Njiba Impisi (Phansi Uhlanga)

Njiba Impisi
General Njiba Impisi in 2023.
2nd Supreme Leader of Phansi Uhlanga
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 January 1986
Preceded by	Yenge Seko
1st Commissioner of the National Defense Commission
Incumbent
Assumed office 1 January 1986
Preceded by	position established
3rd Supreme Commander of the Revolutionary People's Front
In office 1 January 1991 – 31 December 2010
Preceded by	Yenge Seko
Succeeded by	Slindile Elithu
Personal details
Born	Njiba Letsie 17 December 1925 eNumthondo, Kingdom of Iqozi
Nationality	Phansi Uhlangan
Political party	Communist Party of Phansi Uhlanga
Spouse	Kabedi Lumba
Children	N!xau Coexǂae Impisi, Shambuyi Impisi, Iqaqa Impisi, Kanye Impisi, Zama Mmemli, Vemvane Wenzile, Bonginkosi Gania, Donya Impisi
Education	Injabulone Military Academy
Alma mater	Injabulone Officers Training School
Military service
Allegiance	Phansi Uhlanga
Branch/service	Revolutionary People's Front Red Guards
Years of service	1962–current
Rank	Supreme Commander

Njiba Munta ya Bitumba Makelele za Nzasi Mikonji wa Banyoka Impisi (born Njiba Letsie; 16 February 1925) is a Phansi Uhlangan politician, military officer, and pan-komontuist who has been Supreme Commander of Phansi Uhlanga since 1986. He is the third overall leader of the country since the military coup of that year. Upon his ascension to power, the nation became a military dictatorship under the National Defense Commission junta which remains to this day. His rule has been characterized by the almost total removal of the deposed Premier Yenge Seko’s political and economic reforms, widespread human rights abuses and a total centralization of political, economic and civil life around the Communist Party and himself. International organizations such as the Karel Moravec Institute for Cultural Freedom have decried his military regime as a “cult of personality” in which he is elevated to a near divine status. Impisi himself as well as the Uhlangan government however have always maintained such charges as spurious and without basis.

Impisi and the NDC came to power during a period of immense political and economic strife in Phansi Uhlanga. It began first with the Cultural Revolution in 1971, suspension of aid from the Rubric states in 1974 and the suspension of favorable trade terms by Elatia by 1981 owing to the latter’s own economic collapse. This led to the long suppressed liberal reformist faction within the Party achieving dominance, culminating in Yenge Seko being elected to the Premiership by the SPI Central Committee. His resulting economic and political reforms intended to provide a “shock therapy” to the Uhlangan economy that would quickly and radically transition the nation to a syndicalist market model based on Tyresia and Talahara, while also democratizing and decentralizing governance. It instead however caused twin crises of economic depression and ethnonationalistic separatism that by 1985 saw the resurgence of a hardliner faction crystalized around Impisi who officially took power the following year. The early years of NDC rule were characterized by a program of harsh austerity and rollbacks on civil rights, including military crackdowns on public protests and the forced shuttering of independent political groups.

Early life

Details on Njiba Impisi’s early life are scarce owing not only to the secrecy of the Uhlangan regime but also to the scarcity of records in Iqozi during that time. It is generally agreed by historians that he was born in eNumthondo, Kingdom of Iqozi on 16 February, 1925 of five siblings. His family were of mixed Bakhoeli and Iqozi ancestry, the former of which through his paternal line traced itself to a Bakhoeli mercenary in the service of Inkosi Iqo, who was the founder of Iqozi. The Letsie clan of which he was a part were by the time of his birth the impoverished noble class of a small cattle ranching village. His father Ata Letsie was motse (village head), which by official accounts afforded their family a certain lifestyle and level of education not afforded to most Iqozi. This allowed a young Impisi to attend a private academy in Injabulone, where he would be exposed to leftist political theory at an early age. At this time he was a part of the household of Iqaqa Bhengu, former governor of Kwenyoka-Natal, whose clan the Letsies loosely owed fealty.

