YithiLabais not just a magazine. It is a bold reclamation of the proud contributions and sacrifices of members of the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZPRA), the armed wing of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) in the liberation of Zimbabwe. The name comes from the iconic liberation song which for some became an anthem of the exploits and the identity of the guerilla movement.
The magazine is also an acknowledgement and a challenge of the systematic suppression of the role of ZPRA in the struggle that led to independence in 1980. It is also an ambitiousattempt to reclaim the dignity that state mistreatment, violence and other forms of humiliation undermined right from independence. Zimbabwe’s official narratives are characterised by under-documentation, suppression and even deliberate distortion of ZPRA’s contribution.
To counter this,YithiLabaweaves through ZPRA’s military strategies, its sacrifices, internal debates and dynamics and even conflicts and crises. It also explores the organisation’s cultural life, besides stories of war and death. Inevitably, the persecution that its members experienced upon independence, as they were literally labelled enemies of the new state is a major concern for the magazine.
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YithiLaba!is therefore a plunge into contested terrain. It confronts the silences that are loud in Zimbabwe’s history and challenges the carefully choreographed, pro-establishmentlegacies of the liberation struggle. It also provides a direct platform to former ZIPRA combatants to narrate their own stories.
YithiLabais also a living archive and memorial. It gathers ZPRA’s scattered and destroyed memories and curates them as part of much other efforts by CITE to mainstream the organisation’s history. The magazine recognises that the story of ZPRA is not a single, linear account but a mosaicof triumphs and defeats, unity and betrayal, crises, disappointments, and internal conflicts.
Ultimately however, it is a story of human courage and sacrifice, of songs and slogans of hope and victory, and of defiance under some of the most harrowing experiences imaginable. Although the editorial team has encountered many teething problems in the maiden year, many articles have been published which collectively underline the magazine’s archival mission. Some, such as“ZAPU and the Liberation of Zimbabwe: Setting the Record Straight”,situate ZPRA firmly within the broader nationalist struggle, challenging simplified binaries and reaffirming ZAPU’s foundational role in mobilising mass resistance against colonial rule.
These pieces remind readers that the liberation struggle was never monolithic; it was shaped by ideological debates, regional dynamics and shifting international alliances.It was also shaped by many daunting challenges between the main protagonists, ZPRA and ZANLA, whose rivalry sometimes threatened to torpedo the whole liberation project. The magazine’s team of researchers also continuously digs primary documents and speecheswhich articulated the mission and vision of ZPRA, many of which were destroyed when the ZANU government raided ZAPU archives in 1982. It is through such efforts that we managed to carry the re-publication and analysis of ‘The Turning Point Document by ZAPU’, which was personally launched Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo in Lusaka in 1979.
These texts allow ZAPU and ZPRA to speak in their own voice, restoring agency to historical actors too often spoken about in distorted narratives that deny their contributions and sacrifices. One ofYithiLaba’s most significant interventions lies in its detailed exploration of ZPRA’s military strategy. Mainstream accounts, designed to ridicule water down ZPRA’s role, have frequently reduced it to a conventional army which had been organised to wait for a decisive confrontation with the Rhodesians, which is a distortion of the Operation Zero Hour.
Such accounts deliberately undermine the sophistication and adaptability of ZPRA’s war machinery. More professional research reveals that ZPRA was a formidable, complex guerilla movement whose operations were backed up by clandestine intelligence networks and sophisticated relations with communities and community members which were underpinned by a level of respect for civilian communities scoffed at by rival groups.
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