The Sunday Mail
Dumisani Sibanda
In 1995, in the run-up to Zimbabwe’s general election, this reporter was assigned to cover a Zanu-PF campaign rally that was to be addressed by none other than the late Father Zimbabwe, Dr Joshua Nyongolo Mqabuko Nkomo, who was State Vice-President and Second Secretary of the ruling party.
The rally was at Borabora, more than 100 kilometres from Gwanda town after Manama.
I was a cub reporter, having joined the Sunday News in November 1994, and there were senior reporters from the Zimbabwe Inter-African News Agency, Ilanga Community Newspaper and the then Matabeleland South Bureau Chief, the late Lazarus Mhlanga.
Mhlanga — being the veteran that he was — predicted that Father Zimbabwe would talk about land redistribution.
Yes, it was an important issue, he said, but Dr Nkomo had said it several times such that it was unlikely to make it as headline news. It had become a “ding-dong”, I imagined, but that was not enough to kill my interest in covering the rally.
I had grown up in the streets of one of Bulawayo’s oldest suburbs, Mzilikazi, and later the newer Lobengula Extension, known as Estandeni, such that Dr Nkomo’s name and the residential areas near Pelandaba where he lived were not only familiar, they were revered in those areas as was the rest of Bulawayo.
The town was my world — where I believe the icon had assumed demi-god status.
There was talk that apart from being a fiery politician, Dr Nkomo had magical powers that allowed him to change into something else and confuse the enemy when he was being pursued.
So, there was the colossus — both political and physical, as those who know will testify he was no light weight — right before me.
I was anxious.
I sat on the edge of my seat and felt a great sense of dignity that I was covering this great man and remembered the songs sang in his honour, both just before independence and soon after.
Suddenly, I noticed I had become lost in my own world as the large crowd erupted, singing praise songs in his honour as he took to the podium.
I quickly rolled my sleeves up and started capturing Dr Nkomo’s speech.
A minute into his speech, Dr Nkomo, who had his special assistant who is now State Minister, Ambassador Simon Khaya Moyo, on his side to help him as he addressed the crowd, went into his “gospel on land”, true to Mhlanga’s prediction.
“We have nothing, I tell you,” he thundered, leaving his audience bemused.
“I came here from Harare using . . . what do you call that thing?” he asked Ambassador Moyo who quickly and ably came in saying “helicopter”.
“I asked whose farms these were and I can tell you we have nothing,” said Dr Nkomo.
“If we go (die) without sorting out this problem our children will fight, there will be chaos.”
He said what was needed was equality in the ownership of land, not the then racially skewed ownership patterns of the resource in favour of the whites.
The audience gave him a thunderous applause as he took his seat with his walking stick which some of us, growing up as children of fanatical Zapu supporters — more like staunch Highlanders followers — revered and equated to the Biblical Moses’ staff.
According to the Book of Exodus in the Bible, the staff used by Moses was by his side throughout important miracles which included using it to produce water from a rock, being transformed into a snake and back and being used at the parting of the Red Sea.
I told myself that was the story, the need to address the land issue, especially coming from one of the founding fathers of the nation.
I had read the Ndebele bestseller by Ndabezinhle Sigogo, Umhlaba Umangele, which spoke of the dispossession of the black people from their land and thought the angle I wanted to write for the thousands of readers was apt.
The land issue was after all, I reasoned, the “raison d’etre” for the armed struggle.
From my reading of history I knew the land issue was so important that the Lancaster House Conference almost broke down because of the subject as the Patriotic Front insisted Britain should pay for land acquisition.
When I got to work, I went on to my old Remington typewriter and wrote a five folio article on the subject and told myself, “done deal, front page” but alas when the paper came out the following day, I discovered, the journalism guru, Mhlanga was right and my story was tucked away in the centre-spread of the broadsheet.
Not only had it been given less prominence, it had also been chopped to five lines. I was heart-broken and did not eat that day, a reflection of the intensity of my disappointment as I was what the others mocked me — a “gormandiser”.
My first article on Father Zimbabwe and about land for that matter had failed to make the front page grade.
But I told myself, my hero, Dr Nkomo, was never wrong and that is generally what happens when you are talking of a person of a political stature of gigantic proportions like Father Zimbabwe, such figures cannot be wrong.
“Ofuna imali kaphendulele ibala elithi lima (If you want money, till the land),” Dr Nkomo once said.
He had spoken so emotionally about the land issue, five years after the expiry of the clause on land that had been inserted at the insistence of the British during the Lancaster House Conference that only allowed acquisition of land on a willing buyer willing seller basis.
The clause covered 1980 to 1990.
Dr Nkomo, I imagined growing up in Kezi, Matabeleland South, had seen the debilitating effects of colonially inspired legislation such as the Land Apportionment Act, that was promulgated in 1930 when he was 13 years old.
The main purpose of the Act was to formalise separation by law, land between blacks and whites and this was after the deliberations and recommendations of the Morris Carter Commission of 1925.
The fertile high rainfall areas became large scale privately owned white farms.
In 1931, the Act divided the land area in the country as follows:
Native Reserves — 29 000 000 acres.
Native Purchase Areas — 8 000 000 acres.
European Areas — 49 000 000 acres.
Forest — 3 000 000 acres.
Population distribution was as follows:
Africans — 1,1 million.
Whites — 50 000.
In 1951, Dr Nkomo was 34 years old and was aware of the Native Land Husbandry Act of 1951, which was meant to enforce private ownership of land, de-stocking and conservation practices on black small holders.
In fact, this draconian unjust and racist piece of legislation fuelled nationalist politics, then led to its scrapping in 1961.
So as I reminisced about the land issue, I also remembered the slogan “Umntwana Wenhlabathi/ Mwana Wevhu”, which Dr Nkomo had popularised.
But true to the political prophet Dr Nkomo’s words, the genesis of the land reform was now front page news after his death in 1999.
Occasionally, my articles did feature there and I now feel at ease that my hero, Dr Nkomo, was vindicated in the same manner that the Voice from Njelele had told him that he would lead the armed struggle against the “white man without knees”.
As I conclude, I feel some form of catharsis after the disappointment of that article on Dr Nkomo and the land issue where I felt that “we was robbed”.
