Boygweda Petro standing on the bank of the Zambezi River near the spot where Maina Soko is believed to have died.

Mayisana Soko remembers the day Maina Soko left her father’s home the day she died. PICTURES: JACK ZIMBA

 
 

Maina Soko: Who she really was

The mystery woman revealed 55 years after she was shot dead

 

JACK ZIMBA

IN 1965, a woman called Maina Soko was shot dead by the Southern Rhodesian (now Zimbabwe) soldiers on the Zambezi River, in Chiawa area.

The story would have ended there, but over the years, Maina Soko’s story became a source of conspiracy theories, triggered largely by the fact that a military hospital was named after her, as well as a major road in Ndola, and two other roads in Livingstone and Chipata respectively.

Maina Soko Military Hospital in Lusaka was initially a maternity annex for the University Teaching Hospital, built in the 1960s.
Then in 1979, it was converted into a military hospital to take care of military casualties of the liberation wars in Southern Africa.

Currently, Government is spending US$140 million to expand the hospital.

Thus, Maina Soko – an ordinary citizen with no known military background – had her name immortalised in a top-class military facility, and she, herself, became somewhat an enigmatic figure.

To some, she was a spy involved in covert military operations during the liberation war of Southern Rhodesia, ferrying Zambian soldiers disguised as luggage in a canoe across the Zambezi River into enemy territory.

And some wilder conspiracy theorists even allege an affair between Maina Soko and former President Kenneth Kaunda.

About two years ago, my quest to discover who Maina Soko really was did not yield much, as there are no records about her anywhere, not even at the institution that she is named after. Information gleaned was scanty and mostly speculative.

It resulted in an open-ended article that was published in the Zambia Daily Mail on May 26, 2018.

Then three weeks ago, a new lead popped up. A tall aging man claiming to be Maina Soko’s grandson, and the only living eyewitness to her shooting, came forth. He also has an unforgettable name: Boygweda Petro.

I had come across his name in my earlier investigation two years ago.

It is said that Maina’s children died before the age of five. However, one girl she called Megi did grow into a woman and she had a child she called Boygweda.

But Boygweda did not grow in his mother’s house because he was ostracized by his father, who thought he was not his blood. And so he was raised by his grandmother Maina Soko from his infancy.

“Maina Soko took me in and started feeding me milk from a bottle until I grew and she enrolled me in school. It took time for me to know that she was not my real mother. I used to call her mother,” says Boygweda.

Megi died in 2018 before I could interview her about Maina Soko.

Boygweda himself had settled in Petauke district in Eastern Province, unaware that he held a vital piece to a historical puzzle, until recently when he travelled to Lusaka.

He gave an account of the events surrounding Maina Soko’s killing.

One day in 1965, when Boygweda was 17 years old, and in third grade, he was told to escort his grandmother to Chirundu.

Maina Soko was in the early stage of developing leprosy, and at Chikankata was a mission hospital specialised in treating the disease.

According to Boygweda, he, Maina Soko and her younger brother called William Kandoko, left their village called Ndolo on the fringes of the Zambezi River in Chiawa area early one morning (he does not recall what month it was, but he says the year was 1965).

The mission was to travel upriver on the Zambezi by canoe to Chirundu, since vehicles never reached the area at the time, and then travel by road to reach Chikankata.

By this time, Maina had already been widowed many years and was living with her younger brother, William.

She had been married to Enoch Manenga, who had later also married his older brother’s wife after he died.

There is no photograph of Maina Soko, but Boygweda describes her as slightly built and light complexioned.

It is also not clear how old Maina Soko was when she died, but the birth year on her younger brother, William’s national registration card shows that he was born in 1918.

Maina Soko could not have been very old.

“We carried some mealie-meal and blankets and started off,” recalls Boygweda.

He says about mid-day, he said to Maina Soko: “I’m hungry, can we stop over to eat?”

They got off the canoe and, gathering some sticks, made a fire and prepared a meal.

“But my grandmother did not eat,” says Boygweda.

After their brief stop, they proceeded on their journey, but would be violently interrupted.

In the evening, Boygweda heard a single gunshot from an island called Humaile, which is near the confluence of the Zambezi and Kafue River, across the border with Zimbabwe.

“Mai ine nalasiwa (I’ve been shot)! Boygweda heard his grandmother cry.

