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A tribute to Father Zimbabwe – Chibwe Chitedza Joshua Nkomo

Opinion & Analysis
On July 1, 1999, a dark cloud engulfed our beloved motherland as a giant departed from among us. Father Zimbabwe, aka Chibwe Chitedza, meaning slippery rock as he was elusive, was indeed a giant in stature, a giant in the struggle for peace, a giant in progressive ideas, a giant imbued with love for fellow countrymen.

On July 1, 1999, a dark cloud engulfed our beloved motherland as a giant departed from among us. Father Zimbabwe, aka Chibwe Chitedza, meaning slippery rock as he was elusive, was indeed a giant in stature, a giant in the struggle for peace, a giant in progressive ideas, a giant imbued with love for fellow countrymen. His departure has left a yawning hole in the politics of Zimbabwe. An impregnable shadow of uncertainty on the future of this beloved motherland was unleashed. Zimbabwe was condemned to death by fascism. Joshua Nkomo, the father of peace, a freedom fighter, unifier par excellence had left us when we were about to build after a gruelling liberation struggle. Where ever he is, may his soul rest in peace because what obtains now is diametrically opposite to what he fought for.

By Baster Magwizi

The late Dr Joshua Nkomo
The late Dr Joshua Nkomo

Nkomo’s image still lingers on in the minds of many who engaged with him and those who saw him. All those progressive minds who were young then and had a brief encounter with him and those who were born after will forever want to learn about this colossus who brought independence to Zimbabwe. Indeed there will never be any other like him, until the hegemony of Satanism is conquered. Nkomo is remembered for his humility, intellect, bravery, courage, integrity, love, magnanimity and astute leadership qualities. His life is a tale of a man who so much loved peace, who truly used every opportunity and all resources he had been endowed with to achieve a peaceful environment. In this noble objective to find peace for all, he was severely undermined by reactionary forces of darkness. Today Zimbabwe is like a ship at sea and is calling the lighthouse. Ship to shore! But the ship is sinking when the message cannot reach home. Wither Zimbabwe?

What lessons does the life of this giant have for us and posterity? To me there are numerous, but today I will highlight just a few. One of the prominent ones is that it takes more than one race, one tribe, one party, one set of perceptions, one person with a wooden head, one ugly culture to build and sustain a nation like ours, creating a healthy and vibrant society enjoying the national economy negated of monopoly capital and State capture by a political party. Indeed nowhere on earth a party, an individual can be and is exclusively right or on spot and correct all the time. We all have our failures at different times in different circumstances, but others have chosen to play God over our lives as if they are immortal. Nkomo was different from these blood suckers who superintend over our pacified Zimbabwean community. He was just human. He had one great heart filled with love for our beloved motherland.

But who was Nkomo? Some nicknamed him Shumba Ye Rhodesia. Others called him Mwana weVhu. The colonial masters thought he was a communist, yet others respected him as a unifier, uniting blacks and whites, the Shona and Ndebele and indeed all tribes. He was a peace-builder yet other black people in Zimbabwe hated him for his magnanimity. Some were jealous and felt dwarfed by his stature, wisdom and prowess. They frivolously and indiscreetly sought his demise, by day and by night like witches and wizards.

As early 1958, I believe Nkomo had concluded that Zimbabwe needed versatile leadership in the persecuting of the liberation struggle. As a freedom fighter, he sought to be prepared for a long and arduous struggle. He became a guerrilla freedom fighter to achieve peace for all. However, some of his compatriots turned blue with envy and chose to condescend with the oppressive enemy forces. They went into overdrive and de-campaigned against him, labelling him a weak leader. They wanted to hijack the struggle at every moment. They denounced him because they were now fighting from the enemy trenches. They became sell-outs. In a few years they became known as VanaTshombe. Incorrigible African sell-outs with myopic mindsets were now dancing on the ceiling of the British grotesque plan to deny Africans freedom. But Josh, as an avid peacemaker, was full of boundless energy and had a fervent desire to achieve a peaceful inclusive society. During those early years of the liberation struggle he led the concept of one-man one-vote. Had this idea been accepted by our fellow blacks, whites would have conceded power. They would not have been fired even a single bullet on Zimbabwean soil. Ominously, some of those in leadership chose to be enemy proxy elements. They developed an unbridled ambition to deny Africans early independence through the concept of one-man one-vote. They chose to hide in other African and European countries pursuing nefarious and dishonest manoeuvres denying peoples early freedom.

