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Pathisa Nyathi, OBITUARY

A LIGHT that shone brightly during the protracted struggle for Zimbabwe’s independence has been extinguished. Dauti Salatiel Mabusa passed on peacefully in his sleep on February 4, 2022 at his Hertford Farm home just outside Bulawayo.

Mabusa, whose struggle life began in 1959, when he arrived in Bulawayo after the first truly national black political organisation was established on 12 September 1957 at the Mai Musodzi Hall in Harare Township (now Mbare). His arrival followed the slamming of doors to higher education after he failed to raise school fees to enter Goromonzi High School where he had secured a vacancy to Form 3.

When he tried to get to Limana in Musina, South Africa, once again he failed to raise the required fees.

He was faced with no choice but to go to Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia’s black political hub.

There, he would cut his teeth in nationalist political campaigning, a profession he remained faithful to until independence in 1980.

Dauti was born on 21st of March 1940 at Gwaranyemba in the Gwanda District.

His father was Pastor Makhetho Matshaphu (Mpuratshaphu) of the Apostolic Faith Mission (AFM), which was the oldest of the Pentecostal churches to set up base in Southern Rhodesia. Sadly, his father died when Dauti was just four years old.

His family was afflicted with extreme poverty, which explains why he failed to proceed to acquire higher educational qualifications after 1958 when he completed Form 2 at Gobadema Mission run by the AFM.

His mother was Rhoda Mafumisa Ncube, daughter of Mzhazhalandi who belonged to the Zhawunda ethnic group that lived in the Gwanda area.

Dauti’s mother shouldered the responsibility to fend for the family of three girls and one boy.

The family hardly had any livestock, and as irony would have it, Dauti in his adult life possessed a very large herd of cattle, goats and pigs.

He however, grew up looking after other people’s livestock.

Misery and poverty followed the early part of his life.

His story is one of rags to riches as will be shown in this series of articles.

At home, several languages were spoken interchangeably.

His father, a Nyathi/Nare was part of the Babirwa ethnic group who settled in Gwanda South, at Zhomba in about 1825.

He belonged to the Serumola/Luphade section of the Babirwa people to which this writer also belongs. His father spoke Sebirwa and IsiNdebele.

His mother spoke TjiZhawunda that was threatened with extinction. She also spoke IsiNdebele. At school, they learnt English.

At age nine in 1949, Dauti enrolled at Betsa Primary School that was run by the AFM.

The school was named after Bedza a nearby mountain. Several other primary schools such as Makarabha, Tshongwe, Zhobwe, and Tshoboyo were feeder schools for Gobadema Mission.

Dauti was very bright and the school authorities found themselves forced to fast track him.

He omitted Standard 5.

After Betsa Primary School, Dauti proceeded to Gobadema Mission that offered boarding facilities.

There were instances when he remained at school during school vacations.

He did some work at the school in order to raise fees.

At school, Dauti was already exposed to political literature.

He was progressively becoming a political animal from a very tender age.

There was an incident at Gobadema that showed he was one who could stand for the truth and justice.

One naughty boy at Gobadema Mission, one Nawusi Gotshana Dube decided to defecate in a classroom.

The school authorities were riled and decided to cane all the male pupils. Dauti would have none of it.

He flatly refused to submit himself to a few lashes from the principal’s sjambok.

As a result, he was expelled from Gobadema Mission.

A Dube man who was his sister’s husband took him back to school.

Dube held down Dauti while the principal lashed him.

“Did you die? Oh, you little devil!” Dauti was re-admitted to the school.

In 1958, he completed Form 2.

As already alluded to, Dauti failed to raise school fees to embark on higher education studies.

Growing up at Gwaranyemba exposed Dauti to the iniquities of the colonial regime.

One day, arriving home from school, he found his frail mother sitting down digging a contour ridge in the family crop field.

The government was demanding that, as part of measures to minimise soil erosion, Africans erect ridges to contain the flow of water.

The political animal within Dauti was provoked.

The colonial authority had the habit of instructing the police to search buses for various items that the rural folk were taking with them to Bulawayo such as peanuts, biltong, samp, and the various journey’s provisions.

The boys from his rural home conspired to defy the police when they tried to search and confiscate their provisions.

However, when the agreed time of defiance came, the other boys chickened out and submitted to the demeaning police searches at a roadblock outside Maphane (Gibbons). Dauti would not, under any circumstances succumb to police brutality.

He refused to be searched and ran away into a nearby thick bush.

He was abandoned in the middle of nowhere and had to find own transport to Bulawayo.

Given the instinct of political defiance, Dauti was headed for a new political life in Bulawayo at a time when the political temperature was rising.

He lived at Iminyela Township (Number 1). Bulawayo, then a district in political administrative terms, had several branches. Dauti belonged to IMP branch, an acronym for Iminyela, Mpopoma and Pelandaba. Its youth league comprised, inter alia, the likes of Dumiso Dabengwa, Abel Tabona Siwela, Akim Ndlovu, Ethan Dube, Philani Ndebele, Roger Ngugama, Stanley Maduma, Clark Mpofu and Elias Ngugama.

The African political party then was the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), led by Joshua Nkomo.

However, the political movement was proscribed in February 1959 when the Edgar Whitehead regime rounded up the political leadership of the party and threw them into detention.

Dauti had his first taste of detention experience then.

He was taken to the newly-built prison facility known as the Khami Maximum Security Prison, just outside Bulawayo.

Many leaders in Bulawayo were nabbed: Bernard Mutuma, Joseph Msika, Clement Mchachi, Lazarus Nkala, Jason Ziyaphapha Moyo, Benjamin Madlela, Mgqibelo Ncube, John Robert Mzimela and many others.

That detention turned out to be a dress rehearsal for Dauti when his life would be one of in and out of prison and detention until independence in 1980.

After a week, he was released.

The SRANC leaders were banned under the Emergency Regulations imposed by the Edgar Whitehead regime.

A new piece of legislation was promulgated, the Unlawful Organisations Act (1959).

This was the piece of legislation that was used to ban subsequent political movements.

It was to remain on the statute books deep into the independence period.

The Preventative Detention (Provisional) Act (1959) was used to detain the SRANC leaders. Ironically, Dauti would also become the first political prisoner under Robert Gabriel’s government in 1980, alongside the likes of Mark Nziramasanga and Sydney Donald Malunga, his PF-Zapu colleagues.

l To be continued tomorrow