The Sunday Mail
Cde Jane Ngwenya was one of the first women to take a leading role in the male-dominated political resistance to the colonial government in Rhodesia. The Sunday Mail’s Deputy News Editor Levi Mukarati interviewed the nationalist in Bulawayo and in this first instalment of that conversation, Cde Ngwenya narrates how she got into politics.
***
Q: A lot of people speak glowingly of your political career and this raises the question, at what time or stage did you come face-to-face with this thing called politics?
A: When I was 14-years-old, doing Standard Six and being the youngest at the school, I was faced with the words or phrase “politically-minded”.
This was in 1949 and the words or phrase were meant to describe and nail me to an extent that I was temporarily expelled from school. It took the intervention of some black church leaders to persuade the school head to re-admit me. But honestly, then, I didn’t know what politically-minded meant.
I was to understand, a few years later, that while in the incident I had been labelled politically-minded, I was not. But I had been raised in an environment where subconsciously I had become politically-minded.
Let me not speak in riddles, but explain how this thing called politics started. I grew up with my maternal grandparents, this was after the death of my father who passed on when I was still a baby. I only know of my father’s face through photographs of him.
I was born in 1935 in Njanja, Buhera in Manicaland. My grandparents had given birth to nine children, but the ones that I grew up seeing were my mother and her elder sister. The other seven had died at various ages before adulthood. I am not sure how the others died, but only my mother and her sister survived to get married. I am told my mother and her sister widowed a few years into marriage and returned to stay with their parents. My mother took me along, because my grandfather believed that when a woman lost her husband, it was difficult for that woman to raise her children whilst staying with the in-laws.
When I was aged four or five, we started having problems. My grandfather had a lot of cattle and that was our big problem.
I say it was a big problem because at that time white agricultural officers were moving in communal areas to set up what they called organised settlement patterns, vachiti vanhu ngavagare mumaraini. This set-up literally meant people were to settle in clusters together with their livestock.
My grandfather tried to explain to the white lands officer that it was a challenge for him to settle mumaraini as he had a lot of cattle and he risked the animals straying into relatives and villagers’ gardens. He was not totally opposed to moving to the new area, but his argument was that he wanted to stay where he was to be able to manage his cattle.
But the whites thought he was being resistant and he became a frequent guest of the police cells. He would be arrested, cuffed and put in leg irons before being dragged away in our presence.
Each time he returned, after the arrest, my grandfather would have a haphazard haircut to make him look like a vagrant or a mad man. You can imagine how it felt for me because this was a man who I knew more as a father, and looked up to.
I was close to my grandfather and at my tender age he sometimes took me on his hunting expeditions. Then there was the exercise to downsize the number of cattle, commonly known as madimura muswe.
The whites were arguing they were advocating good farming and conservation methods and as such one needed a few cattle that could be sustained by the available pastures. But those were all lies, they wanted to eliminate our traditional Mashona cattle which they thought were prone to diseases that could affect their high breed cattle.
When this exercise came, my grandfather lost a number of cattle that were just taken by the whites; just taken like that with no compensation.
But I am proud my grandfather stood his ground and he did not move to the new area. Even today, our rural homestead is where it has always been.
My dislike for the whites, if that is what is called politics, started from there and I was aged just four or five.
I was to enrol at Gwebu School in 1941 which was close to my grandfather’s homestead. But the school did not offer studies above Standard One level. There was another school, which was a distant, called Chamadende which had Standard Two.
Other schools such as Daramombe and Makumbe Mission were offering studies up to Standard Four. These were far away and for a small girl like me, to be sent to a boarding school, it was a problem because of my age.
I was to enrol at as a border at a non-denominational School in Shurugwi called Charles Wraith. Wraith was a social worker and had opened the school in March 1947 to accommodate students failing to get school places.
During that time there was demand for school places as the number of African children going to school had increased since most parents understood the importance of education as a basis for a better job.
At this school, priests from various churches would alternate in preaching.
In 1949, while in Standard Six we had Reverend Mupantsi of the Anglican Church who came to conduct a service. He gave a good sermon of what a good life awaited us in Heaven.
During those days, the church leaders would invite questions or comments from the students. I was the youngest at the school and raised my hand to comment.
I said to Reverend Mupantsi: “You have preached in a captivating way about this place called Heaven and I have fallen in love with it. If it were possible I would want to go there now. You say it is a beautiful place of milk and honey, golden gates and all, I want to go there.”
I didn’t know I had stirred a hornet’s nest.
Reverend Mupantsi read my comments otherwise and thought I was being rude towards him, trying to demean his sermon or challenging why we were on Earth if there was such a beautiful place.
I had made the comment with all honesty, sincerity and from the bottom of my heart in admiration of this place called Heaven.
My statement infuriated Reverend Mupantsi, who said I was politically-minded and got me expelled.
It was already examination time in November and I was not allowed to write the examinations.
I was to be rescued by Fathers Samukange and Kachidza just before the visit by Harold Macmillan to Rhodesia to work out the formation of the Federation of Southern Rhodesia and Nyasaland.
Macmillan, who because of his link to Charles Wraith, had visited the school and Fathers Samukange and Kachidza pleaded with him that I be allowed to continue with school.
That is how I was readmitted and wrote the examinations alone because other students had finished. I however managed to pass with flying colours.
I had been expelled and labelled politically-minded. I didn’t even know what that statement meant, but that is when I started taking the word politics seriously and got curious to know what it really meant.
Despite the fact that I was in Standard Six, the word “political” was not common.
At that time we were very passionate about our studies and phrases such as political-minded were uncommon to us.
But when I came across the phrase “politically-minded” and was accused of being politically-minded, I drew interest to know what that meant and the result was I ended up in politics.
After school I was to be employed as a school teacher in Kwekwe and in 1952 got married to George Tinarwo in Mzilikazi Bulawayo. I gave birth to my first son Emmanuel Tinarwo in 1953.
But the political mind had already settled in me.
One day, in 1953, as I left St Patricks Roman Catholic Church in Mzilikazi, Bulawayo with my child strapped to my back, I saw a group of about 25 men in what seemed a meeting at an open space.
As I passed through, I noticed one of the men was addressing the group. I grew up a curious character and even up to now I never let anything suspicious slip by me.
As I approached the group, I reduced my pace to eavesdrop on what was being discussed.
I heard the man, who was at the centre of attraction, saying “even if it means we will die, let it be so. We cannot continue being ill-treated at work without taking any action. We work hard, but the wages we get are an insult to our hard work.
“Our mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters cannot be chased away from where they are staying and leave behind the graves of our ancestors. Our fathers are losing cattle without any compensation from the whites”.
I then moved to where the group was to hear more.
The message was similar to what I had endured as a young girl when whites tried to evict my grandfather and eventually took away part of his cattle.
I was standing at the back of this grouping and the man who had been addressing stopped speaking.
He came and inquired if I needed any assistance. I said: “I heard what you were saying and I am just interested to listen.”
The men who were there were surprised because they all could hear my response. The man looked puzzled and went back to address the group. They were talking of unfair treatment in the workplace, poor salaries and unequal job opportunities between the whites and blacks.
After the meeting, it seems almost everyone was interested to know who I was, what I did in life, and where I lived. I later learnt the meeting was a trade union gathering and the man who was at the centre was Benjamin Burombo, one of the early nationalist and National Hero who died in 1958.
To be continued next week