When the Albion House realised that they could not deceive committed Africans of peace, they chose to influence their kith and kin to be hegemonic. In that drive some of our black Zimbabweans joined then in order to retard the momentum of the struggle. Pasi pakange pamera madhunamtuna. It was indeed grotesque! Duncan Sandy, an emissary of the Albion House was sent to divide Africans. Nkomo warned Africans that they were at risk of losing their initiative, but fellow Africans had their hatred glued up tight in a constructed narrative that drove a wedge laced with tribalism. This was evil. Fellow Africans swallowed the bait, hook, line and sinker.

With the Tshombes, the whites sought to pacify the liberation struggle by pulverising the leadership and struggling masses. Nkomo as a peacemaker strategically sought to engage in political dialogue. It was not weakness, but a strategy to fight for freedom. With the likes of Garfield Todd and progressive other non-blacks Nkomo sought to write the revolt. As the momentum of violence was gaining resonance, Nkomo advised that if the colonial forces would not relinquish power, then Africans would match them pound for pound, bullet for bullet. The Tshombes went to hide behind the enemy. They colluded with those unleashing terror on blacks. That, however, did not deter Nkomo in the quest for freedom. With the support from the progressive world and local alliances that were formed with African countries fighting against white domination authentic liberation movements came together and gave moral and material support to the struggle.

Although Joshua Nkomo was detained, he led from Gonakudzingwa. At that time African National Congress (ANC) of South Africa and Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu) fought buddy-buddy against the white oppressors. The likes of Joe Modise, Chris Hani and other progressive freedom fighters fought on Zimbabwean soil, while our own fellow blacks were spying against Nkomo. The persistent meddling of whites saw the dissipation of strength among the fighters of Special Affairs, leading to the withdrawal of the ANC of South Africa from a direct engagement. Even then, it did not break Nkomo’s resolve. The struggle continued. Reactionary forces then formed a diversionary element called Liberation Front of Zimbabwe (Frolizi). Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, as a faithful lieutenant under Nkomo, led to the reconfiguration of the Special Affairs Department of Zapu to the new look Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, (ZIPRA) paying allegiance to Nkomo. As a result of this rejuvenation, the liberation struggle intensified leading the white regime to seek to dialogue with the hope of retarding the increased momentum of the ZIPRA armed struggle.

The white regime realised that Nkomo was the engine firing on the armed struggle. They sought to water down the impetus by calling for peace talks, when other talks before had failed to break Nkomo’s resolve. Nkomo strategically accepted invitations to talk peace, meanwhile ZIPRA was intensifying the combat initiatives. This phase saw the likes of Henry Kissinger pursuing destructive engagements in Southern Africa. Some blacks fell for the bait, but Nkomo refused to be submerged in the Detente’. Some foolhardy Africans connived with the Western world to break the thrust of the struggle. They alleged that Nkomo was a communist and communism was engulfing Southern Africa, hence it had to be stopped at all cost. Reactionary blacks sold out, but the armed thrust did not rescind. Realising that they still were not winning, whites resorted again to dialogue while employing our fellow blacks as proxy forces. Even if these proxies were deliberately deployed externally, they failed to retard the armed struggle until Nkomo was released from detention.

The release of the detained leaders was meant to dilute and weaken the armed struggle, but instead it propelled it with more intensity. Incidentally and tragically in the ranks of the freedom fighters Herbert Chitepo died under unclear circumstances, shrouded on the suspicion that enemy agents within the ranks had a hand. At this time some of our leaders were hosted at the Windsor Castle by Sarah Churchill and her husband Lord Soames, in the presence of Lord Carrington and other senior members of the Albion clan. With General Nkomo out of detention, liberation forces were to be amalgamated under the banner of Zimbabwe People’s Army (Zipa). Still Zipa was rendered ineffective from within its ranks. Nkomo sought to galvanise it, but the enemies of the struggle for unity justice and peace prevented it to be strong. Albeit that the struggle had to continue. Just after the formation of Zipa, Nkomo’s lieutenant JZ. Moyo fell at the hands of the enemy in a parcel bomb attack. JZ Moyo had been instrumental and the strategist behind the setting up of Zipa.

