Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe : politics, power, and memory 978-3-319-60555-5, 3319605550, 978-3-319-60554-8

Table of contents :
Front Matter ....Pages i-xxi
Introduction: Writing Joshua Nkomo into History and Narration of the Nation (Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni)....Pages 1-45
Front Matter ....Pages 47-47
The Contributions of Joshua Nkomo to the Liberation of Zimbabwe (Eliakim M. Sibanda)....Pages 49-71
Joshua Nkomo and the Internationalization of Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Liberation (Martin Rupiya)....Pages 73-90
Joshua Nkomo and the Quest for Unity and Peace in Zimbabwe (Kenneth Tafira)....Pages 91-113
The Entrapment of Joshua Nkomo Within Global Imperial Snares (Gorden Moyo)....Pages 115-147
Lancaster House Talks: Timing, Cold War and Joshua Nkomo (Pathisa Nyathi)....Pages 149-170
Front Matter ....Pages 171-171
Joshua Nkomo: Nationalist Diplomat, ‘Father of the Nation’ or ‘Enemy of the State’ (Timothy Scarnecchia)....Pages 173-192
Joshua Nkomo: The Trial of a Philosopher of Liberation (William Jethro Mpofu)....Pages 193-211
Unearthing the Legacy of ‘Father Zimbabwe’: A Decolonial Imaginary (Blessed Ngwenya)....Pages 213-235
Making Sense of Joshua Nkomo’s Political Behaviour: A Sociogenic Approach (Morgan Ndlovu)....Pages 237-251
Joshua Nkomo on Land: Exploring His Vision for Land Reform and Land Use in Zimbabwe (Rudo Gaidzanwa)....Pages 253-277
Joshua Nkomo on Transitional Justice in Zimbabwe (Everisto Benyera)....Pages 279-295
Front Matter ....Pages 297-297
Joshua Nkomo and Nelson Mandela: Ideas of Nation and Liberation (Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Busani Mpofu)....Pages 299-322
Reconstructing the Self: Hauntology and Spectrality in Nkomo’s Autobiography (Josiah Nyanda)....Pages 323-340
Self-Writing and Subjection: Frederick Douglas and Joshua Nkomo (Tendayi Sithole)....Pages 341-372
Father Zimbabwe: Media, Memory and Joshua Nkomo (Sylvester Dombo)....Pages 373-387
The Immortalisation of Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo (Henry Chiwaura)....Pages 389-403
Whose Nkomo Is It Anyway? Joshua Nkomo’s Statue and Commemorative Landscape (Thabisani Ndlovu)....Pages 405-439
Back Matter ....Pages 441-454

Citation preview

AFRICAN HISTORIES AND MODERNITIES

JOSHUA MQABUKO NKOMO OF ZIMBABWE Politics, Power, and Memory Edited by

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

African Histories and Modernities Series editors Toyin Falola University of Texas at Austin Austin, TX, USA Matthew M. Heaton Virginia Tech Blacksburg, VA, USA

This book series serves as a scholarly forum on African contributions to and negotiations of diverse modernities over time and space, with a particular emphasis on historical developments. Specifically, it aims to refute the hegemonic conception of a singular modernity, Western in origin, spreading out to encompass the globe over the last several decades. Indeed, rather than reinforcing conceptual boundaries or parameters, the series instead looks to receive and respond to changing perspectives on an important but inherently nebulous idea, deliberately creating a space in which multiple modernities can interact, overlap, and conflict. While privileging works that emphasize historical change over time, the series will also feature scholarship that blurs the lines between the historical and the contemporary, recognizing the ways in which our changing understandings of modernity in the present have the capacity to affect the way we think about African and global histories. Editorial Board Aderonke Adesanya, Art History, James Madison University Kwabena Akurang-Parry, History, Shippensburg University Samuel O. Oloruntoba, History, University of North Carolina, Wilmington Tyler Fleming, History, University of Louisville Barbara Harlow, English and Comparative Literature, University of Texas at Austin Emmanuel Mbah, History, College of Staten Island Akin Ogundiran, Africana Studies, University of North Carolina, Charlotte More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14758

Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Editor

Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe Politics, Power, and Memory

Editor Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Archie Mafeje Research Institute University of South Africa Pretoria, South Africa

African Histories and Modernities ISBN 978-3-319-60554-8 ISBN 978-3-319-60555-5  (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2017944542 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: © Keystone Pictures USA/Alamy Stock Photo Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Foreword

“This book is not a biography of Nkomo”, Ndlovu-Gatsheni pre-emptively states in his introduction to this book. It is an interpretive study that writes back into the Zimbabwe nation the voices and deflated presences of those excluded and marginalised by it. But ironically, the victims of political exclusion have unexpectedly acquired a more secure legacy and enduring taste for a resonant political afterlife than the perpetrators of their forced disappearance and diminution in history and politics. Astonished and infuriated, the perpetrators regard their undying victims with “A cobra’s puzzled glance at the bitten life that would not die”, as Dambudzo Marechera would have succinctly put it (Mindblast 1984: 64). The “celebratory tone” evident in most of the chapters in this book is justifiable: it comes from a place of woundedness overwhelmed by political toxicity. It is a critical celebration of the figural resilience of Joshua Nkomo and his survival; and a sharp, cringing awareness of the tainted and haunted nature of state power in postcolonial Africa. It is as if anyone who participated in the anti-colonial struggles and failed to enter the halls of power in 1980 (in the case of Zimbabwe) failed therefore to enter history; hence, the euphoric taunts aimed at Robert Mugabe and the devastating critique of postcolonial power that is Nkomo’s biography. Mugabe has a dauntingly solid and spectral presence both in the critical ruminations presented in this book and in Nkomo’s political life. Given such a challenge, it turns out that a book on Nkomo is not just a book on Nkomo, but an exercise in exorcism as well as path-clearing. v

vi  Foreword

Essays in this book are trenchant in their criticism of what NdlovuGatsheni has inventively termed “commissar scholars” who peddle partisan histories and narratives that deride and denigrate Joshua Nkomo for the benefit of Robert Mugabe. These “commissars” have dedicated their blindness to eviscerate the body of public memory and silence the voices and perspectives represented by Joshua Nkomo in postcolonial Zimbabwean history and politics. There is, again, a challenge here. Essays in this book, as Ndlovu-Gatsheni warns, are in danger of overcorrecting the imbalance of critical resources devoted by Robert Mugabe to the interment of Nkomo in the Evil Forest. There is a way in which counter-celebration morphs into counteronesidedness. Two wrongs do not make it right. However, procedurally it makes sense: the positive identification of a survivor of historical and political carnage must of necessity evoke feelings of awe which might find egress in songful dance. This is what I see as happening in most of the chapters in this book. Then follows the careful separation of the victim from the debris, and the surgical extraction of fragments of a hostile history that would have penetrated his body, distorting and disabling it for life. It is not possible to narrate the biography and history of Nkomo without talking about how Mugabe inhabits and collides with that life of struggle. The essays struggle to deftly eschew being ensnared by the lures of a celebratory, rehabilitative counter-scholarship by striking a delicate balance between repair work and reconstruction in the aftermaths of Nkomo’s experience of the demolition work that Mugabe’s wrecking ball had done to his stature and memory. There are methodological and philosophical tensions registered across the entire book, and these relate to the impulse to recreate an alternative history while at the same time building from the shards what could be considered the history and life of Nkomo. It is not an easy task. It is a tempestuous space riven by the same hand that sundered Nkomo’s life; it is the same hand that, after Nkomo’s death, dabbles in his canonization and contested statuary. The beatification of Nkomo in musical galas and political mantras (well-captured in these essays) orchestrated by Mugabe post-2000 signalled the new state of capture of Nkomo’s life of struggle, particularly to service the hero-hungry imaginations of his erstwhile enemies and tormentors. Nkomo’s body is once again exactly where Robert Mugabe has always wanted it to be. It is laid out in the pantheon that is carefully and self-servingly curated by Robert Mugabe.

Foreword

  vii

The dizzying rotation of Nkomo’s life seems to indicate not only the figural significance that he wields in Zimbabwean politics, but the selfsacrifice that required the harsh or diplomatic silencing of the memories of the atrocities committed on Nkomo’s past in order to allow for an altruistic but abused accommodation in the afterlife. This too is the understated bitter experience of reconciliation and selflessness. This kind of experience requires sensitive intellectual work that repositions and restructures rather than renovate and refurbish Nkomo’s life. The final section of this book does this praiseworthy and necessary work. It is to Prof. Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni that we owe this largeness of critical vision as well as an unflagging gaze into one of the most tortured embodiments of Zimbabwean nation-building, Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo. This book reinvents Nkomo not only as the folkloric “slippery stone” that he was to colonisers, but positions him as the bedrock and beacon of modern Zimbabwean nationhood. Therein lies the political and critical gravitas of this book, as a work of memory and as a comprehension of the dynamics of African power. University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa

Prof. Robert Muponde

Acknowledgements

This book will never have materialised without the cooperation and commitment of the contributors to the project. I therefore take this ­ opportunity to thank all the contributors most sincerely. Like all academic work, the writing of this book meant compromising on family responsibilities and I wish to express my thanks to my wife Pinky, my children Vulindlela Kings, Thandolwenkosi Jaqueline, and Nobuntu Anaya for tolerating my absence and understanding the importance of this work. At Palgrave Macmillan, I wish to express my thanks to Prof. Toyin Falola the Series Editor for African Histories and Modernities; Megan Laddusaw (Commissioning Editor—History); and Christine Pardue (Editorial Assistant—History). Finally, a word of thanks to the anonymous reviewers—the review comments enabled improvement of this book.

ix

Contents

1

Introduction: Writing Joshua Nkomo into History and Narration of the Nation Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

1

Part I  Imperialism, Nationalism, Liberation and Leadership 2

The Contributions of Joshua Nkomo to the Liberation of Zimbabwe Eliakim M. Sibanda

49

3

Joshua Nkomo and the Internationalization of Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Liberation Martin Rupiya

73

4

Joshua Nkomo and the Quest for Unity and Peace in Zimbabwe Kenneth Tafira

91

5

The Entrapment of Joshua Nkomo Within Global Imperial Snares Gorden Moyo

115

xi

xii  Contents

6

Lancaster House Talks: Timing, Cold War and Joshua Nkomo Pathisa Nyathi

149

Part II  Legacy, Diplomacy, Political Philosophy and Fatherhood 7

Joshua Nkomo: Nationalist Diplomat, ‘Father of the Nation’ or ‘Enemy of the State’ Timothy Scarnecchia

173

8

Joshua Nkomo: The Trial of a Philosopher of Liberation William Jethro Mpofu

193

9

Unearthing the Legacy of ‘Father Zimbabwe’: A Decolonial Imaginary Blessed Ngwenya

213

10 Making Sense of Joshua Nkomo’s Political Behaviour: A Sociogenic Approach Morgan Ndlovu

237

11 Joshua Nkomo on Land: Exploring His Vision for Land Reform and Land Use in Zimbabwe Rudo Gaidzanwa

253

12 Joshua Nkomo on Transitional Justice in Zimbabwe Everisto Benyera

279

Part III Nation-Building, Persecution, Autobiography and Rehabilitation 13 Joshua Nkomo and Nelson Mandela: Ideas of Nation and Liberation  Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Busani Mpofu

299

14 Reconstructing the Self: Hauntology and Spectrality in Nkomo’s Autobiography Josiah Nyanda

323

15 Self-Writing and Subjection: Frederick Douglas and Joshua Nkomo Tendayi Sithole

341

16 Father Zimbabwe: Media, Memory and Joshua Nkomo Sylvester Dombo

373

17 The Immortalisation of Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo Henry Chiwaura

389

18 Whose Nkomo Is It Anyway? Joshua Nkomo’s Statue and Commemorative Landscape Thabisani Ndlovu

405

Further Reading

441

Index 

447

xiii

Editor

and

Contributors

About the Editor Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni is founding head of the Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI) and is currently Director of Scholarship in the Change Management Unit (CMU) at the University of South Africa. He holds a doctorate in historical studies from the University of Zimbabwe. He is the founder of Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN), a member of Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf), Research Associate at the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University in the United Kingdom and fellow of the African Studies Centre (ASC) in the Netherlands. He has published extensively in the areas of history of the Ndebele, African political thought, identity, nationalism, development, ideology, and decolonial/postcolonial theory. His latest major publications include Mugabeism? History, Politics and Power in Zimbabwe (Palgrave Macmillan 2015) and The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and Politics of Life (Berghahn Books, 2016).

Contributors Everisto Benyera is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of South Africa. He holds a doctorate in African politics from the University of South Africa. His research and publications are on transitional politics and transitional justice. xv

xvi  Editor and Contributors

Henry Chiwaura  is a Lecturer in Archaeology, Museums and Heritage Studies at Great Zimbabwe University in Zimbabwe. Sylvester Dombo is a Lecturer in the Department of History and Development Studies at Great Zimbabwe University in Zimbabwe. He holds a doctorate in history from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. His research interests include media, religion, politics, nationalism, democracy, violence, land reform, and entertainment. Rudo Gaidzanwa  is a Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Zimbabwe and a renowned feminist scholar. She is a former Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Zimbabwe and has published extensively on land, gender, and social policy. Busani Mpofu is a Senior Researcher and Acting Head of Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI). He holds a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland in the United Kingdom. His research interests are in urban history and the agrarian questions. William Mpofu is a Researcher at the Wits Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand and a member of African Decolonial Research Network (ADERN). His doctoral studies focus on Thabo Mbeki as a philosopher of liberation. His research interests are in semiotics and philosophy of liberation. Gorden Moyo is a Zimbabwean opposition politician and a former cabinet minister. He holds a doctorate in leadership studies from the National University of Science and Technology (NUST). His research interests are in development, politics, and governance. Thabisani Ndlovu is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Arts at Walter Sisulu University in South Africa. He holds a doctorate in literary studies from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. His main areas of research include literary studies, human rights, human diversity, race, nation, and restitution. Morgan Ndlovu  is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Development Studies at the University of South Africa and a founding member of Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN). He holds a doctorate in social anthropology from Monash University in Australia. His main areas of research include Zulu cultural villages, identity, local economic development, and coloniality of knowledge.

Editor and Contributors

  xvii

Blessed Ngwenya is a Lecturer in the Department of Communication Science at the University of South Africa and a member of Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN). He holds a doctorate in media and communication from Oxford University. His research interests are in political economy and decolonial approaches to media and communication. Josiah Nyanda is a doctoral student at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. His main field of study is literary studies. Pathisa Nyathi is a well-known Zimbabwean historian and cultural activist. He has published extensively on Ndebele history and culture. Most of his publications appear in indigenous Ndebele language. Martin Rupiya  is a Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute of African Renaissance Studies (IARS) at the University of South Africa. He holds a doctorate in military history from the University of Zimbabwe and has published extensively on security sector reform and military history of Africa. Timothy Scarnecchia is Associate Professor of History at Kent University in the USA. His research interests are in Zimbabwe particularly nationalism and urban politics. Eliakim M. Sibanda is an Associate Professor of History and chair of the Department of History at the University of Winnipeg. He researches and publishes on immigration, social movements, liberation movements, biographies, and human rights. His major publication is The Zimbabwe African People's Union, 1961–87: A Political History of Insurgency in Southern Rhodesia (Africa World Press, 2004). Tendayi Sithole is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Sciences at the University of South Africa where he teaches African politics. He holds a doctorate in African politics from the same university. Sithole is a founding member of Africa Decolonial Research Network (ADERN) and the executive council member of South African Association of Political Studies (SAAPS). His research interests include black radical thought, decolonial critical theory, Africana existential phenomenology, public intellectuals, and literary studies. His major publication is Steve Biko: Decolonial Meditations (Lexington Books 2016). Kenneth Tafira is a former Postdoctoral Fellow at the Archie Mafeje Research Institute for Applied Social Policy (AMRI) at the University

xviii  Editor and Contributors

of South Africa. He holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa. He has done extensive research on black liberation thought and his recent major work is Black Nationalist Thought in South Africa: The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Abbreviations

ANC ANC-Z AU BSAC CAF CIA DRC FRELIMO LAA MDC MPLA NAM NDP OAU OAULC PAC PF-ZAPU SADC SRANC SWAPO UANC UDI UK UN USSR ZANLA

African National Congress African National Council-Zimbabwe African Union British South Africa Company Central Africa Federation Central Intelligence Agency Democratic Republic of Congo Front for the Liberation of Mozambique Land Apportionment Act Movement for Democratic Change Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola Non-Aligned Movement National Democratic Party Organization of African Unity Organization of African Unity Liberation Committee Pan-Africanist Congress Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African People’s Union Southern Africa Development Community South Rhodesia African National Congress South West Africa People’s Organization United African National Council Unilateral Declaration of Independence United Kingdom United Nations Union of Soviet Socialist Republic Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army xix

xx  Abbreviations ZANU ZANU-PF ZAPU ZIPA ZIPRA

Zimbabwe African National Union Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Zimbabwe African People’s Union Zimbabwe People Army Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army

List of Figures

Fig. 17.1

Showing some of Nkomo’s representations in Zimbabwe

400

xxi

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Writing Joshua Nkomo into History and Narration of the Nation Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Introduction Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe: Politics, Power, and Memory is the first academic work on the life of struggle and legacy of Nkomo—a Zimbabwean leading nationalist who is credited for being the founder of Zimbabwean nationalism itself (‘Father Zimbabwe’). What is ironic about the legacy of Nkomo as ‘Father Zimbabwe’ is that he is one of those African nationalists who actively led in the anti-colonial liberation struggle from the beginning up to the end of colonialism, but did not win elections in 1980 to become the first black leader of independent Zimbabwe. Rather than enjoying the status of a founder of an independent African state, Nkomo endured political persecution by the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) from 1982 to 1987, including assassination attempts.

This introduction draws partly from my earlier work on Nkomo (NdlovuGatsheni 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009; Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (*)  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_1

1

2  S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Thus, his life of struggle and legacy is a political tale of trial and tribulations under both the white minority regime and the black majority government. The political persecution of his person, his supporters, his political party (Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African People’s Union-PFZAPU), and his military wing (the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army-ZIPRA) only ended in 1987 when he politically surrendered as an opposition leader and joined ZANU-PF under what became known as the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987. This Unity Accord was signed after ZANU-PF had set the Fifth Brigade (a North Korean-trained military outfit) on Nkomo, his party, military wing and supporters, which resulted in the death of over 20,000 people in Matabeleland and the Midlands Regions. What compounded the trials and tribulations of Nkomo, his party, his military wing and his supporters was that the international community never raised its voice against the persecutions to the extent that Hazel Cameron (2017: 2), concluding that the British in particular ‘were consistent in their efforts to minimise the magnitude of the Fifth Brigade atrocities’ as part of pursuit of ‘realpolitik’. The British silence in particular is attributed to three factors. The first is that the British had important economic and strategic interests in Southern Africa, and Robert Mugabe was their ‘point man’. The second is that for the British Zimbabwe under Mugabe offered a good example of a successful transition that could be used to persuade apartheid South Africa. Finally, to the British, Zimbabwe under Mugabe offered a useful bulwark against Soviet influence (Cameron 2017: 3). All this makes political sense because PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA had been sponsored by the Soviet Union during the anti-colonial struggle. Three chapters in this book by Martin Rupiah, Pathisa Nyathi and Godern Moyo deal with the entrapment of Nkomo in ‘Cold War coloniality’ and ‘imperalism of decolonization’ in which some political formations had to be propped up and others destroyed depending on their value in ‘global realpolitik’. Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA became a priority for physical elimination following the shooting down of two Rhodesian plans by ZIPRA in 1978. Aeneas Chigwedere in his booklet entitled The Hunt for Joshua Nkomo (2003) emphasises that after 1978, the assassination of Nkomo became a priority for the white Rhodesia regime and its white international allies. That Nkomo had to be hunted down for assassination by a black government in the same manner the Rhodesians wanted to assassinate him reveals complicity of forces. Mugabe’s persecution of

1  INTRODUCTION: WRITING JOSHUA NKOMO INTO HISTORY … 

3

Nkomo was covered by Americans and the British who had since the Lancaster House Conference revealed their anointment of Mugabe as their preferred black leader of Zimbabwe (See chapters by Pathisa Nyathi and Gorden Moyo in this volume). This book is not a biography of Nkomo. It is an interpretive study that focuses on different aspects of Nkomo’s life of struggle, legacy as well as trial and tribulations of a veteran nationalist leader whose political existence and history successfully resisted deliberate erasure because of the strengths of his liberation credentials. This book is part of the emerging literature that writes back into the nation those who have been excluded and at the same time subverting the official historical narratives that privilege the hagiographies of those who ascended to power at the end of direct colonialism in 1980. The historical record seems to reveal that those like Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo who did not succeed to win independence elections and who never ascended to the seat of power, posthumously retain positive aspects of their legacy than those who succeed in being presidents. Despite persecution by those in charge of the state, Nkomo’s legacy is more secure than that of President Robert Gabriel Mugabe who has been in power since 1980. Mugabe’s legacy is hugely damaged. He is associated with ethnic divisions, collapse of the economy, human rights violations and deviation from democracy. Mugabe will likely be remembered as the undertaker of the nation. So far the many books that have been written on Mugabe are condemnatory rather than celebratory (see NdlovuGatsheni 2015). Even for Nkomo, his decision to dissolve PF-ZAPU due to persecution of his supporters and himself, his joining of ZANU-PF through the Unity Accord of 1987 and his acceptance of the position of Vice-President of Zimbabwe, nearly dented his legacy very badly. But that Nkomo never became the top political dog saved his legacy and is remembered fondly. This is why the tone of this book is overly ­celebratory. The same is true of nationalist leaders, such as Herbert Chitepo, Josiah Tongongara, Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo in Zimbabwe; Steve Bantu Biko, Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, Oliver Reginald Tambo in South Africa; Almilcar Cabral in Guinea Bissau; Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); and Eduardo Modlane in Mozambique, to name a few who died in the course of the anti-colonial struggle or immediately after the attainment of independence, are remembered fondly as heroes and are even elevated to sainthood. But for those who ascended

4  S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

to power at the end of colonialism are rarely remembered fondly. They soon became enemies of the people they claimed to have liberated from colonial oppression. This is partly because the very anti-colonial nationalism that had brought people together was rarely reinvented successfully into post-colonial patriotism. Rather anti-colonial, nationalism quickly mutated into authoritarian nation-statism. Even Nelson Mandela of South Africa, who spent 27 years in prison and had attained an iconic and sainthood during the anti-apartheid struggle, taking over power as the first black president of South Africa dented his iconic and sainthood status. Even though Mandela left power voluntarily, after serving only one 5-year presidential term, that short 5-year stint as president enabled the rise of negative judgements of his legacy, with some of those born after apartheid even accusing him of being a traitor and sell-out who left the crown in the hands of white minority settlers (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2016). For those like Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola, who have been in power since 1980 and 1979, respectively, they have attained the negative characterisation as typical dictators clinging to power without the popular support (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2015). Nkomo was a leading nationalist who led the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and commanded the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) during the anti-colonial liberation struggle. But at the end of the anti-colonial liberation struggle in 1980, Nkomo did not win the independence elections. What followed was persecution of Nkomo, his party, his military force and his supporters. In fact, an entire Brigade—the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade was set on him, his party, his forces and his supporters from 1983 to 1987 (CCJP and LRF Report 1997). Concerted efforts were made to rubbish Nkomo’s liberation credentials. He became characterised as the ‘Father of Dissidents’ as part of contesting his claim to the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’. Mugabe likened Nkomo to a snake in his house whose head had to be crushed. Mugabe was claiming Zimbabwe as his house. He was claiming the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’ by presenting himself as the head of the Zimbabwe household. Nkomo became an inconvenience inside Mugabe’s house. The persecution only ended in December 1987, when Nkomo signed the Unity Accord which allowed ZANU-PF led by Mugabe to swallow PF-ZAPU (Ncube 1989). The people of Matabeleland and the Midlands regions stood stoically behind Nkomo and PF-ZAPU during the years of persecution as

1  INTRODUCTION: WRITING JOSHUA NKOMO INTO HISTORY … 

5

they had done during the anti-colonial liberation struggle. But soon after joining the ZANU-PF dominated government as a Vice-President of the country, Nkomo began to be criticised as a coward and a sellout who failed to protect his supporters from persecution. It would seem what remained of his positive legacy was only served by the fact that he never became the president of the country. Thus, the failing of the economy, human rights violations and lack of democracy were never directly levelled at Nkomo. Some even thought that if Nkomo had become the first black leader of Zimbabwe, the country could not have been plunged into economic and political crisis. Nkomo is remembered as a true nationalist in fact as a supra-nationalist who could have been more successful in building pan-ethnic unity and launched a more successful nation-building project compared to Mugabe who ended up building Zezuru hegemony rather than pan-ethnic unity. That Nkomo was persecuted by a political group that plunged the country into economic and political chaos has generated public sympathy for him and this is reflected in the rather celebratory tone of the essays contained in this volume. Nkomo is largely featuring as a good leader and a statesman that was persecuted. This celebratory tone reached a crescendo when Nkomo died in July 1999. His death invoked deep sympathies across the nation. Posthumous reflections on Nkomo’s life of struggle and legacy began to ‘write’ him back into the history of the nation. Even those like Mugabe who spearheaded the persecution of Nkomo ended up acknowledging that Nkomo was actually the ‘Father of the Nation’. At another level, Nkomo’s history, life of struggle and legacy reflected the broader vicissitudes of what Homi K. Bhabha (1990) described as ‘narrating the nation’ as a site of struggles. Those nationalist politicians like Nkomo who pioneered, actively participated and led the anti-colonial struggles but failed to win independence elections were immediately disqualified from speaking in the name of the nation. The sense of nationness was quickly appropriated and monopolised by those who successfully won elections. Rosa Luxemburg also reflected on the tensions and contestations attendant to the ‘narration of the nation’ when she wrote that: The ‘nation’ should have the ‘right’ to self-determination. But who is that ‘nation’ and who has the authority and the ‘right’ to speak for the ‘nation’ and express its will? […]. Does there exist one political party which would not claim that it alone, among all others, truly expresses the will of the ‘nation’ whereas all other parties give only perveted and false expressions of the national will. (Luxemburg 1976: 141)

6  S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Those politicians that lost independence elections however hard they had fought for the national liberation, began to be stripped-off of their nationalist and liberation credentials and heroism. Indeed, soon after attainment of political independence by Zimbabwe in 1980, Mugabe and ZANU-PF assumed the identity of the only authentic revolutionary party and Nkomo’s PF-ZAPU was de-legitimised. The contestation over authentic liberation identity began as far back as 1963 when ZANU was born as a splinter political formation from ZAPU that was led by Nkomo. When ZANU-PF won elections in 1980 and took over the state, it used state power to try and annihilate PF-ZAPU and Nkomo. Nkomo’s history, life of struggle and legacy also highlighted how he was entangled in the imperatives of ‘Africanism, nationalism and ethnicity’ (Young 2012: 291). The concept of ‘triple helix of identity’ coined by Crawford Young (2012: 291) expresses how the ethos of territorial nationalism conflicted with those of pan-Africanism and the realities of ethnicity tended to undercut the very processes of the imagination and invention of the common territorial nation. Young (2012: 293) convincingly argued that the ‘triple helix of identity has played a critical role in defining the political itineraries of African state’. Nkomo hailed from the minority Ndebele-speaking people inhabiting Matabeleland and Midlands regions. Perhaps aware of his identity of a nationalist leader hailing from a minority group, Nkomo became a leading advocate for a pan-ethnic Zimbabwe. He actively played a role in the very invention of the idea of Zimbabwe as a unitary state. His party, ZAPU, was the first significant political formation to use the name ‘Zimbabwe’. Thus, Nkomo’s history, life of struggle and legacy of Nkomo were deeply entangled in the itineraries of the ‘triple helix of identity’. Those who competed with him for leadership were mainly from the majority Shonaspeaking people. Ethnicity in Zimbabwe like in the rest of the continent is practiced by everyone and denied by all. Nkomo’s autobiography reveals how his claim to be ‘Father Zimbabwe’ is derived from quantification of his political work. Nkomo led almost all the big nationalist political formations from the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) in the late 1950s to the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and commanded the welltrained, resourced and Soviet-backed Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). He spent 11 years in prison and over a decade in exile. Losing elections to Mugabe in 1980 did not sit well with Nkomo. He lamented the loss in these revealing words:

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Is this how the people of Zimbabwe thank me for all the suffering and sacrifices I made from 1957 to this year in order to liberate this country? Is this how they think they should thank me? (qouted in Msipa 2015: 94)

But his wife Mama Mafuyane who was in Germany at the time of the announcement of election results had a different response. When Nkomo phoned her to deliver the news of his party’s defeat in the elections, Mafuyane began by congratulating Nkomo saying ‘Amhlophe’ in IsiNdebele before he could even explain: Oh, I am so happy that we have won. I have already packed, and if there was transport to bring me to Zimbabwe tonight I would have come but I have to wait until tomorrow. Oh, I can’t wait. (quoted in Msipa 2015: 95)

Cephas Msipa a long-time ally of Nkomo who was there when Nkomo phoned Mafuyane wrote that Nkomo was initially ‘flabbergasted’ by Mafiyane’s jubilation in the face of a PF-ZAPU loss and a ZANU-PF victory. Mafuyane had to explain the basis of her happiness: I understand Smith lost and the Patriotic Front won. Were we not fighting for majority rule? I am congratulating you for majority rule. That’s what we got. Didn’t we get that? (quoted in Msipa 2015: 95)

In Msipa (2015: 95)’s reading of Nkomo’s body language, phoning Mafuyane produced the needed political therapy. ‘He [Nkomo] was suddenly a different Nkomo. He had relaxed immediately’. Nkomo’s PF-ZAPU had only gained 20 seats compared to ZANU-PF’s 57 seats. A political formation that had splint from ZAPU in 1963 had suddenly become senior and all its members were political juniors to Nkomo and were now in charge of the state. How do we explain this political eclipsing of ZAPU and Nkomo. In the first place, what escaped ZAPU, ZIPRA and Nkomo was the fact that where ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Army) the military wing of ZANU operated inside Rhodesia one of its main tasks was not primarily military engagement of the Rhodesia forces. Its main task was to mobilise people and to destroy ZAPU structures. In the second place, ZANLA had the advantage of operating from Mozambique, which enabled them to cover the most populous regions of Manicaland and Mashonaland. The results of 1980, elections indicated that the vote followed the bullet—when one’s

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military forces were dominant during the liberation struggle—the party was guaranteed of winning elections. In the third place, the history of post-colonial Africa has revealed over and over that elections in Africa are nothing other than an ethnic census. The leaders hailing from the majority ethnic groups have a higher chance of winning elections than those hailing from minority groups. Fundamentally, even those who publicly express themselves as nationalists they privately practice ethnicity in their mobilisation of support. ZANU-PF was never an exception. PF-ZAPU was also not an exception. PF-ZAPU’s weakness was how to mobilise outside of Matabeleland and the Midlands regions where ZIPRA had operated mainly. ZANU-PF and ZANLA made Mashonaland and the Manicaland no-go areas for PF-ZAPU and Nkomo to campaign. Throughout the liberation struggle, ZANLA had ‘conquered’, ‘captured’ and ‘occupied’ Mashonaland, Manicaland and Masvingo on behalf of ZANU-PF. Nkomo who had been affectionately known as ‘Chibwechitedza’ in the 1960s as well as ‘Umdala Wethu’ and ‘Father Zimbabwe’ among his supporters found himself having to defend himself from a new political identity of ‘Father of Dissidents’ and a ‘snake’ inside Mugabe’s house. This was the beginning of writing Nkomo, PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA out of the nation and its narration. This writing of ZAPU, ZIPRA and Nkomo out of the nation began with confiscation of ZAPU archives by the ZANU-PF government in 1982 under the pretext of a ‘discovery’ of arms caches in PF-ZAPU-owned farms (more on the arms cache saga later). What this book demonstrates is that any writing and narration of Zimbabwe’s modern history from the very conception of the idea of Zimbabwe in the 1960s right up to it concretisation in 1980 will remain incomplete without Nkomo’s story, without ZAPU’s story and without ZIPRA’s story. Nkomo’s given names tell a rich history and underscore his centrality in the history of the liberation struggle. ‘Chibwechitedza’ is a Shona word which refers to softness and slipperiness of a stone which make it had to hold in one’s hands. With reference to Nkomo, it conveyed two meanings. The first meaning is linked to Nkomo’s birth which was predicted by a ‘voice’/‘izwi’ from the sacred Matopos Hills where indigenous black Zimbabweans went to seek guidance and predictions from Ngwali/Mwari (Indigenous God). The legend is that when Nkomo’s parent had difficulties in conceiving a child they went to the

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sacred Njelele Shrine in the Matopos Hills to seek blessings and they were promised that a son would be born who will lead the people in the struggle for liberation. This linked Nkomo to the Matopos rocks and mountains. The second meaning derived from how during the liberation struggle Nkomo would frequently slip through security snares as well as avoid imprisonment. What is interesting to note, while Nkomo’s supporters celebrated how Nkomo avoided being captured and detained by Rhodesian state until 1964, those who had split from ZAPU to form ZANU used that very fact to denigrate Nkomo as a coward who always avoided being arrested. ‘Umdala Wethu’ is a Ndebele honnorific and affectionate term which highlighted the fatherly figure of Nkomo. In the first place, it highlighted Nkomo as a ‘patriarch’ of the Zimbabwe anticolonial struggle. In the second place, it was a recognition of Nkomo’s huge and towering physique and conveyed a sense of magnanimous nationalist ‘patriarch’. The father-figure politics and its logics in African post-colonial history are explored by Michael G. Schatzberg (2001: 1): It argues that political legitimacy in this corner of the globe rests on the tacit normative idea that government stands in the same relationship to its citizens that a father does to his children. In turn, this normative idea ultimately derives from a pervasive, yet largely unarticulated, conceptual understanding of the distribution of rights and responsibilities within a highly idealized family. Moral matrices are present in all societies, and they change across both time and space.

When Mugabe described Nkomo as a snake inside his house, he was also claiming a father-figure identity. Schatzberg used the example of the notorious dictator Mobutu Sese Seko to demonstrate how the logics of father-figures worked in politics to justify authoritarianism and dictatorship. By for Nkomo unlike for Mobutu, for instance, the ‘father figure’ name spoke to his warmth rather than notoriety and dictatorship. The title ‘Father Zimbabwe’ had a political meaning, and it was a recognition of the pioneering role that Nkomo played in laying the foundation of Zimbabwe nationalism and playing a leading role in the anti-colonial struggle until Zimbabwe was born as a free country in 1980. It became a highly contested title soon after Nkomo had lost elections. But by as early as 1983, Nkomo found himself not only humiliated through sacking from cabinet by Mugabe but his very life had to

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be protected from danger. Between 1983 and 1986, Nkomo endured another exile in the United Kingdom, this time running away from a black government that was after his life just like the colonial regime of Ian Douglas Smith. Nkomo had spent 13 years in exile in Zambia prosecuting the anti-colonial struggle, and he never imagined another exile from an independent Zimbabwe. It was while in exile in Britain that Nkomo had to defend his nationalist credentials and his title ‘Father Zimbabwe’ from ZANU-PF and Mugabe who were poised to rubbish it. He did a spirited defence in his autobiography. The opening paragraphs are very revealing of how Nkomo defendend his liberatory credentials: From my earliest youth I thirsted for freedom. When I became a man, I understood that I could not be free while my country and its people were subjrected to a government in which they had no say. In middle life I fought for national independence, and I was sixty-three years old when, in 1980, Zimbabwe emerged as the last of Britain’s African colonies to win nationhood. Yet even then the cause of freedom for the people had not prevailed. We had won our national right to independence, but our human rights were still suppressed. This is not a history—one day, if I am spared, I may contribute to the writing of one with a happy ending, but this story has no end. Instead it is the personal record of a life that has played a part in history, and it is also the work of an active politician who wishes to see things change for the better in the lives of the ordinary people of his country. I have been called ‘Father Zimbabwe.’ Whether I deserve that title is not for me to say. But by a dozen years in prison and half as many in exile I believe I have earned the right to speak up for freedom while it is still endangered—this time not by far-off colonial rulers, nor by a settler population who will, I hope now play their full part as citizens of a new nation, but by my former colleagues in the liberation struggle. (Nkomo 1984: xiii)

What this book reveals are the shifting invocations of nationalism underpinning the changing political identities of Nkomo as one of the leading Zimbabwean nationalist leaders. Changing representations of Nkomo cut across the colonial and post-colonial history of Zimbabwe. Nkomo’s death on the 1st of July 1999 became an important occasion for new elite reflections on the entire narration of the nation as Nkomo posthumously received the much-contested title of ‘Father Zimbabwe’.

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Theoretical/Conceptual Interventions This writing of Nkomo into history and the narration of the nation simultaneously unfolds as an extended historical analysis and commentary on the emergence of nationalism within which Nkomo’s political career emerged. What emerges poignantly are various and different representations of Nkomo as part of the unfolding of the complex processes of the making and unmaking of political identities. Political identities were always open to deconstruction and reconstruction as political elites competed for political dominance through the strategy of negative labelling and political delegitimation of competitors. The number of chapters that detail how Nkomo became a subject of cultural celebration after his death through galas revealed the importance of taking into account what has been termed the ‘cultural turn’ in the humanities and social sciences which inaugurated the ‘new historicism’ (Vesser 1989; Fox-Genovese 1989) as a theoretical orientation. New historicism is revisionist and deconstructivist. Under new historicism some long-standing meta-narratives and official histories are called into question as part of puncturing hegemonic and statist historiographies. What is also innovative about this books is that it contains other chapters that reflect the impact of emerging ‘decolonial turn’ critical of the limits of anti-colonial nationalism and which enable a refreshing reading of the political philosophy of Nkomo. What is disappointing about those chapters that deployed decoloniality as a lens of understanding the life and legacy of Nkomo is that they failed to transcend the celebratory orientation. One expected the decoloniality perspective to enable a critical engagement with the limits of anti-colonial politics within which Nkomo’s political life is located. What is useful though is that the chapters by William Mpofu, Morgan Ndlovu, Tendayi Sithole and Blessed Ngwenya delve deeper into Nkomo’s philosophy of liberation and reveal how his ideas of liberation were shaped by knowable political, cultural, epistemological and political environments. Gorden Moyo and Pathisa Nyathi open the canvas to deal with how Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA were ensnared in global coloniality including Cold War coloniality as well as ‘imperialism of decolonization’—in which the colonialists were actively involved in the clandestine politics of selection of which nationalist politician was to take over after the end of juridical colonialism even before elections are held. This is very revealing of how neo-colonies are invented. Lancaster House Conference was a site of ‘imperialism of

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decolonization’ with the aim of producing a neo-colony presided over by a trusted black face that will not destroy the neo-colonial structure. Thus, a combination of conventional historical narrativity, ‘new historicism’ and decolonial perspectives anchors this book theoretically and conceptually. This hybrid approach enabled the deconstruction and reconstruction of the history of Zimbabwe particularly the partisan and ethnic narrations of the nation and questioning of ZANU-PF half ‘truths’ (O’Tuathail 1996; Sutherland 2005; Gunn 2006). While new historicists have concentrated on rewriting and reinterpreting recorded histories as part of their protest against hegemonic, unitary and objective histories, it has afforded the contributors to dethrone most of what was erected ZANU-PF aligned commissar scholars complicity in silencing the role played by Nkomo, PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA in the liberation of Zimbabwe. It also enables reasoned responses to such latter-day scholars like Maurice Toanezvi Vambe (2009) who are failing to critique official partisan histories and consequently continue to attempt not only to downplay the persecutions of such leaders Nkomo but to rubbish the value of self-writing in a context in which the ruling party ZANU-PF has been ‘ruling’ through a very skewed invented historiography that imposes party hagiography on the nation and society as national history. The contributions predicated on new historicism in their deconstructive and constructive style have successfully exposed instrumentalities of power and ideological motivations in the writing of the history of the nation. While self-writing in the form of autobiographies have inherent weaknesses of always projecting the heroics and positive aspects of the subject being written into history, it remains one of the most useful ways of subverting official partisan histories masquerading as histories of the nation. Through close reading of autobiographies, we access the other side of history of those written out of the nation. Through the story of Nkomo what is attempted is to retell another history—one that advocates for justice, inclusivity, plurality and social change. What it puts to the public is what Michel Foucault (1980) termed ‘subjugated knowledges’ as well as marginalised, excluded and dissenting voices. Thus, taken together the chapters in this book were expected to inaugurate a paradigm shift from what history was or what it should be according ZANU-PF to an emphasis on how history worked, how it was produced and how it was deployed in particular ways for particular purposes (Trouillot 1995). The celebratory tone, however, foreclosed any critique of Nkomo as leader and his conceptions of

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nationalism. But what is not lost is the idea that histories were produced with an immediate goal in mind: ‘they are partisan histories, narratives about the past designed to help win arguments and political struggles’ (Friedman and Kenney 2005: 1). This led Michael de Certeau (1988: 36) to argue that ‘history endlessly finds the present in its object and the past in its practice’. It is within this context that history assumed the character of representations, regimes of truth and perspectival lenses than rigid objectivity and singular narratives. What is also highlighted in this book is how autobiography is lens of seeing through the making of history, identities and even imaginations of the nation as well as political contestations for power. While the surge of academic interest in biography and autobiography grew out of postmodernism which questioned teleologies of nation and elevated the focus on individual agency in history, in the Zimbabwean case, this genre is part of continuation of what Masipula Sithole (1999) characterised as ‘struggles-within-the struggle’. While Nkomo’s autobiography remains one of the richest sources on his life and legacy, just like all others it is a fighting text of an aggrieved politician that had lost elections and was enduring political persecution. While an autobiography is a useful entry point into issues of self-representation, individual self-portrayal and resistance to some external representations, it remains a polemic in which the true self is suppressed and the imagined one is privileged (Vambe and Channels 2009). In Zimbabwe, major nationalist political actors have used autobiographies to continue the competition for power, making them more of sites of power rivalries that must be used with care.

Historiographical Interventions Post-colonial Zimbabwean historiography unfolded through installation of ‘praise-texts’ by David Martin and Phyllis Johnson (1981) that set the stage for the official ZANU-centric history of the liberation struggle. Martin and Johnson became the earliest willing ‘commissar’ intellectuals of ZANU-PF and Mugabe who helped to produce a one-sided official nationalism as they served nationalist power instead of critiquing it (Robins 1996). These ‘commissar’ intellectuals became ‘willing scribes of a celebratory African nationalist history that profoundly shaped official accounts of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle’ (Robins 1996: 76). In this mould of history, one also found the early work of Terence Ranger (1985) and David Lan (1985) that romantically

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valorised what they termed ‘peasant consciousness’ and installed the ideas of the automatic popular revolution spearhead by ZANU-PF, ZANLA and Mugabe. Inadvertently, they became complicity in sideling and silencing of Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA contributions. The people of Matabeleland and the Midlands regions were excluded from the celebrated ‘peasant consciousness’ framework. The work of Ngwabi Bhebe (1999) an active participant in the anti-colonial liberation struggle from the ZAPU side attempted to strike a balance by bringing the history of ZAPU, Nkomo and ZIPRA into the existing heroic narratives of nationalism liberation struggle. Bhebe’s contribution was a simple historical task of ‘adding’ ZAPU, ZIPRA and Nkomo into a spoiled official narrative. This made these work easily appropriable by the ZANU-PF regime for its hegemonic and regime legitimating purposes. The works of Ibbo Mandaza which were predicated on political economy analysis became the earliest literature to highlight the entrapment of the state in coloniality and the dangers of the rise of a bureaucratic bourgeoisie that was inherently parasitic to the state. It was Mandaza who described the post-colonial state as a ‘schizophrenic’ political formation that violated the people’s rights and security while claiming to advance people’s interests. While this work predicated on political economy spoke to ‘state-making’ and ‘nation-building’, it never reflected specifically on what was happening in Matabeleland and the Midlands regions where the Fifth Brigade was committing atrocities and PF-ZAPU, ZIPRA and Nkomo were being persecuted in the broad-day light. One remains curious to know how the events that were unfolding in Matabeleland and the Midlands regions were interpreted from a political economy perspective which continues to privilege class analysis at the expense of ethnicity and race. In short, the majority of the works produced within the post-­colonial euphoric period assumed the format of ‘praise texts’ that accepted the victor’s version of history and ignored the activities of such nationalists as Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Reverend Sithole, James Chikerema and others who were active in the nationalist struggle throughout the 1970s but failed to come into power in 1980. It was mainly in the 2000s that state sponsorship of a narrow and fetishised history of the liberation war provoked robust deconstructions of this master-narrative (cf. BullChristiansen 2004; Ranger 2004; White 2003; Moore 2005). Interestingly, Ranger participated in both construction and deconstruction of nationalism and the armed liberation struggle when he

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began to explore how the rise of hegemonic Marxist-Leninist-Maoist nationalist politics of the 1970s erased and eradicated the evolution of pluralistic political traditions of the pre-1960s period (Robins 1996: 80). In 2003, Ranger mounted one of the most robust deconstructions of nationalism that was initiated by Norma Kriger in 1992 and blamed it for a host of post-colonial problems ranging from authoritarianism, personality cult, commandism, violence and militarism. A burgeoning ‘revisionist’ approach to nationalist history saw Louise White (2003) interrogating various and differing accounts or perspectives on the murder of Herbert Chitepo who was the chairman of ZANU in exile until 1975. White was not interested in the historical truths and fallacies of Zimbabwean historiography but instead she aimed to show ‘how narratives about the past are produced and reproduced and how power is produced and reproduced by these narratives’ (White 2003: 2). She sought to highlight the purposes for which different narratives were used and how these perspectives were competing for ‘truth’. The climax of revisionist historiography is the current tearing apart of all of the old certainties in Brian Raftopoulos and Alois Mlambo’s Becoming Zimbabwe (2009) and Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni’s Do ‘Zimbabweans’ Exist? (2009). The common thread is that of democratising historical knowledge and liberating it from dominant and hegemonic nationalist historiographies of the 1960s and 1970s that provided raw material that enabled monopolisation of national histories by a single political party and few political elites who claim to have ‘died’ for all Zimbabweans (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2009). Therefore, the analysis of the changing representations of nationalism as manifested in the life, times, death and after-life of Joshua Nkomo is built on the burgeoning revisionist historiography. This burgeoning revisionist historiography is further boosted by the publication of new autobiographies that are very critical of ZANU-PFcentric and Mugabe-centric history of the liberation struggle. It was not Nkomo alone who felt sidelined and who developed the urge to correct history. Judith Todd a daughter of Sir Garfield Todd who together with his father supported the liberation struggle and suffered detention and other forms of dehumanisation wrote Through the Darkness: A Life in Zimbabwe (2008) which reveals the post-colonial cruelties of ZANU-PF under Mugabe and told the story of the country’s silenced people such as the ZIPRA commander General Lookout Masuku who died in detention without committing any crime. Wilfred Mhanda who actively led

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and participated in ZIPA (Zimbabwe People’s Army who actively led and participated in that combined units from ZIPRA and ZANLA) was very critical of nationalist disunity and ideological shallowness provided the most critical comprehensive history of Mugabe and his defects as leader in his memoir entitled Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter (2011). The memoirs and autobiographies open some hidden and closed boxes of Zimbabwe’s political history and reveal the need for alternative history.

The Political Making of Nkomo Nkomo was one of the early educated elites who used their education in the service of nationalism. His nationalist baptism of fire is traceable to the time of his studies in South Africa where he met such figures as Nelson Mandela and Sir Seretse Khama who eventually became leaders of independent South Africa and Botswana, respectively. When he returned to Bulawayo in 1948, he became an active participant first in trade union politics at the Rhodesian Railways where he worked as a welfare officer. He later on became active in the ‘making’ of nationalism. The process involved careful reconstructions and mediations of ethnic, regional and national identities for the nationalist cause. Making nationalism was a very delicate task in the environment of the 1940s where ethnically based associations such as the Matabele Home Society, the Kalanga Cultural Society, the Monomotapa Offspring Society, the Mashonaland Cultural Society and many others dominated. Enocent Msindo (2004: 218), in his discussion of ethnicity, and specifically the Ndebele-Kalanga relations, concluded that ‘[l]ocal identities were thus stronger than regional, let alone territorial identities’ during this period (see also Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). However, Nkomo found a way in which to balance and synthesise these different cultures and identities into a broader territorial nationalism. He successfully drew from African traditional resources, mobilising graves of kings, monuments, religious shrines and pre-colonial history in order to reconstruct and manufacture an inclusive form of nationalism. Ranger (1999: 211) described Nkomo as a ‘great synthesiser’ who synthesised Kalanga, Ndebele and Shona identities into national ones. He worked hard towards syncretising various histories and spoke proudly and positively about pre-colonial political and religious figures

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such as Chaminuka, Mzilikazi, Lobengula, Mambo and Monomotapa (Munhumutapa)—all of whom he presented as respectable African leaders who founded nations. He made efforts to transform the grave of Mzilikazi at Entumbane into a national monument (Ranger 1999: 211). Nkomo’s first visit to the United Kingdom in 1952 made him realise how the British valued their past through preservation of the graves of their past kings at Westminster Abbey (Nkomo 1984). When he came back, he intensified his mobilisation of traditional religion in the formulation of nationalism, including making a pilgrimage to the Dula Mwari (Mwari is Shona and Mwali is the Kalanga) Shrine in 1958. He later took the whole executive of the National Democratic Party (NDP) to Matopos in order to seek ritual guidance so as to plan the struggle for liberation (Nkomo 1984). From 1958 onwards, Nkomo modelled himself simultaneously as a cultural nationalist and a moderniser, as someone who worshiped at a shrine in Matopos with the peasants, as someone who transcended ethnic identities and who saw nationalist value in Kalanga, Ndebele and Shona historical relics and symbols. The years 1957–1963 were a ‘golden age’ for Nkomo as a nationalist leader as he was elected into the pinnacle of Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), the NDP and the Zimbabwe African People Union (ZAPU), all of which enjoyed mass support in spite of the increasing colonial political repression (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). It was during this period that he was showered with praises and given nicknames such as Chibwechitedza (slippery stone) which symbolised the way in which he had managed to evade colonial repression. During this period, Nkomo also enjoyed popular support from both Mashonaland and Matabeleland and his leadership was endorsed by such Shona leaders and veterans of the First Chimurenga (1896–1897) as Nyamasoka Chinamora (uncle to Chief Chinamora) who in 1962 offered him a ritual war-axe, sword and knobkerrie, urging him to fight to the bitter end (Daily News, 30 July 1962). But during this same period, nationalist actors began to secretly compete for traditional ritual blessing as personal ambitions propelled them to challenge Nkomo. Nkomo’s visit to the Matopos shrines provoked some nationalists like Simon Muzenda and others from Mashonaland to make a similar pilgrimage to Great Zimbabwe during which they offered beer to ancestral spirits in 1962 (Fontein 2006: 106). But traditional leaders continued to recognise Nkomo as a leader to the extent that

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Chief Sigombe Mathema of Enqameni in Wenlock also ‘presented assegais, a knobkerrie, a shield, a feather head-gear and armbands of feathers to Mr. Nkomo and said these things were very essential for him to have in his warrior fight for political rights’ (Home News, 9 August 1962). However, these representations of Nkomo as a unifying, national leader of both Mashonaland and Matabeleland were short-lived. In 1963, a split in ZAPU resulted in the formation of a new breakaway party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) which was dominated by Shona-speaking politicians. The split within ZAPU resulted in open competition for leadership of the imagined Zimbabwe. Nkomo exuded and cultivated a myth of him as the divinely ordained leader with a ritual blessing to lead all black people into independence. It only took the courage of the intellectuals who broke away from ZAPU to begin to de-ritualise and de-mythologise Nkomo, exposing some of his weaknesses as a leader (Battle Cry: Official Organ of ZANU 1963: 10). The 1963 split inaugurated a period in which Nkomo was increasingly represented by ZANU as an inconsistent and indecisive politician who offered weak leadership. Besides accusations of being a coward, Nkomo was represented as not willing to embrace confrontational politics (Shamuyarira 1966: 173–177). ZANU intellectuals conveniently avoided the issue of tribe and power as a cause of the split and argued that it was because of ideological differences that they moved away from ZAPU. They represented ZANU as a party that was more dedicated, more revolutionary and more prepared to confront the white repressive regime. Nkomo (1984: 109–119), on the other hand, singled out tribalism as the main cause of the 1963 split in his autobiography. In order to maintain and justify their separate identity, ZANU and ZANLA consistently had to ‘other’ leaders such as Nkomo and movements like ZAPU as less revolutionary, less committed to the armed struggle and as inconsistent. The existence of ‘Others’ is crucial in defining the ‘Self’ and in locating one’s own place in the world.1 It was partly to maintain a certain identity that active nationalist politicians engaged in labelling others as stooges, sell-outs, dissidents and counter-revolutionaries. ZAPU had its own way of identifying ZANU as a new-comer in the nationalist struggle and as a tribally based party not committed to national unity (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007; Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2008: 58–60). Up until independence in 1980, Nkomo continued to be cast by those in ZANU as a weak and prevaricating politician. Despite the fact that ZANU and ZAPU negotiated at the 1979 Lancaster House

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Conference as a united Patriotic Front (PF), their long-standing antagonism did not vanish. The PF had been formed in 1976 mainly as a counter to the moves by Ian Smith and moderate ‘internal’ nationalists led by Bishop Muzorewa and Reverend Sithole towards a negotiated internal settlement which excluded ZAPU and ZANU. PF was also a response to the Organization of African Unity (OAU) through its Liberation Committee and the Frontline States’ pressure for Zimbabwean liberation forces and movements to unite. Regardless of ZANU-ZAPU cooperation in the negotiations, Nkomo continued to be seen as a compromiser by ZANU as is highlighted by Edgar Tekere (2007: 113)—a long-time ZANU Secretary General— who said Nkomo was a heavy political burden to bear in the PF and a great compromiser at Lancaster House Conference. In her recent memoires, ZANU activist Fay Chung (2006: 61) also argued that Nkomo was often criticised for relying heavily on white advisors such as Terence Ranger, John Reed, Leo Baron and Peter MacKay and ignoring his black colleagues. But Msipa (2015: 33) a prominent PF-ZAPU member explained the basis of the criticism of Nkomo’s leadership this way: ‘Naturally people were now impatient with the failure to attain majority rule, and Nkomo became the scapegoat’.

Nkomo as ‘Father of Dissidents’ ZAPU and ZANU participated in the elections of 1980s as separate political entities with the former adopting the Patriotic Front-ZAPU (PF-ZAPU) and the later ZANU-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) (Shaw 1986; Laakso 1999; Cliffe et al. 1980; Sithole 1986; Kriger 2005). In his election campaign, Nkomo represented himself as ‘Father Zimbabwe’ in order to remind the electorate of his pioneering role in the nationalist struggle and to project his seniority in nationalist politics. Nkomo also emphasised that PF should be considered as ‘one liberation movement with two parties’. ZANU-PF politicians, on the other hand, saw this in a different light and considered the cooperation as a marriage of convenience that had served a specific purpose (Moto Magazine 19 April 1980). However, due partly to ZANU-PF violence and the reality of politicised and ethnicised identities, Nkomo’s campaign did not succeed to appeal to the electorate beyond the provinces of Matabeleland and the Midlands where his army had mainly operated and liberated the people. Although many expected Nkomo to win the 1980 elections,

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it was ultimately Mugabe who obtained the majority of votes. This could be explained by the fact that ZANU’s armed wing (ZANLA) had covered more ground during their military operations (including the densely populated areas of Mashonaland, Manicaland and Masvingo), whereas ZAPU’s armed wing (ZIPRA), mainly operated in the thinly populated areas of Matabeleland, the Midlands and smaller parts of Mashonaland (Rich 1982). ZANLA’s operations included a deliberate destruction of ZAPU political structures created in the 1960s throughout Mashonaland. But exigencies of nation-building forced ZANU-PF to pursue a policy of national unity after the party’s election victory in February 1980 in order to unite black people through a government of national unity (GNU). Even though Nkomo and PF-ZAPU were initially devastated by the fact of losing elections to ZANU-PF, they immediately expressed their support for the new government and the idea of a GNU. Nkomo personally told his supporters that ZANU-PF’s victory in the elections was a victory of the PF over settler colonialism. Nkomo urged its supporters to see themselves as part of ‘one tribe called MaZimbabwe’ (Msindo 2004: 265). However, despite these efforts, the GNU did not last beyond 2 years and ZANU-PF increasingly began to exclude PF-ZAPU from the nation-building process (The Chronicle, 30 June 1980). Msindo (2004: 265) has argued that ‘Nkomo’s efforts to unite the nation at this point were met with non-cooperation from the government, perhaps because of official suspicion of his aims and also because of bitter relations between ZAPU and ZANU’. He added that ‘ZANU would not allow Nkomo, an opponent, to be a living hero and to be in front of nation building’ (Msindo 2004: 265). The new government saw nation-building as the exclusive terrain of ZANU-PF. This attitude was further elaborated by Kriger who argued that ZANU-PF aimed at building a ‘party-nation’ and a ‘party-state’ which excluded all other actors and histories except those belonging to ZANU and ZANLA. This was demonstrated in the continued use of specific party slogans, party symbols, party songs and regalia at national ceremonies such as Independence Day and Heroes Day (Kriger 2003: 75). As Msindo (2004: 265) has argued, ‘[t]he nation was defined along ZANU-PF’s philosophy of unity which meant one-partyism as opposed to multi-party democracy; and Shona tribal dominance as opposed to nationalism’. While PF-ZAPU was still part of the GNU, ZANU-PF increasingly framed the party, its leadership and its former military wing (ZIPRA) as ‘dissidents’. Because of PF-ZAPU’s loss in the elections and

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its refusal to disband and be swallowed by ZANU-PF, Nkomo, his party, his supporters and ex-ZIPRA members were ‘othered’ as enemies of the new republic. Nkomo and PF-ZAPU did their best to cooperate in the post-colonial nation-building project. They served in the Joint High Command (JHC) which aimed to integrate ZANLA’s and ZIPRA’s military forces into a single Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) (Chitiyo and Rupiya 2005). But Mugabe and his party were offended by Nkomo’s refusal to accept the ceremonial post of being the first ceremonial president of Zimbabwe with Mugabe as executive Prime Minister. Nkomo preferred a more active post as Minister of Home Affairs. In political terms, Nkomo’s acceptance of the ceremonial post would have meant that PF-ZAPU had no leader as it was going to be difficult for him to head the nation and to be the leader of opposition at the same time. Suspicions arose that PF-ZAPU and Nkomo were not committed to nation-building and still harboured ambitions to unseat ZANU-PF from power. ZANU-PF increasingly began to reconstruct PF-ZAPU and Nkomo as enemies of Zimbabwe. The use of inflammatory political language which disparaged Nkomo, PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA as ‘unheroic’ actors gradually resulted into a major breakdown in the GNU. The initial marks of this crisis were isolated cases of post-election lawlessness and misbehaviour of some armed men who went out of Assembly Points (APs) with their guns and ammunition (The Chronicle, 10 May 1980). The ZANU-PF government took advantage of this situation and began to ‘other’ PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA as dissidents bent on subverting the will of the people by fighting the legitimate government of Zimbabwe. Between 1980 and 1982, Nkomo and his party found themselves hard-pressed to rebut accusations of disloyalty and to counter the label of being dissidents. For example, the Minister of National Supplies, Enos Nkala, labelled Nkomo as a ‘self-appointed Ndebele King’ (The Chronicle, 7 July 1980). During a rally at White City Stadium in Bulawayo, he stated that PF-ZAPU and Nkomo were in government ‘by the grace of ZANU’ and that they ‘contributed in their own small way, and we have given them a share proportional to their contributions’. At the same rally, Nkala reinforced his framing of Nkomo as a ‘tribal king’ likening him to Ojukwu of Biafra, Tshombe of Congo, Harry Nkumbula of Zambia and Odinga Odinga of Kenya ‘who tried to appoint themselves as tribal leaders’ (The Chronicle, 7 July 1980).

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It was partly these inflammatory speeches that caused panic among some ex-ZIPRA forces within the ZNA and contributed to clashes with ex-ZANLA forces in APs such as Entumbane (Moto Magazine 15 November 1980). After what has become known as the ‘First Entumbane War’, Mugabe reacted by sacking Nkomo from the post of Home Affairs Minister and made him a Minister-Without-Portfolio. This further incensed ex-ZIPRA members and rank-and-file PF-ZAPU supporters and culminated in the ‘Second Entumbane War’ which pitted ex-ZANLA and ex-ZIPRA members in a heavy exchange of fire (White 2007). A witch-hunt was launched against those ex-ZIPRA members who had integrated themselves into the ZNA. The few ex-ZIPRA forces that fled back to the bush did so involuntarily in order to escape the threats and realities of persecution, just like their political leadership which was increasingly demonised by ZANU-PF and forced out of GNU (Alexander et al. 2000; Alexander 1998: 151–152). Kriger (2003: 133–137) documented how the eradication of ex-ZIPRA forces within the ZNA became frenzied during the post-Second Entumbane War. Ex-ZIPRA members were increasingly framed as dissidents and, as Msindo (2004: 264) pointed out the definition of a dissident was a ‘political, a product of the politics of power and the capacity to name. Nkomo hated the term and preferred that the lawless men be labelled bandits, which was less politically charged’. The GNU ultimately collapsed when in 1982 ‘arms caches’ were ‘discovered’ in PF-ZAPUowned properties around Bulawayo (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2003). But Frederick Charles Mutanda (war name ‘Chillis’) a former senior ZIPRA officer dismisses the allegation of arms caches: I was one of those who remained in Zambia and involved in preparing part of the ZPRA list and movement of these ordinances. Before 18th April 1980 ZPRA had presented its schedules of ordinance and as agreed, the Rhodesia gave our commanders their list. The ZPRA list included battle tanks, Armoured Personnel Carriers, artillery and other fighting equipment. ZANLA did not present a single thing. The ZPRA ordnance and armament matching the schedule eventually came into the country via Victoria Falls. No decision or instruction was made as to how and where the ZPRA ordnance w3as to be stored. The administration of integrating the three armies, weapons and ordnances, including Assembly Points was the responsibility of the Joint High Command, thus removing political

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parties over military affairs. Arms which were then discovered at Ascot and Hampton Farms […] were not caches at all but had been procedurally declared and submitted to the Joint High Command. Allegations that Dr. Nkomo and ZAPU after losing elections were conspiring to overthrow the government in 1982, were false and mischievous. (Mutanda’s Foreword to Nkomo 2010)

Following this so-called discovery, Nkomo was completely removed from government and former military heads of ZIPRA, Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku were detained and accused of treason. Ironically, the arms caches were ‘discovered’ barely a week after PF-ZAPU rejected a forced unity with ZANU-PF which Mugabe desperately needed in order to establish a one-party state (Shaw 1986). Mugabe’s desire to create a one-party state became increasingly clear from his political statements in which he imagined ‘one state with one society, one nation, one party, one leader’ (Moto, August 1982). The Chronicle of 25 January 1982 quoted Mugabe asking ZAPU to join ZANU stating that ‘because that is what united people should do. They should be one party, with one government and one Prime Minister’. This invented and choreographed ‘discovery’ of arms caches was used to justify ZANU-PF’s increasing clampdown on Matabeleland. In order to deal with the problem of ‘dissidents’, the government sent an elite unit of North Korea-trained soldiers, known as the Fifth Brigade, into Midlands and Matabeleland provinces where PF-ZAPU drew its major support from. The government justified its intervention by referring to the threat that ‘dissidents’ or ‘bandits’ posed to national security. The military intervention resulted in major killings of civilians which brought suspicion to the government’s plan to crush and flush out ‘dissidents’. What became known as Gukurahundi (literally refers to the early spring rains which separate the chaff from the wheat) resulted in the massacre of an estimated 20,000 Ndebele-speaking people (cf. Alexander et al. 2000; CCJP and LRF 1997; Werbner 1991; Worby 1998; NdlovuGatsheni 2003). Although some dissidents were involved in acts of violence, human rights groups have estimated that 98% of the victims of the violence were killed by government forces (CCJP and LRF 1997: 156– 157). The Gukurahundi campaign was less concerned with military engagement with the so-called dissidents but ultimately sought to de-legitimise Nkomo and ZAPU which is also evidenced through ZANU-PF slogans

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that were used at the time such as ‘Down with Joshua Nkomo’ and ‘Forward with Mugabe’ (CCJP and LRF 1997; and Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2003: 81–90). These slogans were followed by attempts to eliminate Nkomo physically after Mugabe described him as a ‘snake’ in his house. After the Fifth Brigade invaded Nkomo’s residence and killed his guards, he was forced to escape into exile via Botswana to the United Kingdom in 1983 (Nkomo 1984: 2). While in exile, ZANU-PF continued to portray Nkomo negatively and he was often represented as a coward and a politician who had failed the nation by leaving Zimbabwe. The direct threats Nkomo received from the ruling party were silenced in these representations. ZANU-PF mocked Nkomo’s escape by focusing on the fact that he had left the country disguised as an old woman.

Nkomo’s Autobiography In an attempt to counter ZANU-PF’s negative representations, Nkomo started writing his autobiography while he was in exile in the United Kingdom. His autobiography was eventually published in 1984. Whereas ZANU-PF had constructed Nkomo as ‘Father of Dissidents’ and a threat to Zimbabwe, in his autobiography Nkomo emphasised his contribution to the liberation of Zimbabwe as a clear rebuttal to criticisms levelled against him by his opponents. Nkomo emphasised his political seniority in the nationalist struggle, and justified why he deserved the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’. He described how he committed himself to liberating Zimbabwe through enduring 10 years in detention and 13 years in exile commanding ZIPRA and prosecuting the armed struggle. What emerges from the autobiography are different positive self-representations that include Nkomo as the authentic African leader; as the originator of the liberation struggle and as a symbol of unity; as the committed nationalist and pan-Africanist; and as the advocate of post-independence unity (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). In order to articulate himself as someone who was able to speak on behalf of the Zimbabwean nation and Africans in general, Nkomo described himself as a ‘native son’ and provided details on his African roots and his attraction ‘to the traditional religion of our people’ (Nkomo 1984: 12). Nkomo modelled and presented himself as a cultural nationalist and a man of the people, who cherished traditional cultural norms, leading Ranger to describe him as a ‘cultural nationalist’ (Ranger 1999). His pilgrimage to the Dula Mwali cult shrine in the Matopos

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Hills in 1958 was to seek legitimacy. This shrine had been used by precolonial leaders as a source of legitimacy and was consulted for divine advice, particularly on military matters and war. Nkomo’s visit was to ask Mwali (God) to assist them as nationalists in order to reclaim the country back from the colonialists and to get blessings for the prosecution of the nationalist struggle. Nkomo wrote that for 30 years he kept the ritual secret of what he was told at Matopos shrine to the effect that ‘a long and costly struggle’ was to be waged before the achievement of political independence in 1980 (Nkomo 1984: 14). To solidify his claim to be ‘Father Zimbabwe’, Nkomo even sought ritual powers so as to mystify himself as the true inheritor of a chain of power that was disturbed by colonial rule. Nkomo portrays himself here as a keeper of national ritual secrets that other nationalists were not aware of. Until his death, Nkomo associated himself with the Matopos shrines and carried a traditional short knobkerrie wherever he went. These shrines were and are still revered by traditionalists who believed that Ngwali/Mwari (God) resided there (Ranger 1999). In times of crisis, they are visited for divine consultation. Nkomo presented his struggle for independence as sanctioned by these shrines and when he came back from exile in 1980, he went back to report on the fruits of the struggle and to get further divine advice on the way ­forward. On the first pages of his autobiography, Nkomo represents himself as someone who actively participated in all phases of the liberation struggle, as an unwavering nationalist deeply committed to both independence and national unity. Whereas ZANU-PF at the time did not recognise Nkomo’s contribution towards the liberation struggle; Nkomo here clearly spells out that he was legitimised to speak as someone who has been important in the history of his country. Nkomo asserted that he ‘fathered’ the nation, stressing the ways in which he consistently struggled for freedom, whether from the colonial regime or from fellow liberation party ZANU-PF. Nkomo presents himself as someone who is motivated by efforts to promote freedom. In his autobiography, Nkomo does not only describe himself as a freedom fighter but as someone who to a large extent originated the liberation struggle in Rhodesia. For example, he explains his involvement in sourcing the first guns for the struggle from Egypt in 1962. The weapons acquired by Nkomo comprised of 24 semi-automatic assault rifles, with magazines, ammunition, plus some grenades. To him these

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weapons marked the first ever step in the direction of an armed struggle. Nkomo’s detailed description of the guns sought to counter ZANU-PF claims that they inaugurated the armed struggle in Zimbabwe through their frequent reference to the death of seven ZANLA guerrillas at Sinoia in 1966 as the beginning of the armed struggle. Elaborating on the 1963 split in ZAPU that gave birth to ZANU, Nkomo explains this development on a purely tribal basis and by referring to the interference of Julius Nyerere who, as Nkomo argued, ‘had a special problem with me personally’ (Nkomo 1984: xii). He squarely blamed Washington Malianga and Leopold Takawira for influencing younger politicians like Robert Mugabe to split the party (Nkomo 1984: 109–119). In other words, Nkomo projects himself as a symbol of unity and portrays his opponents as tribalists who were just power hungry. In the last sections of his autobiography, he detailed how he worked for unity and how Robert Mugabe frustrated all the efforts. He bemoaned the untimely death of General Josiah Magama Tongogara whom he saw as firmly committed to unity like himself (Nkomo 1984: 210). The popularly held view is that Tongogara was a victim of political assassination by ZANU. Through Nkomo’s openly expressed admiration of Tongogara, he implicitly constructs both Tongogara and himself as benevolent advocates of unity who ultimately end up as victims of ZANU-PF violence. ZANU-PF is then represented as a party that was not truly committed to unity but sought to destroy those who did not toe the party line. By discrediting the dirty tricks within ZANU-PF, Nkomo projected himself as a real statesman and a true nation-builder who was—like Tongogara—also a victim of power hungry politicians. This projection is evident in the following excerpts of his book: To me the most important fact appeared to be that we had fought the war on the same side, negotiated as one, and been victorious. It seemed a great disservice to the people of Zimbabwe to launch their independent history divided by party quarrels, not united by national feeling.’ (Nkomo 1984: 203)

He added that ‘the leaders of the party that won (by unquestionable means, but let that pass for now) our first elections believed that I symbolised the national unity that they rejected. So I became the focus of their anger, perhaps of their envy’ (Nkomo 1984: 203). Nkomo was aware that he had gained considerable recognition in the popular

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consciousness of Zimbabweans and realised that ZANU-PF was doing everything it could in order to crush this popularity. Ironically, it was precisely Nkomo’s call for unity which ZANU-PF began to emphasise to represent Nkomo in the changed political dispensation after his death in 2000.Throughout his book, Nkomo reminds his readers about the many years he spent in detention. Countering ZANU-PF’s accusation that he was a coward who always avoided arrest by spending time overseas, Nkomo wrote the following: I have often been criticised for being too fond of travel and for spending too little of my time at home. But that was not how I would have chosen to spend my life. It was the work I set myself, because I thought it was essential if my country was to get her freedom. In that I am sure I was right. (Nkomo 1984: 86)

Nkomo emphasised that the endless travels were part of his commitment to the nationalist cause. During his trips abroad, he gave publicity to the Rhodesian problem: ‘The cause I stood for needed friends who were not automatically committed […]. And I needed to visit capitals of those countries, to win the support not only of their diplomats but of their decision-makers’ (Nkomo 1984: 86). He argued that it was him who had to do the travelling because as he pointed out, by 1957 ‘I was still the only ANC leader with a passport’ (Nkomo 1984: 75). Nkomo presented a picture of a politician who was committed to both negotiations and armed confrontation and who saw these as two complimentary methods to achieve independence. This is demonstrated by the following quote from his autobiography in which Nkomo (1984:163) described his use of both methods: Now, with full-scale war facing us, I had to learn to be a military commander. I was immensely proud of my men; it was my task to see that they got the backing they deserved. I carefully left the day-to-day command of the men to our own senior officers. But I regularly visited the training camps and bases to explain just what was going on, and to raise morale. When negotiations broke down, I went to the soldiers and said I had done what I could; it was up to them now. I emphasized that they were not fighting to do me a favour, nor I them: we were in it together for our country. I was doing my best to keep them supplied with material to fight with, and to see it was fairly distributed. It was up to them to put those supplies to good use.

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While ZANU-PF represented Nkomo as a leader who preferred to negotiate with the Rhodesian regime instead of more confrontational approaches, he portrayed himself as supportive of both approaches. When negotiations did not seem to work out, he considered the armed struggle to be perfectly legitimised. Apart from being committed to the liberation of Zimbabwe, Nkomo also projected himself as a supra-nationalist and a pan-Africanist who brushed shoulders and worked together with other luminaries of the broader African struggles for independence. His autobiography includes details of his acquaintances and the contemporaries he met and worked with in the struggle against colonialism. The list includes Kwame Nkrumah, Tom Mboya, Nelson Mandela, Sir Seretse Khama, Holden Roberto, Kenneth Kaunda and many others. By highlighting how he rubbed shoulders with these leaders, he implicitly sought to legitimise his leadership of Zimbabwe just like other continental leaders who had assumed power after the departure of colonialists. So while ZANU-PF was keen to see Nkomo as a half-hearted nationalist and bedfellow of the Rhodesians, he firmly rebutted these images in his autobiography and emphasised his commitment to the liberation of both Rhodesia and Africa in general. After Nkomo returned from his first period of exile in January 1980, he modelled himself as a real statesman as he began to talk of the war that was over, the need to forget the past, to reconcile and to collectively build the nation. Even after he lost the 1980 elections, he refused to be the ‘Savimbi of Zimbabwe’, telling his angry ZIPRA forces the following: ‘Our nation had gained its independence by years of sacrifice. Any bickering now would inflame passions, divide the people and encourage the enemies waiting on our borders to destabilise the country’ (Nkomo 1984: 211). In his account, Nkomo was careful to distinguish between the new ZANU-PF government and ZANU-PF as a party. While he criticised ZANU-PF as a party for trying to kill him, Nkomo (1984: 1) remained committed to the newly independent government: Robert Mugabe had decided to have me out of the way, and he evidently did not care what method was used. But I hold the legitimate government of Zimbabwe innocent of this atrocity. Mugabe was acting not as prime minister, but as leader of his party, ZANU […]. As leader of ZANU he acted outside the law: but the law and the constitution of Zimbabwe remain in force, and I hold the ruling party, not the lawful government, responsible for the attempt on my life.

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By arguing that it was particularly ZANU-PF that challenged his position, he also ultimately represented the party as uncommitted to promote unity and determined to get rid of the opposition ZAPU. Despite ZANU-PF’s efforts to associate him with ‘dissidents’, he did not compromise his nationalist credentials. As he emphasised in his book, ‘[t]he ruling party could not provoke me to disloyalty towards the nation I had struggled to liberate’ (Nkomo 1984: 1). In the last chapter of the book, Nkomo (1984: 252) expresses his firm commitment to the process of building a Zimbabwean nation: It is not too late to change all that, to muster the collective energy of our people and build the new Zimbabwe we promised all those long years of suffering and struggle. During my brief exile in 1983 I appealed in this way to Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, calling as a start for a national conference of all the country’s interest groups, under his chairmanship, to begin the process of reconciliation. He did not answer then. Perhaps in the interval between writing this book and its publication he will change his mind and reply constructively. For my part, I shall continue working to that end. Long Live Zimbabwe!

Nkomo’s autobiography is a robust rebuttal to the criticism levelled against him throughout the history of liberation and beyond. Through his book, Nkomo wrote himself back into the history of the liberation struggle and appropriated to himself a heroic niche not only as deserving of the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’ but also as the inaugurator of the armed liberation struggle, the populariser of the Rhodesia problem across the world and a statesman who desired to see his country not only independent but also united (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010).

Nkomo and the Unification of the Nation (1987–1999) When Nkomo finally came back from exile in 1984, the unity negotiations which had collapsed in 1982 resumed. A final agreement between ZANU-PF and PF-ZAPU was reached on 22nd of December 1987 when both parties signed the Unity Accord (Chiwewe 1989). The Accord paved the way for a ‘united’ ZANU-PF but the popular perception was that PF-ZAPU had effectively been swallowed by ZANU-PF after heavy and consistent subjection to violence and harassment for over 7 years (Sithole 1988).

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While in the early 1980s, Nkomo was portrayed as the ‘Father of Dissidents’ by ZANU-PF, the newly united ZANU-PF party now represented him more positively as a selfless nation-builder and unifier who put the nationalist interest above the party interest. This was a convenient representation for both Nkomo who wanted to be remembered as an advocate of unity and Mugabe who did not tolerate any political challenges and who was still committed to establish a one-party state in Zimbabwe. Mugabe perched himself on the success of the unity accord and travelled together with Nkomo to Matabeleland and Midlands regions to sell the unity accord to the people. Mugabe also wanted to be recognised as a nation-builder and a statesman committed to nation-building.2 After the signing of the Unity Accord, Nkomo and other PF-ZAPU leaders seemed to be satisfied by being accommodated in ZANU-PF and government. In the immediate post-Unity Accord period, Nkomo was first given the position of Senior Minister. When PF-ZAPU and ZANU-PF structures were finally formally merged, he became co-Vice-President of the republic together with Simon Muzenda (Ncube 1989). Nkomo avoided talking about the immediate political past that led him to escape into exile in 1983. While for the victims of the violence of the 1980s, the Unity Accord was important because it managed to end both dissident and Gukurahundi activities in Matabeleland and the Midlands regions; there were no other post-conflict rehabilitation measures to help heal the wounds (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2003: 24–30). What followed was a dead silence and no official apology was made by government to the victims. Within this terrain of politics, a new discourse began to emerge in the Matabeleland and Midlands regions in which Nkomo and former PF-ZAPU leaders were seen as having sold-out their followers for personal political gain. The official government was that the past of those atrocities had to be forgotten for the sake of national unity. When CCJP and LRF Report broke the silence in 1997 through the publication of detailed human rights abuses by the Fifth Brigade, Nkomo immediately reacted to the report by storming into CCJP offices in Harare wanting to confiscate all the copies of the report, stating that it was going to divide the nation (The Sunday Mail, 22 July 1997). Mugabe also reacted to it by emphasising the need to forget the past (CCJP and LRF 1997; Werbner 1998). Instead of dealing with the troubled past, Nkomo became engrossed in debates over land redistribution and black empowerment. He became

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an important voice for the emerging black middle classes and aspiring black bourgeoisie (Raftopoulos 1996). He consistently warned about the inevitability of land wars in Zimbabwe as long as the unequal patterns of land ownership continued. In 1993, he warned white commercial farmers as landowners that they would soon be challenged by blacks over their citizenship as long as they refused to share strategic resources like land with blacks (Financial Gazette, 28 January 1993). But not all Zimbabweans celebrated the signing of the unity accord as a national achievement and the swallowing of PF-ZAPU as a wise decision on the party of Nkomo. By 1990, a small party emerged that called itself Zimbabwe Active People Union (ZAPU) that tried to claim the political vacuum left by PF-ZAPU. The party blamed Nkomo for selling out his own people after they had been massacred by ZANU-PF.3 While this party was insignificant, it symbolised a counter politics that saw the unity accord as not only a surrender document but also Nkomo as a sellout rather than a selfless nation-builder.

Nkomo as ‘Father Zimbabwe’ After Nkomo died at the age of 82 on the 1st of July 1999, he continued to be represented as a unifier. Following the burial of Nkomo, Mugabe addressed the nation, thanked the people for demonstrating a spirit of oneness and stated that Nkomo’s last words were ‘Unity, Unity, Unity’. He argued that Nkomo’s life story ‘is in large measure the story of our nation, yes, the story of you and me as our destiny took a painful and tortuous meander towards self-rule and full nationhood’ (The Herald, 10 July 1999). At Nkomo’s burial, Mugabe also described the atrocities of the 1980s as having happened during a ‘moment of madness’ and took time to assure the people from Matabeleland that the Unity Accord was going to be respected despite the fact that the ‘great unifier’ was no longer present (Zimbabwe News, July 1999). But apart from a nation-builder, Nkomo was posthumously also given the title of ‘Father Zimbabwe’ by ZANU-PF. Nkomo was suddenly reconstructed as a hero. For example, Mugabe announced Nkomo’s death as follows: ‘The mountain has fallen’, and further added that ‘[i]t is a loss so keenly felt by all of us, by all Zimbabweans who saw in the Vice-President a father-figure, a founder of our nation. The giant has fallen and the nation mourns’ (Zimbabwe News, July 1999: 3).

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ZANU-PF’s official publication, Zimbabwe News, inscribed Nkomo in the line of pre-colonial religious and political leaders: The death of Cde Joshua Nkomo must give birth to national rededication to those ideas that made him a national hero. To act any otherwise would be betrayal of not only Cde Joshua Nkomo, but all those in whose footsteps he walked such as Ambuya Nehanda, Sekuru Kaguvi, uMzilikazi kaMatshobana and Lobengula the Great. (Zimbabwe News, July 1999: 2)

All this happened against the background of ZANU-PF’s fading legitimacy. Nkomo became useful in a number of ways. He proved crucial to provide legitimacy to ZANU-PF’s main campaign issue in the 2000s, the unequal distribution of land. ZANU-PF frantically tried to justify their determination to correct the land imbalances through the fast-track land reform programme as part of fulfilment of the last wishes of Nkomo (Mugabe 2001; Sachikonye 2003). The programme was explained in terms of Nkomo’s last words: ‘Land, Land, Land’ as reported by Mugabe after his death. A blueprint on land reform which Nkomo had written in 1981 as PF-ZAPU’s guide on land reform was republished by SAPES Publishers in 2001. Nkomo’s emphasis during his time as VicePresident on black economic empowerment and a resolution to the land issue made it possible for the ZANU-PF government to represent him as a major champion for land reform. Furthermore, in the new context of the emerging opposition MDC, Nkomo’s willingness to sign an agreement with ZANU-PF enabled government to depict him as a visionary who saw the value of national unity, an issue that suddenly had obtained a new urgency in the face of an increasingly popular opposition party. For example, during an official ceremony to commemorate Nkomo in July 2002, President Mugabe stated as follows: We remember him as the Father of Zimbabwe, as the one who pioneered the struggle and one who was committed to the very end to liberate his people and after liberation wanted the people to get their land. We also remember him as father of the family and politically, as father of all of us. But what’s important now is that we should follow his steps on those things that he showed us as virtues and that he wanted done. And the things he emphasised most were, firstly, the unity of all Zimbabweans. That unity is important as the basis on which we can put our minds together, our energies together, and work as one and for the good of us

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all, the good of our children. The second issue is land and this issue must be resolved in the interests of the people of Zimbabwe. Therefore imperialism must never be allowed to thrive and prosper in Zimbabwe. (The Herald 2 July 2002)

By associating Nkomo with major ZANU-PF campaign issues, the party sought to gain support in Matabeleland where the opposition MDC had become increasingly popular. In order to drum up support, the ruling party equated voting for ZANU-PF with giving support to Nkomo and opting for MDC was represented as abandoning Nkomo’s belief in unity. For example, in a speech during a visit to Joshua Mqabuko High School in Matobo District, Matabeleland (where Nkomo was born), Mugabe criticised residents for having given their support to the MDC in previous parliamentary and local elections: You gave your school the name Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo on your own volition. On the other hand, you say you want the MDC and Tsvangirai. What contradiction is that? Do you still have Nkomo in mind? Do you have him in your heart? I heard the schoolchildren here singing a tune that says Nkomo is still alive. That is as it should be. However, we should show that he is still alive in our hearts, in our minds, in our whole lives […]. He taught us to be united. He also taught us to be the owners of our land and to suffer for our land; to defend our land so it is not sold to the enemy. (Herald 30 November 2004)

The revival of Nkomo’s legacy and the silence of the ruling party’s treatment of Nkomo in the 1980s was expressed most strongly in the introduction of the Umdala Wethu Music and Cultural Gala (‘Our Father’ in isiNdebele) which was launched in Harare in July 2001 and from then on served as an annual commemoration of Nkomo’s death. After the Harare launch in 2001, the gala rotated annually in different provinces such as Manicaland (Mutare) in 2002, Midlands (Gweru) in 2004, Matabeleland South (Beitbridge) in 2005, Bulawayo in 2006 and Mashonaland East (Marondera) in 2007. The rotation of the event in provinces throughout Zimbabwe served to reinforce Nkomo’s status as ‘Umdala Wethu’ (Father of the Nation). The galas were generally announced weeks in advance on television and radio through numerous advertising notices a day. State newspapers such as The Herald published special supplements about Nkomo’s life. Clips of Nkomo were shown on television repeatedly, illustrated with

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music from ZAPU’s choir, the Light Machine Gun (LMG) Choir. A significant amount of LMG choir recordings were destroyed by government officials in the early 1980s and ZBC did not allow their music to be played during the 1980s because government feared it would help mobilise support for ZAPU.4 However, against the background of the rising popularity of the opposition party MDC in Matabeleland, Nkomo’s legacy suddenly became useful for the ruling party in efforts to gain support from those who had supported Nkomo in the past but had switched to MDC after his death in 1999. In television clips shown in the weeks before the 2004 edition of the gala in Gweru, Joshua Nkomo was portrayed in four different ways: Joshua Nkomo as statesman; Joshua Nkomo as freedom fighter; Joshua Nkomo as nationalist; and Joshua Nkomo as the unifying force. These identities which the ruling party emphasised were convenient for its own purposes and served to mask the way in which Nkomo was viewed by the state in the early 1980s. ZANU-PF government’s framing of Nkomo as a national hero in 2000s differed sharply from its construction of Nkomo as ‘regional dissident’ in the 1980s (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). While in the 1980s, Nkomo was considered as a threat to the nation, he was celebrated as a hero in the changed context of the 2000s and reinscribed into the nation. This reconstruction should be understood against the background of political changes occurring in the country. While Nkomo passed away in July 1999, it was only in July 2001 that the musical gala was introduced, reinforcing the idea that political motivations were behind introduction of the gala. After ZANU-PF’s loss of a significant number of parliamentary seats in the June 2000 elections, the gala was introduced in 2001 in order to gain support from Matabeleland voters. Later, ZANU-PF government built a statue of Nkomo at the centre of Bulawayo and renamed the Bulawayo Airport as the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport as part of recognition of his contributions not only to the anti-colonial liberation struggle but to postcolonial nation-building.

Organisation of the Book The essays in this book—grouped broadly under Part I ‘Imperialism, Nationalism, Liberation Struggle and Leadership’; Part II, ‘Legacy, Diplomacy, Political Philosophy and Fatherhood’; and Part III,

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‘Nation-Building, Persecution, Autobiography and Rehabilitation’— constitute collectively the first ever academic attempt to reflect on the life and legacy of Joshua Nkomo Mqabuko and his contributions to the liberation of Zimbabwe and post-colonial nation-building project. The chapter that follows this introduction is by Eliakim Sibanda—a Zimbabwean historian based in Canada who has written a book on ZAPU entitled The Zimbabwe African People’s Union, 1961–1987: A Political History of Insurgency in Southern Rhodesia (2005). The book did not focus on Nkomo per se. Here, Sibanda specifically explores Nkomo’s political life, paying particular attention to his contributions to the country’s independence. Sibanda reestablishes Nkomo’s role as founder and leader of key nationalist revolutionary movements that laid the foundation for the armed struggle and underscores Nkomo’s active international campaigns for the liberation of Zimbabwe. International campaigns by Nkomo put the Rhodesia question on the global map and immensely to eventual attainment of political independence in 1980. The following chapter, by the military historian Martin Rupiya, which compliments Sibanda’s analysis very well as it specifically highlights how Nkomo contributed to the internationalisation of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle—an aspect that Rupiya argued is downplayed in the Zimbabwean historiography of the anti-colonial liberation struggle. Chapter 4 is by Kenneth Tafira. Just like Sibanda and Rupiya, Tafira continues with the question of rebutting those narratives that tried to belittle Nkomo’s contribution to the liberation of Zimbabwe. Tafira specifically builds a convincing case of Nkomo as an astute politician who consistently worked for unity and peace before and after independence. Tafira presents two related arguments. The first is that Nkomo’s participation in talks over a long stretch of time was meant to achieve unity, peace and independence without excessive loss of life. Pursuit of peace and unity was never a sign of weakness. The second is that throughout the struggle against colonialism the question of unity of all liberation movements was a central concern of Nkomo’s political thought. To Tafira, maintaining unity, peace and harmony was ingrained in the revolutionary armed struggle as inseparable attributes of commitment and sound leadership as compared to the paradigm of war. Part 1 is completed by Gorden Moyo and Pathisa Nyathi’s related chapters that open the canvas to the global context within which Nkomo operated. Moyo and Nyathi highlight how Nkomo became a victim of the invisible but active operations of colonial/imperial matrices of power

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as well as Cold War coloniality. Moyo’s chapter introduces an important concept of ‘imperialism of decolonization’ whereby the colonial powers worked actively but subtle to identify and promote those African leaders they considered of being useful for neo-colonialism and protection of colonial-white interests after the end of juridical colonialism. He posits that the British towards the end of their empire were consistently but invisibly favouring Mugabe over Nkomo. Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA’s close alliance with the Soviet Union disadvantaged them in the context of the Cold War coloniality. Moyo also reveals that at Lancaster House Conference, Mugabe knew the British were on his side and just pretended to be radical to hide his complicity with the imperial power. To Moyo, Mugabe was a ‘recruited’ and ‘managed’ inheritor of the colonial state of Zimbabwe in the broader context of imperial global designs. While this sound like part of conspiratorial historiography, it helps in explaining why the persecution of Nkomo, ZAPU, ZIPRA and his supporters in Matabeleland and the Midlands regions of Zimbabwe in the 1980s, continued without any open condemnation from the Western capitals for almost 10 years. Nyathi’s chapter compliments Moyo’s analysis, and it specifically brings to the fore how the negotiations that took place at Lancaster House in 1979 were not only underpinned by Cold War coloniality manoeuvring but also messed up Nkomo’s grand military plan of taking over Zimbabwe through outright military onslaught on the white settler colonial state using regular ZIPRA military units. Nyathi builds his analysis from the fact that ZAPU and ZIPRA under Nkomo’s leadership and command and with the support of the Soviet Union and Cuba had developed a grand military strategy of using regular and well-trained and well-equipped mechanised ZIPRA battalions to storm Rhodesia and execute a clear military takeover. Nyathi postulates that leakage of this grand military strategy might have contributed to the convening of the Lancaster House Conference itself to prevent a black liberation army backed by the Soviets militarily defeating a white settler colonial army and the colonial state. Part II opens with the historian Timothy Scarnecchia’s chapter which paradigmatically shifts the conventional narrative of Nkomo as a vacillating and inconsistent anti-colonial revolutionary through a counternarrative which highlights Nkomo as a confident nationalist diplomat. Scarnecchia posits that less has been written by historians about the extensive diplomatic work Nkomo engaged in after his release from

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detention in 1974. He further asserts that unlike Mugabe, Nkomo was the recognised leader of the nationalist movement from the perspective of both sides of the Cold War. He had managed through his connections developed in the early 1960s to receive training and military weapons for ZIPRA from the Soviet Union and important Eastern bloc countries that were willing to invest in the liberation wars of Southern Africa, most notably Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The next chapter is by William Jethro Mpofu, and it posits that both the affirmations and negations of the political figure of Nkomo tend to cloud rather than illuminate his status as a political theorist and philosopher of liberation whose ethics of revolutionary struggle privileged dialogue and the preservation of life against war and its costs to humanity. Dispelling the caricatures of affirmation and negation that accompany the multiplicity of narratives on Nkomo, Mpofu argues that he was neither a messianic legend nor a cowardly opportunist but was a political thinker and philosopher of liberation who was formed and shaped by concrete historical experiences and political conditions of colonialism under which he was socialised, educated and trained. Drawing inspiration from Enrique Dussel—the father of philosophy of liberation, Mpofu delves deeper into the liberatory philosophical vision of Nkomo as that which was not limited to the liberation of black Zimbabweans from Rhodesian colonialism but one that also incorporated ideas of how to integrate white Rhodesians into the Zimbabwean nation as full citizens. The Chap. 3 under Part II is by Blessed Ngwenya who continues the exercise of delving into the key political assumptions of Nkomo and his political thought as shown mainly in speeches, his autobiography, and other writings. Ngwenya highlights how Nkomo was committed to a philosophy of non-violence which set him apart as a decolonial humanist symbol of the paradigm of peace among those who fought for the liberation of Zimbabwe. Even under overt provocation soon after the end of the anti-colonial liberation struggle by ZANU-PF government, Nkomo managed to avoid falling into the paradigm of war. According to Ngwenya, throughout the liberation struggle, Nkomo remained a steadfast champion of dialogue by condemning violence as a process that dehumanised both the colonial master and the colonised subject. Based on a close reading of Nkomo’s speeches and writings, Ngwenya convincingly proved that Nkomo realised that the brutal colonial system did not only need liberation for blacks but the whites too, something fellow nationalists did not appreciate.

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The Chap. 4 is by Morgan Ndlovu who deploys the Fanonian sociogenic approach to make sense of Nkomo’s political behaviour and political philosophy. Ndlovu delved deeper into the indigenous cultural, political, epistemological and ideological springs that shaped the political philosophy of Nkomo as well as his ideas of the nation and liberation. Also writing on the theme of Nkomo’s political philosophy and specifically his practical contribution to post-colonial nation-building is the sociologist Rudo Gaidzanwa who highlights Nkomo’s vision on land reform and land use in Zimbabwe. Just like Ndlovu’s chapter, Gaidzanwa delves into Nkomo’s peasant background and experience with limited landholding in a peasant household and explains how this influenced his ideas about land policies and land reform. Gaidzanwa also explored how Nkomo initiated and developed concrete land-based projects and programmes for peasants, war veterans and others after the end of the anti-colonial liberation struggle. The last chapter under Part II is by Everisto Benyera, and it departs from the prevalent reading of Nkomo in terms of power politics by introducing a new reading of Nkomo’s contribution to nation-building from the perspective of transitional justice and politics of national healing. He excavates Nkomo’s views on transitional justice that are contra to those of the government he served as he opposed such statist mechanisms as amnesties, indemnities and pardons in favour of truth telling, reparations, accountability, memorialisation and indeed institutional reforms. Benyera points that Nkomo was cognisant of the need to seek accountability for human rights abuses, especially in the Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces in post-independence Zimbabwe but was not able to convince ZANU-PF on the need of such a trajectory as the party and state were directly involved in the commission of atrocities. Part III opens with a chapter by Busani Mpofu and Sabelo J. NdlovuGatsheni which compares Joshua Nkomo and Nelson Mandela as politicians. The justification for comparison springs from the fact that they belonged to the group of the first generation of African nationalists to fight anti-colonial struggles that eventually led to black majority in Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively. Mpofu and Ndlovu-Gatsheni posit that Nkomo and Mandela’s overriding quest for peace and unity presents interesting similarities of the ideas that they had for their countries and the conceptions of liberation they envisaged. While Nkomo did not ascend to power as President of Zimbabwe in 1980 as his party lost elections to a rival nationalist party, Mandela assumed power in 1994.

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However, their autobiographies, just like that of other post-colonial ‘fathers of the nation’, give us glimpses of the development of their political consciousness, the ideas of the Zimbabwe and South Africa they were fighting to create, and the conceptions of freedom or liberation that they envisaged, respectively. The next chapter is by Josiah Nyanda and is informed by a literary approach predicated on the concepts of hauntology and spectrality in the reading of how Nkomo used his political memoir to reconstruct the self and illustrates a specific understanding of reconstructing the self. Nyanda posits that the memoir presents a life of pain and suffering dedicated to liberating Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans, first from colonial bondage and, second from Mugabe’s ZANU-PF’s tyrannical rule. He further argues that through massive investment in the symbolic infrastructure of pain and suffering, the memoirs of Nkomo embrace in them the language of ‘ghosts and the uncanny—or rather anachronic spectrality and hauntology’. What emerges from this chapter is that through self-narration, Nkomo archives himself as a political ghost that cannot be done away with but whose spectres will forever haunt and occupy that special place in Zimbabwe’s political history and landscape regardless of how ‘altered’ this ‘terrain of the struggle itself’ is. The Chap. 3 under Part II is by Tendayi Sithole, and it ventures into a difficult comparative analysis of two separate ‘self-writings’ by an ex-slave (Frederick Douglas) and an anti-colonial nationalist leader (Nkomo). Sithole begins by stating that while his two subjects of study ‘occupied different geographies, lived in different centuries under different regimes’ they were brought together by a set of existential questions and concerns about the plight of being human under enslavement, racism and colonialism. What is interesting about this chapter is the dynamics of ‘self-writings’ of Douglas and Nkomo that both expand into a reflection of a life under opptression. The last three chapters by Sylvester Dombo, Henry Chiwaura and Thabisani Ndlovu address the common themes of memory, memorialisation, immortalisation and commemoration. Dombo’s chapter looks at the struggle over the memory of Nkomo in Zimbabwe’s history through the lens of the press, both private and state media. He posits that while the state media sought to overlook the controversies surrounding the relationship between Nkomo and the ZANU-PF government, the private media effectively promoted debate on and about his life pointing to his treatment at independence as demeaning. The private press thus questioned the choice of the

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selection of makers of his statue, the place to erect his statue and what it meant to the state viz-a-vis what it meant to the veteran nationalists’ supporters. The chapter is focused on the immortalisation of Nkomo into Zimbabwe’s cultural landscape. The immortalisation of Nkomo can shade light on the complex nature of nationalism in Zimbabwe. Chiwaura shifts the lens to the immortalisation of Nkomo through a statue, grave and naming process. This book ends with Thabisani Ndlovu’s rich chapter which employs heritage interpretation as a lens to read contestations over the statue(s) of the late Joshua Nkomo with a view to examine the role of statuary in recent Zimbabwean historiography. The process of unveiling the bronze statue of Nkomo on 22 December 2013 at the intersection of 8th Avenue and Main Street, and the subsequent name change of the latter to JM Nkomo Street, was a slow process mired in contestation and controversy. While it took government more than 6 years to sanction the name change as proposed by the city council of Bulawayo, the bronze statue (one of a pair) of Nkomo had to be taken down before its official unveiling in 2010, following complaints by the Nkomo family and Bulawayo public. The government had planned that the second of the two statues would be erected in Harare’s Karigamombe Centre to which there were objections by both the Nkomo family and the owners of the space for the proposed site, revealing the importance of the spatialisation of public memory. The focus of this chapter is on the Bulawayo statue, which was (re)erected on the spot where that of Cecil John Rhodes used to be, facing the same direction (North) suggesting some kind of dissonance.

Conclusion This book is written in a context of Zimbabwe where ZANU-PF has not only monopolised power but also history of the nation. What Ranger (2004) depicted as ‘patriotic history’ is consistently mobilised to silence other pertinent histories. The choice of Nkomo as a subject of this book is a modest means meant to address the broad question of silencing in history and existential suffering through delving deeper into politics of the nation and its narration. What emerges poignantly is that anti-colonial nationalism was not only a terrain of liberation visions but contestations among nationalist actors. The contestations were described by Masipula Sithole as part of ‘struggles-within-the struggle’. What also emerges is

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that Nkomo’s political life story was in large measure intertwined with the historical tapestry of the evolution of Zimbabwe from a colony to postcolonial nationhood. His story is that of an active politician and transcends colonial and post-colonial divides of Zimbabwean political history. Political contestations over power dovetailed into equally complex and competing nationalist regimes of truth in the broader context of production and reproduction of history of the nation through political narratives and rhetoric. These representations are significant as another way through which one could understand the consistent underlying competitions for dominance among key nationalist actors throughout the struggle for Zimbabwe. This book offers a window into struggles-within-the struggle and struggles-after-the-struggle. There is no doubt that nationalist politicians had permanent political interests rather than permanent opponents. Through use of political rhetoric, they built enemies, and through the same process, they rehabilitated those enemies as long as it was convenient to their political stakes of the day.

Notes 1. The term has been used extensively in existential philosophy, notably by Jean-Paul Sartre in Being and Nothingness to define the relations between ‘Self’ and ‘Other’ in creating self-awareness and ideas of identity. The concept of the ‘Other’ has also been widely used in post-colonial theory. Their definition of the ‘Other’ is rooted in Freudian and post-Freudian analysis of the formation of subjectivity, most notably in the work of the psychoanalyst and cultural theorist Jacques Lacan. 2. This was clearly demonstrated by the effective use of the picture taken after the signing of the unity accord in which Mugabe and Nkomo grabbed each other’s hand and raised them high. This picture was used in the 1990 elections representing Nkomo and Mugabe as ‘the stars of Zimbabwe’. 3. This insignificant party finally joined ranks with Edgar Tekere’s Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) that contested the 1990 elections on the platform of resisting a one-party state in Zimbabwe. 4. Sibanda, Maxwell, Music central tool in Zimbabwe election, 29 March 2005, available from: http://www.freemuse.org/sw8620.asp (last accessed: 24 March 2017).

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42  S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Alexander, J., McGregor, J., & Ranger, T. (2000). Violence and memory: One hundred years in the ‘dark forests’ of Matabeleland. Oxford: James Currey. Bhabha, H. K. (Ed.). (1990). Nation and narration. London: Routledge. Bhebe, N. (1999). The ZAPU and ZANU guerrilla warfare and the Evangelical Lutheran church in Zimbabwe. Gweru: Mambo Press. Bull-Christiansen, L. (2004). Tales of the nation. Feminist nationalism or patriotic history? Defining national history and identity in Zimbabwe. Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Cameron, H. (2017). The Matabeleland Massacres: Britain’s wilful blindness. The International History Review, 1–19. Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Legal Resources Foundation. (1997). Breaking the silence: Building true peace: A report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980–1988. Harare: CCJP and LRF. Chitiyo, K., & Rupiya, M. (2005). Tracking Zimbabwe’s political history: The Zimbabwe defence force from 1980-2005. In M. Rupiya (Ed.), Evolutions and revolutions: A contemporary history of militaries in Southern Africa (pp. 331–363). Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies. Chiwewe, W. (1989). Unity negotiations. In C. S. Banana (Ed.), Turmoil and tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890–1990 (pp. 242–287). Harare: The College Press. Chung, F. (2006). Re-living the second Chimurenga: Memories from Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. Uppsala: The Nordic Africa Institute. Cliffe, L., Mpofu, J., & Munslow, B. (1980). Nationalist politics in Zimbabwe: The 1980 elections and beyond. Review of African Political Economy, 7(18), 44–67. de Certeau, M. (1988). The writing of history. (Tom Conley, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. Fontein, J. (2006). The silence of great Zimbabwe: Contested landscapes and the power of heritage. London: University College of London Press. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. New York: Pantheon Books. Fox-Genovese, E. (1989). Literary criticism and the politics of new historicism. In H. A. Veeser (Ed.), The new historicism. New York: Routledge. Friedman, M. P., & Kenney, P. (2005). Introduction: History in politics. In M. P. Friedman & P. Kenney (Eds.), Partisan histories: The past in contemporary global politics (pp. 1–13). New York: Palgrave. Gunn, S. (2006). From hegemony to governmentality: Changing conceptions of power in social history. Journal of Social History, 39(3), 705–720. Kriger, N. J. (2003). Guerrilla veterans in post-war Zimbabwe: Symbolic and violent politics, 1980–1987. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriger, N. (2005). ZANU (PF) strategies in general elections, 1980–2000: Discourse and coercion. African Affairs, 104(414), 1–34. Laakso, L. (1999). Voting without choosing: State making and elections in Zimbabwe. Helsinki: University of Helsinki.

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Lan, D. (1985). Guns and rain: Guerrillas and spirit mediums in Zimbabwe. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Luxemburg, R. (1976). The national question. New York: Monthly Review Press. Martin, D., & Johnson, P. (1981). The struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga war. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Mhanda, W. (2011). Dzino: Memories of a freedom fighter. Harare: Weaver Press. Moore, D. (2005, June 26–29). Inventing the past, creating hegemony: Deconstructing Ngwabi Bhebe’s Simon Vengayi Muzenda: The struggle for and liberation of Zimbabwe. Paper presented at the South African Historical Society Biennial Conference: Southern Africa and the World: The Local, the Regional and the Global in Historical Perspective, University of Cape Town. Msindo, E. (2004). Ethnicity in Matabeleland, Zimbabwe: A study of KalangaNdebele relations, 1860s–1980s. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Cambridge. Msipa, C. G. (2015). In pursuit of freedom and justice: A memoir. Harare: Weaver Press. Mugabe, R. (2001). Inside the third Chimurenga. Harare: Government of Zimbabwe. Mutanda, F. C. (2010). Foreword. In J. Nkomo (Ed.), Nkomo: The story of my life. Reprint. Harare: Pacprint. Ncube, W. (1989). The post-unity period: Developments, benefits and problems. In C. Banana (Ed.), Turmoil and tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890–1990 (pp. 305–335). Harare: The College Press. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2003). The post-colonial state and civil-military relations in Matabeleland: Regional perceptions. In R. Williams, G. Cawthra, & D. Abrahams (Eds.), Ourselves to know: Civil-military relations and defence transformation in Southern Africa (pp. 17–38). Institute of Security Studies: Pretoria. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2007). Forging and imagining the nation in Zimbabwe: Trials and tribulations of Joshua Nkomo as a nationalist leader. Nationalities Affairs, 30, 25–42. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2008). Fatherhood and nationhood: Joshua Nkomo and the re-imagination of the Zimbabwe nation. In K. Muchemwa & R. Muponde (Eds.), Manning the nation: Father figures in Zimbabwean literature and society. Harare: Weaver Press. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2009). Do ‘Zimbabweans’ exist? Trajectories of nationalism, national identity formation and crisis in a postcolonial state. Oxford: Peter Lang. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (Ed.). (2015). Mugabeism? History, politics, and power in Zimbabwe. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2016). The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, justice and the politics of life. New York: Berghahn.

44  S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S., & Willems, W. (2010). Reinvoking the past in the present: Changing identities and appropriations of Joshua Nkomo in post-colonial Zimbabwe. African Identities, 8(3), 191–208. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. O’Tuathail, G. (1996). Critical geopolitics: The politics of writing global space. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Raftopoulos, B. (1996). Race and nationalism in a post-colonial state. Seminar series, no. 10. Harare: SAPES Books. Ranger, T. (1985). Peasant consciousness and the guerrilla war in Zimbabwe. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Ranger, T. (1999). Joshua Nkomo: A cultural nationalist. Public Lecture Presented at Bulawayo History Museum. Ranger, T. (2004). Nationalist historiography, patriotic history and the history of the nation: The struggle over the past in Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 30(2), 215–234. Rich, T. (1982). Legacies of the past? The results of the 1980 election in midlands province, Zimbabwe. Africa: Journal of the International Africa Institute, 52(3), 42–55. Robins, S. (1996). Heroes, heretics and historians of the Zimbabwe revolution: A review article of Norma Kriger’s ‘peasant voices’ (1992). Zambezia, 23(1), 73–92. Sachikonye, L. (2003). From ‘growth with equity’ to ‘fast track’ reform: Zimbabwe’s land question. Review of African Political Economy, 30(96), 227–240. Schatzberg, M. G. (2001). Political legitimacy in Middle Africa: Father, family, food. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Shamuyarira, N. (1966). Crisis in Rhodesia. New York: Transatlantic Arts. Shaw, W. H. (1986). Towards the one-party state in Zimbabwe: A study in African political thought. Journal of Modern African Studies, 24(3), 373–394. Sithole, M. (1988). Zimbabwe: In search of a stable democracy. In L. Diamond et al. (Eds.), Democracy in developing countries: Africa: Volume II: Africa (pp. 217–285). Boulder: Lynne Rienner. Sutherland, C. (2005). Nation-building through discourse theory. Nations and Nationalism, 11(2), 185–202. Sithole, M. (1999). Zimbabwe: Struggle within the Struggle (2nd ed.). Harare: Rujeko Publishers. Tekere, E. (2007). Edgar ‘2’Boy Zivanai Tekere: A lifetime of struggle. Harare: SAPES. Todd, J. G. (2008). Through the darkness: A life in Zimbabwe. Cape Town: Zebra Press. Trouillot, M. R. (1995). Silencing the past: Power and the production of history. Boston: Beacon.

