The Sunday Mail
Farai Makubaza
I was shocked on Friday evening to learn of the untimely passing of Mr James Jonga, the Permanent Secretary for the District Development Fund in the Office of the President and Cabinet. I was really taken aback for I had missed this piece of news for the greater part of the day.
My life revolves around the cyber space where time-sensitive sharing of content is of the essence. I should have picked up the news earlier and it is somehow strange that I did not.
When I eventually heard the news, I called his personal assistant for many years, the lady we affectionately call Sisi Zodwa, as well as director for water, Mr Toriro. They both confirmed the sad news that Mr Jonga was no more.
The last time a death really hit me this hard was when I lost my father in 2018.
The devastating death of Mr Jonga is equally difficult to stomach because he had become a father-figure to me. As I took in the news, and reflected on his life, it became apparent that his legacy will be enduring, one in which future generations will learn of the legend of PS Jonga and his immense contribution to the rural landscape.
I was introduced to Mr Jonga in October 2018, after a colleague who usually covered that portfolio was out of the country on official business. I thought it was a once-off meeting, little did I know that it would be a chance encounter that would trigger a short, but intensely worthwhile one and-a-half year long relationship.
On that day, I entered his office for a briefing and met the legend of Jonga in person. There he was seated in his chair, a heavily built man, who carried himself with amazing ease.
He wore a striped suit, and his hair was dyed shiny black. I immediately took to liking his personality. He was conscious of his appearance and dressed immaculately well.
He greeted me with a booming, but warm voice, one which came from the deepest parts of his huge frame, and I immediately felt at home. He was a towering figure, yet so gentle, and this warmth radiated throughout his office on the 19th floor of the Mukwati building. One thing which struck me during the first encounter was his sharp memory and knowledge of Zimbabwe’s lineage and family trees. He was a fountain of knowledge.
When I told him I was a scion of the Makubazas, at first the “B” in my surname almost threw him off-balance, but he quickly recovered when I explained to him that it was a burden of a colonial mistake inherited when my father who was studying at Thekwane High school in Matabeleland South, upon getting a birth certificate, was assumed to be of Ndebele origin, and as per Ndebele lexicon a”B”was inserted therein, permanently distorting our surname.
Immediately he began tracking and making connections with his own family and totem. He would go on to recite this numerous times at any given opportunity, up until a time I remembered the dots by heart. We were on an assignment where the DDF was carrying out road rehabilitation works in Matabeleland North and South provinces. Irrigation consortiums were set up at village level and this had an impact on the financial standing of communities.
He spoke passionately about alleviating rural poverty through availing of clean water sources, as well as ensuring that access and feeder roads to rural communities were trafficable. He was an integral player in the Zunde ra Mambo concept which was rural-centric in nature.
The importance of this work will be felt across the country for a very long time to come. We travelled the length and breadth of the country without him, but one could feel his presence as we traversed Zimbabwe, implementing his vision.
Whenever he was on such tours with the team, he would interact with villagers without the preposterous airs customarily associated with town people or bureaucrats. He was indeed one of them, for their struggles were indeed his struggles.
There was empathy there. The connections he would make between the work he was undertaking, and the National Development Strategy 1 and ultimately Vision 2030, was simply amazing, one fed into the other effortlessly.
As President Mnangagwa and progressive Zimbabweans are championing an Upper Middle-Income Economy by 2030, PS Jonga had his work cut-out and he was alive to this fact. He would always remark that the President’s vision would be incomplete if the rural community was to be left behind, hence he devoted his life to working for the rural folk.
He was a champion for widows under the “Lest we forget” programme. A voice of the voiceless and a proponent advocate for previously marginalised communities.
His mandate and tentacles straddled the cities as well. With local authorities failing dismally in service delivery, major cities have been plagued by water borne diseases like typhoid and cholera.
The onerous responsibility to rehabilitate urban infrastructure naturally fell on PS Jonga. President Mnangagwa directed that central Government intervenes to militate in the plethora of City woes, and PS Jonga hit the ground running.
Gweru, Kadoma, Kwekwe, Masvingo, Bulawayo and Harare to mention but a few troubled urban areas, are beneficiaries of borehole facilities courtesy of DDF.
Another striking aspect about PS Jonga was how he could accommodate people from all walks of life at his offices. Whenever I visited his offices, it would be teeming with MPs from across the great political divide.
Such was his nature to always find time to listen to their plight. Opposition MPs immensely benefited from his all-embracing approach.
After all, the Zimbabwean he sought to serve, was not one of party affiliation. PS Jonga rode the uneasy tides of political contestation with relative ease, all the while reasserting his devotion to a service that had indeed been his life’s calling. Yet even then, he could never be second-guessed or questioned about political loyalties, because he possessed a clarity of thought steeped in the revolutionary struggle which sired our hard-won independence.
To PS Jonga then, minority parties that did not uplift their communities through DDF had simply not approached him.
The last time I was on a DDF tour we went to Masase Hospital deep in rural Mberengwa. The medical facility had been bedevilled by water challenges for over four months, up until the administrator, Mr Sithole called him. The response was swift, as within three days a borehole had been sunk at the hospital bringing relief to patients and the community.
I remember vividly one pregnant woman shedding tears of joy at Masase Hospital. Such was the impact that Mr Jonga made, and I could go on and on.
In Development studies, there is an adage, “there can be no meaningful development without community involvement”. For Mr Jonga it was “there can be no national development without rural development”.
The last encounter I had with him, I was imploring him to write a book so as to immortalise his vast knowledge. He laughed it off and said we would discuss it at a later stage. As fate would have it, this was not to happen. The fountain has gone and with it, its waters. The bane of our father figures, we should change this in our lifetime, otherwise we will always be subservient to colonial and foreign knowledge systems.
As the sun has set on his glorious life, I say it was a life well-lived, more so because he dedicated his life to “bridging” (forgive the pun), the rural-urban divide. The gains that have been realised thus far in alleviating poverty in the rural areas can be attributed to the dedication of PS Jonga, and this legend will live on.
Go well Mr Jonga, you transformed a grateful rural terrain that rural folks will thankfully never forget.
Till we meet again Nzou, Samanyanga. So long.
Farai Makubaza is the acting director for Media Services in the Ministry of Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services. He wrote this article in his personal capacity.
