THIS is the second and last part of a tribute by veteran nationalist and journalist, Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu on the late Vice-President, Joshua Nkomo. This tribute, the first installment of which we published on Saturday, is an abridged version of a paper Ndlovu was supposed to deliver at the Joshua Nkomo Lecture Series held in Bulawayo early July to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the death of one of Zimbabwe’s founding fathers.

JOSHUA Nkomo was strongly criticised by those who were against his leadership for allegedly accepting the 1961 Southern Rhodesia Constitution worked out by the then Commonwealth Relations secretary, Duncan Sandys, who represented Britain, and Sir Edgar Whitehead’s delegation standing for the Southern Rhodesia settler administration.

Joshua Nkomo’s delegation comprised the Rev Ndabaningi Sithole, Advocates Enock Dumbutshena, Herbert Chitepo, Tarcisius George Silundika, and Nkomo himself as its official leader. We must emphasise one important fact and it is that at that time, December 1961, both the British Government and the Southern Rhodesian white minority settler regime most strongly held a view that Southern Rhodesia was internally self-governing, and that all matters pertaining to the country’s black people fell under its internal affairs department.

That meant that the British government had no legal authority to speak on behalf of the oppressed black majority led by Nkomo.
Their complaints and demands were regarded as Southern Rhodesia’s internal affairs.  Whereas Kenya, Malawi, Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia), Cyprus and other former British colonies were under the colonial office, Southern Rhodesia was a responsibility of the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO).

So, the invitation to Nkomo’s delegation to attend the 1961 constitutional conference was virtually from Sir Edgar Whitehead’s office rather than from London. It was not, in fact, a normal, friendly, respectful invitation, but it was virtually on take-it-or-leave-it terms.

The Nkomo delegation attended the conference being more of a tolerated intrusion than a welcome group, and was confronted with a fait accompli — 50 “A Roll” seats for the white settler minority which numbered only about 220 000 people at that time, and 15 “B” Roll seats for the four million-plus black people.

Nkomo’s delegation was operating on the democratic principle of consultation, the British government officials led by Duncan Sandys being much more experienced and thus adept at such meetings, soon announced to the international media that the constitution had been accepted by all the delegations, including Nkomo’s.

It is most interesting that this piece of news was broadcast from London before it was disseminated by the media houses in Salisbury (Southern Rhodesia) where the conference had been held and had just ended.

The London-based National Democratic Party (NDP) representative, Leopold Takawira, immediately sent a telegram strongly denouncing the Nkomo delegation for allegedly accepting such an anti-African constitution. He copied the telegram to a number of print media.  Joshua Nkomo denied the allegation, but denying an accusation is always less believable than making it.

The false accusation generated a great deal of acrimony, and it was not until 1963 that Sir Edgar Whitehead , who had led the Southern Rhodesian Government delegations, publicly stated that Joshua Nkomo  never accepted the 1961 constitution and that he did not sign the final document.

The author of this opinion article was at that time the features and readers’ views pages editor of The Daily News in Salisbury. He published a piece apologising to Joshua Nkomo for having been misrepresented for all that time, and thanking Sir Edgar for putting the record straight.

Meanwhile, Duncan Sandys had come out in the open by saying he had planted the lie about Joshua Nkomo accepting the 1961 Southern Rhodesia Constitution to lend some aura of credibility which he had achieved in his capacity as the Secretary of the Common Relations Office (CRO)

For its part, the NDP concluded its own referendum on that constitution, and a very large majority rejected it.  That was a major NDP political achievement.
In 1962, Joshua Nkomo submitted the status question of Southern Rhodesia to the United Nations whose colonisation committee was asked to decide whether the country was a British colony or something else. He also asked the UN to decide whether or not the British Government was legally responsible for the black people’s constitutional advancement in that country.

The colonisation committee chairperson at that time was a Malian ambassador.  After a rather protracted debate, the committee concluded that Southern Rhodesia was a British Colony, and that White Hall had the legal and constitutional responsibility and legal authority to promote and protect the rights and security of all the people of that country.

That was a resounding diplomatic success for the untiring Joshua Nkomo and his entire Zapu national leadership and its members and sympathisers.
I vividly recall that the Zapu Vice President at that time, Dr Samuel Tichafa Parirenyatwa, when he was contacted by telephone by The Daily News about that favourable UN decision commented: “It is a great moral victory for the people of Zimbabwe.”