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Vambe, M. T. (2009). Fictions of autobiographical representation: Joshua Nkomo’s the story of my life. Journal of Literary Studies, 25(1), 80–97. Vambe, M. T., & Channels, A. (2009). The power of autobiography in Southern Africa. Journal of Literary Studies, 25(1), 1–7. Veeser, H. A. (1989). The new historicism. New York: Routledge. Werbner, R. (1991). Tears of the dead: The social biography of an African family. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press. Werbner, R. (1998). Smoke from the barrel of a gun: Postwars of the dead, memory and reinscription in Zimbabwe. In R. Werbner (Ed.), Memory and the postcolony: African anthropology and the critique of power (pp. 67–98). London: Zed Books. White, L. (2003). The assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Text and politics in Zimbabwe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. White, L. (2007). Whoever saw a country with four armies?: The battle of Bulawayo revisited. Journal of Southern African Studies, 33(3), 619–631. Worby, E. (1998). Tyranny, parody and ethnic polarity: Ritual engagements with the state in North-western Zimbabwe. Journal of Southern African Studies, 24(3), 337–354. Young, C. (2012). The postcolonial state in Africa: Fifty years of independence, 1960–2010. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press.

PART I

Imperialism, Nationalism, Liberation and Leadership

CHAPTER 2

The Contributions of Joshua Nkomo to the Liberation of Zimbabwe Eliakim M. Sibanda

Introduction Joshua Nkomo was one of the dominant forces in the anti-colonial independence movements in colonial Zimbabwe between 1949 and 1980, and then a major political figure in independent Zimbabwe from 1980 until his death in 1999. Nkomo’s fame survived his electoral defeat in 1980. Even those hostile to him conceded he possessed great abilities and a streak of genius, as evidenced by his contributions to the decolonization and building of Zimbabwe, which made him an enduring hero. When he was leader of ZAPU, Nkomo played a robust part in the rough-and-tumble of national politics of decolonization. His image as a nationalist had, however, a distorting effect which opened him to both positive and negative mythmaking. Interestingly, these negative myths of 1980–1987 were remarkably different from the great hero as he was generally perceived to be in the 1990s and posthumously. This chapter explores Nkomo’s political life, paying particular attention to his contributions to the country’s independence, and how it sharpened

E.M. Sibanda (*)  University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_2

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the beginnings of an independent Zimbabwe. Specifically it focuses on his role as founder and leader of revolutionary movements and his international campaign for the liberation of Zimbabwe which contributed immensely to its independence. Because a lot has been written over the years on Nkomo’s perceived weaknesses, this chapter will not repeat those foibles of his although some might criticize it as hagiography. Thus, in a way, this chapter must be understood against a broader tapestry of the African liberation and anti-colonial discourse.

Early Trade Unionism and Leading the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC): 1948–1959 Nkomo’s decision to take on a position in 1947 as organizing secretary of the Rhodesian African Workers’ Union launched him on a political path. Black politics until then had never articulately questioned and challenged white supremacy, contenting itself with petitions for better living conditions, neither were previous unions, such as the 1948 SRANC led by Reverend Thompson Samkange, very radical. The SRANC, the African Voice Association, and the Reformed Industrial and Commercial Workers’ Union not only spoke actively against racial discrimination, but also seem to have accepted the inevitability of some form of white domination. In 1948, Nkomo was employed by the Rhodesian Railways, a government department that was headquartered in the industrial city of Bulawayo (Nkomo 2001: 45). He was one of the first black Africans to be given a senior managerial office in the company, which was led entirely by whites and relegated blacks to the lower ranks. He worked as a welfare officer, attending to the working and living conditions of railway workers (Ranger 2010: 196). This position required him to be in constant contact with the grievances of the ordinary African worker. He also lived with them in the compounds in Bulawayo, where the conditions were squalid and unfavourable. Nkomo travelled often between Bulawayo and Lusaka on business, witnessed inequities in the ­distribution of jobs in colonial economic organizations. In the same year, Nkomo was also elected president of the African Railway Employees Association (Scarnecchia 2008: 72). The association had been founded in 1946, when it organized a massive strike. It was

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one of the earliest formidable workers’ unions to emerge in Southern Rhodesia and was a political force in its own right. The 1946 strike had taken place while Nkomo was still in South Africa, however, so he did not yet realize the threat this institution was beginning to pose to white dominance of the railway industry. The association’s strike was seen as first evidence of the ‘waking up’ of the African working class in opposition to colonial domination, and Nkomo had just become its leader (Bond et al. 2015: 123–124). Whether or not this was his intention, almost overnight Nkomo became the face of African working-class resistance to colonial injustice. The African Railway Employees Association was forced to assume a political role in the late 1940s due to the Southern Rhodesian government’s increasingly oppressive approach towards African workers. Though not illegal, workers’ unions were resented by whites. In addition, the demands of the African workers had evolved from social welfare issues, such as better food rations, to more important issues, such as adequate accommodation and improved wages. This shift was important because it affected key state institutions such as the Native Affairs department. It was evident that the association was incubating the earliest forms of black insurgency against colonialism and was the most organized black movement of the time. Joshua Nkomo thus became the leader of the biggest black movement in Southern Rhodesia, and (in more ways than one) the development of the African Railway Employees Association presented him with the opportunity to incubate his future political career. From being a union organizer, Nkomo became involved in the early 1950s with African political movements. When he got back from South Africa in 1948, he found a weak local SRANC, which a few revolutionaries, Clement Muchachi, Jerry Vera, Aaron Mazibisa, and Edward Ndlovu, were trying to strengthen. It was a regional political party based in Bulawayo, the second city of the country (Sellström 2003: 294). Its concerns only included local grievances, not pushing for constitutional and political changes, and Nkomo was elected its president in 1952. Evidently, the SRANC’s members had been impressed by his ability to mobilize support and had witnessed his vibrant leadership of the African Railway Employees Association after becoming its president in 1948. He initially rejected the offer, but was convinced by friend and fellow politician, Eric Dumbutshena, to take up the task (Nkomo 2001: 82).

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One of Nkomo’s most important attributes was his talent both for sensitizing the workers to bigger issues and for mobilizing them against colonial rule. Under his leadership, the African Railway Employees Association evolved from a workers’ union concerned only with workrelated welfare to concern with broader issues demanding the Southern Rhodesian government’s political attention. The calls for equality between whites and blacks spilled over from the workplace and industry into the political sphere. It was through the example set by the African Railway Workers Association that blacks began to demand suffrage and representation in decision-making bodies at both institutional and national levels. No doubt in response to such a growing sentiment, in 1952, the white settler communities in Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland intensified their discussion to form a Federation in order to further consolidate and entrench their power. It was first necessary, however, to consult with Britain the colonizing power. Through Reverend Percy Ibbotson (a man Nkomo respected), Prime Minister Sir Godfrey Huggins invited Nkomo to be part of the Southern African delegation to the London Conference that was making preparations for this Federation. Before he responded, Nkomo consulted with his SRANC executive who after reluctantly agreed that Nkomo be part of the delegation, warning that he should reject the whole idea of the Federation. Through its connection with other African movements from Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the SRANC executive was aware that their counterparts were vehemently opposed to the notion of the Federation, which they feared would concentrate power in white hands and unduly delay what they saw as inevitable independence. The London Federation talks of 1952 proved that Nkomo was not only a respected African leader, but also a politically attentive one who listened to the voices of millions of aggrieved Africans. Initially, Huggins had chosen Nkomo on the basis that he was respected by fellow Africans and would make a good and submissive representative (Casey 2007: 93–95). Nkomo was also selected on the basis that the negotiations needed the nominal presence of an African leader. After the fact, there is some irony in Nkomo at time being viewed as a passive African leader who would not threaten the agenda of the Rhodesian government. Nkomo must have surprised his sponsors when he strongly spoke about the concerns of the Africans in national affairs and their widespread disapproval of the idea of Federation.

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Despite African resistance, however, the Federation was imposed in 1953, and a negligible number of non-whites were invited to sit in parliament. After failing to win his party’s support for his own candidacy, Nkomo ran for the African seat in Bulawayo, his home town, and lost. Despite his role in opposing the Federation, his participation in these elections (though unsuccessful) would be counted against him by his comrades in the early 1960s as one of the reasons they needed to break away from his party to form a new one that was less likely to collaborate with the colonial status quo. Federation saw the intensification of nationalism on the part of Africans and added to the hardship that the black population was already enduring. For instance, in 1923, African voting rights were restricted by the imposition of financial property, as well as educational and ownership requirements. In 1930, their lands were expropriated through the introduction of the Land Apportionment Act, giving blacks, who were 95% of the population, less than two-thirds of the available land, and whites, who were 5%, a third, which also happened to include the best arable land. These laws were followed by the Industrial Conciliation Act (1934), which unfairly regulated the state of trade unions, wages and industrial workers, and the Native Land Husbandry Act (1951), which restricted the number of cattle blacks could own and abolished communal land ownership. In response to these restrictive laws and the formation of the Federation, Africans became politically radicalized. By the mid-1950s, a new generation of activists had emerged that went beyond mere petitioning for better living conditions to demanding majority rule. These activists formed the Southern Rhodesia National Youth League under the leadershipof James Chikerema, Edson Sithole, and George Nyandoro. The Youth League was later joined by Jason Z. Moyo, Lazarus Nkala, and Joseph Msika. This group was radical in its demands and severely criticized the ‘tea time partnership’ of interracial organizations. The group’s greatest achievement was the boycott it organized in August 1956 to protest the hike in bus fares for blacks living in Salisbury. The Youth League suffered essentially from the same weakness from which the SRANC suffered; however, it too was regional, with no membership beyond Salisbury. The government responded to this protest by introducing the Unlawful Assemblies Act to try and suppress any future such opposition.

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In August 1955, Nkomo became one of the founding members of the revived SRANC (first called the Southern Rhodesia Bantu Congress, in Bulawayo) and its president. As a somewhat elitist group itself, its main objective was to mitigate rather than eradicate African grievances. They resorted to delegations and petitions as a way of influencing the settler government to govern them better; however, they needed a leader who was both respectable and educated. Nkomo met both of those criteria: he had a university degree and was already widely known through his union activities at the Railways. With the introduction of the Unlawful Assemblies Act, Nkomo quickly became aware that the SRANC’s elitist approach could not respond adequately to the hardships the government had imposed. The approach needed was a national one and so he resigned from the party. On 12 September 1957, the African National Congress combined with the Youth League to form the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), which gave the new organization a national character. The new party then decided to find skilful leadership that was already prominent, so Nkomo was elected the first president of the expanded SRANC. His arrival on the scene also marked a generational shift in the political landscape. This was a time of mass politics, a phenomenon unknown before, so much so that the formation of SRANC has been considered the beginning of mass African nationalist engagement. While its main goals were modest, it opposed racial laws contained in the constitution and demanded equal treatment. Nkomo’s desire for the SANC to become a mass party, encompassing both educated and uneducated Africans from both rural and urban areas, became a reality as the party dealt with issues causing discontent among all Africans. By early 1958, the weekly political meetings became huge mass rallies. Nkomo, whose addresses were more conversational, intimate, and charismatic, riveted large audiences. He drew comparisons with Lobengula and Nehanda, reminding people of resistance that had occurred half a century ago. His speeches buttressed the continuity of struggle, which resonated with his audiences. Consequently, he attracted massive followings all over the country, showing great empathy, a quality that is so crucial to any politician’s success. Nkomo played also a pivotal role in internationalizing the Southern Rhodesia political crisis through attendance at successive conferences, including the 1953 Constitutional Review Conference held in London (Nkomo 2001: 58). It was during these political trips that he

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encountered various civic organizations, religious groups, civil rights movements, labour groups, and trade unions, all of which showed sympathy to the plight of the Africans (Nkomo 2001: 58). Although the SRANC was still a small political movement, Nkomo managed to broadcast the plight of the Africans to the Western world through various conferences and events in Britain. The current plight of the Africans was not much in the public eye; Nkomo enlightened the Western world about the harsh colonial privations that Africans experienced in their country. Although Nkomo showed great leadership and strength, the SRANC proved not to be militant enough to deal with strongly established colonial institutions. This was witnessed in the 1956 Salisbury Bus Boycott in which urban dwellers, industrial workers, and the City Youth League staged a demonstration by boycotting state-run bus services on urban routes such as from Highfield to the central business district (Muzondidya 2005: 168). In this protest against the colonial administration, the SRANC failed to increase support among Africans. In addition, the SRANC failed to export the demonstrations to other towns and cities such as Bulawayo and Gwelo, where Africans were facing the same challenges. In his biography, Nkomo admitted that the SRANC failed to register itself as an effective political movement, leading to his resignation in 1956 and signalling his personal dissatisfaction with the organization (Nkomo 2001: 70). International politics were also changing in a positive way for Nkomo and his party. Ghana became the first sub-Saharan country to get its independence from Britain in 1957; this resulted in a nationalist euphoria in most African countries, particularly those under British rule (Bourret 1960). An independent Ghana offered Nkomo’s SRANC financial and political support. Through those improved relations, Nkomo attended Kwame Nkrumah’s All-African People’s Conference in Ghana, meeting with other nationalist leaders from across Africa. There Nkomo and others learned new techniques of agitation and subversion and adopted the doctrine of pan-Africanism, which he merged with his party’s political agenda. As a pan-Africanist, he and his party were committed to the liberation and unity of Africans across the continent and the struggle for the total liberation of Africa (Sibanda 2005: 73). By 1959, the SRANC, thanks to Nkomo, had become a known revolutionary movement. President Nassir of Egypt had offered financial support to the party as early as 1959 after making contact with Nkomo (Nkomo 2001: 78). Thus, Nkomo’s role on the continental front made

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the SRANC stronger and more widely known. In the eyes of some of his lieutenants and some liberal white supporters of the struggle at the time, his international travels were criticized as a jet-setting performance that epitomized his personal flaws; in reality, however, these trips gained the party invaluable political capital both regionally and internationally. On 26 February 1959, the SRANC was banned by parliament under the newly passed Unlawful Organizations Act, effectively putting a stop to the nationalist movement for just under a year. Nkomo was travelling in Cairo at the time (Nkomo 2001: 78) and was not among the 500 arrested. He was able to establish a base in London in the interim and was chosen as president of the new, more radical New Democratic Party (NDP) upon his return to Rhodesia. It can thus be argued that it was through Nkomo’s leadershipthat the SRANC became enough of a threat to the white supremacist regime in Southern Rhodesia that it, in selfdefence, had to intervene to curtail its activities. As a result of the ban, Nkomo was forced into exile for 22 months away from home, fuelling further opposition to colonial rule and enhancing his public role in the struggle.

Return from Exile and Leading the National Democratic Party (NDP) 1960–1961 The ban of the SRANC in 1959 was intended to derail the nationalists’ agenda of political freedom and equality in Southern Rhodesia. The arrest of leaders such as James Chikerema and George Nyandoro was only part of the colonial government’s strategy to thwart any nascent revolutionary plans. For Nkomo and other leaders, the ban of the SRANC meant a more aggressive political stance was required. It was Nkomo’s desire to see an independent Zimbabwe that prompted the formation of a successive nationalist party, despite the prevailing hostile political climate. Nkomo returned to Southern Rhodesia to embark on a more militant struggle for political independence amidst increased mass support. At Salisbury International Airport, he was met by 50,000 supporters, which signalled the beginning of more aggressive nationalism (Nkomo 2001: 93). Nkomo drew new support as the icon of revolutionary a­ctivity in the country, being both a nationalist and traditional leader (Ranger 1999b: 3–4). His role as president of the NDP became intimately

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associated with the celebrated First Chimurenga wars of 1896–1897, which had resisted colonial encroachment. Nkomo received traditional semi-military paraphernalia from one of the spirit mediums who had fought in the First Chimurenga. This gesture cemented his status as a leader of liberation movements in the country (Nkomo 2001: 93). The praise name Chibwechitedza (a ‘Slippery Rock’) was also given to Nkomo in honour of his role in leading the nationalist movements on his return from exile. Nkomo’s return marked a renewed interest in the ongoing struggle and resuscitated the hopes of many nationalists who were incarcerated in prisons and concentration camps, thus giving him iconic status. As president of the NDP, Nkomo was invited to resolve Rhodesia’s constitutional future at a British conference in Salisbury in 1961. There, Nkomo accepted a deal giving nationalists 15 of the 65 parliamentary seats, even though this franchise agreement would delay majority rule several decades. Though this deal upset many ZAPU members, including Mugabe, Nkomo was unable to renege on it once negotiations had been concluded and it became law in 1962. While the party increasingly disagreed on a number of issues including ideology and tactics, Nkomo’s method of constitutional negotiations was the only one that reached the international scene, including both the African Congress and the United Nations. Those that opposed him offered no clear and viable alternative and conceded that Nkomo was still popular within the country (Ranger 1963). The acceptance of the new constitution had a brighter side to it for the African population; it denied the whites any form of independence from Britain that excluded them, and introduced a bill of rights that nationalists were able to use to argue or appeal their cases. Echoing what happened to SRANC, the NDP was banned in September 1961. ZAPU was formed by the banned NDP leaders on 17 December 1961, 10 days later (Sibanda 2005: 72). By this time, the party’s support had grown to include people of all classes in urban and rural areas. All this occurred under the presidency of Joshua Nkomo. The new movement was different from its predecessor because it was more consistent in its call for total independence as well as its strategy to win the country through military confrontation. To that end, it formed one of the earliest modern guerrilla armies in the country, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). There was also a war council, which worked specifically towards the war cause.

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Nkomo’s direction for the reconstituted party did not change, however, and some nationalist leaders within the party became increasingly frustrated with a perceived lack of progress. As president of ZAPU, Nkomo was criticized for being indecisive and weak, while security laws still constricted nationalist activities. Nkomo wished to continue negotiations through constitutional means, however. He hoped majority rule could be reached through peaceful negotiations through the support of the international community. Nkomo believed that Britain eventually would be forced to intervene in Rhodesia, implementing majority rule for them. In order to make contacts abroad, Nkomo thus travelled often, leaving ZAPU without effective leadership at home. When ZAPU was banned in September 1962 and other leaders were arrested, Nkomo was once again out of reach, this time in Lusaka, and so avoided arrest, remaining abroad to establish a government in exile. Many nationalist leaders, disillusioned with the ineffectiveness of the international community, were starting to believe that Africans in Zimbabwe were the only ones who could bring about liberation for Zimbabwe. These factors, combined with personality clashes and the divisive role played by white liberals who supported the nationalists, led to a split among the nationalist leaders in 1963. Fifteen of them left ZAPU to form ZANU, the Zimbabwe African National Union, under the leadership of Ndabaningi Sithole. The split led to unprecedented violence and hostility between ZAPU and ZANU supporters, no doubt to the delight of the white establishment. At this point, both ZAPUand ZANU acknowledged that constitutional negotiations were not advancing their cause. Nkomo turned to the Soviet Union for support, and ZAPU became recognized as one of the ‘authentic seven’ black nationalist movements by the Organization of African Unity. ZAPU was given military and diplomatic support from the Soviet Union and was encouraged by other nationalist groups striving for independence in Africa. When Nkomo returned to the country, he was sent to a desolate detainment camp at Gonakudzingwa and remained there for 10 years starting April 1964. While in exile, Nkomo had continued to lead ZAPU and maintained control over its Soviet-trained military wing, ZIPRA. Though recognizing the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare, Nkomo maintained his position preferring diplomacy to guerrilla warfare. This created increased suspicion and hostility from ZANU and its military component, Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), who

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relied heavily on guerrilla war tactics. Progress towards independence was impeded by ongoing clashes between the two groups. Nkomo’s role in the road to independence during this period thus was characterized by ongoing negotiations with the ruling Southern Rhodesian government. The white regime under Garfield Todd was willing to address the political imbalances in the colony, but without reducing the economic autonomy of the white minority. Nkomo negotiated with the Todd government on several occasions, but the two differed on the issue of majority rule and ‘one man, one vote’. Despite these serious differences, Nkomo convinced the Todd government to adjust the constitution in order to pave the way for negotiations with the hope of making an easy political transition to majority rule. In terms of dealing with the constitutional impasse during this period, Nkomo gained considerable ground when the government agreed to suspend the constitution. As a result, in 1960, Nkomo issued a joint statement with Todd announcing the suspension of the Southern Rhodesian constitution (Ranger 1992: 72). This was a landmark step, as the constitution was the primary weapon used to systematically and effectively subject Africans to perpetual subordination. It had also been used to disenfranchise Africans through land clauses and the protection of white enterprise. Thus, Nkomo’s role in suspending the constitution in 1960 was of cardinal importance on the road to independence because he had managed to also have suspended, the legislative apparatus that had haunted the African masses for decades during colonialism. Nkomo’s leadership capabilities had also been sharpened by the rough political environment in Southern Rhodesia as well as his exposure to international politics. Ranger vividly captures how the personality of Nkomo had, within a short period of time, developed a strong political stamina: I have heard Joshua speak twice since his return from London - once at a meeting of 20, 000. He seems to have gained greatly in stature […] I am glad Joshua came back at once so that he could take a firm grip on the situation here […]. (Ranger 1992: 90)

Clearly, Nkomo’s return from exile was a landmark political development in the colony, which led in turn to an improved political strategy. His return was a well-timed political move which ensured continuity of the quest for independence in Southern Rhodesia.

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Furthermore, the 1961 demonstrations under the leadership of Nkomo signalled the dawn of an aggressive revolution, something that was to remain visible throughout the liberation struggle. Previously, Nkomo had pursued dialogue with the Rhodesian government as early as 1949 as well as in the constitutional review talks of the early 1950s. There was thus a clear shift between Nkomo’s earlier dialogue approach and this new approach in the early 1960s under the NDP. Nkomo, as the president of the NDP, should be credited for driving the nationalist elements from a position of restraint, which had proved ineffective, into more direct opposition to colonial rule. The beginning of Nkomo’s militancy may be traced to the 29 of November 1961 when he convened a meeting with the agenda of crippling industry, the backbone of the colonial economy (Nkomo 2001: 118). At the meeting, Nkomo requested all the people present to take off their shoes, a symbolic act associated with preparation for a major task. The taking off of shoes signalled that Nkomo and his NDP were ready to destroy Rhodesian industry as part of their new strategy to weaken the government. This undoubtedly helped cultivated a much-needed militancy in the minds of ordinary Africans. Although it took a long time, the seeds of Nkomo’s changed approach were to bear fruit throughout the liberation struggle, both in urban and in rural areas, as the masses cooperated to defeat the colonial ­government. The ban of the party and restriction of its leaders is proof that Nkomo and his colleagues had achieved success in mobilizing Africans under a systematic political framework. The NDP had become the biggest political movement representing the plight of the Africans in the region. Among other achievements, Nkomo had opposed the government’s oppressive land policies, had led demonstrations against the referendum, and had eloquently expressed the African voice to the Rhodesian government. Meanwhile, the ban of NDP did not deter Nkomo from working towards the political independence of Rhodesia. In fact, the end of the NDP placed Nkomo at the centre of the armed struggle within ZAPU party. Nkomo’s ability to withstand internal divisions in the NDP helped ensure continuation of the struggle for independence. These differences assumed varying forms at different times. Of particular importance in this case was internal opposition against Nkomo which emerged in the

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backdrop of the ‘Destroy Industry’ campaign of 1961. Nkomo’s greatest internal opposition came from trade unionists in the party who opposed the destruction of the colonial economy. Their basic argument was that the destruction of the colonial economy would have devastating ripple effects on the urban population that depended entirely on these institutions, as the colonial economy was comprised of agriculture, mining, and the manufacturing industry. At the same time, Nkomo’s acceptance of the 1961 constitution resulted in the widening of the political differences within the NDP. The proposed constitution between the British government, the Southern Rhodesian government, and Nkomo had set aside 15 seats for Africans in parliament out of 65 seats. This quota was seen as inadequate by many, considering the fact that the Africans who were to be given only 15 seats in parliament were the majority and comprised more than 80% of the entire population. In addition, the proposed arrangement had actually reduced the participation of Africans in overall decision-making instead of increasing it (Ranger 1992: 95). The results of these talks and the proposed constitution showed that Nkomo had failed to bargain for what the Africans really wanted: one man, one vote, and equal representation. Michael Mawema, based in Salisbury, and Leopold Takawira in London then became the greatest of Nkomo’s critics (Ranger 1992: 95). Writing on 15 February 1961, nationalist leader Maurice Nyagumbo expressed his disapproval of Nkomo’s actions, arguing that ‘the results of the constitutional talks were very disappointing. The franchise was raised instead of lowering it. Only 15 Africans in parliament out of 65 members’ (Ranger 1992: 95). Although the proposed arrangement did not come to fruition, it is clear that Nkomo’s alleged political blunder had divided the party. Those in prison, including Maurice Nyagumbo, were also seriously divided. In the face of mounting internal opposition and attacks by the Rhodesian security forces, however, Nkomo was still able to maintain his strong command of the party structures. He organized a mediation conference in Accra, Ghana, where the nationalist leader met with Kwame Nkrumah, who commanded great influence among African liberation movements. Nkrumah’s mediation was credited with stabilizing the party, but the role of Nkomo in settling the differences should not be overlooked.

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Nkomo’s Political Career with the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), 1961–1980 In 1962, ZAPU under Nkomo’s leadership became the first nationalist party in the country to explicitly call for independence on a one man, one vote basis (Sibanda 2005: 72). During this period, the majority of Africans could not qualify to vote due to the oppressive nature of colonial governments which qualified voters on the basis of education and economic status. Only those who met a certain economic standard and formal education could qualify for suffrage. Because most Africans during this time had not attained the required level of economic status and education, they did qualify in the required economic class. Suffrage thus was clearly determined on racial basis. In effect, whites were indiscriminately given the right to vote regardless of their status, ability to pay taxes, or level of education. Thus, the founding of Nkomo’s ZAPU interrupted this strongly established racist system. By calling for independence through one man, one vote, Nkomo and ZAPU were forging political equality in the country; this became one of the major cornerstones of the struggle for independence. One man, one vote implied that Africans, Europeans, Asians, and those of mixed race needed to be viewed as equal. This call for equality was an important step in sensitizing other Africans who had been influenced to believe that they were politically, ideologically, and economically inferior to whites. The call for political equality awakened Africans to the possibility of democracy and majority rule, which became the motivation for the more militant demand for both political independence and the equality of races. The calls for political equality were also important because they exposed the Southern Rhodesian government’s constitutional and legal imbalances. The unequal treatment of Africans symbolized the citizen versus subject relations in which the African was only allowed to play a minor role in decision-making. The Southern Rhodesian constitution protected these imbalances and racial biases through the respective constitutional clauses meant to reduce the autonomy of Africans in decisionmaking and political activities of the colony. The stance by Nkomo and other leaders allowed Africans to view themselves as equal to their colonisers, motivating them to face the colonial government and demand their independence through military confrontation if negotiations failed. This approach was important to ZAPU movement and to Africans in various ways. First, the call for independence on a one man, one vote

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basis showed a common grievance of all Africans, resulting in the emergence of a common call, demanding equality and suffrage. Second, it was ideologically potent, providing the focus for negotiation or the justification for military confrontation. It became the major rallying point in various negotiations, including the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement that eventually resulted in independence in 1980. The demand for equality thus was of crucial importance in the much-awaited transition from white minority rule to majority rule by Africans. Nkomo’s tenure as the president of ZAPU also witnessed the internationalization of what came to be known as the Rhodesian crisis. Nkomo spent the first half of 1962 lobbying countries such as Cuba, Russia, Egypt, and Ethiopia to support the war of independence (Sibanda 2005: 73). He negotiated with the British government, which had considerable influence in the political affairs of Southern Rhodesia. Nkomo also lobbied for support from other African leaders such as King Hailie Selassie of Ethiopia, who provided him with much-needed financial and moral support. He also established good relations with President of Egypt, Nasser, spending several weeks there, where he acquired financial and military support in preparation for a full-scale war against the colonial government. Support from these foreign governments pushed the colonial authorities to the negotiating table to work on a political transition, because the alternative was becoming more ominous. In the end, the Rhodesian government was forced to announce a ceasefire to pave way for the negotiations that culminated in the 1979 Lancaster talks and subsequent majority elections in 1980. Nkomo’s role in the internationalization of the Rhodesian war was more evident in the post-1975 period after Mozambique attained its independence. The geopolitics of the Southern African region became tense after the defeat of the Portuguese in Mozambique because the incoming FRELIMO government was sympathetic to the nationalist cause (Mzumara 2011: 359). Chigwedere (2003: 2), an historian, argued that this resulted in Britainand the USA pressuring Ian Smith to accept majority rule in Southern Rhodesia or risk the country’s military takeover by a Communist black government. Thus, he conclude that due to the pressure exerted by Nkomo, other nationalists, and foreign governments, Ian Smith thus eventually accepted the idea of majority rule (Chigwedere 2003: 2). It was not an idle threat, either. ZAPU began its first armament initiative in 1962 after Nkomo had acquired firearms from Egypt with the

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help of President Nasser. The weapons were smuggled across borders through Tanzania and Zambia, and with the help of other nationalists like Joseph Msika, the weapons were destined for Southern Rhodesia with the hope of launching attacks against specific state institutions and government officials. Although the firearms were confiscated by the police before reaching Bulawayo, the mission served as a warning to the colonial government of what a failure in negotiations certainly would mean. Throughout his career ZAPU, Nkomo managed to amass political support through his multi-racial approach. His party included people of different racial backgrounds—whites of European origin, those of mixed race mainly in Salisbury, and Asians, particularly Indians. ZAPU under Nkomo not only accommodated non-Africans in its structures, but also gave them leadership positions, illustrating that the struggle was not against the white race, but against a system of racial discrimination. Such figures included, for example, Judith Todd, daughter of former Rhodesian Prime Minister Sir Garfield Todd, who was eventually deported by the Ian Smith government for her role in the nationalist movement (Nkomo 2001: 68). On 15 June 1962, Terence Ranger, a white academic from the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was elected ZAPU’s deputy district chairperson (Ranger 1992: 128). Ranger remained active in nationalist politics together with his wife, Shelagh. The ZAPU branch under the leadership of Steve Lombard at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN) was dominated by whites, demonstrating that race was not a primary concern for Nkomo and other ZAPU nationalists. Marlborough, a white-dominated suburb in Salisbury, was under the leadership of Margaret Moore (Ranger 1992: 128). There was also a ZAPU branch in Acadia, an area comprised of mixed races. Nkomo was also on the forefront of a campaign against racism in Southern Rhodesia. ‘Citizens Against the Colour Bar’ was most prominent in 1961, although it remained a part of the nationalist discourse up to the independence period (Ranger 1992: 83). In his biography, Nkomo writes: ‘We did what we could to show that our fight was not a racial one, against the whites, but for all the people of the country. From white supporters outside, we received precious help’ (Nkomo 2001: 137). Ranger observed that for Nkomo, however, the campaign against the colour bar was a step towards a greater goal—to swim with whites, not in pools but in parliament (Ranger 1992: 88). Thus, it can be argued

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Nkomo popularized the notion of racial and for that matter, ethnic equality, thereby laying the foundations for militant mass nationalism in the colony that rose above race and ethnicity. Continued militancy by ZAPU under Nkomo resulted in its ban by the government in 1962, followed by house arrests of its leaders, including Nkomo, who were restricted to their rural homes for 3 months. Nkomo made sure that the quest for freedom would not die by creating a temporary reprieve called the People’s Caretaker Council (PCC) in 1962. The PCC was responsible for offering Africans political sanctuary at a time when nationalist activity was criminalized. Nkomo thus ensured continuity of the nationalist euphoria which had engulfed most parts of urban and rural Rhodesia. Furthermore, Nkomo played a pivotal role as one of the nationalist leaders who took part in the formation of the Organisation of African Union (OAU) in Tanzania in 1963. Led by Julius Nyerere of Tanzania, Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, Samora Machel of Mozambique, and Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia, it was the biggest body made up of independent countries and its main objective was to give support to the nationalist movements to achieve independence. The presence of Nkomo as the leader of the nationalist movement in Zimbabwe resulted in increased support from the OAU throughout the liberation struggle. ZAPU and later on ZANU became members of the OAU nationalist movements, receiving various forms of support throughout their struggles for independence. Thus, under Nkomo’s presidency, ZAPU was successful in getting continental support and attention that was vital to the country’s quest for independence. The widening of internal differences in ZAPU resulted in Nkomo and his fellow nationalists suffering a major setback in the form of a split in 1963. The ZANU split undoubtedly undermined Nkomo’s role in the struggle for independence, resulting in a loss of public confidence in his leadership. Scholars such as Sithole and Kriger have called it the ‘mother of all splits’ due to its magnitude and its impact on the nationalist cause (Zvogbo 2008: 115). Nkomo, however, managed to restructure the party by filling in the vacant posts, enabling new leaders such as Joseph Msika to assume influential positions. Nkomo was also able to identify and groom a new crop of leaders to continue with the fight for independence after the split. His efforts in the ZAPU did not go unnoticed as he was elected life president of the party at a meeting held on 10–11 August 1963 (Nkomo 2001: 120). These developments point

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to his ability to maintain the relevance of the ZAPU party in the country’s quest for independence and ZAPU prominent among other African nationalist movements in their common pursuit for freedom. His efforts towards independence also had personal consequences, resulting in his arrest on 16 April 1964 with other nationalist leaders such as Joseph Msika, Ruth Chinamano, and Josiah Chinamano. Because they were deemed dangerous citizens by the colonial government (Crummey 1986: 377), they were sent to Gonakudzingwa Restriction Camp, located in a game park on the south-eastern tip of Zimbabwe near the Mozambican border. For the next 10 years, the Rhodesian government separated Nkomo from nationalist activity, but could not take away the political will that had enabled him to lead nationalist politics for decades (Crummey 1986: 377). The government eventually released Nkomo from prison in 1974, and he went into exile in Zambia. Nkomo then embarked on an accelerated political exercise which saw the restructuring of ZAPU’s military wing, the ZIPRA. From exile, he directed, coordinated, and led the liberation struggle as leader of the war council. The restructuring process took place after 1975 and intensified recruitment of war fighters from Southern Rhodesia to countries such as Egypt, Tanzania, and Zambia for military training. He arguably created one of the best trained and disciplined freedom armies consisting of both guerrilla and conventional units. Between 1975 and 1979, Nkomo organized foreign military aid, acquiring both expertise and ammunition. ZIPRA force began to receive military training from Cuba and the Soviet Union (Nkomo 2001: 180). With the help of other ZAPU leaders, Nkomo was responsible for identifying potential military leaders and commanders for extensive military training in these countries. They returned and imparted their acquired military knowledge to new recruits. The military expertise acquired from these countries helped ZIPRA engage the Rhodesian security forces in direct combat and acquainted ZIPRA leaders with modern tactics, weaponry, and strategies that undoubtedly helped the nationalist movement to win key battles throughout the war. ZAPU and the Soviet Union also agreed to send future nationalist leaders to Moscow to acquire education. Scholarships were targeted at youth activists, women, and trade unionists to study general military subjects and specialized guerrilla warfare (Shubin 2011).

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It can therefore be argued that Nkomo, as leader of the ZAPU party and chairman of the ZIPRA war council, played a pivotal role in coordinating foreign military aid that eventually resulted in the incapacitation of the Rhodesian security forces. It is evident that without Nkomo and other nationalist leaders’ efforts in acquiring external military support, the independence struggle in Zimbabwe would have taken longer. The fighting forced the government back to the negotiating table, which is what Nkomo had wanted from the beginning. Nkomo was also responsible for directing the war from Zambia. He worked closely with the commanders who trained guerrillas at Wheatland Farm in Zambia which was in this case the headquarters of the ZIPRA base (Chigwedere 2003: 4). At one point, the ZIPRA base in Lusaka housed about 20,000 guerrillas who were undergoing military training in preparation to invade Rhodesia (Tamarkin 1990: 23). Through his role in overseeing the military operations, ZIPRA under Nkomo destabilized most parts of Rhodesia, particularly the Matabeleland region and north-western parts including the Zambezi area. Rhodesian government administration in such areas thus became crippled. Such significant losses on the battlefront were crucial in forcing Ian Smith’s government to negotiate with the nationalists, leading to the 1979 Lancaster House Peace talks which resulted in the independence of Zimbabwe in 1980. The period from 1975 to 1979 saw Nkomo participating in several rounds of negotiations in quest for a peaceful solution to the political crisis in Zimbabwe based, however, on one man, one vote. In 1975, Nkomo met with Ian Smith for negotiations on a transitional government. The talks were mediated by the Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda and took place secretly in Zambia (Mtisi et al. 2009: 148). Both Smith and Kaunda chose Nkomo as the right candidate for negotiations for two reasons. First, because it was perceived, he was a generally acceptable figure among Zimbabweans, also as a possibly leader of an independent black government. Second, Kaunda in particular saw Nkomo as an astute negotiator who would not betray his people by negotiating for nothing less than majority rule. To Kaunda, Nkomo had already shown good political negotiating skills throughout his career as the leader of SRANC, NDP, and now ZAPU. Although the talks broke down over the timing of the introduction of the majority rule, Nkomo was willing to compromise on some aspects in his quest for independence. One thing that he could not compromise on though was the need for political independence and equality on a one man, one vote basis.

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The following year, Nkomo attended the Geneva conference where talks centred around the, again, the transitional government. This time, Robert Mugabe, Ndabaningi Sithole, and Abel Muzorewa were present. Although they spoke with one voice in as far as their demand for independence was concerned, they had serious differences regarding how independence was to be introduced. Throughout the talks though, Nkomo notably stood for one man, one vote, a position that represented the demands of especially millions of Africans in Rhodesia. Although some leaders had given into proportional representation which did not guarantee an African majority in parliament, Nkomo remained firm on his demand for a majority rule based on a one man one vote, and that was one of the reasons why the talks failed to bear fruit. In 1978, Nkomo was one of the nationalist leaders who played a pivotal role in condemning the Zimbabwe–Rhodesia agreement signed between Abel Muzorewa and Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front Party. Although the agreement between Muzorewa and Smith allowed Africans to enter into parliament, it did not ensure them the majority rule which they wanted. The suffrage system was not based on a one man, one vote system (Martin and Johnson 1981). In addition, the name Zimbabwe– Rhodesia implied that Rhodesian elitist and racist tendencies were to remain strongly entrenched in the new system. Thus, it became the responsibility of nationalist leaders such as Joshua Nkomo to reject the offer and continue with the struggle for total independence. The Lancaster House Peace talks epitomized Nkomo’s role in the independence of Zimbabwe. The talks came as a result of ceasefire calls by Ian Smith’s Patriotic Front government in December 1979 and were brokered by Lord Carrington in London. Britain, the USA, and the African Frontline States were also part of the talks (Mtisi et al. 2009: 148). The major talking point of the conference was the manner in which power was to be handed over to the new black government. Nkomo and other nationalist leaders insisted on the one man, one vote system, Nkomo’s, constant refrain. The talks paved the way for the first majority election in 1980. During the ceasefire period, Nkomo was the pillar of a united ­movement which was known as the Patriotic Front. The Patriotic Front consisted of the two major African nationalist movements, ZANU under the leadership of Mugabe and ZAPU under Nkomo. It came into existence after concerted efforts from both local and frontline leaders who desired to see a united black government under one political body.

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As the leader of ZAPU, Nkomo was part of this arrangement and was very clear in his desire for unity among all African nationalist movements. Despite Nkomo’s efforts towards the cause of a Patriotic Front, Mugabe launched an election manifesto soon after the Lancaster House Agreement expressing his clear disregard for both Nkomo and ZAPU, thus making the Patriotic Front’s dream a failure (Asante 2015: 317). Even though the Patriotic Front failed to contest the 1980 elections as a united entity, Nkomo remained pro-unity in postcolonial Zimbabwe even after what he termed the greatest betrayal of his life (Nkomo 2001: 201). Nkomo’s dream of one man, one vote finally came to fruition in March 1980 when majority elections were held. Although Nkomo’s party won 20 seats against ZANU’s 57 seats, he had played a pivotal role in ensuring a majority for Africans in parliament (Sithole and Makumbe 1997: 126). Africans dominated more than 75% of parliament seats with Nkomo’s ZAPU in control of 24% of the total (Sithole and Makumbe 1997: 126).

Conclusion A closer look at the life of Joshua Nkomo from 1949 to 1980 reveals that his life revolved entirely around his quest to see an independent Zimbabwe. Through his domestic leadership and his role in involving the international community in the struggle for liberation, he made the independence of Zimbabwe achievable. Through alliances initiated by Nkomo, the struggle for independence became internationalized, resulting in an inflow of much-needed military, technical, and financial support from foreign countries. Because of these alliances, Zimbabwe was able to pave the way for majority rule that became the basis of African politics in independent Zimbabwe. As a nation-builder, Nkomo demonstrated that there was no ‘contradiction between being a cultural leader and being a nationalist’, being a nationalist and being a nonracist, being cultural, without being chauvinistic, being adamant on principles without being repulsive. All these traits are part of his legacy with which he bequeathed Zimbabwe in particular, and in general all those engaged in fighting imperial and colonial legacies that deny agency and independency to their people. Nkomo’s role in dialogue with the Rhodesian government from the 1950s to 1979s makes it clear that he was a strong believer in negotiations, and only used the armed struggle as a last resort. Without the

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contributions of Joshua Nkomo, Zimbabwe’s independence would have taken a completely different and likely more troublesome course. Undoubtedly, the memory of Nkomo’s contributions to the decolonization of Zimbabwe, as father of Zimbabwean nationalism, astute and untiring negotiator, nationalist and subsequently in the postcolonial Zimbabwe, statesman, will forever be part of our history. That is what perhaps Eddison Zvogbo, a onetime Minister of Justice, when he positively reflected on Nkomo’s legacy a few days after his death. He stated, ‘It is true that all of us die, but some truly don’t die. It will never be possible for Joshua Nkomo’s name to vanish from our history. Josh will never die’ (Zvogbo 1999). The words of Zvogbo are definitely echoed by many today in Zimbabwe as they reflect on Nkomo’s lasting contribution to the independence of their country.

References Asante, M. (2015). The history of Africa, the quest for eternal harmony (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. Bond, B., Miller, D., & Ruiters, G. (2015). The Southern African working class: production, reproduction and politics. Socialist Register, 37, 119–142. Bourret, M. (1960). Ghana: The road to independence, 1919–1957. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Casey, M. C. (2007). The rhetoric of Sir Garfield Todd, christian imagination and the dream of an African Democracy. Waco: Bayolor University Press. Chigwedere, A. (2003). The hunt for Joshua Nkomo, Chimurenga II Episode. Marondera: Mutapa Publishing House. Crummey, D. (1986). Banditry, Rebellion and Social Protest in Africa. London: James Currey. Martin, D., & Johnson, P. (1981). The struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Mtisi, J., Nyakudya, M., & Barnes, T. (2009). War in Rhodesia, 1965–1980. In B. Raftopoulos & A. Mlambo (Eds.), Becoming Zimbabwe, a history from the pre-colonial period to 2008. Harare: Weaver Press. Muzondidya, J. (2005). Walking on a tight rope, towards a social history of a coloured community of Zimbabwe. Trenton: Africa World Press. Mzumara, M. (2011). Mozambique from Marxist-Leninist to capitalism: Has the country performed well economically? International Journal of Business Management, 2(6), 359–370. Nkomo, J. M. (2001). The story of my life. Harare: SAPES Books. Ranger, T. (1963, July 25). Letter to John Reed.

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Ranger, T. (1992). Writing revolt: An engagement with African nationalisms, 1957–67. Harare: Weaver Press. Ranger, T. (1999a). Joshua Nkomo: A cultural nationalist. Public Lecture Presented at Bulawayo History Museum. Ranger, T. (1999b). Voices from the rocks: Nature, culture and history in the Matopos Hills of Zimbabwe. Harare: Baobab Books. Ranger, T. (2010). Bulawayo burning; The social history of a Southern African City, 1893–1960. Woodbridge: James Currey. Scarnecchia, T. (2008). The urban roots of democracy and political violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfield, 1940–1964. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Sellström, T. (2003). Sweden and the national liberation of Southern Africa: Volume 1: Formation of a popular opinion (1950–1970). Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet. Shubin, V. (2011, February 10). Russia-Zim Ties have come a long way. Online http://www.herald.co.zw/mdcs-election-manifesto-synonymous-with-violence/. Accessed 26 Aug 2015. Sibanda, E. (2005). The Zimbabwe African People’s Union 1961–1987. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Sithole, M., & Makumbe, J. (1997). Elections in Zimbabwe: The ZANU (PF) hegemony and its incipient decline. African Journal of Political Science, 2(1), 122–139. Tamarkin, M. (1990). The making of Zimbabwe: Decolonization in regional and international politics. London: Frank Cass. Zvogbo, C. J. (2008). A history of Zimbabwe, 1890–2000 and postscript, Zimbabwe, 2001–2008. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Zvogbo, E. (1999, July 8). Financial Gazette.

CHAPTER 3

Joshua Nkomo and the Internationalization of Zimbabwe’s Struggle for Liberation Martin Rupiya

Introduction Early in the struggle for independence, especially during the armed struggle period, those leading the calls for freedom were confronted by partisan media houses, owned and dominated by imperial governments, ready to suppress, twist and besmirch the emerging opponents in a bid to support the status quo. In the case of the struggle for Zimbabwe, we have yet to ascertain, persons who were responsible for bridging this breach, how they operated, succeeding to shape contrary opinions, on behalf of the black majority leading to the lifting of the oppression by a white-settler minority regime? Amongst the many individuals who, in numerous anecdotal references, appear to have played a part and contributed to the internationalization of the struggle for Zimbabwe is the role played by Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, from the early 1950s until independence in 1980. However, his role and contribution has remained unacknowledged. And yet, based on the available evidence on this score—the internationalisation of the struggle for Zimbabwe—the

M. Rupiya (*)  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_3

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contribution by Joshua Nkomo stands head and shoulders above most political actors of his time. And yet, this contribution has been underplayed, swept under the carpet and marginalised. Why? Before delving into the discussion that looks at Nkomo’s unique contribution towards the internationalization of the struggle for Zimbabwe, it may be illustrative to cite a few examples of his monumental achievements. Chiedza Chimhanda begins the toting up by stating the obvious when he asserts that, the first major contribution that Umdala Wethu made towards the armed struggle in Zimbabwe is almost trite and that is, ‘almost every prominent figure in Zimbabwe’s nationalist politics and armed struggle, had their careers shaped within Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU)’ (Chimhanda 2003: 4). ZAPU was a political party ‘with a short legal life’, placed under a ban during the 1960s and forced to assume pseudo identities—such as the People’s Caretaker Council (PCC), the African National Council Zimbabwe (ANC (Z) and PF ZAPU within Zimbabwe after 1980. The second major contribution that Nkomo made was reaching a decision to launch the armed struggle and create an entity, the Zimbabwe People’s Revolution Party (ZIPRA) that was to compliment and concretise the political party work. By establishing the military wing, ZAPU–ZIPRA succeeded to become one of the ‘OAUs recognized Authentic’ six liberation movements, an equal in the company of African National Congress of South Africa, (ANC-SA), the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), PAIGC and the South West African People’s Organization (SWAPO) as acknowledged in the 1969 meeting in Khartoum (Zimbabwe Review 4 Oct/Nov 1969: 6). The third important contribution made was the clear policy formulation and articulation describing the plight of the oppression of the majority by a white-settler minority through force of arms, with the support of the former colonial power and its allies, including apartheid South Africa. This soon led to international condemnation, sanctions and an arms embargo through the United Nations and triggering support amongst Socialist and the Non-Aligned (NAM) Countries Movement member states and even the exhausted humanitarian organisations that have been swayed to support the status quo. Soon, the liberation movements found themselves being treated as ‘equal partners’ with the Non-Aligned Movement countries, found common ground and ideological partners, succeeding to shape international opinion, harnessing diplomatic support and developing

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serious and significant contacts with the then Socialist World and other progressives to result in the provision of military weapons, equipment and training, amidst international political and diplomatic support towards the armed struggle. Through the well thought out and managed, Zimbabwe Review publication, Nkomo created an effective platform for posterity, is crucial in providing empirical information in order to correct the missing gaps, against what has been condemned by the renowned Terence Ranger as Zimbabwe’s versions of patriotic history (Ranger 2006).

Nkomo’s Role in the Shadows In retrospect, we now note that for Joshua Nkomo, instead of Joshua Nkomo enjoying the fruits of his labour, at the precise juncture of establishing the new state, the hitherto conflictual relationship between Nkomo and Mugabe, ZAPU/ZIPRA and ZANU/ZANLA, worsened. First, the fractitious relationship between Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe—suspicious of each other even as the partners in the Patriotic Front (PF)—continued to guide, inform and influence the immediate post-independence era of April 1980. This immediate, post-independence development had its roots in the last stages of the struggle period—with the violence between ZANLA-ZIPRA escalating during the campaign period following the December 1979 ceasefire. Months before the February 1980 Lancaster House inspired election, ZANU announced that it was to go it alone, formally splitting from the struggle partnership with ZAPU. In the subsequent elections, ZANU secured an absolute majority of 57 seats from the available 80 Common roll seats. ZAPU was the second runner-up with only 20 seats, confined to the Midlands and Matabeleland regions. In spite of the mathematical majority, soon afterwards, ZANU invited ZAPU into a coalition Government. However, the next round of political contestation was just round the corner. This was the August 1980 local government election in which the ruling party sought to sweep the polls, only to experience resistance in the now ZAPU dominant areas of the Midlands and Matebeleland. From this moment on, the old rivalry and suspicion poisoned the new Coalition Government relationships (Report Breaking the Silence 1997). What now appears to have taken place is that a carefully laid out and comprehensive strategy, by the new state, aimed at extinguishing any positive contributions by Nkomo and accuses ZAPU

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of complicity in political subversion and the ZIPRA forces as fifth columnists (Alao 2012: 14–20). At the apex of the strategy was an attempt to cast Joshua Nkomo as a counter-revolutionary—one who had intentions to remove by force—the newly elected ZANU PF government relying on the so-called ZERO Hour option (Kynoch 1997). In this, practitioners of the new state attempted to ideologically cast Nkomo as the counter-revolutionaries Movement for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) leader, ‘Jonas Savimbi’ or ‘Alphonso Dhlakama, leader of the RENAMO—the National Resistance Movement of Mozambique’ of Zimbabwe (Stapleton 2013: 276). A second string to the bow was to attempt to decouple Nkomo from his international and regional traditional support bases. Part of this was manifested in the ‘blocking of the Soviet Union from establishing an Embassy in the new capital of Harare’ even as other Western countries proceeded to do so. Moscow was only allowed to establish an Embassy in February 1981, 13 months after independence after agreeing conditions—in conversation with Ambassador Valentin Vdovin—‘to cease all contacts with PF ZAPU’ (Shubin 2008). There were also deliberate and aggressive diplomatic moves to remove the rear bases that Nkomo had enjoyed especially in Zambia while tarnishing his credibility amongst the then former member of the Front Line States (FLS). By November 1980, Nkomo was officially, enemy number one, culminating in the launch of the war against Dissidents and Operation Ghukurahundi—that violently targeted and eliminated the core of ethnic and perceived supporters in the Midlands and Matabeleland (The Simplisius Chihambakwe Commission of Inquiry, 1983–84—Report not released by Government; Report On the 1980s Disturbances in Matabeleland & Midlands, 1997). The ferocious state-sponsored violence that included units firing heavy gunfire on his residence in Bulawayo, forced close family and aides to strongly urge Nkomo to leave the country (Alao 2012: 18). In March 1983, Nkomo was forced to flee into exile, closely behind or followed by other notables such as Akim Ndlovu while the ZIPRA hierarchy, Generals Lookout ‘Mafela’ Masuku and his deputy, Dumiso Dabengwa were arrested and jailed even as the courts found no evidence of their transgressions (Alao 2012: 83–85; Stapleton 2013: 275–276). The impact of the strategy was horrendous to state and civil society ­relations as well as directly to Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA. Curiously, President Robert Mugabe was to later concede that the aggression was without foundation and executed on misperceptions during a ‘moment

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of madness’. The Catholic Commission notes that ‘the only government official to register contrition’, when he acknowledged the Report cited in The Sunday Mail, 6 September 1992, was Minister of Defence, Moven Mahachi, who expressed deep regret on ‘the events of the period are regretted and should not be repeated by anybody, any group of people or any institution in this country’ (Catholic Commission Report 1997: 17) This sordid phase in the history of Zimbabwe was to end with a triumphant capitulation of Nkomo, through the treaty now popularly known as 22 December 1987, Zimbabwe National Unity Accords— agreed to in order to stop the generalised state sponsored pogrom. (Vladimir Shubin 2008: 189). The reality of the Unity Accord was— ‘a splinter part from ZAPU in 1963, ZANU had by 1987, swallowed ZAPU’ (Chimhanda 2003: 1–7). But the damage had been done. By 1987, any references to Nkomo had become truncated. Only as an afterthought, when Nkomo had died was the ‘official’ title Father Zimbabwe appears episodically in the state controlled media.

Airbrushing and Patriotic History In the subsequent history of the admitted mishap, even after three and half decades after independence, the proper history of the struggle for Zimbabwe remains largely untold. What is available, disparagingly described as ‘patriotic history’ by the renounced historian, Terence Ranger, focuses on the different aspects of the struggle, failing to present a fair, just and comprehensive picture of the equally complex phase of the country’s decolonization period? (Ranger 2006) For example, for only a brief period, David Martin and Phyllis Johnson’s The Struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War (1981), stood as the preferred national history, promoted by adherents of the ruling party, the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU (PF) (Chimhanda 2003: 15–16). Soon, however, exposed to serious academic inquiry, its objectivity on various key historical junctures was found wanting and open to different interpretation. For instance, there have been differences on when and which organization fired the first shots in the armed struggle comparing the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union and its military wing, the Zimbabwe Revolutionary Army (ZAPU–ZIPRA) and the ZANU and its military wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA)?

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While Martin and Johnson cited the genesis of the armed struggle as represented by the 1966 Sinoia campaign, this was contradicted by ZAPU, asserting that, armed campaigns had already been commonplace from 1965 (Chimhanda 2003: 13–15; Chimhanda 2008; Alao 2012: 78–79). Furthermore, in an associated event, the question of who was responsible for the bombing of the fuel depot in the capital, Salisbury now Harare, during late 1978 appears contested. On the one hand, ZANU–ZANLA claims to have carried out the attack while accounts in the ZAPU–ZIPRA’s public mouthpiece, The Zimbabwe Review, also claim authorship (Zimbabwe Review Oct–Dec 1978: 4–5). In yet another seminal event, the assassination of Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo, ZANU’s Chairman of the War Council, on who was responsible for his death; in a car bomb as he drove out of his residence in Lusaka on 18 March 1975 remain contested (Martin and Johnson 1981: 141–167; Horne 2001: 256). The historian Luise White in her book The Assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Texts and Politics in Zimbabwe (2003) has provided a painstakingly and empirically research account whose import cannot be dismissed. In this, Luise argues, convincingly, of uncovering ‘four confessions’ and several accusations as to who was responsible for Chitepo’s death. According to her, these accounts tend to surface at particular historical junctures in the history of post-independent Zimbabwe, appearing to seek to influence opinion, credit or discredit opponents and in the process leaving readers wondering (White 2003: 1–7). More recently, Fay Chung has also added fuel to the fire, indicating serious internal divisions and infighting within ZANU just before the assassination of Chitepo. Luise White has accused her of ‘once Chung manages to find out who killed whom—she is ready to ‘close this sad chapter’ in ZANU’s history’ and is not prepared to, boldly state the facts. (Chimhanda 2008; White 2003). On Fay Chung published account, reviewers appear to have had a filed day, generally, severely criticised her work as—‘while providing more plausible version than the established ZANU PF canon’—the work remains partisan and uncritical of Mugabe’s role (s) and yet harsh and sustained against utterances of Wilfred Mhanda, a former ZANLA-Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA) Military Commander until 1977 (Ranger 2006). To that end, the recent written account by Wilfred Mhanda in Dzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter (2014) that has been disparagingly condemned by the country’s only national state newspaper, The Herald as ‘self serving narrative’. Opinions in state controlled Herald newspaper directly represent the thinking of the ruling political elite, and the paper has been credited with

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‘successfully extinguishing’ unwelcome thoughts casting aspersion on the leading political elite from the unsuspecting masses. To provide some useful background, at the time, following the coup in Lisbon that then changed the political context in the Portuguese territories, Nkomo was hastily transferred from the bordering area next to the then Portuguese East Africa, now Mozambique to the Salisbury, now Harare, and Maximum Prison. From the archival texts, Nkomo continued to exert his influence through ZAPU, even from the prison walls, issuing instructions for his key aides to work with the UANC’s Bishop Abel Muzorewa and directing the internal dynamics of the struggle. Nkomo was released from prison as part of the negotiations in 1974 and soon fled into exile in Zambia in order to more effectively lead the struggle for Zimbabwe. The final curtain to his work was his contributions during the Lancaster House Conference of 1979, where a transitional framework was finally agreed to before the parties returned to Zimbabwe and the Patriotic Front split, announced by ZANU PFs, Enos Nkala in township of Highfields, before the elections. What is posited here is that Joshua Nkomo is an acknowledged leader who was able to define, create platforms that effectively presented the case for Zimbabwe’s just struggle to the international community, against machinations of imperial media and other supporters who were convinced of the civilizing mission of colonialism as well as apartheid South Africa, seeking to maintain the status quo. This was able to benefit the struggle for Zimbabwe in several ways. An innovative structure that was capable of providing military strategic tracking and analysis as well as providing intelligence to enable counter-action was put into place, whose outputs were regularly published in The Zimbabwe Reviewthe Official Organ of ZAPU Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). This also provided insightful summaries in the military arena, appearing to have followed one the leading and authoritative international security publication of the London-based Institute for International Strategic Studies (IISS).

Internationalization of the Struggle for Zimbabwe Discerned from the available ZAPU documentation, Nkomo and his colleagues appeared to have carefully examined the contemporary ­ situation of the 1950s, dominated by Western philanthropists before ­ deciding to carve out a deliberate niche to engage in the battle of ­influencing opinion (s) on the international stage.

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In a policy statement (undated) made in a number of editorial comments as well as to UN 4th Meeting of the UN Committee of 24 by the National Secretary for Information and Publicity Department and also the Editor-In-Chief of the Zimbabwe Review, T. George Silundika, affirmed that: following the end of slavery, partisan organizations, even within imperialist countries had emerged, to champion for the emancipation of the Africa continent and its people. However, from the 1980s and 1990s, Humanitarian Organizations and Churches championing independence had become weak and allowed themselves to become tools of imperialism where they were ‘beginning to see “benefits” of imperialism-such as development, jobs and the so-called British civilizing missions as a necessary precondition and period of justified extended colonialism’ (Zimbabwe Review Jan–Feb No. 1/75: 13). In the absence of an alternative and credible champion of African independence, then an organization was needed to fill the vacuum. However, in confronting the philanthropists, the message had to be sensitive to the justification of the armed struggle, characterised by the use of violence against political repression. By the late 1950s, ZAPU had adopted the decision to embarking on the armed struggle for political freedom. This was to be conducted by an armed wing of the political party. However, communicating this to the outside world that included the Humanitarian and Church groups required sensitivity and justification (Zimbabwe Review, Jan–Feb 1975). To this end, the message put out was cast against the United Nations resolution on UDI and Rhodesia that projected the same as regime representing an illegal entity that constituted a threat to international peace and therefore subjected to morale and practical economic sanctions, weapons embargo and diplomatic isolation. The next step after policy was infrastructure and entry points of engagement; the most important organizations for the struggle for Zimbabwe turned out to be the Socialist Countries and the NonAligned Movement (NAM). After regular and persistent appeals to the International Committee of NAM for material, financial and diplomatic support, during the 3rd Meeting of NAM held in Algeria, the organization officially expressed its position on anti-imperialism and recognised liberation movements as ‘equal partners’. This was a major diplomatic achievement as it, henceforth shaped the relationships of member states with the international community. Progress was to continue to bear fruit as, in the 4th NAM Meeting, held between 5 and 8 September 1973,

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agreed to place the matter of ‘opposing world systems—that of imperialists and socialists’. More significantly, for the struggle for Zimbabwe, the same meeting also adopted a resolution supporting a ‘Conference on the Decolonization of Zimbabwe’. This decision had culminated from the lobbying and in principle decision obtained 3 months earlier, during a meeting on 19 June of the AfroAsian Peoples Solidarity Organization (APPSO) with Edward Ndlovu, the Deputy Secretary-General of ZAPU. Securing political, diplomatic and practical support to host the Conference on the Decolonization of Zimbabwe in Mogadishu was a major milestone and diplomatic triumph that would, subsequently, provide opportunities to focus support on the Zimbabwe struggle. It can therefore be claimed that, historical Mogadishu Conference on Zimbabwe—held during 25–27 November 1973—was the harbinger for several organization formally adopting the struggle for independence in Zimbabwe as part of their agenda. In attendance was a myriad of international organizations, including agencies from the UN such as the Special Committee on Anti-Apartheid, the International Organization of Journalists; World Federation of Trade Unions; World Federation of Youths; Italian and French Labour Organizations; World Council of Churches; the Arab League; International Conference of Arab Trade Unions; the International Labour Organization; American Committee on Africa; Canadian Liberation Support Movement; the rest of the other five ‘authentic six’ African liberation movements—the ANC (South Africa), FRELIMO, MPLA, Party of Africans for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), SWAPO and ZANU; the OAU; Independent African countries of Ghana, Guinea, Nigeria, Egypt, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Zambia, Sudan, Togo, Upper Volta-now Burkina Faso; Botswana; Lesotho; Swaziland; Algeria; Morocco; Cuba and other countries such as Belgium; New Zealand; Syria; USSR, UK, USA, Canada, Czech, Bulgaria, Hungary, France, Iraq, India, Nepal, the Republic of Congo. The impact and outcomes of the Mogadishu Conference on Zimbabwe were afterwards ventilated in several issues of the Zimbabwe Review. Attendance and the message delivered through the conference were to constitute an important psychological, ideological and diplomatic support platform that then reinforced the political and military work undertaken by Zimbabweans themselves. In the following year, Nkomo intensified the focus with the ­international intervention serving the purpose of effectively criminalizing

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the supply and delivery of oil, arms or normal trade that would sustain the white minority settler regime in Rhodesia. To this end, Nkomo embarked on a spirited and public international campaign aimed at ‘isolating not only Salisbury but also its alliance partners. In this, the documents reveal that the UK, the West and NATO and the apartheid South African regime convinced Nkomo (Statement to the UN 4th Committee by T.G. Silundika 1974 in Zimbabwe Review Jan–Feb 1975). The impact of the intervention was almost immediate. During, early during the 1970s, the initiative was able to expose ‘Britain, via Jordan, selling missiles and Centurion tanks to Rhodesia and South Africa’ in a move publicly criticised as ‘an unfriendly blow to the decolonization of Africa’ (Zimbabwe Review 1974). Demonstrating a keen understanding of international diplomacy, Nkomo devised a strategy that would question the morality of the former colonial power within the Commonwealth. In January 1966, in a Commonwealth meeting held in Nigeria, the latter received a briefing, and ‘a request to assist with diplomatic support within the international arena for Zimbabwe’s decolonization’ (Zimbabwe Review Mar–Apr 1975: 12). The Zimbabwe Review also reveals performance in the security arena, adversely highlighting imperial and settler colonial collaboration, especially that aimed at consolidating the status quo—against the While initially focusing on the 1965 sanctions after Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) the exposures soon included the 1977 UN Arms Embargo (Zimbabwe Review 1974: 15). The evidence shows that, in practice, ZAPU–ZIPRA had a fair sense of the military cooperation between apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. Citing an International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) assessment of the 1969– 1970s military capabilities of Rhodesia, the publication revealed that, of the 6 million population, made up of 5.5 Africans and half a million Whites, Asians and Coloureds, the white minority state had organised a Defence Force, divided into three elements of Air, Army and ParaMilitary Forces made up of a 3400 Army, 1200 in the Air Force, and 6400 Para-Military Forces that could be increased to about 28,500, when the white Reserve Force was marshaled. This was complimented by the combination of supportive South African and Portuguese Forces in Portuguese East Africa, now Mozambique and Angola, averaging about 14,8000 (Zimbabwe Review 1974). The knowledge on military matters, significantly, went down to unit level, revealing tactical awareness of the existence of the all white

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SAS and Rhodesia Light Infantry (RLI) units (Daily Mirror Testimony Mar–Apr 1976: 10–12). The Editor-In-Chief of the Zimbabwe Review appeared confident of their information when, in Vol. 4, Mar–Apr, No. 2/75, wetted the appetite of readers by announcing that the following issue would provide, ‘a detailed account of the Smith regime’s military strategy’ (Zimbabwe Review Mar–Apr 1975: 14). It is also revealing that the Zimbabwe Review demonstrated a sound appreciation of the scorched earth and human concentration camps curiously presented as Protected Villages as the struggle for Zimbabwe war intensified. To this end, the publication provided detailed insights and criticism of what it called, ‘Smith’s concentration camps now called Protected Village’ (Zimbabwe Review 1974: 13). Furthermore, the Zimbabwe Review was also used for propaganda and morale weakening purposes—when it highlighted Rhodesian Security Forces’ deaths and wheelchair bound service men and women killed or wounded in the liberation war (Zimbabwe Review 1976: 12–13). Condemning Sporting Links with apartheid and Rhodesia The Zimbabwe Review also became an important platform for signalling and condemning cultural contacts and sporting links. This soon became an important consideration in cricket, rugby and related sports tours especially from the UK, the USA and Europe. Next, and in parallel, Nkomo and ZAPU were able to engage with the Organization of African Unity (OAU), with Jaison Moyo and other others addressing the Standing Committee of the OAU Liberation Committee on a regular basis (Zimbabwe Review Mar–Apr 1975). For Nkomo and ZAPU, regular briefings to the OAU were important as ZAPU had been recognised as one of Africa’s ‘authentic six’ (Zimbabwe Review Mar–Apr, 1976: 9). Furthermore, the Zimbabwe Review, in retrospect, the publication was able to correctly analyse the events associated with the collapse of the Marcello Caetano regime, toppled by General Spinola on 25 April 1974 in Lisbon and the subsequent events in Southern Africa. Again the paper reveals the October 1972 secret visit by Ian Smith to Lisbon where he conferred with Caetano seeking to urge them to do more as the situation on Eastern front was deteriorating fast. This meeting was followed by another coordinating meeting cited in Pretoria between Ian Smith and President Johannes Balthazar Vorster in Pretoria (Zimbabwe Review 1974). As the security situation in the Portuguese colonies deteriorated, Nkomo was moved

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from Gonakudzingwa, where he had been incarcerated since 16 April 1964 to Salisbury, now Harare, Maximum Prison. This period was to coincide with the increased attention towards attempting to resolve the Zimbabwean political crisis, culminating in the formation of the umbrella grouping—the UANC under Methodist Bishop, Abel Muzorewa. Nkomo issued instructions for the party and cadres to support Muzorewa—an initiative that he saw as continuing to advance the cause for independence (Zimbabwe Review 1976). Next in the seminal events was the emergence of UANC, during the intensified armed struggle when Nkomo sent word from inside prison to support the Bishop, Abel Muzorewa’s initiative on the ground. There were also challenges faced with the task of conducting the Zimbabwean campaign, even amongst fellow African countries. For example, Nkomo faced a difficult relationship with Tanzanian President, Julius Nyerere. In the drive to present a unified front, the Patriotic Front had been allowed to open offices a Headquarters in Dar es Salaam on 20 April 1977 (Zimbabwe Review 1977: 13). However, implementing the PF idea operationally continued to experience major difficulties. Under pressure, particularly from Dar es Salaam and yet sensing undue interference, Nkomo issued a veiled statement: ‘as liberation movements, grateful for support from OAU and others but, one or two countries […] while assisting […] gone out of their way to interfere […] this is a crucial point […] Zimbabweans lead the struggle’ (Zimbabwe Review Sept–Oct 1976: 3). Given this post-independence trend of ahistorical accounts, claims of singular, supreme gallantry and the deliberate attempts to ‘Savimbisize’ Joshua Nkomo in information and even misinformation, one area that has remained obscured from view is, who internationalised Zimbabwe’s decolonization struggle and how did they do it? The purpose of the strategy towards the internationalization of the armed struggle had a twin objective. Its primary goal was to make the global community aware of the political injustices of imperial and partial settler minority rule in the country. Secondly, the strategy provided a platform of confronting the political injustice, which was open for support from well-wishers. To this end, the political process was to receive Diplomatic, Financial and Material support when the decision was later taken to take up the armed struggle. Furthermore, as this discussion is to demonstrate, the implementation of the strategy to internationalise the armed struggle was also conducted in an innovative manner. For example, in spite

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of the early incarceration of Joshua Nkomo for political reasons in Gonakudzingwa on 16 April 1964 until May 1974 when he and others were transferred to Salisbury (now Harare) Maximum Prison following threats of possible abduction by the newly installed government of FRELIMO in Mozambique, the policy continued to function. Later, the same was also adaptive when it was the bedrock of the Muzorewa led ANC. But precisely how was this to be achieved? What concrete and practical achievements can be attributed to Joshua Nkomo’s contribution in the internationalization of the armed struggle and how this made an impact on its course in the then Rhodesia? As the parties left Lancaster after the protracted talks, PF headed for a split. In retrospect, ZANU appeared determined to seek an identity that would distance itself from Nkomo and ZAPU–ZIPRA before the scheduled elections. The former liberation movements then entered into enclaves with distinct ethnic, regional and liberation history difference. Soon after the election in which ZANU secured a ruling majority of 57 seats from the available 80, with ZAPU winning 21, the former then invited the latter to become a partner in the first coalition government. Whilst Nkomo and ZAPU accepted the invitation, by August of 1980 when the country was preparing to go for local government elections, the intense competition revealed that, already the former Patriotic Front allies were heading for a major showdown. It is therefore evident that, at the point of euphoria for the newly acquired independence in April 1980, Joshua Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA had their backs to the wall— under an intense onslaught by former allies now in the form of the new government in Zimbabwe—hunted down and shot at using government weaponry, forced into exile or killed—by ZANU determined to occupy center stage and embrace all the historical liberation accolades. Again with the benefit of time, we can see that the strategy against Nkomo and ZAPU had at least six strands, comprising an integrated: the vilification and exorcising the personal image of Nkomo and his relationship with the struggle for Zimbabwe in a process that sought to cast him as a counter-revolutionary—akin to the new ‘Savimbi’; mount the diplomatic culling of all established external links related to Nkomo; dismantle all known and existing structures of sister organizations such as ZIPRA and ZAPU; to disperse and destroy its supporters, ethnic base and purge its regional base. On the diplomatic front aimed at curtailing Joshua Nkomo’s the evidence now reveals that Mugabe and ZANU (PF), using the newly

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acquired state machinery, embarked upon the comprehensive dismantling of ZAPU and Joshua Nkomo political and military contribution towards the struggle for Zimbabwe. We now know that, at the diplomatic level, the Soviet Union, identified with supporting Joshua Nkomo, was prevented from establishing formal relations with the new and independent Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, a parallel process targeted the person of Joshua Nkomo, succeeding to fire shots at his residence in Bulawayo forcing his family to compel him to leave the country and into exile, via Botswana in order to save his life. As the decapitation of the leader of the organization occurred, former ZAPU senior officials were sought and arrested while former ZIPRA commanders, led by Lookout Masuku and his Deputy, Dumiso Dabengwa were taken into custody. The new government forces, comprising partisan units of the 5th Brigade and party aligned Militia—were deployed in the Midlands and Matebeleland against the so-called dissidents. At the time, these differences resulted in the emergence of competing, political parties and armed factions, representing the domestic ethnic, linguistic and regional flaws of ZAPU–ZIPRA and ZANU–ZANLA. At independence in 1980, the faces of the two organizations were that of Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo and that of Robert Gabriel Mugabe. Finally, the proper documentation of the account of the war was hijacked at independence, when one faction of the nationalists, ZANU (PF) won the first election in February 1980 and proceeded to brutally emasculate both the image and personality of Joshua Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA and institutional structures. The post-independence factional fight soon assumed the character of genocide, wiping thousands of actual and perceived supporters, incarcerating leading commanders and ZIPRA Generals, including Masuku and Dabengwa while forcing into exile, Joshua Nkomo and others. As evidence was to show, this violent period also sought to depict Joshua Nkomo as a sell-out to the nationalist cause. Only in late 1987 was the conflict ended with the capitulation of victims, signified by the signing of the Unity Accord of 22 December 1987. Thereafter, with Joshua Nkomo compelled to disband ZAPU and ZIPRA the cacophony of the ahistorical accounts reached new levels— presenting a one sided version. Reflecting the deep personal, linguistic and regional differences within the nationalist movement, as the goal for achieving Zimbabwe’s political independence appeared within grasp, military clashes between the armies of ZAPU–ZIPRA and ZANU–ZANLA intensified—each determined

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to establish the so-called liberated zones and prepared to exterminate each other in the process (Tendi 2015; Shubin 2008: 180–182). This created advantages for the surprised and bemused Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF). In the subsequent election, ZANU (PF) secured a comfortable majority of 57 seats or 63% from the available 80, sufficient to govern on its own. However, Robert Mugabe and ZANU (PF) invited Joshua Nkomo and ZAPU (PF) who had garnered 20 seats, representing 24% of the vote and confined to the Midlands and south of the country in Matebeleland, to join the new government. Although the gesture appeared magnanimous, the point had been made that ZAPU was a junior partner and only served at the pleasure of the dominant party— ZANU (PF) (Tendi 2015: 937–940).

Conclusions As Zimbabwe’s independence beckoned in 1980, the country’s liberation movements, departing from the Lancaster House Conference in London split. Both in the media and on the battlefields, the parties engaged in fratricidal combat, to the bemusement of the white minority regime in Rhodesia. In the subsequent elections, once ZANU secured a comfortable ruling majority, the party invited Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA as junior coalition partners. Signs of continued, competitive strife were barely concealed. In this early period, the USSR was prevented from establishing an Embassy—a position that remained in place for the next 13 months—until Moscow was forced to accept conditionalities, on record, towards disengaging from supporting Nkomo. Ninety days into the newfound coalition, as the country prepared to hold the August 1980 local government elections, violence broke out between the parties. By the end of the year, a deliberate campaign to cast Nkomo as the new ‘Savimbi of Zimbabwe’, and ZIPRA forces as fermenting dissidents, while ZAPU was cast as a counter-revolutionary fifth columnist organization, was launched. The result was that Nkomo was forced into justifying his position—announcing that he harboured no intentions to dislodge the new government by force while a number of his senior political officials were hounded, arrested or forced to flee into exile. In parallel, the ZIPRA military hierarchy, from its Commander, General Lookout ‘Mafela’ Masuku and his Deputy, Dumiso Dabengwa and other senior officers where also targeted, arrested and thrown into prisons.

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While witnessing the harsh and ferocious conduct of state-sponsored forces in Operation Gukurahundi that resulted in thousands of people in the Midlands and Matabeleland losing their lives, Nkomo’s family and close friends appealed to him to leave the country. Humiliated, Nkomo was forced to seek exile in London in March 1983. Four years later, he was forced to reach an agreement, nay, capitulation—in order to save the same ethnic and regional supporters as well as senior colleagues held in the new Zimbabwe’s prisons. The perpetrators were later to admit that this episode was but an aberration—conducted in a ‘moment of madness’ but the damage had been done: there was little opportunity to pay homage and acknowledge the sterling role that Joshua Nyongolo Mqabuko Nkomo had played in internationalizing the struggle for Zimbabwe in a development that ‘shortened the period of fighting’. In retrospect, we can cite the following achievements that can be attributed to Joshua Nkomo: that every political and military player in the struggle cut their teeth under Nkomo and ZAPU/ZIPRA. That as early as the late 1950s, Nkomo accurately read the international media and decolonization agenda to note that the wave had turned, the previous advocates for African political freedoms had been influenced to change their opinions, beginning to see value in the civilizing benefits of continued imperial and colonial control. In the emerging conceptual confusion, an organization whose task was to reverse the partisan view of Africans’ inability to govern and justifying the utility of the armed struggle against illegal regimes condemned by the UN as constituting threats to international peace and security was urgent. In the OAU meeting in Khartoum held in 1969, ZAPU was accorded the singular recognition that it was one of the ‘authentic six’ liberation movements on the continent: joining the likes of ANC, FRELIMO, MPLA, Party for the African Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) and SWAPO. Once this policy position had been developed, a tireless campaign to convince the UN Committee of 24, the OAU Liberation Committee and parallel work with APPSO as well as NAM, within a few years began to bear fruit. In 1973, NAM accepted the position that the Anti-Apartheid would guide and inform the organization’s political, diplomacy and relationships in the international community. The same conference also recognised liberation movements as equal partners. In 1974, NAM indicated its support for the Mogadishu Conference on Zimbabwe concretizing its earlier position adopted in Aden, Yemen. By now, Nkomo had

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managed to establish fruitful and productive relationship with the Soviet Union and other Socialist countries that proceeded to provide political, diplomatic and military training. All this work and contribution was to come to naught—at the hands of the divisive and unrelenting harshness unleashed just before the electoral campaigns in early 1980. This became part of the fully-fledged civil war that was in place by the end of that year until 1988. As this research has shown, perhaps now the time has come to finally acknowledge the crucial and dedicated role that Nkomo played towards internationalizing the struggle for Zimbabwe—as part of what he pointed out would be the shortest route towards ending the violence and repression of the people.

References Alao, B. (2012). Mugabe and the politics of security in Zimbabwe. London: McGill-Queen Press. Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP). ([1997] 2007). Breaking the silence, building true peace: A report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980–1988. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Chigwedere, A. (2003). The hunt for Joshua Nkomo, Chimurenga II Episode. Marondera: Mutapa Publishing House. Chimhanda, C. C. (2003). ZAPU and the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe 1957–1980. Unpublished MA Dissertation, University of Cape Town. Chimhanda, C. C. (2008, May). Review Fay Chung, Re-Living the Second Chimurenga—Memories from Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle.’ Mukai, The Jesuit Journal of Zimbabwe, 35, Accessed March, 5 2017, at http:// weaverpresszimbabwe.com/index.php/reviews/35-re-living-the-secondchimurenga-memories-from. Horne, G. (2001). From the barrel of the gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbabwe. New York: UNC Press. Kynoch, G. (1997). Review: Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s Liberation War by Ngwabi Bhebe and Terence Ranger. The International Journal of African Historical Studies, 30(2), 360–362. Martin, D., & Johnson, P. (1981). The struggle for Zimbabwe: The Chimurenga War. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Ranger, T. (2006). Fay chung review of re-living the second Chimurenga. Journal of Contemporary African Studies. Accessed March, 5 2016, at http:// weaverpresszimbabwe.com/index.php/reviews/35-re-living-the-secondchimurenga-memories-from.

90  M. Rupiya Shubin, V. (2008). The hot ‘Cold War’: The USSR in Southern Africa. London: Pluto Press. Stapleton, T. J. (2013). A military history of Africa Vol. 3 The era of independence: From the Congo Crisis to Africa’s World War (ca. 1963). Westport: Praeger. Tendi, B. M. (2015). Soldiers contra diplomats: Britain’s role in the Zimbabwe/ Rhodesia ceasefire (1979–1980) reconsidered. Small Wars & Insurgencies, 26(6), 937–956. White, L. (2003). The assassination of Herbert Chitepo: Text and politics in Zimbabwe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Zimbabwe Day Speech by Joshua Nkomo, Lusaka, (1977, March 17). The Zimbabwe Review (1974, March 23). The Zimbabwe Review (1975, April 5). The Zimbabwe Review (1975, June 21). The Zimbabwe Review (1976, November 6). Zimbabwe Review Vol. 4, Jan–Feb, No. 1/75. Zimbabwe Review Vol. 4, Mar–Apr, 2/75. Zimbabwe Review Vol. 1, No. 4 Oct/Nov (1969). The Zimbabwe Review Vol. 4 No. 5 (1975). The Zimbabwe Review Vol. 6 (1977, January).

CHAPTER 4

Joshua Nkomo and the Quest for  Unity and Peace in Zimbabwe Kenneth Tafira

Introduction Joshua Nkomo has in his political career presided over Zimbabwe’s armed liberation struggle, as the leader of Zimbabwe African Peoples’ Union (ZAPU) and its armed wing Zimbabwe Peoples’ Revolutionary Army (ZPRA) which fought alongside ZANU/ZANLA. From trade unionist to nationalist liberation hero detained for 11 years in Ian Smith’s jails, Nkomo oversaw a heroic guerrilla struggle. The protracted armed rebellion would culminate in the Lancaster House Agreement signed in December 1979 where a ceasefire and a post-independence constitution were agreed. This chapter argues that Nkomo’s participation in talks over a long stretch of time was meant to achieve unity, peace and independence. This was misconstrued in various political quarters. Nkomo’s revolutionary credentials are impeccable as the historical record attest. For example, ZPRA’s ability to blast installations and army camps led to peasants to see the guerrillas as possessors of mystical powers who were sent to perform such confounding acts by Nkomo and ‘his name also became

K. Tafira (*)  University of South Africa Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_4

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associated with some inexplicable legend possessing extraordinary powers to conquer and liberate Zimbabwe’ (Cliffe et al. 1980: 57). For Nkomo, failure by Britain to peacefully bring independence necessitated the armed struggle. The liberation movement, he noted, had the dual responsibility and capacity to fight and ultimately ensure unity and peace for the people of Zimbabwe. Throughout the struggle against colonialism, the matter of unity of the liberation movement was central in Nkomo’s political thought. This chapter notes that concepts of unity, peace and harmony, which are ingrained in the revolutionary armed struggle, are inseparable. Just like Amilcar Cabral in Guinea-Bissau, it is through the revolutionary practice expressed through armed struggle that unity is forged and maintained. Ultimately, the objectives of the struggle, which is often accompanied by bloody violence and suffering, are to both broker peace and freedom. People’s struggle for independence unapologetically requires their unity: unity of purpose, principle and identification of common grievances and a common enemy. The struggle is littered with contradictions, though. Those locked in armed combat, rather than recognising themselves as comrades-in-arms, become comrades-at-arms. A lot of energy is expended trying to unify various elements engaged in anti-revolutionary and of course reactionary tendencies that impede the progress of the struggle. Nkomo spent most of his career battling with these impediments. The Unity Accord achieved in 1987 after a bloody expenditure of human life should have happened in the course of the struggle. This is a remiss of the Zimbabwean revolution. Nkomo’s political career, diplomatic manoeuvres, statesmanship and revolutionary credentials were heavily weighed and influenced by prevailing local and international socio-political circumstances at each sociohistorical­epoch of the period under examination, 1945–1980. In the early 1960s, the intersection between Cold War politics and Southern African racial politics and how the United Nations intervened in the Congo crisis created a framework for conflict between white minority regimes and Southern African nationalists (Scarnecchia 2011). Rhodesian Prime Minister Roy Welensky and other Southern African white politicians supported Moise Tshombe to create a buffer state and stall Soviet influence. Following the Congo crisis, Zimbabwean nationalists fell into Cold War games with both the USA and the Soviet Union tucked in competition for global influence. Nkomo had unsuccessfully appealed to the UN to intervene in Rhodesia following 1960 riots that led to deaths of scores of Africans.

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Another derivative of the Congo fiasco is the inception of the term ‘sellout’ or ‘Tshombe’ into the local political repertoire and rhetoric and ‘the lesson from Katanga conflict for Zimbabwean nationalists was to keep future Tshombes from coming to power. It was better to deal with them beforehand’ (Scarnecchia 2011: 83). Thus, following ZAPU/ZANU split, editorials of ZAPU publication, The Zimbabwe Review, likened ZANU, Sithole and Harry Nkumbula of Zambia with Tshombe, as stooges of settlers who were against African unity: Africa for Africans and not for sell-outs like Nkumbulas, Sitholes and the Tshombe mentality. United we stand, divided we fall. Unity is our salvation. (The Zimbabwe Review, 1 June 1964)

Nkomo was Zimbabwe’s longest serving nationalist leader whose political credentials can be dated to 1945 trade union strike when he was the leader of the Railway African workers union in Rhodesia. Other nationalists had in 1955 formed the City Youth League otherwise also known as the National Youth League and African Youth League. In 1957, he was elected president of Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) which had merged with the Youth League, at a time when the Land Apportionment Act was being consolidated through Land Husbandry Act which was meant to deprive Africans of stock and arable land. The ANC effectively took this theme and grievance onto their resistance activities. When the party was banned on 23 February 1959, he was president of the National Democratic Party (NDP) formed on 1 January 1960 and banned on 9 December 1961. Ten days after the banishment of NDP, he became president of Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU) formed on 17 December 1961. Since then, his participation in the nationalist movement made him considered the founder of Zimbabwe’s modern nationalist movement (Libby 1979). Nkomo mentored many leaders including Muzorewa who he asked to lead opposition to Douglas-Home-Smith settlement proposals of 1971. Nkomo’s leadership acumen is seen in that the breakaway party ZANU approach to struggle was identical to ZAPU; people who formed ZANU had been tutored in ZAPU, followed up ZAPU policies and understood the historical realities of the struggle. Nkomo included representatives of each of ethnic groups in the ZAPU’s executive committee. The multi-ethnic composition of ZAPU cut across ethnicity and ZAPU members addressed each other as mwanawevhu (child of the

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soil). At its formation, the composition of ZAPU leadership reflected an admixture of all ethnicities making it a national party. The Zimbabwe in the acronym ZAPU indicates resonance with the masses. Indeed, ZAPU began shifting its focus from urban centres to rural areas. NdlovuGatsheni and Willems (2010: 197) describe the multifaceted character of Nkomo: What emerges from the autobiography are a range of positive identities and subject positions that include Nkomo as the authentic African leader; as a symbol of unity; as the committed nationalist and Pan-Africanist; and as the advocate of post-independence unity.

By the time ZAPU was banned on 20 September 1962, it had 19,0000 members. Subsequently, the Peoples Caretaker Council (PCC) was formed on 23 August 1963. It was not an overtly political organisation, though, but was ZAPU in disguise as ZAPU, like its leader Nkomo, reflected many identities throughout the struggle. British overseas policy from early 1960s included cementing a relationship with the USA, cooperation between London and Washington on African policy and granting independence to her colonies (Butler 2000). In Southern Rhodesia, limited constitutional reforms were introduced which offered majority rule to a deferred date. In 1960, the ‘Ndaba’ conference convened by the British in Salisbury and attended by Ndabaningi Sithole preceded the 1961 constitutional conference which endorsed fifteen seats for Africans in the legislative assembly out of sixtyfive. Nkomo denounced it and walked away. Nkomo’s NDP of course rejected the proposals. I will not dwell on the reasons behind the ZAPU-ZANU split, which needs an analysis of its own except to say the split led to faction fights which often assumed a tribal character. The regional, ethnic-based divisions from 1963 were fully exploited by the Rhodesian intelligence services, and this is captured by former Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) director, Ken Flower (1987). Between 1965 and the Geneva conference, seven attempts at negotiations were made. In 1969, the Lusaka Manifesto or Manifesto on Southern Africa, a blueprint for democracy in Southern Africa, was drafted by fourteen central and eastern African states at their 5th summit and conference held on 14–16 April 1969 in Lusaka. It was endorsed by the OAU in Addis Ababa in September 1969. It stressed the independence of Zimbabwe on the

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basis of majority rule and failure of the settlers to comply would compel Africans to capture power. However, it stated that negotiations were a favourable option than killing and destruction to avoid ‘suffering for all the peoples of Rhodesia, both black and white’. But the intransigence of settler regimes made armed struggle an alternative. Nonetheless, peaceful negotiations and armed struggle were both sides of the same coin. In 1971, African National Council (this time Council replaced Congress of the 1950s ANC) was established, under the chairmanship of Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who had been nominated by Nkomo who was in prison, to oppose the Douglas-Home-Smith agreement entered between Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Ian Smith in November 1971. The Tiger and Fearless talks in 1966 and 1968 by the British government and the Rhodesians had culminated in Anglo-Rhodesian proposals of 1971. The ANC membership included members of the banned ZAPU and ZANU, was basically ‘non-partisan’ and used ZAPU/PCC underground structures. One other interesting thing is that the campaign was led and directed from prison where Sithole, Nkomo, Mugabe and others were sitting. In 1971, Lord Pearce constituted the Pearce Commission of Inquiry into African opinion on the constitutional proposals providing independence under white minority rule. The majority of Africans rejected the proposals and didn’t see them as a genuine basis for independence. The Pearce Report countered Smith’s illusionary assertion that his ‘natives were the happiest in the world’. In early 1970s, FRELIMO had invited ZAPU to join forces and penetrate Zimbabwe. At that time, ZAPU was experiencing serious internal squabbles meaning it failed to capitalise on the opportunity and the invitation was instead extended to ZANU. After ZAPU crisis of 1970–1971, members like James Chikerema and George Nyandoro quit or were expelled. Tribal fissions between Zezuru (Shonas) led by Chikerema and Ndebeles and Kalangas led by JZ Moyo had resulted in bloody clashes at Zimbabwe House in Lusaka in 1970. The Zambian government could not unite the two factions either. Chikerema’s attempt at unity with ZANU was interpreted as representing a tribal faction in ZAPU and therefore was not valid. The ZAPU split led to the formation of Front for Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI) which further complicated efforts at unity. On the other hand, ZAPU internecine conflict stalled its armed struggle. Thus, the OAU Liberation Committee held its 19th Ordinary Session at Benghazi, Libya, on 18 January 1972 and resolved that the armed struggle had to resume.

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The OAU Liberation Committee compelled ZAPU/ZANU to sign a joint declaration to achieve unity of the people of Zimbabwe through armed struggle. The Mbeya Protocol in Tanzania resulted in ZAPU/ZANU forming the Joint Military Command (JMC) in March 1972 with ZANU’s Herbert Chitepo as head. It was modelled on December 1971 Kinshasa Agreement between Angolan FNLA and MPLA. It was tasked with planning and conducting military operations of the two parties. Chitepo commented that the Mbeya declaration ‘was the first major step towards true, genuine, and lasting UNITY forged in blood and death in common battle against a common enemy endures forever’ (Mubako 1975). The principles of JMC were reaffirmed at Kampala meeting of OAU Liberation Committee in May 1972. This was followed up in Accra but OAU Liberation Committee expressed its disappointment that the JMC had not worked. The two parties were therefore prevailed to sign a ‘strategy for liberation of Zimbabwe’, a formula previously applied to the Angolan movements. Although they were pressured to sign, they were not obliged to implement the agreement. Both ZAPU and ZANU confirmed that unity is the unity of Zimbabwean people through armed struggle and those factions not committed to armed struggle cannot be united in a revolutionary organisation. Nonetheless, the JMC was not implemented and no military operations were coordinated. On the other hand, ZAPU commanders did not involve themselves in the implementation of JMC because according to Dumiso Dabengwa, ZAPU’s director of intelligence, at that stage the feeling was ZANU must disband and rejoin ZAPU. ZIPRA declared that apart from commitment to the revolutionary armed struggle, it endorsed the re-establishment of national unity of Zimbabwean people in the ANC through the Lusaka Declaration and called upon the people of Zimbabwe to ‘be vigilant and guard this unity against manipulations by enemies that seek to divide our people again’ (Declaration of Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Council, 31 December 1974 to 4 January 1975). Apparently, the FRELIMO victory was instructive on the need for unity which the national leadership had to commit rather than ‘personal aggrandisement, self-seekers and irredeemable tribalists’ (The Zimbabwe Review, 21 June 1975). The implication was that Zimbabweans could not be split by the formation of political parties by ‘treacherous campaigns meant to discredit some Zimbabwean leaders’ (The Zimbabwe Review, 21 January 1975).

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Following the Zimbabwe Unity Agreement of 7 December 1974 which merged the liberation movement into an enlarged ANC, a followup meeting was held in November of the same year in Dar-es-Salaam under the auspices of executive secretary of OAU Liberation Committee, Colonel Hashim Mbita which led to Zimbabwe Military Committee High Command in Mozambique comprising eighteen members, nine from ZAPU and nine from ZANU. Its terms of references were: consolidation of unity among ANC fighters; recruitment and unified training of cadres; unified deployment of combatants and mass mobilisation; and consolidation of a single military command. The committee also resolved not to engage in slogans denouncing political leadership, abolishing divisive and partisan slogans and adopting new revolutionary slogans that enhance unity of the ANC fighters. However, these agreements were not adhered to by ZANU fighters leading to bloody clashes in Mozambique and Tanzania. In November 1975 in Tanzania, ZPRA and ZANLA formed the Zimbabwe Peoples’ Army (ZIPA) with Rex Nhongo commander and Nikita Mangena political commissar. From bases in Mozambique, it started military operations against Smith regime in January 1976. ZIPA collapsed by mid-1976 as a result of armed clashes between ZPRA and ZANLA in camps in Mozambique and Tanzania. The killing of ZPRA cadres and particularly the Morogoro incident led to their withdrawal and return to Zambia. However, resuscitation of the concept ZIPA continued into the late 1970s. During his speech at the OAU Liberation Committee meeting, Nkomo stressed the need for political alliance and military union stating that ‘it is true that ZIPA has had problems but ZIPA is an entity. The fact that the ZANU and ZAPU sides of ZIPA operate from different geographical areas does not mean that it does not exist as a unit’ (see Speech By Joshua Nkomo at the 28th Session of the OAU Liberation Committee 31 January 1977). On 7 December 1974, leaders of ANC, ZANU, ZAPU and FROLIZI had met in Lusaka and signed a unity accord at the behest of the Frontline States (FLS) presidents. The agreement was that all parties unite in the enlarged ANC and the ANC would be the unifying force in preparation for the transfer of power. The agreement was signed by leaders of the nationalist formations (Nkomo [ZAPU]; Sithole [ZANU]; Muzorewa [ANC] and Chikerema [FROLIZI]) on 8 December 1974. The Lusaka Unity Accord was endorsed by the OAU Liberation Committee, and Zambian Foreign Minister Vernon Mwanga expressed

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that the ANC was the only organisation recognised by OAU. The implication was that both ZAPU and ZANU had effectively ceased to exist. The idea was unity of the people of Zimbabwe in lieu of a forthcoming constitutional conference in Victoria Falls. Contestations in the ANC, however, led to Nkomo breaking away and continued with talks with Smith, of which the talks floundered because Smith was not prepared to transfer power to majority rule. If Smith might have considered Nkomo moderate and dealing with him alone would divide the nationalist movement, he was tragically short-sighted as later events attest. Indeed, others in the nationalist camp labelled Nkomo a moderate for talking with Smith. An editorial in the ZAPU publication, The Zimbabwe Review, considers this matter: Cde. Joshua Nkomo is a ‘moderate’ merely because he has insisted on consistency and honesty in honouring conclusively agreed and signed lines of policy including that of tactical pursuit of negotiations with the Rhodesian regime. (The Zimbabwe Review, 5 November 1976)

Nkomo himself dismissed allegations that he was a moderate; those labelling him harboured intentions to remove him from the struggle. He asked: If I were a blue- eyed boy of the Rhodesian whites, why did they keep me in detention and restriction for so many years? The mere fact that they kept me away from the people for so long is proof that I am not the man they would like to hold an important post in an African-controlled government. (ABC Rusike Interview with Nkomo, 10 January 1975)

Nkomo’s talks with Smith reveal another of his political side. Intuitively, he might have been a shrewd and cunning politician. His talks with the regime did not mean suspension of the armed struggle, but were meant to prove that Zimbabwe could never be liberated through negotiations or goodwill of the Smith regime and the regime could never negotiate a settlement (The Zimbabwe Review, 5 November 1975). In fact after the breakdown of Nkomo’s talks with Smith, Smith told the world that there could never be majority rule in Rhodesia in 1000 years. Talks with the regime also proved that it was reluctant to transfer power to the majority (Speech by Joshua Nkomo at the 13th Session of the OAU in Mauritius, 10 June 1977). In another way, Nkomo proved to the world that the

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Lusaka Manifesto and Dar-es-Salaam Declaration were inapplicable as far as Smith was concerned. Nkomo’s strategy of talks was not an end in themselves, but served to facilitate the next stage of the struggle. Talking with the enemy could only be done under certain circumstances advantageous to the progress and advancement of the struggle, ‘we believe in a cumulative effect of a multi-lateral strategy in pursuing our liberation struggle’, and ‘all forms of struggle, that is, military, diplomatic, labour, political and propaganda must be used in coordination and pushed forward as a single revolutionary thrust’ (The Zimbabwe Review, 5 November 1975). It would be erroneous to suggest that talking with the enemy is an alternative to fighting the enemy. Nkomo was desirous to see complete unity, failure if which would result in bloodbath reminiscent of Angola. Unity would be dissipated through inter-party rivalries and tribal fights which would delay independence, and disunity would be exploited fully by the enemy and would be favourable to the Smith regime. Nkomo had excoriated Bishop Muzorewa who once said since he is from Mashonaland and Nkomo is from Matabeleland, he (Muzorewa) represents more people and therefore should be a national leader. Nkomo said: This is the most absurd, most dangerous tribalistic trash I have ever heard since I became active in the struggle for the freedom of our country almost 30 years ago. (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 November 1976)

Another factor is that the unity was compelled by the OAU and enforced unity failed to work because it did not have enough support from groups and individuals in the nationalist movement itself (Windrich 1977). Secondly, differing ideologies hampered unity in the ANC. The nationalist movements pursued their own separate lines, and their structures were not merged and ‘rather than laying the foundation for sustained unity, the Lusaka Accord contributed to further divisions, deepening the rifts between the signatories, as well as the political organisations and guerrilla forces’ (Mubako 1975: 8). The suspicion was that the ANC was littered with Uncle Toms committed to a non-violent policy; therefore; the ANC could not work in a context of armed struggle (Mubako 1975). Nevertheless, the PF had a measure of success because it had a progressive material and progressive individuals. Unlike the Angolan FNLA and MPLA, regardless of sometimes strained relations between ZAPU/ZANU and differences in tactics, they did not assume

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antagonistic positions and were ideologically closer and were ­supported by FLS (Mubako 1975: 7). The precedence had been set during 1957–1963 where the nationalist movement under Nkomo’s leadership was fairly united. Thirdly, the Angolan experience where the liberation movement was urged by the FLS to sign a unity agreement before negotiating with the Portuguese government was meant to be tried with the Zimbabwean liberation movement. Attempts were made at unity between COREMO and FRELIMO in Mozambique: MPLA, UNITA and FNLA which all failed. On 5 January 1975, FNLA, MPLA and UNITA met in Mombasa under the chairmanship of Jomo Kenyatta and agreed on a common ground to negotiate the end of Portuguese rule but would maintain their separate identities. The conference held in Portugal in January 1975 sealed the Mombasa Accord, but there was no merger of the parties. In their 14 years of struggle, the Angolan nationalist movement was plagued by differences in strategies, struggles for power, personal antipathies, ethnic alliances, dynamics of history and Mobutu’s realpolitiks (Mubako 1975: 5–7). Elsewhere in Namibia and South Africa, the liberation movement was sharply divided and never united. After attending the OAU Foreign Ministers Conference in Dar-­es-Salaam in 1975 and the Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ Conference in Jamaica, Nkomo returned to Rhodesia to negotiate with Smith and plan for a congress to elect the permanent leadership of the ANC. However, Muzorewa, Chikerema and Sithole suspected that Nkomo wanted to ascend the leadership of ANC. Sithole subsequently organised the Zimbabwe Liberation Council (ZLC) and made himself chairman with Chikerema, secretary. At August 1975 Victoria Falls talks, Nkomo refused to recognise ZLC while the other trio refused to recognise Nkomo as ANC leader. In September 1975, ZAPU held its own congress, ousted Muzorewa and formed ANC Zimbabwe (ANC-Z) under Nkomo’s leadership.1 The implication was a failure of the unity of various nationalist formations. Nkomo continued to negotiate and hold bilateral talks, which had begun on 1 December 1975 and spread over thirteen sittings, with Smith until March 1976 of which the talks inadvertently broke down. This followed Angolan invasion by South Africa and Mozambique’s closure of its borders with Rhodesia. Subsequently, ZAPU upped its military option, relaunched its armed struggle and the insurgency escalated. Meanwhile, the USA with Henry Kissinger as negotiator entered the fray, and on 23 June 1976, he met South African Prime Minister

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John Vorster in a bid to reopen negotiations between Rhodesia and the nationalists. Kissinger visited the FLS, made a speech in Lusaka in April 1976 and had a meeting with Vorster in Germany in September of the same year, in preparation for the Geneva talks. In 1974, through efforts of Vorster and business magnets in South Africa, Vorster met Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda in a bid to stop the guerrilla war in north-eastern Rhodesia and to call for a constitutional conference to be attended by the Smith regime and the nationalists. The truth of the matter is that the détente exercise around Rhodesia was a reaction to ZANU military offensive in December 1972; FRELIMO’s military advances and the fall of the Portuguese regime in April 1974; the threat of Soviet influence propelled Kissinger’s ‘shuttle diplomacy’ with the USA and the West worried that Smith’s intransigence would lead to a communist takeover; the Angolan experience would repeat itself in Zimbabwe and Zimbabwean freedom fighters would turn to Eastern bloc for assistance (Matthews 1979/1980). Détente meant defence of apartheid while at the same time Zambia wished to avoid being imbricated in a long drawn conflict. These diplomatic manoeuvres involving South Africa and Kissinger have come to be known as détente policy on Southern Africa. According to Ken Mufuka (1979) who was a ZAPU member, Kissinger’s favour for a negotiated settlement and indeed the policy of détente was meant to avoid military defeat of Smith regime by ZPRA/ ZANLA Russian and Chinese trained guerrillas who would come to power implying the next military target would be apartheid South Africa. In any case, military defeat of Rhodesian racist regime by blacks would be an embarrassment to the white supremacist world. For the above reasons, Vorster and Kaunda agreed that the solution lay in a constitutional settlement where South Africa would insist end of Rhodesian white regime and Zambia would agree to an establishment of a moderate black government in Zimbabwe. However, the détente exercise ended with South Africa’s invasion of Angola in October 1975. In late 1976, Nkomo and Robert Mugabe formed the Patriotic Front (PF) which rejected Kissinger’s proposals and intensified the guerrilla struggle under PF’s joint command. Three weeks before Geneva ZAPU/ZANU issued the Maputo Declaration in which they announced the formation of the PF: Cognisant of the need to present a common and solid approach to national matters and being determined that our different political identities shall

102  K. Tafira not be a barrier to cooperation in promoting the revolutionary process in Zimbabwe…our two organisations have resolved that they shall with singularity of purpose adopt a common approach to all issues arising from the subject of current talks. (Liberation Support 1978: 8)

For Nkomo, the PF had the same motives: to promote the armed struggle; to bring the two parties together; uniting the country after liberation and ‘this has always been the driving force behind our unity’ (Liberation Support 1978: 8). He added: We also realised it was necessary to move toward the creation of one army. But several of us also believe that before you can form a single army it is necessary to have one political organisation. The question of any army hinges on the unity of political leadership. You can’t have one army under two parties, with two leaders. Consequently, you can’t talk of uniting the two armies without first uniting the two parties. (Liberation Support 1978: 18)

Nkomo expressed hope that ZAPU/ZANU would enter elections as a single unit. At that time, political unity was satisfactory because both parties entered negotiations with a single set of proposals. The Geneva peace conference which was sponsored by Britain to form an interim government to facilitate the transfer of power to majority rule convened on 28 October 1976. Nkomo intimated that if the Geneva conference failed, he could not be held liable because on many occasions he had tried to show that talks of these nature do not succeed. Armed struggle, rather, was inevitable and had to be intensified (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 November 1976). After Geneva, the PF was recognised by FLS as the sole representative and sole liberation movement of the people of Zimbabwe at the exclusion of Muzorewa and Sithole. The recognition was further affirmed at the 14th Ordinary Session of OAU heads of state and government meeting in Libreville from 2 to 5 July 1977. At the meeting, the OAU and FLS granted the PF political, diplomatic and material support after the recommendation of the 28th Session of OAU coordination committee for the liberation of Africa. Secondly, the PF’s task was to unify the Zimbabwean people and the Zimbabwean liberation movement before independence to avoid the Angolan experience. The PF had met again in Maputo from 15 to 17 January 1977 and issued a press release signed by JZ Moyo and Robert Mugabe on behalf of ZAPU/ZANU, respectively. It defined further its objectives

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as: liquidation of imperialism and colonialism; creation of a national democratic state of the people of Zimbabwe; eliminating capitalistic exploitation; and creation of a social revolution. It set up a ten-member coordinating committee comprising leaders of the two organisations to coordinate and jointly implement agreed programmes including studying problems that had affected ZIPA and how to reorganise it. The summit of five FLS that met in Lusaka in January 1977 and attended by Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Tanzania and Mozambique gave full support to PF. Following PF’s Coordinating Committee meeting in Lusaka on 20 April 1977, meant to consolidate the political and military fronts of the PF, they decided to establish headquarters in Dar-es-Salaam and regional offices in Maputo and Lusaka. The press statement released after the meeting stated that: The Patriotic Front calls upon all the patriotic and democratic forces inside and outside Zimbabwe to close ranks behind the Patriotic Front, and to make resolute efforts to defeat imperialist machinations and to ensure a speedy advent of genuine independence for the people of Zimbabwe. (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 November 1976)

The coordinating committee of the PF met in Maputo from 9 to 12 September 1977 to consider latest British proposals for a settlement in Rhodesia and came up with a position paper. After analysing the proposed ‘independence constitution’, the movement stressed that it had always advocated for independence which is non-negotiable, and that there should be democratic elections based on universal suffrage. At the Third Congress of FRELIMO in Maputo, 3–7 February 1977, before Nkomo delivered his speech he first called the joint leader of the PF, Robert Mugabe, to share the stage with him as a sign of the serious intentions of the PF to achieve its objectives of unifying the people of Zimbabwe. This act was received with a tumultuous applause from the delegates (The Zimbabwe Review, 7 February 1977). Nkomo noted that although there were differences in Zimbabwe and Mozambique’s historical experience, ‘we are culturally one people, sharing a common territory and inevitably a common destiny whether in peril or prosperity. The Rhodesian racists are demonstrating this fact by murdering our people on both sides of the border’ (The Zimbabwe Review, 7 February 1977). At the June 1977 OAU Summit in Libreville, Nkomo and Mugabe stood side by side in show of a united front and were advised to unite

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their separate armies and form a single political union than merely a front. Still, the parties maintained the slogan, ‘We shall unite if we can, but we shall fight alone if we must’ (Mubako 1975: 9). Nkomo found the idea that the PF was ‘a marriage of convenience’ repulsive because ‘there is no convenience in the struggle. Our coming together is a matter of reality, and we have agreed to work together on certain issues’ (Zimbabwe Day Speech by Nkomo, 17 March 1977). At another forum he said: Some people say the Patriotic Front was a marriage of convenience. It is a reality. A reality of the people who want to work together in both ways. Now we have realised that by working separately, we could not put significant TNT, on this rock to crack it. We brought together the two TNT’s, ZAPU and ZANU together. We are placing heavy TNT’s on this hard imperialist rock, and the fuse is on. (Speech by Nkomo at the World Conference Against Apartheid, Racism and Colonialism in Southern Africa, 16–17 January 1977)

Many times and at various international fora, Nkomo had to address the criticism that the Zimbabwean political leadership had failed to forge and maintain unity. He acknowledged that tribalism had been the main cause of breakdown of ZIPA, ‘We have paid a high price in human lives for what we considered to be unity camps, all in an attempt to achieve unity with elements that have a mania for killing fellow comrades-in-arms’ (Address by Nkomo at the 13th OAU Session, Mauritius, June 1977). Another reason was ZANU political leadership not willing to abandon ZANU for the sake of unity. Secondly, ‘unity of the cadres’ while necessary excluded the entire people. Thirdly, Nkomo noticed that it was futile to discuss unity and sign unity documents without the participation of the masses. Although ZAPU/ZANU remained separate parties and separate political identities, they agreed at least on uniting their armed forces so as to be effective and to have one army in independent Zimbabwe which will defend her independence: A country can have one, two, three, four, ten political parties, but it can’t have more than one army. This is simple common sense. (Address by Nkomo at the 13th OAU Session, Mauritius, June 1977)

Nkomo was quick to observe that the issue of disunity was actually disunity among leaders not the people of Zimbabwe who have a long history

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of struggle and have fought oppression as a united people (Speech by Nkomo at 28th Session of the OAU Liberation Committee, 31 January 1977). Since the people of Zimbabwe were commonly oppressed, it was therefore imperative that they be united on a unity premised on basic principle. For this reason, leaders had the responsibility of uniting people rather than dividing them. Unity would stabilise all revolutionary principle and minimise the chances of enemy tactics of divide and rule, while at the same time the enemy would be facing a ‘one force with one voice’. Apparently, the question of unity sat heavily on Nkomo’s heart. In a press statement on 30 June 1975 in Lusaka, he said, ‘After signing the Lusaka Declaration of Unity in Zambia on December 7 last year, I felt it my bounden duty to abide by it to the letter and spirit. The absence of unity in Zimbabwe was a matter that had tormented and tortured me in my 11 years of prison and detention more than the prison conditions had’ (ABC Rusike (editor of Focus on Southern Africa Journal)’s Interview with Nkomo, January 1975). Nkomo added, ‘When this unity was achieved, I was the happiest man alive, and had a sound and peaceful sleep for the first time in 11 years’ (ABC Rusike (editor of Focus on Southern Africa Journal)’s Interview with Nkomo, January 1975). Nkomo believed unity is a weapon of the struggle which had to be maintained even after independence. As a man committed to service and sacrifice, he hoped the co-signatories would share his view, but he was to be proven wrong. One important facet of Nkomo’s personality is that he refrained from saying anything untoward to other leaders to avoid jeopardising unity. But his silence was misconstrued by those seeking political capital including accusations that he was making secret deals with Smith. Nkomo always maintained that he always negotiated in public and with a mandate from his party and the people. After the Lusaka meeting, they had agreed to speak with one voice, but some leaders were jockeying for positions including feathering ‘their own nests, hence the apparent division within our ranks’ (ABC Rusike (editor of Focus on Southern Africa Journal)’s Interview with Nkomo, January 1975). In an article appearing in the Black Scholar, Nkomo agrees that independence could not come by constitutional negotiations but through armed struggle. Elsewhere, Nkomo had spoken these words: We are also guided by the obvious truth that one cannot procure at a conference table what one has not procured in the battlefield. THAT IS NOT POSSIBLE. Therefore comrades, the revolutionary struggle in Zimbabwe

106  K. Tafira continues. (Speech by Nkomo at the Third Congress of FRELIMO, 3–7 February 1977)

He outlines the essence of unity which is a prerequisite for the victory of the struggle: We in the Patriotic Front recognise the fact that unless Zimbabwean fighting forces unite under a revolutionary banner against Rhodesian fascism, the struggle against Rhodesia cannot succeed. (Nkomo 1978: 21)

Nkomo distinguishes between ‘mixed grill’ unity and ‘creative unity’ where the former involves a smattering of forces who come together without any coherent ideas of what they want to change and the kind of society they want to build. These lack any consistent ideology. This includes selecting a leader to whom the Smith regime would hand over power, a leader who will be more important than the party or government. For Nkomo, the struggle is not about replacing Smith with a black face. Rather, it is about fundamental change and ‘the war is not against white people, but against a system of racism that keeps African people in a state of slavery’ (Nkomo 1978: 22). A reappraisal of the past efforts at unity shows sitting at a table, discussing differences and signing agreements to work together failed. Instead, unity works through a process of shared experience in struggle, and the creative unity of the Patriotic Front is found and expressed in armed struggle. Nkomo describes the armed struggle as a ‘grinding mill’ that eradicates mistrust and suspicions. He believed that ‘since Rhodesians are not going to be charmed from their tree of power and privilege’, they must be compelled before any negotiation mechanism can be drawn. Negotiated settlement cannot be dependent on the voluntary cooperation of Smith nor his goodwill because Smith was reluctant to hand over power voluntarily. In fact, the liberation movement had for years used arguments, persuasion and talks and expressed a desire for peaceful means to change. All was futile. Besides, Smith had an ingrained habit of negotiating in bad faith, in dishonesty, in deceit and prevarication, only willing to negotiate when tables are turning against him and to give his overstretched troops a breather and to sow confusion in the ranks of the liberation movement. In addition, the Rhodesians ‘have operated a police state for over 20 years; they have torn up their own constitution, thus risking world criticism and action; they have detained without trial thousands of

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Zimbabweans; they perverted the rule of law, tried people in camera, hanged people in secret, legalised torture-all, they say, in the name of western Christian civilisation and to contain communism; all, in fact, to maintain privilege of power’ (Nkomo 1978: 23). Nkomo also acknowledges the unity and support of the peoples of the FLS who faced greater risks in the process. Nonetheless, ‘the Patriotic Front will fight by all means at its disposal until Rhodesia is no more. We expect all those that oppose racism and fascism to act in an equally unequivocal manner against minority rule. We must give our blood not because we love war, but because we love freedom’ (Nkomo 1978: 26). According to Mufuka (1977: 58), Nkomo used to say, ‘This is not Smith’s country—ilizwe ngelethu,’2 meaning ‘Mr Nkomo may agree that at international law, the white colonists are Rhodesians but it seems to me that he has never accepted that Zimbabwe, African name for Rhodesia, is a white man’s country. Most Africans, if one can be allowed to generalise still feel that Europeans are not vanavevhu –sons of the soil’ (Mufuka 1977: 58). Nevertheless, Nkomo believed that: We are non-racialists; we believe in one people; we believe in one nation – that is, the Zimbabwean nation. Our intention is to build a new nation, not new in the sense that our forefathers did not have a nation, but new in the sense that we are recreating it from the chaotic situation of the colonial era where people have been divided by race. In saying this, I wish to stress the importance of creating one nation, eliminating racialism completely and, of course, we cannot eliminate racialism and condone tribalism. As we have been fighting, against racialism, we shall fight, even more viciously, against any signs of tribalism that seem to show in our country today. We are fighting for a nation of people – black, yellow or red, people who have made that country their home. They must feel secure, no matter what their skin colour is. (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 January 1977)

In another context, Nkomo also reiterated: Of course we not racialists. When we say the transfer of power to the majority, we are not taking power from the whites and giving it to the Blacks. We are colour blind. We don’t look at people’s faces and say they are not our people because they are white. We don’t look at people’s texture of the hair or their straight nose. We look at people as people. (Speech by Nkomo at the World Conference on Apartheid, Racism and Colonialism in Southern Africa, 16–17 June 1977)

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The Zimbabwe Review (1977) reiterated that in the PF, there was no Shona or Ndebele but Zimbabweans. On every 17 of March of every year was observed by ZAPU as Zimbabwe Day and was announced by a ZAPU delegation to the conference of Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation in Moshi, Tanzania, in 1963. Its importance lay in that it is the day Zimbabwean people came together in 1896 in united effort to fight colonial invaders (Zimbabwe Day Speech By Nkomo, 17 March 1977). The 17 of March originated from the attack on Fort Mhondoro by a force put together by Mashayamombe and Mkwati Ncube with the two generals coming from the north and south but still demonstrating singularity of purpose and effort. In that resistance, Zimbabwean people forgot their differences and fought a common enemy. Zimbabwe Day also meant to counter colonial historian assertion that the military attacks by Africans were a rebellion by scattered, unorganised tribes without purpose or direction (The Zimbabwe Review, 23 March 1974). A disturbing trend in the liberation movement was reflected in cadres developing a habit of avoiding the company of someone speaking Ndebele or Shona. An issue of the Zimbabwe Review urged abandonment of this retrogressive trait because ‘both languages are the cultural wealth of Zimbabwe and behave otherwise is to start a train of prejudices leading to divisive tendencies. As Zimbabweans we should be more proud to speak and understand both languages equally well than taking pride in the knowledge of English minus one local language’ (The Zimbabwe Review, 5 April 1975). As the war heated up in the late 1970s, the Rhodesian propaganda was in full drive and was using the tried and tested tactic of division and divisive tactics. Nkomo, cognizant of the enemy efforts to split people into tribal groups hostile to one another, said: We belong to different tribal as well as racial groups. The racial or tribal differences do not make us less or more Zimbabwean than we are. We should realise that once we fall prey to such tactics practised by people some of whom pose as nationalists, we cannot build a happy and stable Zimbabwe. Our enemies remind us of so-called tribal wars fought by our forefathers’ centuries ago. They remind us about these wars not to help us understand our history but to make us hate those who do not belong to our tribes, those who belong to tribes with which our forefathers might have once clashed over, perhaps, grazing land, fishing or hunting areas. We must be vigilant and expose such divisive tactics. Similarly, we should

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never tolerate any form of racialism whatsoever. (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 November 1976)

Tribalism, like racism, could never perform a liberatory function but only served to generate hatred, prejudice, bigotry and ‘aggressive suspicion’ (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 November 1976). Nkomo stressed that the war was not about fighting white people but a cruel system that is ‘repulsive, indecent, inhuman, and gives a privilege to a minority to dominate a majority’ (Zimbabwe Day Speech by Nkomo, 17 March 1977). The cause of war was denial of human rights and a racist system. The implication was that Zimbabweans of all colours must join the struggle and whites had a choice to either side with a racist regime or join forces fighting oppression. Thus, the war could not stop without its causes removed and replaced by a just system that does not consider one’s ethnic, racial or tribal origin. For Nkomo, all had a solemn duty to create a nation based on human dignity, equality and justice; bound a feeling of human brotherliness and not torn asunder by ‘racial bigotry, hostility and greed…in that nation one has to live a happy and dignified life which will be nothing but human-ness’ (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 November 1976). The objective of Zimbabwean people was seeking right to determine their own destiny, to own it and be masters of their own future. The plan for Zimbabwe which emerged from the commonwealth conference of 1 August 1979 in Lusaka entailed observance of ceasefire, acceptance of outcome of British supervised and internationally observed elections. The precedence had been set in the 1977 AngloAmerican proposals which detailed surrender of power by Smith, holding of free and fair elections and establishment by Britain of a transitional administration. Earlier on in January 1979, Nkomo the joint leader of PF had told Cledwyn Hughes that only a military solution was possible in Rhodesia. If ever there was a settlement, it could only be reached by those locked in combat. Politicians like Sithole, Muzorewa, Chirau and Ndiweni served the divisive purposes of the regime directly or indirectly (The Zimbabwe Review, 6 November 1976). Following the internal settlement of 3 March 1978 also called the Constitutional Agreement on Rhodesia which laid out universal suffrage as a basis of a new constitution; separation of powers and Smith supervising transition to majority rule; and the April 1979 elections, the need for greater political and military unity between ZANU and ZAPU was necessary. As for the 20

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April 1979 elections with anti-revolutionary leaders like Muzorewa at the helm, Nkomo had forewarned that every polling booth would float with blood (Beri 1979). Both ZAPU and ZANU of course boycotted the polls which they considered a sham. After several meetings with FLS which included hosts Kaunda and Machel, Nkomo and Mugabe signed a unity agreement on 12 May 1979 to ensure greater unity and achieve military victory. ZPRA’s ‘Turning Point’ strategy was crucial in hastening the convening of Lancaster House which opened on 10 September 1979. Apparently, the Rhodesian intelligence was aware of the strategy. However, the sight of outright military conquest was short-lived as the liberation movement fell under pressure from the FLS to negotiate. Following the Lusaka Agreement, the FLS ‘insisted that the PF should not only attended the London conference but also that they should not walk out of it’ (Gregory 1980: 15). This was after PF’s reservations of Lusaka Agreement which they thought favoured Muzorewa and were also dissatisfied that the British would supervise the elections. In any case, the PF was caught between a rock and hard place: The Lancaster House Agreement represented a compromise between very different positions of Britain and the PF. An examination of some of the critical stages of the conference reveals how each delegation sought to mobilize international support on its own behalf, and demonstrate how international forces, in turn, limited each participant’s scope for manoeuvre, and, indeed objection. (Gregory 1980: 15)

During 1980 election campaigns, the main theme of ZAPU (now Patriotic Front Party) was peace, national unity and reconciliation (Cliffe et al. 1980). Nkomo refrained from publicly attacking other leaders. Instead, he emphasised on unity and peace despite some ZANLA and ZANU adherents blocking his and his party’s campaigns in some areas. In many instances, slogans like pasi na Nkomo (Down with Nkomo) were the staple of ZANU canvassing. This political immaturity annoyed some communities in Matabeleland where ZANLA cadres had operated and received support from locals who were flabbergasted with this kind of campaigning. Nkomo’s commitment to unity and peace in the newly established Zimbabwe is seen in ZAPU adding PF as a campaign theme for unity and ‘Nkomo’s party made a major effort to overcome its image as a regional, tribally based party appealing merely to the Ndebele groups

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in Matabeleland where only sixteen out of eighty seats were being contested’ (Gregory 1980). To say that ZAPU was regional based is a historical fallacy, as shown above. During the 1980 elections, ZAPU Shona-speaking members like Joseph Msika, Willie Musarurwa and Josiah Chinamano contested in Mashonaland constituencies. Gregory (1980: 183) adds, ‘The PF campaign, which received a US$5 million from the OAU, stressed its leader’s avuncular image as “Father Zimbabwe”’ Besides, Nkomo had decades of experience as a trade unionist which entailed uniting Zimbabweans of all tribes and races. For a long time, Nkomo had been regarded not only as nationalist and revolutionary leader but also a spiritual leader as well. The Njelele national rally he addressed saw some two hundred and fifty thousand people in attendance. Thirty years earlier, Nkomo had visited the shrine considered one of the most important and holiest sites in Zimbabwean cosmology and was anointed leader of the nationalist movement while he also received some ritual and prophetical invocations. Following 1980 electoral defeat, Nkomo refused to take the Savimbi way and plunge the country into civil war. Rather, he recognised the victory and legitimacy of Mugabe’s government (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007).

