Joshua Nkomo - Armed Struggle

Armed Struggle

Nkomo was detained at Gonakudzingwa Restriction Camp by Ian Smith's government in 1964, with fellow rebels Ndabaningi Sithole, Edgar Tekere, Maurice Nyagumbo and Robert Mugabe, until 1974, when they were released due to pressure from South African prime minister B.J. Vorster. Following Nkomo's release, he went to Zambia to continue opposing the Rhodesian government through the dual processes of armed resistance and negotiation. Unlike ZANU's armed wing - the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army -, ZAPU's armed wing - the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army - was dedicated to both guerrilla warfare and conventional warfare. At the time of independence ZIPRA had a modern military, stationed in Zambia and Angola, consisting of Soviet-made Mikoyan fighters, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, as well as well trained artillery units.

Joshua Nkomo was the target of two attempted assassinations. The first one, in Zambia, by the Selous Scouts, a pseudo-team. But the mission was finally aborted and attempted again, unsuccessfully, by the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS). In August 2011 it was reported by the BBC that Nkomo had been tipped off by the British government.

ZAPU forces successfully weakened the Rhodesian government during the war in terms of military tactic. The most widely reported and possibly the most effective of these attacks which had an impact in the Rhodesian's social life was the downing of two Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount civilian passenger planes with surface-to-air missiles. The first, on 3 September 1978, killed 38 out of 56 in the crash, with a further ten survivors (including children) shot dead by so-called ZIPRA cadres, sent to inspect the burned-out wreckage. Nkomo later dismissed these false allegations perpetrated by the Rhodesian media and expressed his regret at the downing of a civilian plane as reason had been that the Rhodesian government was at other times using civilian planes to transport their military personnel. The eight remaining survivors are said to have managed to elude the guerrillas and walked 20 km into Kariba from where the flight had taken off (it was heading for Salisbury, Rhodesia's capital, now renamed Harare). Some of the passengers had serious injuries and they were picked up by local police and debriefed by the Rhodesian army. The second shooting down, on 12 February 1979, killed all 59 on board. The real target of the second attack was General Peter Walls, head of the COMOPS (Commander, Combined Operations), in charge of the Special Forces, including the SAS and the Selous Scouts. Due to the large number of tourists returning to Salisbury a second flight had been dispatched. General Walls received a boarding card for the second flight, which departed Kariba 15 minutes after the doomed aircraft. No one has been brought to trial or charged with shooting down the aircraft due to amnesty laws passed by both Smith and Mugabe. In a television interview not long after the attack on the first aircraft, Nkomo joked about the incident while admitting ZAPU had indeed been responsible. In his memoirs, Story of My Life, published in 1985, Nkomo later said, "during that interview, the interviewee had asked about what we used to down the planes and i said stones jokingly in an attempt to avoid answering the question due to military intelligence which demanded secrecy regarding what type of weapons we had acquired from the Soviet Union.They remembered the laugh and not the regret for the shooting down of both aircrafts.