A young Impisi was raised partially in royal military camps and partially within the aristocratic compound of the Bhengus; in the latter he is believed to have been privately tutored during this period in Iqozi, Kutuba, Kikonji, and Nahuatl, the lingua franca of neighboring Cuhonhico. According to his official biography, a young Njiba was heavily involved in politics by that point, taking part in study groups of republican literature and Wernerist philosophy. Very little information not published by the Uhlangan government is available for this period of his life, however by most accounts he was well-versed in athletics, philosophy, and poetry; particularly in wrestling, linear algebra and avante-garde poetry. Later on he would transfer to a military academy in Diqasa, a popular move among educated youth at the time. Young intellectuals viewed the military as an institution capable of breaking through Iqozi’s ossified and corrupt bureaucracy; the only national body that crossed ethnic and clannish lines and thus singularly positioned to modernize the country. Acceptance into the academy was accompanied by a scholarship; Njiba despite this however could not afford the tuition and had to rely heavily on the influence of the Bhengus as his patrons. He took the exam and passed, entering the academy in 1942 at the age of 17.

At the academy the range of instruction went beyond standard military subjects to include the social sciences, which saw cadets taught by civilian professors in fields such as geography and history. Many of his teachers, influenced by leftist Tyresian and Talaharan thought, invited students such as him to join them in informal discussions outside the classroom on colonialism, imperialism, republicanism, socialism and syndicalism, and so on. Njiba also pursued his passion for poetry and music, with some of his poems from the period forming the earliest portions of published works. He was by all accounts a decent jazz guitarist and singer, with an “incongruously high tenor voice and a shout-singing singing style” which had become common in blues bands at the time. He had a reputation for rowdiness and frequently brawled with other cadets over his ancestry, which the more urbane members of Iqozi society considered downright provincial. He was nearly expelled from the academy at the time owing to his taking part in a demonstration calling for the abolition of the monarchy, but was saved by the intervention of his patron. He would also begin dating Gagasi Bhengu during this period, who would go on to be his first wife.

Military career

He would be commissioned as a sub-lieutenant in 1944 and assigned to a supply unit in the province of Impfondo, which bordered Cuhonhico. There his understanding of the local languages and knack for the granular details of administration made him popular with the personnel of his unit. He blended the ethnic composition of sub-units together to combat the clannish tendency toward self-segregation of the army at the time. This move however was hamstrung by the tendency of some of his commanders, tightly bound as they were to the iziNduna’s patronage system, who generally saw such efforts as threatening their power bases. According to official records he commanded a small unit of supply trucks that he would later use to provide disaster relief to flood-stricken villages in the area, an effort which made him popular with the citizenry of Impfondo. During this time he also began studying the ideological works of the Rubric states as well as the writings of George Werner and Iqozi left-nationalists. This was when he first began using the sobriquet “Impisi”, meaning a kind of mythological shapeshifter, likely in an effort to de-emphasize his Bakhoeli heritage.

At the onset of the First Uhlangan Civil War in 1948, then called the Impfondo Crisis, his unit was assigned the task of helping deliver munitions and supplies to rebels along the Cuhonhicah border. By 1950 however he had run afoul of his commanding officers and was assigned to an artillery unit in occupied eastern Impfondo under the guise of helping to replenish losses there. There he distinguished himself on four separate occasions, including stopping the overrun of Iqozi troops at the 1951 Battle of Kwenobuthi. There his unit was to provide cover for retreating elements of the 9th King’s Infantry Division as they moved to secure a defensive line at the Inimpasi river. The division however came under unusually strong and unexpected Cuhonhicah counterattack; during the early stages of the battle he was wounded in both legs by shrapnel but successfully concentrated enough mortar fire to halt the first enemy advance. With his commander killed, he and his subordinate mortar company held a desperate defensive line while much of the division’s flank collapsed and its headquarters was wiped out by enemy fire. Having been forced to abandon much of their heavier weapons, he covered the retreat of his unit into the Nyeleti forest personally from atop a burning artillery tractor; for over an hour he and a squad of men used light mortars and machine gun fire to prevent a significant Iqozi retreat from turning into a devastating rout.

His squad were among the very last to retreat, doing so only when they had completely run out of ammunition. For his bravery during the battle Njiba was awarded the Royal Crescent, among the army’s most prestigious medals, and made the rank of captain. Later that year he would be captured by Cuhonhicah forces at the Battle of Ingquzaba and held for nearly a year at the fortress of Cuitlatlan. According to the testimonies of other inmates, Impisi composed poetry, played the ugubhu, and engaged frequently in political discussions. He and a group of others soon escaped, with Impisi alone being recaptured. Official Uhlangan records claim that he acted as bait to guarantee the freedom of his compatriots but no independent documentation of the event exists. Despite extensive torture he would again escape in early 1952, owing to the sympathies of camp guards. He was again awarded with the Silver Star of Meritorious Service upon his return to the front lines and put in command of a new unit. However, peace between the two countries would be formally declared before he could again be deployed.

