The son of the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo, Sibangilizwe, has accused President Robert Mugabe’s security forces of attempting to kill his father and brother at the height of the Gukurahundi atrocities.
Sibangilizwe made the revelations at the inaugural Makhathini Guduza Unsung Hero Lecture Series in Bulawayo yesterday.
Guduza was Nkomo’s bodyguard during the post-independence disturbances in Matabeleland and Midlands where the army’s 5th Brigade was accused of killing more than 20 000 civilians.
The former Zapu central committee member died in exile in South Africa.
Sibangilizwe said the Nkomo family would be forever grateful for the role Guduza played in whisking the Zapu leader and his son the late Thuthani into exile when the army was hunting for them.
“I have never seen such loyalty in my entire life,” he said. “He was a friend and an advisor to my parents.
“He stayed with my father throughout the hardships of Gukurahundi. Even when my father escaped death, he was smuggled out of the country by him. “He first saved a member of my family when he smuggled my brother Thuthani out of the country.
“It was at a time when my brother was being hunted and there were plans to move him from his camp in Bhalagwe and be conscripted into the 5th Brigade.
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“Guduza took him to Tsholotsho before he smuggled him out of the country.”
Sibangilizwe claimed government was after Nkomo’s life and Guduza, as his close adviser, played a role in spiriting him out of the country to Botswana and finally the United Kingdom.
Nkomo fled the country in 1983 after an attempt on his life before he was persuaded to return and eventually rejoined Mugabe’s government. Nkomo’s son said Guduza also played a crucial role in looking after the Nkomo family when the late nationalist was in detention.
“I knew Guduza when I was young, very young,” he said. “He looked after us when my father was in prison at Gonakudzingwa.
“At the time of independence when Zapu had been awarded 20 seats and people were jostling for positions, he gave up his own seat for (the late) Ruth Chinamano because she was senior in the party.
“He preferred to stay as a close advisor to my father.”
In his biography, The Story of My Life, Nkomo wrote about how Guduza was instrumental in helping him dodge thousands of soldiers sent by the authorities to “have me out of the way”. The lecture, delivered at the Presbyterian Church in the city centre, was organised by Masakhane Trust and was attended by over 100 people. Former Bulawayo councillor Alderman Michael Batandi Mpofu and Retired Colonel Khutshwekhaya Nketha jointly delivered the lecture.
