The 1981 Entumbane uprising, also known as the Battle of Bulawayo or Entumbane II, occurred between 8 and 12 February 1981 in and around Bulawayo, Zimbabwe amid political tensions in the newly independent state. Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) guerrillas, mainly in the city's western suburb of Entumbane, rebelled, creating a situation that threatened to develop into a fresh civil war, barely a year after the end of the Bush War. The Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR) and other white-commanded elements of the former Rhodesian Security Forces, fighting for the Zimbabwean government as part of the new Zimbabwe National Army, put down the uprising. Groups of Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) fighters attacked both ZIPRA and the government forces during the revolt, which followed a smaller outbreak of fighting between guerrillas in November 1980.
The uprising began in earnest around 20:00 local time (CAT) on 11 February when fighting broke out between the two guerrilla factions in Entumbane, each of which also attacked the local RAR headquarters. When ZIPRA armoured personnel carriers moved on Bulawayo from Essexvale, to the south-east, four armoured cars from the former Rhodesian Armoured Corps, supported by A Company, 1RAR, engaged and defeated them. Meanwhile, C and D Companies, 1RAR were pocketed by numerically superior groups of ZIPRA fighters. By the evening of 12 February, the uprising was over; C and D Companies were relieved, ZIPRA ceased their attacks and their armoured battle group at Essexvale surrendered to the National Army.
The official count of those killed during the uprising was 260 people; historians place the number of dead higher. The Zimbabwe National Army suffered no fatal casualties. Binda calls the battle the RAR's greatest victory, writing that the troops were greatly outnumbered, but won through superior professionalism and discipline. Several analysts comment on the irony that Mugabe and ZANU–PF were saved from a major rebellion by white-led ex-Rhodesian troops. The battle was the RAR's last; its personnel were reassigned to other units when it was disbanded later in 1981. The rebellion's defeat, meanwhile, prompted mass desertions by ZIPRA guerrillas fearing retribution from the Mugabe administration. Indeed, the uprising partially fuelled Mugabe's bloody Gukurahundi campaign against Matabeleland later in the 1980s.
Background
Chimurenga/Umvukela
Following the Unilateral Declaration of Independence by the mostly white minority government of Rhodesia (or Southern Rhodesia) from the United Kingdom in 1965, the southern African country entered a period of international isolation as an unrecognised state under Ian Smith. Black nationalist movements, backed by communist powers and themselves variously Marxist–Leninist, launched military campaigns to overthrow Rhodesia's Government and bring majority rule to the country; the main nationalist groups were the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), which was Chinese-backed, mostly Shona and influenced by Maoism, and the rival Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), which was largely Ndebele, more orthodoxly Marxist–Leninist and supported by the Warsaw Pact and associated nations, prominently Cuba. Each nationalist group fielded a guerrilla army—ZANU's was called the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), while ZAPU's was the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). ZAPU was led by Joshua Nkomo, a trade unionist from Bulawayo in Matabeleland, while ZANU was headed from 1975 by a former teacher from Mashonaland, Robert Mugabe after the assassination of H Chitepo.
The black nationalist campaigns, referred to by the revolutionaries as the Second Umvukela /Chimurenga (liberation war), began in earnest in December 1972. During the ensuing Bush War, ZANLA and ZIPRA fought the Rhodesian Security Forces, and also regularly clashed with each other, despite their parent organisations being superficially allied from 1976 as the Patriotic Front. The war ended in December 1979 with the Lancaster House Agreement in London, following which Britain took interim direct control of the country to oversee fresh elections during early 1980. These were won by ZANU, which added "Patriotic Front" to its name (thereby becoming "ZANU–PF"), and Mugabe became the first Prime Minister of Zimbabwe when the UK granted independence in April 1980. Nkomo was made Minister of Home Affairs in the new Government.
Post-independence tensions
With the transfer of political power, the Rhodesian Army, ZANLA and ZIPRA began to be merged to form the new Zimbabwe National Army. ZANLA and ZIPRA personnel were mixed into new battalions, guerrillas were picked out for officer training, and old Rhodesian units were variously disbanded or earmarked for reform. In some cases the latter meant only a change of symbolism and nomenclature; the Rhodesian Air Force, for example, remained almost all white as the Air Force of Zimbabwe. Every one of the approximately 34,000 guerrillas was promised a place in the new army. In the meantime they would wait in respective ZANLA and ZIPRA assembly camps around the country with pay and rations identical to those of black privates in the old Rhodesian forces.
Though the Chimurenga was over, tensions between ZANLA and ZIPRA cadres, officially referred to in the war's aftermath as "associated forces", endured, particularly in Matabeleland. These rifts were partially tribal-based, but largely political; ZIPRA fighters complained that their counterparts from ZANLA seemed to be favoured for promotions and supplies, while ZANLA suspected ZIPRA of plotting insurrection. ZANU–PF politicians began to call for a one-party state, saying that this would make Zimbabwe stronger. As the process of military integration dragged on, groups of fighters from both forces deserted and roamed the countryside, robbing stores and killing white farmers. Sources differ regarding how much of this was perpetrated by ZANLA personnel and how much by ZIPRA men; each side blamed the other. Mugabe accused ZIPRA elements of "refusing to recognise the sovereignty of the Government", but stopped short of attacking the ZAPU leadership. With the new army's ex-guerrilla battalions still far from ready, the Zimbabwean Government leaned heavily on former Rhodesian units under white command to maintain law and order during this period. Feeling he needed to secure ZANU–PF's position, Mugabe signed a secret deal with North Korea in October 1980 whereby the Asian country would provide instructors and equipment for an elite brigade that would handle political dissidents and report directly to the Prime Minister.