With Chitepo and Moyo out, the enemy forces thought they had won, but alas, it turned out that more fuel has been poured into the fire. Nkomo, now in combat as the General had to direct the war effort. As a result, the Rhodesian air superiority was broken when white enemy air venom was sucked by hitting their notorious air raids in to neighbouring countries. Green Leader, a merciless mercenary was brought down over the camps of guerrilla training. Meanwhile, inside Rhodesia the enemy had introduced a strategy of joint military command (Joc), which introduced operation zones such as Hurricane, Repulse, and Thrasher etc. Externally the enemy carried a raid on Nkomo, but failed to capture him. At home, inside Rhodesia combat intensified pushing the enemy forces from rural areas to hide in their urban barracks. Still they were now besieged. Urban combat intensified. More targets were being hit in towns, lending extreme pressure on the enemy forces and their surrogates. When the Birmingham Road fuel reservoirs were gunned into an inferno, Ian Smith and his African minister Ernest Bhule could not believe it, so they drove to the scene to witness how they had been decapitated by ZIPRA forces led by Nkomo. Of cause, some people are trying a culturally constructed narrative. One liberation icon of Guinea Bissau Amrilcar Cabral had warned that people fighting for independence should not tell lies and claim easy victories in post-war narratives because that’s what the enemy of the people wants.

Nkomo aka General Josh did not lose sight towards peace building. When the Windsor Castle and their kith and kin realised that now they were being defeated, they sought to re-engage General Josh, who in his DNA was predominantly a unifying peace-builder. ZIPRA forces were deployed in strength so that when talks were to bring any progress towards peace, Nkomo would be negotiating from a position of strength. Other black compatriots were not happy about Nkomo’s strength and sought to undermine him even at the Lancaster House peace talks. The Lancaster House peace talks had been thought to last a period of three weeks. But by nasty fate, the conference dragged for long drenching three months when Nkomo stuck to the fundamental principles of social justice. His co-partners were nibbling and hob-knobbing with the enemy. They became infiltrated willing scribes of the Albion Windsor Castle. To coin it up, at the unclear conclusion of the peace talks some people were promised knighthood if they would accomplish what the British and their kith and kin had failed to do. The idea was to eliminate Nkomo at all cost, even if it meant to carry out genocide. Now it is all history.

As it turned out the post-liberation period saw the country rescinding into a quagmire of rabid violence pitting the hitherto oppressed blacks. Those that had landed into the corridors of power sought to galvanise and fortify their positions locally, regionally, continentally and internationally by literally destroying fellow comrades in arms at the behest of the colonial masters. This rewarded them with fetish at the death of multitudes of fellow citizens. But Nkomo was a peace builder, after escaping death by the whiskers of his countrymen; he still sought to unify the people the newly liberated Zimbabwe. This of cause led Zapu to be “swallowed whole” resulting in the current ruling outfit in Zimbabwe. Nkomo became the villain and was vanquished.

And today, this week, as we sadly remember Nkomo, a peace builder par excellence, a unifier, liberator dear Father Zimbabwe, Chibwe Chitedza, Mafukhufukhu as Nkomo was affectionately adored, he would be 100 years old. No one will live forever! Even those that crucified him shall come to pass. What is critical and vehemently important is that lest we not forget the lesson we learnt from a man, who by nature was nonviolent. He equipped us with a legacy of love, tolerance, integrity, honesty, Ubuntu, and above all respect for human life. Let wisdom of General Josh forever shine in our path to peace and coexistence. Let us live side by side without segregating each other along either neither racial nor tribal lines or neither the texture of hair nor the shape of our noses. Let us not teach to hate, not to beat up, to kill or plunder, instead let show affection to each other and build peace. It will be a befitting honour to Nkomo if we can build an egalitarian society. To the spirit of Nkomo I say Long Live, Bayethe, we salute you!!

Remembered by Colonel Baster Willie Magwizi –Inkememkeme (B.A. PCDS, DRMgt) Twitter Handle @Baster Willie;email:[email protected]; cell:+263 778 620574