The Sunday Mail
Father Zimbabwe
There is a story behind Dr Joshua Nkomo’s 1957 Salisbury election to the leadership of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress, formerly the Southern Rhodesia African Congress.
He had spent some six or so years studying in South Africa where he had come into very close contact with the African National Congress Youth League leaders.
Among these leaders were Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, Oliver Reginald Tambo and Anton Lembede.
He met and interacted with these extremely courageous young men most of the time at a place called the Bantu Men’s Social Centre in the centre of Johannesburg near where he was studying at Jan Hofmehr School of Social Science.
Among these men, Dr Nkomo would recall years later how he was deeply impressed by Mandela’s courage and personality.
Talking to the ANC’s acting president, Oliver Tambo, in Algiers, Algeria in 1979, Dr Nkomo observed: “UMandela yindoda impela. Ngahlangana laye eBlue Lagoon eBantu Men’s Social Centre kanenginengi.” (Mandela is a real man. I met him many times at the Blue Lagoon Bantu Men’s Social Centre).
Those social encounters undoubtedly had a political dimension whose impact on Dr Nkomo deepened his commitment to his own country’s liberation.
The black people of Zimbabwe were by and large terribly scared of white people. They regarded them as invincible demigods whose weapons were most devastating, even from distances inaccessible to an arrow, a spear or a knobkerrie – the black people’s most common weapons.
In the 1940s, there were many people who had actually seen the British South Africa Company’s Pioneer Column arrive in the country in 1890. Many had witnessed how Cecil Rhodes’ armed men had indiscriminately attacked black people within a 20-mile radius around Fort Salisbury.
Many had participated in, first, the 1893 BSAC-Matebele War, and, second, the 1896–97 national uprising whose first revolutionary shots were fired in the Makhandeni (Fort Rixon) region in what is now Matabeleland South on Wednesday, March 25, 1896; and whose last shots were heard in the Mazoe River Valley on the night of June 20-21,1896 in present Mashonaland Central province.
The BSAC armed forces had what were by then very sophisticated weapons comprising Tower flintlocks muzzle loading .65 and .75 calibre; Tower muskets; percussion cap; muzzle loading calibre .577; Enfield Snider single shot rifles calibre .577 with a side-hinged block action; Martini-Henry single shots rifles of .450 calibre; 7-pounder field guns; Nordenfeldt guns with five barrels with a .450 calibre, plus the hand-cranked .303 multi-barrel Maxim guns – a weapon first used in battle by British colonial forces during the 1893 BSAC-Matabele War.
The BSAC forces also used the Gatling machine gun capable of firing 600 rounds per minute. In addition, they had the five-barrelled Gardiner machine guns.
In spite of all that unnerving arsenal, the black people were keeping the resistance spirit alive, albeit in isolated places.
In 1927, the South African-based Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union led by Clement Kadallie, originally from Nyasaland, had sent Robert Sambo to Southern Rhodesia to start ICWU branches in some of the country’s urban centres.
The Southern Rhodesia government had deported Sambo a month or so after his arrival. The following year, Kadallie sent Masotsha Ndlovu for the same purpose.
He launched the ICWU, first in Bulawayo, and soon thereafter opened branches in Gatooma and Salisbury.
In what is now known as Mashonaland West, Aaron Jacha Rusike, a small-scale farmer in the Msengezi Native Purchase Area, had launched the first African-led political organisation since the country was granted self-government in 1923.
It was called the Southern Rhodesia African Congress, later Southern Rhodesia African National Congress.
He was assisted by two Methodist (Wesleyan) clergymen, his brother Reverend Matthew Rusike, and the Rev TD Samkange, a paternal uncle of Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe.
Aaron Jacha Rusike’s SRAC held its first congress in 1935, and in attendance were three prominent officials: the Rev E Chipunza, Dauti Yamba from Nyasaland but working in Southern Rhodesia, and Rev Chihota. Aaron Jacha Rusike, the other two SRAC founders and six other people, mostly clergymen, were also at the congress. The Rev TD Samkange (Professor Stanlake’s father) was later transferred to Bulawayo where he met and worked with Joshua Nkomo in the late 1940s and early 1950s. It is historically important to note that in the late 1930s, the British government and the Southern Rhodesia settler administration entertained the idea of amalgamating Southern Rhodesia with Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
That idea failed because Aaron Jacha Rusike’s SRAC sent a strongly-worded letter to London rejecting the proposal.
While Aaron Jacha Rusike’s SRAC was busy in parts of Mashonaland, in Matabeleland a small group calling itself “Sofasonke” was agitating against destocking.
Sofasonke was active in Matobo district, Dr Nkomo’s home area.