Conclusion The long political career of Nkomo endears him to the pantheon of great Pan-African leaders of the contemporary times. He undoubtedly was a nation builder, a diplomat, a statesman and a revolutionary leader. During his time, he earned names of affection: Mdala Wethu, Chibwechitedza, Father Zimbabwe, Big Josh and so on. Nkomo would be remembered for his advancement of the Zimbabwean revolution, his quest for unity and peace and welfare of the people of Zimbabwe. A close analysis of his speeches and writings in the period 1945–1980 reflects the depth of his commitment to liberation which of course he believed could not happen if the protagonists are not united and at worst are at arms against each other instead of the enemy.

Notes 1.  At a congress held on 27–28 September 1975, the ANC Zimbabwe (ANC-Z) was formed at Gwanzura stadium. In fact, it was another nomenclature for ZAPU. The congress was attended by 65 522 delegates coming from eight political provinces and 200 districts. At the congress,

112  K. Tafira Nkomo intimated that if Smith did not resume negotiations, the armed struggle would be intensified. 2. The slogan of the NDP used to be ‘One Man One Vote’, ‘Nyika NdeyeduIlizwe Ngelethu’ and ‘Forward Ever Backward Never’.

References ABC Rusike. (1975, January 10). (editor of Focus on Southern Africa Journal)’s interview with Nkomo. Beri, H. M. L. (1979). Peace prospects in Rhodesia. Strategic Analysis, 2(12), 417–461. Butler, L. J. (2000). Britain, the United States, and the demise of the Central African Federation, 1959–63. The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 28(3), 131–151. Cliffe, L., Mpofu, J., & Munslow, B. (1980). Nationalist politics in Zimbabwe: The 1980 elections and beyond. Review of African Political Economy, 7(18), 44–67. Gregory, M. (1980). Rhodesian elections—A first-hand account and analysis. The World Today, 36(5), 180–188. Joshua Nkomo’s address to the 13th Session of OAU. (1977, June). Port Louis, Mauritius. Libby, R. T. (1979). All-party elections in Zimbabwe: What might happen? Africa Today, 26(1), 7–17. Liberation Support Movement. (1978). Zimbabwe. The final advance. Documents on the Zimbabwean Liberation Movement. Oakland: Liberation Support Movement Information Center. Matthews, R. O. (1979/1980). Talking without negotiating: The case of Rhodesia. International Journal, 35(1), 91–117. Mubako, S. (1975). The quest for unity in the Zimbabwean liberation movement. A Journal of Opinion, 5(1), 5–17. Mufuka, K. N. (1977). Reflections on Southern Rhodesia: An African viewpoint. Africa Today, 24(2), 51–63. Mufuka, K. N. (1979). Rhodesia’s internal settlement: A tragedy. African Affairs, 78(313), 439–450. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S., & Willems, W. (2010). Reinvoking the past in the present: Changing identities and appropriations of Joshua Nkomo in post-colonial Zimbabwe. African Identities, 8(3), 191–208. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2007). Forging and imagining the nation in Zimbabwe: Trials and tribulations of Joshua Nkomo as a nationalist leader. Nationalities Affairs, 30, 25–42. Nkomo, J. (1978). The principles of unity and struggle in Zimbabwe. The Black Scholar, 9(5), 21–26.

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Scarnecchia, T. (2011). The Congo crisis, the United Nations, and Zimbabwe nationalism, 1960–1963. African Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1(1), 63–86. The Zimbabwe Review, (1974, March 23). The Zimbabwe Review, (1975, April 5). The Zimbabwe Review, Vol. 4 No. 5 (1975). The Zimbabwe Review, (1975, June 21). The Zimbabwe Review, (1976, November 6). The Zimbabwe Review, Vol. 6 (1977, January). Windrich, E. (1977). Rhodesia: The road from Luanda to Geneva. The World Today, 33(3), 101–111. Zimbabwe Day Speech by Joshua Nkomo, Lusaka, (1977, March 17).

CHAPTER 5

The Entrapment of Joshua Nkomo Within Global Imperial Snares Gorden Moyo

Introduction This chapter is an invitation to the simultaneous deconstruction and reconstruction of Joshua Nkomo as a towering patriarch of the anticolonial struggle, a ‘decolonial prophet’ and a redemptive nationalist figure in Zimbabwe. Like so many of his contemporaries, Nkomo was a product of a complex intellectual, political and historical milieu paved by freedom fighters and intellectuals such as Sylvester Williams who pioneered the Pan-African movement; Cheikh Anta Diop who spent all his life pushing forward redemptive African nationalist scholarship and politics; Leopold Sedar Senghor who rebelled against French assimilation and inaugurated the Negritude movement; Frantz Fanon who unmasked the life of the ‘wretched of the earth’; Julius Nyerere who spent his whole political career fighting for Tanzania self-reliance and continental Pan-Africanism; Kwame Nkrumah who became the indefatigable advocate of consciencism and Pan-Africanism; Kenneth Kaunda who shared with Nkomo the principles of black humanism; and Steve Bantu Biko

G. Moyo (*)  Lupane State University, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_5

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who like Nkomo strongly believed in the redemptive black consciousness spirit. The list is endless, but these are some of the few of Nkomo’s political and ideological ‘birth-marks’. No doubt this tapestry of ideas, histories, memories, philosophies, experiences and knowledge had a profound impact on the political formation of Nkomo’s politics, political consciousness and political leadership. While Nkomo’s Pan-African pedigree, liberation credentials and decolonial impulses compare very well and shoulder to shoulder with those of other Pan-African luminaries, his contribution, regrettably, has largely remained submerged in imperial epistemic silences orchestrated by a posse of imperial knowledge producers and ‘commissar’ intellectuals who commit what Suarez-Krabbe (2016) termed ‘epistemic violence’. Typical exemplars of these ‘willing scribes’ are the likes of David Martin and Phyllis Johnson whose early independence praise text consigned Nkomo, Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) to the sidelines of history and marginal locations of power, while inventing the ‘hero-stories’ and producing very ‘patriotic histories’ of Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). It is, however, instructive that even Terence Ranger who even joined ZAPU and was led by Nkomo did not produce any work on his party. Instead, he ventured in peasant consciousness in Mashonaland and the biographies of the Samkange family only late in his life to distance himself from the patriotic histories and interpretations he inaugurated in the 1960s and early 1980s (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b). As this discussion unfolds, it will become clear that Nkomo was a product if not a ‘victim’ of what Boaventura de Sousa calls ‘abyssal thinking’ which is a Western thinking that divides social reality into two realms: the realm of this ‘side of the line’ and the realm ‘the other side of the line’. Viewed from this perspective, Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA were classified as the ‘other side’ and pushed to the realm of alterity not only by tribalists in the nationalist movement but also by the global imperial forces before and after the political-juridical independence in Zimbabwe. This was done in collusion with the ‘recruited’ and ‘managed’ inheritors of the ex-colonial state who physically located Nkomo, ZAPU and ex-ZIPRA fighters on the ‘other’ side of ethnic abyssal lines while imagining themselves to be situated on the ‘this side’ of abyssal lines. Invariably for years, Nkomo remained atrophied and

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locked in the shadows of history, peripheries of power and margins of scholarship. This has provoked a new search for alternative knowledge, alternative methodologies, alternative histories and alternative imaginations of the new Pan-Africanism in Zimbabwe. Today, in what appears to be Kwasi Wiredu’s ‘epistemic awakening’, there is a growing stable of the literature churned by decolonial thinkers and revisionists from different academic climes such as Timothy Scarnecchia, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Wendy Willems and others which is quarrying ‘new’ and ‘old’ truths, peeling off folkloric and manufactured ‘hero-stories’ from the historiographies of the liberation struggle in particular and nationalist historiography in general. A battery of recently published autobiographies adds to the increasing din of voices that reveal new nuggets of information and evidence with what they say and with what they don not say about Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA. These include among others David Coltart’s The Struggle Continues: 50 Years of Tyranny in Zimbabwe (2016); Cephas Msipa’s In Pursuit of Freedom and Justice—A Memoir (2015); Wilfred Mhanda’s Wilfred MhandaDzino: Memories of a Freedom Fighter (2011); and Edgar Tekere’s Edgar 2’Boy Zivanai Tekere: A lifetime of Struggle (2007). This surge of selfwriting by those who participated in the liberation struggle in one way or another has immensely added to Nkomo’s own autobiography entitled The Story of My Life (1984). These autobiographies reflect struggles within the struggle and how they were carried over to the post-liberation war era. Furthermore, the recent declassification of the archives by the Department of Foreign Affairs in South Africa has opened new vistas of opportunity for revisionist historians to reanalyse in a more nuanced way the political formation of Nkomo’s politics and his peripherised place in the liberation history. It is also expected that more archival evidence will be made available in the not so distant future through the opening of archived files in Washington, London and Sydney among other sites of Zimbabwe’s hidden historical treasures. This chapter is therefore about inaugurating a new narrative predicated on ‘old’ and long-ignored evidence as well as ‘new’ canons of an-other logic, an-other language, another thinking, an-other truth and another history of the anti-colonial struggle in Zimbabwe. As already implied, the grammar of this chapter is that of a revisionist history which rejects and objects the conventionally received linear versions of history which have attempted to pale the iconography of

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Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA. This contribution is therefore a deconstructive and reconstructive narrative whose leitmotif is to critique the sinister motivations of those praise-texts that have been produced and reproduced as indubitable truths of the Cartesian logic. As MaldonadoTorres (2007: 262) would put it, ‘it is about making visible the invisible and about analyzing the mechanisms that produce such invisibility or distorted visibility in the light of a large stock of ideas that must necessarily include the reflections of the invisible themselves’. The idea is to contribute to the decolonisation of knowledge and reconstruction of silenced histories of Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA. What is maintained throughout this chapter is a decolonial perspective that is critical of both Western and Eastern imperialisms and their impact on the decolonisation project in Zimbabwe. It exposes the EuroAmerican deceit and hypocrisy regarding its role in the inauguration of coloniality of power at the expiry of official colonialism in that country. Similarly, it surfaces both the decolonial and the imperial motives of communist-Soviet in its relations with Nkomo’s ZAPU/ZIPRA. Importantly, it will show that for most of his political life, Nkomo was entangled, enmeshed and entrapped in the colonial matrices of power a situation described by Achille Mbembe as ‘labyrinthine entrapment’ (Mbembe 2015). It is in this context that this chapter retraces Nkomo’s manoeuvrings and navigations or lack of it through the murky imperial snares and designs in which he emerged as a hybridised duality of ‘Father of the Nation’ and ‘Father of Dissidents’.

The Political Formation of Joshua Nkomo Jean Blondel tells us that ‘if one reduces politics to its bare bones, to what is most visible to most citizens, it is the national political leaders both at home and abroad, that remain once everything else has been erased; they are the most universal, the most recognised, [and] the most talked about elements of political life’ (Blondel 1987: 1). In line with this Blondelian conceptualisation of political leadership, it will be realised that Nkomo dominated the public spheres and public discourses; political rallies and political slogans; political songs and political gossips; political imaginations and political images; political symbols and praise-poetry; art, music, theatre and press when he emerged and grew as a nationalist giant in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

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Admittedly, there was a cult of personality in the making of Nkomo’s politics fashioned along the lines of Great Man theory in vogue in the 1960s and 1970s. His personal appeal in the black population cuts across ethnicities, tribes, regions, religions, creed and class. The common slogan was Joshua Nkomo ‘kwese kwese’ (Joshua Nkomo everywhere). No doubt Nkomo enjoyed the ‘Father of the Nation’ adulation and reverence and literally dominated all modes of political signification in the nascent nationalist movement in Zimbabwe. Personal clout, personal traits, intellectual acuity and personal charisma are always necessary but are by no means sufficient conditions in the political formation of one’s politics. To be sure, political leaders are also ‘creatures of history floating on the tide driven by impersonal pressures’, contexts, systems and structures (Hogan and Kaiser 2005). With what happened later in Nkomo’s life reflects what William E. Dubois observed that ‘Life is not simply fact’ (quoted in Mbembe 2015: xii). While pursuing the nationalist decolonial project, Nkomo was caught up in the global imperial snares which also visited many African nationalists who dared challenge the global imperial designs before and after him. The historical developments, political events, social memories and life experiences that shaped the political formation of Nkomo’s politics have to be revisited, re-examined and reinterpreted within the discursive framework ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano 2000) and ‘nationality of power’ (Ribeiro 2011) that constituted his entrapments. As many of his acquaintances including Nkrumah of Ghana, Sam Mujoma of Namibia, Oliver Tambo of South Africa, Patrice Lumumba of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya, Agostihno Neto of Angola and Samora Machel of Mozambique, Nkomo was called upon by history to make huge sacrifices by confronting the mighty imperial and colonial powers. The white Rhodesians had erected a racialised, hierarchised and a military state that exploited, alienated, suppressed and oppressed the black majority who were reduced to Fanon’s ‘zones of non-being’ the les damnes de la terre without rights and without agency. Nkomo, together with his Zimbabwean anti-colonial nationalist counterparts such as James Chikerema, Ndabaningi Sithole, Jaison Moyo, George Silundika and many others, emerged to challenge the colonialist government in order to install a deracialised, detribalised, de-hierarchized and de-patriarchised society. Their vocation was that of

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leading a revolution that would bring about regeneration, self-liberation, self-determination, self-assertion and rebirth of a nation. Simply put, the nationalists were envisioning Fanon’s liberation ethos and Diop’s ‘African Renaissance’ as well as completing the unfinished business of the 1893–1896 Ndebele/Shona anti-colonial uprisings against colonial intrusions. Of this group of decolonial nationalists, Nkomo emerged and grew as its leading figure poised to become the first black leader of the independent Zimbabwe—a vision he never realised. As noted earlier, Nkomo emerged and grew in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s as the face of the liberation struggle and radical resistance ranged against exocentric stance, ‘ape status’ and colonialism in all its hues including racialism, imperialism, alienation, exploitation, suppression and oppression of the black Zimbabweans. In this role, Nkomo articulated and rearticulated a history of land dispossession, racial discrimination and the subalternisation of blacks by a political class of white supremacists. Like Amilcar Cabral of Guinea Bissau, Nkomo’s narrative emphasised the economic implications of colonialism and imperialism on the material and welfare conditions of the subalternised peoples of Zimbabwe (Nkomo 1984). Not unexpected, Nkomo’s nationalist articulations and re-articulations invited the full wrath and violence of ‘Hobbesian heart’ and ‘Clausewitzian mind’ from Ian Smith’s UDI government in particular and pressed a panic button in the broader capitalist community globally. In response, the colonial regime directly threatened to cut short Nkomo’s life through imprisonment, violence and death. But, in spite of all the ‘minefields’ placed on his path, Nkomo remained steadfastly committed to the nationalist and liberation objectives of adult suffrage, freedom, justice and prosperity for the formally disenfranchised masses. In the process, he became a macrocosm of the anti-colonial and anti-racist struggle as a whole in Zimbabwe. It is important to note that Nkomo’s political iconography and iconoclastic figure were not created by a ‘big bang’ or granted to him gratuitously by some deity or esoteric means. Instead, his political formation was a result of personal commitment and stellar contribution associated with a long list of decolonial institutions and movements including the National Railways of Rhodesia; Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC); National Democratic Party (NDP); People’s Caretaker Council; and ZAPU. Invariably, all these Nkomo-led decolonial movements were characterised by their anticolonial stance and espousal of an African ideology of a national right

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to land, self-determination, human dignity and human development. For our purposes here, Nkomo will be identified more with ZAPU an anticolonial nationalist movement he led during the liberation struggle and its military wing ZIPRA which was specifically formed for the purposes of launching the armed struggle in Zimbabwe. Arguably, Nkomo’s ZAPU was a more radical decolonial political formation which inaugurated a period of sabotage to create panic among the white settler population as part of the pressure to grant independence to Africans. It intensified the issue of ‘one man one vote’ as the foundation for a democratic developmental state in that country (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2011: 35). In essence, Nkomo’s ZAPU/ZIPRA was involved in decolonial acts, that is, anti-capitalist, anti-patriarchal, anticolonial, anti-racial and anti-imperial project. As stated earlier, this terrified the Rhodesians, apartheid South Africa and the Euro-North American imperial powers who responded by invisibilisation strategies which included among others imprisonment of the nationalist leadership, splitting the nationalist decolonial movement and eventually robbing Nkomo of his rightful place in history and society at the attainment of the political-juridical independence in 1980. In the early stages of his political career, Nkomo preferred a peaceful decolonisation process as was the case in neighbouring Zambia, Malawi and Botswana including Tanzania. However, due to the prevarications, intransigence and bellicosity of the Rhodesian Front covertly backed by the Euro-North American imperial powers, Nkomo was left with no choice but to resort to the armed struggle as the only available option for the liberation of his country (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2011: 64). Like Fanon, Nkomo recognised that ‘during the revolutionary process of seizing freedom, violence is necessarily applied because the very structure of colonialism is fundamentally violent’. To this extent, Nkomo adopted Mazrui and Tidy’s ‘warrior tradition’ of leadership as a primary method of resistance to colonial intrusion. Accordingly, Nkomo brought into the country the first weapons of war to fight the white minority government in 1962 from Egypt (Nkomo 1984), thereby inaugurating an era of decolonial disobedience which would take almost two decades and left approximately 30,000 lives lost. It was clear to him that independence would not be realised in Zimbabwe ‘without the use of liberating violence by the nationalist forces responding to the criminal violence of the agents of imperialism’. Thus, contrary to the praise-text by Martin

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and Johnson which dates the launch of the armed struggle in the 1966 ZANLA battles in Chinhoyi (Martin and Johnson 1981), the readings of Nkomo’s autobiography and the chronicles of Vladimir Shubin indicate that Nkomo’s ZAPU was the grandfather of the armed struggle in Zimbabwe and not Sithole/Mugabe’s ZANU (Nkomo 1984; Shubin 2008). Martin and Johnson’s chronicles were tantamount to what Jack Goody (2006) called ‘theft of history’.

Nkomo’s ‘Labyrinthine Entrapment’ The launch of the armed struggle in Zimbabwe as was the case in Angola, Algeria, Mozambique, Namibia and South Africa necessarily required the broad continental and transcontinental support. In this respect, it is impossible to fully comprehend the political formation of Nkomo’s politics without a clear understanding of the imperatives of the Cold War which some commentators say was ‘cold to those who waged it but hot to those who suffered it’. Thus, the point of departure for this contribution is its focus on the making and unmaking of the political in Nkomo’s politics within the context of the inter-imperialist rivalries of the then communist-Soviet Union and capitalist USA. It reviews Nkomo as a subject that was ‘trapped’ and ‘enmeshed’ in the ideological, geostrategic, geoeconomic and geopolitical nets of global imperial designs. The implications of this ‘labyrinthine entrapment’ to Nkomo remind one of Karl Marx’s arguments about ‘people making history but under circumstances they have not chosen’ (quoted in Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2011: 183). Arguably, it was not necessarily Nkomo who chose the Soviets as his friends. Instead, his friends were chosen for him by his enemies. By agitating for decolonisation and delinking, Nkomo was naturally branded a communist by the capitalists. It may also be equally true that Nkomo made a conscious and strategic decision to lean towards the left in order to get assistance for his decolonial project. Whichever way one may want to look at it, the summary of it all is that Nkomo’s long decolonial walk to ‘freedom’ was paved with Western and Eastern ideological, geoeconomical, geostrategical and geopolitical ‘thorny carpets’. Understandably, some readers will find it discomforting that the communists who supported the liberation movements and the capitalists who explicitly and implicitly supported colonialism are placed at the same level in this decolonial-based reanalysis.

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While there has been a tendency to downplay the imperative of the inter-imperial competition in the analysis of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe, this contribution contends that Nkomo’s politics was keyed on it. To be sure, Nkomo emerged within a sociopolitical context dominated by the bipolar tension between the USA and the ex-Soviet Union. The British diplomats and politicians including Lord Peter Carrington (former British Foreign Secretary and Chief Negotiator at Lancaster House Conference); Lord Steel (the former leader of the British Labour Party); Dame Rosemary Spencer (who worked in the Rhodesia Department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office); David Summerhayes (who worked in the Embassy in Pretoria); and Wilfred Turner (former British High Commissioner in Botswana), who attended a seminar organised by the Institute of Contemporary British History on ‘Britain and Rhodesia: The Road to Settlement’ at the National Archive on 5 July 2005, were all at pains to refute and dismiss the imperatives of Cold War politics in the then Rhodesia problem (Onslow 2008; Kandiah and Onslow 2008). Apparently, the refusal by the British diplomats to locate the making and unmaking of the liberation struggle in Zimbabwe within the framework of the Cold War imperatives was not something new in British foreign policy relations. As Mark Curtis reminds us, ‘the British foreign policy-making system is so secretive, elitist and unaccountable that policy-makers know they can get away with almost anything, and they will deploy whatever arguments are needed to do this’. Be that as it may, a careful reading of the seminar report on ‘Britain and Rhodesia: The Road to Settlement’ reveals that it would have been impossible for Rhodesia to be immune to the inter-imperial competition between the then communist-Soviet and the capitalist USA, while all other conflicts in Africa (including Angola, DRC, Ethiopia and Somalia) and around the globe were ‘soaked’ in it. To be clear, the session chairs of the seminar namely Terrence Ranger, Sue Onslow and Arne Westad interventions laid bare the implications of Cold War politics on the liberation imperatives of Zimbabwe (see Kandiah and Onslow 2008; Shubin 2008). It is common knowledge that Nkomo’s most trusted patron was the now defunct Soviet Union. Together with the then East Germany, the then Czechoslovakia and Cuba, ex-Soviet Union supported ZAPU/ZIPRA. Indeed, there were many other countries that supported ZAPU including Algeria, Egypt and the Scandinavian countries. The other decolonial

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movements that were supported by Soviet were the African National Congress (ANC), the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), the South West African People’s Organisation (SWAPO), the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (P.A.I.G.C) collectively known as the authentic six. The Soviet assistance stretched into the realm of arms, weapons, financial, educational and political training, including medical and food supplies, among other things. ZAPU was also supported by the Front Line States, mainly Zambia and Angola who offered training bases for ZIPRA (National Intelligence Estimate 1967: 13). Some observers contend that, in supporting the liberation movement in Africa, ‘Soviet Union sought to effect the abolishment of colonial governance by Western countries, either by direct subversion of Western-leaning or controlled governments or indirectly by the influence of political leadership and support’ (Onslow 2008). More importantly, Soviet was also canvassing for its socialist/communist project in southern Africa. While Nkomo’s ZAPU was supported by the Soviets, it is important to note that Nkomo was not a devoted communist. Strike Mnkandla who was one of the intellectuals of ZAPU in exile in the 1970s and now the Secretary General of the revived ZAPU led by Dumiso Dabengwa insists that Nkomo was a pragmatist who believed more in the NonAligned Movement (NAM) driven by the likes of Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt, Ben Bella of Algeria, Jawaharlal Nehru of India and Nkrumah of Ghana rather than the fundaments of Soviet communism (Young 2005). Sithole/Mugabe’s ZANU is one political formation that cannot be ignored in the analysis of the political in Nkomo’s politics. It is important to remember that ZANU was a breakaway party from ZAPU. As will be argued later, it is alleged that ZANU was a covert Western project. Overtly, ZANU was a protégé of the Chinese who assisted it with arms, weapons, training, political education and ideology. It was the Chinese who fed, clothed, healed, taught and armed ZANLA guerrillas. Consequently, ZANU/ZANLA’s official ideology was not just MarxismLeninism, but also Maoism. Notably, there was a bitter Sino-Soviet rivalry with China trying to develop a role as a leader of the Third World and the Soviet seeking to co-opt the same Third World to its sphere of influence (Shubin 2008). In this contest, China claimed legitimacy from its attendance to the 1955 Bandung Conference which inaugurated the liberation solidarity in the Global South (Young 2005). And Soviet did not attend the Bandung Conference. Viewed from this context, it is

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worth reiterating that Soviet’s support of Nkomo’s ZAPU was informed by its motive to undermine both the Chinese and Western influence in Zimbabwe and southern Africa (Onslow 2008: 143). Today, China and Russia work together within the framework of the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) as ‘new imperialists’ in Africa. The current behaviour of Russia and China in particular indicates that these two countries have always been if not aspirant imperialists. So far the BRICS’ dealings in Africa are not about radical change of the world system and its global orders. Rather ‘BRICS activities are about remaking neo-liberalism work more efficiently in accordance with the long-standing discourse of free trade’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2011: 192). This begs the question whether or not these two supporters of the liberation struggle were indeed decolonial as in decoloniality or decolonial as in imperialism of decolonisation. The answer to this question is central to the discussion that unfolds in the rest of the following pages. It is important to remember that in the centre of colonialism in Zimbabwe was Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front. This was assisted by apartheid South Africa and its British and American allies. While the British and American publicly supported the economic sanctions imposed on Rhodesian by the UN, there is ample evidence which suggests that the two secretly supported Rhodesians against the perceived threat of Soviet communist (Bishop, n.d.). As mentioned earlier, Rhodesia was a racially hierarchical, patriarchal, Western-centric, hetero-normative, capitalist and colonial regime. This was the regime that Nkomo and his fellow nationalist leaders set themselves to dismantle. It should be noted that the USA also posed as a country that was committed to the liberation of the colonised peoples of the world and a supporter of decolonisation (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a: 345) mainly as a strategic appeasement policy for the restive civil rights movement in the USA (for a detailed discussion on this see Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a). The USA supported the rivalries of the Soviet-supported liberation movements. For instance, in Angola, the USA supported the National Union for the Total Liberation of Angola (UNITA) and the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) ranged against Soviet’s MPLA. Future researchers may need to establish further whether or not the USA had no hand in Pan-African Congress (PAC) of South Africa and South West African National Union (SWANU) of Namibia. As will be discussed later, this contribution has established an existence of incestuous relationship between the Euro-North American imperial powers and

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Sithole/Mugabe’s ZANU at the height of the liberation struggle and during the early years of the post-independence in Zimbabwe. It is argued here that communist-Soviet and capitalist-USA were both interested in economic, diplomatic, political and resource gains in southern Africa. As observed by Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2013b: 27), ‘Soviet modernity simply fought to refashion the rhetoric of modernity in the language of socialisation of capital’. Controversially, as it may be, this decolonial reanalysis argues that communist-Soviet Union was an imperialist ‘to the extent of producing what the West considered to be a ‘red and evil empire that engulfed central Europe, Central Asia, parts of Latin America, and parts of Africa such as Ethiopia under Haile Mariam Mengistu’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b: 27). Tlostanova and Mignolo corroborate this view by asserting that Soviet modernity was nothing other than an opposition and not an alternative to Euro-American modernity. To be clear, both Soviet and USA were interested in spheres of influence in Africa and elsewhere. By attempting to turn African countries into their spheres of influence, the two were ‘subjectivation’ the futures of those countries to serve their domestic futures. To put it metaphorically, communist-Soviet and capitalist USA were like a proverbial snake with two heads which fought for the same prey in order to feed the same stomach. Clearly, both superpowers were simply pursuing their imperial fortunes in Zimbabwe, southern Africa and the rest of the Global South. In the final analysis, we cannot escape the conclusion that Nkomo was a product of a constellation of factors including the African traditional background, colonial experience and the imperatives of the geopolitical, geoeconomic, geostrategic and ideological clashes between the communist-Soviet and the capitalist USA and its allies. In this respect, the political formation of Nkomo’s politics was a function of complex factors that were akin to what Ali Mazrui termed ‘triple heritage’ of civilisations in the world consisting of Africa’s own rich inheritance, Islamic culture and the impact of Western traditions and lifestyles (Mazrui 2003: 1). While there is no record of Nkomo’s interaction with Islam, he certainly was produced by Christianity, African traditional religion and Western traditions and lifestyles. However, this chapter does not in any way seek to perpetuate Coupland’s myth of Africans as ‘dumb actors’ in their own history (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b). It is not about Nkomo as a hapless object that was acted upon by major external protagonists. Instead, it is about imperial technologies of subjectivation

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that impacted on Nkomo in a profound way, while his agency was also equally put to test.

Nkomo a ‘Victim’ of Imperialism of Decolonisation While Nkomo and his colleagues in the decolonial nationalist movementZAPU were engaged in ways and means of dismantling colonialism, the global imperial powers were, on the other hand, searching for strategies to either stall, delay and/or control the final product of the decolonisation project. Among the most prominent architects of this project were Anglo-American diplomats such as Henry Kissinger (US Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford administrations), Cyrus Vance (USA Secretary of State under Carter administration), James Callaghan (British Foreign Secretary and Prime Minister), Lord Carrington (British Foreign Secretary under Thatcher administration), Peter Ramsbotham (British ambassador to UN) and others. ‘Historians Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson have used the term ‘imperialism of decolonisation’ to describe London’s effort to orchestrate the ‘peaceful transfer of power’ to whichever local candidates would best accommodate Britain’s continued economic and political influence’ (McMahon 2013: 104). Viewed from this perspective, ‘imperialism of decolonisation’ is part of ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano 2000) and instantiates a myth of decolonisation. Coloniality of power is the central category mobilised here to analyse the attitudes of the global imperial powers towards decolonial actors and movements. Decolonial thinkers such as Walter Mignolo, Nelson Maldonado-Torres, Steve Martinot, Enrique Dussel, Ramon Grosfoguel, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni and others have come up with elaborate expose of coloniality of power in recent times. Loosely defined ‘coloniality of power’ denotes the continuation of colonial habits long after the judicial colonialism has expired. This includes the control of the economy among other factors (Mignolo 2007). The widely cited definition of coloniality is the one provided by Nelson Maldonado-Torres who observed that: Coloniality is different from colonialism. Colonialism denotes a political and economic relation in which the sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, which makes such a nation an empire. Coloniality, instead, refers to long-standing patterns of power that

128  G. Moyo emerged as a result of colonialism, but that define culture, labour, intersubjective relations, and knowledge production well beyond the strict limits of colonial administrations. Thus coloniality survives colonialism. It is maintained alive in books, in the criteria for academic performance, in cultural patterns, in common sense, in the self-image of peoples, in aspirations of self, and so we breathe coloniality all the time and every day. (Maldonado-Torres 2007: 243)

Observably, the Anglo-American alliance of the then Rhodesia, apartheid South Africa, UK and USA was in complete agreement about ‘the importance of squelching the nascent communist presence in Southern Africa’ (Bishop, n.d.: 9) and of laying a solid foundation for ‘coloniality of power’ in Zimbabwe well ahead of the expiry of the judicial colonialism. The literature is replete with examples of how the global imperial designs installed their protégés at the end of official colonialism in Africa. Such examples of pliant governments include among others Mobutu of DRC, Amin of Uganda, Bokassa of Central African Republic and Muzorewa of Zimbabwe Rhodesia, temporarily. On the other hand, those African leaders who resisted the machinations of the global imperial powers such as Lumumba and Nkrumah were ruthlessly ‘disciplined’. In Zimbabwe, the Euro-North American powers believed that Nkomo’s ZAPU would be the biggest impediment to the inauguration of their coloniality project. Given its dependence upon Soviet largesse, the Anglo-American concluded that Nkomo’s ZAPU was likely to become a Soviet satellite and bulwark against their version of coloniality in Zimbabwe, therefore needed to be enfeebled, disfigured and destroyed. One of the technologies of subjectivation mobilised by the global imperial designers of coloniality to ‘disable’ and ‘discipline’ Nkomo’s ZAPU was ‘divide’, ‘conquer’ and ‘rule’ strategy. Apparently, this covert tactic constitutes one of the long-standing ways through which ‘global imperial designs diluted, confused and destroyed many counterinitiatives aimed at humanising and democratising the unequal world order in favour of Africa’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b: 48). While hotly contested, the argument that the ZAPU split of 1963 was engineered by the British and the Americans is strong and compelling. Indeed, the most widely disseminated view of the split was based on the myth of its inevitability due to Nkomo’s alleged weak leadership, his alleged unwillingness to embrace confrontational politics, his endless international safari and tribal differences among other superfluous reasons

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(Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010. However, these reasons do not pass a credibility test. In fact, these are what some decolonial thinkers call ‘epistemicides’ dismissed by ZAPU as fabrications minted by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). To this extent, this section privileges the under-researched and often neglected role of the Anglo-American alliance in the split. Vladimir Shubin one of the most important ex-Soviet diplomats in southern Africa has revealed that the then Soviet Union embassy in Tanzania was aware of the UK/USA’s underhand in the ZAPU split of 1963 through their intelligence operations (Shubin 2008). Available literature also notes that prior to the split, the USA educated politician, Ndabaningi Sithole had spent 2 months in the USA openly raising questions on Nkomo’s leadership with the US State Department’s African Bureau (Shubin 2008: 158). After his US trip, Sithole announced the split in Tanzania raising suspicions that he had actually got his divisive ideas from the US State Department. On the other hand, Nkomo’s autobiography implicates Nyerere as the chief architect of the split of ZAPU in 1963 as well as in 1971. Not surprisingly, the name ZANU resembles that of Nyerere’s party—Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) (Shubin 2008: 158). Apparently, after the formation of ZANU, Nyerere approached both the Soviet Union and the Cubans to persuade them to divert their arms supplies and financial assistance away from ZIPRA to ZANU/ZANLA (Nkomo 1984). At that time, Tanzania, like Kenya and Tunisia, had closer links with the West ‘as a redeeming move and a counter to infiltration of communism’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b: 63). Moreover, Timothy Scarnecchia has written tomes about Tanzania being used as the conduit for the ZANU funding from the American government though most of the funding came from the private American corporations especially the mining moguls (Scarnecchia 2008). Furthermore, David Moore (2004: 4) cites some Rhodesian archival files in which Americans were pressurising the British to financially support ZANU. It was recorded in those files that ‘the Americans told the British that if the West did not support the new party on the block the Russians will establish control over them’ (Moore 2004: 5). If this line of argument is correct, then ZANU was an imperialist project prepared from inception to inaugurate colonial matrices of power in the event of the end of official colonialism in Zimbabwe in spite of its Marxist-Leninist-Maoist rhetoric.

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While the West also funded ZAPU and the Soviet also funded ZANU, Scarnecchia records that USA preferred ZANU over ZAPU simply because ZAPU was a Soviet Union protégé bent on giving communism a foothold in southern Africa (Scarnecchia, n.d.). In short, the split of ZAPU/ZANU was part of the global imperial power strategy to pave the way for the inauguration of coloniality of power at the end of judicial colonialism in Zimbabwe. These imperial powers needed an alternative party that would be compliant and malleable to them. Obviously, Nkomo’s ZAPU was not the suitable candidate for juridical independence because of its association with Euro-North America’s competitors. Viewed from this perspective, the liberation project in Zimbabwe like in many other African countries was ‘overseen by the erstwhile colonial masters who were burnt on channelling it into a neocolonial direction rather than genuine liberation’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b: 39). The most decisive fiddling by global imperial designs against Nkomo’s ZAPU was the derailment of ZIPRA’s massive military operation code— named the ‘Turning Point Strategy’ and the ‘Zero Hour’. Addressing a Lookout Masuku Memorial Lecture on 5 April 2016 organised by Ibhetshu likaZulu held at the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA) Local Governance Centre in Bulawayo, Dumiso Dabengwa claimed that ‘Margaret Thatcher got worried when she learned of ZAPU’s stockpiles of weapons and training of cadres in preparation for the launch of the Turning Point Strategy’ and the ‘Zero Hour’ (Dabengwa 2016). Quite clearly, in the late 1970s, Soviet redoubled its assistance to Nkomo in order to launch the ‘Zero Hour’ and the ‘Turning-Point’ attack. The plan was to train and equip at least five battalions of ZIPRA soldiers which were task-organised following the model of Soviet Motorised Battalions for the purposes of launching a conventional war. This plan was set to be ZIPRA’s military apogee in the liberation effort. It was estimated that this would be the minimum force required to defeat the Rhodesian Security Forces and liberate Zimbabwe from colonial bondage. According to Dabengwa, some of the weaponry was tested by ZIPRA guerrillas on 17 February 1979 when they downed a Viscount (civilian plane) in Victoria Falls believed to have been carrying General Pater Walls (Dabengwa 2016). It is worth noting that the killing of the 19 white civilian tourists infuriated the West so much so that it reinforced the thinking that Nkomo was a bloody communist. To lay credence to the ‘Turning Point’, Nkomo said:

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We had set in motion what we called the ‘turning-point’ strategy, for a transformation of the war from a guerrilla operation into a full-scale conflict in which we would match the Smith regime’s armour and air cover with armour and air cover of our own. We had requested the Soviet Union to accelerate the training of our aircrews in that country, and to make available sophisticated modern aircraft which could strike on equal terms against Rhodesian strategic installations, communications and fuel supplies. (Nkomo 1984: 196)

Instead of facing the military challenge from the Soviet-ZAPU/ZIPRA, the Anglo-American alliance resolved to deprive the Soviets and Cubans of any opportunity to influence Zimbabwe’s future through settling the Zimbabwean conflict through a negotiated settlement which would produce a relatively pro-Western black government in Harare. It stands to reason that Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter administrations hurriedly pushed for a negotiated peace conference in Lancaster House in London in 1979 as a pre-emptive strategy to steal the victory away from Soviet-sponsored Nkomo’s ZAPU. More precisely, the Anglo-American imperial alliance was in a hurry to defang the horrid prospect of another Vietnam, another Ethiopia and another Angola in Zimbabwe (Shubin 2008: 180). Kandiah and Onslow (2008: 60) record that Zibigniew Brzezinsk, an American statesman, believed that ‘if the new regime in Zimbabwe came to power at the head of a column of Russian tanks, it would be a Russian –sympathising regime, and if it came to power as a consequence of a Western-negotiated diplomatic process, it would be more sympathetic to Western interests’. Herbert Chingono stated that: The whole idea [of Lancaster House Conference] was to avert a situation where the guerrillas would March from the bush to government offices armed with communist ideology and possibly with direct Cuban military involvement. The Lancaster House Agreement of 1979 was successful in doing exactly what Kissinger had set out to achieve: political freedom for the black majority and avoidance of Cuban and Soviet involvement in Rhodesia. (Chingono, n.d.)

It is commonly known that in Ethiopia, Russia sent its officers, military advisors, tank crews, and fighter pilots, and the entire operation supported by an in ‘impressive air bridge that conveyed armaments and supplies directly from Russia to the frontlines’ (McMahon 2013: 113).

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Thus, the Anglo-American alliance feared the possibility of a repeat of Ethiopia and Angola in Zimbabwe which would result in a pro-Soviet government which would be unfriendly to the West (Kandiah and Onslow 2008: 90). To this extent, on 15 March 1976, James Callaghan sent a message to Henry Kissinger which stated that ‘we both agree that in the short term the communists have scored a major success [in Angola] and that we must do everything we can to prevent the same thing from occurring again (Callaghan 1976: 10). Callaghan predicted that ‘Rhodesia was poised to become the next domino to fall unless immediate action was taken’ (Bishop, n.d.: 11). In order to avert the Angola, Ethiopia and Vietnam complex recurring in Zimbabwe, the Anglo-American alliance was ready to support any force save for ZAPU. As already mentioned, the global imperial powers were worried by the growth of the Soviet influence in southern Africa and at the same time afraid of the possibility of the use of Zimbabwean territory by the ANC of South Africa in the event of a ZAPU government in that country (Shubin 2008: 183). What frightened the AngloAmerican alliance most was the possibility of Zimbabwe bridging the Soviet interests from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean (i.e. Mozambique–Zimbabwe–Angola). In its effort to combat this communist belt, the Anglo-American alliance came to the conclusion that diplomatic finesse rather than military prowess offered the best chance of success (Shubin 2008). It remains, however, a mystery to this day how Nkomo was cajoled into a negotiated table given the advanced plans of a ZAPU military takeover. If Dabengwa’s chronicle during the Memorial Lecture of Lookout Masuku is anything to go by, then the ZAPU leadership went into the Lancaster House Conference against the wise counsel of its military commanders who preferred to settle the Zimbabwean question through the barrel of a gun (Dabengwa 2016). Perhaps, Nkomo was enticed by the nationwide support he enjoyed during his hay days hence the confidence in negotiated settlement. Perhaps, he was charmed by the Anglo-American alliance which spoke of him as the natural leader of the nationalist movement in Zimbabwe hence the obvious leader of the first black government. Perhaps, the imperialists were not necessarily antiNkomo but anti-Soviet; hence, Nkomo reasoned that engaging them would help open new vistas of opportunity for him and his party. What is clear is that Nkomo and the ZAPU leadership which had been in detention (1964–1974) were not operating at the same wavelength with the

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battle hardened military commanders who were more inclined towards the east and were prepared for a military takeover. However, it cannot be denied that the Conference was partly a result of complex and multifarious factors that included among others the former President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, and the former President of Mozambique, Samora Machel, who were desperate to end the war which had led to the serious loss of lives and economic dislocation in their countries; nationalists who were now tired of war; Rhodesian economy and sociopolitical life which was now under severe stress; and Nigeria which had threatened to block British investments in Nigeria until the Rhodesian crisis was resolved (Shubin 2008; Moorcraft 2012). This narrative has ostensibly become a favourite auto-explanation and, in many instances, the mono-explanation of the reasons behind the Lancaster House Conference. On the contrary, this decolonial-based reanalysis indicates that the Conference was largely motivated by fear of a military takeover by ZAPU/ZIPRA. Repetition may be necessary here for emphasis, the Thatcher and Carter administrations could not stomach the direct Cuban and Soviet involvement in Zimbabwe similar to those of Angola and Ethiopia which left the Euro-North American geopolitical, geostrategic and geoeconomic interests in disarray in those countries. As previously stated, Nkomo’s links with the Soviet Union were believed to be detrimental to Anglo-American interests. Therefore, Nkomo’s ZAPU was supposed to be silenced and confined to the other side of abyssal lines—the side of non-existence. In fact in line with ‘abyssal thinking’, the British and the Americans used the Lancaster House Conference to torpedo Nkomo’s ZAPU and endorse Mugabe’s ZANU. Ivor Richard who chaired the Geneva Conference in 1976 is cited by Moore as having said ‘we gave Mugabe the chance to come into power. And there were many, many people, or let’s say a significant few, with power in the British state who were supporting Mugabe as opposed to Nkomo, who they feared a little bit because he would get support from the Soviets’ (Moore, n.d.: 27). This reminds us of Kwesi Kwaa Prah who observed that political leaders, ‘no matter how dynamic and visionary they are, work and operate within structural parameters demarcated by interests of the major powers within the society in question. Without the implicit or open support of these constituencies in one combination or the other, the leader will not reach the position of power in the first instance’ (Prah 2008: 2). Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA were subjected

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to the worst of global imperial designs which left them at the mercy of Robert Mugabe’s ‘nationality of power’ as will be discussed later. In spite of all his Marxist-Leninist-Maoist rhetoric, Mugabe was closely linked to Denis Brennan who coordinated the Ariel Foundation that was funded by the CIA to help young students to counteract Soviet influence (Kandiah and Oslow 2008: 120). This group was constituted to apply pressure on the British ‘to do the right thing’ in Rhodesia (Kandiah and Oslow 2008: 120). Notably, after the 1980 elections, a meeting was organised by Ariel Foundation in Guernsey to celebrate the victory of the Foundation’s model of decolonisation in Zimbabwe. Not surprising, the group consisted of American, British and Australian parliamentarians (Kandiah and Oslow 2008: 120). Moreover, it is noteworthy remembering that Mugabe grew up under the tutelage of the Roman Catholic priests and Pope John Paul II spent the better part of his life fighting communism. This is only an inkling of the relationship between Mugabe/ZANU and the then anti-communist movement. Arguing from an Aristotelian deductive reasoning, it is incontrovertible to conclude that Lancaster House was nothing but a nefarious Western plot to hold down Soviet’s influence by sidelining Nkomo’s ZAPU in favour of Mugabe’s ZANU. It is also instructive to note that Lancaster House Conference was an exclusively British affair. The Front Line states such as Zambia and Mozambique; regional power apartheid South Africa; and the Cold War warriors—USA and Soviet—were all ‘excluded’ in the Conference ostensibly to stop their own interests from poisoning the talks. The unsaid reason was that the main target of exclusion was the Soviet Union which would have openly bolstered Nkomo’s position, yet the USA would not have openly canvassed for ZANU due to the circumstances of their secret/covert relationship. However, Soviet advisors of ZAPU namely Veniamin Chirkin and Vitaly Fedorinov were in London during the entire duration of the talks which started in September and ended in December 1979 (Kandiah and Onslow 2008: 113). Though these two men did not actually attend the Conference sessions, their presence in London caused a lot of discomfort to the Anglo-American alliance which apparently bolstered them against Nkomo’s ZAPU in favour of Mugabe’s ZANU. However, the centre of gravity for the Lancaster House Talks was Lord Peter Carrington—the British Foreign Secretary. He was the negotiator in chief writ large. As noted earlier, his mission was to prevent a

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pro-Soviet party from assuming political leadership in Zimbabwe. In implementing this project, Lord Carrington was secretly assisted by General Peter Walls of the Rhodesian Front, Ken Flower, Ian Smith’s chief spy, and David Smith, Ian Smith’s former deputy. These men were sold to the Anglo-American plan and were rewarded in one way or another by the new Mugabe administration. Specifically, David Smith was drafted into Mugabe’s first cabinet in 1980, General Peter Walls was kept on as army commander, Ken Flower became Mugabe’s spy chief and confidant (Dowden 2008: 136). Interestingly, Mugabe’s behaviour at Lancaster House including his threats of abandoning the talks is viewed here as part of cover–up tactics when reading together with the final outcomes of the Conference. Simply put, Mugabe played hard for the purposes of shielding his own collusion with imperialists and at the same time presenting Nkomo as a moderate nationalist who would go to ‘bed’ with imperialists. Lord Carrington nudged the Conference in the direction that the Anglo-American alliance had favoured and envisaged. As pre-planned, the Lancaster House Conference gestured towards coloniality in the post-liberation era in Zimbabwe. The agreed Westminster-style constitution which was curiously written well before the start of the talks protected the property rights, protected the Rhodesian mercenary army, imposed a willing seller–willing buyer formula for land redistribution, imposed budgetary and bureaucratic constraints, reserved 20 parliamentary seats for the whites, left terms of the top leadership open and discouraged tempering with the constitution until after 7 years (Muranda et al. 2013: 19). As a result, Zimbabwe was born as a successor to the Rhodesia colonial state rather than as a new alternative to it (NdlovuGatsheni 2013b: 209). This is what Grosfoguel (2007a: 219) was lamenting on when he posited that ‘one of the most powerful myths of the twentieth century was the notion that elimination of colonial administration amounted to decolonisation of the world’. In the final analysis, the Lancaster House Conference was the ‘maternity ward’ where Quijano’s ‘coloniality of power’, Nkrumah’s ‘neoimperialism’, Spivak’s ‘neo-colonised world’, Grosfoguel’s ‘myth of the postcolonial world’ and Mbembe’s ‘postcolony’ were actively applied to produce neocolonies in Africa. In this political melodrama, Lord Carrington played the midwifery’s role as coloniality was being birthed in Zimbabwe. While Zimbabweans had hoped for the dismantlement of colonial structures and the restoration of human dignity at the end

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of colonialism, Lancaster House resulted in Fanon’s ‘repetition without change’ (Fanon 1968 cited in Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013a). It, therefore, came as no surprise when a few years later, Nkomo rearticulated his decolonial epistemic vision on land redistribution, racial relations and economic and social justice.

Imperial Endorsement Against Nkomo’s ZAPU The elections that followed the Lancaster House Conference in March 1980 were designed to make sure that the result will not in anywhere deviate from the Lancaster House Agreement. Viewed from this perspective, the pro-Soviet ZAPU would not be trusted with a British-brokered constitutional agreement. In fact, according to the chronicles of Vladimir Shubin, Britain, South Africa, Mozambique and Tanzania were united in their preference of ZANU over ZAPU and of Mugabe over Nkomo (Shubin 2008: 182). This line of argument is corroborated by Paul Moorcraft (2012: 40) who records that Lord Carrington had definitively promised Mugabe that London unofficially supported him. It is no-gain saying to suggest that in colluding against communist-Soviet, the AngloAmerican alliance was by extension against Nkomo’s ZAPU. In the view of Carrington and the rest of the master-minders of the Lancaster House Conference, the only way to protect the interests of the global imperial powers in Zimbabwe was to hand over power to Mugabe—a man supported by the Chinese and not Soviet and a man from a larger ethnic group unlike Nkomo who hailed from a ‘small’ ethnic group. In this respect, there was no chance for a Soviet-sponsored party to win elections that were held under the terms of the Lancaster House Agreement, presided over by a British governor (Lord Christopher Soames), assisted by the Commonwealth officers whose head was the British Prime Minister and Queen who were all anti-communist-Soviet. In short, the 1980 elections were a mere formality and a democratic ritual best described as ‘imperial endorsement’ (for a more detailed discussion on procedural elections in Zimbabwe, see Moyo and Ncube 2015). The following questions provide a snapshot on the ‘integrity’ of the independence elections in Zimbabwe. First, how come Tongogara who expressed a desire at Lancaster House that ZAPU and ZANU should contest the elections as one political party died immediately after the Lancaster House Agreement? Second, why did Lord Soames and his staff choose to ignore reports of massive intimidation of the rural populace

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by those ZANLA guerrillas who had not reported to assembly points? Third, why did the international community acquiesce to and even actively support Mugabe and ZANU-PF while violating the ceasefire agreement? Fourth, how come Mugabe knew the results of the elections before they were announced? While in Dar es Salaam, he stated that his party ZANU-PF was going to win 56 out of the 100 seats in the new parliament of Zimbabwe? Finally, why were the used ballot paper flown to Britain, not to be stored as historic documents, but to be burned? They may not be straightforward answers to these questions, but they are raised here as a way of inviting the reader to reflect on the integrity of the 1980 elections. Despite the fact that the intelligence community from both apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia had predicted a Nkomo victory or at least a coalition government between Nkomo and Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF emerged with a landslide victory (Stiff 2004). Evidence, however, indicates that much of the intelligence agencies and security services work is used to promote disinformation. Thus, contrary to the intelligence community’s predictions, Mugabe’s ZANU-PF came first with 57% seats out of the contested 80 while Nkomo got 20 and Bishop Abel Muzorewa’s United African National Council (UANC) won 3 (Stiff 2000a: 27). The pro-Soviet ZAPU was outwitted and lulled into believing in the electoral process while the Anglo-American alliance was plotting the end of Soviet–USA contest in Zimbabwe through other means. Commenting on Dumiso Dabengwa’s presentation on Lookout Masuku Memorial Lecture, the Coordinator of the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA), Roderick Fayayo was right when he observed that ‘actually, ZAPU did not lose the 1980 elections to ZANU-PF but to the British themselves’. Invariably, the Euro-North American imperial powers saw the victory of Mugabe and ZANU-PF as the greatest reverse the Russians suffered in Africa. There were ‘right’ because ZAPU was the only one of the authentic six, that is, ANC, PAIGC, FRELIMO, SWAPO and MPLA liberation movements supported by Soviet that did not take over power. In fact, the defeat of ZAPU in 1980 was a precursor of the final defeat of its handler—the communist-Soviet in the hands of the capitalist USA in 1989. Not surprisingly, as part of the inauguration of the coloniality project in the newly established ex-colonial state of Zimbabwe, a big proportion of Mugabe’s inaugural cabinet in 1980 consisted of American, British

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and Canadian trained Shona-speaking Zimbabweans including Edson Zvobgo, Dzingai Mutumbuka, Simbi Mubako, Nathan Shamuyarira and Bernard Chidzero who was specifically recalled from the United Nations (UN) to become Minister of Finance in independent Zimbabwe. A decade later, Chidzero became a central figure in the implementation of the Washington Consensus and a World Bank-IMF sponsored Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) an orthodox neo-liberal policy framework. On the other hand, David Smith and Denis Norman were drafted to Mugabe’s Cabinet to specifically represent the white interests in the new Zimbabwe. As mentioned earlier, Ken Flower and Peter Walls remained in the security establishment to ensure the successful implementation of the coloniality of power project. Given the discussion above, it was not surprising that in his inaugural speech as the new Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe declared a national reconciliation policy. This policy ostensibly served a political function of facilitating the necessary compromise between the rulers of yesterday and the inheritors of new state power (NdlovuGatsheni 2011: 76). For this reason, ‘Mugabe’s relationship with the Global North was cosy in the 1980s and early 1990s when he was a frequent guest of the global capitalists and was a recipient of no less than a dozen honorary degrees from the Western universities even as his party and army were being accused of genocide in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces back home’ (Moyo 2015: 2). Paradoxically, the reconciliation served the interests of former Rhodesians and not the black population. In fact, what is celebrated as the ‘years of light’ (1980–1990) of independence in Zimbabwe were good for the former Rhodesians, and in reality, there were the ‘dark years’ for Nkomo, ZAPU, ZIPRA and the peoples of Midlands and Matabeleland provinces who endured untold suffering in the hands of Mugabe and his lieutenants in ZANU-PF.

Nkomo’s Supporters as Collateral Damage This section shifts analysis from coloniality of power to nationality of power. Loosely defined nationality of power refers to technologies of subjectivation deployed by former nationalist leaders turned state leaders (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b: 157). Nationality of power was mobilised by the new Mugabe administration against Nkomo, ZAPU and ex-ZIPRA fighters in the early years of Zimbabwe’s independence. Armed with his newly acquired fetishised power as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, Mugabe

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launched a military operation code named Gukurahundi roughly translated as the storm that destroys everything. Mugabe ordered between 2500 and 3500 North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade battalion into Matabeleland and Midlands provinces where it looted, burned, raped and murdered innocent children, women and men majority of whom were Nkomo’s supporters (Moyo 2014). The principal victims of Gukurahundi were Fanon’s ‘wretched of the earth;’ Mamdani’s ‘subjects’ rather than ‘citizens’ and Mignolo’s ‘dispensable and bare lives’—the subalterns whose lives were deemed worthless, dispensable and expendable in the pursuit of power and profits. As Curtis argues ‘[unpeople were] the modern equivalent of the ‘savages’ of colonial days, who could be mown down by guns…in circumstances where the perpetrators were hailed as upholders of civilisation’. The lives of people were used as ‘collateral damage’ by both the ex-coloniser and the inheritors of the ex-colonial state of Zimbabwe. In this context, Nkomo’s supporters were regarded as a modern equivalent of slaves with no human dignity, a questionable humanity, and were subjected to the ethics of war and to what Hinkelammert called ‘the inversion of human rights’ (Tlostanova 2014: 53). Approximately 20,000 innocent lives were callously murdered, while thousands of others were displaced internally and in diaspora (Moyo 2014: 74). All these people were killed within 4 years of independence (1983–1987). And the figure is comparable to the 30,000 who were killed during the years of the armed struggle between 1962 and 1979. This serves to confirm Maldonado-Torres (2007: 255)’s argument that black people endure hellish existence in which ‘Killability’, ‘rapeability’ and ‘dispensability’ of ‘bare lives’ are normal states of life (Gordon 2007). Similar experiences in Rwanda, Somalia, Darfur, DRC, Sierra Leone and Liberia all attest to this thesis of killability of African bare lives within the discursive context of the nationality of power. This has led Ndlovu-Gatsheni to make three poignant observations that are germane to this analysis namely that the postcolonial states have remained operating like colonial states, unleashing violence on the African people; that juridical freedom has not been translated into popular freedom; and that African people are still treated like subjects rather than citizens by their own national leaders. In Zimbabwe, Nkomo’s supporters were the first victims of the postcolonial logic of violence, politics of alterity and epistemicides. As nationality of power took root in post-liberation Zimbabwe, Matabeleland and Midlands were turned into

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a domain of violence, war, rape, death, murder and mourning, as they were denied the full humanity and reduced to non-beings to this day. Just like the USA and its allies invaded Saddam’s Iraq in 2003 on the pretext of the non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), Mugabe invaded the Midlands and Matabeleland Provinces ostensibly to flash out Nkomo’s ‘dissidents’. The official government line in defence of the Gukurahundi operation was that elements in ex-ZIPRA had become South African mercenaries and were trying to destabilise Mugabe’s government. Observably, the situation in Matabeleland and Midlands became worse after the abduction of six young tourists from USA, Australia and UK. In his autobiography, Nkomo insists that the tourists were not abducted by the so-called dissidents but implies that the Mugabe administration was involved in order to create anger of the West against him and his party-ZAPU (Nkomo 1984). It is common knowledge that the West remained mum when the innocent civilians and ZAPU supporters were butchered by Mugabe’s crack army. Clearly, the Anglo-American allies were still celebrating for having conquered the ex-Soviet communist in Zimbabwe and southern Africa. In their opinion, Zimbabwe was sorted out and Mugabe had become their ally. The logic of the Cold War at the time demanded the continued tutelage of Mugabe to ensure that he did not fall into the communist camp (Arnold 2005: 768). No doubt the Western countries were more concerned with pursuing their project of coloniality of power which was now taking root in Zimbabwe. And Mugabe was its leading acolyte through his reconciliation policy and through his own nationality of the power project. This explains the deafening silence from the global imperial powers that often raise issues of human rights, good governance and rule of law. But because Gukurahundi was serving their mutual interests with Mugabe, they chose to turn a blind eye to the brutalities in Matabeleland and Midlands. In the process, Mugabe found it more convenient to cooperate with Apartheid South African Defence Forces against Nkomo’s ZAPU given the historic ties between ZAPU and ANC (Scarnecchia 2004: 88). In this way, Cold War imperatives provided a convenient cloak under which to take action against the Sovietsponsored Nkomo’s ZAPU and ex-ZIPRA fighters. In this way, the Gukurahundi campaign was less concerned with military engagement with the so-called dissidents but ultimately sought to de-legitimise and decimate Nkomo, ZAPU, ZIPRA and the Ndebele

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people. The main slogans of ZANU-PF and Gukurahundi at the time were ‘Down with Joshua Nkomo’ and ‘Forward with Mugabe’. This was akin to what Steve Martinot termed ‘self-superiorisation through inferiorization of others’. In this case, it was self-superiorisation of Mugabe through inferiorisation of Nkomo. The slogans of praise, songs, poetry and admiration of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were obverted to insult and humiliate Nkomo and his ZAPU. These scurrilous attacks on Nkomo’s integrity were followed by attempts to eliminate him physically after Mugabe described him as a ‘snake’ in his house (Nkomo 1984: 2). This forced Nkomo to escape into exile in the United Kingdom in 1983 where he was further humiliated by Tiny Rowland a white capitalist who had promised to assist him during his exilic time. Rowland pushed Nkomo to destitution only to be saved by his relatives and some ZAPU members in the UK (see Nkomo 1984). By and large, Nkomo was virtually friendless, without a ‘voice’ and without a ‘face’, while ZANU-PF managed to obtain the support of the West and South Africa so long as ZANU-PF and the Fifth Brigade continued to target ZAPU, ZIPRA and by extension the ANC’s ability to operate in Zimbabwe (Scarnecchia 2004: 98). It is important to note that the Soviets, who had previously supported Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA, had also abandoned him to embrace Mugabe’s ZANU-PF during the Gukurahundi era. Like all imperialists, it made sense for Soviet Union to start courting ZANU-PF as a governing party in order for it to have a foothold on the Zimbabwean resources which were now laid bare for the imperial West after long years of UDI and liberation war. These new developments forced Nkomo to accept the Unity Accord which was signed on 22 December 1987 signalling the defeat and subordination of ZAPU to ZANU-PF and an end to Nkomo’s ambition to lead the nation.

‘Doubles’ of Unity Accord The Unity Accord was signed between ZAPU and ZANU-PF in 1987 as a pact to end the atrocities in Midlands and Matabeleland. The pact saw Nkomo and his colleagues in ZAPU offered some government posts where Nkomo became the Vice-President of both new ZANU-PF and Zimbabwe. This was an elite pact which did not include post-conflict rehabilitation, reparations and truth-telling processes (Coltart 2016).

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Nkomo’s inclusion in government was expected to act as a ‘painkiller’ for all the traumas of Gukurahundi victims and survivors. Arguably, the Unity Accord ‘doubles’ as a technology that ended the atrocities, hence it is worth celebrating in that sense. But it also stands as a silent weapon that is judiciously mobilised to continue the subjugation, invisibilisation and silencing of histories, memories and pain of both the victims and the survivors of Gukurahundi. Instead of ushering positive peace through providing space for healing through truth telling, decolonisation of knowledge and righting the wrongs of the past, Mugabe and his associates in ZANU-PF concentrated in celebrating the Unity Accord and Nkomo as a person while denying his supporters healing, compensation, reparations and justice. To this day, no prosecutions of Gukurahundi perpetrators have been carried out. This has resulted in a perennial state of negative peace in Matabeleland and Midlands. While the Unity Accord ended the Gukurahundi military operation, it has conveniently been deployed by the ruling elite to pursue the project of silencing inconvenient truths about the immediate post-liberation era. Notably, under the banner of the Unity Accord, the past is expected to be forgotten; both Anzaldua’s ‘colonial wounds’ and the ‘Gukurahundi wounds’ are ignored; and the whole country is expected to practise selective amnesia. Ernest Renan once suggested that forgetting is essential to the creation of a nation. The government of Zimbabwe has adopted this Ernest Renan approach in managing the post-Gukurahundi dynamics. When the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP) and Legal Resources Foundation Report broke the silence in 1997 through the publication of detailed human rights abuses by the Fifth Brigade, Mugabe reacted by emphasising the need to forget the past in the name of unity (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 13). Moreover, just as the achievements of Patrice Lumumba were celebrated after cutting his body into pieces, Nkomo’s liberation credentials were only recognised after the loss of 20,000 lives of his supporters and after he had joined ZANU-PF in 1987. To that effect, Nkomo has received a token of valorisation from Mugabe and his associates. For instance, an international airport in Bulawayo has been named in his honour, his statue has been erected and stands an edifice in Bulawayo and Harare, the Main Street in Bulawayo has been renamed after Nkomo. The Polytechnic College in Gwanda was also renamed after Nkomo. Apart from these, Nkomo was posthumously given the title of ‘Father Zimbabwe’ by ZANU-PF.

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Almost invariably, Nkomo was reconstructed as a gallant hero of the liberation struggle and was buried in the most prestigious national shrine—the National Heroes Acre in 1999. A special form of commemoration of Nkomo known as ‘Umdala Wethu Gala’ (our dear old man gala) was introduced in 2001 (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2013b: 169). His fatherly figure, his founding father pedigree and his patriarchal status revered throughout the country were appropriated as building blocks for national unity. In this way, Nkomo’s national ‘elder’ status (Mazrui and Tidy 1984) was mobilised as a political resource in service of Mugabe and his associates in ZANU-PF. The galas re-invoked the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s political signification of Nkomo. Thus, while in the 1980s, Nkomo was considered a threat to the nation as the ‘Father of Dissidents’, he was celebrated as ‘Father of the Nation’ after his death in the 2000s (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 15). However, much to the chagrin of the global imperialist powers, Nkomo used his time in unity, government revoking and rearticulating his pre-independence ideas on land, race and black empowerment. Thus, Nkomo’s tenure in unity government was characterised with the reinvention of decolonial liberation agenda. Following many detours and alarums, Nkomo revived debates on land redistribution and black empowerment (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 13). Indeed, more importantly, Nkomo consistently warned about the inevitability of land wars in Zimbabwe as long as the unequal patterns of land ownership continued. In this way, Nkomo mobilised Mazrui and Tidy’s ‘sage’ tradition to educate both the ‘ex-coloniser’ and the ‘ex-colonised’ about the dangers of neocolonialism (Mazrui and Tidy 1984). His ‘decolonial prophecy’ and premonition became a reality in the end tail of the 1990s and early 2000s when the war veterans invaded white commercial farms in a typical decolonial turn. There is no room in this analysis to elaborate on this, save to say that the land invasions marked the end of the honeymoon enjoyed between Mugabe’s ZANU-PF and the West. The current relations between Zimbabwe and the West have suffered a rupture. In fact, Mugabe now represents an imperial project that fatally went wrong leaving David Moore (2004: 4) wondering how the man the West ‘created’ has mutated to ‘become its number one enemy in Southern Africa. As a mark of soured relations, in June 2008 Queen Elizabeth II stripped Mugabe of his knighthood given to him the ‘summer’ of Zimbabwe-UK relations in the early 1980s’ (Moyo 2015: 2).

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In his response to the said rupture of Zimbabwe–Western relations, Mugabe turned to his default mode of pretending to be a radical nationalist like he did during the Lancaster House talks. This time, he launched a massive frontal attack on the Western countries for failing to listen to Nkomo when he told them (West) to share the land with black Zimbabweans. Thus, it became convenient for Mugabe to use Nkomo in his fight against the West which had imposed sanctions against all those individuals known to have perpetrated human rights violations during the land invasions of the late 1990s and early 2000s. A list of 136 names of senior ZANU-PF leaders, military officials and war veterans was compiled by the European Union, UK, USA, Canada and Australia. While some of the names included in the lists were those known to have played a leading role in the Midlands and Matabeleland atrocities, Gukurahundi atrocities were not cited as reason for listings or sanctions. It was thus embarrassing for the West to accept the reality of the Gukurahundi atrocities even when Mugabe was no longer serving its purpose. Despite the desperate attempt to use and abuse Nkomo and the Unity Accord, the electorate in Matabeleland and Midlands has been voting against Mugabe and his ZANU-PF in the general elections since 2000 as a way of punishing ZANU-PF for the Gukurahundi atrocities. Interestingly, Dumiso Dabengwa together with some of his ZAPU colleagues pulled out of ZANU-PF in 2007 to re-establish ZAPU calling to question the entire claim of the continuity of the Unity Accord.

Conclusion It was discussed in this chapter that the emergence of Nkomo as a symbol of resistance against a racially hierarchical, patriarchal, Westerncentric, hetero-normative, capitalist and colonial power structure was greeted with hope for the liberation, freedom and decolonial future of Zimbabwe. Like many of the founding fathers of Africa’s independence, Nkomo was set to become the first black leader of that country after defeating juridical colonialism. Yet, the global imperial designs consigned him and his party ZAPU to the fringes, margins and peripheries of power, society and history. The main line of argument of this chapter was that Nkomo got entangled within the nest of global imperial designs paved with geoeconomic, geopolitical and geostrategic interests of the communist-Soviet pitted against the capitalist USA and its allies. This ‘labyrinthine imperial entrapment’ of Nkomo explains the invisibilisation

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and silences that he and his party suffered. Not surprisingly, his liberation pedigree was distorted, disfigured and destroyed. Like Lumumba who was recognised after his body was cut into pieces, Nkomo’s decolonial liberation pedigree got some token of recognition from his erstwhile rivals posthumously. Hopefully, this chapter has inaugurated a re-reading of the political formation of Nkomo’s politics.

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CHAPTER 6

Lancaster House Talks: Timing, Cold War and Joshua Nkomo Pathisa Nyathi

Introduction Following the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) by the Rhodesian government of Ian Douglas Smith on 11 November 1965, there was a flurry of efforts by successive British government leaders to resolve the Rhodesian constitutional impasse to no avail. While Britain was reluctant to resolve the issue militarily, a series of talks were convened which sought a resolution of the gridlock. At the same time, Britain was not keen to allow the UN to invoke Chap. 7 of its Charter that calls for military intervention by the world body (Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu in the Sunday News 19–25 April 2015). As a result, British Prime Minister Harold Wilson held talks with the Rhodesian prime minister aboard British frigates Tiger and Fearless which failed to resolve the constitutional stalemate. Meanwhile, the nationalists in Rhodesia established military wings of the nationalist movements which were externally based. More importantly, the armed liberation struggle was taking place against the backdrop of the hot

P. Nyathi (*)  Bulawayo, Zimbabwe © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_6

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Cold War which pitted the western NATO allies against the communist countries which supplied arms of war, training, training camps, military instructors and ammunition for the liberation movements. While initially the war of liberation was low key and characterized in the main by sabotage, in the later stages it intensified and soon engulfed most of the country. By the late 1970s, it had become clear that the Ian Smith government was militarily overstretched and could no longer resist the military onslaught. In the context of the Cold War, the West felt threatened, more so when the former Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola gained independence following the coup de tat in Portugal. America and her allies could not countenance the Soviet Union exerting influence and control from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. The Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) had had links with the Soviet Union from as far back as the 1950s and their relations continued into the 1960s, indeed till the end of the liberation struggle. After the 1963 split within the nationalist movement, the Soviet Union supported ZAPU at a time then there was Sino-Soviet rivalry. Hence, during the AAPSO meeting in 1963 the Soviet Union chose to support ZAPU. The Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) on the other hand aligned with China. ZAPU had had its cadres train in both China and North Korea but in 1965 China suspended aid to ZAPU which then was firmly in the grip of the Soviets. In 1967 and again in 1968, both ZAPU and the South African African National Congress (ANC) launched combined military incursions into Rhodesia which marked the first serious military threats to the Rhodesian government (Macmillan 2013: 39). With both liberation movements supported by the Soviet Union, the West regarded the development as posing a real threat to its political, economic and geopolitical interests in southern Africa. At the same time, the ZANU’s military wing the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Front (ZANLA) began operating with the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) as from 1972 and opened the Tete operational zone to strike at Rhodesia from the north-eastern corner. The response from the West was to drive a wedge between ZAPU and the ANC and another within ZAPU itself. As a result, the joint operations did not continue. ZAPU itself faced a split that led to the creation of three factions (Mpofu 2014: 177). ZAPU was seriously weakened militarily as the West sought to counter the Soviet Union in the superpower struggle for the control of southern

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Africa. However, ZAPU managed to reorganize and was, by 1974, in a position to establish the Southern Front (SF) through which guerrillas infiltrated into Rhodesia from Botswana. The United States of America (USA) sensed the danger posed by increased military striking power of the guerrilla movements. It was the USA, as leader of the NATO bloc, more than Britain with colonial responsibility over Rhodesia that sought to arrest the march by the liberation movements. Through his shuttle diplomacy within the broader détente exercise, US Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger lurched into apply breaks to the gathering military storm. The nationalist leaders who had been detained in 1964 were released. Attempts were made to unite the nationalist movement through the Lusaka Unity Accord of December 1974. This was a move that brought the banned ZAPU and ZANU parties into a united front with the political outfit led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa. The political gimmick and intrigue succeeded in applying brakes to the pace of the armed liberation struggle (Interview with Marshall Mpofu 16 November 2015). While slowing down the advance of the war of liberation, the more radical elements within the liberation movement were eliminated. ZANU’s external leader Herbert Chitepo was killed by a bomb placed in his car in Lusaka in 1975. The leader of the external wing of ZAPU Jason Ziyapapa Moyo was killed by a letter bomb sent to him from Botswana. ZPRA commander Alfred Nikita Mangena was killed by a landmine in 1978. In order to free themselves from the claws of detente, ZAPU and ZANU formed a joint military command known as the Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA) in 1975 that resumed the war from Mozambique. The shrewd US Secretary of State Dr Henry Kissinger calculated that the released nationalists, less immersed in MarxistLeninist ideology, would clash with the leaders of the external wings who, through exposure, had embraced political ideologies from the Communist bloc. The next move by the West was to convene a constitutional conference in Geneva in 1976. Joshua Nkomo the leader of ZAPU would describe it as ‘a conference that never was conference’. A few more conferences at Malta and Dar-es-Salaam were convened but yielded no positive results. It was the death of Jason Ziyapapa Moyo which led Joshua Nkomo to move to Lusaka and lead ZAPU till a constitutional settlement was achieved at the end of 1979. It was Joshua Nkomo’s involvement in the leadership of the war effort which altered the complexion

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of the war. Joshua Nkomo’s view was to end the agony that the people of Rhodesia were facing. He wanted the war to end and sought ways to achieve that. The war would be sharp and short. Indeed that is what happened. Joshua Nkomo had tried to negotiate with Ian Smith in 1975 but the efforts yielded no positive results. In coming up with a rethink on the war strategy, Joshua Nkomo was seeking political relevance. It is our argument that the Lancaster House talks were held in London from September 1979 precisely as a result of several related and coordinated military strategies by ZAPU and its armed wing the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZPRA) that dictated the timing of the talks and their positive outcome. It is the burden of this chapter to bring out those factors that created the conditions for the holding of the talks at that particular time and, in particular, to bring out the intended goals and outcomes of the talks which were informed by the Cold War contestations. The Lancaster House talks, which lasted from 10 September 1979 till 21 December of the same year, were the result of the efforts of Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) that took place in Lusaka, Zambia, in August 1979. On the theatre of war, a lot had taken place. ZAPU had crafted what it termed the Turning Point strategy with a Zero Hour component. Without doubt, it was a strategy which was meant to seize power from the Rhodesian government. An outright military victory would have afforded the Soviet Union a strong foothold in southern Africa. That too would have meant the West would have come worse off from that scenario. It was not to be. Lancaster House talks were not about the resolution of the Rhodesian constitutional impasse. Rather, it was the antagonistic superpowers playing out their political game within the context of the very hot Cold War. It came as no wonder, therefore, when some participants in the armed liberation struggle saw the Lancaster House deal as a sell-out: To me this ceasefire order came as a disappointment and we needed ample time to internalize (it) and come to terms with it. Things had fallen apart. We crossed safely, had enough ammunition, sound military strategies to hit the targets, only to receive the news of a ceasefire. This agreement (Lancaster House) did not incorporate us in so far as the future of the guerrillas was concerned. There was no plan for them. (Ndlovu 2014: 50)

Even Joshua Nkomo was later to realize that the constitutional settlement was not about the African problems.

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Kissinger’s (US Secretary of State) southern Africa proposals were not really concerned with African problems at all, but with super-power politics. I think he would have been happiest if the whole region had settled down as a ring of satellite Bantustans depended on South Africa. His ideas were of no interest to us. (Nkomo 2001a: 177)

The Turning Point strategy with its Zero Hour component was an integrated and coordinated stratagem that linked and harmonized several military aspects that would be unleashed upon the incalcitrant white regime in Salisbury which had since 1978 crafted an Internal Settlement in which Abel Muzorewa was the prime minister. As a military strategy, the Turning Point embraced the following: importation and shipment of heavy weapons from the Soviet Union and its communist allies. The sort of weapons that a guerrilla army used only managed to harass the enemy but did little more. The thrust was on sabotage using the AK automatic assault rifle and defensive and offensive grenades. The weapons were ineffective in terms of defence of seized territory. The Soviet Union supplied the weapons as from 1977. The one type of weapon that altered the complexion of the war was the battery of surface-to-air heat-seeking Strela missiles, SAM 7 (Nyathi 2014b). According to Pathisa Nyathi (2014b: 175), mechanized, artillery and engineering divisions were set up and that meant increase military striking force. The Soviet Union and its Communist bloc allies such as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia provided the weapons through Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania. Such heavy military equipment, for example tanks, was for use by a regular army which operated in large numbers and had the capability and capacity to seize territory and defend it. From 1978, ZPRA, as part of Nkomo’s drive for a sharp and short war, started training a regular or conventional army which, it was envisaged, would, in collaboration with other military components, launch a lightning attack across the Zambezi River into Zimbabwe Rhodesia (Nyathi 2014b: 175). Training had to be ratcheted in terms of range of areas covered and the sophistication of that training. ZPRA cadres began undergoing military training in several countries. Some cadres that had done guerrilla training were retrained as officers in line with their expected roles in the regular battalions. There also had to be sufficient numbers of personnel that would constitute threshold figures for meaningful operations in view of expanded operations and the technical expertise that would be required. Indeed, that happened and the year 1977 witnessed the highest

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level of cadres arriving in Zambia to take part in the armed liberation struggle (Nyathi 2014b: 175). In order to enhance its striking power and cover, ZPRA embarked on the training of Mig 17 jet pilots and technicians. From March 1978, the training started at Kirigizstan in the south-eastern part of the Soviet Union close to Afghanistan (Interview with Nelson Nyathi, 19 October 2015). A war that is effectively fought with a good chance of success relies on the gathering of strategic information about the enemy. Intelligence and counter intelligence are critical in that effort. As from 1978, ZPRA reorganized its intelligence, scope and structure which hitherto had been divided into civilian and military intelligence. In the past, there was military intelligence headed by Gordon Munyanyi (Tapson Sibanda) who was later succeeded by Abel Mazinyane as chief of the department. Ethan Dube had been in charge of the civilian intelligence and when the two were integrated Dumiso Dabengwa took over as chief of the national security and order (NSO) (Nyathi 2014b: 175). The fighting force was then better coordinated with many operatives having infiltrated Rhodesian military and civilian sectors, in particular the strategic companies in urban centres where ZPRA staged urban guerrilla operations. At the crossing point, DK, we found Comrade Pilate Sibanda who was deployed in Bulawayo to carry out reconnaissance mission… but later on we received some instruction that some of us should join Pilate and go to Bulawayo for a reconnaissance mission. Our task was to identify targets for attack and these included some of the big companies in the city. (Interview by Mkhululi Sibanda with Lovemore Ngwenya in the Sunday News, 29 November–05 December 2015)

The plan had been that Nkomo as commander-in-chief of ZPRA was going to issue the order for the coordinated forces to roll-out the strategy. Western and US intelligence had got the better of him (Nyathi 2014b). The efficient snooping agencies worked through contacts within the ZPRA forces themselves, some turned-in guerrillas who were brainwashed and reoriented were sent back to rejoin their colleagues and spy on them. There was collaboration between the Rhodesians and the South Africans through sharing intelligence information. ZAPU leader and his key political and military personnel were attending the Lancaster House talks in London when the Turning Point strategy should have

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been launched (Nyathi 2014b). ZAPU and its backers, in particular the Soviet Union, had been outsmarted, outmaneuvred and outclassed. The Soviet Union had banked on a military solution which was going to allow it a strong foothold in southern Africa. Their plans went up in smoke when an outright military victory had been thwarted through the convening of the Lancaster House talks. The significance of the Turning Point strategy and its Zero Hour component is best understood against the backdrop of the Cold War. This was the stiff competition between the West and the East in many areas of the globe. The two blocs sought to exert influence and control over areas of the globe that were perceived to be geopolitically important. The Turning Point strategy and its potential for success played into the dog-eat-dog competition within the Cold War context. The longer the constitutional impasse went on unresolved, the greater the chance of the Soviet Union getting more involved in the politics and future of Zimbabwe. Bringing the antagonistic forces together to negotiate the resolution of the impasse was the only sure way of thwarting outright military victory which would have seriously tipped the scales in favour of the East, the Soviet Union in particular (Interview with Roma Nyathi, 22 May 2015).

Cold War Context and Rhodesian Constitutional Impasse ‘You go to Lancaster and you are finished’, so advised the Soviets to ZAPU (Quoted in Nyathi 2015: 175). The advice was given in the light of their assessment of the outcome and what the outcome would mean to them and ZAPU. The Cold War was a post-1945 World War II political scenario which saw the polarization of world powers into two competing ideologies, capitalism versus Communism. It was a polarization that would for a long time, inform and influence the struggles for independence in Africa and elsewhere. Cold War politics played themselves out in pursuit of the interests of the competing blocs, sometimes to the total neglect of the interests of other people. While the West was for a negotiated solution to the Rhodesian constitutional impasse, the Soviet Union and her allies pushed for a military solution (Nyathi 2014b: 175). ZAPU was firmly on the side of the Soviets who supplied them with weapons and other military requirements such as communications

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equipment, uniforms, transport vehicles, medicine, military training facilities, training in science and other professional fields. From as far back as 1959, Joshua Nkomo, then leader of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), had contacts with the Soviets. Eyebrows had been raised when the British Representative at the UN Sir Patrick Dean resigned from his post following Joshua Nkomo’s political campaigns on the international front which led to the British official’s resignation. The incident caused some embarrassment to both Britain and the USA. ‘It was by the way, at the height of the Cold war, and anyone who strongly opposed colonialism and the exploitation of African, Asian or South American natural resources by the industrialized western European nations were branded a communist. That tag was made to stick by the fact that Joshua Nkomo had visited the Soviet Union as early as 1959, and his successive political parties had been offered scholarships by Yugoslavia, the German Democratic Republic(GDR), the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Ghana’ (Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu in Sunday News 12–18 July 2015). Links between ZAPU and the Soviet Union had been further consolidated when a National Democratic Party official, George Silundika, visited Moscow in 1961. Among the issues raised by him were financial support and other needs, scholarships and the Soviet universities for training of trade union, women and youth activists. In addition to ZAPU leaders going to the Soviet Union, in Britain the Communist Party of Great Britain exerted influence on these leaders. The party organized platforms on ZAPU’s behalf. In the early years, training of ZAPU cadres took place in homes and flats in the Koxhovoskaya and Chirimuski. The cadres were being trained in the use of explosives, arms and sabotage and guerrilla tactics. Uniformed Soviet instructors were behind the training (Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu in Sunday News 12–13 July 2015). More cadres underwent training in North Korea about 15 kilometres from Pyongyang. In China, the training took place near Beijing and at Nanking. In 1960–1961, the famous statements by Khrushchev disturbed US President John F Kennedy whose response led to the reorganization of US armed forces to deal with ‘insurgents’. There was further alarm in the Western quarters when Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in his address to the 24th Congress of the Communist Party in 1971 indicated that the three main revolutionary forces in the current epoch were socialism, the international working class movement and the liberation movements. ZAPU was more and more swallowed into the Cold War conflict,

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and any moves it pursued were bound to be influenced by the politics of the Cold War that was progressively getting hotter and hotter (Interview with Roma Nyathi, Moffat N Ndlovu and Strike Mnkandla 19 October 2015). When the newly independent African states moved towards the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), they found themselves torn between the antagonists in the Cold War. There were African leaders, the most radical of the lot, who were aligned to the Soviet Union and belonged to what was termed the Casablanca Group. Among the leaders in this group were Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana. The more liberal and pro-Western African leaders belonged to the Monrovia Group and sought a gradualist approach to the attainment of independence in Africa. Liberian leader William Tubman, Jomo Kenyatta of Kenya and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere of Tanzania were some of the leaders in this group (Interview with Roma Nyathi, Moffat N Ndlovu and Strike Mnkandla 19 October 2015). Splits within the trade union movement in 1962 apparently preceded the split within the nationalist movement. The Cold War dichotomies were discernible within the splits in which ZAPU found itself within the Soviet camp. The Southern Rhodesia Trade Union Congress (SRTUC) which had been formed by Joshua Nkomo and other trade unionists such as Jason Ziyapapa Moyo experienced a revolt from Tom Mswaka and associates such as Terry Jeremiah Maluleke who formed the Southern Rhodesia African Trade Union Congress (SARTU). The fissure extended to the continental level where the Casablanca Group opted for a politicized trade union movement while the Monrovia Group preferred a trade union movement that was divorced from politics (Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu in Sunday News 24–30 May 2015). The split in the nationalist movement was viewed by Joshua Nkomo as having been fuelled by pro-Western interests within the Cold War context. He noted that Leopold Takawira, one of the drivers of the rebellion, was a member of Capricorn Society which was organized by a former British Officer Colonel David Stirling. ‘It’s aim was to build up African elites prepared to take over government in co-operation with the rich white property owners. Takawira supported its scheme for allowing selected Africans to qualify gradually for a share in power’ (Nkomo 2001: 115). After the 1963 split, ZAPU remained in the Soviet camp. To thwart the Soviet Union in southern Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular, it was imperative for the West to checkmate

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ZAPU. A victorious ZAPU in Zimbabwe would translate to a Soviet and Communist victory in Zimbabwe and indeed southern Africa. The situation would get worse in the Cold War context when ZAPU and the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe launched joint military operations in 1967 and 1968. James Chikerema, the leader of the external wing of ZAPU, and Oliver Tambo of the ANC clinched a deal for joint operations, and in 1966 a ZAPU reconnaissance party was infiltrated through Kazungula to recconoitre the route to be followed in 1967. The Luthuli Detachment that was infiltrated in 1967 was led by John Dube (Charles Ngwenya). This was the most serious military engagement that the Rhodesians had ever experienced. In the following year, another joint military incursion was undertaken. That Pyramid Detachment was led by ZAPU’s Moffat Hadebe (Mpofu 2014: 39). Both military operations by Soviet-backed liberation movements were perceived as the cutting edge of the Communists into southern Africa. That, later to be followed by the collapse of the former Portuguese colonies of Mozambique and Angola made the spectre of a communist domination in southern Africa a real possibility that would not be countenanced by the western world. Indeed, soon after 1968 the joint operations were discontinued, a move surreptitiously engineered by Western intelligence and cherished by the Western nations. ZAPU on its part experienced an internal crisis (Nyathi). In fact, ZAPU splintered into three sections—the March 11 Movement, the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (RFOLIZI) and mainstream ZAPU (Mpofu 2014: 39). ZAPU’s military capability was seriously affected. There was time when only a handful of guerrillas were operating and resorted to hit-and-run tactics to create an impression there were many of them. In fact, at the time the number of both civilians and trained guerrillas did not reach 100. Among these few operatives were Roger Matshimini Ncube and Abel Mazinyane. ZAPU reorganized and attained levels where it ultimately posed some real threats to Western interests through increased military capability. The West sprung into action once again to thwart increasing Soviet influence. US Secretary of State’s shuttle diplomacy was calculated to apply brakes to the gathering momentum of the armed liberation struggle by the two liberation movements, ZPRA and ZANLA. Indeed, the strategy did succeed in slowing down the pace when fighting ceased and conflicts ensued. Meanwhile, the ideologically strong externally based leaders of both ZAPU and ZANU were eliminated. Keen to resume the struggle, the two liberation movements formed the Zimbabwe People’s

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Army (ZIPA) which was based in Mozambique and was tasked with the responsibility of resuscitating the war. It was strategy and counter strategy between the liberation movements and their backers on the one hand and the Western nations on the other (Nyathi 2014b). The latter, with Britain shouldering the responsibility of restoring constitutionality in Rhodesia, resorted to constitutional conferences to resolve the impasse. When the war escalated and the Communists were seen to gain the upper hand, another conference was called to add more lethargy and sluggishness to the pace of the struggle. The Geneva conference was arranged. Like the earlier talks between Smith and Harold Wilson, the conference aborted. Its failure marked an important turning point in the struggle for independence and the contestations between the West and the East in the context of the Cold War (Nyathi 2014b). The former Portuguese territories attained independence which saw ZANLA operating from rear bases in Mozambique. It was then able to open more operational fronts and thus extended the theatre of war in Rhodesia. If ZAPU were to attain an outright military victory in Rhodesia as it planned to do, the whole area from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean would come under the influence of the Soviet Union and the Communists. The West sprung into counter action. After the Geneva Conference, Anglo-American diplomacy was handled by the US Representative to the UN, Andrew Young, who was supported by US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and British Foreign Secretary David Owen who later was replaced by Anthony Crossland. The urgency was informed by the fact that the Portuguese former colonies had gained their independence and extended the perceived southern African frontier of Communism (Nyathi 2014b). There were numerous diplomatic shuttles between New York, London, Salisbury and the Front-line capitals. Indeed, on the 1st of February 1978 more talks were held in Malta under the chairmanship of David Owen. These were attended by Andy Young, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Richard Moore and the UN Special Representative for Rhodesia Pram Chand. The Anglo-American proposals were sold to the Patriotic Front (PF) which had been created a few months prior to the convening of the Geneva Conference. The involvement of Andy Young and Dr Henry Kissinger is a pointer to Western interests. The USA is the leader of Western countries and was not the colonial authority over Rhodesia. Clearly, the Rhodesian issue had assumed a Cold War contestation and

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character where the East and the West sought to outmanoeuvre each other out of self-interest. The Geneva was a turning point towards the Turning Point strategy. On the part of ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo, it brought disillusionment and a new sense altering the course and pace of the war. Describing the Geneva Conference as a ‘conference that never was a conference’ to a journalist, it had dawned on Joshua Nkomo that what was needed was a different strategy, a military onslaught to bring down the Ian Smith regime in Salisbury (Nyathi 2014b). At the time, Joshua Nkomo was hardly 2 years out of detention at Gonakudzingwa. A few months later, an unfortunate incident would see him leave Rhodesia to settle permanently in Lusaka. The fateful incident in January 1977 was the death of Jason Ziyapapa Moyo. He had been killed by a letter bomb delivered through the post from a woman acquaintance in Francistown who was a Rhodesian intelligence operative (Nyathi 2014b). The same year saw an unprecedented number of cadres arriving in refugee camps in both Botswana and Zambia. There were thus sufficient numbers from which to recruit personnel for both the guerrilla struggle and the professional training in various friendly countries. The war continued to escalate. More and more areas in Rhodesia became operational zones. The callup system was introduced. Police reserves were drafted in and women were not spared either. By 1978, ZPRA was able to score defining victories which caused consternation among not only the Rhodesians, but the South Africans and the Western powers that were monitoring events with an interest of containing the military tide within the context of the Cold War (Nyathi 2014b). Now we turn to those changes in the complexion of the war that led the Western allies to seriously consider convening a constitutional conference that would effectively checkmate both ZAPU and its sponsors within the Communist bloc. Events in South Africa were also a cause for alarm and concern. The student riots in Soweto had taken place in June 1976. The ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) was making inroads into urban areas and politicizing the youth (Nyathi 2014b). MK and ZPRA were both aligned to the Soviet Union and had, in 1967 and again in 1968, launched joint military incursions into Rhodesia. In the event that both political parties came to power in their respective countries, there was a real possibility for Communism to get a strong foothold in a geopolitically important area of southern Africa. That was not to be. In Zimbabwe, where there was a strong liberation movement in opposition

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to ZAPU it was to become a bulwark against Communism. It would be the preferred party to ZAPU with strong links to the Soviets. The Chinese who supported ZANU were a lesser evil in the eyes of the West (Nyathi 2014b). In response to the escalating war, the Rhodesians instituted sham elections that drew in the participation of some political parties that were no longer involved in the prosecution of the armed liberation struggle. Ndabaningi Sithole, James Chikerema, Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Chief Jeremiah Chirau and Chief Khayisa Ndiweni all participated in the Internal Settlement in which Bishop Abel Muzorewa emerged as prime minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia after the elections. Sensing real danger when the Internal Settlement failed to win international recognition, the British government in 1978 sent a 39-member delegation of industrialists to assess the situation and get a feel of the direction the country was likely to take. Once in Zimbabwe Rhodesia, the group split into smaller groups that visited various parts of the country. The one question they asked was about who was likely to rule the country when independence was granted or achieved. The generality of the black people, chiefs and whites that were consulted all put forward the name of ZAPU leader Joshua Nkomo. The various groups reassembled at the Meikles Hotel in Salisbury. Boyman Mancama of the Anglo American Company played host to the visiting group (Nyathi 2014b). The British seemed not unduly raffled by the fact that Joshua Nkomo was the people’s favourite choice. However, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) advised otherwise. There was no way the Soviet Union and its Communist allies would control the whole swathe of land from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean. Advances were made to Swazi king Sobhuza to investigate the links between ZAPU and the ANC of South Africa. An emissary was dispatched to Maputo to confer with ZAPU Representative in Maputo. Mozambican President Samora Machel dispatched word to Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere. Nkomo was not to be told about the goings-on. Nkomo later found out and was told by his own representative, ‘I was advised not to tell you’. Dr Kissinger had much earlier met Nkomo at the Intercontinental Hotel where he asked him, ‘Are you in charge? Do you have support?’ (Interview with Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu 15 September 2015). In order to arm-twist South Africa, Dr Henry Kissinger visited oil-rich Iran and instructed them to stop oil supplies to South Africa. Iran relied heavily on the income from sales of oil. They were advised the USA was going

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to buy the oil so as for Iran to continue to get the required revenue. Having been weakened, South Africa had no choice but to support constitutional efforts to resolve the Rhodesian impasse in such a way as to exclude the Soviet Union from the politics of southern Africa (Interview with Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu 15 September 2015).

Events Leading to the Holding of Talks at  Lancaster House in 1979 The year 1978 was the decisive year that led to the holding of talks at Lancaster House the following year. The Soviet Union, sensing danger from the West if the war was not escalated and lead to outright military victory, ratcheted the struggle in various ways. It is these new efforts starting from 1978 in the main and to some extent in 1977 that pushed the West to the corner and saw them outmanoeuvre the Soviets by arranging a US-initiated conference towards the end of 1979.

Supply of Heavy Weapons Guerrillas did not carry heavy weapons, heavy enough to inflict telling damage to big installations that have a psychological effect on the war. As part of the build-up to the Turning Point, ZAPU requested the Soviet Union for the supply of heavy weapons. A department of artillery came into being in 1977 at the time Sam Mfakazi was Chief of Logistics and was deputized by Masala Sibanda, Donki Dube, Petros Khumalo (Mpondo) and Nyawera. From inception, Andrew Ndlovu (Dumezweni) was the chief of this new military unit (Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane in Sunday News 5–11 July 2015). Also getting into the hands of ZIPRA were the anti-air weapons comprising Strela surface-to-air missiles (SAM 7), which were used against Rhodesian aircraft. Moscow had stepped up its avowed assistance to ZAPU. The supply of these heavy weapons was highly controlled by the OAU Liberation Committee in Dar-es-Salaam chaired by Brigadier Hashim Mbita (Interview Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane in Sunday News 5–11 July 2015). Weapons donated to ZAPU were handed over to the Tanzanian government which then surrendered them to the Liberation Committee. The Zambian government was then informed. Tanzanian military then transported the weapons to Zambia where the weapons were surrendered to the Liberation Centre in Lusaka from

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where ZPRA was informed about their arrival. To ensure the safety of the weapons, they were transported in the company of a Zambian military officer, a senior ZPRA officer and another officer from the Logistics Department (Interview Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane in Sunday News 5–11 July 2015). Sometimes, ZPRA resorted to unorthodox means to smuggle in the weapons. For example, a Zambian military attaché in Dar-es-Salaam was bribed with a Mercedes Benz vehicle that had been supplied by the ANC’s MK. The vehicle was acquired in South Africa and smuggled through Mozambique and driven all the way to Dar-es-Salaam where the military attaché received it and facilitated the delivery of ZPRA weaponry to Zambia (Interview with Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu 15 September 2015). In 1978, more heavy weapons were supplied to ZAPU. Apparently, these were spotted by Western intelligence during their movement from Dares-Salaam to Tunduma on the border with Zambia. Once within Zambia, the weapons were taken to the western part of Zambia. The Rhodesians knew about the presence of these heavy weapons that included tanks. Acting on Western-supplied intelligence, the Rhodesians attacked the road infrastructure including bridges on the Chambeshi River in order for ZPRA to find it burdensome if not well nigh impossible to transport the weapons to their intended destination, Zimbabwe Rhodesia. Aerial bombardment of the area presumed by the Rhodesians to be harbouring the weapons was being carried out while the Lancaster House talks were in progress (Nyathi 2014b: 207). Other heavy weapons that ZPRA received included the Grad P which was effectively used by the Brigadier Madliwa Khumalo-led regular battalion to withdraw from where it was pinned down by the Rhodesian firepower and ground forces and the B 74 anti-tank guns and the ZegUs (Interview with Marshall Mpofu 16 November 2015). The supply of heavy weapons, particularly the SAM 7 missiles, led to the downing of the Rhodesian civilian aircraft, the Viscounts in the Lake Kariba area. Before the civilian aircraft was knocked out, a number of Rhodesian air-force fighters had been brought down. ‘We could not claim the credit we deserved because we needed to keep secret the fact that we had been given some Soviet surface-to-air missiles, SAM 7s. The first time we used them we knocked down two of their strike aircraft, the next time we got four. In all, we shot down about thirty of their planes and helicopters: the Rhodesian Minister of Defence was forced to resign and they replaced the losses only by importing second-hand Hawker

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Hunters from Israel, with South African help. The only times they would admit to losses of aircraft were when we brought down passenger planes which we did on two occasions’ (Nkomo 2001: 172). The Rhodesian aircraft attacked ZPRA installations in Zambia in October 1978 probably in response to the successful creation and commissioning of the regular battalions. In retaliation of the attacks, ZPRA used SAM 7 missiles to bring down the first civilian aircraft in 1978. The next civilian Viscount aircraft was brought down with heavy casualties in 1979 (Nyathi 2014b). The aircraft downing made the West and their Rhodesian kith and kin that ZAPU, through the collaboration and support of the Soviet Union, posed a threat to the Rhodesian state, a threat that would favour the penetration of the Soviets into an area that the West considered strategic to their military, economic and geopolitical interests. There were other developments on the military front which, when taken together with the downing of the civilian and military aircraft created a real scare that made the West to panic and the USA in particular to urge the newly elected Conservative Party government of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to prioritize settlement of the Rhodesian crisis in order to eliminate the Soviet factor from the region. Prime Minster Thatcher obliged (Nyathi 2014b). One such visible and conspicuous victory that ZPRA’s urban guerrilla unit scored in Salisbury was to hit the oil-storage tanks. ‘Transporting heavy weapons through the Rhodesian air cover was terribly risky, and it was rare that we brought off conspicuous triumphs like the rocketing of the oil storage tanks in Salisbury and Bulawayo as the Salisbury tanks burnt for a week, a symbol of our success, but the Bulawayo reserve was unfortunately empty when Zipra hit it’ (Nkomo 2001: 172). Other than being conspicuous, the hitting of the oil-storage tanks was a serious economic blow to the entire Rhodesian economy, and the war effort as fuel runs the engines of both the economy and the transport sector on which the military was dependent. Besides, the morale of the ZPRA cadres was boosted, and the heroic act was immediately published in the ZAPU newspaper, the Zimbabwe Review.