Asked whether or not the verdict meant that freedom and independence were then much nearer than before, he remarked that Britain would thenceforth be obliged to deal with the Southern Rhodesia problem much more realistically than before since it could no longer try to hide behind the false self-government claim it had been giving.

The British UN representative, Sir Patrick Dean, was so embarrassed by the development that he resigned from that high diplomatic post. We would be forgiven for suspecting that the British Government of the day did not forgive Joshua Nkomo for causing it such a huge international embarrassment.

Joshua Nkomo was also criticised for not being “dynamic,” a word whose actual meaning was probably confused with being “ruthless”.  He was compared with Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta.

The comparison was in fact unrealistic in that there was a vast difference in the level of actual transformation of the black people of Kenya and those of Southern Rhodesia.

The launch of the Mau-Mau in Kenya occurred at a time when Western cultural influences such as education and the Christian religion had not covered as wide a space as they had in Southern Rhodesia (1952) when Joshua Nkomo effectively took over the Southern Rhosedia African National Congress (SRANC) leadership from Rev Samkange.

Since the founding of SRANC by Aaron Jacha Rusike in 1934, the organisation had been led by Christian pastors up to the time Joshua Nkomo took over. It is interesting to note that while staying at Adams College in South Africa in the early 1940s he too tried to become a pastor.

He failed because of a little technicality that required his candidature to be endorsed by his home congregation for the South African church leadership to admit him into their pastor training programme.  The SRANC was thus, quasi-Christian.

Other factors were primarily tribal in that when the Mau-Mau was launched, to become its member who was bound by its highly secret oath, one had to be a Kikuyu by tribe.

If there were non-Kikuyu people in the highly secret organisation, there were so few that for purposes of this discussion, the Mau-Mau is treated as a ritually Kikuyu underground anti-colonialist Kenyan movement.

Had Nkomo launched a Mau Mau type of liberation army of successive parties that could have split his following.  To him the defeat of the Southern Rhodesia white minority regime lay in the unity and cooperation of the oppressed black majority not in the tribal units. In that unity and cooperation lay the peace and the future state of Zimbabwe. Those two, peace and cooperation among the black people of Zimbabwe meant social progress and economic prosperity for the entire nation. That was Joshua Nkomo’s dream.

To end this discussion on one of Zimbabwe’s political legends, we will quote Joshua Nkomo on two occasions; the first was when he was addressing Hope Fountain Teachers’ Institution students in 1955.

Accompanied by a Shona colleague, John Cyril Shonhiwa, Nkomo emphasised national unity.  Note that he was accompanied by a Shona person, not a Ndebele. Unity starts at inter-village level and should be strengthened by the community and then consolidates at national level. In campaigning for our freedom there is no room for those who refuse to unite with the majority because they say (and he spoke in Kalanga language) “imi ndinanzi wangu” implying that he lives an independent and full life in his own village.  I was at Hope Fountain then.

Some 26 years later, at a time of direct strife between PF-Zapu and Zanu-PF in Zimbabwe during the Connemara-Entumbane-Ntabazinduna-Chitungwiza disturbances, Nkomo solemnly told the writer of this article in the presence of his old time friend, William Mpotshi Sivako Nleya at Pelandaba suburb:

“If you, young men thought I was struggling all these years so that Joshua Nkomo would personally rule this country, you were gravely mistaken.  I fought so that this country is ruled by a black person. Whoever that black person is, is none of my concern.”

He actually spoke in IsiNdebele: “Nxa lina majaha lalicabanga ukuthi ngalwela ilizwe leli ukuze mina Joshua Nkomo ngokwami ngilibuse, lalilahlekile. Mina ngangilwela ukuthi ilizwe leli libuswe ngumuntu omnyama. Ukuthi umuntu omnyama lowo ngubani angilandaba lakho.”

If these are not the words of a peace lover, unifier and patriot par excellence, certainly no better words by someone else who left greater national legacy than that bequeathed to Zimbabwe by Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Mtshumi Ramatsati Nkomo, otherwise popularly and rightfully referred to as Father Zimbabwe.

Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu can be contacted on 0734 328 136 or at [email protected].

You Might Also Like

Comments