Jack Zimba

  JACK ZIMBA   O N OCTOBER 28, 1997, when a group of soldiers led by an army captain, Steven Lungu, who came to be known by his alias Captain Solo, attempted to overthrow the government of President Frederick Chiluba, a small group of Special Forces soldiers was summoned. Within a few hours, the coup was over, the renegade soldiers arrested, and the nation saved. Whether it is protecting the country from an internal or external threat, the Special Forces have been used as the last line of defence, and to carry out operations where conventional troops cannot be deployed or have failed, in most cases, beyond enemy line. Most recently, the Special Forces were called to action on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Congolese government troops had hoisted their country’s flag on Zambian territory. No-one from the Special Forces is willing to talk about the operation, code-named Operation Kulula, which ended the incursion, although it was widely repo...

  Col. Peter Malembeka at a shooting range at Mushili Barracks in Ndola. Picture courtesy WOII Ingwe Kipande (COMBAT CAMERA)   JACK ZIMBA HE IS standing tall and imposing – pistol in hand, and an Uzi Pro submachine gun slung across his shoulder - in a shooting range littered with countless cartridges emptied from different types of military firearms. Colonel Peter Malembeka is the man in charge of the Special Forces unit, popularly known as commandos, at Mushili Barracks in Ndola. And today, the men in maroon berets are using the Israeli-made Uzi and Jericho 941 pistols to fire at their targets, simulating urban warfare. Some men are taking turns on two sniper weapons on legs. One is the Russian Dragunov sniper rifle capable of taking out a target up to 1.5km away, while the other is an Israeli-made Galil sniper rifle. Col. Malembeka is not a man who leads from behind, pushing his troops. Rather, he likes barking orders from the front. When I ask him how he trains his men to...