Creation of a Regular Army Following the importation of the first arms of war into Rhodesia by Abraham Nkiwane, Misheck Velaphi Ncube and Kennias Mlalazi in 1962, the stage was set for the commencement of sabotage stage of the

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struggle (Nyathi 2014b). In 1964, at the Zidube Ranch in Mambale, the first engagement led by Moffat Hadebe took place. In the early days, ZPRA cadres were trained in China, Ghana and North Korea. A new level in the armed liberation struggle was reached when in 1963 ZAPU cadres left for Tanzania en route to the Soviet Union and other friendly countries to undergo military training. As from 1965, the guerrilla war started although in those early phases the emphasis was on reconnaissance and establishing contacts with the ZAPU political structures inside Rhodesia (Nyathi 2014b). Despite the setbacks brought about by the split in 1971, the guerrilla war intensified and engulfed more parts of Rhodesia, especially, when the Southern Front was established in 1974. For Joshua Nkomo, the turning point towards taking a new course in the military onslaught was after the failure of the Geneva Conference and the earlier talks with Ian Smith in 1975. Joshua Nkomo had been asked about his next move: ‘What are you going to do (now)?’ asked a journalist. ‘I am instructing my commanders to build an army. Mind you, I am not building a Salvation Army but an army that is going to take the country by force of arms’ (Interview with Marshall Mpofu 19 November 2015). That landmark speech and declaration by Joshua Nkomo marked the first move towards building a regular brigade. Marshall Mpofu, who had been engaged in reconnoitring the Elephant Hills in 1977, was withdrawn from the front. He proceeded to Lusaka where he went to Mulungushi as Deputy Political Commissar to Gedi Dube. Training was done under the auspices of the Zambian army (Interview with Marshall Mpofu 19 November 2015). There were about 24 ZIPRA officers who did the training and were joined by three Soviettrained officers, namely Gedi Dube, Cephas Khupe and Marshall Mpofu. There were over 2000 cadres in all that underwent training, among them Abu-Basutu, Madubeko Moyo who would later command the first battalion after the integration of the erstwhile antagonistic armies that created the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) (Interview with Marshall Mpofu 19 November 2015). On the day of the pass-out parade, Joshua Nkomo, Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda, Zambian Army commander General Kingsley Chinkuli and ZPRA commander Alfred Nikita Mangena were in attendance. The Zambian army provided logistical support to the regular outfit (Interview with Marshall Mpofu 19 November 2015). The infantry brigade had four battalions. ‘Some ZIPRA cadres trained at the Zambian Military Academy and these included Milton Siziba,

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Nyamupingidza and Diye later a Colonel in the ZNA. Dubhu Nleya was the commander of the brigade with Marshall Mpofu as Political Commissar. Cephas Khupe and SB Sibanda were also in the command. The first battalion was commanded by Madliwa Khumalo, Zuva Commanded the second battalion with TJ Matiwaza commanding the third battalion. Soneni Mdlalose Moyo commanded the fourth battalion’ (Interview with Marshall Mpofu 19 November 2015). The regular battalions were self-contained in that they included specialized units such as artillery, the signals unit, engineers unit and intelligence unit, among others. Training of the regular army members took place in various countries such as Somalia, Ethiopia, Libya, Angola (the Cubans trained the cadres with the assistance of the Soviets and these were later integrated into the ZIPRA army that had been trained by ZIPRA commanders) and the Soviet Union (Interview with Marshall Mpofu, 16 November 2015; Interview with Jaconiah Moyo 26 October 2015, Bulawayo). ‘ZAPU pinned its hopes on a regular army or conventional army. The thinking was that a regular army was capable of hitting the enemy and defending captured territory. Such an army would be well equipped with advanced weapons including tanks, artillery, antiaircraft batteries and even Mig jet fighters’ (Nyathi 2014b: 175). That the Rhodesians were aware of this dangerous development was evidenced by the Rhodesian agents who frequented the nearby lake pretending to be tourists. At one time, the ZPRA cadres captured such agents, three men and one woman who pretended to be journalists. Further, the first ever aerial raids into Zambian territory were undertaken at the time when the battalions were ready to roll-out towards the gorges in the Zambezi valley. It can safely be surmised this initial bombing was meant to emasculate the battalions and thus remove the threat of a possible outright military victory. Indeed, Madliwa Khumalo’s battalion was attacked over several days and nights and only retreated when they had sought and got permission from the ZPRA headquarters in Lusaka to use the Grad P that provided yellow smoke cover under which retreat was concealed and affected. As it turned out, the battalions were never deployed across the Zambezi River. The Lancaster House talks put paid to the Turning Point strategy which was going to see an integrated and coordinated multipronged onslaught on Zimbabwe Rhodesia.

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©Training Mig 17 Pilots and Technicians Both the Mig 17 jets and the anti-air batteries were going to provide cover to the advancing regular army battalions. The engineers were going to fix bridges where necessary to enable troop carriers and tanks and artillery units to cross and destroy these bridges in order thwart the movement of any pursuers in their attempts to close in on advancing troops (Nyathi 2014b). The timing of the training was done so as to coincide with the completion of training by the regular army units. Air-force personnel had done basic training in the guerrilla camps in Zambia. Their pass-out parade took place in 1978 before the death of ZPRA commander Alfred Nikita Mangena and the first aerial raids into Zambia in October of the same year (Nyathi 2014b). The raids were undertaken to more or less coincide with the passing out of the regular army battalions, and the fiercest attacks were concentrated on positions where the regular battalions were located. Through intelligence and common sense, Rhodesians who frequently shared intelligence with the more effective intelligence units in the West, sought to destabilize the units that were ready to position themselves in the Zambezi valley gorges to await the signal from the Commander-in-Chief Joshua Nkomo who awaited the various support units to be ready so that the Zero Hour of the Turning Point was reached when it would be systems go (Nyathi 2014b). The air force personnel were divided into two groups: technicians and pilots. There were close to 100 of them altogether (Retired Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane in Sunday News 12–18 April 2015). Training commenced in March 1978 at Frunze in Kirgizstan, a place in the Soviet Union close to the border with Afghanistan. Though the place was far away from the prying intelligence eyes of the West, the latter was quite aware of the development and thus assessed the danger that the coordinated military units were going to pose to the security of the southern African region (Nyathi 2014b). Of particular significance was the threat the Turning Point strategy posed to the Western interests as part of the dog-eat-dog competition between the East and the West within the context of the Cold War. The Soviet military advisors and the Cuban trainers were in Angola. ‘I first had encounter with Cuban comrades when they drove from Angola to Lusaka in Zambia to deliver food and trucks to ZIPRA’ (Retired Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane in Sunday News

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12–18 April 2015). In 1977, ZIPRA hosted them at Freedom Camp (FC) for about 4 days. On their return, they transported a group of three hundred ZIPRA recruits to Boma Luso which was to be the first camp to train ZPRA in Angola (Retired Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane in Sunday News 12–18 April 2015). After this initial visit, the Cubans became a permanent part of the armed struggle. The Cubans came to Nampundwe Transit Camp to collect more recruits who travelled to Angola in Soviet-built KRUZ trucks. At one time, Soviet President Podgorny visited Angola—a move that raised alarm in Western political and military circles (Retired Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane in Sunday News 12–18 April 2015). The trainee pilots only graduated in 1980 long after the Rhodesian constitutional impasse had been resolved at Lancaster House in December 1979. The resolution of the Rhodesian constitutional question nullified the Turning Point strategy. The heavy weapons in north-western Zambia only rolled on over the Victoria Falls Bridge en route to the Gwayi Assembly Point after independence(Nyathi 2014b: 140). The Mig 17 jet trainees completed the course in October 1980. After arrival in Lusaka in Zambia, they proceeded to Chitungwiza outside Salisbury where some ZPRA demobilized cadres were encamped. From there, some of the trained cadres joined the Zimbabwe Air Force a part of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. It was all over and yet the total destruction of the ZAPU political and military infrastructure lay ahead, in the post-independence era. The Cold War threat would only be removed when a Soviet-backed ZAPU party and its political infrastructure was completely destroyed (Nyathi 2014b).

Conclusion In the Cold War, contestations playing out in Zimbabwe the Soviet Union and its allies lost out. Outright military victory was curtailed. A negotiated settlement forestalled the military solution that had been pursued by the Soviets and their allies. Even soon after the Lancaster House talks had been successfully concluded the Soviet Union continued to supply weapons to ZAPU. The Patriotic Front with co-leaders Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe was abandoned in order to isolate ZAPU, its leader Joshua Nkomo, its fighters and supporters. Josiah Magama Tongogara, the ZANLA commander who was gunning for a Joshua

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Nkomo-led Patriotic Front that was billed to take charge died before he got back to Zimbabwe following the ceasefire. ZAPU, which had been one of the authentic liberation movements during the struggle, lost the general elections and became the first and only authentic liberation movement not to form a government after independence. Instead, ZAPU was invited by ZANU to be part of the government, a cleverly designed strategy to allow the party to relax only to be attacked when ZANU had entrenched itself. The South Africans worked overdrive to drive a wedge between the two former liberation movements. Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the ANC, was never allowed to establish military camps in Zimbabwe, a further success by the West in checkmating a Soviet-backed liberation movement. As it would turn out, both Oliver Tambo and Chris Hani did not become part of the post-struggle government. MK was demobilized. Once again, the West had the upper hand. In Zimbabwe, the Soviets were shunned, thus becoming the last country to open a diplomatic mission in Salisbury (Harare). A lot of development funding was poured by the West into Zimbabwe as part of ZIMCOD. Ironically, the West which provided only humanitarian assistance and not military support was now the beneficiary of the independence of Zimbabwe. The military arsenal that the Soviets had supplied to ZPRA was confiscated and became part of the Zimbabwean Defence Forces arsenal. Some heavy weapons had been at Gwayi Assembly Point while others from Mashumbi Pools Assembly Point were taken to Cranborne Army Barracks (Nyathi 2014b: 222). The Soviets were out of the picture as the British Military Advisory Team, BMAT, took charge of the integration exercise when the Zimbabwe National Army was established from the three erstwhile antagonistic military outfits. White privileges were entrenched and their representatives continued to occupy seats in Parliament—a bicameral legislature. Their seats were safe for the next 10 years. The issue regarding the Cold War was not over as long as ZAPU was in existence as a political party harbouring the desire to one day become the ruling party in Zimbabwe. Who would vouch that they would not invite their war time backers? It was thus in the interests of their political rivals ZANU-PF, South Africa and the West to have ZAPU and its fighting arm ZPRA completely dismantled, weakened and finally absorbed into ZANU-PF. The military campaigns against it from 1981 till Unity

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Accord on 22 December 1987 were calculated to achieve just that. The West, only keen to outmanoeuvre and elbow out the Soviets, watched nonchalantly amid deafening silence. Thus, both the timing of the Lancaster House talks and the post-independence political and military activities were a continuation of the same design to uproot the Soviets from southern Africa against the background of the Cold War contestations among the world powers led by the Soviet Union on the one hand and the USA on the other.

References Interview with Mpofu Marshall. 2015, November 16. Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Interview with Nyathi Roma. 2015, May, 22. Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Interview with Nyathi Roma. 2015, October 19. Ndlovu Moffat MN, Mnkandla Strike, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Interview with Nyathi Nelson. 2015, October 19. Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Macmillan, H. (2013). The lusaka years: The ANC in exile in Zambia 1963–1994. Auckland Park: Jacana Media. Mpofu, J. M. (2014). My life in the struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe. Bloomington: Author House. Ndlovu, A. (2014). Zimbabwe struggle: The delayed revolution. An autobiography. Bulawayo: Amagugu Publishers. Nkomo, J. M. (2001). The story of my life. Harare: Sapes Books. Nyathi, D. N. (2014a). Starting businesses in Zambia and aiding the liberation struggle. Bulawayo: Amagugu Publishers. Nyathi, P. (2014b). The story of a ZPRA cadre: Nicholas Macala Dube ‘Ben Mvelase’ an autobiography. Bulawayo: Amagugu Publishers. Sunday News 5–11 July 2015: Retired Brigadier General Abel Mazinyane. Sunday News 12–18 July 2015 Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu: Dr Nkomo Undeterred by Dr Parirenyatwa’s Death. Sunday News 19–25 April 2015: Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu Rhodesian Regime Desperate-Detain Nkomo. Sunday News 24–30 May 2015: Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu How the OAU Came into Being.

PART II

Legacy, Diplomacy, Political Philosophy and Fatherhood

CHAPTER 7

Joshua Nkomo: Nationalist Diplomat, ‘Father of the Nation’ or ‘Enemy of the State’ Timothy Scarnecchia

Introduction The most difficult task for historians of Zimbabwean nationalist political history and diplomacy is avoiding a ‘presentist’ view of history, that is, to avoid using the past to justify what will happen in later periods. The rise of Mugabe’s ZANU to power after 1980, and the longevity of ZANU’s control of the state since then, makes it difficult to not focus on the moments where it seems Mugabe and others in ZANU’s leadership managed to surface as the most successful of the two main nationalist parties. A more honest history, however, needs to remember that historical actors were not able to read the future, so it is important to remember that their individual and collective actions at a given time, or year, or event, cannot be neatly put together to explain the present. Political history almost inevitably leads to a sort of triumphant story of political ascendancy of individuals and parties, and such histories have always been used to teach school children why they should give thanks

T. Scarnecchia (*)  University of Kent, Canterbury, USA © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_7

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and praise to their ‘founding fathers’ (hardly ever ‘founding mothers’) and respect the status quo as the result of hard-fought battles against British settler colonialism and later the forces of imperialism and South African apartheid influences. If one wants to move away from these triumphant or perhaps ‘patriotic’ histories that most all of us grew up with, it is important to look at the roles of others, especially others in political parties that also made extensive individual and collective efforts to fight a liberation war, negotiate with numerous regional and international interests, and deliver at negotiated independent Zimbabwe in April 1980. This chapter attempts such a counter-narrative by examining the role of Joshua Nkomo as a diplomat. Much is known about Nkomo’s role in the early 1960s as the leader of the National Democratic Party (NDP) and then after the banning of the NDP of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) up to the time of his lengthy detention by the Rhodesians who believed that by removing him and many of the other leaders of ZAPU and the rival Zimbabwe African National Union, they would be able to thwart the efforts of African nationalists to successfully wage a campaign for majority rule government in Rhodesia (Sibanda 2005; Msindo 2012; Mlambo 2014; Scarnecchia 2008). Less has been written by historians about the extensive diplomatic work Nkomo engaged in after his release from detention in 1974, as part of a détente process initiated by both Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda and South African President Vorster. The idea was the UDI Government of Rhodesia, an illegal regime under sanctions from Britain and most other nations, was increasing an impediment to economic and political stability, so the time had come for direct negotiations between Prime Minister Ian Smith and Joshua Nkomo, the then recognised leader of ZAPU and the nationalist movement. These talks were carried out very dramatically in a train car on a bridge overlooking the Victoria Falls held on 26 August 1975. The results were less dramatic than the view. No side was willing to accept the offered conditions, and the talks fell through. The détente period did, however, produce major shifts in the war as many of the old guard leadership were released from detention and made their way out of Rhodesia to better work with the external military and party leadership. ZAPU/ZIPRA was based in Lusaka, Zambia, and ZANU/ZANLA was based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The geography of the war reflected the Frontline State President’ (FLSPs) preferences than for who they would like to see take over an independent Zimbabwe. For the FLSP and

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the liberation forces themselves, it was only a matter of time before the Rhodesian would be military defeated and they assumed their own liberation movement would come to power in Zimbabwe. This, of course, took longer than these groups imagined, but as noted at the beginning of this chapter, the diplomacy of this crucial period needs to be examined as it happened, not with our knowledge that it would take another 5 years to achieve their goal. The next key influence in the diplomatic process came from outside the region, that is, the Cold War interests of the USA in Southern Africa starting in 1975 but especially strong in 1976. The reason for this was the successful defence by Soviet military aid and Cuban soldiers of the MPLA takeover of Angola in 1975. The USA believed that they, along with the Chinese, the Tanzanians, the South Africans, the Zairians and the Zambians, could effectively thwart any Communist government from coming to power after the Portuguese announced the Independence of Angola and Mozambique in 1975. The ‘loss’ of Angola, from the Western powers perspective on the Cold War in Africa, especially to the large numbers of Cuban soldiers who effectively defeated the two Western- and Chinese-backed rebel groups (FNLA and UNITA), meant that Rhodesia would become the focus of much of American Cold War interests from 1976 to 1979. This new interest from the USA presented an important diplomatic opportunity to both Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe. Both leaders of rival nationalist movements took different strategies to take advantage of the opportunity American interest presented. For Mugabe, he and Tekere had crossed the border into Mozambique in 1975 in order to try and make contact with the ZANLA fighting forces there as Mozambican Independence had opened up this extremely long border with Rhodesia for ZANLA’s fighters to infiltrate and fight in Rhodesia. Mugabe was not exactly welcomed by the guerrilla forces and leadership, as they themselves were caught up in serious internal conflicts following the assassination of Herbert Chitepo, the ZANU leader who had led the war effort before his death. At the same time, President Nyerere had requested Mozambique’s leader, Samora Machel, to make sure that Mugabe and Tekere, as representatives of what were then viewed as the ‘old guard’ leadership of ZANU, were not able to influence the ongoing consolidation of power over what Nyerere termed the ‘third force’, that is, a younger generation of Zimbabwean fighters who he hoped would evolve beyond the internal factionalism within ZANU and who

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could effectively wage a war against the Rhodesians. This new force was primarily made up of former ZANLA fighters who were not involved in the internal leadership fights and also the groups of leftists known as ZIPA, led by Wilfred Mhanda. Nyerere and Machel thought in 1975 and early 1976 that this younger group would succeed where the old guard and the leaders caught up in the controversy of Chitepo’s assassination and imprisoned by President Kaunda in Zambia, had failed. All of this background information on ZANU and ZANLA is important to keep in mind for the impact it would have on Nkomo’s diplomatic strategies and outcomes at the end of 1976. Joshua Nkomo took a different approach to the diplomacy of 1975 and 1976. Unlike Mugabe, he was the recognised leader of the nationalist movement from the perspective of both sides of the Cold War. He had managed through his connections developed in the early 1960s to receive training and military weapons for ZIPRA from the Soviet Union and important Eastern bloc countries that were willing to invest in the liberation wars of Southern Africa, most notably Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The Organization of African Unity (OAU)’s liberation committee had managed to provide additional aid to both ZIPRA and ZANLA, but the Liberation Committee was very concerned, especially after the failures to defeat the MPLA in Angola, that Rhodesia would become another Angola if the two competing liberation armies and their political parties could not somehow find a way to cooperate their efforts. This created a heightened urgency in 1976 to try and bring ZANU and ZAPU, ZANLA and ZIPRA, to some sort of compromise towards unity. It was, however, a very difficult task as ZANLA and ZANU were in the midst of their own internal conflicts. There was no clear leader of ZANU until late in 1976. For Mugabe to emerge as the clear leader took the contingency of American and Frontline Pressures to forge a United front, what became known as the ‘Patriotic Front’ by the two parties before the Geneva talks in October–November 1976. Before describing how Nkomo and Mugabe faired at that otherwise unsuccessful conference, it is necessary to back up and see why Nkomo especially felt confident that he would be the first leader of an independent Zimbabwe, and that it would happen with a relatively short period of time. The reason for this was that the Americans entered the Rhodesian crisis diplomatically with a quick strike and agenda, not really fully understanding what they were getting themselves into. The reason they wanted to act quickly in 1976 was to stave off any more Cuban

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and Soviet interventions into Southern Africa via Rhodesia, and, in the case of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, because should Cuba and the Soviets decide to get involved more heavily in the conflict as they had in Angola, the USA knew that they could not be seen defending Ian Smith and white minority rule against African liberation forces. The Americans understood that global sentiments had shifted and that the Soviet Union had successfully used America’s own racial segregation and oppression as a powerful ideological tool in Africa. Castro and the Cuban revolution also used race effectively in their ideological support for African liberation movements fighting against minority white states in Southern Africa. Given Kissinger’s need to act quickly, he used the many tools available to America, the most important being the offer of development and food aid to the FLSPs, in order to guarantee their cooperation in delivering what was supposed to be a unified Zimbabwean liberation movement at the Geneva talks. Kissinger also had to enlist the support of South African President Vorster to help pressure and convince Ian Smith to accept majority rule in 2 years time as the precondition for negotiations. The South Africans, particularly after the international condemnation of the apartheid regime after the June 1976 Soweto uprisings and the brutal repression used against students, were willing to work with Kissinger in order to receive much needed diplomatic attention and recognition from the Americans (Miller 2016). Based on two trips to Africa in 1976, Kissinger engaged in his famous ‘shuttle diplomacy’ to try and broker a negotiated settlement between Smith and the Patriotic Front. As he would tell many of the key actors in his meetings, Kissinger was not really concerned with who ended up in power in Zimbabwe, only that the USA would start in motion an agreement that would preclude Soviet and Cuban intervention. Additionally, if the Soviets and Cubans did get involved because the Smith regime refused to compromise, he wanted to make it clear to all involved that USA would not come to the defence of Smith and his illegal UDI regime. Nkomo met briefly with Kissinger in April 1976 in Lusaka after President Kaunda and Kissinger met. The transcript of their meeting is very brief. All it really reveals is that Kissinger wanted to tell Nkomo that the USA was behind him and wanted to see him as the first President of Zimbabwe. Nkomo was not exactly enthusiastic about the prospect, however, as he had already known Smith to back out of any promises in the past, and knew that Smith had a habit of using negotiations to stall progress towards majority rule and to build up Rhodesian defences.

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Before Geneva, Nkomo was the only Zimbabwean political leader the Americans considered a viable candidate to lead the country after Smith’s regime surrendered power or collapsed. The Americans knew of Mugabe, and he had been visited by an American Congressional Representative, Steven Solarz, but the Kissinger team made no effort to meet with Mugabe and left the leadership question up to the FLSPs. As it would turn out, the Geneva conference greatly enhanced Robert Mugabe’s international profile, to Nkomo’s dismay. There is not sufficient space to outline all that happened at Geneva between Nkomo and Mugabe, but it was clear that Mugabe and ZANU, in particular, were not eager to reach a settlement at Geneva. Instead, Mugabe managed to come out stronger from the conference almost by accident. The main issue remained Nyerere’s hopes to create the ‘Third Force’, or the ‘boys with the guns’, as he referred to them to Kissinger. ZIPA and Mhanda were to be that force but just before Geneva Nyerere realised that they were not, in his opinion, really up to the task of representing the interests of Zimbabwe on the world stage. What happened though at Geneva was that President Kaunda, and his key advisor Mark Chona, worked with the British to release the ZANLA leadership that was imprisoned in Zambia to the conference to help show solidarity with the newly formed Patriotic Front. The Tanzanians also arranged to send some of the ZIPA leaders, including Wilfred Mhanda, to the conference as well. Once at the conference, both the ZANLA leaders, and in particular Josiah Tongogara, and the ZIPA leaders expressed their support for Mugabe as the proper political leader of the ZANU half of the Patriotic Front. The support shown to Mugabe was, however, not reciprocated for the ZIPA leaders, as when they returned from Geneva they were seen as a liability to the reconstituted ZANLA leadership and to Mugabe’s new role as leader of the movement. Nyerere and Machel supported Mugabe’s and ZANLA’s efforts to arrest and imprison the ZIPA leaders, many of whom would spend the rest of the war years incarcerated in Mozambique (Mhanda 2011; Moore 2012). After Geneva, it is interesting to contemplate what kept Nkomo and Mugabe together in the Patriotic Front (PF) if it had generally been established for the purposes of the Geneva conference. The main incentive remained FLSP pressure, and the threat to cut off future OAU Liberation Committee approved military funds, should one of the leaders decide to leave the PF. The war intensified after Geneva, and this increased the burdens on the two main host countries, Zambia

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for ZIPRA and Mozambique for ZANLA. The USA continued in the Jimmy Carter Administration to supply what foreign aid and food aid it could to both countries. The late 1970s would be difficult years for both countries, and President Kaunda in particular had to open borders with Rhodesia in order to have access to South African markets and trade. This was a difficult decision given that the Rhodesian special forces and air force increasingly raided into Zambia and Mozambique to hit ZIPRA and ZANLA forces, but also choosing to hit refugee camps as well as part of a very brutal war where terror tactics were used by the Rhodesians and increasingly by the guerrilla fighters who were competing for the hearts and minds of Zimbabweans. The Catholic Committee for Justice and Peace (CCJP) commissioned an important book in 1975, entitled the ‘Man in the Middle’ which chronicles the brutality of the Rhodesian counter-insurgency tactics used by the Rhodesian forces. They also chronicle the terror used by the Zimbabwean nationalists as well, making life extremely tough and dire for Zimbabwe’s rural population, the men, women and children, caught in the middle (CCJP 1975). Through all of this, Nkomo in particular, but also Mugabe, continued to engage with the British and Americans on the diplomatic front. After Geneva, the Americans and British put forward the Anglo-American plan (AAP) with the hopes that an idea of an ‘all parties’ conference could still be held to continue negotiations for a transition away from minority rule, the creation of a new constitution and a necessary ceasefire. The years 1977–1979 would be difficult years for all sides, and the diplomacy was set back by Ian Smith’s attempts to achieve what the South Africans also hoped to achieve in Namibia, that is, to create a ‘puppet’ African government that would be elected by a wider franchise but that would exclude the liberation forces outside of the country. Smith went forward with his plans by negotiating with the UANC leader Bishop Abel Muzorewa, former ZANU leader Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole and Chief Jeremiah Chirau. These three African leaders would make up, along with Smith, the Executive Committee of what would become known as the internal settlement government. Nkomo, for his part, lobbied extensively in the West against this outrageous affront to the notion of majority rule that Smith and his Executive Committee were putting forward. International diplomacy became intensified, however, because the existence of the internal settlement offered the possibility that the British and the Americans would recognise that government and lift sanctions against the Rhodesian

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economy, making it then easier for the Rhodesians to fight the war. International condemnation of the internal settlement was quite strong, particularly from the OAU, at the UN and in the Commonwealth. All three important organisations continued to demand the inclusion of the PF in any future negotiated settlement. The Americans and the British, however, had their periods of doubt, and much of Nkomo’s strongest examples of skilful diplomacy came during this period. Just as the Americans had got involved in the Rhodesia crisis in 1975–1976 in order to limit the possibilities of ‘another Angola’ in Rhodesia, the threat of such Cuban and Soviet intervention continued to drive American involvement in the next 3 years. In April 1978, a key American Cold War leader, National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brezezinski, was quoted as saying ‘that Rhodesia is one of the world’s most dangerous trouble spots. If a peace settlement isn’t reached, he warned, it will open the door to Soviet-Cuban support’ (Anderson 1978). The Cold War tension over Rhodesia found the USA and the UK working together to keep the negotiations with the PF going. One has to remember that these negotiations were primarily influenced by the ongoing war between the Rhodesians and the PF’s two armies. Neither side managed to gain a decisive advantage over the other in these years, but the war was extremely costly in terms of lives and spending for all sides. The Rhodesians continued to survive sanctions because of South Africa’s contravention of sanctions to provide oil as well as direct military assistance. Rhodesia’s air superiority and use of fighter jets and helicopters gave them an important advantage over ZIPRA and ZANLA, and the host countries of Zambia and Mozambique constantly complained to the Americans and British that they needed military aid in the form of air defence in order to deter future attacks. This type of technology was not forthcoming, which added to the pressure to end the conflict from the American perspective as it was known that the Soviets were willing and capable of supplying anti-aircraft weapons to the Zambians and Mozambicans. In fact, in late 1978, the ZIPRA forces would use Soviet-made anti-aircraft weapons to shoot down the Air Rhodesian planes. Before getting to this, however, it is important to examine how Nkomo’s diplomacy navigated the difficult waters of international and regional pressures. The main dilemma for Nkomo remained the lack of movement on unity between ZAPU and ZANU on the questions of merging their military forces and merging their political leadership. The latter seemed

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out of the question, so Nkomo hoped to approach Josia Tongogara to help merge the two military wings under one leadership. The problem remained that Mugabe was completely unwilling to concede any of his power over ZANU and ZANLA knowing that without complete and unitary support from Tongogara and ZANLA, his tenuous hold over the political wing of ZANU would be once again called into question. In fact, in early 1978, after returning from the Malta talks with the British and Americans, Mugabe once again found his leadership challenged by a faction within ZANLA who challenged the authoritarian leadership within ZANU and ZANLA. Tongogara and Machel once again suppressed the rebellion, but as Stephan Stedman argues, ‘The cost to Mugabe…was that his power rested on the shoulders of Machel and Tongogara’ (Stedman 143). Another major factor that needed to be contained was the development first announced in November 1977 and formally launched on 3 March 1978 that of the internal settlement between Smith, Muzorewa, Sithole and Chirau discussed above. The British, in particular, especially their Foreign Secretary, David Owen, expressed interest in using the internal settlement as a new basis for negotiations. The Americans, including Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and especially UN Ambassador Andrew Young, were much more critical of the internal settlement and joined the OAU, the UN and the Commonwealth in denouncing the internal settlement as an attempt by Smith and the minority white regime to put a ‘black face’ on their continued minority rule. Nkomo and Mugabe were both furious with the African leaders who had joined Smith and promised to carry out the war against Muzorewa and the rest of these black leaders. The main difference, however, which remained a consistent difference between Nkomo and Mugabe in their diplomatic strategies, was that Nkomo did not rule out negotiating with Smith in these years. He hoped to negotiate a settlement that would allow Smith to surrender. He and President Kaunda had, of course, a history of direct talks with Smith from the Victoria Falls talks and also Kaunda’s own efforts in 1977 to talk directly with Smith. In 1978, British Foreign Secretary David Owen worked with Nigerian Foreign Minister Joeseph Garba and Kaunda to organise a direct negotiation between Nkomo and Smith in Lusaka. The details of the meeting were kept from Nyerere and Mugabe given their previous objections to such direct talks outside the framework of the FLSP and AAP framework.

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The meeting took place on 14 August 1978, with only Nkomo, Smith and Garba present. Lots have been written about the meeting by all the participants, and the main concern in all the analyses has been whether or not Nkomo was willing to accept a role for himself without Mugabe if Smith agreed to surrender power to the Patriotic Front. Nkomo, Garba and even Smith have all related that Nkomo was adamant that Mugabe needed to be part of any settlement that he could not negotiate a deal separately for himself. This is an important point to emphasise, as it is really a key element to clear up as this secret meeting was used against Nkomo to portray him as a ‘sell-out’ who was willing to give up on the Patriotic Front in order to obtain the leadership of a new Zimbabwe. The evidence clearly points out that Nkomo resisted any attempts by Owen and Smith to have him join the internal settlement without Mugabe. The reality is that Nigeria became quite involved in the process to the extent that after the first meeting, Garba had Mugabe flown from Maputo to Lusaka to discuss the need to hold a second meeting with Nkomo, Mugabe and Smith. Mugabe refused and was then sent to Lagos by Nigerian military plane to have a stern talking to by General Obasanjo. According to Garba, Obasanjo pressed Mugabe to accept a secondary role in the political leadership of the PF under Nkomo’s leadership, and in return, ZANLA’s Tongogara would be selected to lead the combined liberation army with ZIPRA taking a secondary role. Mugabe apparently accepted this possibility but on return to Dar and Maputo, he changed his mind. Garba was therefore completely incensed when he found out that Nyerere had moved against future talks (Scarnecchia 2017). Generally, the fallout of that meeting was less serious at the time than it would become after Independence when the campaign to detract from Nkomo’s positive contributions to the creation of Zimbabwe would get into full swing. Both Nyerere and Machel were much more upset with David Owen and the British for trying to short-circuit the FLSP and Nyerere’s prominence as the de facto leader of the FLSPs. The strategy was also detrimental for Nkomo in terms of American support. If anything, the Americans grew more strongly in favour of Mugabe’s position in the PF after the Owen-Garba-Kaunda efforts to promote Nkomo as the leader of the PF. Tongogara, who had apparently offered some hope to Nkomo that he would be willing to merge the two armies under his leadership, became increasingly vocal on the separation of ZANLA and ZIPRA in their efforts. Following the criticisms of the

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direct talks with Smith, it became increasingly clear that the PF would remain unified in name only for the remainder of the negotiations. In September 1978, Nkomo approved the shooting down of the Rhodesian Airlines Viscount plane under the rationale that these civilian planes were used to transport troops. The Rhodesians retaliated by attacks on ZAPU camps in Zambia. A second Viscount was shot down, this time because ZIPRA apparently had intelligence that Rhodesian General Peter Walls was scheduled to fly on the plane that was shot down but he had changed his flight plans (Nkomo 167). The international outcry against the killing of Rhodesian civilians on that flight angered Nkomo, who pointed out in his press conferences the hypocrisy of international condemnation and sympathy when it came to the killing of whites versus the killings of black in the camps by Rhodesian forces. The British diplomats in Ethiopia described Nkomo’s response to questions about the ZIPRA attack on the plane, while he along with Mugabe was attending an International Solidarity conference hosted by the Mengistu regime in September 1978: Nkomo described the outcry over 48 white victims, when hundreds of thousands of Africans were killed, jailed, humiliated and deprived of their basic human rights as ‘simple racist hypocrisy.’ He said, ‘We live in an era where racism is religion. This is the legacy of Britain.’ Smith’s vow to liquidate ZAPU after this incident was a re-declaration of war to which the answer was war to the end. He claimed that the Front controlled certain areas within Salisbury itself, let alone rural areas under the control of ZIPRA. (FCO 1978)

From September 1978 until the Lancaster House talks (10 September to 15 December 1979), many combatants and civilians would be killed, injured and tortured. It is interesting to consider what the cost was for the intransigence of Mugabe and ZANLA over the negotiations with Smith. Was it worth holding out for an indeterminate time in order to increase their chances of coming to power instead of coming to power in a coalition with Nkomo? These are difficult questions but worth considering to avoid the linear argument promoted by ZANU that Nkomo’s attempts at negotiations were always within a framework of ‘sell-out’ politics that was so prevalent—and unfortunately still present—in Zimbabwean politics. One could equally ask what it would have meant for Nkomo to concede the leadership role to Mugabe in

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August 1978 in order to break the deadlock and to enter direct talks for a transitional government? Such questions are always only academic, as the historical actors did not know how much more time the war would take, nor how much more suffering their lack of unity and cooperation would cause. The one certainty, however, is that the Cold War helped to continue the war much longer than it otherwise might have lasted. Having read extensively in the archive records from the British, the Americans and the South Africans, it seems plausible that while the British were the most in favour of Nkomo as the next leader, the Americans and the South Africans remained less convinced of Nkomo given his long relationship with the Soviet Union and the possibilities this presented for Soviet, and in the case of South Africa, African National Congress (ANC)’s presence in an independent Zimbabwe. The irony here, of course, is that Nkomo was always portrayed as the more ‘moderate’ of the two PF leaders, but his Cold War support from the Soviets and the links between the South African ANC and ZIPRA, both in terms of training and fighting in Rhodesia, made ZANU and ZANLA less of a threat. For the South Africans, they continued to prefer the internal settlement as the best option, but they also understood quite soon after the official creation of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia in April 1979 that Bishop Muzorewa and the other African leaders were not capable of translating their will to lead into an effective African government that could bring the war to an end. At this conjuncture, in 1979, international diplomacy again played a key role. The biggest question in 1979 was whether or not the Americans and the British would accept the results of the April elections and recognise Bishop Muzorewa’s government. The consequences of such recognition would have been enormous in terms of lifting sanctions and making it easier for the new government to fight the war. Conservative elements in both the UK and the USA lobbied their respective governments to recognise the new government. President Jimmy Carter and recently elected Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher therefore both had big decisions to make. As Andy DeRoche and Nancy Mitchell have shown, the decision was not an easy one for Carter (DeRoche 2016; Mitchell 2016). Cold War imperatives still outweighed Carter’s proclivity to respect the PF’s claims as the only true representatives of the Zimbabwean people. There was great pressure on Carter to accept the internal settlement in order to bolster the new government, but there was also the keen awareness that both sides of the PF were committed

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to continue the war if this happened. Here, Nkomo and Mugabe were both adamant of their combined commitment to continue fighting. The personal hatred for Muzorewa and Sithole for ordering attacks on ZIPRA and ZANLA bases in Zambia and Mozambique made any possible direct negotiations impossible by 1979. In addition, Muzorewa and Sithole had been training their own personal armies inside Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, their auxiliaries, who were then the target of disdain and attacks by the PF. The key event that is often cited to be the ‘turning point’ in Margaret Thatcher’s decision to not recognise the internal settlement was the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) held in Lusaka in early August 1979. As DeRoche explains, Kenneth Kaunda played a major role, along with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, to convince the new British Prime Minister that it would be in Britain’s best interest to withhold recognition of the Muzorewa government and press for a negotiated settlement under British authority (DeRoche 2016). The success of this diplomacy opened the door rather wide and quickly for a constitutional conference under British leadership that would bring the PF in direct negotiation with the Smith and the new Muzorewa government. The subsequent Lancaster House talks offered Nkomo and Mugabe another opportunity to negotiate together for the future of an independent Zimbabwe. Unlike in the Geneva talks 3 years previously, Nkomo had no illusions of Mugabe’s increased power at the level of international diplomacy. Nkomo and Mugabe pushed forward together to deal with what was by any measure a very predetermined effort by British diplomat Lord Carrington to push for the approval of a constitution that would protect white Rhodesian political, economic and importantly land rights in exchange for the re-establishment of British rule under Governor Lord Soames who would return the country to legality and provide conditions for the demobilisation of the liberation forces and the first majority rule elections. It was a tall task and one the British tackled with a drive to get it all done as quickly as possible. The most interesting elements of the process are the diplomatic intrigue over British promises to the Rhodesians, particularly General Peter Walls and to the South Africans, that they would speed up the time between Lord Soames taking over and the election to help Bishop Muzorewa’s chances of winning the first election. The PF, of course, asked for more time to both demobilise their forces and run an election campaign. The compromise did not please either side, but throughout

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the Lancaster talks, the British continued to tell the Rhodesians and South Africans that they were doing everything possible to guarantee a Muzorewa victory. Nkomo’s lifelong dream of becoming the leader of independent Zimbabwe faded as the Lancaster House Agreement was negotiated and signed. He held onto the idea that perhaps Mugabe and others in ZANU would agree to contest the election together as a united Patriotic Front, but given the years of acrimonious relations, the chances of this actually happening were very slim. Nkomo writes somewhat dramatically in his autobiography of how he thought all along that Mugabe and ZANU would campaign together with him and ZAPU, but this was really not much of a possibility as Mugabe and ZANU knew well before Lancaster House that they had the votes they needed to win a majority. There was still talk by the British, South Africans and Rhodesians throughout Lancaster of attempting to split Nkomo off from Mugabe and the PF, but this also was never truly a viable alternative. Throughout the campaign, Nkomo and his supporters complained of the intimidation of their campaigners in areas under ZANU and UANC (Muzorewa) control. But in the end, the complaints were strongest from Muzorewa’s campaign who felt that the intimidation and violence used by ZANU supporters prohibited their ability to mobilise votes in their favours. The more likely reason for Muzorewa’s poor showing was the knowledge that rural and urban Zimbabwean voters had that if Muzorewa was elected again, the war would continue and there was no guarantee that the war would end with Bishop Muzorewa in control. The aggressive use of Rhodesian troops and the UANC auxiliaries since April 1979 had only added to the mistrust most voters had in Muzorewa to bring the war to an end.

Post-Independence The transition to Zimbabwe was a bitter-sweet moment for Nkomo. He had done so much to hold the liberation movement together over the past 20 some years and had worked tirelessly for the purpose of a real majority rule transition away from Smith’s illegal regime. All the same, his longtime opponent, since the 1963 creation of ZANU, was now the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe and now Joshua Nkomo found himself having to serve in a Government that was far from sympathetic to him. There was, of course, a recognition among most of the ZANU insiders that Nkomo deserved praise and respect for his years of efforts.

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However, as time went on and the ZANU insiders around Mugabe, and including Mugabe himself, became more confident in their role as leaders of a sovereign nation, the respect shown to Nkomo grew thin and then turned into outright hatred and abuse. As Nkomo describes in his autobiography, he was not accepted as part of the ZANU government and was only allowed to stay in a ministerial position out of respect for his past and his needed role in integrating former ZAPU and exZIPRA soldiers into either the Zimbabwean National Army or civilian life. Nkomo’s efforts were crucial, along with those of ZIPRA leaders Dumiso Dabengwa and ZNA Lieutenant General Lookout Masuku in helping try and smooth out the very tense relations between ex-ZIPRA and ex-ZANLA during the demobilisation and re-integration process. The most crucial period came in 1981 when former ZIPRA and former ZANLA soldiers engaged in pitched battles at the barracks near Bulawayo and also at barracks near Harare. Nkomo had to intervene to ask his former ZIPRA soldiers and leadership to cooperate with the government. One of the consequences of this conflict and the process of de-arming the two sides are that large arms caches were stored on ZAPU-owned farms and cooperatives. This storing of weapons in case of future conflicts between former ZIPRA and ZANLA forces would become the ‘smoking gun’ that Mugabe’s ZANU government would use against Nkomo, Dabengwa and Masuku in 1982. The latter two were arrested and charged with treason for the arms caches, and Nkomo was removed from his ministerial position but remained a member of parliament. Both Masuku and Dabengwa were eventually cleared of charges, but much like the Smith regime in the 1960s, they were both immediately re-arrested and held without charges. Masuku would tragically die in April 1986, a month after his official release from detention (Todd 2008: 147–166). Nkomo, for his part, stayed in Zimbabwe until it was increasingly clear to him that the ZANU-controlled police were after him in February 1983; after his driver and two others ‘were shot dead in cold blood at his house’, he left the country for Botswana (Todd 2008: 57). From Botswana, he left for London. The diplomatic record on Nkomo’s flight to London is revealing for the ways a government that had invested so much into the creation of Zimbabwe could now so carefully avoid offering him any assistance for fear of offending their new ally, Robert Mugabe, the leader they had tried their best, just a few years previously, to keep out of power. Even maverick businessman Tiny Rowland, under pressure from ZANU, refused to continue to support

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his old friend Nkomo in London, so Nkomo had to rely on ZAPU contacts in London. Throughout this period, ZANU increasingly blamed Nkomo for the dissident problem in Zimbabwe. Given that many of the dissidents were ex-ZIPRA, and some invoked Nkomo as their leader and reason for fighting, the ZANU leadership constantly complained that the dissidents must have been directed somehow by Nkomo, a claim Nkomo repeatedly denied. However bad tensions were in 1982, they could not prepare Nkomo and ZAPU members for the tragic events of Operation Gukurahundi in January 1983. The ZNA’s 5th Brigade had been trained for a one-year period in bases in the eastern highlands by the North Koreans. Originally discussed as a potential ‘presidential guard’ for Mugabe, the 5th Brigade was made up of ChiShona-speaking soldiers who were clearly under instructions to ‘discipline’ those who supported ZAPU in the Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces, the areas where ZAPU still maintained electoral support to the disdain of Mugabe and others in ZANU who wanted to promote a ‘one-party state’ that would do away with parliamentary opposition. Nkomo and his ZAPU party leadership soon found themselves inundated with testimonies of 5th Brigade killings, torture and rape of civilians thought to be supporting ‘ZAPU dissidents’. The state crimes committed by the 5th Brigade in the first few months of 1983 were well documented, and despite attempts by ZANU-PF to limit access to the region by foreign journalists, the story did reach the wider world (CCJP 1997). As Judith Todd explains, Nkomo ‘had returned home from exile in August 1983 to pre-empt moves to expel him from parliament’ (Todd 2008: 89). From Zimbabwe, he continued to contact the media and international diplomats to complain against the poor treatment of himself and ZAPU by the ZANU government. Nkomo himself did his best to get the word out to the international media once he realised that the Zimbabwean state was giving him a cold shoulder, including Mugabe, and would not listen to his and other’s demands that the 5th Brigade be withdrawn and the killings and torture brought to a stop. Nkomo, still a member of parliament, effectively used his parliamentary immunity to criticise Operation Gukurahundi in parliament. Before making such presentations, he would alert the foreign media and international diplomats to make sure they were present to hear his reports. These interventions further enraged Mugabe and the others in ZANU’s leadership. A particular enemy of Nkomo was Minister Enos Nkala who, as himself a

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Ndebele, was one of the more vocal in his criticisms of Nkomo. Mugabe and Nkomo both blamed Nkomo for dissident violence and made it clear to ZAPU supporters that continued support for ZAPU would bring on further destruction and suffering, often expressed in such biblical terms (Scarnecchia 2012). There is no space here to explore the different phases of the Gukurahundi, but Shari Eppel, who has spent many years exploring the human costs of this particular state crime, has suggested that the Gukurahundi would take on different strategies from its first phase in 1983 all the way until 1987 when Nkomo finally did concede power to ZANU to sign the unity accords of 1987 (Eppel quoted in Scarnecchia 2015; Eppel 2005). Throughout this period, Nkomo continued to inform foreign diplomats, important non-governmental agencies and the foreign media of the serious plight his supporters suffered at the hands of ZANU-PF.

Conclusion It is tempting to follow Nkomo’s own argument in his autobiography that consistently paints him as a victim of circumstances that he heroically fought against with a moral uprightness that matched the nastiness of his opponents, that is, of course, the trope of heroic nationalist, antiimperialist autobiography since the writings of Jawaharlal Nehru, Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, etc. And in this way, his own vision of his life and work in the service of creating an African majority rule government is a very heroic story. But as with any political biography by a key actor, much of the book is also about creating a myth and legend around his role. Interestingly, the book itself was released and serialised in the press in 1984, during the Gukurahundi period and a key time in Mugabe’s attempts to keep foreign aid and support even though the extent of Gukurahundi abuses was widely known. The Gukurahundi, while so devastating to the people of the Matabeleland and the Midland Provinces, and to so many ZAPU politicians and supporters throughout Zimbabwe, also would become Mugabe’s Achilles heel in terms of his own political career and his historical legacy. As many diplomats pointed out, it was Mugabe’s own pre-Gukurahundi personal campaign against Nkomo that would eventually contribute to the extremely costly and tragic decision to deploy the 5th Brigade in Operation Gukurahundi. M. K. Ewan, the new British High Commissioner in Harare in 1983, wrote candidly

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at the end of his first year, putting the blame for Zimbabwe’s problems squarely on Mugabe’s shoulders: The root of much of the trouble has lain in a combination of arrogance and arbitrariness which has characterized Mugabe’s increasingly autocratic style of leadership. Early in the year [1983] he was faced with growing armed dissidence in Matabeleland, caused largely by his own ineptitude the previous year [1982] in precipitating an unnecessary showdown with Joshua Nkomo’s largely Matabeleland-based ZAPU. His response was to send in the 5th Brigade, a cowardly and ill-disciplined Shona unit ‘trained’ by the North Koreans. Instead of engaging the dissidents, they tried to reestablish governmental authority through a campaign of murderous intimidation of local villagers. (Ewan 1984)

Some 35 years after the Gukurahundi began, there are many still waiting for justice from the Zimbabwean government. ZANU-PF still remains in power as well, so the chances for justice for the victims and their families remain slim at the time of writing. What new diplomatic history can help to revel is that the backward-looking ‘patriotic history’ that continues to paint Joshua Nkomo in a negative light can and should be revised. His role was obviously not always as selfless as he projected in his autobiography, but it is also increasingly plausible to argue that he did not ‘sell-out’ the nationalist cause for his own personal gain. As more and more documents become available for this period, it is clear that Nkomo contributed extensively to the diplomatic success of the PF in the years between 1976 and 1979, and at times when Mugabe and ZANU were showing their characteristic intransigence, which at times was a convenient way to mask internal party weaknesses, Nkomo was often the only leader the Americans and the British could find to continue serious diplomacy and conversations in order to move the process forward. Nkomo’s contributions to the creation of Zimbabwe certainly do still warrant the name ‘Father of Zimbabwe’, even well beyond those years when he was first seen in those terms by Zimbabweans. The tragic period of the early 1980s demonstrated again his ability to rise above challenges and the violence directed against him, much like in the early 1960s when he bravely faced up to an embittered state structure that wanted Nkomo and ZAPU removed from the political scene. To his credit and skills as a diplomat, Nkomo did not let this happen, even after years of abuse and detention. Scholars today need to approach their research and writing

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with their eyes wide open to ways that will counter the ‘patriotic history’ of the past 15 years or so. It was natural for that ZANU-PF supporters would want to promote their contributions and downplay those of ZAPU, but the historical record does not bear out some of the extreme criticisms usually cast against Nkomo and others in ZAPU as the nationalists fought for majority rule. More work still needs to be done on the contributions of Nkomo and ZAPU as such work can contribute to a more balanced understanding of the personal efforts of Joshua Nkomo towards the formation of the Zimbabwean state.

References Anderson, J. (1978, April 21). Rhodesia accord gets top priority. Washington Post. Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP). ([1997] 2007). Breaking the silence, building true peace: A report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980–1988. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP). [1975] (1999). The man in the middle: Torture, resettlement and eviction. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. (Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Legal Resources Foundation, 1997). DeRoche, A. (2016). Kenneth Kaunda, the United States and Southern Africa. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Eppel, S. (2005). Gukurahundi: The need for truth and reparation. In B. Raftopoulos & T. Savage (Eds.), Zimbabwe: Injustice and Political Reconciliation. Harare: Weaver Press. Ewans, M. K. (1984). ‘Zimbabwe: Annual Report 1983’ 3 January FCO 105/1742 South Africa/Zimbabwe Relations 1984. National Archives UK. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). (1978). ‘Addis Ababa to FCO telno 353 of 16 September’ Prem 16/1835 Rhodesia Part 34. National Archives Kew. Mhanda, W. (2011). Dzino: Memories of a freedom fighter. Harare: Weaver Press. Miller, J. (2016). An African volk: The Apartheid regime and its search for survival. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Mitchell, N. (2016). Jimmy Carter in Africa: Race and the cold war. United States: Stanford University Press. Mlambo, A. (2014). A history of Zimbabwe. New York: Cambridge University Press.

192  T. Scarnecchia Moore, D. B. (2012). Two perspectives on Zimbabwe’s national democratic revolution: Thabo Mbeki and Wilfred Mhanda. Journal of Contemporary African Studies, 20(1), 119–138. Msindo, E. (2012). Ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Transformations in Kalanga and Ndebele societies, 1860–1990. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Scarnecchia, T. (2008). The roots of urban democracy and political violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and highfield, 1940 to 1964. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. Scarnecchia, T. (2015). Catholic voices of the voiceless: The politics of reporting Rhodesian and Zimbabwean state violence in the 1970s and the early 1980s. Acta Academica, 47(1), 182–207. Scarnecchia, T. (2017). Front line diplomats: African diplomatic representations of the Zimbabwean Patriotic Front, 1976–1978. Journal of Southern African Studies. (forthcoming). Sibanda, E. (2005). The Zimbabwe African People’s Union 1961–1987. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Todd, J. G. (2008). Through the darkness: A life in Zimbabwe. Cape Town: Zebra Press.

CHAPTER 8

Joshua Nkomo: The Trial of a Philosopher of Liberation William Jethro Mpofu

Introduction To participate in the thinking and writing about the political thought and historical legacy of Joshua Nkomo is to engage in both the acceptance and rejection of some already passed verdicts. The political life and historical times of Joshua Nkomo are marked by contesting verdicts of affirmation and those of negation. On the category of affirmation, Joshua Nkomo is ‘Father Zimbabwe’, a founding patriarch of the nation of Zimbabwe (Nkomo 1984) and ‘Chibwechitedza’ (a small slippery rock) that defines an elusive revolutionary who severally cheated death (Nkomo 1984: 71) until he matured into ‘Umdala Wethu’ (our dear old man) whose life is annually commemorated. On the category of negation, Joshua Nkomo became ‘father of the dissidents’ as he was accused of leading bandits that sought to overthrow a legitimate government (Nkomo 1984: 230). His life and that of his family was endangered as the government of Robert Mugabe unleashed a force to hunt him down and to punish his supporters. Nkomo also became an inconvenient

W.J. Mpofu (*)  University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_8

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and costly hero whose hatred or fear of war prevented him from using military and violent means in defending his party and supporters that became targets of ethnic cleansing and genocide. This chapter departs from the observation that both the affirmations and negations of the political figure of Joshua Nkomo tend to cloud rather than illuminate his status as a political theorist and philosopher of liberation whose ethics of revolutionary struggle privileged dialogue and the preservation of life against war and its costs to humanity. As signified in ‘Father Zimbabwe’ and ‘Umdala Wethu’ (our dear old man), Joshua Nkomo is represented in language and signature that defines a ceremonial, symbolic and saintly octogenarian and not the compelling revolutionary thinker that he actually was. As ‘Chibwechitedza’ (the small slippery rock), Nkomo is portrayed as more of a dodgy trickster, some kind of a MacGyver and a James Bond figure and not a principled thinker and revolutionary who was prepared to die for freedom. That Nkomo was an effeminate coward who feared the revolutionary uses of violence and bloodshed as Dinizulu Macaphulana vividly argues ignores that Joshua Nkomo, out of philosophical principle, not the convenience of safety and his personal preservation, thought that war was unnecessary, human beings needed to embrace dialogue as a means of conflict resolution (Nkomo 1984: 1). Away from the caricatures of affirmation and negation that accompany the multiplicity of narratives on Joshua Nkomo, this chapter argues that Joshua Nkomo was neither a messianic legend nor a cowardly opportunist. Joshua Nkomo was in actuality a political thinker and philosopher of liberation who was formed and shaped by concrete historical experiences and political conditions of colonialism under which he was socialized, educated and trained. Philosophers of liberation as described by Enrique Dussel (1985) are men and women of flesh, blood and bone whose intellectual and social sensitivity, love for life and freedom compel them to rebel against domination of any form. The vocation of the philosophers of liberation is not only to humanize and liberate the dehumanized victims of oppression such as colonized peoples, but it is also to humanize and liberate the oppressors such as the colonizers who are entangled in the inhuman condition of being racist haters and exploiters. In the liberatory philosophical vision of Joshua Nkomo, it was not enough to liberate black Zimbabweans from Rhodesian colonialism, it was also important

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to integrate the white Rhodesians themselves into the Zimbabwean nation as full citizens. From here, this chapter proceeds to delineate the intellectual and political formation of Joshua Nkomo by examining the social and historical conditions that produced him and his thought. This chapter delves into the thinking and political activism of Joshua Nkomo as a philosopher of liberation. An examination of Joshua Nkomo’s theological thinking follows before an exposition of his politics of liberation that privileged the preservation of the self and others, including political opponents.

Political and Intellectual Formation of Nkomo Before the present chapter explores the political thinking and philosophy of liberation of Joshua Nkomo, it is important to examine the historical conditions and social experiences that conditioned him and shaped his mental universe. Political thinkers do not produce their thoughts outside the historical environment and social conditions that surround them. Immediate political conditions tend to mark their stamp on the bodies and consciousness of thinkers. Nyongolo, Joshua Nkomo’s father was born in 1880 and his mother in 1885 which means that his parents were toddlers when Cecil John Rhodes landed in what was to be called Rhodesia. What his parents passed on to Joshua Nkomo is an archive of memories carried in stories of colonial conquest and the resistance to it. Born on 19 June 1917, Joshua Nkomo entered a world where black people had become effectively engulfed in subjection to the British Empire alongside fresh memories of what life had been before conquest. Inside the engulfing envelope of conquest and colonialism, Joshua Nkomo’s parents became Christians under the London Missionary Society (Nkomo 1984: 8). Christianity provided the privilege of missionary education that catapulted Nyongolo to the position of school teacher and Christian preacher. The Christian Bible, alongside the oral narratives of conquest and resistance to it became part of the socialization in the Nkomo family (Nkomo 1984: 10). By his mother, Joshua Nkomo was tutored to be a trusting and also trustworthy child in what in his later life made him

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vulnerable to being betrayed and beguiled in the dirty game of power politics (Nkomo 1984: 8). Educated colonial subjects such as Nyongolo not only enjoyed privileges that colonial modernity offered but also endured the acute experience of exclusion and marginality from full citizenship. In the observation of Xolela Mangcu (2008: 9) following readings of cultural historian Ntongela Masilela, enlightened colonial subjects used their education and Christianity ‘as political and cultural facilitators of entrance into European modernity’ and the opportunities that it occasioned. For that reason, besides being a teacher and a Christian minister, Nyongolo excelled in the cultivation of crops and cattle ranching (Nkomo 1984: 9). The privilege of selling his farm produce and boasting at some point a herd of one thousand cattle turned into pain when colonial regulations required natives to reduce the number of their cattle and to move their homesteads to less productive landscapes. By its imperial nature, colonialism tends to turn its supposed beneficiaries amongst the natives into victims and injured subjects (Dussel 2008b: 489). On a daily basis, Joshua Nkomo as a toddler witnessed the reduction of and dehumanization of his father by the same system that on the outside looked like an organization of life that benefited and developed him and his family: Father was the greatest man in the world. But there were people who treated him disrespectfully. When he met one of the people on the road, he would take off his hat and stand aside, but they would not take their hats in return; at best they would nod their heads and pass on, barely noticing him, these were the pale people, the Europeans. (Nkomo 1984: 16)

The way the European conquerors treated his father who was supposed to be an important man in society pressed it upon Joshua Nkomo that the modern colonial world was an asymmetrical organization of life. The semblance of privileges that his family enjoyed in the community came with a price of not fully belonging to the conquerors and also being distanced from those that had been conquered and did not enjoy any of the privileges. As a toddler attending primary school, Joshua Nkomo was embarrassed by the privilege of putting on shiny Khakhi shorts amongst a multitude of other children who put on animal skins and clothes made out of grass and tree leaves (Nkomo 1984: 11). To forge a sense of belonging to the crowd of the colonized, he would hide his shorts and wear animal skins.

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For Nkomo (1984: 17) the punitive modern colonial world began to be even more hellish when ‘the white farmers began to demand that the residents’ amongst blacks ‘work free of payment on their land, in lieu of rent’ and the areas available for arable farming by Africans were cut down. For black people to pay rent for land that a few decades back was considered theirs was a taxing experience. This experience was even more demeaning when blacks had to pay tax to the colonial administration. The black people were sensitized of the nature of colonialism that meant maximum profit for the colonizer and minimum to no benefit for the colonized (Memmi 1974: 48). Under such punitive historical conditions, the marginalized and exploited natives begin to imagine ‘an alternative history that emerges from the experience of the victims: The ideas of those who have been invaded and dominated and who have not had the chance to express themselves’ (Dussel 2008b: 492). Joshua Nkomo began to question the truth of Christianity as a religion of love, peace and happiness. In his view, ‘that there is a God I devoutly believe- but a God of all mankind, not just for a selected people’ (Nkomo 1984: 11). The peace and love that the Christian God seemed to dispense had been isolated to the colonizers and kept away from the toiling black masses, to Nkomo there must have been something wrong with such a sectional and partisan God who permits another race to oppress another. Now that the religion and modern knowledge of the colonizer did not have answers to the strong questions of life that confronted the colonized, the colonized had to seek answers elsewhere in their own history and social experiences. Not only did Joshua Nkomo steal out of his Christian father’s homestead to join ceremonies of traditional African religion in the villages (Nkomo 1984: 12) but he also took an interest in the history and the traditions of the indigenous peoples of the surrounding villages. In the communities of the colonized: Most people stuck to their traditional religion, which the white people mistakenly described as ancestor worship; in fact the African people of what is now called Zimbabwe worship almighty God who is a spirit, with whom they communicate through their ancestors. (Nkomo 1984: 10)

As a form of spiritual and epistemic resistance to the punitive new world, the colonized stuck to their traditions and sought to draw answers from their indigenous knowledge for the pressing historical questions that the modern colonial world presented. For Joshua Nkomo, this involved a form of rebellion in shape of going behind the back of his father a

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Christian preacher to join African traditional worship in the surrounding communities. ‘The (re)turn to epistemological positions informed by indigenous knowledge systems, although not a panacea for the total manifestations of this situation’, of liberation it ‘does offer the possibility for creating a critical space for knowledge (re)production in the heart of dominant global knowledge circuits as well as serve as a challenge and corrective to the epistemic hegemony of the North’ (Corey 2011: 105). Colonialism was not going to be dethroned by the simple gestures of returning to the religion and traditions of the past, but the gestures of return constituted meaningful resistance and negotiations of emancipated spaces within the engulfing envelope of coloniality. Colonial conditions were themselves an effectively politicizing and radicalizing experience that turned victims into active opponents of the system. ‘Politics cannot be separated from ontology, the political and the ontological are inseparable’ in the view of Percy Mabogo More (2012: 39) and ‘philosophy must interrogate the problem of being’ if it is to understand politics. In that view, colonial conditions helped to produce thinkers that questioned and challenged colonialism as Nkomo was to. In his commitment and dedication to the religion of his people, Joshua Nkomo had to be forcefully removed by his father from the lessons that he was receiving to become a traditional African healer (Nkomo 1984: 21). His father, in line with his Christianity and modernity intended to send him to a Christian mission boarding school. Beside Christianity that conditioned the spiritual universe of the colonized and sought to shape them into manageable colonial subjects, the colonial education system as designed by Christian missionaries had an interest in producing young natives into functionaries of coloniality. As Nkomo was sent into a Christian mission boarding school, he was to encounter the colonizing effects of colonial education. In actuality, ‘there is no such thing as a neutral education process. Education either functions as an instrument that is used to facilitate the integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system’ and in the process ‘bring about conformity to it’ (Richard Shaul in Paulo Freire 1993: 16). Ngugi wa Thiongo who did not only go through Christian mission education but has also studied and written on it observes that this education was part of the paraphernalia of the modern colonial universe that sought to change the life of the colonized forever in the interests of the colonizer:

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In order to make economic and political occupation complete and effective, the colonizer tried also to control the cultural environment- education, religion, language, literature, songs and dances, every form of expressive practices—hoping in this way to control a peoples values, their world outlook and hence their images and definition of self. (Ngugi wa Thiong’o 1997: 8)

This kind of education meant to shepherd the mind and the imagination of the colonized away from themselves, their past and independent future into the colonial envelope in which they would be sealed forever. In being taught arithmetic and carpentry in which he excelled at the boarding school (Nkomo 1984: 24), Nkomo was not being developed into an independent thinker or a free citizen but a manageable colonial subject who would function profitably in the interest of the colonial administration. It was out of his radicalization and rebelliousness after school that he was dismissed from his job for demanding equal pay and same working conditions with white employees (Nkomo 1984: 27). Nkomo became one of the few Africans who came out of mission education untamed and even more politicized and radicalized. In spite of the domesticating effects of colonial and missionary education, Nkomo had to argue later that ‘from my earliest youth I thirsted for freedom’, and ‘when I became a man, I understood that I could not be free while my country and its people were subject to a government in which they had no say’ (Nkomo 1984: 1). The privileges of modernity in the family environment and calming effects of mission education could not remove the discontent that Nkomo had about life under colonialism. After mission education, the higher education that Nkomo earned involved travel to and stay in another country, South Africa. Travel, stay and education in another country tend to open up the world to a curious mind and expose one to different people and experiences that are enriching, and can be further radicalizing and politicizing. Kwame Nkrumah (1964: 1) believes that the ‘ten years’ that he ‘spent in the United States of America represents a crucial period in the development of my philosophical conscience’. In South Africa, Joshua Nkomo studied and qualified in social work. Added to the study of social work, South Africa exposed Joshua Nkomo to the vagaries of Afrikaner apartheid that intensified in 1948 (Nkomo 1984: 37). Apartheid was not going without resistance, Joshua Nkomo had the privilege to attend mass rallies and meeting of anti-apartheid radicals of the African National Congress

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where political speeches were delivered and radical political literature was circulated (Nkomo 1984: 35). In this volatile and charged political environment in South Africa, Joshua Nkomo made enriching friendships with many black and white people who left him with the deep impression that besides artificial political barriers, white people and black people were after all the same, human beings (Nkomo 1984: 33). As he arrived back in Rhodesia to work as a social worker at the Rhodesia National Railways in Bulawayo, in 1948, Nkomo had a deeper understanding of colonialism, apartheid and the need for resistance to coloniality. Soon enough, he became the President of the African Railways Employees Association (Nkomo 1984: 44). This position exposed him to the conditions and experiences under which the poor black workers came as part of the agonizing colonial environment. Nkomo was pained by the way employees were treated as beggars, being given the food that they earned in form of weekly rations of groceries instead of being paid their due wages (Nkomo 1984: 43). Later in life, the experience of prison, where Joshua Nkomo was jailed for more than a decade by the colonial administration for his political ideas and activities also became a ‘school’ in which Nkomo read and thought in depth about life under colonialism and the aspirations of liberation for black people (Nkomo 1984: 124).

Nkomo’s Philosophy of Liberation That Nkomo was formed by his life experiences, traditional socialization and education into a deep thinker on the condition of the colonized and the need for their freedom can scarcely be disputed. What can be discussed is what the content of his thinking was. This chapter advances the argument that of the many types of political thinkers and philosophers, Joshua Nkomo became a philosopher of liberation. Philosophers of liberation are not just those political thinkers and theorists who apply themselves to thinking about liberation but they think about a certain defined type of liberation. In other words, not all liberation thinkers are philosophers of liberation. Argentinean theologian and philosopher of liberation Enrique Dussel attempted to flesh out the unique qualities of philosophers of liberation that separate them from many other thinkers on politics and freedom. To start with, Enrique Dussel distinguished the philosophy of Liberation from the extended family of other philosophies in that it is philosophy that has no time for luxuries. The philosophy of liberation

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is that philosophy that ponders on human problems, and especially the problem of power and its uses for domination and oppression in such imperial adventures as slavery and colonialism: Philosophy, when it is really philosophy and not sophistry or ideology, does not ponder philosophy. It does not ponder philosophical texts, except as pedagogical propaedeutic to provide itself with interpretive categories. Philosophy ponders the nonphilosophical; the reality. But because it involves reflection on its own reality, it sets out from what already is, from its own world, its own system, its own space. The philosophy that has emerged from a periphery has always done so in response to a need to situate itself with regard to a center—in total exteriority. (Dussel 1985: 03)

In other words, philosophers and liberation thinkers such as Nkomo had no time to debate what philosophy should be or did they spend time exploring philosophical classics. Nkomo had to engage philosophically with the real challenges of the colonized in practice not in theory, and in thinking about colonialism and the need for liberation he thought from his personal experience and the existential experience of his family and community. Nkomo thought and spoke of liberation not from a lecture hall or seminar room but from amongst the colonized in their exteriority and marginality from power. In describing the thinking Jomo Kenyatta who was his student, British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski noted that Kenyatta had a compelling view of the world. Malinowski observed that what made Kenyatta a competent philosopher was that he spoke from direct experience of colonialism using the tools of his European education and training. In the view of Bronislaw Malinowski (1938: 1), ‘an African who looks at things from the tribal point of view and at the same time from that of western civilization experiences the tragedy of the modern world in an especially acute manner’. Similar to Kenyatta, Nkomo was passionately rooted in the indigenous knowledge, religion and spirituality of his people, while at the same time, he imbibed European learning and observed the lives and thinking of European peoples. In fleshing out the category of philosophers of liberation, Dussel described them as: Distant thinkers, those who had a perspective of the center from the periphery, those who had to define themselves in the presence of an already established image of the human person and in the presence of

202  W.J. Mpofu uncivilized fellow humans, the newcomers, the ones who hope because they are already outside, these are those who have a clear mind for pondering reality. They have nothing to hide. How can they hide domination if they undergo it? How would their philosophy be an ideological ontology if they praxis is of liberation from the centre they are opposing? Philosophical intelligence is never so truthful, clean, and precise as when it starts from oppression and does not have to defend any privileges, because it has none.’ (Dussel 1985: 04)

These thinkers from oppressed, colonized and exploited corners of the world experienced the suffering of their people directly but also had the privilege to understand the knowledge and ways of the European oppressors. Counting himself amongst the philosophers of liberation from his experiences as a political exile in Mexico, Enrique Dussel noted that philosophers of liberation were ‘those of us who are able to effectively combine proficiency in our own regional tradition within the South, with the necessary familiarity with the latest achievements of European or US philosophy’ (Dussel 2013: 16). Frantz Fanon (2001: 169) described this species of thinkers as native intellectuals who use their modern education to intellectualize from amongst their people as a kind of vanguard thinkers who assure their people that their culture is not backwards and that colonialism is crime against their humanity. Organic intellectuals as vanguard thinkers from amongst their people tend to have their own problematics that come with eliticism. Peter Ekeh described these privileged and elite political thinkers as ‘the second public’ that was created by colonialism. Because of their education and dalliance with modernity they see themselves as equals to Europeans in thought and being, on the other hand they tend to consider themselves as superior to their own people and therefore as ideal candidates to rule over them, leading to tyrannical tendencies and a multiplicity of complexes such as a sense of entitlement to power (Ekeh 1975: 102). Philosophers of liberation are different from the native intellectuals that Frantz Fanon describes, or the second public that Peter Ekeh elucidates on. Philosophers of liberation are even different from the organic intellectuals that are valorized by Antonio Gramsci. The politics of eliticism and vanguardism that native intellectuals, the second public and the organic intellectuals practice espouses politics as the ‘will to power’ that Friedrich Nietzsche (1968a) emphasizes. In this paradigm of politics, power is understood as domination and not liberation. Enrique Dussel (2008a: 3)

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argues that the ‘will to power’ has corrupted the noble vocation of politics and turned it into a corrupt profession and a dirty game that fetishized power and domination. The philosophy of liberation that Dussel defends prefers the ‘will to live’ that looks down upon domination, war and violence while it privileges liberation and the preservation of life. As defined by Dussel, the philosophy of liberation trains itself against all types and forms of domination in the world to such an extent that it becomes a planetary way of thinking about liberation. Slaves in the plantations, the colonial subjects in the colonies and exiles in their camps can all invoke the philosophy of liberation as their language of life: The Philosophy of Liberation that I practice, not only in Latin America, but also regarding all types of oppression on the planet (of women, the discriminated races, the exploited classes, the marginalized poor, the impoverished countries, the old and homeless exiled and buried in shelters and asylums, the local religions, the homeless and orphaned children (a lost generation) of inhospitable cities, the systems destroyed by capital and the market… in short, the immense majority of humanity), begins a dialogue with the hegemonic European-North American philosophical community. (Dussel 1996: vii)

Instead of privileging war and bloodletting, the philosophy of liberation centres dialogue with the political thinking of the oppressor. The philosophers of liberation seek to challenge the thinking about politics and power, the will to power, that the oppressor espouses. As a philosopher of liberation, Nkomo took the trouble to engage in dialogue and negotiations with Ian Smith the leader of the colonial regime in Rhodesia: In talking to Smith I took a big personal risk […] I am still criticized for trying to negotiate with Smith. I hated what the man personally stood for. I longed for majority rule in Zimbabwe and justice for my people. I wanted those things with as little killing as possible between the white people who had an equal right to live in the new nation of Zimbabwe. (Nkomo 1984: 158)

While the fetishism of power and will to power that Dussel condemns privileges a nihilistic approach to conflict and centres war, the philosophy of liberation prefers dialogue that preserves the life of both the oppressor and the oppressed, and humanizes both of them. Even after independence when his life, that of his family and supporters was threatened while

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thousands of members of ZAPU were massacred, Nkomo resisted the temptation to retaliate in kind. With ZIPRA, an able, trained, disciplined and equipped army Joshua Nkomo could have easily used military means to engage with his opponent but he insisted on keeping the peace, ‘my family and my friends were threatened, my passport was impounded, my speeches calling for unity and justice were methodically suppressed’ by his enemies ‘but still the ruling party could not provoke me to disloyalty toward a nation I had struggled to liberate’ (Nkomo 1984: 1). Nkomo’s response to attacks and violence appear clinically to be a form of cowardice that avoids war even if it is justified. However, the understanding of philosophy of liberation is that war is unnecessary expenditure of human life and happiness (Nkomo 1984: 1). Defending this kind of messianic political thinking that borders on turning the other cheek to oppression, Paulo Freire notes that the oppressed from their position of being the exploited and the dominated, the dehumanized are the ones who must defend the thinking that seeks to liberate both themselves and their oppressors. Otherwise, ‘who are better prepared than the oppressed to better understand the terrible significance of an oppressive society?’ and ‘who suffers the effects of oppression more than the oppressed? Who can better understand the necessity of liberation?’ (Freire 1993: 27). The oppressed in their subjugation think and speak from a position of privilege in terms of the philosophy of liberation. In persuasively addressing himself to the King, Lorenzo de Medici of ancient Florence in Italy, Niccolo Machiavelli noted that political thinkers are comparable to the surveyors of land. To understand mountains surveyors position themselves on low ground and to study low ground they climb mountains: Just as men who are sketching the landscape put themselves down in the plain to study the nature of the mountains and the highlands, and to study the low-lying land they put themselves high on the mountains, so to comprehend fully the nature of the people, one must be a prince, and to comprehend fully the nature of princes one must be an ordinary citizen. (Machiavelli 1961: 1)

In a strong way, as a philosopher of liberation, Nkomo emerged from the low ground amongst his colonized people as one of them. He also emerged from the high ground as an educated political thinker and activist who could debate and engage the European colonizers in their

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language and their logic. Philosophers of liberation are that species of political thinkers who use the intellectual and philosophical tools of modernity to attempt to answer the strong questions that modernity and coloniality have created. For that reason, the philosophers of liberation can be a problem to the colonial oppressor as much as they can be to the colonized peoples. In the case of Joshua Nkomo, the philosopher of liberation is a product of colonialism that uses the education that he benefited from modernity to demolish coloniality and seeks to set afoot a new liberated humanity shared by both the former oppressor and the former oppressed.

Philosophy of Liberation and the Theo-Politics of Nkomo In his defence of what he called the ‘theology of liberation’, Gustavo Gutierrez noted that theology creates a meeting point between religious faith and scientific reasoning. Theology, as an understanding of God and religion, seeks to help religious faith to take into account the workings of the world and therefore remain relevant in the world. One of the theological problems that Nkomo had with the Christian religion as preached by Christian missionaries and native preachers such as his father was that Christianity seemed to justify colonialism and racism and that it participated in the erasure of the traditions, history and the memory of the colonized. When Nkomo visited England for the first time, he was struck by the fact that Christianity there sat well with ancestral memories. It was not the same in Rhodesia where natives were forced to abandon traditions and memories of their ancestors: I began to think about Christianity and power. At home becoming a Christian meant giving up our own old ways to follow white clergyman and a white Christ. Our religion, in which we approached God through our ancestors and the history of our people, was said to be primitive and backward. But here in England the ancestral tombs in the churches signified the continuity of the nation, and I could not see what was so different about that. (Nkomo 1984: 52)

Nkomo thought theologically when he made the observation that Christianity maintained rather than challenged colonial and racial organizations of power. The Christianity in the Rhodesian colony demanded

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forgetfulness of history and ancestry, while in the British metropolis it reinforced remembrance of ancestral memories. In that way, Christianity took sides with the colonizer and participated in the peripherization of the spirituality and indigenous knowledge of the colonized. Nkomo did not only think in terms of the theology of liberation but he also acted in those terms when he visited the Mwali or the Mlimu shrine at Dula to consult the traditional God about colonialism and the liberation of his people (Nkomo 1984: 13). The question endlessly worried Joshua Nkomo that in the first place, ‘Christian religion seeks life after death for the individual, while our African religion seeks rain, health and peace in the world for all mankind’ (Nkomo 1984: 15). Theology of liberation and philosophy of liberation have their meeting point in the political and theological thinking of Nkomo whose target for political liberation and spiritual salvation is the whole of ‘mankind’ not one chosen race. In questioning the uses of Christianity in colonization and the racialization of God, Nkomo was doing a lot of things including defending indigenous knowledge and native spiritualities. Colonialism had a keen interest in erasing native memory, distorting indigenous history and silencing local wisdoms and philosophies. In that rebellion, where an educated and supposedly civilized and Christianized native goes back to the traditional shrines of his people to seek guidance on liberation, Nkomo was resurrecting the buried spiritual and epistemic wisdom of his people. According to Frantz Fanon, it is in the nature of native intellectuals to go back and assure their people that their gods were not dead and that their knowledge is knowledge amongst other knowledge in the world and not inferior: Perhaps unconsciously, the native intellectuals, since they could not stand wonderstruck before the history of today’s barbarity, decided to go back farther and to delve deeper down; and let us make no mistake, it was with the greatest delight that they discovered that there was nothing to be ashamed of in the past, but rather dignity, glory and solemnity. (Fanon 2001: 169)

The native intellectuals that Fanon describes seek to give dignity to the past and bring new life to spiritualities that slavery and colonialism sought to demonize. Condemned religions and silenced knowledge are given new currency by the confident native intellectual who has the courage to tell his people that the white man lies when he says their ancestors

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are demons. Michael Foucault describes the knowledge that slavery and colonialism sought to silence as subjugated knowledge whose reappearance is revolutionary: Blocks of historical knowledges: naïve knowledges, insufficiently elaborated knowledges, hierarchically inferior knowledges, knowledges that are below the required level of erudition or scientificity. And thanks to the appearance of these knowledges from below, of these unqualified or disqualified knowledges. (Foucault 1997: 7)

While Christianity as the religion of the oppressor is presented as a religion of civilization that carries a living God of human salvation, the reappearance of Mwali or Mlimu as the living God who answers the existential and spiritual questions of the colonised provides for a rupture and a titanic disturbance of the imperial and colonial order of things. To worship Mwali or Mlimu is to delink from a colonial spirit and assert the existence of another universe where the oppressor is invited. The search for liberation from colonialism entails reordering the universe that the colonizer or the enslaver constructs for the colonized. For Joshua Nkomo, the beginning of liberation is the refusal of given gods and received knowledge that sustained the colonial universe that must now be overturned. C.L.R. James (1989: 18) shows how, under the leadership of Toussaint L’Ouverture, the rebellious slaves of San Domingo invoked their long forgotten gods and sang what were called Negro Spirituals, abandoning the disciplining and domestication Christian hymns that the master had given them. The native intellectuals and philosophers of liberation borrow what they can use and reject what they do not need, or what disables liberation from the colonial master’s knowledge and spiritual system.

Nkomo’s Politics of Liberation In the compelling observation of Chantal Mouffe (2005: 2), politics naturally entails conflict and antagonism. The dream of a world without enemies is a dream in futility in this world where human beings compete for scarce resources and do not worship the same God and tend to think differently. For that reason, Chantal Mouffe (2005: 3) states that the role of ‘the political’ as a way of thinking about life, power and politics is to ensure that natural political conflict and antagonism

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do not degenerate into violence, but remains at the level of agonism, where people agree to disagree, to become opponents and not enemies that must destroy each other. In the realm of the political that Mouffe describes political opponents and disputants become adversaries that recognize each other’s legitimacy and right to exist. In many ways, in the struggle against settler colonialism and later against the domination and violence of the Zimbabwean post-independence government of Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo exhibited a philosophy of liberation and politics of liberation that recognized the humanity and legitimacy of his bitter opponents. At a certain point, Joshua Nkomo was declared a public enemy in Zimbabwe and his political party ZAPU treated as an enemy organization that needed to be crushed. Publicly, Robert Mugabe declared that Nkomo, ‘the father of Zimbabwe had become the father of dissidents’ (Nkomo 1984: 230). Nkomo admits that nothing had prepared him for persecution by a black government. When Robert Mugabe publicly stated that ‘ZAPU and its leader Joshua Nkomo are like a Cobra in a house’ and the only way to ‘effectively deal with a snake is to strike and destroy its head’ (Nkomo 1984: 2). Nkomo realized that he was yet to live the life of a hunted animal and fugitive in a country that he dedicated his life to liberating (Nkomo 1984: 4). Even as he had a ready and loyal army in the shape of ZIPRA, the reaction to persecution that Nkomo gave was in the form of communication. From his exile in England, Nkomo wrote several letters to Mugabe appealing for respect for the constitution, peace and justice for himself and his supporters: It is a well-known fact that in Zimbabwe today, there more people detained without trial than in fascist South Africa. Most of the people are also without formal detention orders and the next of kin have no idea as to whether they are alive or dead. These people are not enemies of Zimbabwe, peasant men, women as well as young men and women who only happen to be caught, in a conflict the government itself created. (Nkomo 1983: 9)

Reacting to attacks and to persecution of himself and his supporters with communication had the appearance of cowardice, but to Nkomo violence and war were not only a weapon of the last resort but were also unnecessary expenditure of life. In the world of ‘the political’ and that of

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the philosophy of liberation, communication and dialogue are considered a potent weapon of engagement: he Philosophy of Liberation affirms decisively and unequivocally the communicative, strategic, and liberating importance of ‘reason.’ It commits itself to the reconstruction of a critical philosophical discourse that departs from the ‘Exteriority’ and assumes a practico-political ‘responsibility’ in the “clarification” of the liberating praxis of the oppressed. (Dussel 1996: ix–x)

Pleading his case and that of his people, clarifying his position and challenging the accusations against him were for Nkomo a means of struggle. Most of his supporters and sympathizers took this dedication of Nkomo to dialogue as cowardice and even irresponsibility that exposed him and his supporters to helpless victimhood. Dinizulu Macaphulana (2010) understood Nkomo’s dialogic engagement with his persecutors as ‘costly heroism’ that wasted time on communication when armed response was justified and needed. Talking to opponents, black or white, was not enjoyable but it was a responsibility and a duty that Nkomo was willing to suffer (Nkomo 1984: 158). In his commitment to dialogue as opposed to physical combat, Nkomo found himself taking the painful risk of seeking audiences with his enemies and swallowing his pride to propose peace when an active war of liberation was raging. Liberation, in the political thinking of Nkomo, should not have been allowed to cost many lives on either side of the divide in the conflict. The opponent, black or white, was a legitimate human being whose life should also be preserved. The white colonial settlers, even after being defeated, had a right to full citizenship in the liberated country that Nkomo imagined. In the thickness of the liberation struggle, Ian Smith approached Joshua Nkomo with an offer that could have seen the colonial regime transfer power to Nkomo and his party (Nkomo 1984: 189). Instead of taking advantage of this political opportunity, Nkomo insisted that Mugabe, his political rival should be part of the deal, an insistence that shocked and amazed Ian Smith. For Nkomo, politics was not a dirty game of foul play and opportunistic tricks but a vocation that privileged ethical conduct and fairness. When Mugabe’s leadership of his own political party was challenged and disputed, Nkomo mediated to ensure that Mugabe held a firm grip and control of his party (Nkomo 1984: 160) a move that can be understood as the unexpected task of preserving one’s enemy and that is not

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expected from an astute politician. Further to that magnanimity, Nkomo spent time negotiating that his opponents should be released from prison (Nkomo 1984: 160). Later, when these opponents that Nkomo helped to preserve came to power they threatened his life and that of his family, but still, Nkomo would not be provoked into imagining any form of retaliation (Nkomo 1984: 1).

Conclusion The names of ‘Father Zimbabwe’, ‘Chibwechitedza’ and ‘Umdala Wethu’ (our dear old man) describe only but a part of what Nkomo was. Even the description of Nkomo as cowardly does not capture the philosophical explanation to why Nkomo opposed war and privileged dialogue with opponents and adversaries. This chapter has understood Nkomo as a philosopher of liberation whose deep thinking was shaped by concrete historical and social conditions under colonialism in Rhodesia. Nkomo’s rootedness in his people’s traditions and religion, combined with his modern mission education gave him a rounded view of life that allowed him to question racism and colonialism from an empowered and privileged position. Exposure to modernity and to African traditions gives the thinker a larger and much more compelling view of the world and an acute sense of justice. That larger and much more compelling view of life and the world gave to Nkomo a passion that enabled him to question Christianity and to propose another view of God as a God of mankind and not of one chosen race of Europeans. In Joshua Nkomo, the theology and philosophy of liberation combined to produce a fighter who sought to liberate himself, his people and the colonial oppressor who was imprisoned in the dehumanizing condition of being an oppressor. For Nkomo, the ideal country that has been liberated is the one where the government does not fear it people and has no uses for violence and coercion as the people themselves do not fear their government and protect it. Violence is a resort by those who are not liberated but live in fear of even their own people (Nkomo 1983).

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References Corey, D. P. (2011). ‘How Does It Feel to be a Problem?’ Local knowledge, human interests and the ethics of opacity. Transmodernity: Journal of the Peripheral Cultural Production of the Luso-Hispanic World, 1(2), 103–119. Dussel, D. E. A. (1985). Philosophy of liberation. New York: Orbis Books. Dussel, E. (1996). The underside of modernity: Apel, Ricoeur, Rorty, Taylor and the philosophy of liberation. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Dussel, E. (2008a). Anti-cartesian meditations: About the origin of the philosophical anti-discourse of modernity. Tabula Rasa, 9, 153–198. Dussel, E. (2008b). Twenty theses on politics. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Dussel, E. (2013). Agenda for South-south philosophical dialogue. Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge, 11(1), 3–18. Ekeh, P. P. (1975). Colonialism and the two publics in Africa: A theoretical statement. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 17(1), 91–112. Fanon, F. 2001. The wretched of the earth. London: Penguin Books. Foucault, M. (1997). Society must be defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975–1976. London: Penguin Books. Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. London: Penguin Books. James, C. L. R. (1989). The black jacobins. New York: Vintage Books. Machiavelli, N. (1961). The Prince. New York: Penguin Classics. Malinowski, B. (1938). In J. Kenyatta. Facing Mount Kenya. London: Mercury Books. Mangcu, X. (2008). To the brink: The state of democracy in South Africa. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. Memmi, A. (1974). The colonizer and the colonised. New York: Earthscan. More, M. P. (2012). Black consciousness movement’s ontology: The politics of being. Philosophia Africana, 14(1), 23–39. Mouffe, C. (2005). On the political. London: Routledge. Ngugi wa Thiong’o. (1997). Writers in olitics: A re-engagement with issues of literature and society. Oxford: Heinemann. Nietzsche, F. (1968a). On the geneology of morals. New York: Modernity Library. Nietzsche, F. (1968b). The will to power. New York: Vintage Books. Nkomo, J. (1983, December 24). Joshua Nkomo Letter to Robert Mugabe. Nkomo, J. (1984 [2010]). The story of my life. Harare: Pacprint. Nkrumah, K. (1964). Consciencism: Philosophy and ideology for decolonisation and development. London: Heinemann.

CHAPTER 9

Unearthing the Legacy of ‘Father Zimbabwe’: A Decolonial Imaginary Blessed Ngwenya

Introduction The contest between two approaches in African political philosophy of liberation, violence versus non-violence, has polarised many Africans between optimism and hopelessness in the process, defining relationships between friend and foe. These two approaches are contradictory responses to black subordination, and they have significantly shaped African political thought and leadership. This chapter re-examines some of the key assumptions of Joshua Nkomo, one of the leading African nationalist figures of the twentieth century’s political thought, as shown mainly in speeches, autobiography and other writings. I also want to show how his philosophy of non-violence and practice can be unearthed in ways that make it meaningful, valuable and relevant for contemporary political thought. Using the decolonial epistemic perspective I therefore argue, Nkomo was a decolonial humanist symbol of the paradigm of peace. The article demonstrates how Joshua Nkomo refused to succumb to the logic of violence of coloniality which was reproduced in African

B. Ngwenya (*)  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_9

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subjectivities and entrapped many an African movement who could not shed it off even after ‘liberation’. Nkomo, despite engaging in ‘reptilian violence’, remained a steadfast champion of dialogue by condemning violence as a process that dehumanised people, dehumanising both the colonial master and the subject. In his speeches, Nkomo realised that the brutal colonial system did not only need liberation for blacks but for the whites too, something fellow nationalists did not appreciate. Therefore, a nuanced account of Joshua Nkomo calls for an interconnected approach. Consequently, an even-handed explanation recognises that, among other factors, Nkomo drew his thoughts from the positions he occupied in colonial Rhodesia. I hope to provoke a new reading of Nkomo by highlighting his seldom-discussed side of non-violence. However, to project Nkomo in the paradigm of peace when he led the longest and bloody liberation struggle in Africa, twenty years, presents us with a fundamental paradox. The paradox is here a man who speaks peace but wages a war that claims tens of thousands of life, not to mention downing a civilian aeroplane. This paradox will be addressed in the third section. The discussion in this section will be founded upon Nkomo’s more telling and instructive words that disclose his tepid position on war and violence. In his autobiography Nkomo: The Story of My Life, he projects two important arguments which in the surface might even appear contradictory, but in reality are complementary. Our war of independence was longer and more cruel than any yet fought in Africa, because it was unnecessary.

He continues to say: The war was necessary, and I do not regret my part in it….the price of freedom can never be too high. (Nkomo 1984: 11)

The gist of the argument here, Nkomo, was against the war and at the same time in opposition to the domination of one group by another. A more helpful stance is when he was responding to a condescending question by the Duke of Devonshire: Mr Nkomo, you must realise that Southern Rhodesia has a complicated advanced economy…we could not possibly hand it over to be run by untrained hands….Nkomo directly answered. “If development in Southern

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Africa is an obstacle to political freedom of the black people there, then we shall have to destroy that development’. (Nkomo 1984: 99)

The above quote gives rise to a number of sub-questions and responses that will guide the discussion in the chapter, such as: How can a conflict of interest between the coloniser and colonised be reconciled without resulting in bloodshed? In the conflict between coloniser and colonised, how can there be a class of Ubermenschen (supermen) as propounded by Nietzsche without a profound and corresponding belief in the existence of the Hitlerian Untermenschen (subhumans)? (Rosen 1995). Where does morality lie when both the Ubermenschen and the Untermenschen believe themselves to be right? What knowledges inform the rightness of action of the respective groups? This chapter posits that most human suffering wrought by violence and war has largely been informed by a Western canon of thought that naturalises violence. And these pro-violence epistemologies seek to silence alternative perspectives, such as traditional and humanistic enlightenment, projecting those who pursue the alternative as absurd, remote and naive. At the heart of modernity is a powerful theme of violence and war, I argue. I also add that the pro-violence epistemologies remain the dominant influence in the contemporary world, such that the epistemologies even interpellate ideologies that drive many a liberation movement. Despite the fact that I use the decolonial epistemic lens, my method is also historical; using some standard nodes in the development of Western civilisation, notions of violence in particular, I trace and unearth an alternative world through foregrounding the ideology that informed Nkomo’s worldview, a paradigm of peace. Consequently, through the argument, it becomes apparent that there are two encompassing but diametrically opposed conceptions to the continued existence of humanity. One is a largely violent attitude rooted in the struggle to dominate others driven by a will to power, which is associated with the belief in the survival of the strong through total war and annihilation of the weak (Kaufman 1968: 460). The will to power, I argue, does not exalt; instead, it debases the human condition. The other one is the struggle for decolonial humanism, which can be framed as the will to live. The will to live communicates a serious concern for the well-being of all. The accretion of tension between the two is one of the greatest problems faced by the modern world in general and those pursuing liberation in African in particular. An illustration of the divide between these

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fundamentally different ways of thinking about humanity will be holding the centre of this discussion. In what follows, I explore the various ways in which Nkomo lived and articulated his humanist perspectives that move against the paradigm of war. I contrast his perspectives with views that locate humanity in the degenerate will to power perspective which forms the bulk of the following section. My chapter is divided into three sections. To understand Nkomo’s position, I begin with an inquiry into Western thought and the foundational tenets of violence. The second section explores decolonial thought and its anti-violence thread. In the final section, I weave in Nkomo, and in the process, I trace his thoughts as reflected by his autobiography, speeches and what others said about him.

The Will to Power and the Reproduction of  African Subjectivity Nelson Maldonado-Torres has argued that ‘European modernity is the naturalisation of the death ethic of war through colonialism, race, and particular modalities of gender differentiation’ (MaldonadoTorres 2008: 4). Violence and war have a place of pride in the Western history that in African history. While every society has different gradations of violence, its deep roots of universalisation are found deep within the Western canon of thought which has generally permeated modernity. The pervasion of particularistic thought cascaded from Western epistemology which claimed to be universal (Grosfoguel 2007a: 214). The underlying message in this episteme is that violence is inescapable. This inclination to violence in Western thought can be traced to various events in history, but three stand out, namely the crusades, slavery and colonialism. The three events are in turn informed by two successive and interlinked ideological strands. The tightly braided, twofold ideological strands can be traced on a continuum, the Spanish-Portuguese ego conquiro (I conquer therefore I am) to Rene Descartes’ cogito ego sum (I think therefore I am). With regard to the first ideological strand, philosopher Enrique Dussel points out that the conquest of the Americas by Spanish-Portuguese hoards was the imposition of the first modern will to power on

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indigenous populations (Dussel 2000: 471). It therefore follows that ego conquiro was the logical development of the principles that gave birth to Descartes’ cogito ego sum, I think therefore I am. In a nutshell, the English or French enlightenment was built on the Spanish plunder and conquest; hence, the two cannot be separated. Dussel adds that ‘given its secondary and mythical negative content, modernity can be read as the justification of an irrational praxis of violence’ (Dussel 2000: 472). In a nutshell, Europe’s social, political, economic and epistemological development was based on the conquest. It therefore should not be a surprise that Europe’s philosophers would go on to invent varying epistemic excuses for violence to protect their plunder. Western philosophers, ranging from Descartes to Nietzsche, have promoted the idea that violence is natural and inescapable. The focus on Descartes’ work is in Europe, but its message is universal. It is a message that calls for genocide, ethnocentrism, epistemicide and the normalisation of violence. The emphasis on his work is justified because he is the founder of the Western philosophy that places man above nature and God. Maldonado-Torres untangles the intricate link between cogito ego sum and ontology. He uncovers this Cartesian formulation by breaking it into two. First, he says ‘I think’ can mean that others do not think, or do not think properly, and ‘therefore I am’ means others are not, lack being, should not exist or are dispensable (Maldonado-Torres 2007: 252). Maldonado-Torres’s articulation finds substance in Nkomo’s discussion with the Duke of Devonshire in the introductory section. The Duke’s idea of untrained hands is Manichean scepticism. It doubts not only the ability of Nkomo and his race but also their humanity too. Nkomo is quick to recognise this scepticism and gives a direct response, which can be interpreted as: if you think the untrained hands are not human, then we will fight so that you realise we are human too. The Duke’s arrogance sees no bounds because he totally excludes Nkomo from issues of governance. Watered-down Untermenschenism would only advocate for the secession of power to the ‘non-human’ where it applies a firm eye on the subject as one who would watch over a child but the Duke outrightly dismisses the whole idea of freedom and self-rule by the Untermenschen in the form of Nkomo. It is such a position from the Ubermenschen that leaves the humanist Nkomo in a quandary and resolutely says: ‘if whites persist in handling us the way they are doing, they must not be surprised if one day we pay them back in their own coin’ (Nkomo 1984: 55). Two other Western scholars stand

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tall in propounding violence and the scepticism of the humanity of others in their works. They are Friedrich Hegel and Friederich Nietzsche. Hegel is one scholar who epitomises Maldonado-Torres’s assertion that the naturalisation of war is the darkest side of Western modernity and it defines the relationship between those who appear to be naturally selected to survive and those who are dispensable (Maldonado-Torres 2008: xii). Despite many arguments to his defence, Hegel is indisputably the father of modern racism (Tibebu 2011; Popper 1950; Kaufmann 1968). Tibebu makes an interesting dissection on Hegel which chimes well with the Lewis R. Gordon’s idea of epistemic closure. Gordon basing his ideas on Du Bois’ human social science points out that as black is by definition non-human, therefore epistemic closure means black is all that is needed to be known about a black person, nothing more, whereas epistemic openness implies that more can be known about a person, especially when they are white (Gordon 2000: 88). Tibebu uses this illustration to question Hegel’s generalised view that supports slavery when it comes to the people of Africa by stating that ‘for Hegel, if you have seen one African you have seen them all’ (Tibebu 2011: 199). Tibebu acknowledges that Hegel’s Phenomenology is against biological racism, but does not absolve him from his later works that justify the violent enslavement of Africans. If the demeaning and dehumanisation of the African life by Hegel can find any parallel in Nkomo’s life, it will be in the shunter’s utterances when Nkomo’s 6-month-old son Themba passed on and was due for burial. The shunter with all his insolence yelled, ‘so where is this dead animal’ (Nkomo 1984: 61). Nkomo says in his autobiography, ‘until I wrote this down today I have never allowed anyone, even my wife, to know that this happened when our first son died’ (1984: 61). If Hegel’s racism is disputed, Nietzsche’s racism and violence cannot be defended. Nietzsche has vigorously argued that war is not only part of human nature but also the natural state of things in support of Thomas Hobbes’s Bellium omnium contra omnes (the war of all against all). The contention here is that before man entered, society was in a state of war against everyone. This view has undercurrents of superior and inferior. The inferior, the savage and barbarian have not entered society, and his elimination is defensible. The view is coupled with the elimination of God as the European man occupies the summit of humanity. The state of affairs where war and death are naturalised explains Nietzsche’s concept of Ubermenschen (superman). The superman embodies all the virtues

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that exemplify the will to power since he is ‘beyond good and evil’. The will to dominate is realised when the Ubermenschen finally has the power, and in his drive to dominate the world, he regards others as sub-human that can be subjugated and exterminated whenever possible. The extermination of the Herero in Namibia, the Tasmanians or the Australian Aborigines who until 1967 were classified as flora and fauna attests to the sub-humanisation of the ‘other’ informed by these particularistic knowledges (Anderson and Perrin 2008: 152). Largely, the claim about human nature or the naturalisation of violence seeks to maintain the status quo. That answers the question, Cui Bono? Who benefits? One who is already established has the ammunition to maintain the status quo; consequently, any reform is opposed on the ground that it is impossible, while masking the intention to consolidate power. In this light, Ian Smith faced by the onslaught from guerrilla movements vehemently asserted that never will a black man rule Rhodesia in a thousand years. Paradoxically, Ian Smith as the coloniser is the one who was supposed to exercise the will to power; however, it appears the black movements too did the same to the shock of everyone including Joshua Nkomo. ‘Nothing in my life’, wrote Nkomo, ‘had prepared me for persecution at the hands of a government led by black Africans’ (1984: 01). While the case of black on black oppression is problematic and embarrassing, Jean-Paul Satre has a plausible explanation for it. In his preface to Frantz Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Satre explains that ‘the European cannot recognise his own cruelty turned against himself, his own settler’s savagery, which the coloniser has absorbed through every pore and for which there is no cure’ (Fanon 1991). According to Satre, the root of the colonised violence lays at the coloniser’s door. Peter Godwin sustains Satre’s position when it comes to events in Zimbabwe where the Mugabe regime, soon after independence, committed gross inhumane acts, ranging from genocide, rape, foetuses slit off mother’s wombs and plunder in an extreme case of will to power. Godwin aptly sums it up: And yet in many ways, the war to which I was returning in 1976 was precisely what radicalised a generation of the black Zimbabwean leadership and created Smith’s nemesis, Robert Mugabe, elevating him to the rank of a liberation hero, who set about cultivating an almost messianic status. And in many respects Mugabe’s methods now mirror those of his old oppressor. This is part of Smith’s legacy. As is the model of one-party rule, and the useful levers of repression he bequeathed: the draconian

220  B. Ngwenya Emergency Powers - still relied upon by Mugabe to conduct his own oppressive minority rule. If Ian Smith had shown more historical imagination, then more of his own people might still live in a place they once considered home. (Godwin 2007: 6)

Godwin’s description is evidence to the fact that violence has become deeply entrenched and overwhelmingly enduring part of modernity with the same degenerative consequences on both the dominant and dominated. The fact that humanity fails to consider other alternatives to conflict, violence or war is a testimony to the effectiveness of our socialisation. An entrapment of an African liberator finds the self in violence in the type of liberation where no one wins but everyone is in a losing cause because violence begets violence. David Coltart, a lawyer and former Zimbabwean cabinet minister, interprets the degeneration in a causal link with history by highlighting that ‘Robert Mugabe and ZANU PF practise politics of the 1960s….we still suffer from the legacy of war, we need reconciliation’ (Coltart 2015b: 15). Such outcomes of violence should in one way or another foster a rethink of Africa in general and the nation as it should be understood that the anti-violence paradigm has been propounded by luminaries like Joshua Nkomo who were not isolated in their pursuit but had leading lights like Luther King Jnr., Nelson Mandela and Mohandas Gandhi.

Nkomo’s Pursuit

of the

Will to Live

Philosophers of liberation have one cross-cutting theme, that is, a serious concern for the well-being of all. Unlike the will to power which is driven by the Western canon of thought, which seeks to purge those who are different and weak through military and cultural dominance by promoting the superiority of one ethnic group over another, the philosophy of liberation is antithesis to such. Instead, the philosophy of liberation which is determined by the will to live encourages mutualism and symbiosis. It discourages the drive to dominate others, vindictiveness, propagation of negative group stereotypes and overstated estimate of individuals’ own importance. It has to be made clear that Nkomo, by fighting colonisation, was not only fighting for freedom from the shackles of the master but he was fighting to be human. He was fighting both colonialism and coloniality. The two are different but interrelated. Colonialism denotes a political

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and economic relationship in which a sovereignty of a nation or a people rests on the power of another nation, but coloniality refers to longstanding patterns of power that emerged as a result of colonialism and it survives colonialism (Maldonado-Torres 2007). What sustains coloniality is the knowledges that produce colonialism in the first place and knowledges that promote the will to power. It therefore follows that ­knowledges from the dominated should inform liberation. MaldonadoTorres says that ‘colonisation and racism are also conceptions that ­promote or are complicit with dehumanisation, violence and war’ (2008: 06). In response to colonialism, violence, racism and coloniality, the decoloniality episteme is a liberating perspective that emanates from and aids the search for humanity by colonised people. Decoloniality is a critical and liberating project emanating from the underside of modernity, and it is concerned with unveiling coloniality as a negative side of modernity while also seeking to take forward the decolonisation project which it considers to be incomplete (NdlovuGatsheni 2013a). Grosfoguel (2007a: 212) adds that decoloniality is not an ‘essentialist, fundamentalist, anti-European critique, it is a perspective that is critical of both Eurocentric and third world fundamentalisms, colonialisms and nationalisms’. Decoloniality as a theoretical framework and method goes a long way in not only helping us understand Joshua Nkomo but also decoding anti-colonial African movements’ multifarious experiences and challenges in their pursuit of liberation. It is therefore from a decolonial standpoint that we can understand Nkomo as thinking from the underside and in search for his own humanity and that of others in the peripheral side of modernity who are struggling to shed off its straitjacket of racism that masquerades as deliverance. Walter Mignolo (2007: 200) looks closely at how modernity and its racial categorisations operate. He points out that ‘modernity is presented as the rhetoric of salvation; it hides coloniality, which is the logic of exploitation and oppression’. Enrique Dussel even unpacks Mignolo’s articulations further by rejecting the idea that modernity’s project was to civilise the backward and therefore the consequences of death and slavery and inevitable. Dussel declares that: [I]f one aims at overcoming modernity, it becomes necessary to deny the denial of the myth of modernity from an ethics of responsibility. Thus, the other denied and victimized side of modernity must first be unveiled as “innocent”: it is the “innocent victims” of ritual sacrifice that in the

222  B. Ngwenya self-realization of their innocence cast modernity as guilty of a sacrificial and conquering violence—that is, of a constitutive, originally, essential violence. (Dussel 2000: 18)

The trajectory we have traced up until now, from our recognition of modernity as a crisis to our analysis of the first articulations of a new imperial form of sovereignty, has allowed to understand transformations of the constitution of the world order. Furthermore, we have not yet been able to give any coherent indication of what type of political subjectivities might contest and overthrow the forces of empire. Let us therefore descend into the hidden abode of production to see the figures at work by exploring ideas of liberation and where we locate Nkomo in these ideas. Liberation discussions cannot be easily extricated from notions of development. Development has various definitions but has largely been associated with economic growth and increase in wealth (Gustavo 1988: 245). A perspective that views development in a purely economic sense is not only found wanting but fails to consider social process and by default reinforces the hierarchical status quo which continues to theorise development from the vantage point of the capitalist Global North, instead of considering the Global South on its own terms, terms that include economic, social, political and cultural aspects. Gustavo Guiterrez gives a humanistic face to development, ‘it is building a world where every man, regardless of race, religion, or nationality can live a fully human life, free of the servitude that comes from other men and from the incompletely mastered world about him’ (Gustavo 1988: 247). The correlation between this definition of development and liberation is in that when this kind of development is finally realised, man becomes a creative subject as he seizes the reins of his own destiny, directing it towards a society where he will be free of every kind of slavery (Gustavo 1988: 247). In this light, liberation denotes a situation where humanity marches towards a society in which man will be free of every servitude and master his own destiny (Gustavo 1988: 250). Liberation therefore centres on humanity; it liberates both the oppressor and oppressed. Here we are not talking about Hellenic humanity which privileges the Western man as human while questioning the humanity of other people. Harking back to Ian Smith and the Duke of the refusal to hand over power or to listen to Nkomo as the leader of the nationalist movement is influenced by this economics centred form of development.

