfire of that single day at the height of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. Ends