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Supplement compiled by Features Desk
FOUR years have passed since the late Vice President John Landa Nkomo breathed his last after succumbing to cancer.

He was 79.

Cde Nkomo was buried at the National Heroes’ Acre in Harare.

A legacy of reconciliation, national healing and tolerance for which he worked tirelessly to promote in the country is what he will be remembered for.

Cde Nkomo was passionate about unity and reconciliation and worked to come up with a mechanism to promote national healing and tolerance in the country.

He was a teacher, trade unionist, liberator and politician.

He distinguished himself as a committed patriot, civil servant and peacemaker since the earliest nationalist parties of the 1950s and 1960s, right through to the more confrontational phase of the independence struggle of the 1970s and post-independence.

The late Vice President was a dedicated revolutionary for the liberation of the country, while in Zimbabwe and in Zambia where he served as the Secretary of Administration for PF-Zapu.

He played a pivotal role during the Lancaster House Conference that culminated in the independence of the country and dedicated his life to serving the country before and after independence.

Cde Nkomo was a unifier. He was humble but concerned about progress, unity and development.

He will be fondly remembered as a dedicated and revolutionary leader.

Cde Nkomo was passionate about education.

He, in his personal capacity and through his companies, played a major role in the construction of Landa J Nkomo High in Tsholotsho.

He donated equipment and materials used in the ongoing building of Lupane State University and used his resources to build the secondary school in Tsholotsho.

Cde Nkomo was a dedicated community worker, who worked hard to uplift the lives of the rural folk.

He is the only politician who single-handedly built a modern state of the art secondary high school, Landa J Nkomo High, in his rural home in Manqe, Tsholotsho.

Cde Nkomo, who was born and educated in the Manqe area, volunteered to build the school.

President Mugabe officially commissioned the school in July 2012 at a colourful ceremony attended by scores of people.

Villagers in their numbers, together with Cabinet Ministers, Members of the House of Assembly, Senators, traditional leaders, diplomats and service chiefs who witnessed the commissioning of the school paid tribute to Cde Nkomo for taking the first concrete step towards narrowing the gap of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) knowledge between urban and rural schools in the region.

Landa J High was the first learning institution to have ultra-modern computers in the country’s southern region.

The name of the school was changed from Manqe Secondary School to Landa J High in 2012 following a request by the Tsholotsho community that wanted to pay tribute to Cde Nkomo for his contribution in developing the school.

Each time he visited the school to monitor progress in its construction; Cde Nkomo always stressed his dream of making the school one of the best in the country in terms of examination passes in Mathematics and Science subjects as well as ICT training.

He used to say the school was going to be a model of modern learning centres that would help curb migration of youths to countries such as South Africa and Botswana.

Cde Nkomo often said his dream was to see pupils from Tsholotsho attaining good passes at Ordinary and Advanced Level and being able to get places at local universities such as Lupane State University and the National University of Science and Technology.

Speaking at the commissioning of the Presidential High Schools E-learning Programme and the official launch of the school years ago, President Mugabe praised Cde Nkomo’s passion for education.

Said President Mugabe: “Lest we forget, the colonial education system which we inherited was by and large, academically inclined and deliberately designed to create an ever-desperate pool of job seekers who eagerly awaited and gave each other turns to join the white dominated and controlled labour market only to be exploited for the white man’s benefit…

“The launch of the E-learning programme at this particular school would not have been possible without the Honourable Vice President John Landa Nkomo’s quest for development and his visionary leadership. He knew very well that our independence would be meaningless if the national socio-economic development agenda is not addressed. It is through the desire to uplift the livelihoods of our people that he mobilised resources for establishing secondary school in this remote area, which is one of the districts that bore the brunt of the draconian racial policies of the settler governments, whose objective was to under-develop indigenous people.”