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Development thought that thrives on dehumanisation and the q ­ uestion of other people’s ability to think so as to handle complex economic ­systems is colonial. Nkomo is not oblivious of this clash of knowledges. In fact, he is aware that it is the same knowledges that influences some of his comrades in the nationalist movement such that what happens post-­ independence, violence, tribalism, genocide and oppression is a ­reproduction and manifestation of the Western knowledges that found an oasis within the hungry for power comrades. Nkomo points out: White experts on Rhodesia […] missionaries, government employees, academics loyal to successive regimes had for a long time emphasised and exaggerated tribal differences as a way of dividing people[…]now their work was bearing fruit through students at universities abroad who felt the need to create some artificial loyalty to a group, and they chose tribal differences as a means of rallying that loyalty. (Nkomo 1984: 65)

Concerning students based abroad, Nkomo, in his statement, makes an interesting connection to the knowledges that inform them. He is aware of the inner workings of coloniality where divide and rule typified by the idea of the noble savage poses a threat to students’ worldview. He links their knowledges to the white experts whom he blames for exaggerating tribal differences. Nkomo does not deny that the differences are there, but his concern is how they are magnified for the divisive reasons. This is an interesting analogue by Nkomo. He is very practical in his assessment, and he further maintains that by spending so much time abroad, the students have become detached to the realities (this can be read as knowledges) at home. Nkomo is also prophetic in his assessment; he poses a serious question on students’ position. In most of his speeches, he always refers to students or young people as the one that will unearth the truth. Therefore, if those students are promoting tribal loyalties, then Nkomo is also questioning the students’ astuteness; if they are to subordinate themselves to knowledges that detach them from the reality at home, Nkomo poses a serious question on the Zimbabwean academy and he is indirectly questioning the future of the Zimbabwean academy. In this case, he is circuitously saying the Zimbabwean academy will be hostage to and an ideological tool of the tribal affinity that gets power. At this point, he doubts the moral validity of the idea of Zimbabwe as it is built on the very same foundations that he spent most of his life fighting against. In a nutshell, according to Nkomo, owing to what it was

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premised on, the idea of post-1980 Zimbabwe was colonial, Western and European. Nkomo’s premise is supported by Anibal Quijano who gives an intricate illustration on how the Western canon gets infused into the worldview of nationalists movements: The colonisers also imposed a mystified image of their own patterns of producing knowledges and meaning, at first placed these patterns far out of reach of the dominated, later they taught them in a partial and selective way, in order to co-opt some of the dominated into their own power institutions. the European culture was seductive, it gave access to power, after all, repression, the main instrument of all power is its seduction. (Quijano 2007: 169)

The question posed at this juncture is: who is Joshua Nkomo and what knowledges produces a philosopher of the liberation of his kind. Is it the family, school, religion, travels or other forces? It cannot be denied that subjectivity is a constant and continuous process. Therefore, what are Nkomo’s production processes of subjectivity or what acted on him? Why would a decolonial humanist, a will to live proponent resort to ­violence?

Nkomo

as a

Humanist

On Saturday 12 April 1986, Nkomo delivered a timeless speech at the funeral of General Lookout Masuku who died on his hospital bed at the hands of a ZANU PF regime. The speech has remained a sufficient barometer to where Zimbabwe has come from since independence. The central theme of the speech is twofold: first, he forces his audience to gauge the gap between the ideals of liberation and the reality of violence before them. Second, the speech gives Nkomo’s audience a window to his beliefs and dialogical idea of the political. However, the underlying puzzle to Nkomo is the dualisms and incongruities that mark the easy assimilation of the victorious liberation movements into the dominant paradigm of war which is characterised by the complete dominance of the other; yet on the other hand they wear the liberator’s mantle with pride. Nkomo scorns this attitude in his speech: We are enveloped in the politics of hate. The amount of hate that is being preached today in this country is frightful. What Zimbabwe fought for was

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peace, progress, love, respect, justice, equality, not the opposite […] our country cannot progress on fear and false accusations which are founded simply on the love of power[…] let us be clear about it, we are seeing racism in reverse under false mirror of correcting imbalances from the past[…]. Life has become harsher than ever before. People are referred to as squatters. I hate the word. I do not hate the person. When people were moved under imperialism certain facilities like water were provided. But under us? Nothing! You cannot build a country by firing people’s homes. No country can live by slogans, pasi (down with) this and pasi that. When you are ruling you should never say pasi to anyone. If there is something wrong with someone you must try to uplift him, not oppress him. We cannot condemn other people and then do things even worse than they did […] We cannot go on this way. (Nkomo quoted in Todd 2007: 164)

In this respect, it is interesting to observe how at this point Nkomo notices the emerging biformity that characterises liberation movements. In his speech, he makes a juxtaposition between the economic and the social and humanity-driven kind of development. That is, the liberators in power now mete out destruction on development in its two forms: first, the infrastructural development, which he acknowledges that the imperialists provided; second, he speaks of the humanist form of development which both the imperialists and the new regime had no respect for. The new regime, to Nkomo, is even worse off because it goes about firing people’s homes and oppressing other. In his speech, Nkomo addresses a third key issue, that of racism. It must be pointed out that the new regime’s convictions about liberty are far divorced from Nkomo’s ones. Nkomo rejects reverse racism, that is, in the guise of correcting past imbalances by the post-independence regime. In Judith Todd’s Through the Darkness: A Life in Zimbabwe (2007), the regime’s perspective of race is made clear. Todd is shocked and irritated by a senior minister in the new regime’s cabinet, Didymus Mutasa’s rationale when he brazenly says in his Black Behind Bars book: ‘It t is surprising that Judith Todd and Peter Niesewand, those young whites who opposed the regime, were born and brought up in Rhodesia, maybe they are opposed to Afrikaner domination’ (Todd 2007: 119). These are the form of binaries that conjure images of race and places liberation movements to be a different side of the same coin of the dominant and dehumanising paradigm of war. They are a classic example of, ‘you have had your turn but now the shoe is on our feet’. Joshua Nkomo is far removed from this implacable, hostile and polarising concept of liberty.

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This can be supported by tracing the nationalist leader at his lowest ebb during his time in prison. After an event where there is a fight which culminates in a shootout between the nationalists in prison, a white prison warden comes to Nkomo and voices his concerns: [A]fter the violence, Nkomo I am very sad today, and I come to you today as a leader of these people, I am guarding you here not because it is a pleasure but because it is my job…we know that in the end you will succeed and you will run this country. But after the violence last night I wonder whether after all this suffering you will be able to work together. If you cannot work together it is not just you the black people who will suffer. We whites too will suffer. (Nkomo 1984: 134)

The warden’s perspective gives us another gaze into white Rhodesians’ point of view. Not all white Rhodesians were racist, and not all were subscribing to the Smith regime’s violent position. What is, however, important here is Nkomo’s reaction when he appealed to the warden not to abandon the country: I told him violence like that does happen, it is not the end of the world…. it would be a tragedy if he left, he was exactly the sort of person we wanted to stay with us after independence, for we were fighting not against white people but against an oppressive system, oppressive not only to those who are oppressed but to the oppressors too. (Nkomo 1984: 134)

Nkomo does not hesitate to point out the contributions by the different races, the coloured (mixed race), Indian and whites including the international community, in the struggle against the oppressive system. A 1976 BBC interview reinforces Nkomo’s consistency, ‘this country has been ruled by a minority white community for 85 years. When we say majority rule we mean that the majority of the people as a whole not excluding white people, all the people together must have a constitution that gives them the right to choose a government they want, together as a people not just black people’ (Nkomo’s BBC interview: 1976). Despite his hope for a triumphant humanity, despondence can be discerned from Nkomo when his uncanny love for humanity enables him to see beyond his country when he hopes for a better future for other countries still engaged in their own liberation struggles: ‘I hope this is not a fore-runner­of things to happen in Namibia and South Africa when they attain their independence’ (Todd 2007: 95).

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So if, Nkomo was such a humanist committed to universal human equality and detested the domination of one group by another why then would he choose a bloody path for liberation? In Nkomo: The Story of my Life (1984), the intent to secure a non-violent means of liberation can be seen where Nkomo says, ‘I had been trying for 20 years to talk to successive governments about independence for they people but they would never talk to us […] two days after coming into power Smith threw me and my colleagues into prison and never spoke to us…we were driven to fighting by his actions’ (Nkomo 1984: 148). It must be noted that there is no day or single speech where Nkomo is found glorifying war. If anything, his utterances are either in regret or he states the reasons for war and how it could have been avoided, unlike nationalists like Mugabe who have boasted in the past that they have degrees in violence. For example, in protesting his people’s exclusion from complete Rhodesian citizenship, Nkomo lays the blame for violence on Smith and the liberation movements’ door, ‘Smith bears the personal responsibility for five more terrible years of war, during which chances of reconciliation between black and white became fewer by the day’ (Nkomo 1984: 157). When it comes to liberation movements, he emphasises that ‘our lack of unity prolonged the war for another 6 years and led to many tens of thousands of deaths’ (Nkomo 1984: 152). Before we discuss the compromise on his principles and original intent, it will be important to take a cursory glance at what may contextually shape the man, his strengths and weaknesses. In Nkomo’s autobiography, four key occurrences are indicative of Nkomo’s discursive political formation. What is remarkable is how they work together to shape his evolution, which is somehow consistent. These are Nkomo in the family, Nkomo in the community, Nkomo in South Africa and Nkomo in prison. It is these four aspects that drive his consistency, and he does not divert from the philosophies that they impart on him until the end. Nkomo’s formative years are largely influenced by Christianity, a religion well entrenched in his family. His father is a London Missionary Society preacher. He is also a teacher, farmer and trader. Nkomo acknowledges that the Bible teachings from his mother had a great impact on him, particularly coming from someone he loved so much. His attachment was due to the fact that he was a sickly child. His sickness, he says, exposed him to a traditional man from a different tribal group called Mathimulana Nyathi who taught him traditional medicine. His fondness for the man whom he wanted to be like when

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he grew up could have planted early seeds of understanding diversity for the young Nkomo, a Matabeleland native and Mathimulana a Mashonaland native. Nkomo also benefitted from folk tales that are traditionally passed down orally from generation to generation (Nkomo 1984: 12). But, an important reading from this text is two-pronged. First, for some thinkers in the theory of liberation state that the source of critical insight into modernity comes from indigenous cultural traditions, while others come from the fusion between Christianity and traditional knowledges (Gustavo 1988). Nkomo has the experience of both from his upbringing. Second, Nkomo’s sickly nature as a baby keeps him closer to his mother and does not cope with other games that other boys play. A closer scrutiny reveals someone on the margins both as a weakling and also as a mother’s boy as he says it himself. Nkomo points out at two things that he inherits from this state of affairs. First, he says he has always lacked confidence; second, because of the motherly love and trust, he has always been trusting in all his dealings only to find out late that he has been betrayed (Nkomo 1984: 08). Nkomo is forced to speak from the underside from the onset despite the fact that he comes from an affluent family by the era’s standards. The community level introduces us to the early radicalisation of Nkomo. Nkomo finds himself in a quandary. At the community level, he encounters whiteness which awakens him from his dogmatic slumber. Nkomo meets modernity in all its character at a very young age. First, he realises that the fertile land they were moved from in the Matopos had been forcefully claimed by the white man; second, his father’s, a respected man, greetings are not returned by white men. Third, people are not only forced to work for free on the white man’s land, but also forced to reduce their livestock and pay hut tax. Fourth and final, the face of modernity which foregrounds salvation but hides its dark side manifests itself to a young Nkomo when white people give them canned food; while it is an act of charity, they leave the tins open for ants and dust to fall into them (Nkomo 1984: 20). Nkomo said it seemed an insult and emphasises that it is such action that leaves a mark on a child’s mind (Nkomo 1984: 20). This, it appears, contributed immensely to the radicalisation of Nkomo. At times, radicalisation is a result of unintended subjectivation or an uncomfortable clash with a worldview. Nkomo, fortunately, did not wish to kill the white man; instead, he wanted to save both the white man and his people from the position of a fallen man. It must be, however, acknowledged that for others, the experience

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of subjugation, dispossession, marginality or dehumanisation differs and the stimuli may call for a different reaction. For others, conformity could be the choice, for others revenge and for others using the same coin to pay both their own and their oppressors. Third, is Nkomo’s education in South Africa had two key lessons for him. As a social worker in 1947, he got exposed to all social ills that black people in South Africa faced as a consequence of modernity. People had no jobs neither did they have land to farm on, a shocking scenario for Nkomo with all his rural background. His human-centric nature always got the better of him just as it did all his political life, he says, ‘I offered my sympathy, although the theory was that social workers should not get emotionally attached in their clients’ problems’ (Nkomo 1984: 36). As it turned out, Nkomo arranged the adoption of abandoned children in African families. Another lesson was from Mrs Hoskins the widower who treated him like a son and even paid his tuition, ‘I got to know people from other countries as well as facts about those countries, yet I do not think any lesson was so important as the one Mrs Hoskin taught me: that white people too were human beings, if you could somehow get through the barriers that society erected to stop us being friends’ (Nkomo 1984: 37). Nkomo began to understand that the racial barriers were not natural just as he realised that the class barriers in Durban were not natural but man-made too. The final traceable event, which is also a turning point for Nkomo, was his imprisonment. After a long stretch with little varying success in the struggle for equality, Nkomo was finally thrown into prison. After all avenues had been exhausted, solutions pointed to the struggle and he was not oblivious to the consequences of war, ‘I knew all too well that fierce fighting would mean grave problems at the end of the war’ (Nkomo 1984: 159). It is a decision that went on to haunt Nkomo (1984: 159) despite his utterances that ‘the war was necessary, and I do not regret my part in it, the price for freedom can never be too high’. A cursory reading of this statement could be found to be contradictory with his other statement mentioned earlier that our war of independence was longer and more cruel than any yet fought in Africa, because it was unnecessary. The former must be read in light with the fact that dialogue had failed for twenty years and finally prison sufficed, Nkomo says, we had no alternative but to take up arms. A more succinct explanation: ‘Of course I would have preferred the peaceful road to freedom that was open to practically all the other former British colonies in Africa. It had been just

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possible that British intervention, or pressure from the outside world or even an outbreak of common sense among the settler community, might have created a hope of African advancement by peaceful means. But it was not to be. Were forced to fight’ (Nkomo 1984: 98). Consequently, after an unsuccessful attempt to lobby for peaceful change, Nkomo led an armed struggle. And it is such a decision that leads to the question why and when does a humanist decide to use violence? Nkomo’s endorsement of violence is what Frank Kirkland (1999: 297) calls ‘temperate revolutionism’ which expresses how one adopts violence, a form of self-defensive violence, which shows that the oppressed should be under self-control when engaged in violence pursuant to the acquisition of freedom. Frantz Fanon calls this a reptilian violence, which denotes how a cornered reptile can unleash any form of violence to free itself. Nkomo in his book endorses this notion several times, and this type of violence is offset against the dehumanising colonial violence which is supremacist in form. Savage, brutish, unbridled and intemperate colonial violence is therefore positioned in a divergent manner from reptilian violence. Even luminaries of passive resistance were faced with more resistance and formulated other aggressive strategies such as Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha (truth force) in their bid for freedom. There is, however, a risk that ‘temperate revolutionism’ or reptilian violence can degenerate into colonial violence. As such, Nkomo’s inclination to dialogue lost him many friends within the nationalist movement whose comrades even split to form a new party using peaceful dialogue as an excuse for ethnic reasons. In his book A Lifetime of Struggle, Edgar Tekere a member of the splinter group that formed ZANU buttresses this notion, ‘I was suspicious of Nkomo, afraid of being betrayed by him, and when ZANU finally disengaged itself from Nkomo, it became a much more vigorous and confrontational party. Nkomo was too moderate a leader for a war situation’ (Tekere 2007: 151). Sabelo J Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2008: 85) quotes Ndabaningi Sithole the first leader of ZANU who said ‘we wanted more confrontational politics, Nkomo and others that remained with him were more cautious’. It is, however, the same Sithole, who after independence, like most of his comrades came to comprehend Nkomo’s stance and went on to say, ‘our government and the people of Zimbabwe must be praised for conferring on this man, the highest honour, acclaim and acknowledgements as Father Zimbabwe, at long last, for there is no one so deserving as Joshua Nkomo’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2008a: 85).

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Nevertheless, Nkomo was aware that many had taken his pursuit for peaceful means as a weakness, ‘I am still criticised for trying to negotiate with Smith. I hated what the man personally stood for. I longed for a majority rule in Zimbabwe and justice for my people. I wanted those things with as little killing as possible’ (Nkomo 1984: 158). His choice of peace and dialogue stance over violence is something that has haunted him even after his death. During and after the genocide, most of his supporters are still bitter that he did not choose to fight despite having what was deemed the strongest guerrilla army in the form of ZIPRA. This has widely been mistaken for naivety; however, history has proven him right that violence begets violence, and the genocide has been declared a genocide and not war by the genocide watch in 2010. To judge Nkomo fairly, it is also important to trace the reasons why he got into the struggle in the first place, which were to liberate both the oppressor and the oppressed, ‘it was an attitude of mind as demeaning to the rulers as to those who were ruled it had to be changed and nobody was going to change it except ourselves’ (Nkomo 1984: 46). Nkomo, as I conclude, remains a giant located in the paradigm of peace that many have began to understand long after his death. Even the wrath over the downed civilian Viscount appears to be misdirected, as he explained in his autobiography that ‘it was not our policy to shoot down civilian airliners, if we wanted to we could have done so more often, it was a tragic mistake, I felt it personally’ (Nkomo 1984: 166). Nkomo’s simple stance, a human-centric one, continues to elude many people, even the first Prime Minister Mugabe who appeared to have seen the country on tribal affinities was surprised at how Nkomo chose to stand for member of parliament hundreds of kilometres away from his own province (Todd 2007: 120). Ian Smith was another leader who never understood Nkomo. After being turned down by the nationalist on other means to topple, Mugabe says grudgingly in his autobiography entitled The Great Betrayal: Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith, ‘Nkomo did not have the stomach for the kind of plan we had in mind. History seemed to prove that he was born a loser […] on a number of occasions when opportunities presented themselves, he had hesitated and lost out, lacking the leadership qualities to make a positive decision’ (Smith 1997: 352). He gives two examples, ‘I pointed out that our security information indicated that the ZANLA forces of Mugabe had penetrated deep into Matabeleland territory, and I questioned why he did not insist on maintaining the demarcation between Matabeleland and Mashonaland

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[…] he replied that as they were fighting for the same cause there was no problem’ (Smith 1997: 352). A second one, ‘I urged him to support my plan for a confederation which would decentralise power and enable the Matabeles to control those affairs that had special relevance to their history, culture, traditions and language…he replied, people should understand and accept that he was not only the leader of the Matabeles but of all the people in the country’ (Nkomo 1997: 353). Perhaps, Nkomo could be construed as naive or born a loser and probably conscious of it. This is demonstrated by his assessment or selfprojection on his friend Michael Scott, of whom he says: ‘I say without any critical intention towards people whose goodwill and sincerity cannot possibly be in doubt, but their kindness was sometimes overwhelming to the point where it became a distraction […] Michael Scott was so deep in his commitment to the welfare of others such that he had forgotten his own welfare […] I said to him one day “if you do not look after yourself you won’t be able to look after the people you are committed to help”’ (Nkomo 1984: 82). This is a message that Nkomo should have probably said to himself; however, he was beyond self-seeking and the will to power as demonstrated by the logo he had for his elections, a soldier carrying a baby with a crossing garden pick and a hoe and two mealies on either side of the soldier. The image promoted principles of work, advocating for non-violence, in larger terms symbolised a divorce from injustice and violence of coloniality but also hard work and self-sufficiency, values that do not only guide future generations but sustain them too. In the end, it is enlightening how he advocates for pluriversality when he says no religion has absolute truth: ‘as I have grown older I have remained a religious man, but not so much specifically a Christian. That there is a God I devoutly believe […] but a God of all mankind, not just of a selected people’ (Nkomo 1984: 11). It is his stance on diversity of religions that makes him receptive and also reveals his abhorrence of violence when he visits the traditional shrine, where he has an encounter of non-violence from the oracle: ‘You son of Nyongolo (Nkomo) […] what do you want from me. What do you want me to do for you? How do you expect me to accomplish it? When I told King Lobengula not to fight against his cousins who were coming into the land […] but Lobengula ignored my instructions and he fought against his cousins…he was compelled by some of his chiefs who wanted to destroy him, he listened to them and not to me’ (Nkomo 1984: 14). Three lessons, key lessons, are drawn from the oracle about Nkomo,

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the idea of non-violence, humanity where Europeans are cousins and acknowledgement of history and the benefit of hindsight. The main thrust of the chapter has been the idea of the legacy of Father Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo as a decolonial thinker. I have explored how his will to live position differed from that of both his colonial masters and fellow liberation comrades. I did not intend to insinuate that comrades in arms should not have differences in thought or perspective. My interest was in excavating and defining the knowledges that inform the obverse ideological positions they occupy.

Conclusion This chapter has presented an underlying argument that dissecting the complexity and ambiguity of Zimbabwe is dissecting the complexity of Africa and the idea of liberation. The chapter has demonstrated how the paradigm of peace upheld by Joshua Nkomo sharpened and triggered cleavages within the nationalist movement where many were driven by the will to power in contrast to his will to live position. While the chapter makes it clear that his views were coloured by the positions from which they were formed, particularly the traditional and Christian background, they nevertheless remain applicable today. Accordingly, excavating Nkomo’s ideas offers a crucial hidden window into the past and highlights current historical and political misrepresentations and inclinations to violence by the Zimbabwean polity. The state has failed to detach itself from its violent past and the people continue to live in fear of their own government as highlighted by Nkomo. Consequently, if the present dilemma for the reconstitution of the political were no more than a mystification occasioned by everyday disputes over conflicting principles and philosophies of pedestrian nature, one could view the tussle between the will to live and the will to power existing with a somewhat relaxed attitude. These relate directly to issues of life and death. Therefore, they cannot be postponed or relegated to the unscheduled future or wait for time to conceal or cure them. These are pressing problems that will invigorate the thinking from the underside of modernity which is facing a barrage from modernity’s intoxicating atmosphere of violence. Re-imagining and re-inventing the future is important, returning to the source and unearthing where our predecessors came from such as Joshua Nkomo is important in undoing Nietzschean, Machiavellian, European, Westernised and colonial, exhibiting all manifestations of dominance,

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plunder, genocide, rape and survival of the fittest idea of Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular. Consequently, to resurrect Nkomo is to challenge the entire narrative of the West as the driving force of human progress and enlightenment. Instead, the West becomes a symbol of dominance and plunder. Edison Zvobgo sums it up well: ‘It is true that all of us die but some truly don’t die. It will never be possible for Joshua Nkomo’s name to vanish from our history’ (quoted in Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2008: 83).

References Anderson, K., & Perrin, C. (2008). Beyond savagery: The limits of Australian aboriginalism. Cultural Studies Review, 14(2), 147–169. Coltart, D. (2015a). Zimbabwean Whites move on despite troubled past. Available at http://www.davidcoltart.com/2015/09/zimbabwean-whites-move-on-despitetroubled-past. Accessed 21 Dec 2015. Coltart, D. (2015b). The struggle continues: 50 years of tyranny in Zimbabwe. Auckland: Jacana Media Pvt Ltd. Dussel, E. (2000). Europe, modernity and eurocentrism. Nepantla: Views from South, 1(3), 465–478. Fanon, F. (1991). The Wretched of the Earth, (Constance Farrington, trans.). New York: Grove Press. Godwin, P. (2007, 24 November). If only Ian Smith had shown some imagination, then more of his people might live at peace. Mail and Guardian. Gordon, L. R. (2000). Existentia Africana: Understanding Africana existential thought. New York: Routledge. Grosfoguel, R. (2007a). The epistemic decolonial turn: Beyond political-­ economy paradigms. Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3), pp. 211–223. Grosfoguel, R. (2007b). Decolonising post-colonial studies and paradigms of political economy: Transmodernity, decolonial thinking and global coloniality. Transmodernity: Journal of Peripheral Cultural Production of the LusoHispanic world, 1(1), pp. 1–34. Gustavo, G. (1988). A theology of liberation: History, politics and salvation (Teologia de la Liberacion: Perspectivas 1971). Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007, March/May). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21 (2–3), 240–270. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2008). Against war: Views from the underside of modernity. Durham: Duke University Press. Mignolo, W. D. (2007). Coloniality of power an de-colonial thinking. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 155–167.

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Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2008a). Fatherhood and nationhood: Joshua Nkomo and the re-imagination of the Zimbabwe nation. In K. Muchemwa & R. Muponde (Eds.), Manning the nation: Father figures in Zimbabwean literature and society. Harare: Weaver Press. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2008b). Shifting sands of Zimbabwe’s history. South African labour bulletin. 32(2), pp. 58–60. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013a). Empire, global coloniality and African subjectivity. New York: Berghahn Books. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2013b). The entrapment of Africa within the global colonial matrices of power: Eurocentrism, coloniality, and deimperialization in the twenty-first century. Journal of Developing Societies, 29(4), 331–353. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Popper, K. (1950). The open society and its enemies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Quijano, A. (2007). Coloniality and modernity/rationality. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 168–178. Rosen, S. (1995). The mask of enlightenment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, I. D. (1997). The great betrayal: Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith. London: John Blake Publishers. Tekere, E. (2007). Edgar ‘2’Boy Zivanai Tekere: A lifetime of Struggle. Harare: SAPES. Tibebu, T. (2011). Hegel and the third world: The making of eurocentrism in world history. New York: Syracuse University Press.

CHAPTER 10

Making Sense of Joshua Nkomo’s Political Behaviour: A Sociogenic Approach Morgan Ndlovu

Introduction The figure of Joshua Nkomo remains a subject of controversy and contestation within the historiographical landscape of Zimbabwe and Africa in general. Thus, the depictions of Joshua Nkomo within the Zimbabwean and African historiography range from his portrayal as a terrorist, liberation hero, nation-builder, father of dissidents, sell-out, coward and ‘father Zimbabwe’; all which reveal that Nkomo’s political behaviour is subject to not only different interpretations but also misunderstanding across time, space and people. In this chapter, I seek not to provide a supposedly correct interpretation of the meaning of Nkomo within the Zimbabwean and/or African political discourse, as that would be an exercise in futility, but to lay a foundation on which we can make sense of some of the meanings of Nkomo’s political behaviour. Thus, this chapter is a socio-genetic analysis of Nkomo’s political mind as produced within a particular sociocultural background.

M. Ndlovu (*)  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_10

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Contradictory Representations of Nkomo The meanings of Joshua Nkomo’s political behaviour and leadership style within the Zimbabwean and African political history can be understood as inventions of Nkomo through a process of both self-representation and representation by others. These inventions can neither be treated as entirely false nor true, but they can best be taken re-imaginations of the ‘actual’ lived experiences of Nkomo’s leadership from different ideological standpoints. Thus, as Carolyn Hamilton (1998) has eloquently argued in her book, Terrific Majesty: The Powers of Shaka Zulu and the Limits of Historical Invention, there is always a material basis behind ‘historical inventions’ and ‘regimes of truths’ of prominent political figures such as Shaka Zulu; hence, we cannot ignore their political representations in our search to understand meanings behind their political actions and behaviour. It is, however, the responsibility of the analysts to sift through a corpus of representations that are ‘regimes of truth’ to obtain the actual raw materials on which another plausible interpretation of reality about a particular political figure can be developed. This new interpretation itself does not pronounce an ‘end of history’ about that particular political figure, but merely expands the knowledge base from which the political actions and behaviour of that historical figure can further be examined and understood. In this chapter, I seek not only to provide another interpretation of Nkomo’s political actions, behaviour and leadership style but also to articulate a robust method of reading the genesis of his political mind. The political figure, Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo launched his political career around 1948 when he became an active participant in the trade union politics of the then Rhodesian Railways in Bulawayo. It was in the 1950s and early 1960s that Nkomo first rose into prominence among the anti-colonial nationalist movements in Rhodesia where he became the leader of prominent nationalist movements such as the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), the National Democratic Party (NDP) and the Zimbabwe African People Union (ZAPU). As a prominent leader of these early nationalist movements, Nkomo became the originator of the Zimbabwean liberation struggle. It was, indeed, his popularity as a fearless and cunning anti-colonial figure in the early day of nationalist movements that earned him the nickname, Chibwechitedza (‘the slippery stone’ in Shona) to symbolize his evasion skills against colonial repression. However, this positive representation of Nkomo

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was short-lived as his political career took a turn with the split of ZAPU in 1963. The split, which resulted in the formation of the Shonadominated Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) versus the Ndebele-dominated ZAPU, inaugurated a period whereby the figure of Nkomo was represented by ZANU politicians as weak, inconsistent and indecisive. Nkomo was portrayed by his ZANU detractors as a coward who was not willing to embrace confrontational politics (Shamuyarira 1966), yet those who supported him remained convinced of him as a liberation struggle stalwart. While the controversy around the figure of Nkomo in the Zimbabwean political historiography began in the heydays of colonialism, particularly in the formative years of the liberation struggle against the Rhodesian government, this controversy further heighted after Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980. The first controversial representation of Nkomo within an independent Zimbabwe came from ZANU-PF politicians who won the national elections on 18 April 1980 and then followed by Nkomo’s supporters in Matabeleland and Midlands who were persecuted and victimized by the ZANU-PF-led government. Thus, despite the fact that ZANU-PF and PF-ZAPU together formed a Government of National Unity (GNU) after the former won the national elections in 1980, Nkomo came to be portrayed as the ‘father of dissidents’—a figure that represented him as a leader of disgruntled members of a vanquished party who sought to remove a ZANU-PF-led government from power by force. The motivation behind the projection of Nkomo as a rebellious father of dissidents by ZANU-PF, according to Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems (2010), could have stemmed from the desire by the ZANU-PF leader and the newly elected Zimbabwean prime minister, Robert Mugabe, to create a one-party state. Robert Mugabe, who was then the prime minister of the newly formed postcolonial ZANU-PF-led government, used the pretext of ‘arms cache’ by the ex-ZIPRA members—an armed wing of PF-ZAPU during the liberation struggle—to portray Nkomo as a leader of a tribal party that sought to dethrone a legitimately elected ZANU-PF government. Mugabe then deployed a North Korea-trained army unit known as the Fifth Brigade under the pretext of hunting down dissidents in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces thereby resulting in the death of an estimated 20,000 mostly Ndebele-speaking civilian supporters of Nkomo. The carnage that was inflicted by the Fifth Brigade on the people of Midlands and Matabeleland provinces enabled another portrayal

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of Nkomo as an indecisive and cowardly leader, now not by his detractors in the ZANU-PF political formation but by those who were his supporters. These supporters who were brutalized by Mugabe’s tribal army felt that Nkomo did not do enough to protect them as their leader but instead skipped the country to find safe haven in London while leaving them being brutalized by Fifth Brigade. In addition, there were those who felt Nkomo was a naïve leader who disarmed his highly trained ZIPRA army during the integration of ZIPRA and ZANLA forces thereby laying ground for Mugabe’s Fifth Brigade to brutalize them without any form of resistance. Perhaps, the last coherent and dominant strand of Nkomo’s representation as a political figure within Zimbabwean and/or African history is that of Nkomo as ‘Father Zimbabwe’ which ensued after the signing of Unity Accord on 22 December 1987. Though Nkomo began representing himself as ‘Father Zimbabwe’ prior to Unity Accord through his autobiography, Nkomo: The Story of My Life (1984), to counter the negative portrayals by ZANU-PF as a ‘father of dissidents’, his positive portrayal as a nation-builder rose to prominence after 1987 when he gave into Mugabe’s demand for a oneparty state through the signing of the Unity Accord. The Unity Accord that was signed by PF-ZAPU and ZANU-PF was widely interpreted by Nkomo’s supporters as the ‘swallowing’ PF-ZAPU by ZANU-PF. All the above shows clearly that they have never been any stable singular interpretation of Nkomo’s political actions and behaviour within the political landscape of Zimbabwe, but what has been always missing in many of Nkomo’s representations is the attempt to read his political behaviour and actions from a point of departure that takes into cognizant of the environmental circumstances that produced his political mind.

Nkomo and His Political Behaviour: Towards a Theory of a Political Mind The meaning of Nkomo’s political actions and behaviour can best be understood from reading his political mind. By his political mind, I mean his thought system as it was produced by the biological processes within him and the sociocultural circumstances outside him. Thus, Nkomo as a person was a product of an internal biological process of being and an

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external social process of being that cannot be disassociated from the broader environmental circumstances that limited his thinking and imaginative prowess. This section, therefore, is about what does it mean to think? This is an important question not only because thinking precedes action thereby making it obvious that knowing the ‘thought’ behind the action is a prerequisite of knowing the meaning of that action but also because the phenomenon of the thinking is complex affair that requires us to understand what does it mean to be a human being in the first place. This is not an easy question but the subject of being human has always been explained by distinguishing being human from being an animal. Thus, for instance, being human as opposed to being an animal is well articulated by Clifford Geertz (1973) in his description of human being as culture-carrying animal. This culture, which becomes a control mechanism among human beings as they instructively relay it to one another and from generation to generation, is always subject to continuity and change; hence, human beings unlike animals have no permanently predictable behavioural pattern throughout their history, but their behaviours are subject to both stability and transformation. In the quest to examine the genesis of Nkomo’s political-cum-cultural mind, it is important to underline that the culture that is thought to have informed his mindset is not treated as though it was circumscribed and frozen in time or as completely dynamic and unknowable. The fact that human beings are ‘culture-carrying’ animals means that human beings have an advanced pedagogic discourse and practice that enables them to effectively relay their culture to each other as well as from one generation to another. Thus, pedagogy among human beings is an instrument socialization that makes them to teach and learn from each other thereby making it possible to define themselves primarily as social beings rather than mainly biological beings. Thus, when we seek to unpack the sociocultural background that informed Nkomo’s political mind, we seek to unmask that which was imparted on him as a way of life. That being human is primarily social than biological, however, does not therefore mean that biology is of lesser importance in the constitution of being human, but it simply means it is the sociality in human beings that enables their brains—a neurological substance—to obtain a higher-level thinking capacity than that of animals. Thus, even though it might be correct to characterize the early stages of development in human beings as primarily biological, human beings tend to be primarily social in their later stages of their development. The above discussion of

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what constitute being human is quite important in developing a sociogenetic theory of Nkomo’s mind simply because it allows us to view his political behaviour as primarily rooted in his socialization than a product of his pre-given innate qualities—a development that may lead to not only the questioning of his humanity but also the classification of those of his type as lacking human qualities with dire consequences. This is even more important to understand in the aftermath of the genocidal atrocities that were committed against Ndebele supporters of Nkomo between 1980 and 1987 where a radical doubt on the humanity of Ndebele people as an ethnic group was expressed through descriptions such as ‘cockroaches’. The idea of culture and its centrality to the question of being human is an idea that has influenced a number of progressive social psychological theories of learning that have so far challenged the ‘innatist’ behavioural school of mental discipline for privileging the ‘omni-science of the soul’ (Jarvis 2006: 91) over the social status of being human thereby leading to the development of the idea that human intelligence is pregiven and fixed. This extremism of the reductionist psychological theories about the mind of a human being that manifested themselves as ‘black box psychology’ (Watson 1913, 1929) or ‘ghost in a machine’ (Skinner 1974) was challenged by what became the first and the second cognitive revolution whose task was to articulate how the mind of a human being is a product of both ‘biogenesis’ and ‘socio-genesis’ rather than one of them. If, indeed, the cognitive revolutions in psychology were successful in demystifying the myths of ‘brain science’ whose preoccupation was to conflate ‘brain’ with the ‘mind’ in its search to establish ‘how our neural hardware might run our mental software’ (Bruer 2006: 1), then the mind of a human being can neither be attributed to ‘inside-outside’ process nor ‘outside-in’. Instead, the mind of human being must be thought of as ‘embodied’ in that experience as ‘the locus of perception of the understanding of the world and the environment’ (Christodoulou (2010: 331) is of primary importance; hence, when we seek to understand the political mind of a figure such as Nkomo, we seek to engage in a theory of his embodied cognition. However, in theorizing his embodied cognition and perception of the world, we are not in a position to study his internal neurological state of his brain; hence, we are bound to focus on the socio-genesis of his thinking which we can access. Thus, by accessing the sociocultural environment that produced Nkomo’s political behaviour, we gain the privilege of estimating the gap

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between the actual development of his innate mind and that of the society or culture that groomed him—what Vygotsky (1978) described as a zone of proximal development. In other word, the socio-genetic theory of Nkomo’s political mind is a theory of Nkomo’s zone of proximal development vis-à-vis his eco-culture or the environment of his sociocultural experience. Apart from the psychological and sociological theories about what constitutes the mind of a human being, Nkomo’s political mind can also be read through philosophical approaches to the question of the mind. The history of the philosophical interpretations of the mind is traceable to the Cartesian philosophy of the seventeenth century when Rene Descartes produced an ontological dualism between the mind and the body. As it will be seen later in the chapter, it was this dualistic notion of the ‘mind-body compound’ (Heinämaa 2003) that brought about what we can characterize as anti-Cartesian discourses of the mind. These antiCartesian discourses of the mind are similar to the socio-genetic theory of the mind that I explained above though they focus more on responding to the damages that were caused by Descartes’s pronouncement of the ‘cogito ego sum’, which means, ‘I think therefore I am’. The ‘ego cogito’ as popularly referred to is a philosophical statement that inaugurated ‘a new era of epistemological thinking, wherein everything is thought to be determined or made intelligible by the workings of the mind’ (Burns 1982: 63). There are, indeed, many interpretations of the Descartes’s statement of ‘I think therefore I am’, but the common one is that Descartes was exercising a Cartesian quest for a secular foundationalism, self-consciousness and truth where he concluded that the mind is far more reliable when it comes to the question establishing ‘trustworthy foundations’ and ‘states of conviction’ (Philips 1995). This development reduced the significance of the body in matters of thought, knowledge and truth mainly because to Descartes the ‘mind object’ became what Philips (1995: 230) described as a ‘perverse theorist of the body’. Thus, by reducing the body to a ‘quantity’ than a ‘substantiality of the ‘soul’ (res cogitans) (Dussel 2008), which to him was the same as the mind, Descartes established the bodily experiences of the material world, its sensations and sense perceptions as the enemies of the truth. The implication of such a conception of the ‘body mind compound’ became problematic to a number of scholars such as Dussel (2008) who view such a thinking as having inaugurated a situation where it became possible to develop universal social

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scientific theories that are insensitive to varying socio-historical circumstances that determine human behaviour and thought across time and space. This therefore led to the development of different forms of ‘antiCartesian mediations’ whose objective has been to challenge the ‘epistemic solipsism’ that was enabled by the Cartesian dualism of the ego cogito which privileged the mind over the bodily experiences of the material world—experiences that were to lead to deeper understanding about what constitutes the mind of a human being. Among a number of earliest theorists in Europe who challenged Descartes’s rejection of ‘senses’ as forming a reliable basis for knowledge were the English philosopher, John Locke (1632–1704), the Scottish philosopher, David Hume (1711–1776), and the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Thus, in contrast to Descartes’s innate and rational mind, the empiricism of philosophers such as Locke and Hume stressed that experience plays a primary role ‘in all human understanding and knowledge’ (Sedgwick 2001: 12). Thus, for instance, in his essay entitled An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke argued that all our ideas are derived ultimately from our experiences which mean that ideas are a result of the qualities of our bodies as they sense the world within which we exist. The Lockean approach to the question of the body and the mind was followed by Hume in his thesis on how ‘impressions’ give rise to ‘ideas’. Thus, according to Sedgwick (2001: 17), Hume argued that ‘All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS’. By impressions, Hume meant perceptions that are a direct consequence of sense experience while ideas are ‘the faint images of these [impressions and perceptions] in thinking and reasoning’. What this means is that Hume, unlike Descartes, developed a causal hypothesis where experience precedes our thinking or reasoning. In the case of seeking to understand Nkomo’s political mind, it is important that we avoid those dehumanizing reductionist Cartesian approaches that treated his mind as inherently weak and, therefore, not deserving to exist. Thus, an anti-Cartesian approach to Nkomo’s political mind not only restores and rehabilitates Nkomo’s lost humanity but also provides a sense of justice to Nkomo political mind by locating it within the sociocultural environment of its cultivation. In general, though the empiricism of Locke and Hume was affirmed by Kant when he argued that ‘There can be no doubt that all out knowledge

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begins with experience…’, it can be noted that Kant did not take the primacy of experience for granted as evident in his articulation that ‘though all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it all arises out of experience’ (Sedgwick 2001: 27). Thus, in contrast to Locke and Hume, Kant divided knowledge into a posteriori judgement that is based on our empirical experiences and a priori judgement that is independent of any experience. In other words, the Kantian approach to the question of the body and the mind sought to depart from the Lockean notion of human beings as ‘empty cabinets’ that are mere passive recipients of sense impressions of the world to reconstitute the objectivity and universality of knowledge that is enabled by a ‘pure intuition’ of the human mind. In general, the above anti-Cartesian meditations by Locke, Hume and Kant are a clear indication that Cartesianism has been a challenge not only to the theorists of the non-Western world but also to those of the West. This, however, does not mean that these two categories of theorists engaged the subject of Cartesian thinking in similar terms, but as it will be explained below, the anti-Cartesian meditations of the nonWestern theorists have tended to focus on the role of Cartesian thinking in sustaining and perpetuating colonial power relations. Since tribalism, a microcosm of racism, is behind some of the negative representation of Nkomo, the anti-Cartesian approaches of the non-Western theorists are useful to reversing the tribally motivated representations of Nkomo. Thus, whereas the anti-Cartesian approaches of non-Western theorists represent a decolonial critique to the challenge of colonialism and racism in the imagination of the non-Western ‘Other’, the anti-Cartesian approach to Nkomo’s image represents a non-tribalistic critique to the challenge of tribalism in the representation of Nkomo as the Ndebele ‘Other’ in Zimbabwe. A socio-genetic theory about Nkomo’s political mind is also an antiCartesian approach to his thinking that ‘bridges’ his experience and his ‘thought system’ in order to produce a non-reductionist perspective about his political behaviour. Thus, whereas the anti-Cartesian approach to Nkomo’s mind ‘bridges’ experience and the mind inside the body of the person, the Cartesian approach, that was used mainly by his detractors who did not take his sociocultural experiences seriously when criticizing his political actions and decisions, simply ‘breaches’ his sociocultural background to produce unjustified criticisms. Since Nkomo’s vilifications were mainly tribally motivated, an anti-Cartesian socio-genetic

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theory of his mind has the potential to produce a decolonial perspective about Nkomo’s leadership qualities.

Ndebele Culture and Nkomo’s Political Mind The most important source about Nkomo’s sociocultural background is his autobiography: Nkomo: The Story of My Life. This is an important source not because one can regard it as an accurate reflection of untainted ‘facts’ about his sociocultural background that shaped his personality and character but precisely because ‘self-representations’ contain those biases and exaggerations that cannot be obtained from anyone else other than the narrator himself and people who were with him from the time he was born. Biases, inventions and exaggerations that emanate from self-representation, like those that emanate from ‘representations from without’, are subject to limitation by pre-existing knowledge; hence, they are reliable to a certain extent. In some instances, self-representations are even more reliable than representations from without in that the latter can be ‘ad hoc’ as it can be based on momentous knowledge rather than long-term pre-existing historical knowledge about the subject being represented. Thus, for instance, many of Nkomo’s detractors had no prior historical knowledge about his sociocultural experiences when he was a child which may or may not have influenced his adult behaviour but only knew of Nkomo as an adult thereby failing to understand the basis of some of his political actions. Nkomo was Ndebele. He was brought up in Ndebele culture. Born on 7 June 1917, Nkomo was the third of eight children of his parents who partly experienced a pre-colonial Ndebele lifestyle and a modern colonial life style of the British settlers. Thus, as revealed by Nkomo in his autobiography, his father and mother were born around 1880s and were teenagers when the final occupation of the Ndebele state took place in 1897. Though his parents were Christians who also worked for the London Missionary Society under the British settler government, Nkomo reveals in his autobiography that they nonetheless remained believing in traditional doctors. Thus, their belief in traditional healers was made clear when they took Nkomo to a traditional doctor when he was a child—a clear indication that they were firmly rooted in Ndebele culture even though they were Christians. This belief in Ndebele culture which included the practice of traditional healing by Nkomo’s parents was imparted on Nkomo during his formative years to the extent that

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he ended up attending non-Christian ceremonies and visiting the Mwali shrine in the Matopos hills. As he reveals it in his autobiography: Between the ages of eight and fourteen I became much attracted to the traditional religion of our people. With my friends I would steal away from home in secret to the ceremonies of our non-Christian neighbours, joining in the dancing and the singing, and even partaking, despite my parents’ strict orders, of the food that had been specially prepared for the ceremony. To me their worship was more lively and attractive, and seemed more serious, than that I had seen in the Christian church. (Nkomo 1984: 13)

What we can discern from the above is that Nkomo’s values and beliefs came to be even more rooted in Ndebele culture than that of his parents who were partly influenced by Christianity. Thus, it was therefore not surprising that before he engaged in the nationalist politics against the minority rule of the Rhodesian white settler government in the 1950s, he first consulted the Mwali spirit medium at the Matopos hills. Apart from having been influenced by Ndebele traditional beliefs and values, Nkomo, like many of his contemporaries, was a product of the modern colonial education. Thus, for instance, Nkomo studied, among other professions, social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work in Johannesburg which, after completing his Diploma, landed him a job as a chief social worker in the Department of African Affairs of the Rhodesia Railways. It was at the Rhodesia Railways that Nkomo joined the trade union and became the president of the African Railway Employees’ Association—a development which he attributes to the experience of segregation, oppression and dehumanization of black people by the then white settler government. While Nkomo’s experiences, during his formative years before he became a fully fledged political figure, are vast and complex, his political mind can be attributed to two cultural systems: Ndebele culture and colonial modernity. A deeper analysis of how the two cultural systems affected Nkomo in his formative years reveals that he was enchanted with the Ndebele traditional beliefs and values but disenchanted with colonial modernity. If, indeed, it is correct to characterize the behaviour of Nkomo as having been influence positively and negatively by both Ndebele culture and colonial modernity, respectively, the question that becomes important therefore is not just that of how

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did the two sociocultural systems shape Nkomo’s political behaviour but also that of how does this sociocultural background affect our interpretation of Nkomo’s behaviour. The question of how does our knowledge of Nkomo’s sociocultural background affect our interpretation of his political mind and behaviour, however, cannot be answered without an understanding how the two sociocultural systems represent two different civilizational paradigmatic approaches to politics and life in general. Thus, for instance, Ndebele culture is a civilizational cultural system that socializes individuals into what decolonial scholars such as Maldonado-Torres (2008) and NdlovuGatsheni (2016) characterized as the ‘paradigm of peace’—a paradigm about life and politics that is different from that of modernity/coloniality which is predicated on a ‘paradigm of war’. Nkomo as a typical Ndebele or product of Ndebele culture was not a warmonger. He engaged in warfare as a last resort and did not intend to live by war as his ideology and way of life. This is made clear in his autobiography where he provides a reason why he ended up engaging in the armed liberation against white minority rule in Rhodesia: Of course I would have preferred the peaceful road to freedom that was open to practically all the other former British colonies in Africa. It had been just possible that British intervention, or pressure from the outside world, or even an outbreak of common sense among settler community, might have created a hope of African advancement by peaceful means. But it was not to be. We were forced to fight. (Nkomo 1984: 98)

The above statement clearly reveals that though Nkomo was forced to engage in a violent armed struggle against colonial rule, he was not at peace with violence as a way of life but merely exercised it as a radical rejection of the ideological violence of the oppressor. Thus, Nkomo exercised a Fanonian form of ‘counter-violence’ that Mbembe (2012: 23) views as ‘purely responsive- ad hoc, reptilian and epilectic’ by a ‘hunted man’ who desperately seeks to repel a violent way of life imposed upon him by a subject who believes that violence is natural way of life. Given the fact that Nkomo was characterized as docile leader during the liberation struggle simply because he preferred peaceful resolution to the conflict than war, such a characterization of Nkomo’s leader can be seen as misplaced due to the fact that it was not based on an understanding of his Ndebele cultural horizon about conflict resolution

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that informed his political decisions. Ndebele culture through its proverbs such as induku kayakhi muzi (meaning violence does not sustain a family) always cautions its subjects against leaning towards violence as means of achieving peace. Thus, according to Ndebele culture, violence negates the spirit of nation-building. As a result of his Ndebele sociocultural background, Nkomo like many other political figures such as Nelson Mandela whose views about life and politics were anchored on the paradigm of peace within a global environment whose logic privileges the paradigm of war suffered the consequence of being a minority in a world where the majority has been made to believe that war is natural marker of being human. This perverted logic of humanness is a colonial invention of being human that is meant to justify oppression as a natural order of life yet in reality life did not begin with the dominance of the Western worldview over other nonWestern knowledges and ways of knowing. It was the German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche in his thesis on The Will to Power (1968), who made it clear that Eurocentric worldview about life and politics is predicated on naturalizing war as a way of life and practicing politics. Thus, according to Nietzsche (1968: 550), ‘the world is the will to power’; hence, domination and oppression of one group of human beings by another group is a natural state of existence. Nkomo, like his contemporaries such as Mandela, was against this form of politics of the ‘will to power’ as they were products of sociocultural systems that viewed politics as an expression of the ‘will to live’. The similarities between Nkomo and Mandela in terms of their paradigmatic horizon about life and politics are not surprising simply because they were all informed by an Nguni cultural background that includes Ndebele and Xhosa. The crisis of leaders such as Nkomo and Mandela who viewed the world through the lenses of the paradigm of peace is not only that they became the minority in a world where the colonization of knowledge has succeeded in imparting the paradigm of war into the minds of the majority of world’s population but also because their politics was predominantly interpreted from a paradigm of war that equates the search for peace with naivety. This is why both Nkomo and Mandela easily attained the label of being ‘sell-outs’ by the majority of those who observed and judged their politics from the epistemic standpoint of the paradigm of war. Instead of being a sell-out and coward, Nkomo was a decolonial humanist who rejected Eurocentric conception of politics as war but to see Nkomo in this way requires one to be familiar with his

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sociocultural background and how his sociocultural background paradigmatically represented a horizon of peace about life and politics. To conclude, the socio-genesis of Nkomo political mind presents Nkomo as a great nation-builder whose nationalist politics was predicated on a paradigm of peace but practised in a spatio-historical temporality dominated by a paradigm of war. This made him to be appear naïve and docile to many of his detractors who observed and judged his politics from a colonially rooted epistemic standpoint that privileges violence as a way of life yet when examined from a decolonial epistemic standpoint that takes seriously the socio-historical experience of the mind of a human subject, his radical humanism becomes visible. Thus, as an embodiment of an Ndebele culture that enabled its founder, Mzilikazi to a build a nation of uMthwakazi out of what was a small group of about three hundred men and women when he left what is now KwaZuluNatal, Nkomo was taught that positive peace and sustainable unity cannot be achieved through violence as an ideological apparatus.

References Bruer, J. T. (2006). Education and the brain: Spanning disciplines. In Annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association. San Francisco, CA: American Educational Research Association. Burns, G. (1982). Inventions: Writing, textuality and understanding in literary history. New Haven: Yale University Press. Christodoulou, N. (2010). Embodied curriculum. In C. A. Kridel (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of curriculum studies. London: Sage. Dussel, E. (2008). Anti-cartesian meditations: About the origin of the philosophical anti-discourse of modernity. Tabula Rasa, 9, 153–198. Geertz, C. (1973). The interpretation of cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic books. Hamilton, C. (1998). Terrific majesty: The powers of Shaka Zulu and the limits of historical intervention. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Heinämaa, S. (2003). The living body and its position in metaphysics: MerleauPonty’s dialogue with descartes. In Metaphysics, facticity, interpretation (pp. 23–48). Amsterdam: Springer. Jarvis, P. (2006). The socratic method. The theory and practice of teaching. New York: Sage. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2008). Against war: Views from the underside of modernity. Durham: Duke University Press.

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Mbembe, A. (2012). Metamorphic thought: The works of Frantz Fanon. African Studies, 71(1), 19–28. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2016). The decolonial Mandela: Peace, justice and the politics of life. New York: Berghahn. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S., & Willems, W. (2010). Reinvoking the past in the present: Changing identities and appropriations of Joshua Nkomo in post-colonial Zimbabwe. African Identities, 8(3), 191–208. Nietzsche, F. (1968). The will to power. New York: Vintage Books. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Phillips, A. (1995). The story of the mind. In E. G. Corrigan & P. Gordon (Eds.), The mind object: Precocity and pathology of self-sufficiency. London: Jason Aronson. Sedgwick, P. R. (2001). Descartes to Derrida: An introduction to European philosophy. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. Shamuyarira, N. (1966). Crisis in Rhodesia. New York: Transatlantic Arts. Skinner, B. F. (1974). About behaviorism. New York: Knopf. Vygotsky, L. S. (1978). Mind in society. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Watson, J. B. (1913). Psychology as the behaviorist views it. Psychological Review, 20(2), 158–198.

CHAPTER 11

Joshua Nkomo on Land: Exploring His Vision for Land Reform and Land Use in Zimbabwe Rudo Gaidzanwa

Introduction This chapter delves into Joshua Nkomo’s background and experience with landholding in a peasant household. This chapter explores Nkomo’s struggle with colonial employment policies, entrepreneurship and his ideas about land policies and land reform in an independent Zimbabwe. Based on Nkomo’s lived experiences with the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) and Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) initiatives to develop land-based projects and programs for peasants, war veterans and others, this chapter links Nkomo’s background and experiences to his ideas in the light of Zimbabwe’s actual experience with land reform in post-independence Zimbabwe. Nkomo’s life experiences are contextualised in the occupation of Zimbabwe which started around 1890, culminating in colonisation by 1896. Colonisation occurred as a result of the desire for gold and other minerals which was followed by the looting of cattle and land and gold claims by the white settler colonists

R. Gaidzanwa (*)  University of Zimbabwe, Harare, Zimbabwe © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_11

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in land held by the Ndebele and Shona peoples. According to Palmer (1977), Ndebele people’s land was seized by settlers as early as 1893 and those Ndebele who had not been pushed off their land became tenants to settler landlords who demanded rent and hut taxes from them. Others became wage labourers, while others whose land was alienated were pushed to Shangani and Gwayi areas, which were characterised by dry and barren Kalahari soils while the Highveld, which was well watered, was alienated to the white settlers, instantly turning the indigenous people into ‘squatters’ on the land they had previously held (Palmer 1977). In the Shona-occupied areas, settlers comprising missionaries, miners, companies and other adventurers seized land of the Shona for speculation in minerals and ‘farming’ labour for exploiting these resources. The British South Africa Company introduced taxation to force the populace to work for cash or pay taxes in cattle, grain and gold. Beach (1970) noted that in most cases, natives’ cattle and grain were grossly undervalued by over 33%, resulting in over a third of Shona people’s livestock being seized by force. By 1896, forced labour, taxation and both Shona and Ndebele land had been alienated to settlers to various degrees. While forcible occupations of land had alienated both Shona and Ndebele people, sparking off uprisings against the settlers in 1896, both Shona and Ndebele people were forced into new modes of coexistence with the settlers. According to (Palmer 1977), about a third of Shona people still lived outside the ‘reserves’ created for them by settlers. The settlers needed reserves to provide labour without generating conflict with the natives. This was accomplished through wages and taxation, a system that affected the Ndebele more acutely since they were on dry, barren land and had less arable land to work as a means of avoiding wage labour for the settlers. Shona people, on the other hand, still had some reserve land to farm as a means of avoiding wage labour for the settlers. As a result, the settlers in Shona-occupied areas were forced to resort to recruiting wage labour further afield as far as Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. The relative labour scarcity in Shona areas pushed wages higher than those obtaining in Ndebele areas. Hut taxes doubled in 1904 but Shona farmers were still able to grow food for the settlers and their labour until the ‘White Agricultural Policy’ was launched by the British South Africa Company in 1908. Palmer (1977) holds that prior to the First World War, there was no land policy or consensus about the role of reserves in the colony of

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Southern Rhodesia. However, a series of taxes were imposed on the native peoples progressively as European immigrants demanded land for capitalist farming. In 1909, land rent increases on African ‘tenants’ generated more labour working on settler farms, while the mines also required more labour. Maize and tobacco surpluses were generated for export from Southern Rhodesia. In 1912, dog taxes were imposed on Africans to generate more labour for mines, farms and other settler enterprises. Settler ranches were expanded in Ndebele people’s areas through the imposition of grazing taxes on Ndebele people, generating more land and labour for the settlers. Shona farmers competed with settlers for grazing land, exerting more pressure on the land that both Shona and settler farmers desired. By 1914, the inexorable pressures on land of the natives and their intensified taxation impoverished growing numbers of the Shona and Ndebele peoples. In 1914, a commission pronounced native land holdings ‘excessive’ and proceeded to reduce native land holdings by five and a half million acres. Those reserves that were close to transport routes were reduced in size or eradicated to reduce competition by natives in agriculture. The settler-dominated government and society agreed that natives should be wage workers thus ameliorating the demand for reserve land which settler farmers desired for capitalist agriculture. Thus, in many areas, native peoples were dispossessed of their land and relocated to areas without access to transport, water, capital and other resources. Many native peoples were forced to undertake wage labour together with subsistence farming although, in theory, there were provisions for them to purchase land for farming. However, in practice, settlers thwarted any private property ownership by the native peoples as a means of minimising competition for labour. Eventually, in 1925, whites called for racially segregated land holding which was accomplished through a land commission that approved the assignment of separate land areas for Europeans (17.4 million acres) and Africans (6.8 million acres). The rest of the land was for African reserves and European areas. The provisions of the land commission became law in 1930 as the Land Apportionment Act through which the settlers had managed to consolidate their social, economic and political domination over the African peoples of Zimbabwe. Through land seizures, which created artificial shortages of land in the reserves while settlers held more land than they could use, settlers had created a system that provided them cheap African labour and monopoly over the financing

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of agriculture and transport. Thus, settler agriculture was consolidated at the expense of the livelihoods of the native peoples. In addition, there was an effective halt to any future expansion of land holdings by Africans. In the Native Purchase Areas, where land was held by natives on freehold, more than half the land was unsuitable for dry-land cropping and was situated in remote parts of the country where rail and road transport for marketing agricultural produce were scarce and expensive. Given the costs of labour, many purchase area farmers could not afford to hire wage labour and often resorted to polygyny as a labour recruitment and reproductive strategy. These factors hobbled any opportunities for the development of a class of black capitalist farmers who could have competed with the settlers. The reserves became the repository of the bulk of African labour. The reserves, through the artificial creation of land shortages for the natives, were overstocked, overgrazed, crowded and most were located on infertile land. Production in the reserves declined as the quality of the land declined over time. Wage work became the accepted alternative, leading to migration into towns, mines and white-owned commercial farms by young men and some women in search of wage work. Wage work enabled men to meet tax obligations, obtain cash for purchasing consumer goods and agricultural implements. As servicemen were demobilised from Europe, some of them sought fortunes in Rhodesia, occupying more state and European land in Rhodesia. Post-war industrialisation generated demand for more labour in urban areas, resulting in a boom in the economy and influx control in the towns as labour flooded the colony of Rhodesia from surrounding territories. It is in this context that the life and times of Joshua Nkomo will be analysed. Joshua Nkomo lived through many of the events described in the introduction and also fought for the independence of the black people of Zimbabwe. His ideas and approaches to the land question in Zimbabwe were shaped by the experiences of his youth and adulthood with respect to land alienation from the native peoples of Zimbabwe.

Nkomo’s Early Experiences with Peasant Life and Land Use In his biography (1984), Nkomo recounts the stories he heard about the killing of natives by Rhodes and his colonists, at random in order to ensure that natives feared white people. In addition, he refers to the

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looting and sharing of natives’ livestock and land between the armed colonists after they had subdued the natives. Nkomo recalls how his father, Nyongolo, a teacher and a farmer who had learned better farming methods, was so successful that he traded his farm surplus for grain and had bought a two wheel donkey cart and later a four-wheeled trolley wagon. Eventually, Nyongolo and his partner, Chief Luposwe’s brother, traded grain which they sold to white miners and traders, reinvesting the proceeds in the purchase of more cattle, sheep, goats and donkeys. Since at that time, before 1914, the natives could till as much land as they could and rear as many animals as they desired; Nkomo’s family had a huge herd of over one thousand cattle, over a thousand flock of sheep and goats and other animals. In addition to the meagre proceeds from Nyongolo’s teaching, Nkomo’s family was able to live well and became well-to-do because of their animal husbandry and cropping activities. The mission taught building, reading, writing, and provided books, chalk and slates for children to write on and paid the teachers but Nyongolo also taught his children together with his siblings, Othilia and Stephen, at home. Nkomo recalls with sadness and anger, the development of the initiatives that displaced black farmers in the wake of the ‘White Agricultural Policy’ in 1908 and the declaration of his home area at Tshimale near the mission, a white area, while Nyongolo was studying in South Africa, for 3 years. This resulted in the mission being moved to another place near Chief Bango’s area near the Matopos. Nkomo also describes how his uncle, brother to his father, fought in the First World War and how his uncle fought with the British army in France. The influx of whites into the colony of Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe was named, gained momentum as prisoners of war, returning soldiers and other adventurers seeking their fortunes, came into Zimbabwe. White areas were designated in the wellwatered areas with grass for cattle and other livestock and good soils, for these settlers, resulting in the movement of the natives off the good land, pastures and other resources. In addition, forced labour, ‘chibharo’ was introduced, resulting in the exploitation of black labour with little or no compensation. Native ‘reserves’ were created to separate the local populations from the settlers and in the ‘reserves’; the livestock holdings of the natives were reduced and so were their landholdings. The new classifications of land did not enable the natives to be freeholders of land but they became mere occupiers of land with use rights. The white settlers, by contrast, were given freehold title to their land, making it negotiable

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on the market. Nkomo also notes that Native Commissioners were appointed to adjudicate and administer all aspects of native life, ranging from numbers of cattle held, crops grown, numbers of wives married and other facets of native life. The inequitable, racially based distribution of land in Rhodesia was intended to facilitate the procurement of labour for the settler farms and other enterprises that were developed after the colonisation of Zimbabwe. The domestic economy of the African rural areas (termed ‘reserves’) was used by the settlers to generate and sustain the reproduction of labour throughout the life cycle so that eventualities such as youth, illness, unemployment and old age of the workers had minimal disruptive effects on colonial agriculture. Thus, the African labourers would be raised in the reserves, attain adulthood and be available for work in the agriculture, commerce and industry of the colonial economy and then return to the reserves in cases of illness, unemployment, illness and death, minimising the costs of their upkeep to colonial employers (Gaidzanwa 1981). Employees, predominantly male, were employed as ‘single’ workers regardless of their marital statuses and they were paid survival wages which did not support their wives, children and other dependents because these dependents fended for themselves in the reserves. The reserves were therefore reservoirs of cheap labour and the domestic economies in the reserves did not benefit much from the accumulation or circulation of incomes and capital since the levels of extraction and exploitation from labour were very high. Given the minimal investment by capital into the reserve economies, capital was able to institutionalise cheap labour extraction from the reserves, securing for capital high levels of accumulation over decades of exploitation of the native populations. The Nkomo family first relocated to Mbembeswana, ‘a wild, bushy, dry, flat land with ravines […] infested with wild animals, hyenas, leopards, lions, wild dogs!’ (Nkomo 1984: 17). Given the ‘impossible’ situation at Mbembeswana, the Nkomo family moved again, this time to Malaba’s area, about seventeen kilometres from Mbembeswana. Nkomo notes that the Native Commissioner came to collect taxes. The native male was charged one pound per year, and taxes for veterinary services were charged. Nyongolo traded maize and did well with Legion and Antelope Mine customers but decided to move to Bidi where he got employed as a teacher, though earning very little. Nyongolo sent his sons, Paul and Joshua, to be schooled in handicrafts, agriculture,

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building and other skills at Tsholotsho Government Industrial School near Nyamandlovu. Joshua became the school bugler and was also responsible for hoisting the Union Jack every morning and lowering it every evening. According to Joshua Nkomo, the school was very good because the teachers adapted existing technologies and developed appropriate ones for drilling seed furrows with oxen, enabling peasant farmers to use these technologies since they could not afford to buy tractors that were used for these purposes by the white farmers who had access to public state funding and private financing. Nkomo’s vision was to extend these technologies to peasant farmers in Zimbabwe rather than getting them indebted to banks for expensive technologies which only the well-financed white farmers could afford. Nkomo was always very clear that he took after his father who ‘wanted to work on our own account’ (Nkomo 1984: 26). At the age of 20, after his brother had bought a used bus, Nkomo ventured into the public transport business after securing a licence to drive public transport vehicles. He tried his hand at lorry driving for four pounds a month, while Coloured (mixed race) men earned twelve pounds a month for the same job. When the 20-year-old Joshua found about the racial salary disparities, he asked for the twelve pounds a month given to Coloureds and promptly got sacked for his temerity to ask for a higher wage. He tried his hand at selling livestock and teaching but soon abandoned all these activities to pursue further education at Adams College in South Africa since there was no secondary school for blacks in Rhodesia until 1947. At Adams College, Nkomo learned Carpentry, Mathematics, Latin, English, Zulu and Physical Science and earned extra money in Durban making wooden stools with leather seats to pay his fees. His driver’s licence came in handy since he earned extra money driving the school secretary. He also earned a diploma in social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work. Nkomo’s rural and urban social work background enabled him to understand the problems and challenges faced by the rural and urban poor. His exposure to white missionaries, white civil servants and colonists, employers, teachers and lecturers exposed him to a variety of white people beyond the missionaries that many Zimbabwean nationalists encountered through their education. In South Africa in particular, Nkomo learned about the internal differentiation among the white people as well as the blacks according to their experiences within apartheid structures. According to Nkomo, the Boers (Afrikaners originally of

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farming stock) were easier to get on with because most blacks worked closely with Afrikaner families as farm labourers and, as a result, spoke Afrikaans more fluently than English. The Afrikaners were also poorer on balance, than the English settlers who encountered blacks as domestic and factory workers. However, blacks who worked for whites of English stock in South Africa were more distant from their employers. Nkomo noted that most blacks in Johannesburg did not speak English because of their social and economic distance from the aloof white South Africans of English stock. In South Africa, Nkomo was exposed to the intricacies of the politics of the African National Congress, the Afrikaners and the white South Africans of English stock. Nkomo also had exposure to different religious practices and beliefs as well as work practices and situations. In colonial Zimbabwe, his parents were ardent Methodists while his wife was a devout Roman Catholic. Nkomo was employed by the railways organisation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in 1946. In the course of his social work in the railways, Nkomo was exposed to workers of various cultural, social and economic backgrounds originating from Nyasaland (Malawi) Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), as well as those from Portuguese East Africa (Mozambique). His social, political and economic horizons were expanded by his job that necessitated travel throughout these territories. These experiences stood him in good stead in his capacity as a nationalist and a trade unionist organising workers to resist the colonial government’s oppression. Nkomo had strong feelings and ideas about the need for black people to access freehold land rights and own urban land in urban areas in colonial Zimbabwe. Blacks could only access short term leases on urban land in urban areas and only in the black townships. Nkomo had set up business in real estate and insurance sales after leaving his job with the railways and was keen to access and sell land to black people for urban housing. He first moved to a ‘superior’ black township, Barbourfields, but decided to move to Pelandaba, another black area, and build a house there because Africans were as allowed to build homes on land held on 99 year leases. The strictures on land ownership by blacks prevented the development of a black middle class in colonial Zimbabwe. In the rural areas, the Native Land Husbandry Act (1951) did not allow black people to have freehold rights to land. Thus, the bulk of the blacks could not use their land in the communal areas as collateral for loans to improve their agricultural production. Only in the Native Purchase Areas were a

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few hundred black people who were former policemen, agricultural demonstrators, teachers and small business people, allowed freehold land rights. Even there, the Native Purchase Areas as they were called, land allocated to them was inferior in quality, dry and located on inhospitable and marginal land not suitable for intensive cropping. Thus, it was not easy for an African landed class or an urban bourgeoisie to emerge and consolidate its power through numbers or alliance with other blacks in urban and rural areas. What made things worse, according to Nkomo, was the vast power vested in the Native Commissioners, later known as District Commissioners, to determine many facets of the lives of black people in both urban and rural areas. The Native/District Commissioners could determine the number and type of livestock each African family could rear, the acreage they could plant with various crops and the kinds of livelihoods they could pursue. Holleman’s (1968) seminal account of the relationship between the Chiefs, Councils, Native Commissioners and the black people is important because it illuminates the sources of friction arising from power asymmetry between the white state functionaries and the black traditional authorities and their black subjects. As the colony of Southern Rhodesia absorbed more white settlers, the squeeze on the lands of black people intensified and the Nkomo family experienced this squeeze, together with millions of the blacks in the rural and urban areas of Southern Rhodesia. More black people, like Nyongolo Nkomo’ family, were driven into areas with poorer quality land and lower rainfall. Nkomo notes that the European Farmers’ Union, as it was called, argued that as long as African farmers’ agricultural and livestock production was not restricted, the white farmers would never be able to survive or compete with the blacks, arguing that 80% of the commercial beef in Southern Rhodesia was produced by blacks who had cattle and good grazing land. Joshua Nkomo noted that the colonial government declared that it was illegal for black farmers to grow Virginia tobacco, forcing them to grow Turkish tobacco which was intended for local consumption and not for the export market. Nkomo argues that these restrictions on black agriculture and entrepreneurship created the grounds for mobilising black people against the colonial government. Using these restrictions as grievances, Nkomo remarks that the nationalist movement in general and Nkomo himself, as a trained agriculturalist and entrepreneur and son of a dip supervisor, was pushed into opposing the dipping of cattle, the recording of

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the numbers and types of cattle blacks owned for taxation. Black farmers cattle were slaughtered if they went beyond certain limits set by the white colonial functionaries. This, in the rural areas, people opposed the digging of contour ridges, (makandiwa), the dipping of cattle because it was at the dipping points that cattle were assessed and designated for slaughter if they exceeded the designated numbers. Thus, black rural poverty was engineered by the white colonial state, and Nkomo was convinced that the white-dominated and racially discriminatory system of land tenure in both rural and urban areas had to be changed if there was to be peaceful coexistence between the black and white populations in a free Zimbabwe. Nkomo also observed that the major hurdles faced by the black population in the colony of Southern Rhodesia were that there was no likelihood that any white parliament would ever legislate against racially discriminatory land laws and practices. Given that a significant proportion of the white parliamentarians, ranging from Winston Field, Garfield Todd, Ian Smith and others, were farmers who benefitted from the racial discrimination against black people; they had no interest in undermining the advantages conferred on them by the racially discriminatory laws of Southern Rhodesia and eventually, after the demise of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, Rhodesia. In addition to their individual interests and enterprises in Rhodesia, the white luminaries of the colonial society had strong links with the British capitalist establishment. Nkomo points to the land ownership, mineral interests, manufacturing and services sector of Rhodesia in which British capitalists were invested in Rhodesia. He cited the example of Lord Carrington, past director of Rio Tinto Zinc, a company with mining interests in Rhodesia and eventually, Zimbabwe. Lord Carrington chaired the Lancaster House Conference through which negotiations of the deal that ushered in the transition to majority rule in 1980, took place. Nkomo noted that Lord Carrington sympathised with and supported Ian Smith during the negotiations. Nkomo also pointed to the desire for an executive Prime Minister and a ceremonial president by the British, which they got through the negotiations. Nkomo’s ZAPU wanted a constitution that would allow the Zimbabwe government to expropriate underutilised land but the British insisted that the Zimbabwe government had to pay the full market price for the land that was expropriated even though the settlers had not paid the full price for the land they controlled. Nkomo himself would have preferred an arrangement

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like the Swynnerton Plan that was crafted for Kenya whereby the British government would compensate the farmers whose land was expropriated for black settlement but the British argued that the Rhodesians had been independent for a long time and Britain could not be held responsible for paying them. During the Lancaster House negotiations, Nkomo countered the British by arguing that the whites were Zimbabweans and there was a need for the British to fund land reform to Nkomo appreciated the USA’s help because they argued that they would not use their taxpayers’ money to fund inefficient white landowners and farmers for not utilising land fully. The Americans argued that if the British were to buy the land from the whites in Rhodesia, then they (the Americans) were willing to fund its development. However, Nkomo observed that neither the British nor the Americans were willing to make concrete commitments about exact sums to be spent on land acquisition. For Nkomo, the principle of funding land purchase was critical for moving forward the negotiations. Nkomo asserts that ZAPU/ZIPRA had crafted what he called a ‘turning point’ strategy to decisively end the war by going into full scale war through their USSR-trained air crews who were to strike Rhodesian communications and fuel supplies using tanks and armoured personnel carriers which were to be brought in through the northern border with Zambia and mount ground strikes through Victoria Falls, seizing air fields and proceeding into Zimbabwe. Nkomo suspected that the British had intercepted ZAPU/ZIPRA communications and leaked their plans to the Rhodesians, resulting in the Rhodesian raids of ZIPRA camps in Zambia. Nkomo suspected that the British must have used this threat of assault by ZIPRA from the north through their USSR-trained air crews to force the Rhodesians into agreeing to a settlement. The Lancaster House settlement was reached and the issues that were never really spelled out were those regarding the amounts of money to be availed and by which parties, to fund land reform and transfer to black farmers. In any event, after the signing of the Lancaster House settlement, ZAPU/ZIPRA parted ways with ZANU/ZANLA and the two parties fought the elections separately. Nkomo also noted that Josiah Tongogara, a force for unity between ZANU and ZAPU, died presumably in a road traffic accident in Mozambique, in December 1979 before independence on 18th April 1980. The issue of land continued to be unresolved when independence came. Many demobilised fighters were of peasant stock and knew no other life except agriculture. They needed

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to be re-absorbed into their communities to resume their lives as best they could or to have schemes created for them to acquire new skills and competences necessary for civilian life. Judith Todd describes vividly the work that she embarked on with the Zimbabwe Project which was set up to give war veterans start-up capital for various projects, including those in agriculture which needed large quantities of land as well as others in the service and commercial sector that only required limited urban and peri-urban land, offices and other types of resources. The post-independence era was characterised by lots of activity around land issues relating to the demobilisation of war veterans, the acquisition of land for resettlement of the war veterans and other people who needed residential, agricultural and commercial land.

Nkomo’s Vision About Land Reorganisation Nkomo’s vision about land in an independent Zimbabwe was based on the reorganisation of land in the communal and small- and ­large-scale commercial farmers were usually underutilised and needed to be acquired for use by the small-scale commercial and communal farmers in such a way that the land would not be degraded as had occurred in the communal areas. He recognised that communal farmers were impoverished and could not afford to adopt and apply the measures that had been used by the white commercial farmers to develop the land with state assistance. He also recognised that the post-colonial state did not have the resources to invest in all the communal farmers to enable them to improve their farming methods and purchase technologies and inputs to become commercially successful farmers in the short term. Therefore, his suggestion was that the state had to acquire land for resettlement by small farmers as cooperatives or collectives on a non-racial and nonpolitical basis to make them commercially viable. The cooperatives and/ or collectives would undertake crop and animal husbandry and animals would be moved from the communal farms into the new areas which would undertake scientific field and crop husbandry to avoid overstocking. In Nkomo’s model, the state entities responsible for conservation, extension, water and other development would carry out the necessary surveys and planning to determine which places would be suitable for cropping, ranching and settlement and poor areas would be designated for settling people together, while ranching and agricultural land would also be located separately from residences. The same processes were

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to take place in the commercial farming areas that were under white ­control. Nkomo’s objective was to ensure that communal people recognised and understood that the way in which they were settled and practicing their agriculture was wasteful and needed reorganisation. He pointed to the scattered homes and fields of communal people which wasted space which could be better utilised for cropping and animal husbandry. He expected that communal people would have to be mobilised and persuaded to agree to bring their homes close to each other as villages, releasing more land which could be used for ranching and cropping. Eventually, Nkomo expected that communal land could be reclaimed and put to good use, avoiding overstocking and enabling herds to grow. In the long run, Nkomo’s vision was that these reorganised villages would grow into towns where social services and infrastructures such as schools, clinics, shops, piped water and electricity would be provided, becoming nuclei for commerce and industry and creating jobs. In Nkomo’s view, agricultural land would be consolidated, with each family retaining its land portion which, however, would be worked cooperatively to maximise and optimise the use of agricultural equipment, the purchase of farm supplies and inputs such as fertilisers, seed and pesticides. Nkomo also expected that estate farming would be continued as collective agricultural lands. Nkomo’s vision was informed by the problems that individual small farmers experienced in accessing agricultural loans. However, he did not consider the impact that the commercial farming model had on the peasant and workers’ imaginations. The commercial farm model, based on individual land ownership, became the model many small farmers aspired to and events in the late 1990s would show the extent of that model’s hold on the imaginations of the peasants, the dispossessed and the aspiring farmers. In urban and mining areas, Nkomo’s vision was to induce changes that would incorporate black people as significant stakeholders in commerce and industry so that they went beyond labour provision for existing white enterprises. Nkomo’s vision was that the black people must mobilise themselves cooperatively and acquire property in commerce and industry. He explained that this process was not to be about acquiring previously white undertakings but creating new ones which could access loans and create jobs for black people. He noted that many black women had no jobs, land or other means of subsistence and lived as vendors and shebeen queens (illegal liquor sellers) and needed particular attention.

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Nkomo suggested the creation of people’s markets which could be run cooperatively by the people themselves rather than municipalities and councils in urban areas, as had been the case in colonial Zimbabwe. The building of people’s capacities was very important to Nkomo who desired that black people develop pride and confidence in their own abilities after nearly a century of oppression and undermining of their confidence in their capacities. The markets that Nkomo discussed were expected to service and dispose of the produce from the farmers and to create jobs for the unemployed. The urban, peri-urban and rural cooperative production entities would utilise the urban markets as outlets for the agricultural produce ranging from vegetables, grain, poultry, dairy, piggery, rabbitry and other farm produce. Nkomo stressed that for this post-war development to succeed, there had to be state commitment, involvement of leaders in commerce, particularly farming, industry, mining and other sectors. Nkomo was of the view that if there was a concerted effort in reorganising Zimbabwean society. Increased food production, food exports, and complete rehabilitation and recovery of the economy would result.

Nkomo’s and ZAPU/ZIPRA Initiatives Around Land After Independence Nkomo and his party ZAPU did not depend solely on the new government to determine what was to happen to the ZIPRA veterans. Nkomo and ZAPU set up NITRAM, a private company, to be the holding entity for the resettlement schemes for ZIPRA war veterans. ZAPU mobilised ZIPRA war veterans who had no jobs and training prior to the war, to pool their demobilisation benefits and pensions to buy farms that were available in many locations around the country so that the war veterans would be self-sufficient and learn skills to run their own enterprises rather than depending on the state for handouts. Under these schemes, over four thousand ZIPRA war veterans contributed Z$50 a month (then the Zimbabwe dollar was equivalent to just over 1 UK pound) to buy shares in the enterprises in which they worked. The war veterans could also incorporate locals into these schemes, creating employment and developing the skills of war veterans and security for them as shareholders in the enterprises in which they worked. As Nkomo observed, these enterprises did not cost the state anything and provided a strong

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incentive to the members and shareholders of the enterprises to make a success of these enterprises. These initiatives provided ample demonstration of Nkomo’s and ZAPU’s entrepreneurial bent from the beginning of independence. Nkomo’s experiences as an agriculturalist, a teacher, a builder, a driver, social worker and real estate entrepreneur gave him a broad understanding of the possibilities for tapping the resources and potential in the environment given the reluctance by the British and Americans to commit themselves to specific figures in a funding plan for land acquisition in Zimbabwe. According to Nkomo, ZAPU and some ZIPRA veterans, through their holding company NITRAM, had acquired various properties around Zimbabwe. According to Nkomo, NITRAM had four farms and three business enterprises and ZAPU had two farms and five business enterprises. The farms were used for resettlement, vegetable farming and cattle ranching and the commercial properties provided jobs skills and training for entrepreneurs, secretaries and provided health and other services. ZAPU/ZIPRA properties included the Castle Arms Motel and Nest Egg and Woody Glen, smallholdings in Bulawayo, Ascot farm in Bulawayo, Hampton Ranch near Connemara barracks in the Midlands province, among other enterprises. Ascot Farm grew tomatoes and onions, with maize as a break crop. Hampton Ranch had 200 cattle. In Harare, the Snake Park had a motel and entertainment complex and a snake park. There was a garage and a clothing factory with its own retail outlet in Harare. There was also a chicken farm which was run by a cooperative of women. ZAPU had also started a secretarial college and the first of what was intended to be a chain of rural health clinics. ZAPU had also bought urban housing which was to be sold to its occupants to give people a leg up the property ladder and avail them a meaningful stake in their country’s economy after nearly a century of exclusion. Nkomo was convinced that these enterprises were important because Prime Minister Mugabe had confided to him during a private meeting that ‘the official resettlement schemes were a national disaster’ (Nkomo 1984: 227). Nkomo’s experiences in Europe and parts of Africa had convinced him that dependence on the state and local authorities disempowered people unnecessarily since most people have capacities and capabilities to fend for themselves and their families as long as the state provided sufficient infrastructure. The $150 per month stipends of the war veterans were viewed by Nkomo as a basis for investing in and building enterprises that could support the war

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veterans and their families. As Todd observed, ZAPU/ZIPRA were cognisant of the need to invest demobilisation money wisely and war veterans were to be availed on-the-job training as a means of tackling unemployment.

Gukurahundi and Disruption of ZAPU’s Land Initiatives Nkomo’s prescience was uncanny because he had reservations about the use of force in resolving social and economic issues in Zimbabwe. In his biography (1984: xiv), Nkomo stated that ‘young people have grown up knowing nothing but the chaos and disruption […] the focus of their lives, the false glamour of the gun’. After his party, ZAPU was accused of sponsoring dissidents; Nkomo and other ZAPU leaders such as Josiah Chinamano, Joseph Msika, Jini Ntutha and others were expelled from the government. ZAPU properties were impounded by the government without compensation and over ten cooperative members in ZAPU enterprises were killed. In addition, ZIPRA commanders Dumiso Dabengwa and Lookout Masuku and others were jailed. ZIPRA and ZAPU war records, the names of exiles, war casualties and the injured were confiscated by the state. Nkomo observed that the names of the war-dead on the ZIPRA side are missing from the roll of honour at Heroes’ Acre in Harare. The Gukurahundi, a brigade, named for the first heavy rains that sweep away the chaff, was unleashed on the populace in Matabeleland and the parts of the Midlands where ZAPU was active and supported. According to the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission’s Report (1997), at least 20,000 people were killed by the Fifth Brigade with collusion by ZANU. Despite his expulsion from government, Nkomo did not cease his entrepreneurial activities. He explored joint ventures with players in the private sector including the manufacture of bottles and containers to substitute the imported ones. He also ventured into the pharmaceutical sector and the manufacture of blankets and electrical insulators. However, his initiatives were thwarted through the intimidation, ‘reprimand’ and arrest of his potential partners. He sums up the story of his life up to that point with regret at the situation regarding land. Nkomo notes that Zimbabwe’s food surplus was, by 1984, produced on only half of Zimbabwe’s usable land. Half of Zimbabwe’s land was owned by around six thousand white farmers, while the rest was settled by six of the seven and a half million black people in Zimbabwe. The inequity

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in landholding continued to be a problem because black Zimbabweans were still marginalised with respect to landholding. Nkomo noted that white farmers succeeded because of the allocation of the best land, well watered and well situated, for their ranching and cropping enterprises, while blacks were shunted into marginal lands with poor soils. In addition, state investment in irrigation, concessional farm loans, water and irrigation, road, transport and power resources, and free technical advice gave the white farmers an added advantage. The freehold land held by whites could be used as collateral to borrow from financial institutions, while blacks, the bulk of whom occupied communal land, were unable to use their land as collateral to finance their operations. White farmers, according to Nkomo, had absolute authority over black workers whose labour they commanded. Blacks had their livestock culled and sold off cheaply. As black people’s land became congested through population increase, unemployment and underemployment became rampant. Wasteful land use and scattered settlements criss-crossed by paths, all contributed to the poor utilisation of land, raising the costs of provision of safe, piped water, electricity and other services. Nkomo was quite scathing about the present settlement patterns characterised by scattered homes, loose dogs, uncontrolled grazing and other disorganised and unplanned activities, spaces and practices. The cutting down of trees for fuel also denuded the soil and facilitated environmental degradation. Nkomo suggested the reorganisation of rural settlements, the construction of paddocks, planning of villages, fields and other spaces, cultivation and provision of food, water and other services. In these initiatives, Nkomo wanted the war veterans, farm workers and the land-hungry in the communal areas to be availed good technical advice. Nkomo’s rationale was that good farmers in the communal areas would also be good neighbours to commercial farmers. It was not clear how such initiatives would be funded. Nkomo was cognisant of the plight of the bulk of workers in urban areas. Most had no houses of their own, working as vendors, part-time and full-time employees in commercial and service enterprises. Nkomo felt that these workers had no stake in their communities since they had no property to defend or invest in as city councils and authorities were impersonal and not too bothered about crafting plan to include the urban poor in home ownership schemes. While the urban poor had no property, they could use as collateral, they remained partly invested in the communal areas, resulting in split strategies of investment and

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expenditure which depleted their incomes and provided no long-term pathways out of poverty. Nkomo’s suggestion on collective ownership of neighbourhood property for the urban poor was not well elaborated and seems not to take into account the individualisation of household housing, farmland and other assets, making it difficult to imagine how collective ownership of neighbourhood property would be operationalised for the urban poor. Nkomo’s critique was not confined to the communal areas. He noted that the commercial farm, while large and profitable, produced low yields per unit area. The production was based on cheap, exploited labour and could be increased if their production was intensified, using more labour on the same unit area. Nkomo suggested intensification of land use on commercial farms and re-planning land use and settlement on communal lands. He pointed to the existence of underutilised water resources, aquifers and dam sites which could be harnessed to improve production in communal areas. In the aftermath of the Gukurahundi, ZANU and ZAPU worked out a settlement resulting in a unity pact in 1987. Since 1985, the state had acquired land on a willing-buyer-willing–seller basis giving compensation to the sellers. In addition, the state acquired abandoned and underutilised land and had the right of first refusal to any land that was on the market. The state continued with some land reorganisation along specific models, namely models A, B, C and D. However, the bulk of resettlement after independence was along Model A schemes, characterised by intensive individual arable land allocations and grazing areas. All settlers were allocated residential plots within communal villages where amenities such as water and vegetable gardens are provided. Farmer committees elected by settlers were supposed to plan and coordinate all community activities except production. The farmers had permitted to cultivate land and de-pasture stock, all at the pleasure of the Minister of Agriculture. Model B farms were also set up and these farms were supposed to be worked communally and with cooperative living. This model was designed for people with very limited resources through cooperative tilling, procurement of credit stock, equipment and marketing produce. All the land and property as to be held cooperatively with elected management committees, making decisions for the collectivities. Labour and skills were to be contributed and profits to be shared according to agreed formulae within the cooperatives. Skills which were not available within

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these entities were to be sought through the employment of outsiders. This model was intended for small-scale intensive enterprises such as community irrigation systems of young people with experience of collective living and enterprise in the neighbouring countries during the war of national liberation. However, this model scheme never really took off and none are known to have survived to date. The other model, namely C with intensive settlement combined with a centralised estate farm, is hardly spoken about. Thus, the resettlement that took place in the 1980s was predominantly along the Model A and this is the model that survives to date and is known as Minda Mirefu (the long fields). The other models fell by the wayside and were quietly abandoned. However, in the 1990s, in the wake of the disagreement between the British and the ZANU (PF) dominated government in which Nkomo was incorporated after the Unity Accord, land invasions by war veterans and other landless people took place sporadically, gaining ground in 1999, when Nkomo died. These invasions were impelled by the slow pace of land transfers based on white willing sellers of land and willing black buyers. The perceived slow pace of the land transfers by ZANU (PF) resulted in the constitutional amendments of the 1990s and these amendments sought to accelerate land transfers. When the Lancaster House constitution’s provisions expired in 1990, the government subjected rural land to compulsory acquisition through designation and compensation to landowners from 1992. This move generated some resistance with some dispossessed farmers pointing out that the land was not being allocated to the landless but to cronies and ZANU-PF functionaries who did not utilise it. Land transfers were very slow and many involved black elites rather than the black poor and landless (Moyo 1999).The British pointed to the lease of land to black elites, thereby justifying the slowing down of funding of land transfers. Clare Short, the British Minister for International Development, argued in 1997 that Britain had no obligation to fund land acquisition in Zimbabwe. This response by Clare Short was not acceptable to the Zimbabwe government which responded by listing 1471 white-owned commercial farms for compulsory acquisition through the Fast Track Land Reform Program. To compound the problems of financing, the Zimbabwe government was confronted with strikes in 1997, 1998 and 1999 on the back of growing poverty and attempts to raise food prices. Amidst all the social upheaval, the government gave into war veterans’ demands for pensions and the unbudgeted payouts to war veterans in 1997 resulted

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in the crash of the Zimbabwe dollar. In addition to the war veterans’ demands, the Zimbabwe government was forced to deal with an emergent civil rights movement comprising students, women, trade unionists and workers, the landless and business people, all of whom converged into a strong civil rights movement demanding economic, social and political reform in Zimbabwe. The strikes of 1997, 1998 and 1999 and the economic decline since 1990 strengthened the social demands of the poor and the excluded. The rejection of the government-led draft constitution in 2000 strengthened the forces of democratisation led by the Movement for Democratic Change under the leadership of Morgan Tsvangirai. Under these pressures, the beleaguered Zimbabwe government, angered by the rejection of the proposed 2000 constitutions requiring Britain to pay for land acquisition, ignored war veterans’ land occupations and the Fast Track Land Reform process started in earnest. Under the Fast Track Land Reform program, two resettlement models, namely the A1 targeting 160,000 landless small farmers and the A2 model, targeting 51000 small-scale medium black farmers were developed. War veterans dominated the A1 farms as indicated by Matondi (2012) and Hungwe (2011). However, this strategy backfired badly because there was no systematic training for resettled farmers. In some cases, settlement of A1 and A2 farmers took place through state organs as expected but in other cases, self-settlement occurred and was ratified in retrospect resulting in the de-capitalisation of the former commercial farm areas as farmhouses were looted, infrastructure vandalised and financing of small- and medium-scale farmers was not systematically organised and repayment schedules set up. Attempts by the Ministry of Lands and Agriculture to audit farm ownership failed as the politically powerful and well-connected multiple farm owners resisted farm audits. Tobacco farming by small-scale producers in the communal and smallscale resettlement areas and some large farmers boomed but was accompanied by land degradation and deforestation in the absence of reliable transport by rail to move coal for curing tobacco. Many farmers went into debt because of insufficient training, financing and state support of the kind that the white farmers had received before 1980. In the urban areas, housing the majority remained a major problem because many urban councils and authorities were not able to provide affordable housing for the working classes and only the middle classes could secure mortgages for their own housing through financial institutions. The shortage of urban housing countrywide resulted in the

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jerry-building of rooms on existing homes and houses in many high-­ density areas where the poor working classes lived. Working and poor people built illegal dwellings and work premises on existing premises, common land, roadsides and any available land. Schlyter (1989) and Fundire have written about urban housing deprivation especially among urban women in Zimbabwe. While the focus was placed on rural agricultural land and land reform, there was little being done by the state to make residential land available especially for women who had precarious land rights in rural Zimbabwe. By 1991, men and women under the age of 30 were equally represented in rural to urban migration, indicating the problems in rural Zimbabwe that made rural life unpalatable to both young men and women. In particular, young rural women could only look forward to unpaid domestic labour as wives and daughters of landholders. Both young men and women resisted toil under the control of male elders who had communal, commercial and resettlement land. GEMINI survey (1994) showed that the Structural Adjustment program had eroded jobs in the formal sector, swelling the informal sector with young unemployed people, working in vending, shoe repair, selling cooked and uncooked food, running bars and shebeens (unlicensed liquor outlets in residential areas) cross-border trade with South Africa, among many other activities. These activities helped the unemployed and underemployed to survive the contraction of the formal sector. Urban poverty became more visible since very little or no affordable land was availed to the urban poor to support their livelihoods and housing. A Poverty Assessment Study Survey (2003) indicated that poverty levels in Zimbabwe had increased from 25% in 1990 to 63% in 2003. Urban ‘housing co-operatives’ in urban areas emerged as a response to housing shortages and the desire by urban poor people for housing of their own. However, the urban housing problems continued as poverty grew into the new millennium. By 2005, GDP had declined by 40% in the previous 8 years and halved income per head. Two-thirds of the population lived below the poverty datum line on less than US$1 a day, and unemployment was estimated to be close to 70%. Inflation stood at 1200%. As a result of growing poverty, at least two million people, including many with high-level skills, had left the country, while Zimbabwe’s share of SADC’s GDP declined from 3.6% in 1996 to 1.4% in 2006. Zimbabwe declined from its position of the second largest economy in SADC to tenth place in 2006 (Games 2006; Hawkins 2006).

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Operation Murambatsvina In June 2005, in the middle of winter and a drought, the government of Zimbabwe embarked on Operation Murambatsvina (Remove the filth) through which the state violently removed poor people from the cities by demolishing illegal and informal structures and settlements in the townships, peri-urban areas and in some growth points in rural areas. The numbers removed are contested with the government of Zimbabwe claiming that it removed 58,000 people and the United Nation’s figure pointing to 700,000 (UNDP Report of the Special Envoy of the Secretary General of UN Anna Tibaijuka 2005). This exercise was reminiscent of the colonial state’s forced removals of the native populations from both rural and urban areas to suit the needs of settlers. In the central business districts of towns and cities, illegal structures used as kiosks, stalls in markets and pavements were demolished. Overcrowded offices used by small businesses were closed down so that thousands of tailors, seamstresses, import-export and trading enterprises were shut down. However, the ‘Murambatsvina’ operation did not change the situations of the poor because poverty grew faster and the situations of the poor deteriorated further. Small businesses folded up and urban rents rose steeply as house seekers chased limited legal housing. Overcrowding intensified and pensioner/house-owners’ incomes dried up. The poor were forced to seek more expensive services as the poorer service providers were driven out of business by the state. The disease burden increased as the sick, especially those with HIV were dispersed and untraceable due to ‘Murambatsvina’.

Post-Murambatsvina

and the

Economic Collapse

After ‘Murambatsvina’, the economic decline of Zimbabwe continued unabated and culminated in 2008, in the abandonment of the Zimbabwe dollar. In the general election of 2008, ZANU-PF lost the election to Morgan Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change in what was considered a flawed election characterised by irregularities. In the run-off that was held because Tsvangirai was said not to have garnered the required 51% of the presidential votes, violence was unleashed by ZANU-PF and state-related military functionaries on the MDC supporters. Tsvangirai withdrew from the run-off citing violence and in the

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subsequent Mbeki-brokered Government of National Unity, Tsvangirai became Prime Minister and Mugabe remained the President. The Zimbabwe economy grew by just over 10% during the Government of National Unity between 2008 and 2012. However, in 2013, ZANU-PF went back into power and the temporary rally of the economy was reversed. Water and sanitation infrastructure collapsed and urban drinking water availability declined from 95, 1% in 2012 to less than 20% in 2015. The situation that ‘Murambatsvina’ sought to address has resumed in worse form since there are scanty water and sanitation services delivered by local authorities. Lake Chivero in Harare is heavily polluted and all over Zimbabwe, shanty settlements, businesses and other enterprises of the urban poor with no water or sanitation have sprung up in many urban areas under worse conditions than those that prevailed in 2005. Unemployment is over 90% in many areas and the majority of the population is in informal employment as hawkers, vendors and small business owners. Local authorities are locked in battles with vendors who sell food, clothes, electronic goods and other wares in the central business areas which provide a broader and wealthier customer base than the impoverished shanties and townships of the poor. By 2015, the government of Zimbabwe was forced to admit that commercial farming had collapsed in most farming areas and food relief for the majority was necessary. The economy deteriorated as power, transport and other infrastructure decayed. Massive job losses occurred as de-industrialisation took place. The dreams that Nkomo had for reconstruction and development after independence never came true.

Conclusion The developments in post-independence Zimbabwe point to the difficulties of realising the plans that Nkomo had for Zimbabwe. Nkomo himself was very ambitious and had plans for land use in rural and urban Zimbabwe, that could not be realised during as well as after his lifetime. Nkomo had to deal with the schism within the nationalist movement, dating back to the early 1960s. His ZAPU’s rivalry with Mugabe’s ZANU never was resolved and hobbled the realisation of Nkomo’s plans for Zimbabwe. Nkomo had broad exposure as a son of a prosperous peasant farmer, a social worker, an entrepreneur and a politician and was able to relate to many types of people, ranging from peasants to workers

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and business people in Zimbabwe. Nkomo had ideas about land reform and reorganisation that were influenced by his exposure the Eastern Europe and Western countries. However, in independent Zimbabwe, the handling of the land question after independence has generated problems and remains unfinished business in both rural and urban Zimbabwe. Nkomo also had to contend with acting as Mugabe’s junior partner in the Government of National Unity after 1987 and was not able to influence the land question in the ways he desired. This chapter has analysed Nkomo’s thoughts about land reorganisation after independence in Zimbabwe. It is important to note that Nkomo was quite entrepreneurial and embarked on land, farm and property purchases for ZAPU and ZIPRA and did not wait for the government to fund the resettlement and re-integration of ZIPRA forces after the war. Unfortunately, these properties were confiscated by the state under Mugabe’s control and they have never really been properly utilised as intended. Nkomo’s land-related initiatives included the state-sponsored as well as the private ones that his party embarked upon given their realisation that they would not have as much control over the state as ZANU had. However, the catastrophic decline of agriculture and the economy in the 35 years of ZANU-PF and Mugabe’s rule indicate that there is need to rethink the use of land in Zimbabwe and to critically examine how people of various economic, social and political dispositions desire to use land. This chapter has also critically examined Nkomo’s ideas about collective use of land under specific circumstances and these ideas proved to be non-viable, unpopular and difficult to implement. However, the present economic collapse and the situation with land both rural and urban, cannot possibly have been what Nkomo intended for Zimbabwe. It remains for the present generations of activists, scholars, theorists and citizens to revisit the land issues in Zimbabwe in ways that address the needs of the majority of Zimbabweans.

References Beach, D. N. (1970). Afrikaner and Shona settlement in the Enkeldoorn area. Zambezia, 1(i), 5–34. Gaidzanwa, R. B. (1981). Promised land: Towards a land policy for Zimbabwe. Unpublished Masters thesis. Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands.

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Games, D. (2006). A nation in Turmoil: The experience of South African firms doing business in Zimbabwe. In SAIIA business in Africa report. No. 8. SAIIA: Johannesburg. Hawkins, A. (2006, May 4). Still standing: The economic, political and security situation in Zimbabwe in 2006 and its implications for the SADC region. Paper Presented at the Institute of Strategic Studies, University of Pretoria. Holleman. (1968). Chief, council and commissioner. Assern: Van Gorkum and Co. NV. Matondi, P. (2012). Zimbabwe’s fast track land reform. London: Zed Books. Moyo, S. (1999). Land and democracy in Zimbabwe. Monograph series no. 7 (p. 19). Harare: SAPES. Munyuki-Hungwe, M. (2011). In search of ‘community’ in Zimbabwe’s fast track resettlement area of Mazowe district. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis. Lund University. Native Land Husbandry Act. (1951). Salisbury: Govt. printers. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Palmer, R. (1997). Land and racial domination in Zimbabwe. Berkeley, LA: University of California Press. Schlyter, A. (1989). Women householders and housing strategies: The case of Harare. Zimbabwe. Research Report 26. Nordic African Institute.

CHAPTER 12

Joshua Nkomo on Transitional Justice in Zimbabwe Everisto Benyera

Introduction Throughout his life, Joshua Nkomo as leading political figure in Zimbabwe before and after independence has undergone various interpretations. To some, he has largely been understood as a pioneering political liberator and a conciliatory nation builder—a ‘Father Zimbabwe’. To those who challenged his leadership, Nkomo was a weak, prevaricating, moderate and non-committal liberator. This chapter is focused on Nkomo’s conceptions and contributions to not only political transition but also transitional justice as a way of achieving full liberation. This chapter departs from the prevalent reading of Nkomo in terms of power politics and nationalism and privileges a reading of Nkomo from the terms and notions of transitional justice that do not place much emphasis on political power but on healing communities inflicted with decades of human rights abuses. Thus Nkomo’s views on transitional justice are pertinent given that he was the leader of the then opposition Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-ZAPU) which signed the 1987 Unity Accord with the

E. Benyera (*)  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_12

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Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) thereby ending one of Zimbabwe’s post-1980 atrocities known as Gukurahundi. After the Unity Accord, Nkomo accepted the position of Vice-President of Zimbabwe, a junior position which he shared with Simon Muzenda as coVice President. What is posited in this chapter is that Nkomo’s views on transitional justice were contrary to those of the government he served as he opposed such statist mechanisms as amnesties, indemnities and pardons in favour of truth telling, reparations, accountability, memorialisation and indeed institutional reforms. The thesis presented here is that Nkomo was cognisant of the need to seek accountability for human rights abuses, especially in the Matabeleland and Midlands Provinces in post-independence Zimbabwe but was not able to convince new ZANU-PF on the need of such a trajectory. This explains the current hunger for a mode of transitional justice in which the state does not exempt itself and its agencies but rather favours truth telling and accountability as a way of according citizens’ full closure and healing. Devoid of political transition in Zimbabwe, genuine transitional justice will remain a pipe dream, and a dark cloud will continue to hang over the country with the accumulated anger and hatred being bequeathed from generation to generation. Generally, transitional justice is defined as a set of mechanisms, policies and instruments used to seek historical accountability for gross human rights abuses. According to Benyera (2014: 336): [A]t a different level, it is concerned with the choices, mechanisms, and the quality of justice implemented by states emerging from episodes of gross human rights abuses such as, civil wars and totalitarian rule, to respond to past oppression and injustice while constructing a new future based on democracy and the rule of law.

The aims of transitional justice are therefore broadly to seek historical accountability, establish the truth, deter future abuses and shepherd the post-conflict state into future, that is, characterised by sustainable peace, enhance reconciliation, restore community relations (social cohesion) and inter alia. This chapter is presented in five sections. The first section explores the need for transitional justice in Zimbabwe; it is followed by a section that presents what this chapter considers to be genuine transitional

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justice. The third section presents Nkomo’s views on human rights abuses. The fourth section is an overview of statist transitional justice mechanism used in Zimbabwe during the time of Nkomo. This culminates in a section that presents Nkomo’s view on one of the statist transitional justice mechanisms used during his time, i.e. unity governments. The fifth section grapples with the notion of attempting transitional justice in the absence of political transition. This section argues that such an endeavour is complicated by the fact that the political party accused of committing atrocities in Zimbabwe is still the party in power. This leads to a discussion on Nkomo’s views on the 1982/1983 genocide, otherwise known as Operation Gukurahundi. As Nkomo was both Father Zimbabwe and the leading political figure in the most-affected provinces of Matabeleland North and South and the Midland, his views on the genocide deserve to be interrogated. This section presents how Nkomo pursued genuine transitional justice as an exhibit not only of his belief that genuine transitional justice is a sine qua non for nation building in Zimbabwe but how he personally initiated such mechanisms. The peroration of this chapter paints Nkomo as a man who believed in one nation, ‘sonke singama MaZimbabwe’ (we are all Zimbabweans).

The Need for Transitional Justice The need for genuine transitional justice in Zimbabwe cannot be overemphasised. As aptly stated by Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Benyera (2015), Zimbabwe lacks interventions that genuinely seek to bring social cohesion to this racially and ethnically polarised nation. This absence of genuine healing and reconciliation was conceived out of the state’s proclivity towards mechanisms that privilege political transitions over transitional justice since 1980. This proclivity for pardons, amnesties, clemencies and commissions of inquiry has been an overarching theme in Zimbabwe’s historiography. On several occasion, the late Nkomo rebuked the nation for such tendencies, especially at the burial of one of ZIPRA’s commanders General Lookout Masuku. The problem in Zimbabwe is therefore not that of an absence of transitional justice, but rather an absence of genuine transitional justice, with an emphasis on justice. Lessons from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission are that any transitional justice mechanism which negates the justice component is a farce. Because without justice, the formerly disadvantaged and oppressed will remain exactly in that position of underprivileged, oppression and marginalisation,

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while their former oppressor will carry into the new dispensation all the privileges and all forms of power which they used to enjoy. Five factors therefore necessitate transitional justice in Zimbabwe, without which the transitional process which began in 1980 and is still ongoing will remain a protracted and agonising never-ending affair. Firstly, without accountability for historical human rights abuses and long spells under dictatorship, societies rarely transition into sustainable peace. They become what Benyera (2014) termed stagnant transitional states, i.e. states that got stuck in the transitional process. Once most historical human rights abuses have been accounted for and the perpetrators brought to justice can nation building and state building take root. Besides Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is case in point of a stagnant transitional state. Secondly, transitional justice must address all the five pillars of transitional justice. These pillars are justice, reparations, truth seeking, memory and memorialisation and institutional reform. Any transitional justice that emphasises part of the five pillars and negates others, even one, is bound to, at least fail, and at most perpetuate the injustices of the predecessor regime. In Zimbabwe, this is complicated by the fact that the political party accused of being the main perpetrator and beneficiary of human rights abuses is still in power. The problem becomes that of trying to transition within the same political dispensation. Criminal justice is absent in Zimbabwe and has been replaced by executive pardons, amnesties and clemencies. Reparations were awarded only to a handful such as the War Victims Compensation Scheme. The truth has never been fully recovered, and some of the most important documents such as the Chihambakwe and Dumbutshena Commission of Inquiry reports have never been made public. This amounted to the obstruction of transitional justice by the state. While memorialisation has occurred, this has been largely done at national level and led by the state. Days such as the Heroes Day, Independence Day and Defence Forces Day are used to collectively memorialise the brutalities of the predecessor regime and the enemy states such as the United Kingdom and the USA while exalting the current regime as a champion of human rights. Memorialisation at the community level has largely been outlawed especially in the two Matabeleland and the Midlands Provinces which experienced the 1981/1982 genocide code named Operation Gukurahundi. Institutional reform has been absent in Zimbabwe whose uniformed forces witnessed a series of pseudo-reforms

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such as the 1979 unification of all the armies operating in the then Rhodesia and the 2008 harmonisation of the security sector to form one command structure. In other words, there is no security sector personnel held accountable for their actions during Zimbabwe’s war of liberation and after. Again, executive amnesties, clemencies and pardons have been used to exonerate those who otherwise ordered or carried out the most heinous human rights abuses in Zimbabwe.

