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Dr Muzenda the organiser

25 Sep, 2016 - 00:09 0 Views

The Sunday Mail

As part of commemorating the 13th anniversary of Dr Simon Muzenda’s death, we have been publishing excerpts of Professor Ngwabi Bhebhe’s biography of the National Hero and former Vice President. Below is the third part of that biography from “Simon Vengai Muzenda and the Struggle for and Liberation of Zimbabwe”, which The Sunday Mail is serialising. Read on.

It was when Muzenda was still in Bulawayo that he first encountered Joshua Nkomo who was to help launch him on to his nationalist political career.

What finally brought them to meet were the federal elections in 1953.

The federal constitution provided for two African Members of Parliament representing the only two constituencies, Matabeleland and Mashonaland. The four candidates who offered themselves for election were Joshua Nkomo and Mike Masocha Hove, editor of the Bantu Mirror, for Matabeleland and Jasper Savanhu and Stanlake Samkange for Mashonaland.

Muzenda, who was one of the key figures in assisting in the elections, initially supported Nkomo, who also had the greatest African support in Bulawayo.

Muzenda says that just as they were preparing to campaign for Nkomo, Carlton Ngcebetsha, who had his own newspaper, The Home News, published a story de-campaigning Masocha Hove.

“The paper urged that Mike Hove should not represent Matabeleland because he was of Shona extraction,” Muzenda recalls.

“Then most of us who were rallying behind Joshua Nkomo said no to this as we were also of Shona extraction.”

Muzenda says they confronted Nkomo, demanding that he issue a statement disassociating himself from Ngcebetsha’s tribal outburst.

But Nkomo hesitated, apparently fearing to lose Ngcebetsha’s support. Nkomo, however, miscalculated his chances because, when he did not distance himself from Ngcebetsha’s Ndebele tribalism, Muzenda withdrew his support and with him went the Voice Association and many Shona leaders.

Muzenda campaigned for Masocha Hove and travelled as far as Mberengwa and many parts of Masvingo, urging people to support his candidate.

Muzenda had no difficulty in convincing the African electorate in the so called Matabeleland constituency to support a Shona candidate, since the majority of the people were Shona anyway.

Mike Hove won by a wide margin and, of course Nkomo lost the election, having failed to get significant white support.

Federal politics and their 1953 elections helped Muzenda and Nkomo to discover each other and Nkomo did not lose sight of Muzenda’s talent as an organiser and effective political campaigner.

When he was building the National Democratic Party, Nkomo could not think of anybody other than Simon Muzenda to take up the leadership of Masvingo and Southern Midlands.

In the interval between the Muzenda family’s movement to Mvuma in 1955 and his re-entry into active politics in 1960, Muzenda concentrated on providing for his growing family.

Muzenda left the quietness of his business and family life to take up the leadership position in the National Democratic Party, formed on 1 January 1960.

The NDP, according to Nathan Shamuyarira produced, “the biggest thrust in African nationalist thinking.”

For the first time many educated Africans joined the party.

Africans were no longer pleading for air and humane treatment but were now demanding constitutional changes to enable them to rule themselves, just like they were doing in Ghana, for instance. Muzenda resurfaced in 1960 when NDP was formed.

He started working for the party in Mvuma where he was elected chairman of his branch. The branch quickly grew and became highly active. When national leaders came to Mvuma, they were impressed by the way Muzenda had instituted well-organised women and youth wings of the branch, which were able to draw large crowds for rallies.

As shall be seen, Muzenda was first arrested for political subversion when he was branch chairman of NDP in Mvuma.

It soon became obvious to Joshua Nkomo, the President of NDP, that Muzenda was being underutilised as a chairman of a branch; he needed to be elevated to a provincial position where his political talents and skills could benefit the party even more.

Joshua Nkomo personally drove down to Mvuma to appoint Muzenda inaugural and leading executive of what was called the southern province of NDP which covered Masvingo, Zvishavane, Mberengwa, Mwenezi and other districts.

He gave Muzenda a new Land Rover and asked him to go and open party provincial headquarters in Masvingo, since Mvuma was in Midlands province.

Right from the Bulawayo days, Nkomo had developed an admiration for Muzenda’s skills as an organiser and his unrivalled capacity to reach the ordinary people both in urban and rural areas.

Moreover, he was courageous and had an astonishing staying power; so that he could be counted on to persevere in an unpromising field until he built a large following for the party in the Province.

Muzenda’s first task in Masvingo was to identify reliable allies. He soon got the assistance of Samuel Munodawafa, Alois Hwingwiri, Mangena, Nolan Makombe, Charles Gutu, John Mundondo and others, all of whom were chosen for their intimate knowledge of the province’s political terrain and of key people around whom local cells and branches could be set up.

Unfortunately, it did not take long after Muzenda’s appointment before NDP was banned on 9 December 1962. And his Land Rover was confiscated by the colonial regime, which sold it with other party properties to defray the party’s debts.

On 18 December 1962 only ten days after the banning of NDP, Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was launched. Like its predecessor, ZAPU dedicated itself to liquidating imperialism and colonialism and to the establishment of a democratic government in free society, on the basis of ‘One man One Vote’.

Muzenda remained in Masvingo as the leader and chef administrator of the party in the province.

Augustine Nyashanu, who was the organising secretary, assisted him. A new Land Rover had been purchased for the province. Indeed, Solomon Marembo believes that Muzenda was able to get his political propaganda across to the rural masses partly because of utter simplicity, which enabled people to identify easily with him.

By the time Zapu was banned, Marembo tells us, “Masvingo had a very strong organisation . . . basically because Muzenda was a rural man . . . had a good understanding with the people in the rural areas. He could sleep anywhere, unlike most people, who thought that because they are educated they could not just put up anywhere . . .