After the Minister of Finance Enos Nkala railed against Nkomo and ZAPU at a Bulawayo political rally in November 1980, saying they had "become the enemy of ZANU–PF" and should be challenged by "vigilante committees", ZANLA and ZIPRA veterans clashed near the city's western township of Entumbane for two days. Hundreds were killed or wounded before the Prime Minister sent ex-Rhodesian units to intervene. This incident deepened the feeling of distrust and unease that permeated the country and the National Army's integrated battalions. Concerned by ZAPU's apparent political marginalisation, ZIPRA commanders in Matabeleland built up their forces. Over 6,000 ZIPRA troops assembled at Gwaai River Mine, to the north-west of Bulawayo, with Soviet-made T-34 tanks, BTR-152 armoured personnel carriers (APCs) and anti-aircraft guns; another ZIPRA base at Essexvale, to the south-east, formed an armoured battle group including 10 T-34s. Tensions escalated further when Mugabe removed Nkomo from Home Affairs on 10 January 1981 and made him a minister without portfolio instead, in what many in Zimbabwe saw as a demotion. According to Brigadier Mike Shute, then head of the Zimbabwe National Army's 1 Brigade, groups of ZANLA and ZIPRA guerrillas, theoretically under his command, were soon "all over the place and having continual clashes and minor battles with each other". Many became convinced that a second civil war was imminent.
Prelude
The Zimbabwe National Army's only regular infantry unit in the Bulawayo area during the first months of 1981 was the 1st Battalion of the Rhodesian African Rifles (RAR), a regiment of mostly white-officered black troops led by Lieutenant-Colonel Mick McKenna and based at Methuen Barracks on the outskirts of Bulawayo. This had been officially redesignated the 11th Infantry Battalion of the new National Army, but few reforms had taken place so far and in practice the regiment remained almost entirely as before, right down to the old Rhodesian uniforms and insignia. At the end of January 1981, McKenna had about 500 men (including officers), and a troop of four Eland 90 armoured cars, formerly of the Rhodesian Armoured Corps, under Sergeant Stephen "Skippy" Devine, an Australian veteran of the Rhodesian Light Infantry.
Amid the rising tensions in Zimbabwe, Shute and McKenna identified Entumbane, the township on the western outskirts of Bulawayo where the November 1980 clashes had started, as a likely flashpoint. There ZANLA and ZIPRA had camps directly next to each other, each with about 1,500 guerrillas. In late January 1981, McKenna set up an operational headquarters in a beer hall overlooking the two guerrilla camps; this building, surrounded by six-foot walls, was dubbed "the Alamo" at the suggestion of Lieutenant F W "Chomps" Fleetwood, an American officer in A Company, 1RAR. Worried that a new Entumbane clash would prompt the ZIPRA forces at Gwaai River Mine and Essexvale to join the fray, McKenna set up a string of observation posts on each of the roads leading towards Bulawayo.
On 8 February, ZANLA cadres at Connemara Barracks in Gwelo surprised their ZIPRA counterparts, killed over 60 of them and forced the rest to flee into the bush. When the ZIPRA portion of the 13th Infantry Battalion, based at Glenville Camp near Entumbane, learned of this later in the day, it waited until its instructors from the British Army left in the evening, then attacked its ZANLA comrades, killing 12 of them and scattering the rest. Charged with restoring order, McKenna sent Devine's armoured cars and D Company, 1RAR, commanded by the American Lieutenant Dave Hill, to Glenville. Arriving late in the evening, the Elands drove into the camp and flattened the ZIPRA tents, killing many of the occupants and clearing the way for Hill's troops. Taken totally by surprise, the ZIPRA troops put up little resistance; 40 were killed and many more captured, including two officers, Captains Mpofu and Dlamini. On the morning of 9 February, the British instructors were bewildered to find the ZANLA half of their unit gone, and the remaining ZIPRA men squatting in rows in 1RAR captivity. "What happened?" asked a British sergeant. "I am afraid that while you were away, your battalion fell apart," replied McKenna.
ZIPRA personnel in Bulawayo used civilian vehicles to smuggle weapons and equipment, including mortars, into their Entumbane camp over the next few days. C Company, 1RAR, comprising 96 men under Major Lionel Dyck (including a detachment from Support Company) and eight armoured vehicles, noticed this while they were garrisoning the Alamo on 11 February. The major reported to Brigade headquarters that the number of ZIPRA troops at Entumbane appeared to have swelled considerably, and that the chain link fence surrounding the camp had been taken down. Superiors ordered him not to intervene. Anticipating an imminent attack, Dyck used a silenced rifle to shoot out the floodlights surrounding the Alamo, lined up his vehicles against the surrounding walls so his men could stand on them while defending, and ranged mortars on a variety of targets in the ZIPRA complex.
Uprising