What Constitutes Genuine Transitional Justice in Zimbabwe? What constitutes genuine transitional justice has been contested both at scholarship and in practice. This is attributable to the fluidity of the term and the infancy of the discipline of transitional justice. In practice, what constitutes genuine transitional justice has been mired by the transformation of transitional justice to the status of an industry, compete with experts, toolkits, best practices and even international guidelines. Genuine transitional justice is not only elusive in Zimbabwe but elsewhere on the African continent. What exist does not meet the demands of healing, reconciliation and other needs of the survivors. This is why Mahmood Mamdani (2009) has continued to call for what he terms ‘survivor’s justice.’ It is the opposite of victors’ justice which emphasises the punishment of the losers such as what happened with the Nuremburg Trials. Survivors’ justice is characterised by the complementarity rather than conflict between justice and peace. Mamdani rightly posited that: If peace and justice are to be complementary, rather than conflicting, objectives, we to distinguish victors’’ justice from survivors’ justice: If one insists on distinguishing right from wrong, the other seeks to reconcile different rights. (Mamdani 2009: 285)

However, in order for survivors’ justice to be effective, there is a need for public acknowledgement for all past atrocities as the starting point. This is what is absent in Zimbabwe with the only acknowledgement of past atrocities coming from Mugabe ironically at the funeral of Joshua Nkomo when he characterised the genocide as a moment of madness (Murambadoro and Wielenga 2015: 35). To date, the government has not taken any responsibility for the genocide, let alone acknowledge the atrocities. The only acknowledgement came from the late former

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Defence Minister Moven Mahachi who publicly apologised for the Gukurahundi atrocities (Stiff 2000: 226). This obviously made Nkomo despair, however, he remained hopeful of a reconciliation and sustainable peace in Zimbabwe, pledging his full commitment to that cause. Writing about those moments, he stated: I have never abandoned hope that I might contribute to a reasonable solution to our national problems, by discussion rather than confrontation. Sometimes it looks as though progress is possible; sometimes I have to fight back despair. (Nkomo 1984: 244)

Those moments of despair notwithstanding, Nkomo remained a firm believer in human rights. He subscribed to the view that all Zimbabweans, regardless of race colour, creed religion, etc. were equal and most importantly survivors of the brutal and protracted war of liberation. He aptly noted that: Zimbabweans have lately fought a long and terrible war. It has disrupted their lives. But it has also left them with an extraordinary sense of national solidarity which binds together people of all races, colours, whichever side they fought on. (Nkomo 1984: 251)

He went on to attack the state for sabotaging genuine transitional justice and social coercion noting that: ‘That energy is being dissipated by a government which seems to feel the need to exercise a partisan authority rather than to mobilise the national will to survive’ (Nkomo 1984: 251–252). In other words, genuine transitional justice is characterised by bottom-up, victims-centred processes that address all the five pillars, i.e. justice, reparations, truth seeking, memory and memorialisation and institutional reform. Writing on the importance of bottom-up processes, Nkomo noted that: But all this, in the towns and the countryside alike, depends on the active and willing cooperation of those involved. (The failure of the ujamaa resettlement policy in Tanzania shows how wrong things can go when plans are imposed on the people and not developed with their participation). Human beings will work together, and be the happier for it, if they feel that their ideas and their initiatives are taken onto account in the final decision of what is to be done. (Nkomo 1984: 251)

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What constitutes genuine transitional justice in Zimbabwe is therefore that which heals the nation and must accordingly be dictated by the people and not by any other bodies especially the state. The role of the state is that of a facilitator, a catalytic role. It is the people who are in need of healing and reconciliation, and it can only be them who know how they can be healed and reconciled. To that effect, Nkomo was unequivocal in calling for the Mugabe-led government to facilitate a national dialogue around the issue of reconciliation. Nkomo wrote: From London I wrote two carefully considered letters to Prime Minister Mugabe. One detailed his political; mistreatment of Zimbabwe since taking office. The other proposed a non-political national conference chaired by himself of all the major interest groups in our country – churches, trade unions, farmers’ organisations, professional bodies, local councils, political parties, together with representatives of students societies, the armed forces, ex-combatants and youth groups – in order to trash out an agreed understanding of our problems and to work towards a reconciliation of the nation with itself. (Nkomo 1984: 244)

Land occupied and continues to occupy a central place in Zimbabwe’s body politic. The war of liberation was fought primarily over land; hence, the need for land reform cannot be overemphasised. Nkomo was a firm believer in social development and economic empowerment of black Zimbabweans (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007: 35). Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2007: 35) further contends that ‘Nkomo was very vocal against land imbalances in Zimbabwe the first nationalist to warn a second revolution as long as the land remained concentrated in the hands of a few whites and a few blacks’. The form of healing being advocated in these pages is one that operates at three realms; firstly, healing within the individual; secondly, healing at family/community level; and finally, healing at the national level. For Nkomo, human rights, whose abuse necessitates transitional justice, is both a right and a responsibility bestowed on both leaders and the citizenry at large. Nkomo has this to write about human rights: ‘African leaders must improve their record on human rights, and African peoples too must have greater regard to their responsibilities’ (Nkomo 1984: 247). This is how Nkomo undertook and interpreted human rights, as a two-pronged process comprising rights and responsibilities. In the

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discipline and practice of transitional justice, the notion of human rights as constituted by and through the duality of rights and responsibilities can be best epitomised by unpacking the five pillars of transitional justice and how these have been absent in Zimbabwe, notwithstanding the calls by Nkomo and many others for survivors’ justice premised on the will to live as opposed to the will to power (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Benyera 2015). This analysis is attempted in the next section starting with institutional reform as a key pillar upon which the transitional process hinges.

Nkomo’s Views on Human Rights Abuses Joshua Nkomo was clear in his condemnation of human rights abuses especially those committed in pursuance of a greater common good such as political independence. He believed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and wrote: Patience in the face of injustice is hard. It would be easier to achieve if our rulers would accept a shared standard by which to judge their won conduct and seek to improve it; and such a standard already exists, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which all our governments have signed. (Nkomo 1984: 247)

One development that Nkomo lamented in post-independence Zimbabwe was the continued incarceration, especially of former ZAPU and ZANLA operatives even when acquitted by courts of law. During the burial of Lookout Masuku, Nkomo did not mince his words, lambasting the Mugabe government for treating Zimbabweans exactly as they were treated by the Smith administration. He said: Therefore, I say he died in prison. Why should men like Lookout and Dumiso, after being found innocent of any wrongdoing by the highest court in this land remain detained? When we ask we get the same answer from the Minister as we used to get from the Smith regime. (Nkomo 1984)1

Nkomo was a firm believer in truth telling as a means to heal and reconcile Zimbabweans. Like Nelson Mandela, Nkomo admitted culpability for the war crimes and other atrocities committed by ZIPRA members. As the Commander-in-Chief of ZIPRA, the buck ultimately stopped with Nkomo. These atrocities included the downing of two civilian Air

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Rhodesian Viscounts with serious loss of civilian lives including the wiping out of the entire Gulab family. Ironically, Mr Gulab was Nkomo’s friend and he used to assist Nkomo with air tickets when he needed to avoid police detection (Nkomo 1984: 166). Nkomo admitted his culpability when he wrote: Of course it was not our policy to shoot down civil airliners; if we had wanted we could have done so often, but we carefully refrained from that. What happened was that we identified one of the same aircraft that had been shown on television loaded with troops. It landed at Victoria Falls, where we knew paratroopers were stationed, and as it took off we shot it down with a Sam missile. Forty eight people, most of them holiday makers, died in the crash; eight survived. Ten of those who died were said to have been shot on the ground after escaping from the wreck. It was a tragic mistake. I felt it personally. One man was killed with his mother and father and his wife and children – the whole, family wiped out. […] I regret (this) loss of life. (Nkomo 1984: 166)

The paragraph quoted above depicts a man who not only deeply regretted the actions of those under his command but also one who believed in telling the truth, even if that truth was very painful. Admitting that ten of the victims of the air crash were probably pursued by his man and shot after escaping from the plane wreck is indicative of a type of transitional justice that Nkomo practised, i.e. one anchored in truth telling as a way of healing war wounds. On the same account of civilians killed by ZIPRA members, Nkomo lamented the callousness that evolved as the war progressed. This led to serious atrocities and he again admitted capability when he wrote: The worst thing about the war was the callousness it bred. It is true, and I regret it, that atrocities were committed by people on our side, by ZIPRA fighters as well as ZANLA men. Some of those killed were isolated white farmers and their families who happened in the way. Some were African chiefs who may have collaborated with the Smith regime…It was not our policy to kill such people. (Nkomo 1984: 168)

Such forms of truth telling as exhibited by Nkomo possess a positive multiplier effect down the rank and file of the men and women who fell under his command. Essentially, when the commander-in-chief has admitted that mistakes were committed and atrocities committed, those under his command cannot produce a different narrative. Such

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was the profound impact that Nkomo exerted on transitional justice in Zimbabwe especially on his former ZIPRA members. It is also largely due to Nkomo’s transitional justice legacy that former ZIPRA members proceeded with the process of transitional justice through the work of the Mafela Trust. The work of the Trust constitutes restorative justice. Named after ZIPRA Captain Lookout ‘Mafela’ Khalisabantu Vumindaba Masuku, the Mafela Trust was established in 1992 to assist as many people as possible get over the wounds inflicted on them by the liberation war. Its work included helping the families of combatants who died during the war overcome their loss. This was done through a number of programs one of which involves the identification of combatants and civilians who died during the liberation struggle whose remains’ whereabouts are not known (Brickhill 1995: 166). So effective was the restorative work done by the Mafela Trust that: By the end of 1991 the research team had located 1087 gravesites and established the circumstances of the death of 1414 fighters out of an established 2500. (These included 35 ZANLA and 16 South African ANC members). The real names of 657 dead ZIPRA fighters had been established and their next of kin informed (Mafela Trust Project Report in. Brickhill 1995: 169)

The recovery of the remains of both the civilians and the combatants is central in transitional justice as it allows for closure and healing to take place. Additionally, the naming of the trust, while not attributable to Nkomo, forms part of the process of memorialisation.

Statist Transitional Justice During the Times of Nkomo Zimbabwe has implemented a multiplicity of state-led transitional justice mechanisms. One common characteristic of Zimbabwe’s statist transitional justice mechanisms is a deliberate attempt to induce a blanket amnesia, hide the truth, compensate those aligned to the ruling party and enforce mass nationwide memorialisation as opposed to community and other bottom-up memorisations. This can be traced to the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’s inaugural speech as the leader of an independent Zimbabwe when he said: If yesterday I fought as an enemy, today you have become a friend and ally with the same national interest, loyalty, rights and duties as myself.

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If yesterday you hated me, today you cannot avoid the love that binds you to me and me to you. (Mugabe, Independence speech, Rufaro Stadium, Harare: April 1980 in Benyera 2014: 39)

This statement can be castigated for setting the wrong tones for transitional justice in Zimbabwe, one, that is, anchored on a political transition devoid of justice. These can be include the following: Amnesty Ordinance 3 of 1979, Amnesty (General Pardon) Ordinance 12 of 1980, Emergency Powers (Security Forces Indemnity) Regulations of 1982 SI 487/82, Clemency Order No. 1 of 18 April 1988 (General Notice 257A of 1988), Clemency Order Number 1 of 2000 (General Notice 457A), Order No. 1 of June 2008 (General Notice 85A of 2008) and Clemency Order Number 1 of 2002. (Benyera 2014: 40). This tendency of pardoning human rights violators who commit atrocities allegedly as part of their official duties can be traced back to the colonial era where the minority government of Ian Smith used the Indemnity and Compensation Act of 1975 to effectively sanctioned impunity by granting Rhodesian Security Forces immunity in advance (Benyera 2014: 40). Nkomo was very critical against the continued use of colonial era repressive laws. He not only questioned the morality of such laws but also questioned their post-independence use when the removal of such oppressive laws was one of the rallying points of the liberation struggle. On point 92 of his letter to Mugabe, he lamented: Under the terms of the Indemnity Act, which we condemned as barbaric and fascist during the liberation struggle, a citizen has no right of appeal or redress against those who illegally torture, maim, kill, destroy property or do any illegal act on him or against him. I am sure you realize that the result of this use of Smith’s laws and torturers has been to create in an independent Zimbabwe a climate of terror and fear even more discriminate than that created by the Smith regime. Remember, there is no war in Zimbabwe today.2

Nkomo on Inclusive the Government One of the mechanisms used in post-independence to navigate the mucky waters of political transitional and the concomitant transitional justice has been inclusive governments. These also date back to the colonial times when Ian Smith used this methodology to create the

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short-lived Zimbabwe Rhodesia between 1 June 1979 and 12 December 1979 under the leadership of Prime Minister Abel Muzorewa and his deputy Josiah Gumede. Nkomo was very clear on the limitations of inclusive government’s right from 1979, yet he was also too clear about their efficacy as peacebuilding, nation building and most importantly transitional justice mechanisms. In fact, it is Nkomo and his deputy Josiah Chinamano who hand-picked Bishop Muzorewa and appointed him treasurer, a front organisation set-up for the coordination of African views to be presented to Lord Pearce whose commission was garnering views on a proposed new constitution. Nkomo wrote: I also got in touch with Josiah Chinamano, who had by now been released (from prison), in order to set up a front organisation to coordinate African opposition. On his suggestion we approached a well-known churchman, the Methodist Bishop Abel Muzorewa. He seemed an ideal candidate … we decided to call (the organisation), the African National Council…. (p. 141)

This is how Muzorewa became a politician and ended up being the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Rhodesia. These events attest to Nkomo’s belief in inclusivity especially in the pursuance of a greater common good. The 1980 unity government formed by Mugabe included Nkomo and some of his leading members from ZAPU. The 1980 unity government only lasted for 2 years as ZANU began to systematically leave out PF-ZAPU in the nation-building process. It finally collapsed when arms caches were discovered in PF-ZAPU-owned properties around Bulawayo that same year. In retrospect, Nkomo later admitted that he was rather naïve in believing that the 1980 unity government was a genuine gesture by ZANU for fostering post-independence peace. In a letter written to Mugabe from London in 1983, Nkomo admitted: In retrospect, I now believe that I and ZAPU were deceived and cheated by you and your party when you talked of unity, reconciliation, peace and security. I now honestly and sincerely believe that when you invited us to take part in your government you believed that we would reject your offer and set ourselves up in strong opposition to you and thereby label us disgruntled rejected plotters3

The second time that Nkomo was involved in an inclusive government was in 1987 when Zimbabwe changed the constitution and ushered

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in an executive presidency. The 1987 Unity Accord signed between Nkomo’s party ZAPU and Mugabe’s party ZANU-PF to form ZANU (PF) was the culmination of a genocide which claimed in excess of 20,000 predominantly Ndebele-speaking civilians in the three provinces of Matabeleland North and South and the Midland. Signed on 22 December 1987 with Mugabe becoming president and on 31 December 1987 with Nkomo and Muzenda the two vice-presidents, this accord again demonstrates how Nkomo believed so much is forging inclusive governments in pursuit of sustainable peace. The tragedy is that contrary to Nkomo’s vision of a unity government as a unifying factor, for ZANU-PF and in the words of Didymus Mutasa, ‘the ruling party (ZANU PF), desires national unity so as to finally establish a one party state’ (1989: 290). Mugabe himself also uttered the same sentiments when the unity government of 1980 collapsed in 1982 stating that ‘…because that is what united people should do. They should be one party, with one government and one Prime Minister’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 8). This points to a party that enters into unity governments as a political strategy for self-preservation and not for nation building, contrary to what Nkomo yearned for.

Nkomo’s Views on Gukurahundi The problem in Zimbabwe as Nkomo would put it is that of attempting political transitional while negating the justice factor (willingly or unwillingly). Transitional justice is not a game of halves where you negate justice and pursue peace only. Contrary to common views, peace and justice are not contradictory but rather complementary. Without the other, one will not be sustainable. What has happened so far in Zimbabwe is not transitional justice but rather political transition (especially of power) which is just the formative phase of transitional justice. One of the events in Zimbabwe’s political history which yearn for transitional justice is the 1982/1983 Gukurahundi genocide. As such, a chapter on Nkomo’s views on transitional justice cannot be complete without delving into his views on this dark moment in Zimbabwe’s history. Nkomo was clear of what happened during Gukurahundi, a statesponsored genocide. He painfully narrated how it all began thus: In January 1983 the killings began in Matebeleland. The first reports reached me from Mbembesi on the 25th, then from Bubi and from Tjolotjo in the country north-west of Bulawayo, areas already subject to

292  E. Benyera curfew. The police had, I was told, instructed not to intervene…The perpetrators were young men in camouflage uniforms with distinctive red berets, calling themselves the Fifth Brigade. (Nkomo 1984: 235)

In an attempt to halt the killings, Nkomo met then President Reverend Canaan Banana and then Minister of Supply Enos Nkala. This was to no avail and the consequence in Nkomo’s words, there was ‘the burning of villages, slaughtering of cattle, the assaulting of women and a killing inspired by the need to instil fear’ (Nkomo 1984: 235). In the absence of the prime minister who was out of the country and denied access to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister of Home Affairs (Simon Muzenda and Hebert Ushewokunze, respectively). Nkomo thus effectively failed to halt the genocide. In fact, his life was in danger. In his letter to Mugabe, he criticised the government for disregarding the rule of law and choosing to operate impunity. For Nkomo, such actions went contra the aims of the liberation war and most importantly were bound to serious hamper efforts to foster a peaceful, united and reconciled postindependence Zimbabwe. On point 115, he wrote: This is not government; it is the abuse of government, an abuse which transforms the rule of law into the law of rule. As such it cannot lead to a free, united, peaceful and prosperous Zimbabwe. But to one in which oppression, division, violence and poverty will shadow all our hopes, and make a mockery of the freedom struggle in which so many heroes gave their lives.4

Throughout his political career after the genocide, Nkomo was convinced that all Zimbabweans (not only the Ndebele victims) deserved to know what happened and why. Most importantly, he believed that the state must one day apologise for its role in the genocide. This apology and an official acknowledgement by the state are still outstanding.

Nkomo’s on Accountability Nkomo’s intervention in terms of ensuring that post-independence Zimbabwe attains transitional justice can best be captured through his own words. Concluding his book Nkomo: The Story of my Life Nkomo wrote: It is not too late to change at all, to muster the collective energy of our people and build the new Zimbabwe we promised through all those long years of suffering and struggle. During my brief in exile in 1983 I appealed in this sense to Prime Minister Robert Mugabe, calling as a start for a

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national conference of all the country’s interest groups, under his chairmanship, to begin the process of reconciliation. (Nkomo 1984: 252)

He went on to chronicle his disappointment at not receiving a response nor an acknowledgement from the then prime minister. He simply wrote: ‘He (Prime Minster Mugabe) did not answer then’. However, Nkomo remained optimistic about the role he expected the Robert Mugabe government to take in initiating the critical dialogue around the question of reconciliation. To that effect, he wrote: Perhaps in the interval between the writing of this book and its publication he (Mugabe) will change his mind and reply constructively. For my part, I shall continue working to that end. Long live Zimbabwe! (Nkomo 1984: 252)

During his term as a parliamentarian, Nkomo called for a debate in parliament which focused on the Gukurahundi atrocities. He also called for an impartial enquiry into human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, but his calls were either shouted down or simply ignored in parliament. This paints the picture of a man who solidly believed in post-colonial constructive dialogue as a means of settling differences with other nationalists and establishing the truth about the atrocities committed not only in Matabeleland, but elsewhere in Africa. Nkomo lamented the behaviour of his fellow nationalists in Africa in general especially their dislike of dialogue noting that: The new African rulers who came to power at independence have all too often claimed the same unquestioned authority as their traditional and colonial predecessors. Instead of welcoming debate as the necessary means form improving government. (Nkomo 1984: 246)

It is this tendency to avoid dialogue which breeds a proclivity towards dictatorship and human rights abuses. According to Masipula Sithole, Nkomo must be lauded with accolades for ‘swallowing a bitter pill’ and allowing the violence in the two Matabeleland Provinces and the Midlands to end even in the face of a rather humiliating unity accord. Humiliating because of the triumphalism, victors’ justice paraded by ZANU as evidenced by Sithole’s observation that: Even a cursory look at the terms of the Unity Accord (let alone the Chiwewe minutes) gives one the impression that the document spells out

294  E. Benyera terms of surrender and not compromise. Nowhere in the eleven-point agreement does Nkomo’s name appear, but Mugabe’s appears three times. (Nkomo’s name only appears as a signatory to the document). Nkomo should be praised for the bitter pill he swallowed because his humility brought peace to Matebeleland. Eight of the eleven points are pregnant with victorious Mugabe’s ideas. Where mention is made of PF-ZAPU it is either to indicate that henceforth it shall be called ZANU (PF)or that its leadership shall take ‘immediate vigorous steps to help eliminate and end the insecurity and violence prevalent in Matabeleland. (Sithole 1991: 150)

Conclusion This chapter explores the views held by Joshua Nkomo on the issue of transitional justice. It presented Nkomo as more than a nation builder, someone who went the conventional Father Zimbabwe and exhibited his desire for genuine healing and reconciliation in Zimbabwe. Genuine reconciliation and healing as seen in the pursuit of healing mechanisms which strives to address the five pillars of transitional justice which are justice, reparations, truth seeking, memory and memorialisation and institutional reform. The negation of one of these pillars jeopardises transitional justice as obtained in Zimbabwe where the justice was never pursued in favour of amnesties, clemencies and pardons; truth was suppressed in favour of creating a ‘patriotic history’, memory was deliberately obliterated in favour of amnesia; reparations paid to a section of the victims (mainly ex-combatants); and institutional reform was never considered an option. Only memorialisation was rigorously pursued, albeit at national level through commemorations such as the Armed Forces Day and Independence Day. This chapter argued that such top-down tendencies have not yielded genuine reconciliation and healing in Zimbabwe and only aided in further polarising the nation.

Notes 1.  Joshua Nkomo speech at the burial of former ZIPRA Commander Lt Gen Lookout Masuku in Bulawayo On 12 April 1986, available online at: http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category.php/zimbabwe/49235/print (retrieved on 21 January 2015). 2. Joshua Nkomo letter to Robert Mugabe from exile in the UK, available online at: http://nehandaradio.com/2013/12/24/joshua-nkomo-letterto-robert-mugabe-from-exile-in-the-uk/ (retrieved on 21 June 2015).

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3. Point 53 of Nkomo’s letter to Mugabe. 4. Point 115 of Nkomo’s letter to Mugabe.

References Benyera, E. (2014). Debating the efficacy of transitional justice mechanisms: The case of national healing in Zimbabwe, 1980–2011. PhD thesis, University of South Africa. Brickhill, J. (1995). Making peace with the past: War victims and the work of the Mafela trust. In N. Bhebe & T. Ranger (Eds.), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s liberation war (Vol. 1, pp. 163–173). Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications. Mamdani, M. (2009). Saviors and survivors: Darfur, politics, and the war on terror. London: Verso. Murambadoro, R., & Wielenga, C. (2015). Reconciliation in Zimbabwe: The conflict between a state-centred and people-centred approach. Strategic Review for Southern Africa, 37(1), 31–52. Mutasa, D. (1989). The signing of the unity accord: A step forward in Zimbabwe’s national political development. In C. S. Banana (Ed.), Turmoil and tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890–1990 (pp. 288–304). Harare: College Press. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2007). Forging and imagining the nation in Zimbabwe: Trials and tribulations of Joshua Nkomo as a nationalist leader. Nationalities Affairs, 30, 25–42. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J., & Benyera, E. (2015). Towards a framework for resolving the justice and reconciliation question in Zimbabwe. African Journal of Conflict Resolution., 15(2), 9–33. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S., & Willems, W. (2010). Reinvoking the past in the present: Changing identities and appropriations of Joshua Nkomo in post-colonial Zimbabwe. African Identities, 8(3), 191–208. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Sithole, M. (1991). Essay review: Turmoil and tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890–1990. Zambezia, XVIII(ii), 143–152. Stiff, P. (2000). Cry Zimbabwe: Independence-twenty years on. Alberton: Galago.

PART III

Nation-Building, Persecution, Autobiography and Rehabilitation

CHAPTER 13

Joshua Nkomo and Nelson Mandela: Ideas of Nation and Liberation Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Busani Mpofu

Introduction Joshua Nkomo and Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela belonged to the group of the first generation of African nationalists to fight anti-colonial struggles that eventually led to the black majority in Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively. They played pivotal roles that contributed to the attainment of the black majority rule in Zimbabwe in 1980 and South Africa in 1994, and their overriding quest for peace and unity presents interesting similarities of the ideas that they had for their countries and the conceptions of liberation they envisaged. Nkomo served 10 years in jail at the hands of the colonial government, while Mandela was jailed by the apartheid government for a total of 27 years. While Nkomo did not ascend to power as president of Zimbabwe in 1980 as his party lost elections to a rival nationalist power, Mandela

S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (*)  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa B. Mpofu  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_13

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assumed power in 1994. However, their autobiographies, just like that of other postcolonial ‘fathers of the nation’, give us glimpses of the development of their political consciousness, the ideas of the Zimbabwe and South Africa they were fighting to create, and the conceptions of freedom or liberation that they envisaged, respectively. This chapter, while a historical reflection, is also a critical comparison of Nkomo’s idea of Zimbabwe with Mandela’s idea of South Africa, their political consciousness, and their conceptions of liberation mainly through a comparison of their autobiographies: Nkomo’s Nkomo: The Story of my Life and Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, respectively.

Background Nkomo and Mandela belonged to the group of the first generation of African nationalists to fight anti-colonial struggles that eventually led to black majority in Zimbabwe and South Africa, respectively. They played pivotal roles that contributed to the attainment of black majority rule in Zimbabwe in 1980 and South Africa in 1994, and their overriding quest for peace and unity presents interesting similarities of the ideas that they had for their countries and the conceptions of liberation they envisaged. Nkomo served 10 years in jail at the hands of the colonial government, while Mandela was jailed by the apartheid government for a total of 27 years. While Nkomo did not ascend to power as president of Zimbabwe in 1980 as his party lost elections to a rival nationalist power, Mandela assumed power in 1994. This chapter therefore seeks to explore what imaginations of Zimbabwe and South Africa are reflected in the autobiographies of Nkomo’s Nkomo: The Story of My Life and Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom? What ideas of Zimbabwe and South Africa are reflected in their lives of struggle? How did Nkomo and Mandela try to practically build a new Zimbabwe and a new South Africa, respectively? This is done through a comparison of Nkomo’s idea of Zimbabwe with Mandela’s idea of South Africa, their political consciousness, and their conceptions of liberation. Joshua Nkomo, popularly known as Father Zimbabwe, wrote his autobiography while in exile after escaping an attempt on his life in Zimbabwe on 8 March 1983 and got it published in 1984. He passed on in 1999, at the age of 82. Nelson Mandela, regarded as the founder of the ‘rainbow nation’ in South Africa, had his autobiography published in 1994 and died on 5 December 2013, aged 95.

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Nkomo and Mandela’s personal acquisitions of modern education were crucial in the gradual development of their political consciousness, together with their experiences at the schools and colleges and/or universities they attended and their relocations; Nkomo from Zimbabwe to South Africa in 1942 and Mandela from Eastern Cape to Johannesburg within South Africa. Nkomo’s work as a chief social worker at the Rhodesia Railways in colonial Zimbabwe (Southern Rhodesia) since 1948, and his subsequent election as president of the African Railway Employees Association and president of the Southern RhodesianAfrican National Congress (ANC) firmly thrust him into the political arena which saw him taking a leading role in the organising and writing of petitions on subjects that included labour relations, voting rights, land questions, or personal grievances against the national government (Nkomo 1984: 45–46). Similarly, Mandela’s work as a lawyer and his political activities with the African National Congress (ANC) party were all crucial in raising his political consciousness and shaping his idea about South Africa. Both Nkomo and Mandela’s struggles involved opposing the minority white governments in their countries through non-violent means first and only resorted to armed struggles as the last resort. Differences between them lay in the fact that from the onset, Nkomo’s idea of a racially and tribal inclusive Zimbabwe never changed. He always believed in the equality of all racial groups and in the unity of African nationalists and all ethnic groups in colonial Zimbabwe during the anti-colonial struggle and after independence. In the 1950s, for example, Nkomo was worried that some social organisations were ‘beginning to develop “very dangerously”, along local or tribal lines’, a situation he resented actively (Nkomo 1984: 68–69). After the Lancaster House Agreement that ended the liberation war in colonial Zimbabwe, Nkomo spoke of reconciliation and warned against the spirit of revenge. He argued that the war was over, all were now citizens who needed to work together that people needed to forget the past and start building a nation in peace (Nkomo 1984: 204). Nkomo called on blacks to prove to whites that Africans fought for equality of all races and also called for the inclusion of Coloured people and Indians who were marginalised and ill-treated by the colonial Zimbabwe (Nkomo 1984: 251). This earned Nkomo the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’. Mandela, however, initially had conflicting ideas with regards to whether being Xhosa (his tribe) or South African or African was more

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important. He also strongly disapproved of allowing communists, Indians, and whites joining the ANC in the fight for the liberation of the country from apartheid colonialism but became more tolerant after the National Party won the general elections in 1948 and began institutionalising apartheid (Mandela 1994: 129). When the ANC won the first national elections on 27 April 1994, Mandela assured all minorities, whites, Coloureds, and Indians, that they had a place in the new dispensation. He emphasised that the liberation struggle was not a battle against one group or colour, but a fight against a repressive system and therefore urged all South Africans to unite as one country, one nation, and one people, attempting to create what has been popularly referred to as the rainbow nation. This surprised those who had imprisoned Mandela for 27 years as they expected that his reign would bring vengeance and retribution but he preached reconciliation and forgiveness (Alexander 2013). As will be highlighted later, following the split of ZAPU on tribal lines in the 1960s, Nkomo agonisingly struggled against the creation of a nationalist party and consequently of a Zimbabwe that was premised on tribalism and ethnicity. This became the biggest threat to the creation of a Zimbabwe that was imagined by Nkomo. Similarly, Mandela faced the task of building a South Africa whose idea was contested (NdlovuGatsheni 2015). According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, the idea of South Africa entails various searches for particular configurations of power and particular ideological frameworks that are sensitive to the realities of a society characterised by a kaleidoscope of ethnic, racial, class, and gender cleavages (2015, 7). This meant, in other words, that the idea of South Africa is about how diverse and antagonistic identities can be moulded into a nation. Kader Asmal argued that the idea of South Africa involved ‘…moulding a people from diverse origins, cultural practices, languages, into one, within a framework democratic in character, that can absorb, accommodate and mediate conflicts and adversarial interests without oppression and injustice’ (Asmal 2001: 1). Therefore, for Mandela and his ANC party, the most difficult task was to find an acceptable and accommodative way of managing the diversity of South Africa without excluding anyone (Alexander 2013). This culminated in Mandela’s idea of South Africa as a ‘rainbow nation’ (inclusive nation that celebrated its unity in diversity), which of course, still continues to be contested by some sections of the South African society.

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Development of Nkomo’s Political Consciousness Nkomo’s personal acquisition of modern education was crucial in the gradual development of his political consciousness. This was after his realisation that the social and economic ills faced by Africans emanated from racist policies of the colonial government. He argued that he ‘thirsted’ for freedom from his youth days when he began to understand that he could not be free while his ‘country and its people were subjected to a government in which they had no say’ (Nkomo 1984: xi). The refusal by white people (outnumbered by black people by at least one to twenty) in colonial Zimbabwe to accept blacks as fellow citizens eventually forced African nationalists to take up arms and wage a liberation war that was one of the longest and most cruel in Africa. Nkomo was born on 7 June 1917. Educated initially at Tjolotjo Government Industrial Boarding School in Matabeleland from 1932 until 1936, he initially worked as a lorry driver in Botswana soon after acquiring a driver’s licence and later on moved to work as bread delivery van driver at Osborne’s Bakery in Bulawayo owned by Mr Macintyre, who later on became Minister of Finance for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. When Nkomo realised that he earned £4 a month while other Coloured drivers earned £12, he confronted Mr Macintyre over this and he was eventually sacked (Nkomo 1984: 26–27). From 1942 to 1945, he was enrolled at Adams College in South Africa to further his studies. During the journey, he met Enoch Dumbutshena, who later became Chief Justice in Zimbabwe after 1980, Herbert Chitepo, who later became a great nationalist but died in 1975, and Stanlake Samkange, who later on became a historian and professor. From Adams College, he proceeded to Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work that was affiliated to Witwatersrand University in South Africa to train as a social worker. At a Blue Lagoon restaurant in South Africa, he met Nelson Mandela who was a student at Witwatersrand University then. He also met Seretse Khama, who later on became president of Botswana, while staying in one of the rooms at the Wits University hostels (Nkomo 1984: 33–35). While in South Africa, Nkomo also realised how government policies were designed to promote differences between different ethnic groups of Africans in the country. Though he argued that he was not yet ‘really political’ then, he attended political rallies organised by the ANC in the townships frequently. When he left South

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Africa in 1947, he was 47 and claimed that by then he still did not have a political philosophy of his own (Nkomo 1984: 35, 38). Once back in colonial Zimbabwe in 1948, he worked for the Rhodesia Railways under the Department of African Affairs as a chief social worker to train some welfare assistants. Soon in 1948, Nkomo was elected president of the African Railway Employees Association. He was also elected president of the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (ANC) in which he played a leading role in the organising and writing of petitions on subjects that included labour relations, voting rights, land questions, or personal grievances. All petitions were directed to the Secretary for Native Affairs in the national government. Witnessing ordinary African people’s suffering and seeing them treated like children convinced him that this had to change and that only Africans could change it. The invitation by the Southern Rhodesia government of Nkomo in 1952 to be part of the government delegation to a meeting hosted by the British government on the attempts of forming a Central African Federation of Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland was the first of the many (international and local) in which Nkomo found himself invited to represent the African thought in Southern Rhodesia (Nkomo 1984: 44–46). This effectively ushered him into the national and international political stage as one of the leading representatives of African political thought in Southern Rhodesia. When the Minister of Native Affairs Mr Fletcher in 1953 told Nkomo that inviting him to important international meetings on the affairs of Southern Rhodesia was equivalent to ‘elevating’ him to the level of a Minister and that he should therefore not let other Africans to ‘pull you down to their level’, Nkomo argued that ‘Either we rise as a people or we remain down as a people. You cannot pick out one man and raise him above the ground’. He was eventually given back his passport that had been confiscated by the national government after he spoke against the proposed Federation (Nkomo 1984: 58). His opposition to the Federation, which was dubbed as a partnership between a horse and a rider, with the whites riding on the back of black people, gave him a firm reputation as the spokesman of African opinion, and he thinks that this was just a ‘pure chance’ that led to his ‘new fame’. When he returned from one meeting of those meetings in London, some of the pamphlets he was in possession of were confiscated. He was tried at the Bulawayo Magistrates’ Court for importing the subversive literature as some of the pamphlets contrasted black and white people’s housing in colonial

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Zimbabwe. The massive African crowds in his support in court and on the streets emboldened his resolve to continue opposing the Federation and other oppressive government policies (Nkomo 1984: 59–60). In the 1950s, Nkomo and other few educated members of Southern Rhodesian-ANC who qualified to vote and held voters’ cards returned them to the returning officer as a way of expressing their opposition to a voting qualification that allowed only 400 Africans to vote while tens of thousands of whites were allowed. He became convinced that whites in the country would never give blacks their rights until they were forced to do so. In 1953, he resigned from his social welfare officer job to become full-time Secretary General of the Railway Employees Association and served in that position for 3 years (Nkomo 1984: 65). Moving around and visiting leaders of African social organisations, church groups, sports clubs, and welfare societies, Nkomo met organisations that were ‘beginning to develop very dangerously, along local or tribal lines’, including the Matabele Home Society, the Bakalanga Kwayedza, Matabele Highlanders, Mashonaland Football Club, boxing clubs exclusively formed along tribal lines for the Zezuru, Makaranga, Manyika, and so on. Nkomo constantly discouraged this trend, though without much success, urging the organisers not to associate tribal names and tribal feelings with aggressive sports like boxing as this could easily promote tribal clashes even outside the sport (Nkomo 1984: 68–69). Political opposition to the government gained momentum with the opposition of the implementation of the Land Husbandry Act of 1951 which further oppressed African communities. On 12 September 1957, Nkomo was elected president of the new African National Congress, with James Chikerema, George Nyandoro, Joseph Msika as vice-president, general secretary, and treasurer, respectively (Nkomo 1984: 69, 71).

Nkomo in Exile From 1958, Nkomo extensively visited other countries for 22 months including India, Egypt, where he even opened an office at the expense of the Egyptian government, UK-London, USA, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, and Ethiopia to publicise the Southern Rhodesian situation visà-vis Africans. On 26 February 1959, the ANC was banned; leading to the formation of the National Democratic Party (NDP) and Nkomo was elected its president in absentia. When he returned to Southern Rhodesia, he was met by a crowd that the police estimated to be

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50,000. Nkomo had effectively become the symbol and leader of African aspirations in Southern Rhodesia, so the crowd at the airport urged him to carry on. The NDP was banned in December 1961 leading to the formation of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) in 1962 to continue standing for freedom, justice, and equality for everyone in the country (Nkomo 1984: 97–98).

Forced to Adopt Armed Struggle In mid-1961, when the Duke of Devonshire expressed that Southern Rhodesia had a complicated economy that could not be handed over to be run by ‘untrained hands’ (blacks), Nkomo explained that: If development in Southern Rhodesia is an obstacle to the political freedom of the black people there, then we shall have to destroy that development. In the war, if a bridge became a danger to your nation, you blew up the bridge, not that you do not think bridges a good thing, but because at that time that particular bridge was helping your enemy. (Nkomo 1984: 98–99)

As a result, the year 1962 ended with a military confrontation after Nkomo had secured some rifles from Cairo. While he preferred a peaceful road to freedom, he was eventually forced to fight. Initially, his struggle against the minority white government was through non-violent means and only resorted to an armed struggle as the last resort. He argued that ‘We had not wanted the armed struggle-but we were under attack, and we had to defend our people’ (Nkomo 1984: 245, 102). When ZAPU was banned on 19 September 1962 and all its leaders were restricted to live for 3 months in areas where they were born, Nkomo was restricted to his home area in Kezi district. During that time, he carefully persuaded people that the time for peaceful protest in Southern Rhodesia was over, and they had to get ready to fight (Nkomo 1984: 103, 105).

Imbrications of Nkomo in Ethnicity and Political Divisions Since 1963, divisions began to appear within the nationalist movement abroad and that persisted well into the post-independence era in Zimbabwe. On his way to Addis Ababa, for the inaugural meeting of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) in May 1963, Nkomo was warned

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by his Egyptian friend Mohammed Faiek that he had been told that the Shona were the majority tribe and that they were making moves to take over the leadership of the nationalist party in the country. During the same meeting, Leopold Takawira and friends launched their campaign against Nkomo’s leadership, while Joseph Msika found their ZAPU colleague Malianga with a circular openly encouraging ZAPU to get rid of ‘Zimundebere’, a derogatory Shona term meaning an old Ndebele man, and to catapult the ‘majority tribes’, meaning the Shona, to the leadership of the party. This openly incited a tribal revolt against Nkomo, regarded as a Ndebele. Nkomo strongly resented this behaviour and noted that the leadership of ZAPU, its central committee, was drawn from all areas of the country and had a majority of Shona speakers, but now he was being accused of giving preferences to Ndebele speakers. He regarded this as the tragedy of Zimbabwe (Nkomo 1984: 112, 113–114). When it became clear that ZAPU was also going to be banned, its central committee resolved that no successor party was going to be formed this time and that ZAPU would remain the sole party in the country until independence was gained. This meant that the party was to operate as a clandestine movement. ZAPU was eventually banned on 19 September 1962. However, the breakaway faction opposed to Nkomo, now led by Ndabaningi Sithole, met in Enos Nkala’s house in Highfields, in Salisbury where they formed a rival party called Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Nkomo believed that ethnicity was crucial in the formation of ZANU in 1964. He believed that ZANU was born out of tribal feelings, stirred first by Shona-speaking people in exile, and exploited those feelings as a way of attacking Nkomo’s leadership of the nationalist parties. In the townships, ZAPU’s supporters were angry at the ZANU leadership’s betrayal of national solidarity. This led to violence between opposite supporters, leading to a campaign of petrol bombing in the townships that caused real danger. This split was also exploited and manipulated by the national government to weaken the nationalist movement (Scarnecchia 2008). Nkomo was arrested on 16 April 1964 and was only freed on 3 December 1974, 10 years later (Nkomo 1984: 116–119).

Development of Mandela’s Political Consciousness Mandela’s idea of South Africa kept changing from exclusionist to inclusive tendencies as his political conscious and experience increased. As noted, he initially had conflicting ideas concerning whether being Xhosa

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or South African or African was more important. After passing Standard V, his guardian sent him to Clarkebury Boarding Institute in the District of Engcobo to further his studies. During this time, he still believed that being a Thembu (Xhosa) was the most enviable thing in the world (Mandela 1994: 42). After leaving Clarkebury, in 1937, when he was 19, he joined Healdtown, Wesleyan College in Fort Beaufort which attracted students from all over South Africa and also from Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana. He began ‘to sense his identity as an African, not just a Thembu or even a Xhosa’, but this was just a nascent feeling then (Mandela 1994: 44–45). Later on, when Mandela left Healdton School, he had relapsed back to see himself as a Xhosa first and an African second (Mandela 1994: 49–50). From Healdton, Mandela proceeded to the University College of Fort Hare to study BA. His exposure to multiethnic, multicultural, and multiracial environments, all of which were crucial in shaping his idea of South Africa, heightened after his relocation to Johannesburg in 1941. When Mandela got a job as an articled clerk in a law firm Witkin, Sidelsky, and Eidelman in Johannesburg, his new work colleague, an African employee Gaur Radebe, a clerk, interpreter, and messenger, was very fluent in English, Sotho, and Zulu. Radebe also taught Mandela that the ANC preached the goal of Africans as full citizens in the country, that its constitution denounced racialism, and that its presidents had come from different tribal groups (Mandela 1994: 82–83, 99). At the same law firm, Mandela’s white colleague Nat Bregman ‘seemed entirely colour-blind’ and became his first white friend. He shared everything they had. They attended political meetings together and Nat invited him to parties where whites, Africans, Indians, and Coloureds mixed together (Mandela 1994: 85–86; see also Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2016: 17–24). In Alexandra Township in Johannesburg where he once stayed, Mandela discovered that urban life tended to abrade tribal and ethnic distinctions as Xhosas, Sothos, Zulus, Shangaans, and so on all lived together as Alexandrans (Mandela 1994: 89). In 1942, when Mandela moved closer to his workplace in downtown Johannesburg, he stayed at the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (WNLA) compound, ‘a multiethnic, polyglot community of modern, urban South Africa’ comprising of Sothos, Tswanas, Vendas, Zulus, Pedis, Shangaans, Xhosas Namibians, Mozambicans, and Swazis among others (Mandela 1994: 96–97). Politically, in 1944 when they formed the Youth League, African nationalism was their battle cry; they attempted to create one nation out

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of many tribes, to overthrow white supremacy, and to establish a democratic form of government (Mandela 1994: 114–115). Mandela was very much opposed to a multiracial form of struggle because he thought that blacks would then remain subservient to white culture and subjected to a continuing sense of inferiority. He therefore strongly opposed allowing communists or whites to join the league in 1944 (Mandela 1994: 115). However, when he enrolled for a bachelor of law degree at the University of Witwatersrand in 1943, he met some white students, who later became friends or colleagues, and he also made close friendships with Indian students, who were firmly committed to the liberation struggle and prepared to sacrifice themselves for the cause of the oppressed despite their relative privilege (Mandela 1994: 105–106). But he still believed that communists intended to take over the ANC under the guise of joint action and that an undiluted African nationalism, not Marxism or racialism, would liberate black people. The victory of the National Party in the 1948 white general elections led to the institutionalisation of apartheid and this pushed Mandela to become more sympathetic to the ultra-revolutionary stream of African nationalism, the Marcus Garvey-inspired ‘Africa for Africans’. Mandela argued that he was angry at the white man, not at racism, and that while he ‘was not prepared to hurl the white man into the sea, I would have been perfectly happy if he had climbed aboard his steamships and left the continent on his own volition’ (Mandela 1994: 129). Since then, he gradually began to accept Indians and Coloureds provided they accepted ANC policies. However, since he thought that their interests were different from those of blacks, he still doubted whether or not they could truly embrace the cause for blacks (Mandela 1994: 129). In the 1950s, when the spirit of mass action heightened, Mandela remained sceptical of any action undertaken with the communists and Indians (Mandela 1994: 132). Mandela’s co-optation into the National Executive Committee of the ANC, replacing Dr Xuma who had been defeated by Dr Moroka as President General of the ANC in 1949 began to change his ideas. He realised that it became difficult for one to be rebellious once he became a member of the Executive charged with making decisions (Mandela 1994: 135). In the early 1950s, the implementation by the National Party of the cornerstones of apartheid through the Population Registration Act and Group Areas Act, among others, led Indians and Coloured people to organise resistance campaigns, but Mandela, who had recently become national president of the ANC Youth League, still believed that

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disobedience campaigns should be exclusively African and still abhorred joint actions with Indians and Coloureds (Mandela 1994: 141–142). His appointment as first deputy president by the National Executive Committee of the ANC in 1952 (Mandela 1994: 165) also pushed him towards decisions that aligned with ANC’s multiracial approach. The adoption by the ANC of the Freedom Charter in 1955 also pushed Mandela towards multiracialism as the Charter became a major ‘multiracial manifesto’ with its preamble that stated that ‘South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white’ (Mandela 1994: 203). While some Africans in the ANC were anti-communist and anti-white and objected to the Freedom Charter, Mandela, however, now wanted the ANC movement to be a ‘great tent that included as many people as possible’ (Mandela 1994: 222). Mandela’s idea of a racially inclusive South Africa strengthened further in 1956, when he and other political activists, black, white, and Indian were arrested and detained in Johannesburg prison (Fort) where he discovered that: [S]uddenly there were no Xhosas or Zulus, no Indians or Africans, no rightists or leftists, no religious or political leaders; we were all nationalists and patriots bound together by a love of our common history, our culture and our people. Something stirred deep inside all of us…that bound us to one another. (Mandela 1994: 235)

When the Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC) was formed as an Africanist organisation on 6 April 1959 under Robert Sobukwe, it completely rejected ANC’s multiracialism. It rejected communism in all its forms and considered whites and Indians as ‘foreign minority groups’ or ‘aliens’ with no natural place in South Africa. For them, South Africa was for Africans and no one else. Mandela, however, found PAC’s views and behaviour immature (Mandela 1994: 268). In 1962, while Mandela encountered serious reservations about ANC’s cooperation with whites, Indians, and communists during his secret visit to African countries and other international destinations, he defended ANC’s non-racialism policy (Mandela 1994: 369). His belief in a multiracial society was now strengthened by his close friendship with whites and Indians. One of their lawyers after the Rivonia trial was Bram Fischer, whom Mandela described as an Afrikaner, whose conscience forced him to reject his own heritage and be ostracised by his own people, showing a great level of courage and sacrifice (Mandela 1994: 462).

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Forced to Adopt Armed Struggle Mandela and the ANC initially pursued a policy of non-violent struggle against the apartheid government. However, in 1961, Mandela believed that the days of non-violent struggle had passed by. He questioned the logic of the non-violent struggle when the apartheid government always reacted to it by using naked brutal force to crush any form of that struggle. It was becoming clear that a military campaign was needed to confront apartheid police brutality. Mandela thought it was now time they reconsidered their tactics. He had first discussed adopting an armed struggle in 1952 with Walter Sisulu. Mandela firmly believed that non-violence was a tactic that should be abandoned when it no longer worked. The ANC allowed Mandela to form a new military organisation, Umkhonto we Sizwe, separate from the ANC to carry out sabotage acts on government infrastructure (Mandela 1995: 319–323). Mandela was eventually arrested in 1962 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964 and was only released in February 1990, 27 years later. Inside Robben Island, the ANC formed its internal organisation, with a High Command, or High Organ composed of its imprisoned senior members, Walter Sisulu, Govan Mbeki, Raymond Mhlaba, and Mandela, all Xhosa speaking. This worried Mandela because it reinforced an incorrect perception that the ANC was a Xhosa organisation (Mandela 1994: 526). In the 1980s, when transferred from Robben Island and imprisoned at Pollsmoor and when visited my Lord Bethell, Mandela continued to emphasise a future non-racial South Africa (Mandela 1994: 619).

Nkomo in the Liberation Struggle and Crisis of Unity During the liberation war (1960s to 1980), Nkomo was the leader of ZAPU, with the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) as its military wing. Ndabaningi Sithole was the leader of ZANU from 1964 until Mugabe took over from him in 1976, with the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) as its military wing (Nkomo 1984, xiv). In the late 1970s, Nkomo desired reconciliation and unity between nationalist parties in Zimbabwe. However, ZANLA forces, together with some FRELIMO forces from Mozambique, at times raided communities in eastern Zimbabwe that were loyal to ZAPU, beat and killed ZAPU party organisers and forced people to shout anti-Nkomo slogans like ‘Down with Nkomo’. Nkomo agonised over this (Nkomo 1984, 203). He had hoped that after the 1979 Lancaster House Agreement, ZAPU

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and ZANU, as wings of the Patriotic Front (PF),1 were going to contest the March 1980 elections as a single party (Nkomo 1984, 200). Nkomo had hoped for unity between ZANU and ZAPU after the Lancaster House Agreement because of the fact that they had fought the liberation war and negotiated the Lancaster House Agreement and had been victorious over white minority government, while on the same side. However, a day after the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, Robert Mugabe spurned the agreement to talk with Nkomo at his London flat and flew to Dar es Salaam where on arrival announced that he and his ZANU party were to contest elections alone, not with ZAPU. Nkomo felt that his campaign for national reconciliation had been shattered and never fulfilled and believed that he and his ZAPU party were deceived by Mugabe’s ZANU (Nkomo 1984: 200). Nkomo’s invitations to Mugabe after the Lancaster House Agreement for personal discussions on how to approach the 1980 elections were ignored. ZANU went on to register for the national elections on its own as ZANU-PF. Nkomo eventually registered his party for elections as PF-ZAPU. Nkomo decried that victory over the minority white government had failed to bring unity in the nationalist parties. He continued to make overtures for peace to Mugabe. Once back in Lusaka after the Lancaster House Conference, Nkomo asked his deputy Josiah Chinamano to travel to Maputo in Mozambique and find out personally from Mugabe whether he was determined to break their agreement for unity and fight the election as a separate party (Nkomo 1984: 200–203). Nkomo believed that Josiah Tongogara, a key member of ZANU who died in a car accident in Mozambique in 1979 soon after the Lancaster House Agreement, was a true patriot who was going to be a powerful voice for unity in Zimbabwe as he was impatient of unnecessary divisions and was even admired by some ZAPU members (Nkomo 1984: 201). However, as noted, his life was cut short by an accident at a crucial time. Nkomo eventually believed that Mugabe’s disappearance from London after Lancaster House Agreement indicated that he was not interested in talks for national unity (Nkomo 1984: 203). When Nkomo returned to Zimbabwe for the first time after the Lancaster House Agreement, at a press conference in Harare airport, he spoke of reconciliation and warned against the spirit of revenge. He argued that the war was over, all were now citizens who needed to work together, that people needed to forget the past and start building a nation in peace, and that people would not be divided by artificial

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barriers (Nkomo 1984: 204). As white people had fought so hard against black majority rule because they feared that if blacks ascended to power, they would treat the whites as badly as they had treated blacks, Nkomo thus called for blacks to prove whites wrong and to show that blacks believed in equality and that is what they were fighting for. He also noted that the blacks in Zimbabwe needed to treat Coloured people and Indians in the country well, because they also had been marginalised and ill-treated in colonial Zimbabwe (Nkomo 1984: 251). However, during the campaign for elections, two PF-ZAPU candidates and 18 party campaigners were killed and many were terrorised by what Nkomo believed were fighters loyal to ZANU-PF (Nkomo 1984: xiv). Voting took place on 27, 28, and 29 February 1980, and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF won by 57 seats, PF-ZAPU got 20, and Muzorewa’s UANC got 3, while 20 seats were reserved for whites were won by Smith’s Rhodesian Front (Nkomo 1984: 210). Nkomo’s PF-ZAPU therefore lost the national elections in March 1980 to Mugabe’s ZANU-PF which ascended to power on 18 April 1980 (Nkomo 1984: xiv).

Mandela in Post-Prison Politics Soon after his release from jail in February 1990, Mandela argued that his mission was to liberate both the oppressor and the oppressed (Mandela 1994: 751). Mandela also noted that he knew that people expected him to harbour anger towards whites, but he did not. Instead, his hatred for the apartheid system had increased now. Therefore, he persuaded whites that a non-racial South Africa was a better place for all (Mandela 1994: 680, 682). However, through this, he risked being accused of too forgiving and compromising (Mandela 1994: 684). Soon after his release from prison and while holding negotiations with the white apartheid government over the ending of the apartheid regime, Mandela faced a challenge similar to that faced by Nkomo in Zimbabwe, that of violence between supporters of different African parties. Violence and killings between the supporters of the ANC and Chief Buthelezi’s Inkatha reached alarming proportions towards late 1990 in Johannesburg and Kwazulu-Natal. Mandela made several efforts to meet with Chief Buthelezi to end the violence even though he firmly believed that the apartheid government had a role in sponsoring the black on black violence to destabilise the negotiations to end the apartheid regime (Mandela 1994: 707–709). Mandela also demonstrated his quest

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for peace in 1993 after the assassination of Chris Hani by some white supremacists. This threatened to trigger a racial war in the country but Mandela appealed to all people in the country to remain calm and peaceful (Mandela 1994: 729). Therefore while campaigning for the first national elections on 27 April 1994, Mandela told white audiences that they were needed in the country, they belonged here, and they were South Africans and should concentrate on building a better future for all with the ANC (Mandela 1994: 737). Once the election results were out and it became clear that the ANC had won, Mandela purposed to ‘preach’ reconciliation to allay the anxieties of many minorities, whites, Coloureds, and Indians. He reminded all that the liberation struggle was not a battle against one group or colour, but a fight against a repressive system and urged all South Africans to unite and say ‘we are one country, one nation, one people, marching together into the future’ (Mandela 1994: 745). According to Alexander (2013), Mandela’s message of reconciliation and forgiveness became rooted in South Africa and for the first time the country became known as the ‘Rainbow Nation’, in Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s words, a symbol of acceptance and pride in its diversity.

Nkomo and Nelson Mandela’s Idea of Liberation Nkomo envisaged new African leaders who would welcome debate as the necessary means for improving governance, not those who mistook opposition to particular policies for general disloyalty and where constructive criticism is ignored and regarded as undermining the state. His idea of independence included a leadership that listened to diverse opinions of different social groups and different economic interests. He also envisaged recognition of regional differences since different regions in many African states tend to be occupied by people of different languages and cultural backgrounds. Nkomo looked forward to a leadership that did not regard its own interests and those of other people as automatically the same. He was against leadership that confused self-preservation with national security while in the process disregarding the law and individual rights of the general population. He resented the kind of independence whereby a nation can win freedom and its people still remained unfree (Nkomo 1984: 245–246). In 1980, Nkomo felt that people’s human rights were still suppressed and that people’s freedom in the newly independent Zimbabwe was

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under threat, now not from the colonial government but from the fellow former liberation fighters (ZANU-PF nationalists) who had ascended to power (Nkomo 1984: xi). For Nkomo, independence was supposed to kick start the task of building a Zimbabwean nation, uniting the divided people, and working in unity. Colonial Zimbabwe was divided mainly along racial lines, with whites refusing to accept majority rule and pursuing separate development that favoured whites as rulers of the country and oppressed blacks. The nationalists were also divided by the period of forced exile, imprisonment, and other internal conspiracies that surfaced during that time. Nkomo argued that the majority of the African population had not participated in the squabbles of their nationalist leaders, and as such, wished to enjoy their freedom in unity (Nkomo 1984: 214). This, however, did not happen, because, according to him, Zimbabwe’s first government, led by Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF, ‘set out to impose a narrow sectarianism’ and did not prioritise the task of healing the nation’s wounds emanating from a brutal war of liberation (Nkomo 1984: xiv). He accused the new Zimbabwean government of adopting the repressive techniques of the colonial government (Nkomo 1984: 245).

A False Start in Zimbabwe? After the loss of the elections, Nkomo believed that it was crucial that he accepted the results because independence had been gained through a lengthy devastating war of liberation and any contestations now could have inflamed emotions, divided the people, and encouraged external enemies (like the apartheid South African government) to destabilise the country. He calmed down his ZIPRA soldiers by telling them that they had, together with other dead comrades, fought for majority rule and everything else was secondary (Nkomo 1984: 211–212). Nkomo believed that Mugabe attempted to reconcile the nation a little bit by appointing two white members of Smith’s Rhodesian party and four from PF-ZAPU in his cabinet of 22 ministers. He was initially offered the ceremonial post of president of the new republic which he declined. He was then offered the Ministry of Local Government and Housing which he also declined. He eventually took charge of the Ministry of Home Affairs in charge of the police. The next difficult task was to create a national army and a national police force (Nkomo 1984: 211– 213). Prioritising promoting of peace, during the demobilisation period,

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Nkomo at times accompanied ZIPRA generals (commanders) to assembly points and spoke to the former fighters about the need for national unity. As the new Minister of Home Affairs, Nkomo even signed orders for detention without trial against more than 200 soldiers who breached peace and all of them belonged to his ex-ZIPRA army (Nkomo 1984: 218). Nkomo thought that Mugabe’s government had a false start mainly because ministers from ZANU-PF, who numbered 16 out of 22, regarded their party’s central committee as more supreme than the cabinet or parliament itself. As a result of this, Nkomo complained that Mugabe picked up several government ministers whose only qualification for the job was their membership of some ZANU faction so as to achieve some internal party ethnic balance. This resulted in some ‘gross acts’ of irresponsibility by ministers going unchecked, increasingly making it difficult for cabinet members like Nkomo who did not belong to ZANU-PF to do their work because of too much interference from ZANU-PF ministers. Nkomo argued that this amounted to ‘official gangsterism’. In other words, ZANU-PF’s central committee had taken over the functions of the cabinet and of parliament. However, in the midst of such challenges, Nkomo ‘utterly rejected’ embarking on any actions that could lead to a renewed civil war in Zimbabwe (Nkomo 1984: 217, 219, 223). After independence, the greatest threat to Nkomo’s idea of a united Zimbabwe was ethnic divisions which escalated during the demobilisation period in the post-1980 era especially between soldiers in the ex-ZANLA and ex-ZIPRA camps on the outskirts on Bulawayo, the second-largest city in Zimbabwe. This culminated in the first fight between the two camps in November 1980 after ZANU-PF had held a party rally at White City Stadium during which several of its ministers, including the most vocal one, Enos Nkala, insulted PF-ZAPU and Nkomo as its leader and argued that all minority parties should be crushed. Soon afterwards, gunshots were fired into the ZIPRA camp at Entumbane township and ZIPRA retaliated by firing back into the ZANLA camp. During these fights, civilians were killed and 60 people were killed (Nkomo 1984: 219). The culpability of Enos Nkala in sparking the army clashes has also been highlighted by Nyarota (2009). According to Nyarota, in a ZANU-PF political rally in November 1981 at Bulawayo’s White City Stadium, Nkala actually promised a total destruction of the PF-ZAPU

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party. This, according to Nyarota, sparked off a two-day exchange of gunfire between ZANLA and ZIPRA in Bulawayo’s Entumbane suburb, where returning soldiers of the two guerrilla armies were temporarily and separately cantoned. This initial confrontation spiralled into the bloody Gukurahundi campaign that engulfed Matabeleland, with Nkala openly cheering as the Fifth Brigade army massacred people who belonged to his own Ndebele ethnic group. If he was not the cause of Gukurahundi, according to Nyarota, Nkala was certainly its catalyst. In January 1981, Nkomo was sacked as Minister of Home Affairs and appointed Minister of Public Service by Mugabe. He declined to accept this one and was eventually appointed as Minister without portfolio (Nkomo 1984: 220). Fighting broke out again between the ZIPRA and ZANLA soldiers in February 1981 at the National Army camp in Ntabazinduna near Bulawayo, Entumbane and Connemara Barracks near Gweru. Nkomo, together with senior ex-ZIPRA officers Masuku and Dabengwa, was once again called upon to talk to ZIPRA soldiers and ordered them to lay down their arms (Nkomo 1984: 221). On 5 February 1982, after the raiding of PF-ZAPU-owned Ascot and Woodville farms, the government announced the discovery of massive stockpiles of weapons in ZAPU’s properties. Nkomo was accused of plotting to overthrow Mugabe’s government with the help of South Africa. On 17 February 1982, Mugabe sacked Nkomo from the cabinet together with his other three ZAPU colleagues. On 11 March 1982, former ZIPRA commanders Lookout Masuku and Dabengwa, together with five other senior ex-ZIPRA officers, were arrested and charged with treason (Nkomo 1984: 228, 229). Robert Mugabe then likened PF-ZAPU to a snake, a cobra, and threatened that ‘the only way to deal effectively with a snake is to strike and destroy its head’ (Nkomo 1984: 229). This was followed by the constant killing of people close to Nkomo and Mugabe eventually proclaimed in parliament that ‘the father of Zimbabwe had become the father of dissidents’. Managers of companies that Nkomo discussed a possibility of joint ventures with black people were detained for a week and some heavily reprimanded (Nkomo 1984: 230, 232). By so doing, Mugabe ruled out a policy of reconciliation and adopted confrontation towards ZAPU. Nkomo escaped to exile after an attempt on his life in Zimbabwe on 8 March 1983. Nkomo thus believed that he was the symbol of national unity, which was, however, rejected by Mugabe’s ZANU (Nkomo 1984: xiv).

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Then from January 1983, the national government-sponsored Fifth Brigade army began killing Ndebele-speaking people in Matabeleland North, Matabeleland South, and Midlands Provinces after accusing them of harbouring dissidents that were destabilising the government. The Fifth Brigade army burnt down villages, slaughtered cattle, assaulted women, and killed many just to instil fear. This was the birth of the socalled Gukurahundi massacres. Late in 1983, the Catholics bishops estimated that about 20,000 Ndebele-speaking people had already been killed2 (Nkomo 1984: 235–237). In spite of all this, Nkomo still proposed to Mugabe a non-political national conference to work towards reconciliation as he never abandoned hope that he could contribute a reasonable solution to the national problems in Zimbabwe by discussion rather than confrontation (Nkomo 1984: 244). Nkomo worked hard to avoid an outbreak of a civil war in Zimbabwe. According to the current ZAPU president Dumiso Dabengwa, one of the commanders of the ZIPRA military wing in 1979, Joshua Nkomo’s commitment to peace and unity prevented Zimbabwe from plunging into a bloody civil war soon after independence. Dabengwa argued that Nkomo had to endure treachery and personal humiliation but humbled himself in spite of the fact that he had massive military forces at his disposal, to remain steadfastly committed to peace and unity in the new country (Dabengwa 2016).

Mandela as State President During his inauguration as president on 10 May 1994, Mandela argued that ‘We enter into a covenant that we shall build a society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall, without any fear in their hearts, assured of their inalienable right to human dignity – a rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world’ (Nelson Mandela, Inaugural Address, Pretoria 9 May 1994). According to Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2015: 26), the reality on the ground may be that the ‘rainbow nation’ envisaged by Mandela has failed to live at peace with itself. This is because South Africa is still struggling to transcend the racial categories and identities constructed by colonialism and apartheid. There are even complaints about reverse-racism as a poor approach towards the resolution of the intractable national question. However, according to Alexander (2013), one has to understand that in 1994, when Mandela became the first ever black president, he faced a daunting

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task of attempting to unite a traumatised, divided, angry, and fearful nation. While many expected that his reign would bring vengeance, retribution, and civil war, he preached reconciliation and forgiveness and therefore understanding the diversity of South Africa is crucial to understand the challenges faced by Mandela.

Attempts at Economic Empowerment While aware that they had accepted from Britain a constitution that had imperfections, Nkomo believed that they had to make it work in governing the country as it enshrined the rule of law and the rights of the individual, among other good tenets (Nkomo 1984: 216). Nkomo’s concept of liberation included an idea of Africans that were economically liberated. In urban areas, he wanted a system whereby blacks would also have a stake in their communities through ownership of the properties they lived in. He therefore bemoaned the fact that in 1980 only 6000 white commercial farmers owned the most productive land in the country while about 6 million Africans farmed communally in less-productive land. As such, resettlement of land-hungry Africans, including those from communal areas, workers in commercial farms, and ex-combatants, disbanded from the former liberation movements needed to be prioritised in Zimbabwe (Nkomo 1984: 251). Therefore, after independence, Nkomo mobilised resources to buy properties including farms on which to resettle ZIPRA ex-combatants and create some businesses as cooperative enterprises. The idea, according to Nkomo, was to integrate local farm workers and ex-combatants in those farms. Properties registered under ZAPU included two farms and five business enterprises owned by ZAPU, four farms and five business enterprises owned by Nitram, a company established by Nkomo, and five farms and three businesses owned by individuals linked to ZAPU, and all were being used to resettle ZIPRA ex-combatants. According to Nkomo, 4000 ZIPRA ex-combatants who contributed $50 a month were involved. Nkomo was deeply involved as he personally raised funds for the establishment of the collectively owned African enterprises which assumed different patterns of ownership. Some enterprises included a thousand hectare vegetable farm on the outskirts of Bulawayo which produced tomatoes, onions, carrots, and maize, a small ranch outside Gweru which had 200 cattle, a motel and entertainment complex, a tourist resort known as Snake Park outside Harare, a garage, a

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clothing factory with its own retail outlet, a chicken farm, a pig breeding enterprise, a farm set-up as a women’s cooperative, a secretarial college, one clinic intended to be the first of a chain of rural health clinics, and urban housing that was to be sold in instalments to its occupants. All these enterprises had taken off without any input from the national government to empower black people (ZIPRA ex-combatants), ‘to free them from dependence on the state or the municipalities by encouraging home ownership and co-operative enterprises’. All these businesses were confiscated by Mugabe’s government and put in the hands of a liquidator after 5 February 1982 when the government announced the discovery of massive stockpiles of weapons in ZAPU’s properties (Nkomo 1984: 224–227). During his inauguration in 1994, Mandela noted that ‘We have, at last, achieved our political emancipation’. He thus pledged ‘to liberate all our people from the continuing bondage of poverty, deprivation, suffering, gender and other discrimination’ (Statement of Nelson Mandela at his Inauguration as President, 10 May 1994). In his autobiography, he also noted that ‘The true test of our devotion to freedom is just beginning’ (Mandela 1994: 751). He reiterated this in 1999, towards the end of his presidency when he argued that while the achievement of democracy was the defining challenge, ‘the long walk continues’ (farewell speech to Parliament, 29 March 1999), highlighting awareness that the liberation he envisaged for the majority of South Africans had not yet been attained.

Conclusion The autobiographies of Joshua Nkomo and Nelson Mandela highlight pivotal roles that both played in contributing to the attainment of black majority rule in Zimbabwe in 1980 and South Africa in 1994, respectively. Their overriding quest for peace, unity, and reconciliation between races and supporters of different African nationalist parties presents interesting similarities of the ideas that they had for their countries and the conceptions of liberation they envisaged. Nkomo spoke of reconciliation and warned against the spirit of revenge. He argued that the war was over, all were now citizens who needed to work together, that people needed to forget the past and start building a nation in peace (Nkomo 1984: 204). Similarly, Mandela also endeavoured to create a peaceful and united South Africa, the ‘rainbow’ nation that he envisaged. He argued

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that he saw it as his mission to preach reconciliation, bind the wounds of the country, engender trust and confidence, and ensure that all minorities, whites, Coloureds, and Indians felt secure. He also emphasised that the liberation struggle was not a battle against one group or colour of people, but a fight against a repressive system. He urged all South Africans to unite and declare that they were ‘one country, one nation, one people, marching together into the future’ (Mandela 1994: 745). The earlier differences between them lay in the fact that from the onset, Nkomo’s idea of a racially and tribal inclusive Zimbabwe never changed. He always believed in the equality of all racial groups and in the unity of African nationalists and all ethnic groups in colonial Zimbabwe during the anti-colonial struggle and after independence. Mandela, however, initially had conflicting ideas with regards to whether being Xhosa (his tribe) or South African or African was more important. He initially also strongly disapproved of allowing communists, Indians, and whites joining the ANC in the fight for the liberation of the country from apartheid colonialism but became more tolerant after the National Party won the general elections in 1948 and began institutionalising apartheid (Mandela 1994: 129). At the end, however, both Nkomo and Mandela became known for their quest for unity, peace, and reconciliation between different African ethnic and racial groups.

Notes 1. The Patriotic Front was formed in Dar es Salaam in 1976 by the central committees of ZAPU and ZANU and was signed in Addis Ababa in early 1979 (Nkomo 1984: 200). 2. For a comprehensive report of the massacres, see Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace in Zimbabwe. 1999. Breaking the Silence: A Report into the Disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980–1988, (Harare: The Legal Resources Foundation).

References Alexander, M. (2013, December 6). Nelson Mandela dies: Man who reinvented South Africa as a ‘rainbow nation.’ Accessed March 1, 2017, from. http:// theconversation.com/nelson-mandela-dies-man-who-reinvented-south-africaas-a-rainbow-nation-15594.

322  S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni and B. Mpofu Asmal, K. (2001). Foreword. In The manifesto on values, education and democracy. Pretoria: Department of Education. Dabengwa, D. (2016, April 4). Look Masuku: The people’s hero. A paper presented at the Memorial Lecture of Lookout Masuku hosted by Ibhetshu likaZulu at the Bulawayo Progressive Residents Association (BPRA) Local Governance Centre, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Mandela, N. (1994). Long walk to freedom: The autobiography of Nelson Mandela. London: Little, Brown and Company. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2015, March). Genealogies and trajectories of the struggle to become South Africa and South African. Keynote Address Delivered at The Wits Centre of Diversity Studies on the Theme: Dominance, Oppression and Transformation: The Psycho-Social Dimension, Impact and Consequences of Dominance and Oppression and the Emotional Work of Transformation, Emoyeni Conference Centre, Parktown, South Africa, 25–27. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. (2016). The decolonial Mandela: Peace, justice and the politics of life. New York: Berghahn. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Nyarota, G. (2009, July 24). When an owl flies in broad daylight. The Zimbabwe Times. Scarnecchia, T. (2008). The urban roots of democracy and political violence in Zimbabwe: Harare and Highfield, 1940–1964. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press.

CHAPTER 14

Reconstructing the Self: Hauntology and Spectrality in Nkomo’s Autobiography Josiah Nyanda

Introduction This chapter focuses on how Joshua Nkomo, popularly known as ‘Father Zimbabwe’, uses his political memoir to reconstruct the self, in the way that Ana Carden-Coyne (2009) calls reconstructing the body. The memoir, Nkomo: The Story of My Life (1984), republished two decades later after his death, illustrates a specific understanding of reconstructing the self through hauntology and spectrality as analytic lenses. This chapter carefully examines Nkomo’s political autobiographical narrative and shows the reader how different narrative strategies are deployed in this book to illustrate reconstruction of the self. First, this chapter examines two conceptions of reconstruction namely ruin and ruination as conceived by Ann Laura Stoler and others (2013). This section details how each respective concept describes human destruction, ‘dislocation and dispossession’, and deconstruction in a way that spells political ruin and ruination for Nkomo and the party he founded PF-ZAPU.

J. Nyanda (*)  University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_14

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This chapter then presents an argument that the concept of reconstructing the self adequately describes the Gothic effect of Joshua Nkomo’s memoir, The Story of My Life through hauntology and spectrality as metaphors of the haunting effects of the political memoir. This political autobiographical narrative illustrates a live of pain and suffering dedicated to liberating Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans, first from colonial bondage and second from Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF tyrannical rule. It is, therefore, my argument that through massive investment in the symbolic infrastructure of pain and suffering, the memoirs of Joshua Nkomo embrace in them what Roger Luckhurst calls the language of ‘ghosts and the uncanny – or rather anachronic spectrality and hauntology’ (2002: 527). Therefore, what we have in Nkomo’s narrative, I argue, is a political autobiographer and political figure whose self-narrative deals with ghosts, not of the dead, but ghosts of the living; something Shane McCorristine calls ‘phantasms of the living dead’ (2010: 139─191). Joshua Nkomo is undoubtedly conscious of the processes of ruin and ruination that have been meted against him through ‘hostile deconstruction’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007: 78) as a way of ‘uprooting’ (Yap 2001) him and PF-ZAPU and its military wing ZIPRA from the political history of Zimbabwe before and after independence. Thus, through selfnarration, Nkomo projects himself as a political ghost, a phantom that cannot be done away with but whose spectres will forever haunt and occupy that special place in Zimbabwe’s political history and landscape regardless of how ‘altered’ this ‘terrain of [the] struggle itself’ is (Scott 1999: 16).

Ruin and Ruination of Nkomo The process of reconstructing the self presupposes that deconstruction and destruction have taken place. Drawing on Stoler and others’ ideas of ruin and ruination in their astute and multidisciplinary (anthropological, historical and archaeological studies) book Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (2013), I will call this process of deconstruction, ‘ruin and ruination’. While alternative phrases and vocabulary such as ‘historical blunting’, ‘degraded personhoods’ (Stoler 2013), and ‘refashioning the self’ (Scott 1999) and ‘the self in transformation’ (Herbert Fingarette 1963) will come in as synonymous phraseology of deconstruction and reconstruction, respectively, they will serve as the jargon that

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serves not only to authenticate Nkomo political autobiographical narrative but also to validate that processes of political ruin and ruination, and reconstruction of the self have, indeed, taken place in Nkomo’s personal and political lives as exemplified in his political autobiography. What I find fascinating in the way narrative is strategically deployed in Nkomo’s political memoirs is the writers’ awareness of the ‘symptom[s] and substance of history’s destructive force’ (Stoler 2013: ix) and the processes of ruin and ruination that this history has and continues to mete on his political career and image. By history, I am here referring to Joshua Nkomo’s experiences in both colonial Rhodesia under Ian Douglas Smith’s UDI and post-independence Zimbabwe under Mugabe’s ZANU-PF rule. Nkomo (1984: xiii) for instance, clearly states that his book is not a history but ‘one day, if I am spared, I may contribute to the writing of one with a happy ending (my emphasis)’. The happy ending never came and consequently, he did not get to write another narrative, one with a happy ending as he had hoped to do. The aura of fear, insecurity and uncertainty in the carefully worded cautionary statement ‘if I am spared’ shows that he is conscious of the imminence of death and destruction, and the carefully calculated process of historical dislocation and dispossession that is taking place in order to wipe him off Zimbabwe’s historical terrain. Similarly, Wilfred Mhanda, whose nom dejure during Zimbabwe’s Second anti-colonial struggle was Dzinashe Machingura, also ‘seen by Robert Mugabe as a very great threat’ (Moore 2011: xiv), faced, as Nkomo did, the process of defanging (ibid. xv), as Mugabe was ‘eliminating [this] thorn from his side’ (xvi). Thus, Wilfred Mhanda (2011: 253), like Joshua Nkomo, views himself ‘as a victim of the internal struggles within ZANU before [and after] liberation’. This victim mentality, which has the potent effect of turning Joshua Nkomo’s memoir into a victim narrative, is a result of the fact that Nkomo is aware of the degradation and scarring his body and self are going through in the aesthetics of being politically ruined and destroyed by their political opponents—black and white alike. At issue here is the political life of Nkomo, and how this life, through ruin and ruination has been turned into political debris. Focus is on how Joshua Nkomo has taken advantage of his political ruin to ‘provide a favoured image of his vanished past’ (Stoler 2013: 9), in a way that ensures that his reconstructed self has a continual haunting effect on the politics of Zimbabwe. In her introduction to Imperial Debris: On Ruins and Ruination (2013: 9), Stoler describes to ruin as ‘a virulent verb’ (9)

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that signifies the ongoing process of ‘decimation [and] displacement’ in people’s lives. (8) In its virulent state, to ruin has an ongoing corrosive effect that condenses alternative voices and narratives of a people’s history. Consequently, to ruin according to The Concise Oxford Dictionary, as quoted by Stoler (9), ‘is to inflict or bring great and irretrievable disaster upon, to destroy agency, to reduce to a state of poverty, to demoralize completely’. Through the diction ‘inflict’, ‘destroy’, ‘reduce’ and ‘demoralize’, we envision the power of the metaphor of destruction and how irretrievably battered and shattered one’s image will be after being ruined. This idea of ruin and ruination is extended by Ariella Azoulay when she describes ‘To ruin’ as the architecture of destruction in which individual units ‘have been totally demolished’ (2013: 209). While Azoulay’s focus is the actual house, this house demolition can be taken metaphorically to refer to the ruin and ruination of a person’s character, personality and history. This act of ‘deliberate and willful destruction’ of persons and property, as Vyjayanthi Rao calls it in his article ‘The future in ruins’, constitutes the deconstruction that has taken place on Joshua Nkomo’s political history and career. His place and role in the history, politics and struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe from British colonial rule have been deliberately and carefully ‘tamed’, ruined and decimated ‘so as to limit any deleterious and feudal pull it might exert on the future’ (Rao 2013: 291). The fact that both the Smith regime and Mugabe’s ZANU-PF rule inadvertently ‘colluded’ to ensure that the political history of Nkomo is deconstructed through deliberate and carefully constructed processes of ruin and ruination succinctly points towards the central role that he occupies in Zimbabwe’s political history of the struggle for liberation. I now turn to the concepts of hauntology and spectrality and how as metaphors of textual resistance to ruin and ruination manifest Nkomo’s political memoir The Story of My Life as a phantom that resurrects the image of Nkomo as a monumental political figure that refuses to be destroyed.

Understanding Hauntology and Spectrality in Nkomo’s Memoir Hauntology, according to Davis (2013: 54) entails ‘replacing the priority of being and presence with the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present nor absent, neither dead nor alive’. Taken in its

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metaphorical sense, Nkomo’s political autobiography The Story of My Life constitutes the ghost that in essence comes back to haunt Zimbabwe and challenge ZANU’s dominant and hegemonic politics. First, it was written while Joshua Nkomo was in exile, which means that Nkomo was physically absent from his home Zimbabwe. His narrative, therefore, is the ghost that comes back to haunt his political adversaries. Second, it was banned in 1984, as an act of ruin and ruination meant to make sure that his story did not get to the people of Zimbabwe. This makes it a haunting narrative that ‘represents a new aspect of, the ethical turn of deconstruction’ (Davis 2013: 54), in Zimbabwe’s post-independence political discourse. As an act of ruin and ruination, the banning of Nkomo’s narrative shows that ZANU was ‘intent on preventing its traumatic and usually shameful secrets from coming to light’ (Davis 2013: 54). It also inadvertently transforms the book into a phantom, which represents Nkomo’s ‘return from the dead in order to reveal something hidden or forgotten, to right a wrong or to deliver a message that might otherwise have gone unheeded’ (Davis 2013: 54). One would find narrative similarities in Wilfred Mhanda’s memoir Dzino: Memories of a freedom fighter, which follows the literary trope of hauntology in the manner it ‘track[s] secrets [about the struggle] and bring[s] them to light’ (Dzino 2013: 55). Thus, Mhanda’s narrative, like Nkomo’s, exemplifies a phantom, a text ‘in distress’ harbouring secrets, to borrow from Davis (2013: 55). I must, however, be quick to point out that the two political narratives, The Story of My Life and Memories of a Freedom Fighter are not explicitly ghost stories but their narrative thrust and the memories they evoke and invoke, according to Davis, revolve around the transmission of phantoms and secrets. As spectres, the two books act as deconstructive narratives hovering over and above the ZANU-PF hegemonic and dominant discourses, thus ‘making established certainties vacillate’. Looked at as spectres, the narratives of Joshua Nkomo and Wilfred Mhanda reveal historical secrets that are shameful or otherwise. They, as Davis (2013: 54) says, ‘open us up to the experience of secrecy […]: an essential unknowing which underlies and may undermine what we think we know’. The political history of Zimbabwe that we know through the grand narrative of ZANU-PF is challenged, deconstructed and haunted by the spectres of Nkomo’s (and Mhanda’s) memoir. As a literary spectre, a ghost and phantom, Nkomo’s memoir pushes at the boundaries of dominant, hegemonic historical narratives of Zanu, and ‘gesture towards a still unformulated future’ (Davis 2013: 58)

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narrative of Zimbabwean history from the point of view of minor narratives and voices. Commenting on the spectrality and haunting power of texts (books), Wolfreys (2013: 71) says, ‘there is thus at work here a certain troubling, a trembling, in the idea of text itself’. Such lucid description of the power of text speaks to the idea of the machinery of the autobiography. Nkomo’s book partakes in its own haunting power. Thus, the banning Joshua Nkomo’s book in 1984 was ZANU-PF’s attempt ‘to bury the text, to entomb or encrypt it’ (Wolfreys 2013: 72) in the name of preserving and entrenching a purely ZANU-PF grand narrative of the struggle. However, books, whether banned or not ‘appear to have a material presence, without which anchoring that such materiality provides, our lives would assume a ghostly condition of impermanance; or, rather say, as does Updike, more ghostly, more phantasmal. Thus the book, as one finite identity for textuality, seems to keep us in the here and now by remaining with us from some past, from our pasts, from the past in general’ (Wolfreys 2013: 71). Not only does the narrative work as an apparition of Nkomo, who through the text, engages in the self-embalming process but the text gives Nkomo a state of permanent existence. Deadand-alive, the life of Nkomo’s political career is preserved and maintained through the text. Thus, in its state of permanency, the text serves as a troubled and troubling spectre and phantom that will continue to haunt and trouble Zimbabwe’s political history. Nkomo, like many of his colleagues in politics, was forced into exile by Mugabe’s security agents. In a sense, his exclusion from Zimbabwe is synonymous with what Vidler (2013: 404) calls the act of being ‘buried alive’. Thus, desirous of self-restoration, Joshua Nkomo uses his political memoir to steer out of it ‘a feeling that death was beginning to talk’ (Gravida quoted by Vidler 2013: 404). The next section focuses on how both the colonial regime of Ian Douglas Smith and Robert Mugabe’s post-independence regime tried to destroy and deconstruct the political history of Nkomo.

From Gonakudzingwa to Gukurahundi In an environment that is characterised and rocked by violence, racial and political tension as a result of the oppression of one race by another, imprisonment, deliberate isolation and/or detention for long periods are some of the ways of ensuring the political demise of your opponent.

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Thus, the mere mentioning of Gonakudzingwa and Gukurahundi1 takes us into what Richard Strier (1982: 386) calls ‘the theatrical dimension of public life’ for Nkomo. Gonakudzingwa was/is a detention camp in the Gonarezhou national park. It was/is notorious for being ‘home’ for many Black Nationalists during the struggle for liberation in Zimbabwe. It was a place of political ruin and ruination. The idea behind Gonakudzingwa was that of ‘hiding prisoners away in game reserves’ (Nkomo 1984: 121), firstly because ‘the natives were just there, part of the African fauna like elephants’ (Nkomo 1984: 121), and secondly, ‘[t]he objective was to cut us off from the world, to make it forget us and us forget it’ (Nkomo 1984: 130). This delineation of Gonakudzingwa evokes the ideas of ruin and ruination as ongoing processes of destroying and decimating a person’s life, character and political career. We begin to see this process of deconstruction when Nkomo, by virtue of being a political prisoner, loses his name and is referred to as ‘a prisoner’. The ‘Father Zimbabwe’ tag that he claims to have been called by immediately falls away, especially when he is dehumanised to the level of being equated with wild animals. Not only is he hidden, to ensure political invisibility and insignificance, but the place of hiding is a ‘game reserve’ because a native in the eyes of colonial authorities is the same if not worse than beast. Added to this is the idea of rot. Nkomo headlines the chapter that focuses on his life at Gonakidzingwa as ‘Left to Rot’ (130–142). The association between Gonakudzingwa and the image of rot projects Gonakudzingwa not only as a place of detention but also an imperial project with the potential to ruin a person completely. Thus, Gonakudzingwa— and to adopt Stoler—becomes a metaphor of a ‘degraded environment, [for] degraded personhoods’ whose political lives are redefined by spaces that have been ‘turned toxic’ in order to ensure severed relations ‘between [them] and people and between people and [them]’ (Stoler 2013: 7–8). As a place of detention and isolation from public life, and a force of destruction of one’s image and ambition, Gonakudzingwa, one would expect, meant for Nkomo, a vanished, falling, neglected past in a state of decay and disrepair. The effect of this offensive strategy of ruination is best captured by Nkomo when he says, ‘[t]hey wanted us, and the cause we stood for, out of the way. So they shut us up to rot quietly, in Camp 5 of the Gonakudzingwa protected area, in Gonarezhou Game Reserve’ (Nkomo 1984: 131). Because the rot was gradual and carefully calculated as a form of erasure from active nationalist politics, Gonakudzingwa was

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home to Nkomo for 10 years. The objective was to ruin Nkomo’s political career and ensure that his growing support base would shrink. This was made clear to Nkomo by the British foreign secretary Sir Alec Douglas-Home during a meeting of the two in Salisbury (now Harare) in 1970. After years in detention, Nkomo dared to refer to himself as a representative of the African population, whereupon he was told, ‘The people have completely forgotten you’, said Home. ‘They no longer recognise you: you do not represent anybody now. What we have done is reasonable, and if you do not accept it you will be left out’ (Nkomo 1984: 140). While one cannot rule out the possibility of this being political propaganda aimed at extinguishing Nkomo’s revolutionary spirit through isolation, what cannot be missed, however, is the implied ‘you have been politically ruined’ by detention at Gonakudzingwa. Stoler refers to this prolonged detention as ‘targeted humiliations of subject populations […that] are neither aberrant nor exceptional tactics of imperial regimes, but fundamental to their governing grammar’ (Stoler 2013: 3). Evidently, this language of detention was part and parcel of the whole imperial project aimed at stifling African Nationalism, for which Nkomo was a leader. Whether it worked or not shall be seen in the section on reconstruction. The 11 of November 1965 spelled doom not only for Southern Rhodesia as a whole but also for Nkomo and his colleagues who were in detention. For those like Joshua Nkomo and others who were detained at Gonakudzingwa, Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence meant direct political assault and total isolation from the outside world. A state of emergency was declared, and in a movemeant to consolidate Nkomo’s image as political debris, ‘[a]ll our visits were stopped, the police guard on us was strengthened, and we were forbidden to move across into the other camps’, says Nkomo. He adds ‘Now there were to be no visits, no news of the outside world, no free association with the people in the neighbouring camps. We were shut away’ (Nkomo 1984: 128). In short, there was no life, and admittedly, Nkomo adopted a defeatist attitude at this point. By saying ‘we were shut away’, Nkomo draws our attention to the process of ruin and ruination that took place at Gonakudzingwa. The isolation through prolonged detention, the dehumanisation that took place through forced association with wild animals and the state of emergency are all tactics that speak one language, the governing grammar of an imperial regime whose harsh and toxic corrosion of individuals that are perceived as a threat is an act of ruination.

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The attainment of independence on 18 April 1980, after decades of a protracted struggle against British colonial rule did not bring respite for Nkomo. It was a transition from Gonakudzingwa to Gukurahundi. Where Ian Smith’s Gonakudzingwa had failed to break Nkomo, then the brutal and fierce acts of Robert Mugabe’s Gukurahundi were meant to destroy him completely. From being called a terrorist by Ian Smith, Nkomo and his opposition party Patriotic Front—Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-ZAPU) would soon earn a new tag; Mugabe’s ZANU-PF accused him of being the ‘father of dissidents’. Paradoxically for Nkomo, the transition from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe made him realise that nothing had changed. The same allegations of trying to destabilise the country that was levelled against him by Ian Smith were revivified by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF government. A reign of terror in the form of a ZANU-PF North Korean-trained military wing, Fifth Brigade was unleashed in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands provinces in what came to be known in Zimbabwe’s post-independence history as Gukurahundi. An estimated 20,000 people, mostly of Ndebele origin lost their lives. Writing on what he calls the ‘triple metamorphosis of Joshua Nkomo’, which in essence implies the shape-shifting, forms of life and multiple identities of Nkomo, as well as his reincarnation as an apparition, to haunt his adversaries and Zimbabwe’s political landscape, Ndlovu-Gatsheni says, ‘[t]his portrayal of Nkomo as “father of dissidents” set the stage for a systematic, violent campaign against PF-ZAPU, Joshua Nkomo and ZIPRA combatants’ (2007: 75). If the name Gukurahundi (a Shona term for the storm that sweeps away the chaff, paving way for the normal rainy season) is anything to go by, it translates to violent acts whose objectives are cleansing, ruin and ruination. Hence, Ndlovu-Gatsheni posits that ‘[t]he violence against PF-ZAPU, demonisation of Joshua Nkomo and attempts at writing ZIPRA out of the liberation struggle, was taking place at a crucial time of nation-building by ZANU-PF’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007: 75). Simply put, there was a deliberate and strategic deployment of both military and non-military force aimed at wiping off the name Joshua Nkomo, his party PF-ZAPU and its military wing ZIPRA from the history of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. Unlike Gonakudzingwa which symbolised prolonged detentions, Gukurahundi had the objective of yielding immediate results. The deconstruction, decay and ultimate ruin and ruination of Nkomo became the obsession of ZANU-PF, which was bent on rewriting the history of the struggle that would exclude Nkomo, PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA.

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The Fifth Brigade violence which was meant to demolish Nkomo and his party was officially sanctioned by Robert Mugabe as the Prime Minister when he publicly said, ‘ZAPU and its leader Dr. Joshua Nkomo, are like a cobra in a house. The only way to deal effectively with a snake is to strike and destroy its head’ (Nkomo 1984: 2). The serpentine imagery in ‘cobra’ and how to deal with it, which entails striking in order to ‘destroy its head’ makes us envision Mugabe posing as a ‘god’ pronouncing his first punishment against mankind in the Garden of Eden after man’s first act of sin. This god-like quality of Robert Mugabe meant that his word was final and could not be challenged hence, the violence that followed led to the deaths of thousands of people. This is the same man who had addressed Parliament in 1982 and warned that ‘some of the measures we shall take are measures that will be extra-legal […] an eye for an eye and an ear for an ear may not be adequate in our circumstances. We might very well demand two ears for one ear, and two eyes for one eye’ (Hansard 1982). What began as a verbal warning, turned out to be an officially sanctioned act of genocide and/or ethnic cleansing. What we should not lose sight of is that Gukurahundi was an act of political ruin. Zimbabwe’s history was being redirected and rewritten to ensure the exclusion of ZAPU, Nkomo and ZIPRA. Complicit in this project to destroy Nkomo and relegate him into the dustbin of history were several ZANU-PF ministers who insulted ZAPU, insulted me as its leader, and said that all minority parties should be crushed’ (Nkomo 1984: 219). This language of hate and violence, argues Gaylard (1993) would be repeated by Edgar Tekere, Minister of Manpower Development and Planning, when he called for a military operation to crush the PF-ZAPU opposition in the following terms: ‘Nkomo and his guerillas are germs in the country’s wounds and they will have to be cleaned up with iodine. The patient will have to scream a little’2 (Astrow 1983: 167). The systematically patterned acts of violence that followed these utterances were aimed directly at decimating Nkomo and his party PF-ZAPU. Barely a year into independence, Nkomo was ‘sacked’ from his job as the powerful home affairs minister, faced ‘demotion’ to a politically insignificant minister of public service and eventually to the ‘meaningless title of minister without portfolio’ (Nkomo 1984: 220). This humiliation and degradation of personhood as Stoler puts, it signifies the corrosion and decay that precede the political ruin and ruination of a public figure like Joshua Nkomo.

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Realising his loss, Nkomo 1984 (224–234) painfully labels himself ‘outcast’. This was a case of history repeating itself, only that this time, the architects of his fall were his former partners in the struggle against white minority rule. He admits that ‘my own losses were very large indeed; other party members much less able to afford any loss at all were ruined’. Nkomo goes on to add that PF-ZAPU and its leaders ‘had been eliminated’ (my emphasis 228). There is no doubting that Nkomo’s admission that he, together with his support base and party, had been ruined and eliminated sounds defeatist and fatalistic. However, we should not lose sight of the fact that he had realised that he was dealing not with an individual, but a powerful system whose intention was to destroy once and for all his support base. It is this attempt to ruin and deconstruct him politically that he challenges using his memoir. It is here that the value of the book as a form of self-embalmment and a text of haunting becomes apparent. The memoir is the instance of the ineradicability of the ghost of Nkomo. It is the tool used by the autobiographer to manifest the justice-seeking nature of the ghost of Nkomo who, even when detained and isolated at Gonakudzingwa, in exile running away from Mugabe’s security agents, and seemingly dead-and-buried, eternally returns to haunt until some form of expiation has been conducted.

On Refusal to Fall: Spectres of Nkomo In Nkomo’s memoir, there is ‘an unrelenting drive to reconstruct, perfect, and beautify the [self]’, as Carden-Coyne (2009: 4) says with reference to the bodies that were mutilated by the First World War. The Second Chimurenga (hereby represented by Gonakudzingwa) and the 1980s Gukurahundi destroyed human bodies and identities on an unprecedented scale. In particular, the onslaught upon the body, personality, identity and political career of Nkomo and how he refashions and reconstructs his identity is my concern. There is a hidden awareness, in Nkomo’s memoir, of the imminent death and collapse of ZAPU as a political party and ZIPRA its military wing. That PF-ZAPU will be submerged, destroyed even, by ZANU-PF is glaring. Therefore, by unleashing the memoir The Story of My Life three years ahead of the 1987 Unity Accord, which marked the official demise of PF-ZAPU, Nkomo is literary refusing to die. His memoir is, in Derridian terms (1994: xx), ‘a living on’ spirit that ‘in advance comes to disjoin or dis-adjust the identity

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to itself of the living present as well as of any effectivity’ of the deconstruction of Nkomo’s identity at the hands of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF. It is a political narrative that not only seeks to reconstruct Joshua Nkomo’s identity but also to ensure that identity will have a permanent, haunting effect on Zimbabwean history. There is thus in Nkomo’s memoir what Derrida in Specters of Marx calls ‘some spirit. Spirits. And one must reckon with them. One cannot have to, one must not be able to reckon with them, which are more than one: the more than one/no more one [le plus d’un]’ (Derrida 1994: xx). It is this living on spirit that seeks to redefine, refashion, reconstruct and re-infuse Nkomo’s identity through memoir writing, into the ‘sanitized and reinvented’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007: 73) history of Zimbabwe, a history that Chennells (2005: 233) calls ‘state patriotic history’ from which many, like Nkomo, ZAPU and ZIPRA are deliberately and by design excluded. The memoir is testimony that there is connection between the death of a political party PF-ZAPU and the fate of Joshua Nkomo the man and his invaluable role in history. When it comes to the history of the Zimbabwean struggle, the name ‘Joshua Nkomo’, ‘is—in a certain sense—entirely uncircumventable’ (Magnus and Cullenberg 1994: xi). This has been made certain by the memoir which carries within it the spectre of Nkomo. Therefore, the official end and collapse of PF-ZAPU in 1987 did not portend that of Nkomo both politically and historically. The fact that as early as 1984, he was aware of ZANU-PF’s plot to deliberately deconstruct the history of the struggle when he says, ‘[e]ven our national history is distorted’ (Nkomo 1984: 228), shows that he is disillusioned and thus his book ‘is the personal record of a life that has played a part in history’ (Nkomo 1984: xiii). It is this life, which Derrida calls the spirit that we cannot, must not be able to reckon with— the haunting spectre of Nkomo that is the focus of this section. Here, I focus on two strategies that were used by Nkomo in his memoir to reconstruct and refashion his identity to a point where the mere mention of his name haunts Zimbabwe’s political history. These are his link with the spiritual world and his association with the founding fathers of African Nationalism. Nkomo’s visit to the Dula Mwali cult shrine in the Matopos Hills in the 1950s portrays him as the favoured and chosen one to lead the struggle for the liberation of Zimbabwe. His encounter with the spirit of the mountain God at the Dula Mwali shrine was not a chance encounter. He attributes it to the development and growth of ‘the spirit of

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Zimbabwean nationalism’ (13). His desire for freedom from white colonial rule found him with some twenty others at the mouth of the shrine. We are told that after falling into a soft rhythm of clapping, suddenly a voice like that of an ancient man began to call us by our names: ‘You, son of Nyongolo […]—what do you want me to do for you? How do you expect me to accomplish it: when I told King Lobengula what not to do, he did it?’ He goes on, ‘I replied, as leader of the group: Babamkhulu, grandfather, we have come to ask you to give back this land to your children, the people of this land’, whereupon he is told ‘I will give you back your land. It will be after 30 years, and it will be after a big war in which many will die’. It is, however, Nkomo’s claim that ‘for thirty years I kept the secret that the voice had foretold a long and costly struggle’ that is of particular interest here’ (Nkomo 1984: 14). Even though this incident is rooted in traditional African religion, it bears resemblance with two biblical incidents. The first one is the baptism of Jesus where a voice was heard talking, ‘Thou art my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased’. (Matthew 3 v 16). The second is the voice that Moses heard commanding him to go to Egypt to set free God’s children and take them to their Promised Land Canaan—an undeniably tall order, which would take Moses 40 years to accomplish. Similarly, it would take Nkomo 30 years to see the liberation of Zimbabwe from British colonial rule. His claim to be the favoured and chosen one takes him to a point ‘where he appropriates ritual powers so as to mythologies himself as the true inheritor of a chain of power that stretched from pre-colonial times only to be disturbed by colonial rule’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2007: 79). By projecting himself as the custodian and ‘keeper of national secrets that other nationalists did not know’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007: 79), Nkomo puts himself on a pedestal that others including those that are trying to deconstruct history by ruining his character, identity and political career, cannot challenge. He places his degraded name and degraded personhood into the spiritual realm where none can bring them down. By turning his struggle for recognition into a spiritual warfare, Nkomo has taken his fight into a realm that no ordinary man can challenge. It is here that we begin to see the spectre of Nkomo coming back to haunt Zimbabwean history. It is a history that is littered with spirits, ghosts and phantoms that as Derrida suggests we cannot afford not to reckon with. The same voice would visit him in the form of a dream at Gonakudzingwa to pronounce his freedom and the fact that the war was

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coming to an end. The mysterious voice called him by name, ‘Joshua’, and went on to tell him, ‘I have come to tell you it is over now. Get out of here’ (Nkomo 1984: 145). By now, Nkomo’s lifetime of struggle has gone full circle. What begins as a call to lead the struggle at the Dula Mwali shrine in Matopos Hills ends with a declaration of completion when he is told it is over now—reminiscent of Jesus’ last words on the cross, ‘It is finished’ (John 19 v 30). This, coming against the backdrop of demonisation by ZANU-PF as the father of dissidents, serves to present a diametrically opposite image of Nkomo as the chosen one to lead the struggle, an identity and role he would not betray for the sake of power. Besides ritualisation, visions and dreams, Nkomo’s rebuttal of Mugabe’s ZANU-PF’s demonisation and ruination of his identity as the father of nationalism in Zimbabwe comes by association. Contrary to the criticism levelled against him ‘for being too fond of travel, and for spending too little of my (Nkomo) time at home’ (Nkomo 1984: 86), which would reduce him to an absentee nationalist who was gallivanting when others were in the bush fighting the enemy, Nkomo uses details of his acquaintances and contemporaries to consolidate his position not only as ‘father Zimbabwe’ but also as one of the founding fathers of African nationalism. Among the luminaries of nationalist struggles in Africa he associated with were Nelson Mandela, Kenneth David Kaunda, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Kwame Nkrumah, Patrice Lumumba, Sir Seretse Khama, and Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, all of whom became presidents of their respective countries. Added to this is that he was elected president of the African Railways Employees’ Association, president of the African National Congress, in absentia, president of the National Democratic Party and life president of ZAPU. Implicit here is that if all his acquaintances became presidents in their respective countries, then Nkomo was robbed by Mugabe and ZANU, of his opportunity to be the president of Zimbabwe, hence he talks of ‘the doubtful elections’ of 1980, which ushered Zimbabwe’s independence. Ndlovu-Gatsheni puts it well when he submits that by associating himself with Africa’s political greats, Nkomo’s intention was: To alert his readers to his rightfulness to the leadership of Zimbabwe, like other continental leaders who assumed power at the departure of colonialists. One is also given the impression that Joshua Nkomo is projecting himself as a supra-nationalist who ranks alongside luminaries of the broader pan-Africanist struggle in Africa. (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2007: 80)

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In other words, Nkomo’s memoir projects him as an embodiment of the pan-African spirit, which cannot be wished away. Thus, any attempt to deconstruct his identity by erasing him from the history of the struggle is an exercise in futility because it will entail rewriting the entire history of nationalism in Africa. There is a bold statement that says he ranks among Africa’s greatest statesman and political heavy weights, and thus no amount of demonisation can bring his name to ruin. The same technique of narrative by association is used by Edgar Tekere to foretell the doom that would befall ZANU-PF after he was expelled from the party. He recalls Africa’s political heavy weights—Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, Samora Machel and Quett Masire—questioning Mugabe’s logic of expelling Tekere from ZANU-PF: ‘How can Robert [Mugabe] hope to run Zimbabwe without Edgar [Tekere]?’ they asked (Tekere 2007: 132). However, the collapse of PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA did not portend the death of Nkomo. The fact that Nkomo’s name continues to be exploited by Mugabe’s ZANU-PF today—32 years after he wrote his memoir and 17 years after his death—to woo votes from the people of Matabeleland, most of whom are Ndebele-speaking people, shows that the spectre of Nkomo lives on, and continues to haunt Zimbabwe’s political landscape. It is a spirit we cannot afford not to reckon with.

Conclusion In his book Refashioning Futures: Criticism after Post-coloniality, David Scott (1999: 94) talks about de-historicising history and avers that the shape of the past ought to guarantee the shape of the present. Conversely, Scott is talking about the symbiotic relationship between the past and the present and admitting that the past will always have an effect on the present. Similarly, in the current chapter, I embarked on examining a meticulously exhaustive exercise in historical reconstruction. Focus has been on how Nkomo in The Story of My Life reconstructed the self against the backdrop of political onslaught on his identity and history aimed at creating ruins of him. I traced how the tactics of ruin and ruination used by the colonialists against Black Nationalists are similar to the systematic methods of disregard, decimation and destruction applied by the independent government of Robert Mugabe’s government. Central to my reading of Nkomo’s memoir was less the history it so masterfully accomplishes than the historiographical narrative strategies of reconstructing the self that inform the book. Consequently, the question

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I was grappling to answer was whether hauntology and spectrality are part and parcel of the process of reconstructing the self in The Story of My Life. What comes out clearly is that in the memoirs of Nkomo, the past is being mobilised and deployed as the guarantee of one’s claims about the self in the present. The spectral is at the heart of the narrative. Essentially, the past is represented as the spectre that continually haunts the present. Through reconstruction of the self, we see that the authority of the past has great influence in the present. That the memoirs of Nkomo were written at a strategic moment in the life of the memoirist is telling. Nkomo wrote his memoir in exile at a time when his future in Zimbabwean politics was uncertain. The memoir then served as a permanent record of his political life which was dedicated to ensuring freedom and justice for all regardless of race or ethnic group. He thus presents a narrative that reclaims his father Zimbabwe tag. Additionally, Joshua Nkomo wrote at a time when his political career had waned completely—3 years before the signing of the 1987 Unity Accord—which would see PF-ZAPU being submerged into and by ZANU-PF to form ZANU-PF. His memoir is a direct challenge to the emergence and gradual development patriotic history, which in essence would turn out to be exclusionary, selective and a Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF history. The text invokes and exhumes the metaphorical ‘bones’ of the liberation struggle in order to evoke the haunting ghostly image and name of Nkomo, PF-ZAPU and ZIPRA. This gives his memoir an aura of spectrality that haunts ZANU-PF narratives of the struggle. Conclusively, in Nkomo’s memoir, there is fetishisation of the self which projects the memoir as a form of power to cause ruin and ruination of the memoirist’s adversaries while reconstructing the buttered image of the self.

Notes 1.  Gonakudzingwa was a restriction camp situated in the Gonarezhou Game Park. The place was used by the Rhodesian security forces during the Second Chimurenga. It was at this camp that political prisoners that included the late Father Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo, Josiah Chinamano and his wife among others were incarcerated and isolated right in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by dangerous wild animals. Gukurahundi—a Shona word for the spring rain that sweep away dry season chaff—was a code name for a Mugabe’s Zanu-PF led military operation aimed at the

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suppression of Zimbabwean civilians, mostly supporters of Joshua Nkomo, by Zimbabwe’s notorious 5th Brigade in the predominantly Ndebele regions of Zimbabwe during the 1980s. 2. There is irony in Tekere’s utterances when one realises that the same Edgar Tekere had used medicinal imagery in support of ‘ethnic cleansing’ would complain later when the political party Zanu, he founded, rejected him and subjected him to the same treatment that had been meted on Nkomo, with his full blessings and support.

References Astrow, A. (1983). Zimbabwe: A revolution that lost way. London: Zed Books. Azoulay, A. (2013). When a demolished house becomes a public square. In A. L. Stoler (Ed.), Imperial debris: On ruins and ruination (pp. 194–224). Durham: Duke University Press. Carden-Coyne, A. (2009). Reconstructing the body: Classicism, modernism, and the first world war. Scholarship Online: Oxford Press. Davis, C. (2013) Etat Present: Hauntology, Spectres and Phantoms, in Maria Del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (Ed.), The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory (pp. 53–60). Bloomsbury: London. Derrida, J. (1994). Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New international (Peggy Kamuf, Trans.). New York: Routledge. Dzino, D. (2013). ‘Illyrians’ in ancient ethnographic discourse. Dialogues d’histoire ancienne, 40(2), 45–65. Fingarette, H. (1963). The self in transformation: Psychoanalysis, philosophy, and the life of the spirit. New York: Harper and Row Publishers. Gaylard, G. (1993, October). Dambudzo Marechera and nationalist criticism. English in Africa, 20(2), 140–165. Hansard, S. L., Ammerman, C. B., Henry, P. R., & Simpson, C. F. (1982). Vanadium metabolism in sheep. I. Comparative and acute toxicity of vanadium compounds in sheep. Journal of animal science, 55(2), 344–349. Luckhurst, R. (2002). The Contemporary London Gothic and the Limits of the ‘Spectral Turn’. Textual Practice, 16(3), 527–546. Magnus, B., & Cullenberg, S. (Eds.). (1994). ‘Editors’ Introduction’. In J. Derida (Ed.). Specters of Marx: The state of the debt, the work of mourning, and the new international, (Peggy Kamuf, Trans.) (pp. 56–87). New York: Routledge. McCorristine, S. (2010). Spectres of the self: Thinking about ghosts and ghost-seeing in England, 1750–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mhanda, W. (2011). Dzino: Memories of a freedom fighter. Harare: Weaver Press.

340  J. Nyanda Moore, D. (2011). Introduction in Dzino: Memories of a freedom fighter. Harare: Weaver Press. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2007). Forging and imagining the nation in Zimbabwe: Trials and tribulations of Joshua Nkomo as a nationalist leader. Nationalities Affairs, 30, 25–42. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Rao, V. (2013). The future in ruins. In A. L. Stoler (Ed.), Imperial debris: On ruins and ruination (pp. 287–321). Durham: Duke University Press. Scott, D. (1999). Refashioning futures: Criticism after postcoloniality. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stoler, L. A. (2013). Introduction: ‘The rot remains’: From ruins to ruination. In A. L. Stoler (Ed.), Imperial debris: On ruins and ruination. Durham: Duke University Press. Strier, R. (1982, Spring). Identity and power in tudor England: Stephen Greenblatt, renaissance self-fashioning from more to Shakespeare. Boundary 2, 10(3), 383–394. Tekere, E. (2007). Edgar ‘2’Boy Zivanai Tekere: A lifetime of struggle. Harare: Sapes. Vidler, A. (2013). Buried Alive, in Maria Del Pilar Blanco and Esther Peeren (Ed.), The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory. Bloomsbury, London; pp 403–413. Wolfreys, J. (2013). Preface: On textual haunting. In M. D. P. Blanco & E. Peeren (Eds.), The spectralities reader: Ghosts and haunting in contemporary cultural theory (pp. 69–73). London: Bloomsbury. Yap, P. K. (2001). Uprooting the Weeds: Power, Violence, Ethnicity and Violence in the Matabeleland Conflict, 1980–1987. Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Helsinki.

CHAPTER 15

Self-Writing and Subjection: Frederick Douglas and Joshua Nkomo Tendayi Sithole

Introduction It is in this chapter where two figures who occupied different geographies and lived in different centuries under different regimes are brought together by a set of existential questions and ensuring that the plight of being human is what features in politics. In this context, the conventional fissure of time and space leads to Frederick Douglass and Joshua Nkomo not being in the same ensemble, and it will be argued here that they are tied together by one epoch. To qualify this claim, it is important to install the concept of subjection which serves as the knot which ties Douglass and Nkomo together as racialised subjects. Their common lived experience stems from the fact that they are pathologised for being black and they are not worthy of being in the fraternity of the polis. They are also banned from the realm of the sovereign. Both did not accept the condition they were in and took it upon themselves to resist, and in so doing, they reconfigured the world.

T. Sithole (*)  University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_15

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Their self-writing is what ties them together, and this is clear in the manner in which they raise existential questions. These existential questions are paramount in the struggle for liberation and to install the form of life that will allow humanity to exist together. It is a life that is outside the strictures of dehumanisation. Douglass and Nkomo’s foremost critique calls into being new forms of life. This should not be construed as prophesy of that which is yet to come, it is rather a forceful critique that they make existential demands, and inherent in these demands is the impatient and tenacious call that things should be fundamentally changed. The world as it is, because it is plagued by subjection, is yet to fundamentally change and this cannot be the automated process where human activity is structurally delinked from the processes that confer existence, whether precarious or not. Rather, the critique of Douglass and Nkomo demands that the world change because the hellish reality that is unleashed by subjection through its radical mutations of socio-historical processes, say slavery (in the case of Douglass) and settler colonialism (in the case of Nkomo), are ones which are not natural but manifestations of subjection by the master and colonial master, respectively.