“Because of this, those of us who worked with him did not see any difference between us and those living in the rural areas. The leadership of Muzenda was exemplary.

“We thus managed to penetrate every corner of Masvingo and the party became highly organised in the province. Moreover, Muzenda and Nyashanu harmonised truly well with ZAPU’s emphasis on African culture.”

To lodge the nationalist spirit in the hearts and minds of the people, ZAPU decided to go back to African culture.

As it turned, Muzenda was an accomplished traditional dancer, while Nyashanu was first class singer and composer.

Nyashanu would open every rally with a song and his songs were rendered in such a powerful voice and often had powerful messages which ‘drove people into weeping’, Marembo says.

A champion traditional dancer, Muzenda would ask drummers to get on with their part whilst he borrowed mituzu namagagdo (rattles made out of small calabashes) and tied them on the calves of his legs. Equipped thus, he would jump into the dancing arena and perform to the delight, ululation and appreciative whistling of the spectators.

This is the sort of thing he had always enjoyed from his school days at Gokomere. With those preliminaries over, Muzenda and Nyashanu would then deliver their political orations and, again, they were good speakers in their Shona language.

On the literary side, Muzenda and the other champion of written African culture were not disappointed either.

In Mashonaland, Solomon Mutvairo published the nationalistic novel Feso with Oxford University Press in Cape Town in 1956.

The poem Feso, as we shall see landed Muzenda into trouble.

More to the point in connection with Muzenda’s arrest was Solomon Mutsvairo’s novel entitled Feso, and its poem Nehanda Nyakasikana.

The poem expressed African outage and bitterness over white people.

It pointed out white humiliating, rapacious robbery of African wealth, and it underscored African yearning for the day that exploitative and oppressive burden of white rule would go away.

Muzenda recited the poem at one of the rallies in Mvuma, which was addressed by the President of the NDP, Joshua Nkomo and that led to his first arrest. He was charged with subversion and inciting people to rise against the white people. Hebert Chitepo, who had become director of prosecution in Tanganyika, was hired to defend Muzenda in the High Court.

The prosecutor was John Bull. The prosecution picked out the part of the poem which says, ‘neriri pfumojena rakasvika munyika’, (this spear which came to our country).

The prosecution also singled out, ‘Fuma yenyika nhasi vakatora vakagovana pahukama hwavo vepfumojena’, (these people of the white spear robbed the country of its wealth and shared it among themselves). Muzenda says that they spent two days with Chitepo building up their defence and rehearsing it.

The prosecution called in CID authorities from Harare and Kwekwe, together with interpreters from Gweru and Masvingo.

Muzenda’s defense brought in witnesses who spoke the different dialects of Shona, all of whom denied that ‘fumojena’ meant white people.

Then Muzenda suddenly pulled off an unexpected piece of defence. As he put it:

Then in court I told them if you don’t agree with me, I will begin to sing and you will hear the whole court singing in unison. Without giving them any chance, I started singing:

Hee-hee Gwindingwi rine shumba inoruma

Hee-hee vana vaPfumojena vachauya

Hezvo masango ese anoona

All the African people in the court joined and started singing with Muzenda. When everybody was quiet, he pointed out that what he had just led the people in court in singing was a well-known traditional song, sung by Zimbabwean ancestors perhaps long before the appearance of British colonial rulers.

As it turned out, Muzenda had not warned Chitepo either, as it was something he thought of on the spur of the moment.

It worked because when the witnesses for the prosecution were called back, they also said it was a traditional song, sung with no reference to whites.

Muzenda also argued in his defence that the police translation of the poem was wrong. He also could not see why he should be prosecuted for a piece of literature that was prescribed as a school text.

To demonstrate that he had only reproduced work that was being used in schools, he asked the court to secure from the nearby Belmont Bookshop copies of the book, Feso, so that he could recite the poem while they followed in the book itself.

They went and brought bought forty copies of the book and he asked them to open page 42 and then he recited the poem verbatim.

The judge cautioned Muzenda and discharged him. Muzenda and Chitepo were immediate heroes in Masvingo.

In 1962, Muzenda was again arrested. On this occasion he went to address a rally at Mandava Township in Zvishavane, which was part of his Zapu Southern Province. At this meeting he told the huge gathering that whites in Zimbabwe had huge problems in their own countries where they came from.

They had nowhere to go, so that, even if Africans won majority rule, they would remain in the country.

Zimbabwe, he said, was beautiful and endowed with a lot of riches so that the white settlers could not afford to leave.

He was arrested for that speech and charged with four counts. To show his popularity, when he was being taken to the police station a big crowd followed.

Fearing trouble, the police asked him to persuade the people to go back to their houses. He stood on an elevated place and called on the people to go return to their homes, as there was no trouble at all.

He had just been asked to go and sign some papers relating to the just ended meeting. Although many responded to his call, others, especially youths, wanted to register their protests trough acts of arson and sabotage. Some made petrol bombs and tried to burn up petrol stations. Police responded by opening fire indiscriminately and shot dead three people. The following day sixty women from Mandava Township brought food for their leader and hero.

Each had a plate of sadza (meal porridge). The police tried to stop the women but they insisted that they wanted to see their leader.

In the end they were allowed to go through. Muzenda was immediately transferred to Gweru prison to avoid trouble from his followers.

His brother, Davison, hired the famous Bulawayo lawyer, Leo Baron, to defend him. He was found guilty on three of the four charges by the Zvishavane magistrate, who sentenced him to twelve years’ imprisonment as each of the charges carried a four year sentence.

On appeal, his prison sentence was reduced to four years, because the magistrate was said to have erred by not allowing the three sentences to run concurrently.

In the end he did not serve the full four years and was released in 1964.

By the time he came out of prison, Zapu had split into Zapu and Zanu.

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