17. The Crocodile Gang's incursion into Southern Rhodesia was not as isolated in time from other proto-guerrrilla activities as the standard histories of the guerrilla war suggest. The first ZAPU operation was rather similar in some ways to the Crocodile incursion. A group was sent in from Zambia to travel right through the country to the extreme southwest border with Botswana in order to “arrest” the white magistrate who had banned the NDP public meeting in Bulawayo in June 1960, which had been followed by riots and African deaths from shooting. The magistrate and his wife beat off their attacks with gunfire; the members of the group fled and were subsequently arrested. Maurice Nyagumbo writes that “during November 1964 [ZAPU] shipped in a lot of trained boys with weapons,” but due to “lack of orientation the boys and a lot of those weapons proved absolutely useless.” He gives examples of ZAPU groups arriving in Rusape and in Salisbury, threatening and robbing people, being denounced and being arrested. But ZAPU “was not alone in this misfortune. Our first batch of trained boys arrived in March of 1965. Unfortunately, one among them was a police spy who immediately reported their presence to the enemy. As a result, these boys were arrested before they were able to do anything.” Nyagumbo, With the People, 189-90. Nyagumbo's account of the famous Sinoia battle of 28 April 1966 shows it as a continuum with this series of misconceived enterprises: “In April 1966 another batch of seven boys arrived. Although these boys resisted the temptation of contacting anybody in the country, they were all out of cash and were without food and clothes. Faced with this plight, they decided to contact someone in Sinoia. Most unfortunately, this contact revealed their presence to the enemy. Soon, hundreds of police with dogs and with the aid of planes searched the whole area….The seven boys were located [and] a pitched battle was fought for nearly five hours.”