Unmasking Subjection Slavery and settler colonialism signify subjection, and their operating logic is racism. Thus, technologies of subjection do not suggest the continuity or discontinuity of the two epochs—slavery and settler colonialism; in most cases, they are entangled as a single epoch; suffice it to say that subjection has highly invested in its time, contextualisation and modes of operation. Since subjection of racialised bodies is dehumanisation, both Douglass and Nkomo faced the vulgarity of their being, making their lives superfluous. It is not uncommon that there is not any resistance to this vulgarity of being which comes through ontological violence that seeks to mask and redeem itself through the discursive practices of justification. Simply, slavery seeks its elaboration through holding, owning, whipping and extracting the racialised body as nothing but property—the body which is vulgarised as being cast out of humanity, dehumanisation being the very logic and the very elaboration of slavery itself. Douglass as a slave is a case in point. Douglass ([1845] 1995: 3) writes: ‘Master, however, was not a humane slaveholder’. In showing the cruelty of subjection, it is important to ask: Is Douglass making exceptions of having better slaveholders who are humane? Even if they were to

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appear as such, is not the idea of being a slaveholder a serious one, one in which there cannot be any chance of being humane? But to answer this, in making reference to Mr Plummer who was a slaveholder, Douglass ([1845] 1995: 3) vivid description goes: ‘He was a cruel man, hardened by a long life of slaveholding. He would at times seem to take pleasure in whipping a slave’. In point of fact, no slaveholder can be human being since being a slaveholder is to be a dehumaniser, and nothing human being can come out of this. Douglass is right that Mr Plummer has an iron heart and his purpose is nothing but being a murderous figure, a sadist in the extreme degree. Douglass ([1845] 1995: 9) condemns such a figure as having ‘no flesh in his obdurate heart’. On the other hand, settler colonialism seeks its elaboration through conquest, dispossession and the displacing of racialised bodies as that which constitutes lack and deficits—a body that is also cast out of humanity and that is nothing but a superfluous entity with no place. Settler colonialism legitimates itself through the juridical apparatus and hyper-legislation where arbitrary laws are made and applied to contain racialised bodies. The law is not there to protect those who are wronged; it benefits the wrongdoers and perpetrators of injustice. Nkomo (1984: 16) writes: ‘I understood almost without being told that they had taken something from us. Later what I discovered that what they had taken was our country’. It is, therefore, imperative not to discount the fact that there are distinctions between Douglass and Nkomo: Douglass, a slave located in the nineteenth century, on American soil, and Nkomo, a colonised subject located in the twentieth century, on African soil. Indeed, there are in them sets of relations that differ in terms of proximity to power in its enactment and the type of subjection they endure. Douglass, under the institution of slavery, is physically close to his master who exercises power over him, the master who owns him. The life and death of Douglass wholly depend on the will of the master. The enactment of power does rest not only in the institution of slavery, but also in proximate bodily relations between the master and a slave in the plantation. The place that a slave inhabits is a hellish place that is reconfigured as the world of the master—that is to say, the existence of a slave is contingent upon the will of the master. It is in this place a slave must produce what the master wants and how the master wants it—excessive and impossible as it may be—everything should, however, be realised because failure (and sometimes even success) will be met with the wrath of the master.

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The corporeality of the racialised body of a slave, being the site of production, is worked to death, whipped, beaten and dehumanised in order to confirm the existence of the master. Nkomo, in contrast, is a colonised subject who is distant from the colonial apparatus in that he does not live in the same place as his oppressor, but instead he lives in constant interface with the oppressor’s representatives—the police and the army who mete out violence. Oppression is legalised in the settler colony (though through illegal means), and the institutional arrangements are such that they must ensure subjection where relations and the status of citizenship are suspended. Therefore, as the citizen outside citizenship, the dispossession that is institutionally re-inscribed and cemented and bars the racialised body from any access to privileges and allows it to wallow in dispossession. Being as it may, the distinction between Douglass and Nkomo is not peculiar as their racialised bodies are dehumanised. Subjection becomes the norm as their modes of being are outside ethical relations because they are ontologically suspended. Subjection as a discursive marker of power and the (re)production of asymmetrical power relations through the paradigm of difference— dehumanisation as the leitmotif—has to be understood in relation to the fault-lines that are created in order to deny humanity. It is subjection that Douglass and Nkomo contended with and in making their ethical demands on the world that put their humanity into question; they militate for the right to exist—to be human. It is, rather, the hardening of dehumanisation that no concessions are given and nothing is forthcoming. For, the horizon of liberation, the terrain that Douglass and Nkomo seek to arrive at, cannot be a given in that they will have to earn the gains of the struggle through their very same efforts. In short, it is impossible to fathom a situation where they will be declaratively elevated to ‘you are now human and liberated’ in the ontological structure that denies them their humanity. If subjection is what Douglass and Nkomo have to contend with, it is therefore imperative to claim that they are in the same ontological struggle, in that they live under subjection, which in their relentless pursuit of freedom they want to end absolutely. The struggle is then not to just merely survive; it is about the will to live. It is upon Douglass and Nkomo that they marshal their modes of critique, to unmask the scandal of subjection and to engage in the new discursive intervention of the humans. Douglass and Nkomo launched a critique of slavery and colonisation respectively in a manner that is neither parochial nor universal, but centres on the human question. In their argument for a better world, it means

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that human relations ought to change fundamentally. This is not sentimental; it is the politicised demand and, at best, is the call that the world as it is, which finds its existence and elaboration through subjection, should be confronted. In short, reality as it is should be fundamentally altered. The confrontation with the world, in both Douglass and Nkomo’s account, does not suggest the anticipation of the apocalyptical; rather, it is a set of relations that have to come into being and the ones which are not brought by those who mete out subjection, but that being the sole project of those who are on the receiving end of subjection. This is imperative in the light of the fact that those who experience subjection know what it is, and they know what kind of life they want outside subjection. Having lived in the melodramatic existential reality which must be fundamentally altered, as they were denied their full status of being human, it is expected for Douglass and Nkomo to ask fundamental questions about the world they find themselves in and the world which they want—that is, the question is not what is but rather, what ought to be. This is the confrontation with the world, its making and unmaking. For this to materialise, it is important to name and explain the human condition by unmasking dehumanisation. Douglass and Nkomo ask existential questions, and the human condition cannot be engaged outside the sphere of these questions. Such attainment with phrasing these questions has to do with particular modes of thinking which, of course, are in stark opposition to the status quo where unethical relations that inform subjection are masked or if they are the modus operandi, they are deemed natural and nothing can be done about that. Therefore, it cannot be expected that subjection is to be reflective and it is important to pose a set of questions against subjection because it is the justification in itself. Dehumanisation is not a problem in that subjection finds its expression in dehumanisation. If dehumanisation is a problem for Douglass and Nkomo because of being racialised, it then becomes expected that the ensemble of fundamental questions they pose would not illicit any form of empathetic relations. For, it is the task of subjection to justify itself—that is, it poses as reality and human nature.

The Cosmic Hobo The concept of the cosmic hobo is denoted by Wilderson (2008) as the figure of no ontological density, the figure of no place in the world. It is not to belong and to be outside the realm of the ontological realm as Wilderson (2008: 404) remarks, the human being ‘ain’t no cosmic

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hobo’ in constant comparison, ‘like you, Negro’. The logic of power and structure of the modern colonial world remind the Negro that their place is the domain of nothingness. This is the main function of subjection, to remind blackness of what it is and what it is not. The figure of the cosmic hobo is not to own anything, let alone owning the self. Dispossession is what haunts the cosmic hobo, and as Wilderson attests, there is everything to lose and nothing to salvage. It is to be scribbled off anything that lays that basis of humanity. The cosmic hobo is the figure of the obsolete, and therefore, the implication is that it has been the figure under siege. It is to be a figure of lesser human value, to have the absence of ontological density. It is not to have the weight of being human. The processes that came into being in the production of the subject are the emergence of hierarchisation and classification of human species, denying them the status of being. The emptying of the category of being is the violent process of abstraction that installed the cosmic hobo. This is as the result of the invention, allowing the process of abstraction to elaborate itself through systematic, systemic and continual violence. The figure of the racialised flesh is the cosmic hobo—the black of blackness—the one plagued by slavery and colonisation as technologies of subjection. Not only is the cosmic hobo institutionally made, but it is the figure that is ontologically unscripted through discursive markers of racism. It is the figure that is structured through separation, difference, distance, exploitation, violence, absence and even death. Where does the cosmic hobo exist (if there is existence) in the racist imaginary of subjection? It is important to note that the racist imaginary is not an elusive phenomenon; it is the transfiguration of the fantasy to the real. This even means that the absurdity of fantasy or its excessively perverse desires become reality when they are projected and enacted on racialised bodies. Everything becomes licentious in so far as racialised bodies are concerned. Consciously or not, the racist imaginary of subjection suggests a number of ways that the hate of those who are racialised is turned out to be a form of pleasure. This is what dehumanises Douglass and Nkomo as they are at the receiving end of the passion of hate. They even detail this passion of hate in their self-writing and, in return, assert their humanity. This assertion does not mean that the category of the human being is a given as it is the very thing that they are seeking, the thing that should be taken back and restored, and the thing to be thought anew and remade. In short, the struggle is to become human being.

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Ontologically, the struggle for liberation is not detached from the local histories; its contestatory horizons inform the human question. Also, the narratives that inform the struggle for liberation cannot be separated from ontology in that everything is about life itself and for-itself. The centrality of life means that life has to be life, and since there are no half measures in the demands of the struggle for liberation, what ought to come into being is not survival but life qua life. Thus, the figure of the cosmic hobo—the figure that is dispossessed of life and made to survive through dehumanisation—is the one who fights for life. In short, to be in the struggle to be free is to struggle for life. The struggle for liberation for the cosmic hobo is fundamentally predicated in the will to live. There is no basis of preserving because it is the enslaved and colonised entity, and to break the shackles of enslavement and colonisation is to reclaim life. Therefore, there cannot be the preservation of what is dispossessed; preservation is subsequent. For the cosmic hobo, the struggle is to make the insatiable demand to live and this is not something that can be given, it has to be taken since it is adjoined to the struggle for liberation. The very process of self-writing means the starting of the politics of antagonisms where the cosmic hobo creates a resurgent narrative. It is the will to live that creates this narrative and self-writing details the existential struggle and formidable commitment to another reality, another world. From this vantage point, it is necessary for Douglass and Nkomo to engage in self-writing to rid themselves of the life of bondage and to create that of liberation. The ultimate purpose of the struggle for liberation launched by the cosmic hobo is to create the enabling condition for the assertive will to live and the reconfiguration of the world through the subjectivity crafted from the stance of the dehumanised. In this struggle, the world is imagined in another way and the viewpoint of the cosmic hobo is a world that is exclusionary, oppressive, exploitative, rapacious, racist and dehumanising. It is a world that exists through the suspension of ethics—a world without others (Ndlovu-Gatsheni forthcoming). It is a world of non-relation to those whom it dehumanises. Even though they are grossly violated and that creates a form of an ontological scandal to be accounted for, everything turns to reigning through impunity. The ontology of that which is put in the domain of nothing, those who exist in the world but without any form of relationality, without any form of visibility and with no possession, the reign of impunity lies at the fantasy of subjection.

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Whatever is fantasised in order to perfect the sadistic relations of dehumanisation, the racialisation of Douglass and Nkomo is the starting point. What is being dehumanised is not degraded from being human to non-human, but rather the non-human is dehumanised. The question therefore is: What does it mean to dehumanise that which is not human being? Clearly, the paradox therefore arises in that it is impossible to fathom the dehumanising of the non-human. The cosmic hobo, the figure of the non-human, cannot be accounted for on the basis that it is a figure that does not embody life. Clearly, death cannot be said to occur in the light of the fact that the non-human has never before been a figure of existence. The self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo from the positionality of the cosmic hobo means writing from the position of death. It is the ethical reason that deals with a difficult set of questions in the age of terror and lamenting a critique that defines the new aporias that inform a new set of ethical questions. It is to generate a new force and new possibilities. It is to engage in the categorical significations that deal with the lived experience. It then means that both assume the category of what JanMohammed (2005) refers to as ‘the death-bound subject’. Douglass and Nkomo are death-bound subjects by virtue of being dehumanised. To be dehumanised is to be rendered justifiably dead. Both Douglass and Nkomo are rooted outside the category of being, history and humanity. Therefore, their self-writing is the way in which they understand the world, the ways in which they locate themselves in relation to the problems they are confronting. The figure of critique emerges through the resistance of subjection in order to forge another reality. It is the confrontation of life and the one that comes into being at the end of subjection. The cosmic hobo then is reconfigured to refer to the call for fundamental change against subjection which is the condition of no possibility—the justification of non-justification—a scandal. It is this justification practice that propagates injustice as justice. As a form of critique, the self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo and the subjectivity of the cosmic hobo show the politico-ontology of justice, the stand against subjection, the writing of humanity into being and the writing that confronts dehumanisation and claims the place of the cosmic hobo in the world. The subjectivity of the cosmic hobo erupts despite the plethora of impossibilities. The self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo is the inscription of the cosmic hobo qua, the death-bound subject where now writing is the struggle in itself. Violence not only defines the existence of the racialised

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body that Douglass and Nkomo carry, it structures the manner in which they confront death. To render their racialised bodies vulnerable to violence is the means through which subjection justifies itself.

Self-Writing and the Politics of Being The self-writing of Douglass came into being as the making of the self, and of course, the politics of being. ‘Means of knowing’, Douglass ([1845] 1995: 1) inscribes, ‘were withheld from me’. In seeking means to know, the very act of transgression by taking back what was withheld, Douglass embarks on self-writing to fracture the strictures that affirm the withholding of knowing. To know is self-writing, the affirmation of one’s place in the world. ‘Instead it is the personal record of a life that has played a part in history, and it is also the work of an active politician who wishes to see things change for the better in the lives of the ordinary people of his country’ (Nkomo 1984: xiii). Both Douglass and Nkomo have valid reasons to engage in self-writing which are tied to their politics of being. Moral currency is often infused in the discourses that call for the end of subjection. This is often declarative in that the self declares immoral that which negates the self and in turn the moral is challenged through a set of moral questions so that the immoral can be negated. The negation of the immoral is the emergence of the self, and that is what calls for the discursive interventions that are liberatory in intent. The militancy against subjection that dehumanised the racialised cannot have weight on moral grounds only, since immorality cannot change on the basis of being named immoral. Whether the stance is moral or not, it is important to register that both stances are justified, and in their modes of operation, they engage in the practice of self-justification. What is unjust is immoral and what then happens when what is unjust justifies itself and claims moral currency? For this to happen, it is important to then make a distinction between the perpetrators of injustice and those who are its victims. For the perpetrators, moral currency is justified on the basis that what they do to their victims is justified. This happens because they do not see them as human being and everything that happens to them cannot be morally challenged. So, it means that there is no moral dilemma for perpetrators in that their acts are just in so far as they are done to those who cannot be accounted for as they are not human being. As such, it is moral for perpetrators to dehumanise, and

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they can also go as far as to deny that what they are doing is dehumanisation on the basis that there are no humans. To deny those they racialise, humanity is the starting point that will make their every act justifiable. What is unjust is justified. The unjust is just because it is just—that is, it is the favourable position of the perpetrators of injustice. Those who suffer as the result of this justified injustice are denied the legitimacy to raise any moral questions in that they are dehumanised and, as such, the non-human cannot make the distinction between what is moral and what is not. They are outside the grammar of justice, and they cannot claim to be at the receiving end of injustice. Even if the victims would condemn injustices meted out against them and unmask them to expose the moral bankruptcy, this would do nothing to shake the foundation of injustice itself. The distillation of the distinction of moral currency and moral bankruptcy is a key to understanding how subjection functions as the act of self-justification. Since moral currency and bankruptcy are both defined by the perpetrators of subjection, it means that there is no way that the victims have a claim. For, they are not on the moral scale according to the terms which are set by the perpetrators—those who are morally bankrupt while they fashion themselves in moral currency. Indeed, this is not a paradox in the sense that Douglass in slavery and Nkomo in colonialism found themselves spitting salvo towards that which cannot be tainted or called into question on the basis of being self-justification. Everything is urgent in the self-writing that is confronting subjection; it is the subjectivity that is restless in that Douglass and Nkomo write with their backs against the wall. The subjectivity of Douglass and Nkomo departs from the socio-historical experience they are writing from; there is no discourse. There is no discourse in that there is no set of discursive and institutional arrangements where there is a free flow of ideas and their robust contestation. They write in the condition of struggle, they struggle as they write and their writing is written in struggle—a risk. To write is to risk and to risk is to write—that is, writing and risking are inseparable. This intimate connection aims to bring to the open the concept of the racialised figure in subjection. This form of writing then becomes a deliberate method of thought that affirms life and launches a combat against death. In this form of writing, which is declarative for what it stands for, it reconfigures itself and recreates another world. The narrative voice and authorial stance which is epistemological and ontological risk the possibility that death that might occur. It is to write and

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yet putting one’s life at risk and to wage combat in order to imagine the politics of liberation. The politics of liberation are what remains at stake in that they are tied to life, which is also at stake, and the fact that not only is the writing of Douglass and Nkomo a confrontation with death, but they themselves are confronted by death. Their self-writing is not a matter of self-indulgence, but the politics of witnessing. There is not much to derive from self-indulgence since this will not an achieve understanding of the human condition that pathologises those who are racialised, the neurotic infrastructure which creates a plethora of knots of conflict which lead to madness. As such, there is no way that there will be time for self-indulgence as what is at stake is not the narcissistic ego, but life itself. It is therefore right for the self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo to be combatant in that it bears the politics of witnessing dehumanisation and discursively carving the language that speaks for the necessity of liberation. Political imagination is about the possibility of becoming that which was never was the invention and reconfiguration of the world in line with the aspirations of those who want better lives. Butler (2015: 30) is on point to write: ‘The imagination is nothing other than the contemplation of the figure or image of a corporeal thing’. What should be imagined is life itself, to imagine the present that will rescue the future from the persistence of the death-world that cements the subjection of the modern colonial world. To imagine is the very thing that propels Douglass and Nkomo to defy constraints that instil fear and the denial of the embodied self to emerge. The lived experience of having to be weighed down by subjection and its ontological erasure does not hamper the political imagination of those who reconfigure the unmaking of the death-world in remaking life-worlds. Political imagination is always at work, and it is the very existential motif that keeps Douglass and Nkomo relentlessly fighting for liberation. Butler’s idea of ‘traumatic inauguration’ which serves as the field of experience which might point to a break, dissonance of the affective and the psychic structures, does not constrain political imagination even if subjection continued to heighten itself. The traumatic imagination, Butler insists, comes through interruption and disorientation of human experience. This has to be seen as something that is ever present to those who are racialised. The desire to see another world, the life-worlds outside the edicts and strictures of the death-world will only manifest through political imagination. Life-worlds embody other forms of lives, and this calls

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to attention the manner that the new concept of the human being is unmaking the world while remaking life-worlds. The world is not just, it has not been just to the racialised, and it has to be, in the remaking of life-words, just in terms determined by those who are racialised. This is political imagination in so far as it calls for a total restructuring of reality and the existential condition of those who are racialised coming to the fore and resurrecting from their conditions of disappearance. In this way, for there to be the unmaking of the world, the effort for this to be done and realised has to come from those whom the world is against and those who are structured to be at the receiving end of injustice. In inscribing political imagination, there has to be a formidable will to live and to emphasis the necessity that there has to be the emergence of new forms of lives. The different ways in which the figure of the political comes to be considered is to make such consideration from the perspective of the racialised—Douglass a slave and Nkomo a colonised subject. Their self-writing is political imagination because it goes beyond the limits, edicts, prohibitions and dead-ends which present themselves as a finale. They create the impression that they are the last-standing and nothing can emerge beyond them. But then, political imagination is the formidable force that creates another terrain of struggle to say that the status quo cannot remain. It is the force which goes against the grain, the criticism that self-writing qua political imagination is wishful thinking, the impossible. Therefore, if the status quo is to remain, the better as there is no way that things can change. Not that change is unnecessary; there should be no change at all as there is nothing to change. The reality is then perceived from those who are not racialised, and because of their dominant position, reality serves them best and it is their own reality. Instead of reality being that of humanity at large, it is made through the corruption of the ontology of the dehumanised through dehumanisation. The deceptive representation of reality orients it to such a point that those who challenge it are marginalised if not vanquished to be on the wayside. The self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo has to do with the question of the human being which is then interrogated from the condition of being racialised. There is no totality of the narrative that accounts for the humanity of the all in the world and without also having to think of the implications of race as the organising principle through which the modern colonial world is constructed. The self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo has been the ontological domain that signifies a void of things

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worldly and existent. Not that they are poised at the domain of negation, but it is the nothingness of being and not in itself but as the creation of the modern colonial world that denies the full humanity of those who are racialised. What dominates the subjectivity of Douglass and Nkomo is the political imagination fuelled by the will to see the rupture of freedom. Douglass ([1845] 1995: 49) self-declared: ‘I must do something… on my part, to secure my liberty’. This is rooted from his being coming into consciousness and refusing to be in bondage. Nkomo wanted to be free at all costs, and this did not mean the freedom of the individual. It is to be free with others and this is much clearer when he says ‘I could not be free while my country and its people were subject to a government in which they had no say’ (Nkomo 1984: xiii). The politics of witnessing is the dramatising force with which the racialised life is dehumanised. To bear witness is to also reconfigure the world. Thus, Douglass and Nkomo take seriously the question of being alive and also not forgetting that death is an inevitable possibility, and the suspension of its fear makes them be committed to the will to live. They want to live in a manner that they do not fear death; the fear of death is the one that eclipses the imagination of freedom. Those who want freedom will fight for it even in the face of death. So, self-writing is declaratively to exist. There is a demand for political commitment for self-writing to take place. The self that is in a combat struggle can be characterised in three ways. First, it is the through self-writing that subject formation becomes clearly pronounced—that is, self-writing is inseparable from subject formation. As both Douglass and Nkomo write, they both demonstrate how they have become shaped overtime and their hardening commitment in their existential struggles. Second, it is through self-writing the constitution of the political sets out conditions for (non)relations where the self writes itself in the throes of the political. Third, self-writing is the writing which calls the world to be unmade in order to be remade again. These three ways that characterise the combat struggle are tied to the question of liberation. There is no discourse because the position of the being at the receiving end of subjection means that both Douglass and Nkomo are not human subjects in the polis. The polis denotes a place, the structure of political life, of belonging. This does not, however, apply to the racialised subject—a cosmic hobo with no place in the world. The polis serves as

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the place of the sovereign, the figure which belongs and the one who is protected by the institutions of the polis. The fact that there is the figure of the sovereign means having a relation with the world by virtue of having a place in the world. It is the figure which gives legitimacy to the power and authority of the polis. Note here that the polis is legitimate in so far as it determines moral currency and its bankruptcy in ways that are arbitrary. The legitimacy of the polis is not contingent upon the ontological plight of Douglass and Nkomo as they are not citizens. To be citizens of the polis, Nkomo and Douglass should fit neatly into its configuration by having access to rights and privileges. Alas, they are in bondage and dispossession. The difference is not the opposite of sameness. However, sameness will mean the non-existence of subjection. The fetishisation of sameness avoids pandering to the racist infrastructure upon which the subjection dwells. There is no sameness or its repetition; if the world remains fundamentally unaltered, then there is no polis. The fetishisation of sameness avoids the question of the racialisation where difference is launched as the standard bearer. Subjection discursively legislates the fetishisation of sameness without admitting that it finds its justification in the paradigm of difference. The paradigm of difference is the constitutive element of the polis which functions through double fetishisation—the banality of sameness and difference; subjection aims to mask the forms of lives and to deny any form of responsibility with regard to the ethical questions that have to do with the figure of the human being. It depends what sameness and difference are, their interchangeability depends on the will of the polis, and this can be defined without contradiction. It is not the responsibility of the polis to live up to its ethos, and they do not apply to Douglass and Nkomo because they are just its surplus, the ones which have no standing before the polis. It is subjection, the governing ethos of the polis, where Douglass and Nkomo are not allowed to make a register of being the same as the humans and also being different. The fetishisation of sameness and that of difference means the domains that the enslaved and colonised subjects are excluded from. Dehumanisation creates the psychic structure of sameness in which if propagated to the racialised, the latter should be inferior, and if they are declared to be different, they are inferior still. This ontological impasse means that in the fetishisation of sameness and difference puts Douglass and Nkomo in the abyss.

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Both Douglass and Nkomo are situated in their local histories which then serve as the impetus through which they understand their lived experience and the manner in which they article their (non)relation to the world. Thus, these local histories are not events, but the very narratives of their lives which are difficult to craft into what they are denied about their being and subjectivity. Both are tied by the spell of subjection, and their local histories in their self-writing cannot be characterised as parochial nor are they universal. They carry in them the fundamental political activity which is the politics of resisting the institutionalisation of the polis as the legitimate sphere. In their authorial practice, both Douglass and Nkomo in no way claim to speak on behalf of the people or to have the stance of universal subjects. They are situated in order to give an account of their ontological condition—their place in the world that defines the testimony that is contained in their authorial practice. The authorisation of the subject means the politics of being—the being of becoming, the place of the subject—that is, embodiment. Thus, it is to claim that stance, the self as the self through writing, the perspective of one’s own in relation to the world. The paradox that emerges, however, is that Douglass and Nkomo have no relation to the world, but their self-writing, which is not just the relation of the self, is the perspective of the world. The displacement of Douglass and Nkomo is much more pronounced, and it is fundamental to think of the self-writing of the cosmic hobo as the writing of that which is denied a place in the world. Is it possible to think about the place of that which has no place? Indeed, in enslavement and colonisation, it is true that there is no place for those who are at the receiving end of subjection. From where the writing of Douglass and Nkomo is done, they have no place in the sense that they are denied belonging in the world. Therefore, self-writing is the crafting of the narrative of that which does not exist. The place that Douglass and Nkomo inhabit is placelessness, the construct of the nonbelonging. It is obvious that the narrative of Douglass and Nkomo is the plight of the oppressed, the plight of those who are written outside the realm of the humans. As such, the shouts and cries that are evident in both of their writings fall on deaf ears. The world has no place for the cries of those whom it bans from belonging. Those who are humans are the full construct of themselves, and their self-writing comes from the transcendental subject—the one who assumes the stance of the usual—the human qua human. There is no need to construct the narrative that is

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declarative, the world has a rapport structure and the plight is never at stake. If there are any ontological violations, there are structural remedies in place so that the world does not become inconsistent. The sensibilities of the human qua transcendental subjects are what make the world a place, one of belonging. The narrative that is yielded as the one thing is a given. To write is to relate the story of the humans, and if it is self-writing, it is the projection of the self to the world that is expected to have a rapport. But still, the concern remains, what about the pain of writing the self in the domain of placelessness? Does that mean placelessness is a privileged space, one of liminality, transcendence, hybridity—of constant mobility that suggests that the self can write itself outside place? In point of fact, self-writing is the reclaiming of a place and it is to militate against placelessness as it is not a privileged site, but the site of systematic erasure of the self. The textualised nature of Douglass and Nkomo critiques placelessness as a myth if it has to be privileged. Their self-writing is born out of necessity; it is to reclaim the politics of being—the domain where self-writing takes place. Douglass is writing from the enslaved Americas. Nkomo is writing from colonial Africa and its postcolony—he is reclaiming the place in the system that displaces him. Both claim their place not in the geographic sense, it is an ontological reclaiming, the demand for the politics of being. If humanity is denied, it is then avoidable that there would be an ontological struggle in the form of the politics of being. The self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo cannot be expected to be confessional or it is a witness account; it is the call for liberation, the experiment with freedom. The narrative that comes from their writing is the reconfiguration of reality and to declare self-writing as nothing but the right to exist. The self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo, which is largely viewed in the domain of the autobiographical, fails to capture the complexity of the individuals who were unmaking and remaking the world. To read both their existential accounts in the limited scope of the autobiographical forecloses the possibility of fracturing the reality that they were in. It is also not to recognise the textual force with which the human question crystalises. In other words, the self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo is concerned not about themselves but the plight of humanity, particular the dehumanised. This self-writing is to be understood as what Mafeje (2000) calls ‘a combative ontology’ which is predicated on the politics of refusal to be complicit in subjection. It is the writing that is rooted

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in the existential condition of subjection and also that works to rid itself of that plague. A combative ontology is the politics of being, the centring of being in pursuit of liberation. Fanon ([1961] 1990) makes the assertion that those who are clutched in subjection engage in a struggle simply because they cannot breathe. This struggle is founded on the fundamental factor that they want to live, and there is no way that they can live while they cannot breathe. The lack or absence of breathing is suffocation which results in the squeezing of the life out of the body of the racialised, to put them to death as they do not deserve to live. In order to breathe, they must struggle to breathe, to live and to be free. According to Agathangelou (2011), there must be a theft of air and a fight for that air. If breathing is the main function of existence and it not a given in the ontologico-existential condition of subjection, breathing is only natural in the body of the humans whose being is not put into question through dehumanisation. It is problematic when the body is denied what embodies it—breathe—the entity of the body whose absence means the liquidation of life. The existence of Douglass and Nkomo is suffocated through subjection—they cannot breathe. Their existence and humanity are denied. Their assertion of being human is backlashed with dehumanisation. Everything that they both stand for—the politics of life mainly in order to create a new concept of being human in life-worlds—is met with the formidable wrath of subjection. The more they want to breathe, the more they are suffocated. It becomes clearer that by taking it upon themselves to say no to subjection and attest to the fact that combat breathing is a matter of necessity. This is mainly because combat breathing what gives life to the dehumanised in order to become humans. It does not mean that when Douglass and Nkomo breathe, then the struggle is over; when they breathe, they must engage in the struggle. Combat breathing cannot be a struggle on its own; it is ontologico-existential armour, the possession that must embody the racialised. So, combative ontology, which comes into being after combat breathing, means that Douglas and Nkomo declared a struggle against subjection, for it and dehumanisation to end. Combative ontology is a resurrection of those who have been dehumanised and getting out of the throes of the death-world and giving birth to life-worlds. The form of writing that is engaged here is positioned at the standpoint that is ontologically violated. Therefore, there is no way that there will be the negotiation with the world to change its standpoint of being the death-world.

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The combative ontology is thus predicated at the confrontational zone with the asymmetrical relations of the world. There is no way a combative ontology is avoided, and this is because of the way politics are framed necessitating the call for life. The self-writing of Nkomo and Douglass entails what Ngũgĩ refers to as ‘the poetic political composition’ which calls for the dehumanised to see themselves clearly. What the self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo calls for is ‘a liberating perspective with which to see ourselves clearly in relationship to ourselves and to other selves in the universe’ (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o 1981: 87). For Ngũgĩ wa Thiongo, the call is for those who are in the clutches of subjection to come to themselves and to see themselves clearly, that is, to understand the predicament that they are in. It is to understand a set of questions that are before them, and how to address those questions. Ngũgĩ (1981: 88) writes: ‘How we see a thing—even with our own eyes—is much depended on where we stand in relationship to it’. There is no way that the self will see itself clearly without understanding how subjection works.

The People It is, in fact, practical to think of the people as the constituent elements of the polis and to emphasise that there is no polis without the people. But what is of interest is that there is a category of people who have been written off from the polity, and they are made to be nothing—they are dehumanised to such an extent that they cannot even fit into the category of the people. The fact that they are dehumanised cannot make them not be people, but it is important to contend with the fact that they are not human beings. Indeed, dehumanisation is not the making of the humans, but the unmaking of the humans. Let it be stated clearly that slavery and colonisation erased Douglass and Nkomo from the polis—they were not part of it, but were rather the exteriori. What is a given is a conception that the concept of the people signifies the political, if not its constitutive parts—that is, people are political agents who have their place in the polis. But this then leaves a contention where people are in the clutches of subjection in the very polis which is assumed to be democratic by virtue of being given legitimacy by the people those who have freedom as their ultimate horizon. What are they to make with the concept of the people? Can the people exist outside the polis? These questions are important in the light of what Laclau puts forth, ‘the construction of a people is the sine qua non

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of democratic functioning’. The people do not exist in a vacuum; they are the constitutive part of the political. Since the construction of the ‘people’ is the political act par excellence—as opposed to pure administration within a stable institutional framework— the sine qua non requirements of the political the constitution of antagonistic frontiers within the social and the appeal to new subjects of social change—which involves, as we know, the production of empty signifiers in order to unify a multiplicity of heterogeneous demands in equivalential chains.

Laclau also laments that for a discourse to be considered political, or to say the least, to be a form of self-writing, there should be the equivalence of the production of the people. The construction of the people by means of self-writing means that the narratives of the subject are constitutive. The narratives of freedom contained in Douglass and Nkomo’s corpus of work clearly mark that it is not themselves as individuals who matter, but the people as a whole. These narratives have the people at the heart in that the ontological condition that is being witnessed and critiqued erases the people in the face of the world. In point of fact, slavery and colonialism do not allow those who are in the clutches of subjection to emerge subjects but as things condemned to non-existence. The existence of a thing, a slave such as Douglass, if there is such thing as existence for a slave, is a domain of nothingness. To be a thing, a commodified subject in the case of the racialised, a property which is owned, means that there cannot be any claim in the realm of rights. To be a thing is not to be the embodiment of the self. Even if the concept of the self can be made to be, dehumanisation makes it not to be. The self does not exist if the self is turned into a thing. In brief, there is no way a thing can carry life. The very signification of a thing means that life is taken away. In other words, to be a thing is to be expelled from life and, therefore, condemned to death. Douglass is a slave and Nkomo is a colonised subject and both are denied existence. They write from the zone of death, not that they are dead, but they take self-writing as a coming to life as they knew that death was a near possibility—they could die at any time. As those who are deprived, Douglass and Nkomo would rupture into the state of being, and since the people are not those who are being, they are yet to become humans. They will be humans if they have a place, for they have no place in the world. The lives of Douglass and Nkomo count for

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nothing in the regime of slavery and settler colonialism, respectively. This is the concept of the people: They were noble souls; they not only possessed loving hearts, but brave ones. We were linked and interlinked with each other. I loved them with a love stronger than any thing [sic] I have experienced since. It is sometimes said that we slaves do not love and confide in each other. (Douglass [1845] 1995: 49)

Douglass continues: They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in a mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like bettering the condition of my race. (Douglass [1845] 1995: 49)

The love for the people is what informs Douglass and Nkomo’s subjectivity. The struggle for liberation is for the people, and the horizon of liberation lies in the solidarity with the people. In affirming this, Nkomo (1984: 60) writes: ‘My own triumph was in the streets, with those thousands and thousands of people from all over the country’. The love for the people is the bond that binds. This is even expressed in the sense of political commitment. For Nkomo (1984: 89) to write: ‘But I, and the people I spoke for, believed that what people demand cannot be suppressed’, is a serious statement of political commitment. The articulation of ontological demands, their expression, constitutes empty signifiers, and the contention is that this is not the case for those who are racialised and who are at the receiving end of subjection. Empty signifiers, for Laclau, are symbolic limits, and emptiness is not so much about identity but the social location. The production of empty signifiers is essential for Laclau, and this is clear in his emphasis that without them there are no people. Emptiness, Laclau argues, does not mean a void, but to point out that potentiality is fully realised. This is because there is no competition and that is wherein emptiness lies. What then appears is democracy which presents the telos of the political and this is fundamental in Laclau’s concept of the people, the people as democratic subjects. Without the people, there is no democracy. The standard definition of democracy, which can be simply put as the government of the people, by

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the people and for the people, does not apply to those who continue to suffer from the legacy of slavery and colonialism. The challenge that arises when Douglass and Nkomo are brought in, particularly in relation to the concept of the people, is their ontological signification not being in the sense of Laclau’s formulation, and then, there are challenges that arise. To note the concept of the people in Laclau’s formulation does not include a slave and a colonised subject. In other words, the people in the context of Douglass and Nkomo are under subjection, and there is no way that they will be democratic subjects. In short, there is no democratic subject in subjection. The democratic subject is the embodiment of rights, those who enjoy those rights by virtue of being protected by those rights. These are not the rights that are codified in order to ward off subjection, but they are rights to life. The democratic subject is the subject of life. So, these rights are not extendable to a slave and a colonised subject, who are not even part of the polis on the basis that they are not people. The present epoch where the racialised subjects find themselves is the past that has been erased. This erasure creates the system that perpetuates injustice—that is, the absence of the past is to make sure that they have nothing to retrieve from in order to relate to the present. It is to ensure in the present they have nothing to hold onto. Even though both Douglass and Nkomo root themselves in the struggle of the people who are facing the plight of subjection, they do not essentialise the history of the people, but they do, in the struggle, authorise the people as the nodal points of the imagination and actualisation of freedom. This then makes the self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo not only testimonial, but also authorisation in that the people are asserted as the agents of their own liberation. It is the textual form that works with what exists and to create a formidable force that actualises the practices of freedom. If the people are to be, they are going to have the subject position of humans. In this way, it is important to consider that Douglass and Nkomo are not complete as the people, they are people in becoming because they are deprived of freedom. They are dehumanised and they cannot have the full stand as part of the people. Laclau makes reference to the position of ‘being against’ which is tied to the politics of Douglass and Nkomo, being against slavery and colonisation, respectively. Being against serves as the necessity because opposition is the fact of life in the ontological condition of subjection. Even if subjection can instil and amplify fear, there will still be those who rebel

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against it. Laclau makes it clear that the people are not just against; they are in opposition to other things which are not in relation to others. Laclau is in favour of the realm of the people, the entity that is inseparable from the political. The people are the constitutive parts of the political, the polis, which then scandalously excludes those whom it does not refer to as people. These three constituent elements, as Wilderson (2008) refers to them, are the badge of entitlement, the very given right that the imperial subject would justify their existence at the expense and detriment of others. Douglass and Nkomo made claims to these three constitutive elements with the commitment of calling the human world into being, the world where people will be people. The pious nature of equality, liberty and fraternity has been nothing but dubious. Those worship at the altar of these constitutive elements—that is, those who uphold equality, fraternity and liberty even if none applies to them—have been the nature of politics. It is as if they are part of their lives, whereas that is not the case. What still remains is the present scandal in the face of the fully constitutive subject—the democratic subject. This is the subject which has the place in the world and is protected by the embodiment of rights. Its relation to the polis is the limitation of excess—that is, the rights protect the democratic subject from the power of the state. The polis is made without a slave and a colonised subject in mind, and this ratifies the fact that the concept of the people is not inclusive. The ways in which political formations come into being extend precisely to subjection as that which includes while excluding, the latter which is always the case for those who are racialised. In point of fact, the concept of the people bares no same meaning between the democratic subjects of the polis and those who are racialised—the exteriori of the polis. If they are forced to be people, they are then the rightless people, those who never qualify to come close to the concept of the people qua the polis. Should it be the case that the people are one and the same thing—if to say, universally, then it is appropriate to change the relations that exist? But there seems to be no gesture that calls for relations in that Douglass and Nkomo are placed in the position of racial exclusion. Conceptual difficulties emerge as the democratic subject is made to mean to refer to everyone, whereas that is not the case. The democratic subject cannot be a slave or a colonised subject.

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The people that Douglass and Nkomo have in mind are different. They are subjects of liberation, those who are to become, the creators of life-worlds. As such, they are dispossessed through dehumanisation and do not have the ontological currency to be the people of value, and their lives being something that matters. They are not human qua human, subjects qua subjects; their humanity is always in question in systematic, systemic and continuous ways, life has meant a hellish existence. There is no way, therefore, that the world that Douglass and Nkomo inhabit can be the polis, and this necessitates that they are structured outside relations. What remains is that Douglass and Nkomo still remain a scandal in the face of the democratic subject, the subject which they cannot identify with since they have no place in the world. Democracy has not ended the death-world, even if it is propagated as the best regime. It is the regime that propagates the pious, while at the same time it is hellish in that it masks the death-world that clutches the racialised into nothingness. The democratic subject is a sentient being and is exempted from the ontological violence of this modern colonial world by virtue of not being racialised. The longing of the people to be free was not the existential struggle that was pursued in the ‘I’—the individual was not part of the grammar, but all who shared the plight of subjection. To be free as an individual was not the struggle that preoccupied Douglass and Nkomo. They were part of the wretched people and their plight was that of the people. They did witness the brutality of subjection not of themselves as individuals, but with others, and this is what is contained in their narrative and critique. The call for the new concept of the world is fundamental in that this is not the world of an individual. By tackling the concept of the democratic subject, Douglass and Nkomo become aware of its limits— the struggle of the democratic subject is that of democracy itself while this is not the case for those who are slaves and colonised subjects. The polis which is at the epicentre of civil life and the democratic subject having civic duties, being protected by the law, serve as a clear marker that the polis is not for a slave and a colonised subject. If there are to be life-worlds, which usher communal and relational life-forms, that have to be made beyond the polis and its modern colonial world. Douglass and Nkomo cannot claim to be democratic subjects, and their aspirations will be erroneous if they gesture towards this subject configuration because it is not who they are or who they will become. The democratic subject exists in a sense of belonging in the

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world—being-in-the-world—where bonds are made and strengthened by democracy. This is the subject which is not bothered by ontologicoexistential questions which have to do largely with being human. The set of relations is embodiment of rights where democratic subjects are protected by law. Strange enough, Douglass and Nkomo have no standing before the law as legitimate subjects in that they are outside the index of the legal. Even though in the polis there is a pious judicial cliché that everyone is equal before the law and no one is above it, those who are extrajudicial subjects have no relation and they are outside the ‘protection’ of the law. The law is essential for Laclau’s democratic subjects in that they bare civil duties and they must maintain those relations for the better good of the polis and public life. In short, there must be the maintaining of law and order. In brief, the democratic subject is protected by law, and in return, this subject must uphold the law. It is important to note that it is through law that slavery and settler colonialism are founded. It is clear from the above that being enslaved and colonised brings a completely different set of questions with regard to the law. What is the law to those who are written outside its configuration? What is the law to those who are criminalised by virtue of their race? What is the law to those who are ontologically violated and whose relation to the world is absolute absence in the sense of the extra-juridical? Can the cosmic hobo use the law to defend their presence and to be guaranteed by law while not having a place in the world? The manner in which the law is attached to the aspirations of the democratic subject suggests the ways in which there are institutions that serve as guarantors of rights and the upholding of the law. The law then becomes the mechanism of relations but which on the contrary to Douglass and Nkomo, is nothing but cosmetic. The law becomes a weight to them and it crushes their existence. The law, in short, is nothing but subjection. For subjection to justify itself, it is backed up by the law which informs the ethos of the institutions and justifying subjection as just and necessary. This is done without any elaboration or ethical accounting. The fact that it is the law defines the means and the ends— it is the law, end of dialogue! To claim justice in the face of injustice is what Douglass and Nkomo are struggling with. The democratic subject participates in the polis with good relations with the law; this is different to Douglass and Nkomo. It is therefore important to distil forms of relations and to be mindful of the ways in which ideas of the democratic subjects cannot apply to Douglass and Nkomo.

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Confronting Death It may thus be acknowledged that the ontological violation of Douglass and Nkomo cannot be understood outside death. The self-writing is structured by death. Their existence is not life to the full extent; for the fact of being thingified, it means that death is inevitable and it is to the extent that they lived knowing that death could claim them at any time. Not that death is inevitable, but their self-writing being the thing that invites the wrath of subjection which then signifies death. Of course, the manner in which the self-writing takes place from Douglass and Nkomo does not suggest they were writing from the tomb. They were in the world, but the world which is structured by the ethos of dehumanisation. It remains indisputable that their lives were predetermined by death, and not that they were writing, by virtue of being racialised, it means that they were susceptible to the whims of death. But then, they did not fear death in that they were committed to bringing another life. Indeed, it would be a fallacy to suggest that the quest for martyrdom preoccupied the self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo. The struggle for the life of freedom, the world to come, is what preoccupied these two thinkers. It is clear that they dealt head-on with the question of death. There is no contradiction between life and death when they are applied to those who are dehumanised. It means that life and death can be arbitrarily superfluous without any form of accounting that will raise ethical questions. Death outweighs life in that it is the end of life itself and to be dehumanised means that life is not in its fullest, it is that which is without. In brief, life is lived in uncertainty because death is lurking in every path, space, terrain and territoriality. Given this context, the ontological burden for Douglass and Nkomo means that their self-writing deals with the world that is not only lethal, but deadly. In short, slavery and colonialism are lethal in that they are regimes that are effective in the production and legitimation of death. The reason for this spectre of death—the death-world—is that the racialised bodies of Douglass and Nkomo should be routed in that they have no place in the world. The life that is lived while being declared dead because it is dehumanised cannot be expected to resist. It is Derrida (1978: 254) who declares: ‘Resistance is possible only if the opposition of forces lasts and is repeated at the beginning. It is the idea of a first time which becomes enigmatic’. Derrida is on point here in that for Douglass to fight with his slave master, Covey, Douglass for the first

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time has to fight and it was for the first time he was starting to chart the terrain for liberation. ‘I resolved to fight; and, suiting my action to the resolution, I seized Covey hard by the throat; and as I did so, I rose’. It was not expected for a slave to fight the master, but it did happen. Not only did Douglass resist, he fought in order to defeat Covey. In short, a slave gave the master a beating. In a vivid description, Douglass ([1845] 1995: 42) gives this account: ‘I watched my change, and gave him a heavy kick under his ribs’. The status of Covey as a slave breaker was dethroned by a slave. To fight, Douglass ([1845] 1995: 44) argues, is to ‘carry off the rebellious spirit of enslaved humanity’. He began to fight Covey at the very beginning—not of his enslavement or the encounter with Covey who has taken many beatings—rather, the very beginning of him coming to consciousness and facing his ultimate enemy, that is, fear. With the ultimate purpose of facing and transcending his fear, Douglass, as Derrida shows, is fundamental in every act of resistance. Nkomo, on the other hand, had to pick up arms through armed guerrilla warfare against the colonial regime of Ian Smith (the then prime minister of Rhodesia now Zimbabwe). This is because, and Nkomo (1984: 61) writes: ‘The beginnings of a united African resistance were in sight’. It means that the fight for liberation cannot be postponed any further. Nkomo (1984: 105) boldly states, ‘the time for peaceful protest was over, and we must get ready to fight’. To begin is the very act of life— pushing all ontological and psychic frontiers to the transcendental level, the radical suspension of slave consciousness. To ward off any form of fear and impotence, there has to be a radical shift of consciousness. The most appalling barbarity was justified through pious acts—the deception at best—masking the injustices that the racialised subject suffers. The inducing of fear and the strike of terror is what befell slaves, and in no way were they allowed to think about the possibility of freedom. Disciplinarity, which serves as the actualisation of authority, the master justifying his existence by inducing fear and striking terror, to crack a whip that eats the flesh of a slave, is the justification of life in the deathworld. For this world to exist there must be those who enjoy privilege and those who suffer. This is the justification of appalling barbarity which sees itself as legitimate and even those who are enslaved should see that the precarity is justified. Subjection is arbitrary in slavery that being its rationale. This plays into what Douglass ([1845] 1995: 10) articulates: ‘They never knew when they were safe from punishment. They were frequently whipped

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when least deserving, and escape whipping when most deserving it’. But this does not suggest that even if they escaped whipping they were not whipped since their existence was already whipped. They could be whipped at anytime, anywhere and anyhow. It is in slavery that a slave is always wrong. The word of a slave cannot stand with that of the master. My master was one of this rare sort. I don’t know of one single noble act performed by him. The leading trait in his character was meanness; and if there were any other element in his nature, it was made to subject this. He was mean; and, like most other mean men, he lacked the ability to conceal his meanness. (Douglass [1845] 1995: 31)

There is no way the master can be contrary to what Douglass is hinting at. The master has to be mean because he is mean. This attitude of the master is brought about by the fact of owning slaves and seeing slaves as nothing but things to be possessed and disposed of. Slaves, on the other hand, are made to live in bad faith, and they must express being content with their living condition, even if this is not the truth. Telling the truth is deadly in that slaves cannot put their masters to the test of truth. The truth is the sole domain of the master; only the master can tell the truth for he determines what is truth. Even if the master lies, that should be regarded as truth by a slave. For, a slave can be in a deadly situation for accusing the master of having lied. ‘This is the penalty of telling the truth, of telling the simple truth, in answer to a series of simple questions’ (Douglass [1845] 1995: 11). By standing up for the truth, and refusing the sheepish attitude induced by fear, Douglass and Nkomo saw the truth as nothing but to fight. If Douglass fought Covey as a slave and Nkomo fought Smith as a colonised subject, it is important to ask: what does it mean to fight? What is being fought for and why is it worthy of the cause? To fight, Douglass ([1845] 1995: 1) contends, is the ‘evidence of a restless spirit’. This is true with Nkomo who amplifies thus: ‘It made us more than ever determined never to compromise with our enemy’ (Nkomo 1984: 145). No change will occur if there is no beginning. The first step is essential to undertake the politics that underpin Douglass and Nkomo. They were born in struggle, and they began, for the first time, to confront death by their modes of resisting subjection. They began to articulate their lived experience and then actualise their consciousness into deeds— to fight. Indeed, for the first time and to begin, Douglass and Nkomo

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confronted death. In order to begin and for the first time, something must happen to a slave and a colonised subject. As a slave, Douglass amid being enslaved he also rejected the meek consciousness of a slave. The same applies for Nkomo, a colonised subject. To admit is to know what one is—to understand oneself as being dehumanised—and to reject is to think beyond that ontological position of being enslaved or colonised. What remains fundamental is to mark one fundamental principle—all the structures that mete out, abate and facilitate dehumanisation must come to an end. A slave cannot claim to be free as a fully constituted human subject, while the infrastructure of slavery still remains intact. The same applies to a colonised subject. The domain of consciousness is necessary to undergo a radical shift, and this happens through the rebellious effort of a slave and a colonised subject. Both Douglass and Nkomo fight and for the first time, going beyond themselves and becoming committed to fight for liberation at whatever cost. ‘But it was not to be. We were forced to fight’ (Nkomo 1984: 98). It is the duty of Douglass and Nkomo to propel their existential motif to the higher level of consciousness and not the transcendental one but the antagonistic one. The transcendental form of consciousness means that a slave and a colonised subject can evade responsibility and choose to be complicit in their own subjection. In this form of consciousness, which to Sartre (1956) means bad faith, the transcendental consciousness claims to have nothing to do with subjection but getting over it. This means doing nothing about it and letting it to be as it is. But it is clear that subjection is, to a slave and a colonised subject, something that should be of concern. Thus, something must be done about it. For, it is the very thing that dehumanises, it denies existence and animates the politics of death in the world—the death-world. In this case, Douglass and Nkomo act against bad faith by adopting the antagonistic form of consciousness in that they take responsibility, risk their lives and commit themselves to the cause of liberation. Gordon (1998: 210) writes: ‘The onus of human existence is thus born by the human being’. The duty to actualise antagonistic consciousness, which is the self coming to itself, by means of opposition to alienation of the self from itself, is a necessity. A slave and a colonised subject are not free, and their lives have been plagued by subjection; at worse, both Douglass and Nkomo were not born free. In order for them to be free, does not mean returning to the life that their forebears, who were not enslaved and colonised, lived.

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They have never been free, and yet, they are informed by the desire to be free on their own terms. To fight and to confront death is the foreclosure of any pacifist standing, its obliteration. To fight as a slave and colonised subject is, according to Gordon (1998: 215), ‘being able to do what was both denied and forbidden’. It is to be beyond ontological strictures—to be in direct confrontation with the will and might of subjection—to confront death. Subjection denies and forbids confrontation because it crushes resistance, opposition and rebellion with death, by threat or actualisation. To begin and for the first time á la Derrida is the installation of the politics of possibility. Thus, facing oneself through the self coming to itself—ridding oneself of any fear of death (perceived or real)—that is, to be in a sense of being in the life-world. This is appropriate in the condition that dehumanises, and for there to be liberation one has to fight in order to be liberated. Liberation, its call, is the unmaking of the death-world and the remaking of life-worlds. Both Douglass and Nkomo took the project of demanding the world to be fundamentally changed, seriously. To understand their political project is to imagine where thinking of the future world is made out of reclaiming the life-worlds that are supposed to be resurrected from death-worlds infused in subjection. This clearly shows how this political imagination is predicated on the restructuring possibilities that will be the launching of the humans in the world, charting the terrains that do not fear death. It is to work through death—as the possibility or actuality—by confronting the world that sanctions death to those who are perceived as a threat to the symbolic order. It is clearly formidable in the thought of Douglass and Nkomo that they were still determined to reconfigure the world, despite the possibility or actuality of death. They have a different concept of the world, the life-world in which they must exist and not the death-world which renders them dead while they are still alive. The articulation of the world from the perspective of a slave and a colonised subject is a different concept altogether; the imagination of life-worlds is not the one that means that these worlds must exist side by side with the dehumanising world—the death-world. The antagonistic consciousness of Douglass and Nkomo is to fight the death-world, to fight it to come to an end. To be precise, it is not the end of slavery and colonialism; it is subjection which is the nervous system of the deathworld. The articulation of life-worlds exists while the struggle continues,

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Douglass fighting Covey and Nkomo fighting Smith. Both express a new political project which is informed by their subjectivity.

Conclusion The ties that bind Douglass and Nkomo can also bring them into dialogue which is something immanent in their critique of subjection. By way of authorial practice which takes the form of self-writing, they critique subjection in different spaces, times, struggles and existential locations. It is clearly evident both had (re)excavated the human question. This question is still the spectre that haunts the present in the forms of subjection that they critiqued—slavery and colonialism—which are still in existence in the form of their lived aftermath. This is taking place in the manifold of masks and still remains evident in the position of the racialised body below the human line, the line which determines which bodies can be enslaved and colonised. The spectre that haunts the present is the continuity of subjection, and this cannot be divorced from the unfolding of the pathologisation marked by the human line and its attended paradigm of difference. The dehumanisation that Douglass and Nkomo witnessed in their lifetime is the one which they subjected to critique and it is the very thing that still exists. How, for example, is there still the question of subjection in the world that is declared to be free and which espouses a human rights’ culture, and yet, there are still disposable lives. This is the world that does not fear contradicting itself in that it cannot account itself to those who are dehumanised. Their plight counts for nothing, and as such, they cannot make claims to call the human rights culture which is not of their own making and not something they should be concerned about. The pious Trinitarian entitlement of equality, liberty and fraternity cannot be extended to Douglass and Nkomo as they fall outside the ontological structure of the humans. It is no accident that injustices continue to reign in the contemporary era in the sense that what Douglass and Nkomo critiqued did not unravel, but rather mutated—the yielding of the masked face and not the human face. Thus, the implication is still that subjection cannot redeem itself since it is the bedrock upon which the modern colonial world is based. It is the world which exists outside relationality in that subjection is the elevation of one humanity at the expense of another—that is, the systematic and systemic dehumanisation of the latter. The dehumanised

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humanity finds itself in the throes if existence that institutionalise, naturalise and normalise subjection. The self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo did not, by choice, take place outside the discourse. There was no discourse since they were stifled, censured and silenced. For the fact of being the cosmic hobo, they were outside the grammar of being. They were writing precariousness, while they were living it, a life plagued by horror, which, in many ways, cannot be comprehended even on the textual level where their selfwriting took place. Their calls fell on deaf ears since their existence was walled against—shuttered completely. The plight of a slave cannot be heard amongst the chattel slavery apparatus and the settler colonial system. The discourse of agency and structure counts for nothing and thus collapses. The more the enslaved and the colonised cry out loudly for their plight, the more they become inaudible. What then to assume if the self-writing of Douglass and Nkomo was not intended to be heard by their oppressors? It might well be asserted that their self-writing in raising ethical questions was to facilitate the dialogue with the people, those whom they share the same aspirations with and who struggle for liberation. Their self-writing is for those who suffer from subjection and who demand the unmaking of the death-world and making of the life-worlds.

References Agathangelou, A. M. (2011). Bodies to the slaughter: Global racial reconstructions, Fanon’s combat breath and wrestling for life. Somatechnics, 1(1), 209– 248. Butler, J. (2015). Senses of the subject. New York: Fordham University Press. Derrida, J. (1978). Writing and difference (Alan Bass, Trans.). London: Routledge. Douglass, F. ([1845]. 1995). Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass. New York: Dover Publications. Fanon, Frantz. ([1961]. 1990). The wretched of the Earth (C. Farrington, Trans.). London: Penguin. Gordon, L. R. (1998). Douglass as an existentialist. In B. E. Lawson & F. K. Kirkland (Eds.), Frederick Douglass: A critical reader (pp. 207–226). Malden: Blackwell. JanMohammed, A. (2005). The death-bound-subject: Richard Wright’s archaeology of death. Durham: Duke University Press.

372  T. Sithole Mafeje, A. (2000). Africanity: A combative ontology. CODESRIA Bulletin, 1 and 4, 67–71. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Sartre, J-P. (1956). Being and nothingness: An essay on phenomenological ontology (Translated and with a new introduction by Hazel E. Barnes). London: Methuen. Wilderson, F. B. III. (2008). Incognegro: A memoir of exile and apartheid. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.

CHAPTER 16

Father Zimbabwe: Media, Memory and Joshua Nkomo Sylvester Dombo

Introduction During his lifetime, he had a reputation of being a nationalist leader, a dissident and later the vice president of Zimbabwe. In death, he was to become more controversial as he was given the lofty title of ‘Father Zimbabwe’. Further attempts to commemorate his life through a statue created by North Koreans generated more debate as there were those who thought that Mugabe was celebrating his defeat of Nkomo, whilst others thought it was a genuine way to remember a liberation icon. Such controversies were generated by and found expression through the press. This chapter looks at the struggle over the memory of Joshua Nkomo in Zimbabwe’s history through the lens of the press, both private and state media. It argues that whilst the state media sought to overlook the controversies surrounding the relationship between Nkomo and the ZANU PF government, the private media effectively promoted debate on and about his life pointing to his treatment at independence as demeaning. The private press thus questioned the choice of the selection of makers

S. Dombo (*)  Great Zimbabwe University, Masvingo, Zimbabwe © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_16

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of his statue, the place to erect his statue and what it meant to the state vis-`a-vis what it meant to the veteran nationalists’ supporters. The story of one of Zimbabwe’s iconic liberation war heroes borders on being a soap opera: for it have many twists and turns; he was the most popular nationalists during the struggle so much so that he could have been the first president of the country had the British left sooner than 1980. At independence, he would lose the elections to ZANU PF but was humble enough to join a unity government as a minister. Before the independence euphoria was over, he was to be haunted by the same people he probably nurtured politically and was seen as a ‘snake in the house’ whose head had to be crushed. Fast forward to 1 July 1999, Joshua Nkomo’s life had turned a full circle: those who once saw him as a bandit, a sell-out and a dissident now gave him the towering title: Father Zimbabwe. It was none other than his erstwhile enemy who proclaimed him as a founder of the nation of Zimbabwe. How did such transformation come to be? Or why did it come so late in his career (after his death)? Was it just a smokescreen or it was a genuine realisation and appreciation of his contribution to the nation of Zimbabwe or was it the usual ‘wafa wanaka’ rhetoric that is so common at Zimbabwean funerals? What controversies did this honouring generate? Can such an honour be labelled a ‘patriotic statue’? This chapter interrogates the above questions and sees how they can better inform us on the dramatic but painful change of fortunes that the Nkomo name has gone through, both in life and in death. It uses the press as a lens through which we may understand how Joshua Nkomo is being remembered and simultaneously honoured after his death. I generally divide the press into two: that which is pro-government (state owned) and the private press which is deemed anti-government. The main aim is to see how issues were presented about Joshua Nkomo and his memorialisation, especially around the controversial statues in Bulawayo and Harare. This chapter specifically deals with the nature of the newspaper reporting, their selection of headlines and their attribution of agency towards certain actors (Williams 2004: 5). This study is located within the discourses of contested pasts and contested memories. As such, I draw largely from the work of Richard Werbner on how different groups in Zimbabwe memorialised their past. Werbner discusses the memorialisation of the elite soldiers at the Heroes Acre, and contrary to this, there was what he termed counter-memorialisation by the ordinary people. His major argument is that personal and

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collective memory has become increasingly contested and problematic in post-colonial nation building (Werbner 1998). It is contested because the elites have their own version of the past they would want to force down the throats of the people ostensibly to aid in the building of a nation. This leads to what Werbner terms as anti-memory, whereby the past is imagined as buried and forgotten. Besides anti-memory, Werbner also discusses immediate memory which he defines as memory that is readily accessible, held to be unforgettable, always to be remembered and kept very much alive (Werbner 1998). The concept of contested pasts enables engagement with critical questions over what the past means in the present, be it the pre-colonial, colonial, nationalist or postcolonial past. In the context of Zimbabwe, Werbner argues that postcolonial state-building and nation-building processes were predicated on memories of African resistance and the national liberation struggle. He elaborates: In Zimbabwe a lot of effort has been spent on turning the memory of ‘political violence into prestige and legitimacy for itself and tribute for others. Since 1980, Zimbabwe has been agonizing under a nationalist regime whose political essence was founded on the history and memory of the national liberation struggle. This regime has been holding the nation hostage to skewed and highly partisan and sanitized version of history and memory of national liberation struggle, presenting it in romantic and heroic terms pruned of internal and external contestations. (Werbner 1998: 45)

Drawing from these works, this chapter is an attempt to investigate how the memory of the liberation struggle icon is being appropriated supposedly for nation building whilst putting ZANU PF and its members as the fathers of this history at the expense of other players. This chapter also draws from the work by Terrence Ranger, JoAnn McGregor and Jocelyn Alexander’s impressive work on Violence and Memory in Matabeleland which argues that the proclamation and enactment of official memory of the liberation war have sought to silence all alternative memories. In this work, the authors argue that in Matabeleland, it remains difficult and dangerous for people to seek to erect monuments to those slain in the 1970s and those who died at the hands of the state in the 1980s (Alexander et al. 2000). Ivan Murambiwa, the Director of the National Archives of Zimbabwe, aptly summarises the state of the Zimbabwean memories on the conflict

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by arguing that Zimbabwe is divided into fragmented and fluid sections of victors and losers, victims and victimisers (Murambiwa 2008). Murambiwa notes that due to the diversity of its shared memory, some sections actively seek to protect their desired memories through collecting documents, objects and stories that buttress their viewpoints whilst at the same time seeking to erase unwanted memories of losses, atrocities and repression (Murambiwa 2008). This chapter also draws from Wendy Willems’ analysis of the politics of coverage of the land reform in Zimbabwe by the press. She analyses how meanings of land were contested in two daily newspapers, the privately owned The Daily News and the state-funded The Herald, in the period from February 2000 leading up to the parliamentary elections in June 2000 (Willems 2004: 5). In this chapter, I also attempt to draw from the press how the issue of honouring Nkomo was covered by the various newspapers in the country. What kind of stance did the newspapers take and with what implications for their readership? I dwell specifically on the issue of the statues that were to be erected to honour Joshua Nkomo in Harare and Bulawayo. I ask what kind of controversies did they generate and how did these controversies have a bearing on the lofty title of ‘Father Zimbabwe’ that is associated with Joshua Nkomo today?

Statues and Politics of Memorialisation Statues are a form of memorialisation. Usually, they are erected by those in power to remember certain events or important individuals. They are not just statues, but versions of the past depicted to the present by those usually in power. Statues the world over have generated at the centre of controversy. In 2003 after the invasion of Iraq by American forces, images were broadcasted the world over showing the fall of the statue of the then President Saddam Hussein. The most recent controversy on and about a statue took place in Cape Town, South Africa, where the statue of Cecil John Rhodes was removed from the University of Cape Town. The removal was masterminded by the Rhodes must fall movement. The statue was seen as a symbol of colonialism in an independent South Africa. The controversy over statues boils down to symbolism, what people in the present think and interpret from a given structure. The memorialisation of Rhodes has also generated controversy also in Zimbabwe from the colonial period right up to independent Zimbabwe. As Paul

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Maylam shows, Rhodes’ grave at the Matopos in Matabeleland was a site of contradiction and controversy. A campaign for its removal built up in the late 1990s, led by a self-styled ‘war veteran’ Lawrence ‘Warlord’ Chakaredza. Chakaredza went on a tour of the UK telling people that ‘Rhodes’s remains will be fed to the crocodiles of the Zambezi River if somebody does not collect them’. What emerge from the story of Rhodes’ grave and statue is that they tell a story and represent something. Rhodes was a symbol of colonialism. What story did the Joshua Nkomo statue tell us in the present? Or whose story did that statue tell? Whose voices were loud and whose voices were silent in the statues? Can a statue really tell the same story acceptable to all and sundry? This chapter attempts to unpack these issues.

Nkomo and Mugabe Government: Uncomfortable Bedfellows? A closer look at the changing relations between Nkomo and his erstwhile ZANU PF friends provides us with an opportunity to understand what it means to remember him and how to remember him today. Even more, it may imply even asking the dangerous question of a conversation on how the statues and that history are presented to the public. Mugabe and Nkomo had a long history that dates back from the days of the National Democratic Party (NDP) when Nkomo was the President and Mugabe was the Publicity Secretary. But before that, Nkomo was already a prominent personality in the country. For example, besides his exploits in Rhodesian Railways, Nkomo was the first African to be appointed on a government commission in 1956. So in terms of experience in politics as well as being recognised even by the authorities then, Joshua Nkomo was always a senior to Mugabe. The splits within the liberation movements in a way pulled Mugabe and Nkomo apart. According to Chung (88), ZANU, having rebelled against Nkomo in 1963, still saw him as a totally unsuitable leader for the liberation struggle. That split was followed by violence in the Highfield location in Harare between supporters of ZANU and ZAPU, further dividing the rulers. In the end, the struggle for Zimbabwe was masterminded by two parties, ZANU and ZAPU; in fact, one could say the two parties were competing for political space in Zimbabwe. Mugabe and Nkomo

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became competitors. Although they later worked together as the Patriotic Front, they contested the 1980 election as separate bodies, which was won by ZANU. According to Nyarota (2006: 126), there was no love lost between Nkomo and Mugabe although Mugabe included ZAPU in the government of national unity since it had won 17 parliamentary seats in Matabeleland. Whilst Mugabe became the prime minister, Nkomo only became the Minister of Home Affairs, a complete reversal of roles from what transpired during the colonial period. Nkomo accepted the Home Affairs position because Mugabe had mockingly offered him the post of ceremonial president. This shows that Mugabe no longer respected Nkomo even though they were working together as one government. Further testimony to the uneasy relations between Nkomo and Mugabe can be seen in 1982 when Nkomo was accused of plotting to unseat the government. Resultantly, the Mugabe government expelled all ZAPU members from government and unleashed the notorious Five Brigade in Matabeleland where close to 20,000 civilians were killed (CCJP). There were several attempts on Nkomo’s life. Mugabe had no kind words for his erstwhile friend when he said ZAPU and its leader, Dr. Joshua Nkomo, were like a cobra in a house that had to be destroyed. Nkomo was also known as the ‘Father of Dissidents’. As a man of peace, Nkomo could not stand to see his supporters being butchered by the government. In December 1987, PF ZAPU and ZANU PF merged to form ZANU PF. According to Nyarota (2006: 127), ‘with Gukurahundi’s wounds still raw; Nkomo’s Ndebele supporters accused him of selling out, but he nevertheless accepted the sinecure of vicepresidency’. This shows that Nkomo had the interests of peace at the forefront. When Joshua Nkomo died on 1 July 1999, he had metamorphosed from nationalist-cum-dissident-Father Zimbabwe. As an honour for his contribution to the independence of Zimbabwe, his remains were interred at the National Heroes Acre in Harare. Besides interring him at the national shrine, there were other attempts to honour and remember this liberation icon. One such way of honouring him was through statues that were meant to be erected in Bulawayo and Harare.

‘Just a Statue?’ Honouring Nkomo? The story of Nkomo’s honour by the government borders on tragedy and comedy. From the onset, two statues were supposed to be erected in Bulawayo and Harare to honour the liberation icon. However, to this date, only the statue in Bulawayo but not before it had generated

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controversies of its own. In this section, I attempt to capture the various perceptions of different groups of people in Zimbabwe. How did these perceptions found expression in the press? The drama surrounding Dr. Nkomo’s statue in Bulawayo started when questions were raised on the makers of the statue as well as the size of that statue. This resulted in the statue being removed on 16 September 2010, just a few days after it had been erected. It did not last a few weeks from its ‘unveiling’ by the Minister of Home Affairs Kembo Mohadi faced a barrage of criticism from Nkomo’s family as well as his supporters. As if it was something illegal, the Bulawayo statue was erected in the middle of the night and was covered by a black cloth which the Nkomo family alleged to be symbolic of mourning. Mohadi tried to defend the black by saying that there was nothing mystic about the black covering and besides ‘the statue was mere stone and not the real remains of the late nationalist’. The Independent of 30 September 2010 reported that the first statue generated ‘a political storm’ as top leaders in ZANU PF accused Mohadi of procuring the statues from North Korea without consulting the Nkomo family or the presidium. The other issue surrounding the statue was that it did not capture the exact attributes of the late vice president. These issues were succinctly captured by Edward Ginqusaba Nkomo, brother to the late VP when he said: I will speak on this issue because as the traditional head of the family I have not been consulted by anyone including those who have been making statements in the media and eve government itself has not consulted me at any time. The picture that has been used is one of the worst pictures of my late brother and appropriate consultations with the appropriate members of the family would have resulted in the identification of a more suitable picture. (The Chronicle 19 September 2010)

The Movement for Democratic Change also waded into the controversy when it accused the government of abusing Nkomo’s legacy ostensibly for its own benefit. Such views found expression in the private media. For example, The Zimbabwean online newspaper carried and magnified the voices of the MDC members who believed that ZANU PF was only honouring Nkomo so that they would be projected in good light by the people of Matabeleland. One such MDC official was quoted as having said:

380  S. Dombo They want their party ZANU (PF) to be identified alongside patriotic individuals like Joshua Nkomo. They want to fight the MDC using Nkomo’s name. They want to say that ZANU and ZAPU fought the British during the liberation struggle. In that way they want to dismiss the MDC as British political pawns, while using Father Zimbabwe’s name as their political fertilizer. But any Zimbabwean worth his/her salt should ask of ZANUs geriatrics; which Zimbabwean leader was given red carpet treatment in western capitals during Gukurahundi? (The Zimbabwean, 24.9.10)

The Zimbabwean further sought views from another MDC activist, Sam Chigome, who disparagingly attacked ZANU PF for seeking to abuse the memory of Nkomo for the impending 2013 elections: The statue had been timed to boost ZANU (PF)’s electoral fortunes. By erecting a statue of Joshua Nkomo, which is not bad at all, ZANU (PF) want to help ZAPU garner more votes in Matabeleland. That way, ZANU (PF) can disturb Tsvangirai’s vote and stop him from garnering more than the 50% vote required. Nkomo’s statue was going to be used as canon fodder. (The Zimbabwean 24.9.10)

Whilst the private media focused on the possible link between the statue and ZANU PF’s political fortunes, the state media dwelt primarily on the squabbles the government had with the Nkomo family. Whilst the private press interviewed politicians, the state media interviewed residents and most of these had negative sentiments towards the Nkomo family for being too demanding to be in control of the whole statue project. Suggesting that the statue is not removed, the Nkomo family was further accused of being arrogant. The Chronicle summarised its views on the debate thus: The erection of the late Dr. Nkomo’s statue has since inception been characterised by tension between the Nkomo family and the Government, with the former demanding absolute command on the project. (Chronicle 19 September 2010)

The Nkomo project comes across as a war of words between the Nkomo family and the authorities. It further raised questions on the ownership of not only of the statue but also of Joshua Nkomo. Whilst resisting answering questions over the makers of the statue, Mohadi pointed

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out that ‘it was just a statue. It is Zimbabwean, it is a statue of a Zimbabwean and it was a Zimbabwean concept. I am not at liberty to reveal to you where exactly it was carved. This statue is a national project and does not belong to the Bulawayo City Council, to the Nkomo family nor to the residents. These are just its custodians since it is erected in the city of Bulawayo. It has taken government a long time to complete this project, hence it belongs to everyone’. Mohadi was also quoted at length in the Newsday of 15 September 2010 registering his frustrations over the rejection of the first statue. I am going to dismount it. We will decide which museum to take the statue to. We should have done this three weeks ago. With me, this is the end of the project or it is suspended indefinitely. I thought this was a national project but if they (the Nkomo family) say they don’t want it, who am I to say no? The Vice-President called me at his offices and we discussed it and that is where it was agreed that the statue be dismounted. This was a national project and not a Nkomo family project. This is not the unveiling. I am removing it.

Just like the way it was erected, the statue was dismounted in the middle of the night adding further to the mystery surrounding the first attempts to erect a statue in honour of Nkomo in Bulawayo. As will be shown later, the government would come back to the Bulawayo statue in December 2013 when it was finally unveiled by President Mugabe.

Karigamombe Debacle Is it just enough to honour someone with taking into consideration where that honour is bestowed at? How significant is the place where one is recognised for his heroics? In addition, does it matter who has been contracted to deliver the honour? The story of Joshua Nkomo’s second statue that was supposed to be erected in Harare gives us a glimpse into the issues raised. That second statue was supposed to be erected at Karigamombe Centre in the heart of Harare. Together with the one in Bulawayo, it was also designed by the North Koreans. The North Koreans were contracted to create the ‘tomb of the unknown soldier’ at the National Heroes Acre. In addition, they had in 1981 sent 106 trainers to the country to train a brigade that would, according to Mugabe, ‘deal with dissidents and

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any other trouble-causers in the country’ (Nyarota 2006: 134). The Five Brigade was known as Gukurahundi, and it was swiftly deployed to the two Matabeleland provinces and the Midlands to deal with dissidents. However, they ended up committing atrocities against civilians where close to or more than 20,000 were killed (CCJP 1997). That episode in the history of the independent Zimbabwe still harbours ill feelings mostly by the Ndebele towards the government. To make matters worse, the government has refused to apologise for these atrocities. Thus, the memory of the Gukurahundi episode is still fresh in the minds of the people who also blame the North Koreans for the disaster. Contracting the North Koreans to design Joshua Nkomo’s statue therefore seemed either provocative or inconsiderate on the part of the government to the feelings of the people of Matabeleland. It actually seemed like a thinly veiled mockery of Joshua Nkomo. This was further complicated by the attempt to have the Harare statue at Karigamombe Centre in Harare. The Zimbabwean newspaper accused the ZANU PF government of ‘trashing the legacy of Joshua Nkomo’ by insisting on erecting the statue at Karigamombe centre. To some, it symbolised ZANU PF’s victory over ZAPU. Pathisa Nyathi had this to say concerning the choice of Karigamombe: The problem comes with the name of the building. In some people’s minds and in the context of ZANU and PF-ZAPU, Karigamombe building symbolises supremacy over Dr. Nkomo. It is surprising that someone would want to put the statue next to a building associated with the downfall of Nkomo.

Nyathi’s sentiments were echoed by Joshua Malinga, a ZANU PF politburo member who felt that Nkomo’s family ultimately had the right to reject Karigamombe as the place for erecting the Harare statue. He further stated that: The history of Karigamombe is still fresh in the minds of many people, so it is not appropriate for the statue to be placed there. If the family has a right to decide where he should be buried then they should have a right to say where his statue should be.

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The government was saved from further embarrassment by a private company that sought and was granted a court order stopping the erection of the statue at Karigamombe Centre claiming that it was private property. But does the Karigamombe episode tell us about the legacy and memory of Joshua Nkomo? As shown earlier, the private press effectively linked the histories of PF ZAPU and ZANU as well as the names and political symbols to effectively expose the machinations of ZANU PF in honouring Nkomo. Karigamombe means one who fells the bull, and in this case, the bull represented Nkomo and ZAPU with Mugabe being victorious. This therefore begs the question that if the symbolism is correct, how appropriate is this way to honour someone referred to as Father Zimbabwe? Or how accurate is the Zimbabwean’s conclusion that ‘the choice of Karigamombe smacked of ZANU PF’s triumphalism over the Nkomo’s party whose symbol was a bull’? It would seem even to those disinterested that the politics of honouring Nkomo with a statue at Karigamombe was a thinly veiled mockery of the one intended for the honour. President Mugabe’s grandfather was called Karigamombe. It is also claimed that the building, formerly the Piccadilly centre, was used to run operations during the Matabeleland massacres, or ‘Gukurahundi’, in the 1980s, when Mugabe’s men attacked Nkomo’s ZAPU supporters. In this vein, the Zimbabwean of 29 July 2010 quoting one Zenzo Ncube of ZAPU Europe stated that: It is a charade to erect Nkomo’s statue on a site that planned the murder of his supporters and one that is named to his shamming. It is clear that those who persecuted and humiliated our late national leader during his life time still have burning desires to continue humiliating him, his family and all those who support him and what he stood for, even after his death.

What is more interesting is the fact that the state media did not question the choice of Karigamombe as the location of the statue. They simply capitalised on the court order by the owners of Karigamombe Centre who approached the courts to stop the construction of the statue there. The state media never addressed the problems inherently associated with the choice of Karigamombe. As a result, the statue meant for Harare has not yet been mounted and it is not clear when it will be or if it will be.

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Unveiling the Bulawayo Statue Following the debacle associated with the first Bulawayo state that was dismounted and the Harare one that never was, attention was turned back to the Bulawayo statue for the second homecoming. Although it took a long time after the first episode had ended in shame, the Nkomo statue was finally mounted and unveiled in 2013 by President Robert Mugabe. This time, it was more than just a statue as there was the renaming of Bulawayo’s main street into Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Street and the official opening of the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport. This was characterised by less controversy compared to the earlier attempts to honour Nkomo. Except that it required a whooping $600,000 to complete, the statue and other honours were well received, befitting the contribution that Nkomo had made both to the liberation struggle and to the development of independent Zimbabwe. In this section, I look at the responses to the honour bestowed on Nkomo as depicted in both the press and individuals and organisations. A glimpse of what the statue meant can be seen from the statements uttered at its unveiling. Of importance to note is that the triple honours bestowed on Nkomo coincided with the Unity Day celebrations on 22 December, the day which marked the signing of Unity Accord between Nkomo’s PF ZAPU and Mugabe’s ZANU PF. The statue was officially unveiled by President Mugabe who said: The statue we are gathered here to officially unveil and the street we have renamed are the real story of Zimbabwe and Zimbabweans, our struggles and our aspirations as a people. That story is embodied in the person of Dr. Nkomo. Both the statue and the renamed street we commemorate are a tribute to Dr. Nkomo for his leadership, his dedication and his ability to translate the aspirations of Zimbabweans. (Nehanda Radio 23 December 2013)

This was a glowing and fitting tribute to ‘Father Zimbabwe’. The same glowing tribute was also raised by the Nkomo family which thanked the government for bestowing such honour to their father. She said according to The Chronicle (20 December 2013) that ‘we have all waited a long time to witness this great day, but am sure we can all sit here today and agree that the long wait has been well worth it’. Further to that, Nkomo’s son Sibangalizwe had this to say to Mugabe: ‘by this honour, you have inscribed with indelible ink, the memory of Joshua Nkomo,

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not only in Zimbabwe, but for the world’. Such words of praise show that in spite of the earlier problems surrounding the statue, the family of Joshua Nkomo was really looking forward to such an honour to their father. Ordinary citizens also sang praises to the government for honouring Joshua Nkomo. One resident by the name Msimanga said this: ‘I think what they have done is highly commendable and we are looking forward to witnessing other projects associated with Nkomo’s name being treated with utmost respect. People should understand the role he played during the liberation war and after independence and it is not a favour that his statue has been erected. The man deserved it because of the role he played in the history of this country’. Indeed, the statues and other honours on Nkomo were not an act of favour as he surely deserved them. In an opinion article that appeared in the Southern Eye of 01 January 2014, Dumisani Nkomo hammers the point home that the honours were not an act of favour but that the ‘statue, the airport and Nkomo Street are also memorials for thousands of his [Nkomo] supporters whose graves are not known’. The same sentiments were also echoed by Dumiso Dabengwa, a close ally of Nkomo from the days of the struggle: These honours that have been bestowed on Nkomo must not be seen as generous favours from the present government but as highly deserved and belated recognition of the liberation war and nationalist icon. Nkomo’s contribution to the liberation of Zimbabwe and his legendary envisioning of a united Zimbabwean nation are not negotiable achievements but indisputable marks of his heroism. The title “Father Zimbabwe” is not just a loose label but it fits the description of Nkomo’s contribution to the birth of Zimbabwe. (Nehanda Radio 23 December 2013)

Whilst some were celebrating, others remained sceptical as they believed that the triple honours on Nkomo were meant to hoodwink the people of Matabeleland to forget what the ZANU PF government had done to them and to Nkomo during the early days of independence. In spite of the relative lack of controversy on the second statue, there was always a hint of regionalism from some of the people who spoke. This taints the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’. The triple honours bestowed on Nkomo were all done in Bulawayo, and one would be forgiven if they mistakenly think they are honouring a former mayor of the city or something like that. Indeed, it would seem appropriate to refer to Nkomo

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as ‘Father Bulawayo’ in the absence of important landscapes outside of Bulawayo being named in honour of him. The Herald of 18 December quotes the Minister of State for Provincial Affairs for Bulawayo Eunice Nomthandazo saying, ‘it is proper that we celebrate him in Bulawayo for our people to see the strength of unity. It is a day that gives us hope to look forward and work together’. One resident did not mince his word when he accused the government of wanting to reduce Joshua Nkomo to a regional leader. He said: They want to appear as if they are doing something good. Nkomo was a national figure and by erecting a statue in Matabeleland they are reducing him to a leader of Matabeleland and that can be a bit offensive to some people…the people of Matabeleland will never forget what happened to ZAPU and Gukurahundi and in all honesty that is the smallest thing that could be done in honour of a giant, a fallen hero from our region and they will see through the political machinations of ZANU-PF. (Nehanda Radio 23 December 2013)

Statements like this clearly debunk the myth of a united Zimbabwe, especially in the absence of a redress on some dark episodes of our country’s history. Whilst it cannot be doubted that Joshua Nkomo was a man of peace, who sacrificed his political career to save his supporters from being destroyed, the same cannot be said of his partners in government. This by extension implies that an honour on Nkomo may not be enough if it does not go on to address the problems faced by his supporters on the ground at the hands of the government. The statue therefore, or any kind of honour, has to be more about the Nkomo and his supporters rather than him alone. At the unveiling of the statue, Nkomo’s son Sibangalizwe said ‘the people in Bulawayo commemorates 1 July as an unofficial holiday’ (The Chronicle 20 December 2013). The act of celebrating an unofficial holiday is in a way a vote of no confidence on the authorities for failing to fulfil the wishes of the people. And that it is only done in Bulawayo says a lot about unity in the country.

Conclusion In his lifetime, Joshua Nkomo was both a friend and a foe to the ZANU PF government. This saw him at one time being referred to as ‘Father of Dissidents’ and that episode saw him go into exile in the UK. Accepting

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peace, he became the vice president of Zimbabwe, and by the time of his death, he had attained the lofty title of Father Zimbabwe. But as one Dinizulu Mbikokayise says in an opinion piece ‘Joshua Nkomo wished hard and tried over time in words and in deeds to fit the title but never came close to being father of the slippery and imaginary Zimbabwean nation’ (New Zimbabwe 29 July 2010). He went on to accuse Nkomo of exposing his only genuine and loyal followers, ‘the Ndebele people’ to massacre, cultural annihilation, discrimination, economic marginality and political orphanage in Zimbabwe in his pursuit of the illusion of Father Zimbabwe. This suggests that there is no consensus on the applicability of the title Father Zimbabwe to Joshua Nkomo. However, this chapter looked at the story of Nkomo’s statues in Bulawayo and Harare to get a glimpse at how the man is being remembered in the present. It showed that the story of the statues can at best be described as a soap opera and at worst comical. Indeed, for a person regarded as Father Zimbabwe, the drama associated with his honouring is uncalled for and it actually brought his title into serious disrepute. This chapter has also shown that the press projected this drama differently, with the state media supporting the stance of the government whilst the private media opened debate on a topic that could have been closed and shrouded in secrecy.

References Alexander, J., McGregor, J. & Ranger, T. 2000. Violence and Memory: One Hundred Years in the ‘Dark Forests’ of Matabeleland. Oxford: James Currey. Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace (CCJP). ([1997] 2007). Breaking the silence, building true peace: A report on the disturbances in Matabeleland and the Midlands, 1980–1988. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. Murambiwa, I. (2008, 19 April). The Zimbabwe archive. Paper presented at the ‘Expatriate Archives and Museums’ workshop, British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, Bristol, United Kingdom. Nyarota, G. 2006. Against the Grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean Newsman. Cape Town: Zebra Press. Werbner, R. (1998). Smoke from the barrel of a gun: Postwars of the dead, memory and reinscription in Zimbabwe. In R. Werbner (Ed.), Memory and the postcolony: African anthropology and the critique of power (pp. 67–98). London: Zed Books. Willems, W. (2004). Selection and silence: Contesting meanings of land in Zimbabwean media. Ecquid Novi, 25(1), 4–24.

CHAPTER 17

The Immortalisation of Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo Henry Chiwaura

Introduction Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo was born on 19 June 1917 and passed on 1 July 1999. He was leading African nationalist who actively participated in the formation of such nationalist movement as the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). By the time of his death, he was the vice-president of Zimbabwe. He was conferred a national hero status and was buried at the National Heroes Acre in Harare. The chapter is focused on the immortalisation of Nkomo into Zimbabwe’s cultural landscape. The immortalisation of Nkomo can shade light on the complex nature of nationalism in Zimbabwe. The immortalisation of Nkomo through a statue, grave, a museum, a foundation, the naming process and other processes contains statements about the country’s inclusive and exclusive heritage, history and politics. A number of books have been written by his associates and foes and one by him that are useful in unpacking the progression of immortalising Nkomo. Nkomo’s immortalisation into Zimbabwe’s social memory can be contextualised

H. Chiwaura (*)  University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pretoria, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_17

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by looking at his history and autobiography, family members, politicians and the private sector. It is imperative to investigate how the memorialisation process took place during the different eras of his life. Nkomo’s family has its own reasons for remembering him, politicians and the general public both within and without Matebeleland all view his immortalisation from different perspectives. The four loose categories above view the immortalisation and memorialisation of JMN as a way of looking at the past using the present symbols and cultures. Both the government and Nkomo’s immediate family were involved in creating ‘Nkomoscapes’ in Zimbabwe, albeit for different reasons. The ruling elite use heritage narratives and constructs to gain the present and to try and control the future. Nkomo’s dream of one nation constantly appears within the process of memorialisation, but on the contrary ‘Nkomoscapes’ are regionally based in Matebeleland despite assuming the moniker ‘Father Zimbabwe’. The chapter concludes by asserting that Nkomo’s immortalisation through various symbols and representations is not about the past as it is intend to shape current discourses within the society. The well-documented conflict with Robert Mugabe also has an impact on the way Nkomo is memorialised and immortalised in Zimbabwe. Sixteen years after his death, Nkomo continues to live in the form of monuments and memorials. He features in songs, books and academic articles. Buildings and schools are named after him. A polytechnic college bears his name and a scholarship fund-through the Econet Wireless Joshua Nkomo Scholarship fund for the underprivileged students. His name has become a trademark in African nationalism in general and Zimbabwe in particular. At one point, Nkomo was a legend in urban folklore when the government was humiliated by his escape into exile on 8 March 1983 and created a fictitious story that Big Josh escaped the country dressed as a woman. Joshua Nkomo’s political career got in full swing around the 1940s up to the time he passed on in July 1999. Attempts were made on Nkomo’s life during the war of liberation by the settler regime and the independent government. During his lifetime and after death, Nkomo received various honours and awards that have immortalised his name and legacy in the memory of Zimbabweans. Many people acknowledge that Joshua Nkomo is one of the incontestable father and symbol of the struggle for a free and democratic Zimbabwe. His father’s Christian belief and his own personal conviction on customs and traditions had a big influence on his adult life.

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Family Background Nkomo was born on 19 June 1917 in the Semokwe Native Reserve in Matabeleland, his father a preacher, was working for the London Missionary Society. He did his primary at London Missionary Society’s Tshimale School and thereafter attended Tsholostho Native Government Industrial School. From the Industrial school, Nkomo advanced to Adam College in South Africa and to Hofmeyer School of Social Science where he acquired a diploma in Social Science. Having attained a diploma, he proceeded to the University of South Africa where he acquired a Bachelor of Arts degree. He was a native of Matabeleland, a siNdebele speaker, but owed his origins to the Kalanga group which existed in the south-western part of Matabeleland prior to the arrival of the amaNdebele around the 1800s, and so he could not claim the noble lineage of abeZansi in the rigid and complex caste system of the amaNdebele. Nkomo grew up in a society led by the settler Native Administration. His father’s Christian beliefs influenced his upbringing, and at the same time, Nkomo was a secret admirer of the African philosophy and thinking. He started his political life in 1948 as the president of the Railway African Employees Association. In 1954, he became the president of the Federation of African Workers’ Union, a position that propelled him into his political calling. Nkomo led a number of political parties during his fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe, namely the African National Congress (ANC) and the National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1960. When NDP was banned, he formed ZAPU in 1961 and subsequently became the president of the Peoples Care Taker Council (PCC) in 1962 after the banning of ZAPU. Nkomo spent 10 years of confinement at Gonakudzingwa when PCC was banned. He was released in 1974 and became the president and commander-in-chief of ZAPU and Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), respectively. Nkomo was part of the Patriotic Front (PF) a unity between ZAPU and ZANU that negotiated for a political settlement at Lancaster House Conference that ushered independence in Zimbabwe. In 1980, he became the country’s first home affairs minister. The period between 1980 and 1987 was marked by armed disturbances in Matebeleland and parts of Midlands provinces. There were attempts to assassinate Joshua Nkomo during this period, and he went into exile in 1982. Joshua Nkomo was instrumental in bringing peace, and in 1987 on December

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22, he signed a historic Unity Accord together with Prime Minister Robert Mugabe which united ZANU PF and ZAPU PF. Nkomo became the vice-president of Zimbabwe in 1990, a post he held until his death on 1 July 1999. Nkomo acknowledged that he was a mother’s boy and very shy when young, and this made him less confidant. The lack of confidence became a strength and weakness in his later life. He assumed that because he relied on his mother he had to rely on other people in life as well, a weakness that left him betrayed so many times.

A Hagiography Designed to Serve a Political Agenda Memoires are written to fit certain ideological framework prevailing, and Joshua Nkomo’s profile is not an exception. Nkomo wrote his full biography titled ‘The story of my life’ which Vambe (2009: 80) argues that in attempting to narrate his life story Nkomo subdues some facts about inconsistencies that he lived in his personal and political life. Nkomo’s narration is about his childhood existence in rural areas and the convergence with colonialism. According to Javangwe (2011: 151), ‘Joshua Nkomo’s The Story of My Life negotiates as well as buttresses his claims to political significance in Zimbabwe through, first, situating the self in the genealogy and history of nation and second, an early critical consciousness of the political situation in colonial Rhodesia, and third, through claims of political persecution both by the colonial governments and the new government of independent Zimbabwe’. He details the pain he suffered at the hands of Robert Mugabe and how he survived the onslaught on his being. Vambe (2009: 80) argues that Nkomo could not divert from the lure of the dominant ideology that inclined his political misfortunes to the tribal divisions. In attempting to tell the story of his life, Nkomo found himself suppressing some facts about the contradictions he lived in his personal and political life. Vambe (2009: 80) posits that ‘this irony at the heart of autobiographical writings suggests that the storyteller unconsciously suppresses certain memories which may not “sit” comfortably with the version of personal/national history that a story of self-inscription is forced to authorise’. Twenty-five per cent of the book is devoted to deride the government of Zimbabwe prior to the Unity Accord in 1987 and 65% is on Nkomo’s autobiography and his involvement in liberation struggle (Rupiya 2002: 83). Nkomo was motivated in his own words by the ‘Will… make it clear what went wrong and why’ (Nkomo 1984: 1). Other reasons not cited in the biography might also have been to do with

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the ‘free’ time Nkomo had in exile. Rupiya (2002) argues that Nkomo might have been pushed by economic pressures as he needed to survive in exile with an aide. ‘Advance cheque from publishers in such circumstances is not unknown to bring about greater focus to engage in such a pastime’ (Rupiya 2002: 83). Another autobiography from Fortune Senamile Nkomo has been written titled ‘Father Zimbabwe, the life and times of an African Legend’ which was launched in June 2013. Joshua Nkomo is an uncle to Fortune, the writer. Asked about what difference his book has over The Story of my life, Fortune responded by stating that the 16-year gap is not mentioned in the earlier biography and that his book is enriched by archival and comments from different people who interacted with Joshua, while Joshua’s book is his own narration. Chigwedere (2003) has written a historical account of Nkomo’s hunt by the Smith regime titled ‘Chimurenga episodes: the hunt for Joshua Nkomo’s. Two obituary booklets in memory of Joshua Nkomo have been written by the ZANU PF Department of Information and the Ministry of Information, Post and Telecommunications all titled Obituary: Dr. Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo 1917–1999. One worth mentioning biography on Nkomo comes as a chapter in Contemporary Black Biography: Volume 65 profiles from the international Black community. In 2014, a book entitled Unity and Honour: 22 December 2013 was launched in honour of Umdala Wethu. The book is a collection of speeches honouring the late Vice-President Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo. At least five books and several articles, chapters, theses have been written about Joshua Nkomo within a short period of 16 years. The question to ponder is why Nkomo’s life has invoked so much interest in this short period. Maylam (2005: 2) work on Rhodes poses some questions of interest fixed on certain individuals that is also applicable to Joshua Nkomo. He asked whether it is a case of great man syndrome—‘that is satisfying a popular appetite for peering into the lives of history’s chief power players’ Maylam (2005: 2) or is it because Joshua Nkomo’s political life and impact is captivating. To answer the question of interest in writings on Nkomo, the majority of the works constitute political agenda either as in his own biography he is criticising Robert Mugabe over political persecution and in the case of Senamile Nkomo and others. Joshua is portrayed as a great statesman, a unifier and a nationalist. Nkomo is represented as force against the onslaught from neocolonialism. The obituaries are seen as a way by ZANU PF government to reach out to the nonconformist Matebeleland Province, where the party has

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been losing elections to the opposition. Most of the works hold Joshua Nkomo in the highest regard, and this is implicit from two points of view one of the biographers is a relative and the others are from a government that is seeking relevance. Joshua is seen mainly as a victim of colonialism and ZANU PF. This picture of Joshua Nkomo has an obvious purpose that he was a selfless leader not motivated by wealth and driven by a sense of duty to drive out colonialism in Zimbabwe. Most of Nkomo’s profilers are his close consociates like Fortune S. Nkomo, a cousin and political companions, Aneas Chigwedere from the same party who want to present their hero as favourably as possible. To date no critical biography of Joshua Nkomo has been written, but few critical works are beginning to appear in the literature (New Zimbabwe, 29 July 2010). An exhibition marking the life of Joshua Nkomo was put up at the Museum of Human Sciences in Harare in the year 2000. The museum is under National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ), the custodian of Zimbabwe’s cultural heritage. The exhibition titled ‘Joshua Nkomo the Man’ is one of the few exhibitions officially opened by the president of Zimbabwe. The official opening by the state president symbolises the significance of the Man being honoured. Year 2000 was the year the government lost the referendum to the opposition party’s Movement for Democratic Change’s ‘no’ vote campaign against a new constitution. It is in the same year the controversial compulsory Land Acquisition Act Chap. 20.10 was repealed and enacted into law. The exhibition gave the government an opportune moment to conjure up its fading popularity as demonstrated by the loss in the referendum. The exhibition was intended to travel throughout all the NMMZ museums but its life ended at the Natural History Museum in Bulawayo. Presumably this is so because Nkomo came from Bulawayo, and they thought it was befitting for the exhibition to be rested in his home town. The exhibition is now part of the displays at Joshua Nkomo’s house, Number 17, Aberdeen Road in Matsheumhlophe that was converted into a memorial museum in 2007 in his honour under an agreement between Joshua Nkomo Foundation Trust and NMMZ. The idea was in line with Nelson Mandela Museum in South Africa.

A Different Opinion of Joshua Nkomo Representation Not all people agree to the fact that Nkomo was a giant statesman. In an opinion article in New Zimbabwe by Dinizulu Mbikokayise Macaphulana published on 29 July 2010, he argues that Joshua Nkomo’s political

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leadership which he puts forwards in his biography and historical legacy is based on criminal falsehood of the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’: Nkomo wished hard and tried over time in words and in deeds to fit the title but he never came near to being ‘father’ of the slippery and imaginary Zimbabwe. (New Zimbabwe, 29 July 2010)

Without critical profilers of Joshua Nkomo, it will be difficult to come up with aspects like the political influence on his life, values and personality. Most of the judgements against him might be based on conjecture and not facts. Recently, the co-Vice-President E. Mnangagwa allegedly declared that the late Vice-President Joshua Nkomo was a sell-out. A claim E. Mnangagwa attributed to former Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Douglas Smith. He claimed that the reason why Nkomo lost the 1980 elections was because he had a soft spot for whites (Newsday, 3 September 2015). VP Mnangagwa received substantial criticism for the remarks with critics saying that he wants to demean Nkomo’s contribution to the liberation of Zimbabwe. What VP Mnangagwa said was undiplomatic and insensitive to the Unity Accord signed between ZANU and ZAPU. The utterances opened old memories when Joshua Nkomo was not respected by the ZANU politicians in the early 1980s.

The Creation of Nkomoscapes After his death, Nkomo’s immortality started in earnest. The government issued four sets of postage stamps on June 27, 2000 featuring Joshua Nkomo. Not that he intended to immortalise himself, but he was going to happy with the results of the efforts put up by his family, the corporate world, the government and to some extent his own determinations had a bearing on his immortalisation as well. His modest Matsheumhlophe House was immediately turned into a house museum. The other house in Pelandaba suburb in Bulawayo is partially open to visitors by appointment; his grave and statue have all become important sites of memory. Each of these places has its own history. The Pelandaba house attracts very few visitors at the moment the house is occupied by Nkomo’s only surviving son Sibangilizwe. The Joshua Nkomo Memorial Museum at Matsheumhlophe is managed by the Joshua Nkomo Foundation and is open to both local and international visitors. The statue along Joshua Nkomo Street in Bulawayo has attracted a lot of controversies that are not necessarily linked to Joshua

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Nkomo’s name. The controversies are linked to the government’s intention and implication of immortalising Joshua Nkomo in Zimbabwe. The family complained that NMMZ, a government institution responsible for heritage management and protection, did not consult when deciding to create the statue. The statue is also receives its fair share of visitors especially local ones. Joshua Nkomo’s statue has a deeper meaning to the people of Matebeleland given the way they responded before and after its formation and the subsequent installation. The statue has given the different actors a sense of identity, appropriation and a rallying point since most symbols celebrated in Zimbabwe are predominantly of Shona culture in origin (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). One of their illustrious sons was finally committed to Zimbabwean memory by a government that one time persecuted them. Economically, the statue has brought some financial reprieve to some people who have ventured into tour-guiding and souvenir miniature statues and photographing visitors. Nkomo’s memorable memorials in Bulawayo have somehow exorcised Rhodes’ memorial impression. Very few people visit Joshua Nkomo’s grave at the National Heroes Acre monument in Harare outside national political events. Joshua Nkomo is remembered as one of the few heroes whose burial was attended by an overwhelming crowd estimated to be over thirty thousand people, a record crowd witnessed at the shrine. The crowd came by buses and trains from all the provinces of Zimbabwe. The National Heroes Acre itself is a symbol of eternal peace for liberation war spirits and the country’s spiritual pacification. Joshua Nkomo is generally regarded as the founding nationalist, a unifier, and ‘Father Zimbabwe’ is resting at the rightful place befitting his status. As Heroes day is commemorated every August, Zimbabweans are presented with an opportunity to remember the illustrious sons and daughters. Monuments and memorials are not simple physical features located on landscapes. They are loaded with meaning and transmit individual, community and national narratives. Overall purpose of monuments is to carry societies forward deriving meaning and distinctiveness from the past. According to Baya, statues reflect stories of power and identity. The presentation of Joshua Nkomo in the form of a statue has generated a lot of debate prior to the erection and after. Most of the debate was centred on the size of the statue, location, who created the statue and the reason of timing of the unveiling of the statue. The statue was mounted at the intersection of Joshua Nkomo Street, formerly Main street and Eight

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Street in Bulawayo. Nkomo’s statue was initially pulled down under the cover of darkness in 2010 when the family complained that the statue was too small for a man of his calibre and they were never consulted over the location and size of the statue (Southern Eye 2015). The anomaly in size according to Pathisa Nyati (www.pers.com) was resolved after agreeing on erecting the statue on a giant pedestal. Civic groups in Bulawayo protested and criticised the fact that the statue was made in North Korea, a country that trained the 5th Brigade army that terrorised people in Matebeleland and Midlands provinces during the Gukurahundi genocide. Nkomo’s supporters have always complained that Nkomo’s part in the struggle narratives of Zimbabwe is downgraded by the ruling ZANU PF government. Nkomo has often referred to as lager that life nationalist leader now appeared a giant even in statue presentation. A smaller statue on a small pedestal would have been thought of as an insult to Nkomo’s status by his sceptical family and followers alike. Nkomo’s family had been complaining about the non-consultancy by the government over the erection of the statue representing one of their own. The government has also been criticised for taking long to complete projects linked to honouring Joshua Nkomo. JN International Airport new terminal opened on 1 November 2013 in Bulawayo formerly Bulawayo Airport after taking long to refurbish. Joshua M. Nkomo Ekusileni Medical Centre, a Harvard medical international associated hospital, is yet to be opened to the public but construction is now complete, a project that has taken more than 12 years to complete amid power struggles over ownership and control. The idea of erecting another statue in Harare has been put on hold as family and acquaintances protested over the proposed location of the statue at Karigamombe Centre in Harare. Karigamombe is a Shona name meaning ‘one that fells a bull’. ZAPU used a bull as their party symbol before uniting with ZANU in 1987. The move to locate the statue at Karigamombe Centre has been interpreted literary by Nkomo’s followers and sympathisers. The name Karigamombe has links to Mugabe family. On the unveiling of the statue Minister Moyo said ‘Dr Nkomo was a towering figure among nationalists who brought independence, peace and prosperity to Zimbabwe’ (Herald 2013). Nkomo’s life story search that political pedestal from which any other account that challenges it is evasively dismissed as misrepresentation or deliberate defamation of Nkomo’s role in the building of the nation of Zimbabwe (Javangwe 2011: 152).

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Besides Nkomo’s statue in Bulawayo, he has been represented in various ways in Matebeleland in particular and Zimbabwe at large. Looking at the map showing Nkomo’s major representations in Zimbabwe, one would be inclined to think that Nkomo was a regional leader rather than a national one. The Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Foundation established Joshua Nkomo’s Museum, that is in Matsheumhlophe which was the late vice-president’s residency. There are also plans to turn his Pelandaba house into a house museum under the township tourism programme being fronted by the Zimbabwe Tourism Authority (ZTA) and National Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe (NMMZ). A technical college in Gwanda was named after him, namely Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Polytechnic College. The large part of Nkomoscape manifests physically mostly in Matebeleland region as alluded to earlier on. The pattern appearing makes one to think that there is a deliberate attempt to confine Nkomo in Matebeleland provinces. In other provinces, it is evident that Nkomo features intermittently in the cultural landscape. The only outstanding icon outside Matebeleland is his grave at the National Heroes Acre in Harare and the naming of the Harare International Airport Road after him, which again is mired in controversy. At the official opening of the road, the plaque was written Harare International Airport Rd, a position that puzzled many who knew that the road was named in honour of the late vice-president. Currently, there is heated debate over the erection of his second statue in capital city of Harare. In Masvingo province, notable Nkomo’s tribute is at Great Zimbabwe University, a state university that has renamed its Faculties and critical centres after prominent members of Zimbabwean and African community. The university’s Faculty of Arts has been named Joshua Nkomo School of Arts and Humanities. According to the vice chancellor, The school has been named in remembrance of Cde Joshua Nkomo who was the Vice President of Zimbabwe and who helped in uniting Zimbabweans from different cultural backgrounds. (GZU Newsletter 2015)

The creation of Nkomoscape through the regional concentration of his social memory in Matebeleland is pivotal in creating a sense of belonging for the marginalised region. His grave, a statue, commemorations underline the creation of a unifying factor among the marginalised

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Matebeleland. Being a founder, a businessperson and a leader Nkomo was in a position to influence which direction post-colonial Zimbabwe should take. In the process of immortalising him, an identity and memory is being created around his personality. After his death pilgrimages, nostalgic feelings by marginalised group have led some people to visit his grave and other iconic remains. Nkomo is visited daily by kinfolk and by victims as well (The Herald, 8 August 2015). For those who cannot physically visit the grave and memorials in Zimbabwe, the Internet has provided the space to meet, visit and commemorate Nkomo. By all measure, Nkomo is doing well in death because of the well-calculated immortalisation. Mr. Strive Masiiwa, a prominent Zimbabwean business person and Econet Wireless CEO, established a Joshua Nkomo Scholarship Fund for the less privileged students in Zimbabwe since 2005. This was to honour the immense support he received from the late vice-president amid obstacles he faced in his endeavour to establish the Econet brand. A number of school and housing cooperatives have been renamed after him. Nkomo is not only remembered in physical form but also in the immaterial. Songs have been composed to celebrate his life. Matonjeni Cultural Association is lobbying the government to officially declare 1 July as a public holiday, and the president is the only person empowered by regulation to pronounce a national holiday (Fig. 17.1).

Nkomo’s Personal Approaches to Immortalisation Nkomo had tried to immortalise himself by investing in large-scale investment by acquiring property throughout Zimbabwe. He invested mainly in farms, houses, commercial buildings and other projects. Notable farm investments included Umguza farm. Nijo complex-Domboshava road, Landos farm- Charter road in Chihota, Nuanetsi Ranch-Masvingo Glaudina and Hampton farms in Gweru and Ukuthula farm in Matopos. The Umguza farms operated under a cooperative and had the following activities dairy, piggery, and women’s cooperative focusing on chickens, gardening and sewing, a supermarket and butchery and a technical college with an enrolment capacity of 400 students. Among commercial buildings that Nkomo had were Magnet House-Bulawayo, Salisbury Motel-Harare, Snake Park Complex-Harare, Mguza Technical College, Lido Motel Airport Road-Bulawayo, Castle Arms Motel at Richmond suburb Bulawayo and Service Station in Harare and Black Cat (Berkshire)

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Fig. 17.1  Showing some of Nkomo’s representations in Zimbabwe

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co-owned with ANC of South Africa. Other major projects initiated by Nkomo and ZAPU were the Beitbridge Toll Bridge. This was a joint venture with Israel and a Yugoslav company for the construction of the toll bridge at Beitbridge. The DTZ Timber project was initiated by Nkomo in the 1980s with the intention of setting up a timber factory in Muzarabani north of Harare. He also initiated the Zimbabwe Agricultural Industry Agency (ZIGRANDA) which was under the patronage of DTZ. Under this project, two factories were set to be set up in Bulawayo and Norton. Greencroft Coffee estate (GCE) comprised of 3000 hectares of land in Vumba Mountains in Mutare. The farm produced coffee, protea flowers, Kiwi fruit and cabbages for both domestic and export markets. DTZ/OZGEO (Pvt) Ltd is a Gold and diamond joint venture between DTZ and OZGEO, a Russian Company. Currently, the company is extracting gold and diamonds in Penhalonga along Mutare River and Chimanimani district, respectively. One of the Nkomo’s dreams was to establish a state-of-the-art medical facility in each province so that Zimbabweans would be served locally. He registered the Zimbabwe Health Care Trust (ZHCT). The first of these medical facilities has been built in and completed in the Matsheumhlope Suburb of Bulawayo. This hospital is yet to open for business 16 years after his death. Nkomo’s business ventures cover most parts of the country and not regionally based which showed that he was not a tribalbased. Having spent more than 6 years in South Africa, Nkomo was in close contact with African National Congress Youth leaders who influenced his political thinking. Among the influential leaders from ANC were the young Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo and Anton Lembede. They met at a place called the Bantu Men’s Social Centre in the centre of Johannesburg near where he was studying at Jan Hofymher School of Social Science (The Sunday Mail, 14 June 2015). The social encounters undoubtedly had a profound political impact on Dr. Nkomo that deepened his dedication to his country’s liberation from colonisers. ‘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)’ (The Sunday Mail, 15 June 2015). Nkomo proceed to establish a business venture named Blue Lagoon at Renkini bus station in Bulawayo in memory of his active days in South Africa.