In Bulawayo, Masotsha Ndlovu and his ICWU were busy, and so was the union in Harare where its official representative was Charles Mzingeli (Nkomo) and in Kadoma with JM Dumbutshena.
In Bulawayo’s Old Location (Makokoba), a few somewhat elitist organisations were launched in the 1930s to demand the right to vote by some African people as had been the case in the Cape Colony earlier.
Leaders of those organisations were black people of South African origin. They included Garner Sojini of the Rhodesia Bantu Voters’ Association and Martha Ngano of the Bantu Women’s League.
There was also in Salisbury the Southern Rhodesia Native Association whose president was AS Chirimuta.
Its other officials were JN Sinyaka (vice-president), Walter D Chipwaya (general secretary) and G M’kumbi (treasurer).
The Southern Rhodesia Native Association had two branches; one in Fort Victoria headed by the district chair Z Zimuto, with IM Mukartheia as the district secretary and NJ Gono as the treasurer.
The other branch was at Umtali and its chair was the Rev Thomas Marange. V Saugwini was the district secretary and I Mukahdeya the treasurer.
A few years later, after these organisations had apparently run their course, came Benjamin Burombo’s Bulawayo-based British African National Voice Association whose main focus was land. It tried to stop large-scale displacement of black communities, particularly from the Fort Rixon area.
BANVA played a significant role in the 1948 Bulawayo African workers’ strike, and Burombo himself was arrested and charged for allegedly inciting the workers against the government, but he was not guilty. Grey Mabhalane Luposwa Bango, a trade unionist, was detained and became the first trade unionist to be detained in Southern Rhodesia.
The other organisation that was involved in that historic strike was the SRANC, whose president was at that time the Rev TD Samkange.
In Plumtree rural areas, a man called Peter Bafi Thebe Tshuma campaigned against destocking, and was more of an embarrassment to the Native Commissioner than a threat to the government.
He campaigned in the name of the SRANC, and lived to take part in sabotage activities during the National Democratic Party and Zimbabwe African People’s Union days.
That was the immediate socio-political historical background when Joshua Nkomo came onto the scene in the early 1950s.
However, a significant development had occurred in Salisbury where a trully self-made man, George “Bonzo” Nyandoro, had been organising commercial workers, though on a small scale. Nyandoro had been in close contact with Harry Nkumbula, president of the Northern Rhodesia African National Congress, since the late 1940s. Nkumbula was based in Lusaka, Zambia from where he would occasionally travel by train to Beira, Mozambique to buy sea shells for sale in Northern Rhodesia. He used the proceeds to fund his political organisation.
On his way to and from Beira, Nkumbula would stay with Nyandoro in Salisbury, and would brief him about the progress or otherwise NRANC was making in Northern Rhodesia. In 1952, Nyandoro teamed up with James Robert Dambaza Chikerema, a close relative of Cde Robert Mugabe, who had been expelled from Cape Town University for being involved in ANC Youth League defiance activities.
Nyandoro and Chikerema were joined by medical orderly Paul Mushonga, self-employed book-keeper Henry Hamadziripi, and a very studious Masvingo-born young man called Eddison Sithole. The group launched a Salisbury-based militant organisation called the Salisbury City Youth League, popularly called the City Youth League. It later changed its name to Southern Rhodesia African National Youth League, and was incorporated into the SRANC on September 12, 1957 under that name and not as “the City Youth League” as some historians erroneously state. The Youth League was effectively led by Chikerema and Nyandoro; the former as president and the latter as secretary-general.
It was a militant organisation that was a thorn in the flesh of the Southern Rhodesian government whose prime minister at that time was Garfield Todd, a Church-of-Christ missionary who had been for many years the principal of Dadaya Mission near Shabani. The Youth League founders were young men full of physical vigour and mental enthusiasm to correct the country’s racial injustices.
A priest at Kutama College, Father Kotsky, called Chikakuka by the students, had earlier angrily and publicly described Chikerema as “nyoka irikufambafamba ichitadzisa vana vaYahweh kufunga zvakanaka”.
Chikerema had openly criticised Fr Kotsky for refusing to give a lift to Cde Mugabe’s relatives, among them Sabina and Ntombana (Regina), to the home of their old uncle who had just passed away.
The late uncle was a prominent Roman Catholic church member, and Chikerema was upset by Fr Kotsky’s refusal to take them to the funeral wake. The pair of Chikerema and Nyandoro was destined to work with Dr Nkomo until 1972 when they broke away from Zapu in Zambia to form the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe, a development that greatly upset Dr Nkomo who was a great campaigner for national unity.
He was at that time in restriction at Gonakudzingwa.
◆ Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired journalist based in Bulawayo.
