News is awaited of the result of the trial of Maurice Nyagumbo, a leading member of the ZANU Executive who was released last December after 15 years of almost continuous detention and imprisonment to take part in the Lusaka talks. Early in April 1975, he was arrested again in Rusape, eastern Rhodesia, and charged under Section 23A(1) of the Law and Order (Maintenance) Act with recruiting a number of young people for "terrorist" training in Mozambique.
The recruiting "ring" which the regime's security forces later claimed to have smashed included, among others, John Mutasa and Moven Mahachi, two men of outstanding personality and well known in international circles. With Nyagumbo, they were charged in Umtali Magistrate's Court soon after their arrest with recruiting freedom-fighters - a charge which, since November 1974, has carried the mandatory death penalty. John Mutasa, (elder brother of Didymus Mutasa, the author of Rhodesian Black Behind Bars), was for 10 years Farm Manager at the non-racial co-operative development scheme at St. Faith's Mission, Rusape, and is now an honorary director of the Nyafaru Development Company. Nyafaru, a collective farm in Inyanga District, has been closely associated with the struggles of the adjoining Tangwena people to regain their rightful lands and homes. Moven Mahachi, a former vice-chairman of the Cold Comfort Farm Society, has been Managing Director of Nyafaru since 1971.
According to evidence submitted to the Salisbury High Court when Moven Mahachi finally came to trial in mid-September this year, it was Nyafaru's strategic location only 10 miles from Rhodesia's eastern border with Mozambique that caused him to become involved in the ongoing exodus of young people from the country. The prosecution claimed that Mahachi had been approached by John Mutasa to assist in ferrying groups across the border. From the end of March, a total of 48 African youths arrived at Nyafaru and stayed at a camp near the farm boundary. From there following negotiations between their Zimbabwean sponsors and the local FRELIMO command, they were able to cross over into Mozambique.
On 16 September, Moven Mahachi was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment, 6 years being conditionally suspended, by the Salisbury High Court. He was saved from the death penalty on the grounds that although he had undoubtedly assisted, he had not himself instigated the process of recruitment. Mahachi, the defence argued had also not been a member of any political party or organisation.
The Court's verdict on Mahachi and also that on John Mutasa, who on 13 October was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment, 8 conditionally suspended, clouds the prospects for Maurice Nyagumbo, a member of an avowedly political organisation, who, in his brief spells out of prison, has been actively involved in the liberation struggle.