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Conclusion Joshua Nkomo’s immortality is based less on books and monuments than on the omnipresence of his name in Zimbabwe. In real life, Joshua had a big physique and his immortalisation process is almost reminiscent of his larger than life history. He is highly regarded as the founder of nationalism in Zimbabwe and has been into politics since the days when he joined the Railways workers union in 1948 till his death in 1999. His political career was well decorated with a few imperfections. Those who criticise Nkomo for signing the Unity Accord do not seem to understand that he was a man of peace and unity. By signing the Unity Accord, Joshua Nkomo avoided the unnecessary shedding of innocent blood in Zimbabwe. If Nkomo was not a man of peace, he would not have asked ZIPRA guerrillas to disarm after independence. Joshua Nkomo’s immortalisation is interlinked with that of Robert Mugabe. There is clear competition between Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo from the early days of the struggle for independence. Who is the father of the struggle? There has been a recent call by ZANU PF Youth League to rename Harare international airport after Robert Mugabe. What is of interest is the road leading to the airport is named after Joshua Nkomo. The unsung heroes belong to the period before he joined the struggle. It is about the nullification of the liberation struggle to suit a narrative sympathetic to Robert and ZANU PF. When Robert Mugabe was campaigning, he mentioned Joshua Nkomo only when he was in Matebeleland. It leaves him as the only national leader the rest of the leaders being village or regional leaders. At the moment, there is a deafening silence on the mounting of Joshua Nkomo’s statue in Harare. If erected, this would apparently depict him as a national leader. Joshua Nkomo’s legacy can be aptly summarised by the following words: empathy, transparency, honesty, discipline, commitment, persistence, sacrifice, determination, accountability, justice, unity, peace, progress, perseverance, caring, love, wisdom, generosity and tolerance (The Joshua Nkomo National Foundation, 2003).

References Chigwedere, A. (2003). The hunt for Joshua Nkomo, Chimurenga II episode. Marondera: Mutapa Publishing House. Great Zimbabwe University Newsletter, October 2015.

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Javangwe, T. D. (2011). Contesting narratives: Constructions of the self and the nation in Zimbabwean political auto/biography. Unpublished doctor of literature and philosophy thesis, University of South Africa. Maylam, P. (2005). The cult of Rhodes remembering an imperialist in Africa. Claremont: David Philip Publishers. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S., & Willems, W. (2010). Reinvoking the past in the present: Changing identities and appropriations of Joshua Nkomo in post-colonial Zimbabwe. African Identities, 8(3), 191–208. New Zimbabwe. (2010, 29 July). Joshua Nkomo’s costly heroism. Newsday. (2015, September 3). Nkomo A Sell-out: Mnangagwa. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Rupiya, M. A. (2002). The story of my life (review). Eastern African Social Sciences Review, 18(2), 83–89. Southern Eye. (2015, November 10). Grand Honour for Joshua Nkomo. The Herald. (2013, December 18). Nkomo’s Statue Mounted. The Sunday Mail. (2015, June 14). Dr Nkomo Early Years of Struggle. Vambe, M. T. (2009). Fictions of autobiographical representation: Joshua Nkomo’s the story of my life. Journal of Literary Studies, 25(1), 80–97.

CHAPTER 18

Whose Nkomo Is It Anyway? Joshua Nkomo’s Statue and Commemorative Landscape Thabisani Ndlovu

Introduction This chapter employs heritage interpretation as a lens to read contestations over the statue(s) of the late Joshua Nkomo with a view to examine the role of statuary in recent Zimbabwean historiography. The process of unveiling the bronze statue of the late nationalist and Vice-President of Zimbabwe, Joshua Nkomo, on 22 December 2013 at the intersection of 8th Avenue and Main Street, and the subsequent name change of the latter to JM Nkomo Street, was a slow process mired in contestation and controversy. While it took government more than 6 years to sanction the name change as proposed by the city council of Bulawayo, the bronze statue (one of a pair) of Joshua Nkomo had to be taken down before its official unveiling in 2010, following complaints by the Nkomo family and Bulawayo public. It had been planned that the second of the two statues would be erected in Harare’s Karigamombe Centre to which there were objections by both the Nkomo family and the owners of the

T. Ndlovu (*)  Walter Sisulu University, Mthatha, South Africa © The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5_18

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space for the proposed site, revealing the importance of the spatialisation of pubic memory. The Bulawayo statue, which this chapter will focus on, was (re)erected on the spot where that of Cecil John Rhodes used to be, facing the same direction (North) suggesting some kind of dissonance. Thus, the journeys of this statue and the stalled erection of its pair in Harare strongly suggest an inquiry into the cultural and political capital of the statue(s). Looking at late Vice-President of Zimbabwe, Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo’s statue pedestalised on a prominent site at the intersection of 8th Avenue and Joshua Mqabuko Nomo Street as a standalone statue, this is what one might notice: Facing North, the statue stands on an elegant pedestal approximately three metres tall. The pedestal has three tiers and all of them feature red sandstone which blends beautifully with the buildings near the statue, such as the Post Office and Barclays Bank which are built of the same stone. The statue itself, because of its bronze colour, blends in similar fashion. It is situated at a traffic circle popularly known as a roundabout in Bulawayo. Black and white kerbing forms the outer boundary between the road and the statue. In keeping with the general strategy of erecting monuments, it is at a busy intersection where it can be seen by a large number of people passing through. Slightly inwards towards the statue is another boundary of granite columns about half a metre tall, joined by a chain that runs round the inner edge except at the ‘entrance’ to the statue. The four granite columns to the east were knocked down by cars and have not been replaced. Otherwise, all else is impressive. For example, from the four general compass directions, there are lights close to the feet of the statue that shine on the statue at night. There is also, on the Northern side, about two metres high, a glass encasing for an ‘eternal’ flame although the eternal flame is not on all the time. Nkomo is captured standing straight, arms by his sides and on one hand carrying induku (knobkerrie) as was his wont. Induku or rungu in Swahili, ‘has[…] symbolic value in African society’ given that it can be used as weapon to defend oneself but most importantly, it can be carried ceremonially ‘to denote an African elder or leader’ (Larsen 2011: 274). Another African leader famous for carrying induku was Jomo Kenyatta. Dressed in a suit and tie, the pose of Nkomo’s statue is very demure and he has on his face, what looks like a faint smile. From the description above, and excepting the few blemishes, all looks well and thought-out. But as Schultz (2011: 1238) observes,

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‘Commemorative devices provide a smooth veneer under which seethes a host of contestations as different voices fight to be heard and struggle for legitimacy’. To start with the pedestal on which stands Nkomo’s statue is a revised or rebuilt one. The statue was erected on 13 August and dismantled on 16 September 2010 before its official unveiling because of objections from the Nkomo family and the Bulawayo public. The reerection of the same statue on a different pedestal took about 3 years. While the (re)erection of the statue in Bulawayo might represent the statue reaching its ‘final destination’, the journey of the Nkomo statue is far from finished. It is difficult to forget that the statue that stands in Bulawayo is one of two identical statues and that the other either lies forgotten in Harare or its journey towards being erected is still under negotiation. Just as for the Bulawayo one, the signposts and detours on the road to erection are more significant than the ‘end’ of the journey for this statue. The first attempts to erect the statue at Harare’s Karigamombe Centre were opposed by both the Nkomo family and the owners of the proposed site. Nevertheless, the re-erection of Nkomo’s statue should be seen as significant given that the post-independent government of Zimbabwe under ZANU PF does not have a culture of erecting statutes to honour its politicians. That factor and lack of finance tell us that there was a pressing need to eventually erect a statue for the late Nkomo. There had to be significant reasons, which this chapter sets out to identify and discuss. The erection, pulling down and re-erection of one of Nkomo’s statues in Bulawayo, Matabeleland and the indefinite lack of progress in erecting the other in Harare, Mashonaland, raises a couple of questions concerning the statue’s current ‘life’ and possible afterlives. Some of the questions are these: Does the late Vice-President deserve to have statues erected in his memory in both Harare and Bulawayo? What were the government’s intentions in erecting Nkomo’s statue in Bulawayo and have those intentions been realised? Why was the proposed and actual erection of Nkomo’s statue mired in controversy? As a public monument, what are some of the public readings of this statue? What lessons can be drawn from debates that emanated from the erection of Nkomo’s statue? Most importantly, what kinds of future readings and uses are the statue likely to elicit? In the manner that the statue goads these questions, it is not overstretching to say that in many ways, it represents unresolved narratives of Zimbabwean history and heritage. Such unresolved issues can be framed through statuary by asking another question: Are

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we likely to see Robert Mugabe’s statue erected in Bulawayo in the next ten to thirty years? Drawing on heritage theories, particularly heritage interpretation, this chapter analyses government and counter-government narratives of Joshua Nkomo’s statue(s). The study is mostly based on desk research. It makes use of literature on public monuments, particularly statuary. Relevant newspaper articles from Bulawayo’s The Chronicle and The Standard of Zimbabwe provide for analysis, key narratives about Nkomo’s statue between 2010 and 2015—a period that spans firm plans to erect a statue for Nkomo in Bulawayo, the condemnation of the statue, its pulling down, its re-erection, failed plans to erect the Harare statue, and continued conversations and opinions about the two statues. It would not be fair to say that The Chronicle, as a governmentcontrolled paper, had an uncritical reception of Nkomo’s statue and legacy by espousing the expected official panegyric. Some articles are critical, albeit in a subdued way. It is only by putting together separate articles between 2010 and 2015 that the potency of discontent regarding Nkomo’s statue emerges. As expected, it is the independent press, here represented by The Standard, which carries more critical articles. For example, Zimbabwe’s current Vice-President, Mr Emmerson Mnangagwa, whose view that the late Dr Nkomo ‘represented white minority interests’ (The Standard online 2015) might imply that the latter does not deserve a statue erected in his memory. Two interviews were conducted by the author with Mr Phathisa Nyathi (November 2014) and Mrs Thandiwe Nkomo-Ebrahim (November 2014). Nyathi is a renowned Zimbabwean historian, social and political commentator, and leading scholar on the history of Matabeleland. Mrs Nkomo-Ebrahim is the late Vice-President Nkomo’s eldest daughter and family spokesperson. The author also visited the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Museum in Matshamhlophe,1 Bulawayo. The museum had a lot of interesting material on display and the curatorship was of a high standard. In unveiling the statue of the late Joshua Nkomo, and simultaneously renaming Main Street to Joshua Mqabuko Street, President Robert Gabriel Mugabe mentioned some key aspects that will frame the discussion of this chapter. His words were: The statue, a national monument, is therefore, part of the national heritage of Zimbabwe which embodies the national values and aspirations of Zimbabweans. The statue and the renamed street allow us to continually

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reflect on where we stand as a nation, also to introspect on what we are doing, as people, vis-à-vis what Dr Joshua Nkomo stood for. (The Chronicle 23 December 2013)

Mugabe’s comment here concurs with the common view that a statue signifies both ‘portrait and proxy’ (Cherry 2013: 3). In this instance, we ask to what extent the form of the statue bears a likeness to the late Nkomo, and whether ideationally, it can be read as representing what Nkomo stood for at a national scale. In other words, the statue of this extraordinary person who is elevated as a model for present and future generations personifies the nation ‘because it would otherwise be wholly abstract’. Textual framing in the form of copper plaques further corroborates Mugabe’s characterisation of the statue as national. As inscribed on one of them at the base of the pedestal, the statue is a ‘NATIONAL MONUMENT’. As such, the writing continues, the statue is protected by ‘THE NATIONAL MUSEUMS AND MONUMENTS ACT CHAPTER 25:11’. There is a solemnity not only in Mugabe’s comment and inscriptions on the pedestal but also in the realisation that Nkomo had a road named after him. In fact, that same day of unveiling the statute and renaming Main Street, the Bulawayo Airport was renamed Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Airport in what The Chronicle of 23 December 2013 called ‘treble honours’ and a ‘fitting tribute to the icon’. The statue, alongside the other two honours, confirmed the high heritage value of Nkomo. Monuments, as Smith (2011: 1253) puts it, ‘stand as a solid reminder of a person, an event, some accomplishment deemed worthy of remembering long past the person or event occurred’. Following this line of thought, one of the plaques justifies the erection of Nkomo’s statue thus: ‘THIS MONUMENT WAS ERECTED BY ZIMBABWEANS TO CELEBRATE AND IMMORTALISE THE LIFE AND WORKS OF THE HONOURABLE VICE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE, DR JOSHUA MQABUKO NYONGOLO NKOMO, CHIBWECHITEDZA, FATHER ZIMBABWE, A TRUE SON OF THE SOIL’. That inscription deploys overgeneralisations. It proclaims Nkomo’s greatness as epitomised by his nicknames Chibwechitedza (Slippery stone), Father Zimbabwe and the descriptor, ‘A true son of the soil’. It homogenises Zimbabweans and implies that every Zimbabwean not only contributed to the statue financially but also saw the need for it. This declaration also implicitly identifies the government as the instigator

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of the statue and guardian that holds it in trust as a national heritage monument. The four nicknames that appear on the top of the pedestal, just below the statue’s feet, are akin to captions whose aim is to illustrate how truly national Nkomo was and how his memory continues in a similar vein, at the same time hinting at Nkomo’s own family origins. On the northern side, which is the front of the statue, the lettering reads, ‘FATHER ZIMBABWE’, which through its prominence on the front of the statue, appears to be an overall summation of Nkomo in English, which in this instance apart from being an official language, is a lingua franca. On the eastern side, which is the general direction of Mashonaland Province, the appellation is in Shona, ‘CHIBWECHITEDZA’. Chibwechitedza is chiShona for ‘slippery stone’, a name Nkomo got for his ‘uncanny ability to elude the colonialist forces that were hunting him’ (The Chronicle 21 July 2010). On the western side, the general direction of Matabeleland in relation to the rest of the country, the inscription is in isiNdebele ‘UMDALA WETHU’ which translates to ‘Our dear old man’ or as Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems (2010: 201) put it, ‘Our Father’. To the South, which is the general direction of Nkomo’s rural home of Kezi and the general direction of Lesotho where his family originated from (Curatorial information in the Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo Museum, visited November 2015) the tag is fittingly in SeSotho, ‘RAMATSATSI’. The name literally means ‘Father of Suns’ and is said to be the name of the ‘earliest known ancestor’ of Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo’s family (Curatorial information at Nkomo museum, visited November 2015). Thus Nkomo is represented or offered as an emblematic figure worthy of emulation. But how consistent is this honour and image with Nkomo’s role in the struggle against colonisation, his efforts in post-independent Zimbabwe and how he has been regarded by the ruling ZANU PF party, particularly its leader, Robert Mugabe, throughout these periods? It becomes necessary to ask this question given that, like the statue which had a journey to its pedestal in Bulawayo and the one still kept somewhere in Harare, a fuller understanding of the value of the statue requires a long shot view, one that takes into account journeys in the construction of Nkomo’s stature, that is, representations of the late Nkomo during and after the liberation struggle. In any case, and as pointed out before, the erection, re-erection and public consumption of the Bulawayo statue were and continue to be far from uncontroversial.

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Before offering a brief history of the late Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, a few remarks on heritage will be instructive. Mugabe’s words at the unveiling of Nkomo’s statue suggest that a national heritage monument is more than just a historical object or artefact. In fact, his utterance highlights the most common view of national monuments or heritage objects that they are public manifestations of collective memory and national identity (Cummings 2013; Sorensen et al. 2009; Howard 2003). As Graham and Howard (2008) observe, at both personal and national levels, heritage and identity are intertwined. Therefore, analysing national heritage monuments ‘provides an ideal way to trace underlying continuities and discontinuities in national identity politics’ (Cummings 2013: 525). One of the tasks of this chapter is to explore how Nkomo’s statue can possibly be read as a symbol of the Zimbabwean nation, particularly given that one of his nicknames is ‘Father Zimbabwe’. In addition to the link between heritage and identity, Howard (2003) makes three salient points concerning the characteristics of heritage. These points are supported by other heritage scholars. The first is a warning that: ‘Heritage can indeed be perceived as a dangerous concept; it is frequently nationalistic, exclusive, sexist, elitist and backward-looking’ (Howard 2003: 4). Given these politically charged and divisive descriptors, Howard (2003: 23) advises that scholars of heritage need to ask three key questions: ‘Whose heritage? Conserved for whom? At whose expense?’ What should be added to this list of questions is: ‘For what purpose?’ This question is necessitated by the fact that heritage monuments and narratives ‘are not produced for nothing or for fun’ (Groote and Haartsen 2008: 181), and heritage ‘benefits someone, and usually disadvantages someone else’ (Howard 2003: 4). The second point Howard (2003: 46) makes is that there are multifarious readings of heritage monuments and as such, ‘[p]eople do not always take away from heritage sites that which was intended’. Interpretive possibilities are numerous. Consequently, heritage meanings and values are always contested given that the erection of political public monuments inherently carries approval, dissent and scepticism. What puts heritage under constant dispute is that its meanings and/or values are culturally or socially constructed, hence the conclusion that ‘heritage is a communicative practice’ (Groote and Haartsen 2008: 191) and as such any research on heritage ‘needs to pay attention to questions

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of representation and the politics of the communication of meanings’ (Groote and Haartsen 2008: 182). The third point that Howard (2003: 157) makes is that ‘heritage is divisive by nature’. The inherent divisiveness of heritage is due to dissonance, described by Johnson (2014: 584) as ‘lack of agreement and consistency as to the meaning of heritage’. Dissonance is intrinsic to heritage because of the diverse positionalities of consumers of heritage as well as political and other changes that constantly shift the way people view certain heritage monuments, particularly at national level. Thus, the multiple lenses through which we view heritage, some of which include ‘nationality, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, personal history, poverty, insideness, expertise and age’ (Howard 2003: 213) in combination with the site of the heritage monument, and the passing of time, are significant contributors towards heritage dissonance. One could add to Howards’ (2003) list, political party affiliation. However, those with political power create and promote a dominant view of heritage known as ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD)’ (Smith 2006: 3). AHD tends to be mediated by those in power through various media channels. Given the points above about heritage, I find the following definition not only comprehensive but also useful as it does, to a large extent, inform the method used in reading Nkomo’s statue: Heritage …[is] a process of conscious, purposeful remembrance for the political, cultural or economic needs of those in the present; it involves a subjective representation of valued objects, significant persons, places and symbolic events of the past, closely allied with issues of identity and power. (Marschall 2009: 347)

Thus, through selection and presentation, heritage is a construction and has very little or no intrinsic value of its own. Values are placed on chosen artefacts or natural landscapes. As a concept, heritage is ‘present-centred’ in the sense that ‘the contents, interpretations and representations of the heritage resource are selected according to the demands of the present and, in turn, bequeathed to an imagined future’ (Graham and Howard 2008: 2). The choice of heritage interpretation as a lens of analysis Nkomo’s statue should now be apparent because this method of analysis ‘investigates the role of the past in the present and the various kinds of actions—from governmental institutional practices to individual leisure use and responses’, and it calls out ‘for investigation and analysis

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aiming to understand how heritage becomes constituted, what it is and does, and how different groups engage with it’ (Forest and Johnson 2002: 17). Statues themselves are a fertile subject of study regarding memorialisation and national identity because ‘statuary offers a way of understanding nation-building which moves beyond top-down structural analyses to more dialectical conceptualisations’ (Johnson 1995: 57). Such conceptualisations require us to evaluate ZANU PF government’s Authorised Heritage Discourse concerning the Joshua Nkomo statue. The plaque on Nkomo’s statue attempts to summarise Nkomo’s worth and contribution to Zimbabwe’s independence as well as the role he played in post-independent Zimbabwe. Nkomo is described thus: AN ICON AND VETERAN OF ZIMBABWE’S INDEPENDENCE POLITICS, DR NKOMO IS REMBERED FOR HIS MANY ROLES IN TRADE UNIONISM, ORGANISATION OF AFRICAN RESISTANCE TO COLONIAL SUBJUGATION AND MISRULE, LEADERSHIP OF THE ARMED LIBERATION STRUGGLE AND THE ATTAINMENT OF ZIMBABWE’S INDEPENDENCE FOUNDED ON NATIONAL UNITY AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT DRIVEN BY LAND REFORM, INDIGENISATION AND MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL COOPERATION WITH THE REST OF THE WORLD. ZIMBABWEANS TODAY ARE FREE BECAUSE OF UMDALA WETHU’S PRINCIPLED VISION, COMMITTED LEADERSHIP AND TOTAL DEDICATION TO THE REBIRTH OF OUR NATION AND ITS DEVELOPMENT. NEVER AGAIN WILL THE SUN SET IN ZIMBABWE.

Brevity of the writing on the plaque is, of course, a result of limited space. Be that as it may, Savage (2009: 10) makes a perceptive observation that ‘[p]ublic monuments are an inherently conservative art form. They obey the logic of the last word, the logic of closure’, with the result that ‘monuments strip the hero or event of historical complexities and condense the subject’s significance to a few patriotic lessons frozen for all time’. As such, to do justice to the discussion of this paper, it is necessary to first of all flesh out Nkomo’s abbreviated history by focusing on key moments in his political career. Academic opinions, the two interviews with Phathisa Nyathi and Ms Thandiwe Nkomo-Ebrahim, Nkomo’s autobiography Nkomo the Story of My Life (1984), the author’s visit to the Nkomo museum in Matshamhlophe, media coverage of Nkomo

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pre- and post-independent Zimbabwe, will help determine the extent of congruity or incongruity between the state’s version of Nkomo’s value and others’ versions. What will be kept in mind is that ‘heroes’ symbolic lives supersede their real lives, historic reality is “sanitised” by foregrounding some aspects and conveniently forgetting others’ (Marschall 2006: 185). It is clear that the state privileges certain myths and narratives about the history, memory and value of Nkomo while suppressing others.

Who Was Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo? To understand Nkomo’s political history and that of the political party he led the longest, ZAPU, is to understand the political history of Robert Mugabe as well as the ‘old’ and ‘new’ ZANU PF. The political and personal histories of both leaders are so intertwined that one understands Vambe’s (2009) assertion that in Nkomo’s autobiography, we get to know more about Robert Mugabe than Nkomo himself. Vambe (2009) also suggests that ‘Perhaps Nkomo fails in his book to distinguish between ZIPRA and himself’ (90). To expect a neat distinction between political party and its leader is a useful ideal but it is practically insincere, especially when considering African politics. In African politics, political parties tend to bear a heavy imprint of the leader’s character and in the worst case, the leader’s whims and personal squabbles. The edited collection of Drum Magazine articles by Couzens (1992), Zimbabwe: The Search for Common Ground Since 1890 from the pages of Drum Magazine, offers a freshness to the political and personal relationships between Nkomo and Mugabe and the parties that they led or were part of from the late 1950s to independence at 1980. Granted that the articles represent the viewpoint of the writer of each story as well as Drum’s editorial policy, the contemporaneous nature of the stories, particularly the direct utterances of both Mugabe and Nkomo, gives the researcher very rich material to work from. Some of the utterances came to shape the relationships between these two political leaders and their parties. That being the case, this chapter will analyse some aspects of Joshua Nkomo and Mugabe’s personal and political relationships that led to, with regard to this paper, Mugabe unveiling Nkomo’s statue, renaming Main Street and renaming the Bulawayo Airport after Nkomo. One of the plaques on Nkomo’s statue reads: ‘THIS MONUMENT WAS OFFICIALLY UNVEILED BY HIS EXCELLENCY THE

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PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF ZIMBABWE CDE ROBERT GABRIEL MUGABE ON 22ND DECEMBER 2013’. The Chronicle went as far as to say that Mugabe had unveiled the statue of his ‘brother’ (The Chronicle 23 December 2013. In many ways, this message typifies how throughout their political lives, Mugabe is the one who has had more opportunity and power, perhaps 90%, of officially representing Joshua Nkomo, that is, the power to decide what sort of image to accord Nkomo at different historical moments. Initially, Mugabe did this positively as Nkomo’s ‘polished professional spokesman’ as captured in Drum Magazine’s May 1964 issue (Couzens 1992: 222) under ZAPU before the split that begot ZANU. The abbreviated history of Joshua Nkomo on one of the copper plaques tallies with some well-known historical facts, has a rather garbled message on some facts and is entirely quiet on others. The narrative suggests the absence of conflict and contestation. There are some historical events that concur with the brief description of Nkomo’s contributions pre- and post-independent Zimbabwe. Born in 1917 and died in 1999, Nkomo entered trade union politics in 1948 and led the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) in 1957, National Democratic Party (NDP) in 1960 and ZAPU from 1963 to 1987. That the late Nkomo was a leading trade unionist and founding father of Zimbabwean nationalism and liberation struggle is widely acknowledged (Nkomo 1984; Couzens 1992; Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). Cain Mathema, Governor and Resident Minister of Bulawayo described Nkomo as ‘the founding father of our liberation struggle’ (The Chronicle, 31 August 2011). Equally justifiable is the claim by the plaque that Nkomo was a symbol of resistance to colonialism. In anticipation of the unveiling of Nkomo’s statue, The Chronicle of 1 December 2013 writes that ‘Dr Nkomo was befittingly named “Father Zimbabwe” for his enormous contribution to the country’s struggle for independence from British colonial rule and his post-independence role of ensuring unity among Zimbabweans’. The paper unequivocally sees the late Nkomo as deserving of a statue in Zimbabwean politics. But this is ‘Authorised Heritage Discourse (AHD)’ (Smith 2006: 3). What are other possible readings of Nkomo’s statue? To answer this question requires a focus on what the plaque is quiet on. Looking at Nkomo’s statue and taking into account Nkomo’s leadership of SRANC, UNDP and ZAPU; the split of ZAPU that gave rise to ZANU; ZANU’s charge during the liberation struggle that Nkomo

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was not committed to the armed struggle (Nkomo 1984); the branding of Nkomo as ‘Father of Dissidents’ in the 1980s, and the signing of the questionable Unity Accord in 1987, one wonders if the erection of Nkomo’s statue was done in good faith. Similarly, one starts questioning the conferment of attributes, some of them posthumously, that Nkomo had claimed and been denied before signing the Unity Accord. These include Nkomo’s commitment to unity, his role as founding father of Zimbabwean nationalism as epitomised through the epithet ‘Father Zimbabwe’. In their perceptive analysis of the representations and selfrepresentations of Joshua Nkomo, Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems (2010) clearly delineate the numerous identities and subject positions that Nkomo occupied pre- and post-independent Zimbabwe. They conclude that the multiple and fluctuating representations of Joshua Nkomo were for political expediency. Thus, both in life and after his death, Nkomo ‘continued to be a subject of appropriation, use and abuse’ (NdlovuGatsheni and Willems 2010: 204). When he enjoyed national popularity in the early days of Zimbabwean nationalism, Joshua Nkomo got rousing welcomes that in some cases would bring the then Salisbury Airport to a standstill. This is captured for example in Drum’s June 1962 article titled ‘Hero’s welcome for Nkomo’ following ‘3 months at the United Nations’ where Nkomo was ‘dissecting the oppression in Rhodesia’ (Couzens 1992: 120). Perhaps the height of Nkomo’s popularity was when he was crowned ‘King of Zimbabwe’ in Salisbury’s Gwanzura stadium as captured in Drum Magazine’s September 1962 issue (Couzens 1992: 124). The following brief description captures the peak of Nkomo’s popularity: With ostrich feathers, Joshua Nkomo was crowned King of Zimbabwe. While many, many thousands of Africans and some Europeans packed Gwanzura stadium, Dr Edward Pswarayi presented Nkomo with an ornamental spear, and then the crown. The chima drum, used only in kingmaking ceremonies, sounded—its deep note heard for the first time in a city. Earlier, propped by a brass walking stick and dressed in tattered clothing, skins and fur head gear, 90-year-old Nyamasoka Chinhamora, uncle to Chief Chinhamora, staggered forward from amid the chanting crowd at Salisbury Airport with stretched hands and a voice trembling with age, he pronounced: ‘Son of the soil, take this sword, the battle axe and the

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knobkerrie. By presenting these weapons I have bestowed on you supreme leadership. (Couzens 1992: 124)

In spite of his popularity, and perhaps because of it, Nkomo was to soon face a challenge within ZAPU, which led to the splintering of the party and the formation of ZANU. The formation of ZANU as a breakaway faction from ZAPU was characterised by acrimony amongst the leaders. This split contains most of the seeds for future altercations and ‘reconciliations’. The main actors during the split were Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo. They became arch-rivals for most of their political lives. An article in the Drum Magazine of August 1963 reports that the key leaders of the breakaway faction were ‘Mr Robert Mugabe, Mr Leopold Takawira, the Rev. Ndabaningi Sithole, Mr Washington Malianga, Mr Enos Nkala’ (Couzens 1992: 180). The defectors and detractors are quoted as saying that Nkomo was ‘the enemy of the people’, ‘cheap’ and ‘spineless’ (Couzens 1992: 180). But it was Robert Mugabe who castigated Nkomo the strongest and said, amongst other utterances in Drum’s May issue of 1964, ‘I know Nkomo. He is weak. I see through him as I see myself in a mirror. I see through him and I see a coward’ (Couzens 1992: 222). Nkomo, in his autobiography, The Story of My Life (1984), argues that what motivated the split was tribalism, with the Shona speaking members deciding to band together and ostracise him to a possible political wilderness. Although the breakaway faction denied Nkomo’s prognosis for the split, one of Mugabe’s comments does reveal the importance of ethnicity in the 1960s, something that came to influence the elections in 1980 and Gukurahundi in the early 1980s. The following excerpt underlines not only the importance of tribe or ethnicity but also how personally politicians took issues: Mugabe now says that from the start he was disappointed with Nkomo, and disappointment soon turned to despair. What held him back? ‘You see I was toying with the idea that if we sacked Joshua, unity would collapse and he would go with Matabeleland. In the end I made up my mind that unity which could get us nowhere was undesirable and a split that could take us somewhere was preferable’. Now bitter, he added: ‘It was Joshua who asked my wife to go with us to Tanganyika. He has caused us much hardship’. Now, says Mugabe, Sarah [sic] is coming back to face her 9–months’ jail sentence once she

418  T. Ndlovu has nursed her baby and had treatment for a kidney complaint. (Couzens 1992: 222–223)

Thus, Mugabe was disappointed by Nkomo right from the start, had very little regard for him as a leader and tolerated him for the sake of unity, a unity that hinged on Nkomo controlling Matabeleland which, numerically, would not count against the rest of the country or Mashonaland. On his part, Nkomo felt Mugabe’s desertion most keenly. Drum of May 1964 wrote: ‘Then came the split and Nkomo’s shock at his denouncers was only excelled by his hurt at Mugabe being among them’. ‘No, not Robert[…] not him too[…] he kept muttering’ (Couzens 1992: 222). It is possible that Nkomo might not have been very effective in his leadership, in which case, he should have been left to lead ZAPU to self-destruction, to clearly demonstrate his ineptitude. Instead, Mugabe decided to destroy Nkomo in a manner that was to become typical of Mugabe’s intolerance for opposition: Today, Mugabe… spends his time in an all-out effort to destroy his old master. Now he insists that “it is only a matter of time before Nkomo is finished. …. In fighting Nkomo, Mugabe has shown a dedication equal to anything he showed while backing him. He preached against Nkomo before the United Nations, in Britain, West Germany and several African states, being shadowed by Nkomoite George Silundika who followed behind, contradicting everything he said. (Couzens 1992: 222)

Through his efforts, Mugabe’s clear aim was to get rid of Nkomo and is quoted as saying: ‘Then I know Joshua will go, the present government will go. Then, of course, we [he and his wife Sally] will have more children’ (Couzens 1992: 223). For Mugabe, the future had to be free of Nkomo. Eighteen years later, in 1982, an attempt was made on Nkomo’s life by what Nkomo concluded were ‘the armed killers of Prime Minister Robert Mugabe’ (Nkomo 1984: 1). In the armed struggle, ZANU fought through its military wing, ZANLA and ZAPU through its own ZIPRA. After the Lancaster House Agreement, Zimbabwe prepared for elections and Nkomo insisted that

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the two parties contest the elections as the Patriotic Front, a coalition that had been formed by the two parties to push through the last stages of the armed conflict and negotiations at Lancaster House. In Drum’s March 1980 issue, Nkomo is quoted as saying: We believe that Zimbabwe will inspire ourselves and our neighbours as a model. Unity is the keystone to peace and progress. The most effective means to achieve this unity is the maintenance of the instrument created at the insistence of the people—a front for all Zimbabwean patriots. For the sake of our people and our children, self must take a second place to the nation. (Drum 1980: 303)

In his autobiography, Nkomo writes that he had put this idea to ZANU PF but got no response until he was forced, at the last minute too, to enter the elections as ZAPU (Nkomo 1984). In short, the idea of contesting elections as a united front was snubbed by ZANU PF. Consequently, the country went to the polls with clear ethnic rifts amongst the leaders, citizenry and former guerrilla soldiers. ZANU PF won the 1980 elections and Mugabe offered Nkomo a ceremonial presidential position which Nkomo declined (Nkomo 1984). In the end, he was appointed Minister of Home Affairs. On 9 and 10 November, interparty rivalry erupted in the form of gunfire between ZIPRA and ZANLA forces. This was to be known as the first battle of Entumbane or Entumbane I. The skirmish left 58 people dead and over 500 wounded, most of them civilians (Hull 1986). This unrest seemed to have been quelled for a while, particularly with Nkomo calling for patience and national unity. Entumbane II, which was fought between 8 and 12 August 1981, threatened to blow up into a civil war. In February 1982, all members of ZAPU were expelled from national government, including Joshua Nkomo. Nkomo was subsequently branded enemy of the state needing eradication. Whereas the formation of ZANU Nkomo had been called ‘enemy of the people’ (Couzens 1992: 180), in postindependent Zimbabwe he was branded ‘enemy of the state’. Writes Nkomo in his autobiography: Prime Minister Mugabe had publicly called for violent action against my person. He said, quite falsely, that I was trying to overthrow his government. Speaking of my party he said: ‘Zapu and its leader, Dr Joshua

420  T. Ndlovu Nkomo, are like a cobra in a house. The only way to deal effectively with a snake is to strike and destroy its head. (Couzens 1992: 2)

Insults were also heaped on Nkomo, one of which was ‘Dumbuguru’ (big stomach), and mockery of Nkomo’s title ‘Father Zimbabwe’ resulted in ‘Father of dissidents’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 197). After an attempt was made on his life, Nkomo fled the country to a life of exile in Britain. Also in fear of their lives and frustrated by being overlooked in the creation of a new army, some ex-ZIPRA soldiers fled to the bush and became known as dissidents. Then followed Gukurahundi—a brutal suppression ostensibly of former ZIPRA combatants turned dissidents. In reality, the North Korean trained Fifth Brigade killed more than 20,000 civilians in Matabeleland deemed to be Nkomo’s supporters between 1982 and 1987. Gukurahundi is Shona for ‘the first rains that wash away the chaff’. The memory of this period has a great bearing on Nkomo’s statue, particularly some of the objections from the Bulawayo community. For example, some residents rejected the statue because it was made in North Korea, the very country imbricated in Gukurahundi. When Joshua Nkomo signed the Unity Accord in 1987, the move was regarded by some as tantamount to surrendering since the merger of ZANU PF and PF ZAPU resulted in a ‘new’ ZANU PF. In this arrangement, some pro-Nkomo citizens of Matabeleland felt that Nkomo had sold out (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010). Regarding Nkomo’s image in the eyes of ZANU PF after the signing of the Unity Accord, Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems (2010: 200) write: After the signing of the agreement, the newly united ZANU-PF party began to portray Nkomo in a more positive light as a selfless nationbuilder and unifier who put the nationalist interest above the party interest. This was a convenient representation for both Nkomo, who wanted to be remembered as an advocate of unity, and Mugabe, who did not tolerate any political challenges and who was still committed to establishing a one party-state in Zimbabwe.

It should be added here that another aim of Mugabe’s and ZANU PF was to avoid addressing Gukurahundi. The hope was that the rhetoric of unity would progressively erase or mute the atrocities of the Fifth Brigade. Nkomo was eventually made one of two vice-presidents until his death in 1999.

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Various efforts to appropriate Nkomo happened in earnest after his death. At a quite literal level, Nkomo was taken to the national Heroes Acre to be buried there after he was declared a national hero. ZANU PF has a hierarchised manner of conferring hero status starting with local heroes, through provincial to national. Being accorded a national hero status meant that Nkomo was not going to be buried in his home of Matabeleland. His credentials when he died, chiefly that he had been a senior member within ZANU PF with acknowledged contributions to the armed struggle, meant that there would be no question about his hero status. It is almost a foregone issue that if he had died leading an opposition party, he would not have been declared a national hero. As Mpofu (2013: 153) points out, the Heroes Acre is a ‘discriminating space where some people are deliberately excluded on racial, political, sexual orientation or ethnic grounds’. Not only had Nkomo become what ZANU PF wanted, the party also foresaw multiple ways of exploiting Nkomo’s image in death. The multiple constructions and reconstructions of Nkomo’s image by ZANU PF for the sake of creating a legacy that would work in the service of ZANU PF made Nkomo’s son, Sibangilizwe Nkomo, threaten to have his father exhumed from the heroes acre (The Guardian online 6 July 2010). No sooner had Nkomo been accorded a hero status and posthumously given the title ‘Father Zimbabwe’ than ZANU PF started the annual Umdala Wethu Gala. The timing of these galas and other commemorative efforts in honour of Nkomo revealed political expediency more than a genuine intention to honour Nkomo: After ZANU-PF’s loss of a significant number of parliamentary seats to the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in the June 2000 parliamentary elections, the state broadcaster Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation (ZBC) introduced in July 2001 an honorary music gala, the Umdala Wethu (‘Our Father’ in siNdebele) gala, to commemorate his July 1999 death and to remember his contribution to the nation …. It was only in July 2001 that the musical gala was introduced, reinforcing the idea that political motivations were behind introduction of the gala. (NdlovuGatsheni and Willems 2010: 201)

ZANU’s strategy became one of arguing that those who voted MDC were betraying Nkomo’s legacy of unity and those voting for ZANU were characterised as voting for Nkomo and all he stood for, including

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land redistribution. It is too much of a coincidence also, that the rebuilding of the pedestal for Nkomo’s statue picked pace and the unveiling of Nkomo’s statue was done the year of Zimbabwe’s last general election, 2013.

The Road Towards the Erection and Re-erection of Nkomo’s Statue According to Ms Thandiwe Nkomo-Ebrahim (interview November 2015), the Nkomo family did not instigate the erection of a statue to his name. The idea emanated from parliament. The following stages towards the re-erection of the Bulawayo statue are of critical discursive significance: delays in the initial erecting of the statue; the request to have King Lobengula’s statue as well; regionalist discourses around the need to have Nkomo’s statue erected in ‘his’ province of Matabeleland; failure to erect the other statue in Harare; the persistent lobbying of government to name Main Street after Nkomo, and visits to Nkomo’s statue, particularly performance of rituals akin to sacralisation of the statue. The Chronicle of 21 July 2010 had as one of its headings: ‘Work on Nkomo statue to be completed soon’. It created a sense of anticipation which ended in disappointment with both the statue and the pedestal. The situation also divided the citizens of Bulawayo. The Chronicle of 31 August 2011 reports that ‘Dr Nkomo’s family complained that it [the statute] did not capture the exact attributes of the late Vice-President. They said the Government did not involve them in the whole project. The family said the statue itself was very small and pitiful, hardly a street statue at all, and neither the landmark nor monument that it should be’. Nkomo’s brother, Mr Edward Ginqusaba Nkomo, said as ‘the traditional head of the family[…] he was never consulted about the statue, its design, location and size’ (The Chronicle 17 September 2010). He also added: ‘The picture that has been used is one of the worst pictures of my late brother and appropriate consultations with the appropriate members of the family would have resulted in the identification of a more suitable picture’ (The Chronicle 17 September 2010). It will be argued later that the picture ZANU selected, suited their ‘picture’ of Nkomo, the kind that they wanted to present to the public—a non-threatening Nkomo the party hoped would be shorn of political significance. Ms Thandiwe Nkomo-Ebrahim said the size of the statue or portraiture

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of her late father was not the problem. The problem was the low and small pedestal that made the statue ‘look like a garden statue’ (interview November 2015). She also said government had not consulted the family as closely as it could have, especially regarding the ‘finer aspects’ of the statue (interview November 2015). Some of the public objections had to do with the fact that the statue had been manufactured in North Korea, the very country that trained the Fifth Brigade that carried out the Gukurahundi atrocities (The Standard online 18 November 2010). The enduring sense of hurt at the hands of the North Korean trained special task army unit, the Fifth Brigade, and the resultant death of over 20,0000 civilians in Matabeleland was demonstrated against the North Korean football team in early 2010. The team had been scheduled to hold camp in Bulawayo and play a couple of games against Zimbabwe’s soccer teams in preparation for the 11 June–11 July FIFA World Cup in neighbouring South Africa that same year. Ordinary residents and pressure groups in Bulawayo spoke with one voice in telling the Zimbabwean government that North Korea’s football team was not welcome in Bulawayo (Newzimbabwe.com 2010) and threatened to demonstrate everywhere the team would stay or play. Indeed, there were some threats of physical violence against the North Korean football contingent. The idea of accommodating the team in Bulawayo was seen as ‘glorification of Gukurahundi’ and an ‘insult to the people of Matabeleland’ (Newzimbabwe.com 2010). Consequently, the team stayed in Harare only. When it came to the manufacture of Nkomo’s statue, having it made in North Korea was seen in a similar vein by some parts of the Bulawayo community. To many, Nkomo represented Matabeleland and its historical hurts. As for the Nkomo family, Ms Nkomo-Ebrahim revealed that the family had a different sentiment: ‘Our family didn’t mind where the statue was made but people from Matabeleland did. Our family had forgiven and moved on’ (interview, November 2015). This is in line with a feature article, ‘Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo— The Man’ she had written in July 2013 for The Chronicle in which she concluded that her father had possessed an ‘uncanny ability to forgive and forget and let bygones be bygones for the good of the nation’ (The Chronicle 13 July 2013). Bulawayo residents were torn between those who wanted the statue to stand and those who wanted it removed. Mrs Mpofu wanted the statue to stand and commented:

424  T. Ndlovu Government should engage the Nkomo family and talk to them over this issue and let the statue remain…. Nkomo was a national figure and anything that is done about him cannot be confined to narrow interests because it concerns every Zimbabwean. If the statue is removed, that would be a waste of public funds and yet the family which is so vocal on this matter did not pay anything into that project (The Chronicle 17 September 2010).

In the same article, Mr Nkathazo Murefu takes a similar line of argument because ‘there is not much to condemn except that the pedestal is low’. This tallies with Ms Nkomo-Ebrahim (interview November 2015) and Mr Phathisa Nyathi’s views (interview November 2015). The Nkomo family insisted that the statute should be taken down and a proper pedestal erected, and the statue was indeed taken down. But not before the family was accused of arrogance by Miss Beaula Dube who concluded that it was ‘very unfair for the family to call for the pulling down of the statue’. Another resident advised the government to disregard objections by the Nkomo family: Government cannot therefore heed the objections from the Nkomo family without hurting feelings of the entire nation because Dr Nkomo cannot be owned by one family. The man was in his entire life simply a colossus, hence the name father Zimbabwe (The Chronicle 17 September 2010).

The charges against the Nkomo family and the insistence by some Bulawayo residents that Nkomo or his memory is, in a manner of speaking, ‘public property’, do bring to the fore the battle over the ‘ownership’ of Nkomo and his legacy. The family was adamant that the statue or at least the pedestal robbed Nkomo of the stature he deserved. The Nkomo family and those who shared their sentiments won. Another source of objection to the erection of the Nkomo statue in Bulawayo was its site. In a paper titled ‘Dr Joshua Nkomo’s Statue without Stature’ given at a lecture organised by the Southern African Political Economic Series in Bulawayo, Mr Phathisa Nyathi pointed out that the Bulawayo Community was offended by the pedestaling of Nkomo’s statue on the exact spot where the statue of Cecil John Rhodes used to be. This move, Nyathi argued, was read by some as ‘fitting Nkomo into the shoes of Rhodes’. In other words, this constituted a form of heritage dissonance, as explained by Nyathi: ‘Rhodes’ statue was facing north in line with the grand imperial plan of conquering Africa from Cape to Cairo and

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it is unfortunate that Nkomo’s statue was also facing in the same direction’. Seemingly responding to this source of unhappiness, the Governor and Resident Minister of Bulawayo, Mr Cain Mathema, tried to explained away this dissonance thus: ‘Dr Nkomo, being the founding father of our liberation struggle, the erection of his statue where there was Rhodes’ meant that everything that was done by Rhodes and the colonialists was reversed by his contribution to self-rule’ (The Chronicle 31 August 2011). The material that had been used to make the pedestal for the Nkomo statue was inappropriate because it was concrete covered by relatively thin slabs of granite which were bound to break at some point (Nyathi interview, November 2015). Thus, durability as one of the defining characteristics of national monuments had been compromised. The last objection by the Bulawayo community as articulated in Nyathi’s paper was the fact that the ‘statue, unlike the world-wide tradition, was nameless’ (Nyathi 2011, page unknown). The last point shows a gross omission by those involved in erecting the first statue. Perhaps, as Ms Nkomo-Ebrahim concluded, the ‘the whole project lacked forethought’ (interview November 2015). The attempt to mount Nkomo’s statue at Harare’s Karigamombe Centre elicited numerous dissonances and strong reactions from the Nkomo family and Bulawayo community. The Zimbabwe government’s decision to erect Nkomo’s statue at Karigamombe Centre in Harare incensed the Nkomo family who described the idea as a ‘mockery and insult’ (The Chronicle 29 July 2010). As The Chronicle explained, ‘Dr Nkomo was the leader of PF-Zapu, whose symbol was a charging bull. Karigamombe is a Shona word which means one who fells a cow or bull’. Phathisa Nyathi expanded: ‘The problem comes with the name of the building. In some people’s minds and in the context of Zanu and PF-Zapu, Karigamombe building symbolises supremacy over Dr Nkomo. “Kariga” comes from “kuriga” which means to topple and we know who the mombe (cow/bull) is’ (The Chronicle 29 July 2010). Unmentioned by any of the commentators is that the late Nkomo’s surname which also happens to be his totem literally means ‘cow or bull’. Totems in most of Africa are regarded as emblematic of one’s family and clan. In that sense, the suggestion by government looked like a celebration of Nkomo’s ‘defeat’—his decision to sign the Unity Accord in 1987, regarded by some, as already pointed out, as a form of surrender. Unsurprisingly, the Nkomo family viewed the honour very sceptically and concluded that ‘the honour given to Dr Nkomo was in bad

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faith’ (The Chronicle 29 July 2010). The dissonance was not limited only to the name of the centre. It also involved the former function of Karigamombe Centre. In an article titled ‘Joshua Nkomo supporters insulted by plans to put up his statue in Harare’, the South African Guardian quotes one objector saying that ‘the building, formerly the Piccadilly centre, was used to run operations during the Matabeleland massacres, or “Gukurahundi”, in the 1980s, when Mugabe’s men attacked Nkomo’s Zapu supporters’ (The Guardian online 6 July 2010). Another aggrieved Nkomoite whose father was killed during Gukurahundi and identified as Max Mkandla of the Liberators Peace Initiative is quoted as saying, ‘The orders were originating from meetings there and it is associated with Robert Mugabe and his family. It is not a befitting place for a statue of Nkomo’ (The Guardian online 6 July 2010). Some of the complainants expressed unhappiness with the general idea of erecting Nkomo’s statue in Harare. One of them said, ‘Joshua Nkomo would feel bad if he knew his statue was there [Karigamobe Centre, Harare]. He originated in Matabeleland and the statue must be kept in Matabeleland’. The individual concerned was claiming Nkomo and the latter’s memory through a regionalist perspective, as seen for example, through requests to have not only Nkomo’s statue but that of King Lobengula as well. At this stage of the essay, it should be clear that the suffering of the people in Matabeleland under Gukurahundi emerges as an enduring memory at the centre of which Nkomo is regarded as a victim alongside the people who perished or suffered under the atrocities. There is also a sense in which some want to appropriate Nkomo and his memory for the benefit of the Matabeleland region only, something that subverts the government’s discourse of Nkomo as a national hero. The dissonance in the situation above had to do with the site of the statue. As Phathisa Nyathi put it, ‘The idea is good but the place is wrong’ (The Chronicle 29 July 2010). Given that a monument’s main function is to remind, ‘[i]ts location, form, site design and inscriptions aid the recall of persons, things, events or values’ (Stevens et al. 2012: 951), and as such all these factors need to be taken into serious account. Johnson (1995: 55) puts it succinctly that ‘Space or more particularly territory is as intrinsic to memory as historical consciousness in the definition of a national identity’. Thus, spatialisation of public memory is critical. Much as statues have no intrinsic meaning, some of it, and at times a significant part, is derived from and enhanced by

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the geographical spaces that they occupy. How the government was not aware of the connotations of putting Nkomo’s statue at Karigamombe Centre is difficult to understand. Equally perplexing is how the government did not know who owned the land on the proposed site for Nkomo’s statue. There was another objection by ‘owners of Karigamombe centre’ who through the High Court, ‘stopped the Harare City Council from erecting Dr Nkomo’s statue at Karigamombe Centre on the grounds that the land belonged to the Mining Industry Pension Fund (MIPF)’ (The Chronicle 13 August 2010). Phathisa Nyathi suggested that the statue be mounted at Harare’s Africa Unity Square, whose name, centrality and stature would suit Nkomo’s statue (interview November 2015) but that had not materialised during the writing of this chapter. Hard to understand as all the oversights by government are, what the drama around the objections to have Nkomo’s statue erected at Karigambombe Centre reveals is the myth of unity under the ‘new’ and unified ZANU PF. It also revealed lack of trust in the government by both the Nkomo family and people of Matabeleland because of enduring suspicions and hurts. The path to the final unveiling of Nkomo’s statue also reveals not only lack of trust in government but also subversion of the government’s Authorised Heritage Discourse (Smith 2006: 3). To start with, when the statue was taken down, the government did not seem keen to re-erect it. The Chronicle of 26 September 2010 wrote: ‘Government has reiterated that it has shelved indefinitely, plans to re-erect the statute of the late Vice-President, Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, in any of the country’s streets’. Co-Home Affairs Minister, Kembo Mohadi, was very categorical about the matter, his tone suggesting that the statue was unlikely to be re-erected: I will say it again […] that I have taken it to the museum. It is going to be part of my museum collections. There are no plans whatsoever of reerecting the statue in any of the country’s streets as of now and those who want to see the statue can only go to the museum where we have decided to keep it. (The Chronicle 26 September 2010)

However, the Governor and Resident Minister of Bulawayo, Cain Mathema, expressed a different and hopeful sentiment. He was reported as having said that ‘like most residents he wants the statue back at Main Street, which he hinted, he would have wanted renamed Joshua Nkomo

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Way’ (The Chronicle 26 September 2010). In 2012, The Chronicle of 22 April (2012) carried a story titled, ‘Confusion over Nkomo statue’ in which these two government office bearers contradicted each other. Mathema said that the government had made $80,000 available for the re-erection of Nkomo’s statue but Mohadi challenged this claim, citing financial problems in government. There were thus mixed messages on the re-erection of the statue. Those who sounded keen like Mathema also expressed the ambition to have Main Street named after the late Nkomo. Frustrated with the slow pace or no movement in the re-erection of Nkomo’s statue, the Matojeni Cultural Society (MCS) commemorated the 13th anniversary of Nkomo’s death by putting ‘portraits of the late nationalist at the pillar meant for the installation of the statue’ (The Standard online 1 July 2012). On top of this gesture, the Society’s leader, Albert Nyoni, made a statement to the effect that ‘the group wanted to send a clear signal to the authorities, that people of Matabeleland were eagerly waiting for Nkomo’s statue to be installed to recognise his contribution for the liberation and development of the country’ (The Standard Online 1 July 2012). The MCS added a condition to their demand ‘to the powers that be’—that the statue should not be from North Korea. They too, like Mathema, wanted Main Street named after Nkomo (The Standard online 6 July 2012). In Nyoni’s words, ‘How can a veteran nationalist fail to have a road named after him in the city in his region?’ (The Standard online 6 July 2012). The demands of the MCS were regional in outlook, suggesting that it was the ‘people of Matabeleland’ who had a genuine need for the statue. The Society was apparently imposing a regional claim on the statue. It is not difficult to understand why that was the case. As Smith (2011: 10) observes, ‘monuments are also erected to satiate psychic and emotional needs of a community’. These needs would become clear after the unveiling of the statue by President Mugabe. In other words, the needs became manifest during the ‘after-life’ of the statue, that is, after the government’s constrictive rendering of the statue. Concerning the after-life of a statue, Cherry (2013: 4) writes: After-lives of statues refers to the fact that statues continue living on from their many pasts into the present, they may sustain addition or demolition, temporary accretions, adaptive re-use, appropriation, and material and visible change, and summon new visitors, uses, and appropriations.

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In the case of Nkomo’s statue, the Matojeni Cultural Society sacralised it on February 2014 (following Mugabe’s unveiling on 22 December 2013) when they ‘performed a traditional rite (ukuthethela)2 thanking Dr Nkomo for being the great leader he was’ (The Chronicle 3 February 2014). They also performed traditional dances such as isitshikitsha. Later that year, to commemorate Nkomo’s death on 1 July, the Joshua Nkomo Cultural Movement (JNCM) oraganised two events— one at Njelele3 in the Matopos and another in Bulawayo. Concerning the latter event, the chairperson ‘revealed that for the main function in Bulawayo, they will start with a walk dubbed General Josh 4 kilometre walk to healing where they would walk from Blue Lagoon at Renkini to the Dr Nkomo statue in the city centre’ (Sunday News 29 June 2014). The JNCM had turned the statue into a site of healing for the hurts of Gukurahundi, amongst others that the state had downplayed, suppressed or ignored. The only time that Mugabe deigned to acknowledge Gukurahundi atrocities was when he described the operation as a ‘moment of madness’ (NewsDay online 18 May 2015). There has never been any serious attempt at reconciliation, which would require that the government in general and the key people that directed Gukurahundi, tell the truth and express genuine contrition. In the absence of genuine reconciliation, the Nkomo statue has become an ambiguous monument for national unity, Nkomo and Matabeleland’s victimisation at the hands of the government in the 1980s, site for mourning and healing and indeed a node around which to address injustices of the past. An example of the last point about addressing past injustices was the threat by the ZIPRA Veterans Trust (ZVT) to block the erection of Nkomo’s statue, arguing that ‘erection of the statue without returning his [Nkomo’s] properties seized by government in the 1980s was the highest form of hypocrisy by President Robert Mugabe’ (The Standard online, 17 April 2011). In his autobiography, Nkomo (1984) does mention the seizure of his personal assets as well as those of ZAPU. According to ZVT, some of the properties had been ‘taken over by senior Zanu PF officials’ (The Standard online, 17 April 2011). Some of the ZVT members saw restitution as a measure of how serious ZANU PF was in genuinely honouring Nkomo whereas others thought that the block would permanently deny Matabeleland the much needed statue of Nkomo. The former group insisted that ‘It was better if Nkomo was not honoured than for his name to be used as a “pedestal” for Mugabe and Zanu PF’s political mileage’ (The Standard online 17 April 2011). It took the intervention

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of the Joshua Nkomo Foundation (JNF) under the chairmanship of Francis Nhema, then chairperson of JNF, also Minister of Environment and Tourism and also son-in-law to the late Nkomo when he was still married to Nkomo’s daughter, Louise, to allow the erection of the statue to proceed. Linked to the slow pace and doubts over the erection of Nkomo’s statue was the process of renaming Main Street after Nkomo. It took government about 7 years to ratify the City of Bulawayo’s proposal to that end. According to The Chronicle of 2 July 2013, efforts to change the street name started on 29 July 2006 with Bulawayo Governor, Cain Mathema, tabling the idea to the Bulawayo City Council (BCC). The BCC could not effect the name change because Main Street was a national as opposed to city road (Nyathi interview, November 2013). Hence, the BCC lobbied the government but did not get an answer until some days before the official unveiling of Nkomo’s statute. Before the ratification by government, there was a lot of suspicion, frustration and anger. The Chronicle of 2 July 2013 reported attempts by some Bulawayo residents to send a message of frustration to the government, hoping to prod it to hasten the renaming of Main Street. Part of the report reads: Unknown people changed Bulawayo’s Main Street to Joshua Nkomo Street while hundreds of people yesterday attended commemorations of the late Vice-President at Stanley Square. The news crew observed that the ‘new’ signposts were made of wood painted in black. Some of the signposts were nailed on the trees while some are tied to cover the original street sign. (The Chronicle 2 July 2013)

This protest gesture was not heeded and as late as 9 December 2013, BCC was reported as set to ‘re-submit the proposal to have Main Street renamed in honour of the late Vice-President Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo to ensure that the renaming coincides with the official unveiling of the statue in honour of the late veteran nationalist’ (The Chronicle 9 December 2013). In the same article, a resident is quoted as saying that delays in the re-erection of Nkomo’s statue and renaming Main Street were both ‘mockery of the late nationalist’s contribution to the liberation and development of Zimbabwe’ (ibid). Thus, the road to the erection and re-erection of Nkomo’s statue was marked by contestation and

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strife, challenging the common place idea that any monument classified as national heritage belongs to all in that ‘nation’ and is timeless. The statue, just like all national heritage monuments, proved to be ‘part of political action’ (Sorensen and Carman 2009: 3).

Conclusions: Whose Nkomo Is It? If Nkomo’s nicknames on the pedestal of his statue are symbolic labels or tags whose aim is to declare and remind us of his legacy, useful questions to ask would be: who gave him these names? Was he always known by them? What other nicknames or labels have been omitted? The significance of asking these questions is that the nicknames and labels Nkomo was given do tell us, to a large extent, how his image changed over his long political life. They also tell us the kinds of affections and disaffections he elicited in political allies and rivals. Whereas nicknames such as ‘Big Josh’ (Couzens 1992: 265) and ‘The Lion of Zimbabwe’ (Couzens 1992: 302) were endearing and upheld Nkomo, respectively, others such as ‘Father of Dissidents’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 197) reveal not only disaffection but also outsiderness in relation to parameters of the Zimbabwean nation. In other words, such nicknames and labels can tell us where Nkomo ‘belonged’ at separate moments of history and who commanded the political and moral right to claim him. Nkomo ended up as ‘Father Zimbabwe’, a descriptor that was not new but had been suppressed in post-independent Zimbabwe until his death. At the height of his popularity in the early 1960s, he was ‘King of Zimbabwe’ (Couzens 1992: 124). This period is described by NdlovuGatsheni and Willems in these terms: In the 1950s and early 1960s, he was elected as leader of major nationalist movements such as the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), the National-Democratic Party (NDP) and ZAPU. Nkomo modelled himself as a cultural nationalist who saw nationalist value in Kalanga, Ndebele and Shona historical relics and symbols and frequently drew from African traditional resources, mobilising graves of kings, monuments, religious shrines and pre-colonial history. But he also represented himself as a moderniser who transcended ethnic identities in order to reconstruct and manufacture an inclusive form of nationalism.

One could argue that the idea of Nkomo as ‘national’ rang true or at least closer to the truth at this point of his political career, hence the

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claim that black Africans were simultaneously making of and stacking on him. As already demonstrated, at the formation of ZANU PF, which coincided with the creation of an anti-Nkomo discourse, began labels of discredit such as ‘enemy of the people’ (Couzens 1992: 180) and the association of Nkomo with Matabeleland. How much Nkomo could still be said to be ‘national’ or have a national appeal diminished. Whether he was outsmarted by the new ZANU PF or this happened as a result of political ineptitude on his part is open to debate and is not what concerns us here. The point is to stress that the negative image of Nkomo, through the discourse of ZANU, would become magnified at independence with ZANU coming into power and having full control of stateowned media. His ZAPU and ZIPRA’s contributions to the struggle were almost muted in national historiography and monumentalisation. One notes that Nkomo is conspicuously absent from any of the wall murals at the national shrine, whose construction started in 1981. It is Mugabe’s ‘besuited’ figure that dominates one of the two wall murals. Ironically, Nkomo ended up buried at the Heroes Acre and got exhorted as Father Zimbabwe yet his image is absent on the two murals that tell of the country’s struggles to independence. If, as his interment at the national shrine symbolises, Nkomo is a hero, whose hero is he? This brings us back to his statue in Bulawayo. The (re)erection of the statue and Nkomo’s burial at the Heroes Acre represent the ZANU PF government’s attempts at creating a post-colonial national identity. Just like any other such attempt, it relies on eliding historical complexities and divisions. National monuments constitute only one node in the network of national memory. There are several others such as enduring memories of victimhood. Nkomo’s exclusion from early national historiography marked an outsiderness that was compounded by Gukurahundi. Looking at his statue, it is hard not to think of it as also memorialising victimhood, that of Nkomo himself and the people of Matabeleland. As Achebe (1960: 145) puts it, ‘Wherever something stands, another thing stands beside it’. Thus, in spite of the positive nicknames on the statue, or because of them, other negative descriptors keep flashing—‘cobra in a house’ (Nkomo 1984), ‘Dumbuguru’, ‘enemy of the state’ (Nkomo 1984). Although ZANU has made great efforts to manipulate the meaning of the statue and ‘appropriating’ his physical body, there is still a sense that ZANU either rudely, or through sleight of hand, wrested Nkomo from his family and the people of Matabeleland,

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hence the tacit and sometimes open tussle over the ownership of Nkomo’s memory. One plaque on the pedestal of Nkomo’s statue states that one of Nkomo’s critical legacies is ‘unity’. Indeed, towards the unveiling of Nkomo’s statue by President Mugabe, Senior Minister of Sate Simon Khaya Moyo said the unveiling ‘would be an important event in the history of Zimbabwe, demonstrating that the 1987 Unity Accord was irreversible’ (The Chronicle 9 December 2013). Mugabe himself harped on this theme, claiming that some of Nkomo’s last words were ‘unity unity unity’ (The Chronicle 23 December 2013). Related to this, Marschall (2006: 351) observes that ‘In divided societies, heritage does not only further polarise the entities but can also lead to the resolution of conflict, to the reconciliation of former enemies and to harmony and unity’ (351– 352). The question to ask is: looking at Nkomo’s statue, is there a sense of national unity and reconciliation that one gets? Obviously, the answer will depend on the beholder, their personal history and other important factors mentioned earlier on. But for people of Matabeleland, for whom personal and national identity is still overhung by Gukurahundi, the idea of unity is subsumed in victimhood. As Graham and Howard (2008: 5) remind us, there is also ‘heritage of victimhood or monuments that commemorate atrocity. At the moment, Nkomo’s statue inadvertently suggests a heritage of victimhood as seen, for example, through the healing march’ by the Matojeni Cultural Society cited above. That sense of victimhood is regional and by the same logic, the figure which embodies that victimhood, Nkomo, is claimed by people from Matabeleland who feel they have both the moral and political claim to one of their own who was politically persecuted by ZANU. The statue fails to be an unambiguous symbol of unity and reconciliation largely because of the government’s failure to recognise individual victims and survivors of Gukurahundi, a victimisation that Nkomo represented in life, and after his death. This is not to say that this is the only reason but to highlight that it is the main one. There have been no genuine efforts at proper reconciliation. The massacres are still referred to as ‘disturbances in Matabeleland and Midlands regions’ (The Chronicle 21 July 2010) and by Mugabe as ‘a moment of madness’ (NewsDay online 18 May 2015). With genuine reconciliation, it is likely that the statue could have a less ambiguous meaning. The ‘national’ aspect, of having had atrocities committed by the state and then the leaders of the two biggest political parties at the time choosing the path of unity

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would make sense, and Nkomo’s role as the key person in begetting this ‘national unity’ would also make sense to the victims of Gukurahundi as well. That way, Nkomo could, as one commentator put it ‘belong’ to all Zimbabweans—not one family, not one region of the country by its entirety (The Chronicle 17 September 2010). His full contribution to peace in post-independent Zimbabwe would be fully appreciated if the full extent of what the late Nkomo managed to comprehend and act responsibly on, that is to say, if it is brought out very clearly that if in his place there had been an egocentric and dim-witted leader, there would have been a full-scale civil war. Such an acknowledgement would also diminish the feeling amongst some people of Matabeleland that Nkomo’s memory is being misappropriated by ZANU PF for no other purpose than legitimation. If part of the government’s aim in (re)erecting the statue was to diffuse public tension and anger in Matabeleland, then that has partly succeeded. Cummings (2013: 608) writes that political elites use monuments ‘to legitimate their ideologies […] and behaviour’, and to symbolically placate a certain portion of the nation for past wrongs. The people of Matabeleland can feel that their ‘representative’ has been somewhat acknowledged at last, a sentiment that imbues one with pride, albeit of a tainted variety. At the same time, they have an outlet, a site for mourning and possible healing. The duplicity of ZANU PF comes out not only in the change of names and discourses concerning Nkomo but also in how the party accorded Nkomo exactly those attributes he had earlier claimed for himself. These are the very attributes that the Zimbabwean government’s Authorised Heritage Discourse (Smith 2006: 3) wants us to remember. For example, in his autobiography, Nkomo (1984) portrays himself as ‘the originator of the liberation struggle and symbol of unity’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 197), something that ZANU fought very hard to suppress until 1987. Nkomo’s statue stands, as we have already seen, and as justified by the writing on one of the plaques and his nickname on the northern side (Father Zimbabwe), because he was a senior nationalist and unifier. In other words, the politicians in ZANU ‘had permanent political interests rather than permanent opponents. Through use of political rhetoric, they built enemies and through the same process, they rehabilitated those enemies as long as it was convenient for their political stakes of the day’ (Ndlovu-Gatsheni and Willems 2010: 2014). Such politicking has not gone unnoticed, rendering Nkomo’s statue quite dissonant.

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While it is clear that for ZANU, the erection of Nkomo’s statue is yet another regime legitimation and political survival exercise, the statue itself defies a singular reading, alerting us to the polymorphous meaning of monuments and the salient point that statuary is neither neutral nor disinterested. Thus, much as monuments are a tool in the ‘formation and transformation of national identity’ (Cummings 2013: 525), this process is fraught with contestation. Indeed heritage is inherently divisive and dissonant (Howard 2003), but one should qualify this statement. The less thoughtful and inclusive the instigation, building and mediation of a monument is, the more divisive and dissonant it becomes. Nonetheless, the privileging of dissonance and the notion of divisiveness in reading heritage, as opposed to suppressing these two, opens up possibilities of interpretation beyond Authorised Heritage Discourse (Smith 2006: 3). Through such an approach, this chapter has demonstrated that public statuary is part of historical narrative and both are imbricated in present meaning-making. The journeys of Nkomo’s two statues indicate the vitality of historical memory against the nation state’s ‘amnesia’. The restlessness, anger, debates, pressure, threats and all manner of reactions in Bulawayo that accompanied the erection and re-erection of Nkomo’s statue in Bulawayo exposed the role of long-term memory and identity, versus ZANU’s mediated attempts to elide ethnic and regional divisions—indeed, this party’s attempts to appropriate Nkomo’s memory for both use and abuse. Attempts to erect the statue in Harare brought to the fore, some of the suspicions of the Nkomo family and Bulawayo public that the exercise of honouring Nkomo was in bad faith. The Bulawayo statue generated some unintended meanings, some of which served ZANU as the instigator and some subverted the very same party and its goals in (re)erecting Nkomo’s statue. The demure looking stature, it could be argued, is ZANU’s attempt at presenting a peaceful (read ‘non-threatening to ZANU) figure’. A statue’s pose has communicative significance. Cummings (2013: 613), for example, writes about Lenin’s outstretched hand as a ‘haranguing pose [which] suggests movement and revolutionary dynamics’. In comparison, Nkomo’s statue is passive. It does not suggest any form of exertion or expression of a strong feeling or conviction. With the faintest of smiles, it is difficult to tell if there is anything about the statue’s pose that suggests leadership or indeed, the idea of unity which the ruling ZANU PF identifies as Nkomo’s key legacy (clasped hands held in front of the chest, for example, might have illustrated this). Ms Nkomo-Ebrahim wished the statue

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showed some ‘action’, for example, a gesture that ‘he was addressing a crowd or any of the things he used to do very well’ (Nkomo-Ebrahim interview November 2015). She decried the fact that as represented by the statue, ‘he [Nkomo] is just standing’ whereas in his life he ‘was always an active man’ (ibid). So on the one hand, Nkomo became a tool in the re-invention of the Zimbabwean nation by re-inserting him and, by extension, people of Matabeleland into the country’s historiography. Nkomo and people from Matabeleland had felt excluded from the making of the nation but could, to some extent and through the statue, have a sense of Zimbabweanness from the symbolic collective suggested by the nation states’ acceptance and celebration of Nkomo. On the other hand, Nkomo’s statue refused to be contained within the meanings privileged by ZANU. To harp on Nkomo-Ebrahim’s sentiments, her late father’s statue reveals that it is not just standing there. Discourses about, and rituals performed at, the statue, particularly their ethnic and regional bias, question ZANU’s metanarrative of heritage, dredging up victimhood under Gukurahundi and also reminding us of disparaging and discrediting names that Nkomo was once called by ZANU. Even though the statue could be said, within limit, to placate anger and hurt over Gukurahundi, it is very doubtful that it is fostering unity and nation building at the moment. Looking at Nkomo’s statue, does one think of it as a symbol of reconciliation given that reconciliation is a two-way process that reaches out to the injured party at grassroots? Very unlikely. Rather, the statue stands there as a symbol of wounded Matabeleland; a reminder of unreconciled hurts. But this can change. In fact, the statue can be one of the rallying sites for the facilitation of reconciliation and closure, as well as a more genuine sense of nationhood and unity. The erection of a statue in the memory of the late Vice-President Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, if one allows for positivity, can be seen as an attempt by the ZANU PF-led government to forge, perhaps enhance, national identity. At least the re(erection) of Nkomo’s statue in Bulawayo offered that opportunity. The as yet un-erected statue in Harare offers another similar opportunity. For these opportunities to bear fruit, there should have been, and there could still be, more reflection and efforts towards inclusivity. A genuine acknowledgement and dialogue about past hurts in Matabeleland and a re-writing of official historiography are two such conduits towards achieving a real sense of not just belonging to the nation but also revealing the

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truly national character of Nkomo. Monuments give the illusion of permanence and the sacred. Yet they too, like the diffuse narratives of nationhood, change. Nkomo’s statues (assuming the one in Harare will eventually be erected) will stay alive, waiting to be imbued with meanings that make his memory truly national and therefore belonging to all Zimbabweans—past, present and future. Only then will there be a sense of moving on and moving forward.

Notes 1. Since colonial times, Matshamhlophe has been misspelt ‘Matsheumhophe’ following white colonialists’ pronunciation. 2. Ukuthethela refers to a traditional ritual of communicating with one’s ancestors and involves pouring a libation to the ground. It is normally performed in times of trouble, asking the ancestors to intercede. 3. Nkomo used to consult the Njelele shrine even as early as the days of NDP.

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438  T. Ndlovu Johnson, L. (2014). Renegotiating dissonant heritage: The statue of J.P. Coen. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 20(6), 583–598. Larsen, L. (2011). Notions of nation in Nairobi’s Nyayo-era monuments. African Studies, 70(2), 264–283. Mpofu, S. (2013). Public and diasporic online media in the discursive construction of national identity: A case of Zimbabwe. Unpublished Ph.D thesis, Johannesburg: University of the Witwatersrand. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S., & Willems, W. (2010). Reinvoking the past in the present: Changing identities and appropriations of Joshua Nkomo in post-colonial Zimbabwe. African Identities, 8(3), 191–208. NewZimbabwe.Com (2010). North Korean team not welcome: Cctivists. Online Available from http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news-2198-Bulawayo+NO+to+ North+Korea+team/news.aspx. Accessed 14 Dec 2015. NewsDay. (2015, May 18). Mugabe’s Gukurahundi role exposed. Online Available from https://www.newsday.co.zw/2015/05/18/mugabe-exposed/. Accessed 4 Jan 2016. Nkomo, J. (1984). Nkomo: The story of my life. London: Methuen. Nkomo-Ebrahim, T. (2015, November). Interview. Nyathi, P. (2011). Nkomo’s Statue without Stature. Unpublished paper. Nyathi, P. (2014). The story of a ZPRA cadre: Nicholas Macala Dube ‘Ben Mvelase’ an autobiography. Bulawayo: Amagugu Publishers. Nyathi, P. (2015, November). Interview. Savage, K. (2009). Monument wars: Washington, DC, the national mall, and the transformation of the memorial landscape. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schultz, J. (2011). Contesting the master narrative: The Arthur Ashe statue and monument avenue in Richmond, Virginia. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 28(8–9), 1235–1251. Smith, L. (2006). The uses of heritage. London: Routledge. Smith, M. M. (2011). Mapping America’s sporting landscape: A case study of three statues. The International Journal of the History of Sport, 28(8–9), 1252–1268. Sorensen, M. L. S., & Carman, J. (2009). Introduction. In M. L. S. Sorensen & J. Carman (Eds.), Heritage studies: Methods and approaches (pp. 3–10). New York: Routledge. Stevens, Q., Franck, K. A., & Fazakerley, R. (2012). Countermonuments: The anti-monumental and the dialogic. The Journal of Architecture, 17(6), 951–972. The Chronicle. (2010, July 29). Respect Nkomo family wishes, politicians plead. The Chronicle. (2010, September 26). No going back on Dr Nkomo’s statue. The Chronicle. (2010, July 21). Work on Nkomo statue ‘to be completed soon’. The Chronicle. (2010, August 13). Nkomo statue likely to be erected today.

18  WHOSE NKOMO IS IT ANYWAY? JOSHUA … 

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The Chronicle. (2010, September 17). Reconsider move to pull down Nkomo statue. The Chronicle. (2011, August 31). Street to be named after Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo. The Chronicle. (2012, April 22). Confusion over Nkomo statue. The Chronicle. (2013, December 9). Unveiling the statue and renaming Main street after Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo. The Chronicle. (2013, December 9). Main street renaming proposal back on agenda. The Chronicle. (2013, July 13). Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo—The Man, feature article by Thandiwe Nkomo-Ebrahim. The Chronicle. (2013, July 2). City remembers Umdala Wethu. The Chronicle. (2014, February 13). Culture group pays tribute to Nkomo. The Guardian (South Africa). (2010, July 6). Joshua Nkomo supporters insulted by plans to put up his statue in Harare. Online Available from http://www. theguardian.com/world/2010/jul/06/zimbabwe-nkomo-statue-zapumatabeland. Accessed 2 Sept 2015. The Standard. (2010, November 18). Nkomo statue did not meet our standards. Online Available from http://www.thestandard.co.zw/2010/11/18/ nkomo-statue-did-not-meet-our-standards/. Accessed 2 December 2015. The Standard. (2011, April 17). New twist in Joshua Nkomo statue saga. Online Available from http://www.thestandard.co.zw/2011/04/17/new-twist-injoshua-nkomo-statue-saga/. Accessed 3 Oct 2015. The Standard. (2012, July 1). Erect Nkomo statue, cultural society tells govt. Online Available from http://www.thestandard.co.zw/2012/07/01/erectnkomo-statue-cultural-society-tells-govt/. Accessed 1 Oct 2015. The Standard. (2015, September 6). Mnangagwa irks Nkomo’s son. Online Available from http://www.thestandard.co.zw/2015/09/06/mnangagwairks-nkomos-son/. Accessed 22 Oct 2015. Vambe, M. T. (2009). Fictions of autobiographical representation: Joshua Nkomo’s the story of my life. Journal of Literary Studies, 25(1), 80–97.

Further Reading

Arnold, D., & Hardiman, D. (Eds.). (1994). Subaltern studies VIII: Essays in honour of Ranajit Guha. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Arnold, J. R., & Wiener, R. (2008). Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe. Minneapolis: 21st Century Books. Banana, C. S. (1989). Turmoil and tenacity: Zimbabwe 1890–1990. Harare: The College Press Ha. Beresford, A. (2014). Nelson Mandela and the politics of South Africa’s unfinished liberation. Review of African Political Economy, 41(140), 297–305. Bhebe, N. (2004). Simon Vengayi Muzenda and the struggle for and liberation of Zimbabwe. Gweru: Mambo Press. Bhebe, N., & Ranger, T. (1995). General introduction. In N. Bhebe & T. Ranger (Eds.), Soldiers in Zimbabwe’s liberation war (pp. 1–23). London: James Currey. Blackey, R. (1974, June). Fanon and Cabral: A contrast in theories of revolution for Africa. Journal of Modern African Studies, 12(2), 191–209. Boyer, M. C. (1996). The city of collective memory: Its historical imagery and architectural entertainments. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Caute, D. (1983). Under the skin: The death of white Rhodesia. Harmondsworth: Penguin. De Certeau, M. (1988). The writing of history (T. Conley, Trans.). New York: Columbia University Press. Chihambakwe, S. (1983). Zimbabwe commission of inquiry into the Matebeleland disturbances September 1983–84—Report not released by government. Chingono, H. (2008). Revolutionary-warfare and the Zimbabwe war of liberation: A strategic analysis. Unpublished PhD thesis.

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5

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442  Further Reading Cliffe, L., Alexander, J., Cousins, B., & Gaidzanwa, R. (Eds.). (2013). Outcomes of the post 2000 fast track land reform in Zimbabwe. London: Routledge. Collins, J. (2013). Ruins, Redemption, and Brazil’s imperial exception. In A. L. Stoner (Ed.), Imperial debris: On ruins and ruination (pp. 162–193). Durham: Duke University Press. Dabengwa, D. (2012, December 20). Mnangagwa put me in jail. The New Zimbabwean. Declaration of Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Council (ZPRC) on 3rd Plenary Session, December 31, 1974–January 4, 1975, Lusaka. Dubow, S. (2007). Thoughts on South Africa: Some preliminary ideas. In H. E. Stolten (Ed.), History making and present day politics: The meaning of collective memory in South Africa (pp. 51–72). Uppsala: Nordic Africa Institute. Dussel, E. (2010). Globalisation, organization and the ethics of liberation. Organization, 13(4), 489–508. Eley, G. (1996). Is all the world a text? From social history to the history of society twodecades later. In T. McDonald (Ed.), The historic turn in the human sciences (pp. 193–244). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Eley, G. (1996). Is all the world a text? From social history to the history of society two decades later. In T. McDonald (Ed.), The historic turn in the human sciences (pp. 193–244). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings. New York: Pantheon Books. Fox-Genovese, E. (1989). Literary criticism and the politics of new historicism. In H. A. Veeser. (Ed.), The new historicism. New York: Routledge. Friedman, M. P., & Kenney, P. (2005). Introduction: History in politics. In M. P. Friedman & P. Kenney (Eds.), Partisan histories: The past in contemporary global politics (pp. 1–13). New York: Palgrave. Fundire, S., et al. (Eds.). (1995). Gender research on urbanization, planning housing and everyday life. Harare: ZWRCN. Garba, J. (1987). Diplomatic soldiering. Nigeria: Spectrum Books Limited. Gleijeses, P. (2013). Visions of freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the struggle for Southern Africa 1976–1991. Durham: University of North Carolina Press. Guha, R. (1982). Subaltern studies no. 1: Writing on South Asian history and ­society. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Gunn, S. (2006). From Hegemony to governmentality: Changing conceptions of power in social history. Journal of Social History, 39(3), 705–720. Halisi, C. R. D. (1999). Black political thought in the making of South African democracy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Hull, R. (1981). Zimbabwe: Time running out. Current History, 80, 120–133. Interview with Moyo Jaconiah. (2015, October 26). Bulawayo, Zimbabwe.

Further Reading

  443

Interview with Ndlovu Saul Gwakuba. (2015, September 25). Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. Jeater, D. (1997). Histories of war. Journal of African History, 38(2), 334–335. Joshua Nkomo National Foundation. (n.d.). The Nkomo Museum, Joshua Nkomo national foundation, no 17 Aberdeen Rd, Bulawayo. Kriger, N. J. (1992). Zimbabwe’s guerrilla war: Peasant voices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kriger, N. J. (1988). The Zimbabwean war of liberation: struggles within the struggle. Journal of Southern African Studies, 14(2), 304–322. Lawson, B. E., & Kirkland, F. M. (1999). Frederick douglas: A critical reader. New Jersey: Wiley. Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007). On the coloniality of being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2–3), 241–270. Marschall, S. (2008). The heritage of post-colonial societies. In B. Graham & P. Howard (Eds.), The ashgate research companion to heritage and identity (pp. 347–364). Hampshire: Ashgate Publishing Limited. Mawema, M. (1979). Why I resigned from NDP to join the Zimbabwe national party, salisbury, September 1961. In C. Nyangoni & G. Nyandoro (Eds.), Zimbabwe independence movements: Select documents (pp. 48–50). London: Rex Collings. Mbembe, A. (2014, September 26–October 2). Class, race and the new native. Mail & Guardian. Mignolo, W. D. (2003). The darker side of renaissance: Literacy. Territoriality and colonisation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Moore, D. (n.d.). Southern African in the cold war post-1974. The Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe Confrontation-Conference Proceedings. Moyo, S. (2000). The political economy of land acquisition and redistribution in Zimbabwe, 1990–1999. Journal of Southern African Studies, 26(1), 9–25. Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2018). A world without others: Essays on the paradigm of difference and politics of alterity. (Forthcoming). Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2006). Puppets or Patriots! A study of nationalist rivalry over the spoils of dying Settler colonialism in Zimbabwe, 1977–1980. In W. J. Burszta, T. Kamusella, & S. Wojciechowski (Eds.), Nationalisms across the globe: An overview of nationalisms in state-endowed and stateless nations. Volume II: The world (pp. 345–398). Poznan: School of Humanities and Journalism, Slavic Institute, Centre for the Study of Nationalities, & Institute for Western Affairs. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. (1986). Decolonizing the mind: The politics of language in African literature. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House. Ngwenya, S. (2004). Joshua Nkomo: Father Zimbabwe. Harare: Zimbabwe Publishing House.

444  Further Reading Norval, A. (2000). The things we do with words: Contemporary approaches to the analysis of ideology. British Journal of Political Science, 30(2), 313–346. Nyarota, G. (2006). Against the grain: Memoirs of a Zimbabwean newsman. Cape Town: Zebra Press. Nyathi, P. In search of freedom: Edward Ndlovu. Unpublished manuscript in the possession of Pathisa Nyathi. Nyathi, P., & Chikomo, K. (2013). The chevron circle iconography in African aesthetics: Celebrating the golden jubilee of the organisation for African unity. Bulawayo: Amagugu Publishers. Nyathi, P. In search of freedom: Alfred Nikita Mangena. Unpublished manuscript in the possession of Pathisa Nyathi. Nyathi, P. Lest we forget: George Silundika. Unpublished manuscript in the possession of Pathisa Nyathi. Nyathi, P. The Life and Times of Joshua Nkomo. Unpublished manuscript in the possession of Pathisa Nyathi. O’Tuathail, G. (1996). Critical geopolitics: The politics of writing global space. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Phimister, I. (1987). Zimbabwe: The combined and contradictory inheritance of the struggle against colonialism. Transformation, 5, 51–59. Phimister, I. (1987). Zimbabwe: The combined and contradictory inheritance of the struggle against colonialism. Transformation, 5, 51–59. Rabate, J.-M. (1996). The ghosts of modernity. Gainesville: University Press o Florida. Raftopoulos, B. (2007). Review Fay Chung review of re-living. Review of African political economy, 114, 757–7568. Accessed March 5, 2016, from http://weaverpresszimbabwe.com/index.php/reviews/35-re-living-the-second-chimurenga-memories-. Raftopoulos, B., & Mlambo, S. (2009). Becoming Zimbabwe: A history from the pre-colonial period to 2008. Harare: Weaver Press & Jacana Media. Ranger, T. (2002). The Zimbabwe elections: A personal experience. Transformation, 19(3), 159–170. Ranger, T. (2003). Introduction to volume two. In T. Ranger (Ed.), The historical dimensions of democracy and human rights in Zimbabwe: Volume two: Nationalism, democracy and human rights (pp. 1–37). Harare: University of Zimbabwe Publications. Ranger, T. (2005). Rule by historiography: The struggle over the past in contemporary Zimbabwe. In R. Muponde & R. Primorac (Eds.), Versions of Zimbabwe (pp. 217–243). Harare: Weaver Press. Rhodesia. (1941). Land apportionment act. Salisbury: Govt. Printers. Sachikonye, L. M. (2011). When a state turns on its citizens: 60 years of institutionalized violence in Zimbabwe. Cape Town: Jacana Media.

Further Reading

  445

Santos, S. B. (2006, October 24). Beyond abyssal thinking: From global lines to ecologies of knowledge. A paper presented at the Fernand Braudel Center, University of New York, Binghamton. Scarnecchia, T. (2015). Intransigent diplomat: Robert mugabe and his western diplomacy, 1963–1983. In S. J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (Ed.), Mugabeism? History, politics and power in Zimbabwe (pp. 77–92). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Schmidt, E. (2013). Foreign intervention in Africa: From the cold war to the war on terror. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Schreiner, O. C. ([1923] 1976). Thoughts on South Africa: Africana Reprint Library Volume 10. Johannesburg: Africana Book Society. Sithole, M. (1978). Rhodesia: An assessment of the viability of the AngloAmerican proposals. World Affairs, 141(1), 71–81. Sithole, S. (1984). Class and factionalism in the Zimbabwe nationalist movement. African Studies Review, 27(1), 117–125. Speech by Joshua Nkomo at World Conference against Apartheid, Racism and Colonialism in Southern Africa, Lisbon, 16–19 January 1977. Speech by Joshua Nkomo at the 28th Session of the OAU Liberation Committee, Lusaka, 31 January 1977. Speech by Joshua Nkomo at the Third Congress of FRELIMO, Maputo, February 3–7 1977. Stedman, S. J. J. (1990). Peacemaking in civil war: International mediation in Zimbabwe, 1974–1980. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers. Sutherland, C. (2005). Nation-building through discourse theory. Nations and Nationalism, 11(2), 185–202. Terreblanche, S. (2002). A history of inequality in South Africa, 1652–2002. Scottsville: University of KwaZulu-Natal Press. The Chronicle. (2013, December 1). Dr Nkomo statue to be erected this week. The Chronicle. (1958, January 3). The Sunday News. (2015, April 12). There is more to statues than what meets the eye. Sunday. Wright, P. (1991). A journey through the ruins: The last days of London. London: Radius. Yap, P. K. (2001). Uprooting the weeds: Power, violence, ethnicity and violence in the matebeleland conflict, 1980–1987. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Helsinki. Zimbabwe Review Vol. 3 Quarterly No. 4/74. Zimbabwe Review Vol. 4 March/April 2/75. Zimbabwe Review Vol. 3, No. 1/74. Zimbabwe Review Vol. 3, 3/74 & Vol. 3 No. 4/74. Zimbabwe Review, 5, March–April, 2/76. Zimbabwe Review, Vol. 5 December-October, 5/76.

446  Further Reading Zimbabwe Review, Vol. 5 January–February, 1/76. Zimbabwe. (1981). Intensive resettlement policies and procedures. Harare: Ministry of Lands, Resettlement and Rural Development. Zimbabwe. (1981, February). Growth with equity: An economic policy statement. Harare: Govt. of the Republic of Zimbabwe. Zizek, S. (2009). Violence: The six sideways reflections. London: Profile Books.

Index

A Africanism, 6 African National Congress (ANC), 27, 74, 81, 85, 88, 93, 95–100, 124, 132, 137, 140, 141, 150, 158, 160, 161, 163, 169, 184, 288, 301–305, 308–311, 313, 314, 321, 391, 401 African nationalism, 308, 309, 330, 334, 336, 390 Angola, 4, 76, 82, 99, 101, 103, 119, 122–125, 131–133, 150, 158, 166–168, 175–177, 180 Anti-Air, 162, 167 Anti-colonialism, 4 Armed liberation struggle, 14, 29, 91, 149, 151, 152, 154, 158, 161, 165, 413 Armed Struggle, 18, 24, 26, 28, 35, 60, 69, 73–75, 77, 78, 80, 84, 85, 88, 92, 95, 96, 98–100, 102, 105, 106, 121, 122, 139, 168, 230, 248, 306, 311, 416, 418, 421 Arms Caches, 8, 22, 23, 187, 290 Assembly Point, 168, 169

Autobiography, 6, 10, 13, 18, 24–29, 35, 37, 94, 117, 122, 129, 140, 186, 187, 189, 190, 213, 214, 216, 218, 227, 231, 240, 246–248, 300, 320, 325, 327, 328, 390, 392, 393, 413, 414, 417, 419, 429, 434 B Big Josh, 111, 390, 431 Biko, Steve, 3, 115 Botswana, 16, 24, 81, 86, 103, 121, 123, 151, 160, 187, 303, 308 Britain, 10, 52, 55, 57, 58, 63, 68, 82, 92, 102, 109, 110, 123, 127, 136, 137, 149, 151, 156, 159, 174, 183, 185, 263, 271, 272, 319, 418, 420 Bulawayo, 16, 21, 22, 33, 34, 40, 50, 51, 53–55, 64, 76, 86, 130, 137, 142, 154, 164, 166, 187, 200, 238, 267, 290, 291, 303, 304, 316, 317, 319, 374, 376, 378, 379, 381, 383–387, 394–399, 401, 405–410, 414, 415, 420,

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 S.J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (ed.), Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo of Zimbabwe, African Histories and Modernities, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-60555-5

447

448  Index 422–425, 427, 429, 430, 432, 435, 436 C Cabral, Amilcar, 3, 92, 120 Cameron, Hazel, 2 Castro, Fidel Chibwechitedza, 8, 17, 57, 111, 193, 194, 210, 238, 409, 410 Chigwedere, Aeneas, 2 Chikerema, James, 14, 53, 56, 95, 119, 158, 161, 305 Chinamano, Josiah, 66, 111, 268, 290, 312 Chirau, Jeremiah (Chief), 109, 161, 179, 181 Chitepo, Herbert, 3 CODESA Cold War, 37, 92, 122, 123, 134, 140, 150, 152, 155–160, 167–170, 175, 176, 180, 184 Cold War coloniality, 2, 11, 36 Colonel Hashim Mbita, 97 Colonialism, 1, 3, 4, 11, 20, 28, 35– 37, 39, 51, 59, 79, 80, 92, 103, 104, 107, 118, 120–122, 125, 127–130, 136, 144, 156, 174, 194–202, 205–208, 210, 216, 220, 221, 239, 245, 302, 318, 321, 342, 343, 350, 359–361, 364, 365, 370, 376, 377, 392, 394, 415 Colour Bar, 64 Commemoration, 33, 39, 143 Cuba, 36, 63, 66, 81, 123, 153, 177 D Dabengwa, Dumiso, 23, 76, 86, 87, 96, 124, 130, 137, 144, 154, 187, 318, 385 Decoloniality, 11, 125, 221

Decolonization, 2, 49, 70, 77, 81, 82, 84, 88 Detente, 151 Dhlakama, Alphonso, 76 Dissident, 22, 30, 34, 188, 189, 373, 374, 378 Douglas, Frederick, 341 E Econet Wireless Joshua Nkomo Scholarship, 390 Ethnicity, 6, 8, 14, 16, 65, 93, 302, 307, 412, 417 Exile, 6, 10, 15, 24, 25, 28–30, 56–59, 66, 76, 79, 85–88, 124, 141, 188, 202, 208, 292, 300, 307, 315, 317, 327, 328, 333, 338, 386, 390, 391, 393, 420 F Fast-Track Land Reform, 32 Father of Dissidents, 4, 8, 24, 30, 118, 143, 208, 237, 239, 240, 317, 331, 336, 378, 386, 416, 420, 431 Father Zimbabwe, 111, 230, 233, 300, 387, 393, 409 Federation, 52, 53, 81, 260, 262, 303–305, 391 Fifth Brigade, 2, 4, 14, 23, 24, 30, 139, 141, 142, 239, 240, 268, 292, 317, 318, 331, 332, 420, 423 First Chimurenga, 17, 57 FRELIMO, 63, 74, 81, 85, 88, 95, 96, 100, 101, 103, 106, 124, 137, 150, 311 Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (FROLIZI), 95, 97 Frontline States, 19, 68, 97

Index

G Geneva Conference, 68, 94, 102, 133, 159, 160, 165, 178 Global imperial snares, 119 Gukurahundi, 23, 30, 139–142, 144, 189, 190, 268, 270, 280, 284, 291, 293, 317, 318, 329, 331–333, 378, 380–383, 386, 397, 417, 420, 423, 426, 429, 432–434, 436 H Hagiography, 12, 50 Harare, 30, 33, 40, 76, 78, 79, 84, 85, 131, 142, 169, 187, 189, 267, 268, 275, 289, 312, 319, 330, 374, 376–378, 381–383, 387, 389, 394, 396–399, 401, 402, 405–408, 410, 422, 423, 425–427, 435–437 Hauntology, 39, 323, 324, 326, 327, 338 Humanism, 115, 215, 250 I Immortalization, 39, 40, 389, 390, 395, 399, 402 Imperialism, 33, 34, 80, 103, 120, 121, 125, 127, 135, 174, 225 Imperialism of decolonization, 11, 36 Integration, 165, 169, 187, 198, 240, 276 J Joint Military Command, 96, 151 Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo International Airport, 34, 384 Joshua Nkomo Memorial Museum, 395

  449

K Karigamombe debacle, 381 Kaunda, Kenneth, 28, 65, 67, 101, 115, 133, 165, 174, 185 Kissinger, Henry, 100, 127, 132, 151, 159, 161, 177 L Lancaster House, 36, 67, 68, 75, 110, 131, 134–136, 144, 152, 154, 155, 162, 163, 166, 168, 170, 183, 185, 186, 263, 271, 419 Lancaster House Agreement, 63, 69, 91, 110, 131, 136, 186, 301, 311, 312, 418 Lancaster House Conference, 3, 11, 18, 19, 36, 79, 87, 123, 131– 136, 262, 312, 391 Land Reform, 32, 38, 253, 263, 271–273, 276, 285, 376, 413 Leadership, 6, 17–20, 22, 28, 34–36, 51–56, 58–60, 62, 64, 65, 68, 69, 93, 94, 96, 97, 100, 102, 104, 116, 118, 121, 124, 128, 129, 132, 135, 151, 173–176, 178, 180–183, 185, 187, 188, 190, 207, 209, 213, 219, 231, 238, 246, 272, 279, 290, 294, 307, 314, 336, 384, 395, 413, 415, 417, 418, 435 Lord Soames, 136, 185 M Machel, Samora, 65, 119, 161, 175, 337 Mama, Mafuyane, 7 Mandela, Nelson, 4, 16, 28, 220, 249, 286, 300, 303, 314, 320, 394 Mangena, Nikita, 97, 151, 165, 167 Marxism-Leninism, 124

450  Index Mashonaland, 7, 8, 16–18, 20, 33, 99, 111, 116, 228, 231, 305, 407, 410, 418 Masuku, Lookout, 15, 23, 76, 130, 132, 137, 187, 224, 268, 281, 286, 317 Matebeleland, 75, 86, 87, 291, 294, 390, 391, 393, 396–399, 402 Matopos, 9, 17, 25, 228, 257, 377, 399, 429 Matopos Hills, 8, 9, 24, 247, 334, 336 Media, 39, 73, 77, 79, 87, 88, 188, 189, 373, 379, 380, 383, 387, 412, 413, 432 Memoir, 16, 39, 117, 323–328, 333, 334, 337, 338 Memorialization, 38, 39, 280, 282, 284, 288, 294, 374, 376, 390, 413 Memory, 1, 39, 40, 70, 205, 206, 282, 284, 294, 373, 375, 376, 380, 382–384, 389, 390, 393, 395, 396, 398, 399, 401, 406–408, 410, 411, 414, 420, 424, 426, 432–437 Midlands Region, 2, 4, 6, 8, 14, 30, 433 Moyo, Gorden, 3, 11, 35 Moyo, Jason Ziyaphapha, 3, 53, 83, 95, 102, 121, 151, 157, 160 Mozambique, 3, 7, 63, 65, 74, 76, 79, 82, 85, 97, 100, 103, 119, 122, 124, 132–134, 136, 150, 151, 158, 159, 163, 175, 178–180, 185, 254, 260, 263, 311, 312 Msika, Joseph, 53, 64–66, 111, 268, 305, 307 Msipa, Cephas, 7, 117 Mugabe, Robert Gabriel, 2–6, 8–10, 13–16, 20–24, 26, 28–30, 31–33, 36, 37, 39, 57, 68, 69, 75, 76, 78, 85–87, 95, 101–103, 110,

111, 116, 122, 124, 126, 133– 144, 168, 173, 175, 176, 178, 179, 181–183, 185–190, 193, 208, 209, 219, 220, 227, 231, 239, 240, 267, 275, 276, 283, 285, 286, 288–294, 311–313, 315–318, 320, 324–326, 328, 331–334, 336–338, 373, 377, 378, 381, 383, 384, 390, 392, 393, 397, 402, 408–411, 414, 415, 417–420, 426, 428, 429, 432, 433 Muzorewa, Abel (Bishop), 14, 19, 68, 79, 84, 85, 93, 95, 97, 99, 100, 102, 109, 110, 128, 137, 151, 153, 161, 179, 181, 184–186, 290, 313 N Narration of the nation, 5, 10, 11 National Democratic Party (NDP), 17, 56, 57, 60, 61, 67, 93, 94, 120, 174, 238, 305, 306, 377, 391, 415, 431 National Diplomat, 188 Nationalism, 1, 4, 6, 9–11, 13–17, 20, 34, 40, 53, 56, 65, 70, 279, 335–337, 389, 402, 415, 416, 431 National Monement, 37, 56–58, 64, 65, 69, 93, 98–100, 116, 119, 127, 132, 150, 157, 176, 222, 223, 230, 233, 238, 261, 275, 306, 307, 431 National Unity, 18, 20, 25, 26, 30, 32, 77, 96, 110, 143, 239, 275, 276, 291, 312, 316, 317, 378, 413, 419, 429, 433, 434 Nation-building, 5, 14, 20, 21, 30, 34, 35, 38, 249, 290, 331, 375, 413 Ndebele culture, 246–250

Index

Ndebele-speaking people, 6, 23, 317, 318, 337 Ndiweni, Khayisa (Chief), 109, 161 Ndlovu-Gatsheni, Sabelo J., 3, 4, 15–17, 18, 22–24, 29, 30, 34, 38, 94, 111, 116, 117, 121, 122, 125–130, 135, 136, 138, 139, 142, 143, 221, 230, 234, 239, 248, 281, 285, 286, 290, 291, 302, 308, 318, 324, 331, 334–336, 347, 396, 410, 415, 416, 420, 421, 431, 434 Negotiations, 19, 27–29, 36, 52, 57–59, 62–64, 67, 69, 79, 94, 95, 98, 101, 102, 105, 174, 177, 179–181, 183, 185, 198, 203, 262, 263, 313, 419 New historicism, 11, 12 Ngwali/Mwari, 8, 25 Njelele, 9, 111, 429 Nkomo, J.M., Street, 40, 405 Nkomo, Joshua Mqabuko, 1–40, 49–70, 73–77, 79, 81–89, 91–95, 97–111, 115–145, 151–154, 156, 157, 160, 161, 164, 165, 167–169, 174–191, 193–201, 203–210, 213–234, 237–250, 253, 256–271, 275, 276, 279, 280, 281, 283–294, 299–307, 311–321, 323–339, 341–371, 373, 374, 376–387, 389–402, 405–437 Nkomoscapes, 390 Nkomo’s Statue, 379, 380, 382, 383, 396–398, 402, 406–409, 411– 416, 420, 422–430, 433–436 Nkrumah, Kwame, 28, 55, 115, 157, 189, 199 Non-Aligned Movement, 74, 80, 124 Northern Rhodesia, 52, 260, 304 North Korea, 23, 150, 156, 165, 239, 379, 397, 420, 423, 428

  451

Nyandoro, George, 53, 56, 95, 305 Nyasaland, 52, 64, 260, 262, 303, 304 Nyathi, Pathisa, 2, 3, 11, 35, 153, 382, 413, 425–427 Nyerere, Julius, 26, 65, 84, 115, 157, 161, 336 O OAU Liberation Committee, 83, 88, 95–97, 105, 162, 178 Operation Gukurahundi, 88, 188, 189, 281, 282 Operation Murambatsvina, 274 Organization of African Unity (OAU), 19, 65, 81, 83, 84, 88, 94–100, 102–105, 111, 157, 162, 176, 178, 180, 181, 306 P Pan-Africanism, 6, 55, 115, 117 Pan-Africanist Congress (PAC), 125, 310 Paradigm of peace, 37, 213–215, 231, 233, 248–250 Paradigm of war, 35, 37, 216, 224, 225, 248–250 Patriotic Front (PF), 19, 20, 74–78, 84–87, 99, 101–104, 108–111, 116, 137, 138, 141–144, 159, 178, 180, 182–186, 190, 220, 224, 271, 291, 294, 312, 373–375, 377–380, 382–386, 391–394, 397, 402, 407, 410, 413, 414, 419–421, 425, 427, 429, 432, 434–436 Patriotic Front-Zimbabwe African People’s Union (PF-ZAPU), 2–4, 6–8, 12, 14, 19–23, 29–32, 239, 240, 279, 290, 294, 312, 313, 315–317, 323, 324, 331–334, 337, 338, 382

452  Index Patriotic History, 40, 75, 77, 190, 191, 294, 334, 338 Peace-making Pearce Commission, 95 People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), 74, 81, 88, 96, 99, 100, 124, 125, 137, 175, 176 Philosophy of liberation, 11, 37, 195, 200, 203, 204, 206, 208–210, 213, 220 Political consciousness, 39, 116, 300, 301, 303 Political formation, 6, 7, 14, 116, 117, 119–122, 124, 126, 145, 195, 227, 240 R Ranger, Terence, 13, 16, 19, 64, 75, 77, 116, 123, 375 Realpolitik, 2 Regular Army, 153, 164, 166, 167 Revisionism, 11, 15, 117 Rhodesia, 2, 7, 22, 25, 28, 29, 35, 36, 56–58, 60, 64, 65, 67, 68, 79, 80, 82, 83, 85, 87, 92, 93, 95, 98, 100, 101, 103, 106, 107, 109, 120, 123, 125, 128, 131, 132, 134, 135, 137, 149–153, 159–161, 163–166, 174–177, 179, 180, 184, 185, 195, 200, 203, 205, 210, 214, 219, 223, 225, 238, 248, 256–260, 262, 263, 283, 289, 290, 303, 325, 331, 366, 392, 416 Rhodesia Railways, 247, 301, 304 S Savimbi, Jonas, 76 Second Chimurenga, 333

Self-representation, 13, 238, 246 Self-writing, 12, 117, 342, 346–353, 355, 356, 358, 359, 361, 365, 370, 371 Shona-speaking people, 6, 307 Shuttle Diplomacy, 101, 151, 158, 177 Silundika, George T., 80, 82, 119, 156, 418 Sithole, Ndabaningi (Reverend), 58, 68, 94, 119, 129, 161, 179, 230, 307, 311, 417 Slippery stone, 17, 238, 409, 410 Sociogenic approach, 38 Southern Rhodesia, 35, 51–54, 56, 59, 63, 64, 66, 94, 157, 214, 255, 260–262, 301, 304–306, 330 Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), 6, 17, 50–57, 67, 93, 120, 156, 238, 415, 431 Southern Rhodesia Bantu Congress, 54 Soviet Union, 2, 36, 37, 58, 66, 76, 86, 89, 92, 122–124, 126, 129–131, 133, 134, 141, 150, 152–157, 159–162, 164–168, 170, 176, 177, 184 Statue, 34, 40, 142, 373, 374, 376–386, 389, 395–398, 405–410, 413, 415, 420, 422–436 Struggle-within-the struggle, 13, 40, 41, 117 Subjection, 29, 195, 341–351, 353–365, 367–371 Subjectivity, 224, 347, 348, 350, 353, 355, 360, 370 Supra-nationalist, 5, 28, 336

Index

T Thatcher, Margaret, 127, 130, 131, 133, 164, 184, 185 Todd, Sir Garfield, 15, 64 Tongogara, Josiah, 26, 136, 168, 178, 181, 182, 263, 312 Trade unionism, 413 Transitional Justice, 281, 285, 286 Triple helix of identity, 6 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, 281 Tshombe, 21, 92, 93 Turning Point Strategy, 130, 152– 155, 160, 166–168 U Umdala Wethu, 8, 9, 33, 74, 193, 194, 210, 393, 410, 413, 421 Umdala Wethu Gala, 143, 421 Umkhonto we Sizwe, 158, 160, 169, 311 Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), 80, 82, 120, 141, 149, 174, 177, 325 United States of America (USA), 63, 68, 81, 83, 92, 94, 100, 101, 122, 123, 125–130, 134, 137, 140, 144, 145, 151, 156, 159, 161, 164, 170, 175, 177, 179, 180, 184, 263, 282, 305 Unity Accord, 2–4, 29–31, 77, 86, 92, 97, 141, 142, 144, 151, 169, 240, 271, 279, 280, 290, 293, 333, 338, 384, 392, 395, 402, 416, 420, 425, 433 V Vambe, Maurice, 12, 13, 392, 414 Viscount Aircraft, 164

  453

Z Zambia, 10, 21, 22, 64–67, 76, 79, 81, 93, 97, 101, 103, 105, 121, 124, 133, 134, 152, 154, 160, 162–164, 167, 168, 174, 176, 178–180, 183, 185, 254, 260, 263 Zero Hour, 76, 130, 152, 153, 155, 167 Zimbabwe, 1–10, 12, 13, 15–19, 21, 24–26, 28–33, 35–41, 49, 50, 56, 58, 65–70, 73–89, 91–105, 107–111, 115–123, 125, 126, 128–144, 150, 152, 153, 155, 157, 158, 160, 161, 163, 164, 166, 168, 169, 174–179, 182, 184–190, 193, 194, 197, 203, 208, 210, 219, 223–225, 230, 231, 233, 234, 237–240, 245, 253, 255–260, 262–264, 266–268, 271–276, 279–286, 288–294, 299–307, 311–321, 323–329, 331, 332, 334–338, 366, 373–380, 382–387, 389–392, 394–402, 405–411, 413–416, 419–425, 430–434 Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), 7, 8, 14, 16, 18, 20–22, 26, 58, 75, 77, 78, 86, 91, 97, 101, 110, 116, 122, 124, 129, 136, 150, 158, 159, 168, 174–176, 178–185, 187, 231, 240, 263, 286–288, 311, 316, 317, 418, 419 Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), 6–9, 13, 15, 18–21, 23, 26, 28, 58, 65, 68, 69, 75–79, 81, 85–87, 91, 93–99, 101, 102, 104, 109, 110, 116, 122, 124, 125, 129, 130, 133, 134, 136– 138, 141–144, 150, 151, 158, 161, 169, 173–176, 178–181,

454  Index 183, 184, 186–190, 220, 224, 230, 239, 263, 268, 270, 271, 275, 276, 290, 291, 293, 294, 307, 311, 312, 316, 317, 325, 327, 336, 373–375, 377–380, 382–386, 391–395, 397, 402, 407, 410, 413–415, 417–422, 427, 429, 432–436 Zimbabwe African National UnionPatriotic Front (ZANU-PF), 1–8, 10, 12–15, 19–34, 37–40, 169, 188–191, 239, 240, 271, 274–276, 280, 291, 312, 313, 315, 316, 324–328, 331–334, 336–338, 386, 420, 421 Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), 2, 4, 6–9, 11, 14, 16– 20, 23, 26, 29, 31, 33–36, 49, 57, 58, 60, 62–69, 74–83, 85–88, 91, 93–102, 104, 108–111, 116–118, 120–125, 127–134, 136–138, 140, 141, 144, 150– 152, 154–166, 168, 169, 174, 176, 180, 183, 186–191, 204, 208, 238, 239, 253, 262, 263,

266–268, 270, 275, 276, 286, 290, 302, 306, 307, 311, 312, 317–320, 332–334, 336, 377, 378, 380, 382–384, 386, 389, 391, 392, 395, 397, 401, 414, 415, 417–420, 429, 431, 432 Zimbabwe National Army, 21, 165, 169 Zimbabwe People’s Army (ZIPA), 15, 78, 97, 103, 104, 151, 158, 176, 178 Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), 2, 4, 6–8, 11, 12, 14–16, 20–24, 28, 36, 37, 57, 58, 66, 67, 74–78, 82, 85–88, 96, 116–118, 121, 123, 124, 129–131, 133, 138, 140, 141, 162, 165–168, 174, 176, 179, 180, 182–185, 187, 188, 204, 208, 231, 239, 240, 253, 263, 266–268, 276, 281, 286–288, 311, 315–320, 324, 331–334, 337, 338, 391, 402, 414, 418–420, 429, 432 Zvogbo, Eddison, 70