He says his uncle, William, immediately jumped out of the boat and swam across the river.

But Boygweda managed to paddle the boat to the edge of the river and tied it to some reeds then attended to his grandmother.

“I didn’t want to leave my grandmother inside the boat, so I lifted her out and laid her on the bank of the river,” he says.

A bullet had entered Maina Soko’s body through her back and she could not stand.

With a little breath remaining in her, Maina Soko told her grandson to run for his life.

“I ran and after a short distance I looked behind to see if my grandmother was following me, she beckoned me with her hand to move on,” says Boygweda.

Frightened, the boy took flight into the thick bush along the river, and decided to follow the only sign of human presence – a cluster of lights in a distance, for night had now fallen.

Soon, he burst into a police station and reported the shooting.

Boygweda remembers one police officer who attended to the case. His name was Kilyot Kamba.

Shortly at the police station, Boygweda was joined by his uncle, William.

The boy then led police to the spot where he had left his grandmother.
But reaching the place, they found no-one, and the canoe had drifted back into the river.
Under torchlight, they searched for Maina Soko.

After a brief search, they discovered her body lying on the sandy river bank, almost completely buried by the sand washed up by the Zambezi.

They washed her body, put it in a boat, and, that same night, transported it to UTH in Lusaka by vehicle.

Maina Soko is buried at Chingwere cemetery.

Last week, Boygweda travelled back to Chiawa to reconnect with his past.

Now aged 72, it was the first time he was returning to Chiawa since 1966.

Ndolo village, where he lived with his grandmother no longer exists, but Boygweda was able to find some of his relatives.

One of them is Mayisana Soko, who is Boygweda’s aunt.

She was a young girl back in 1965, living in the same homestead with Maina Soko.

But she recalls her father (Willian), Boygweda and Maina Soko leaving for Chirundu on the fateful day.
Her account of events corroborates Boygweda’s narrative.

But Mayisana did not know that her aunt’s name had been immortalised into a military hospital.

She says she only discovered that there existed a hospital named after her aunt last year.

“When I saw it, I dropped my bags and wept. I was overcome with grief,” she says.

For filmmaker Abdon Yezi, whom I worked with on the story, the latest information presents a major breakthrough in discovering who Maina Soko really was, but it still falls short in completely debunking the conspiracy theories surrounding her life and death.

“Sometimes we still have one aspect or another that emerges, especially when you put a story of this nature in the public domain,” he says. “For instance, we still need to explore who initiated and influenced the decision that Maina Soko be immortalised, including the naming of a strategic instalment – a military hospital. Was it done on recommendation from the security forces or otherwise? Was it through Cabinet at that time? I’m sure there still exists the older generation who would guide us around that.”

He adds: “What I’m particularly impressed with though is that we have taken this story to a level where we now know exactly what happened on the material day, who was there, and the actual incident scene. This means that for the wider citizenry, the issue of who Maina Soko was has also been addressed.”

Mr Yezi is now working on a documentary about Maina Soko. 

“This being yet another of Zambia’s untold stories of the liberation struggle that I have pursued, including the Kavalamanja series, it is humbling that the bits and pieces associated with the Maina Soko story have come together,” he says. 

The filmmaker wants the story of Maina Soko to be included in the school curriculum.

“Each time a historical production of this nature comes up, people ask if it is possible to pursue the Ministry of General Education to incorporate this rich history in the school curriculum. If not, what could be done to preserve the story for generations to come? This is a matter that we need to pursue further on this and many other stories that define us as a people and nation,” he says.

Mr Yezi also wants to lobby for a permanent memorial to honour Maina Soko in her home area, Chiawa.

“A public infrastructure, say a school or mini-hospital could be constructed in her honour even around her village or otherwise. It is time people like Maina Soko were celebrated differently,” he says.

Five decades later, Boygweda still has unanswered questions about his grandmother’s killing.

“I don’t know why they fired on us,” he says.

But in 1965, Southern Rhodesia had flared up into civil war, pitting the colonial government of Ian Smith against the majority indigenous people fighting for independence. That war, which lasted until 1979, would soon spill into Zambia, which suffered many casualties through bombings.

It appears Maina Soko was the first victim of the spill-over war. Could that then explain the significance attached to her? Maybe.