During the Second Uhlangan Civil War, also called the Iqozi Revolution, centralized command over the royal military deteriorated and individual unit commanders oftentimes became local warlords. As a close ally of the Bhengus, Impisi and his unit were relocated first back to Injabulone in 1953 where they formed an elite unit within the training school there, and then to the town of Ndovebwe about fifty kilometers outside of the capital in 1955. By this point Impisi had been promoted to the rank of general and had built a sizable following around himself, making him a moderately prominent left-nationalist warlord. Initially he was part of a larger coalition under his father-in-law General Iqaqa Bhengu, however this coalition would disintegrate after Bhengu was assassinated by royalist forces in 1956. Bhengu was to be succeeded in command over much of the coalition by General Farai Mweya, who was perceived as more loyal to the king. In the wake of this, Impisi’s forces broke off from Mweya’s coalition and formed an uneasy alliance with nationalist-republican and socialist groups in the northern hilly part of the country. His headquarters was in his hometown of eNumthondo, where he successfully put down a Bakhoeli separatist rebellion that same year and repelled royalist forces in 1957.

During this period of the civil war, Impisi and his republican nationalist forces acted as something of a wild card in the shifting political situation. At times he maintained a United Front with the government forces when it looked like the country might be able to transition to a republic, however by 1959 the royalist government forces had abandoned any intention of such reforms and the United Front collapsed. Connections between Impisi and Kalala Ulwazi of the Uhlangan Communist Party had been made by that point owing to the efforts of Kakengo Masudi, Ulwazi’s nephew-in-law and a constituent guerrilla commander under Impisi. Masudi carried a secret letter from Impisi to Ulwazi stating that "We must unite forces and carry out a well-defined military and agrarian policy." This in turn helped Masudi set up a meeting between Impisi and Ulwazi in August of that year, which saw the combining of left-nationalist and Wernerist forces. This development led to a turning point in the war as the UCP was suddenly able to crush the Qosavebwe Free Territory in the northwest. The latter was an anarchist army which controlled the mostly VaMwedzi & ʘ͡ʰqonsā̂ populated grasslands, based around a headquarters in Yetimbalini.

By 1962 royalist unity had disintegrated in favor of competing warlord factions seeking the ascension of various nobles to the throne. King Nkonkoni kaQozi’s own faction was by then confined to a strip of land containing the capital of iNyangani to Mhashuvu. Prime Minister Kgabu Daza attempted to broker a peace between Impisi’s forces, who were still perceived as a more moderate and separate faction from the communists, and the rump central government. However, the requirement that this include a transition to republican government was called off at the last moment, causing Impisi under UCP order to sack the capital and dismantle the kaQozi faction by force. The king was tortured and executed on live television over a fourteen hour period; on the general’s orders reels were made and distributed to news organizations and theaters throughout the country. For much of the rest of the year Impisi led cleanup operations in the west to bring the rest of Iqozi under communist control.

During the civil war, Impisi was notorious for torturing and horrifically killing anyone he perceived as a political enemy or overly critical of his actions. During the crushing of the Free Territory, he had more than ninety of its most prominent leaders burned to death in a practice which came to be known as “necklacing”. In 1961 he oversaw the secretive mass killing of more than three thousand royalist PoWs in an event known as the Mudyiwevanhu Massacre. When prominent Mvembist guru Itai Tadzoka publicly posted a letter decrying this, Impisi is alleged to have personally orchestrated his and five of his followers’ executions by necklacing on the bank of the Mpepoto river on 13 September 1962. This latter move saw him recalled back to the capital and dressed down by the UCP Central Committee. Impisi’s implacable will, systematic cruelty, personal charisma, and martial success made him a figure of immense prestige; locals even credited him with supernatural abilities such as the power to hex his foes. However, this mixture of fear and popularity would lead to his coming into conflict with the UCP Central Committee who relegated him to a logistical and administrative role after the war.