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Yoliswa Dube Features Reporter
THE late Vice-President Dr Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, one of the brokers of the Unity Accord signed on December 22, 1987, was the leader and founder of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (Zapu). He was a trade-union leader who became president of the banned National Democratic Party, and was jailed for 10 years by the then Rhodesian regime.

After his release, Zapu contributed to the fall of that government, and the consequential rise of black majority rule. Dr Nkomo was affectionately known as “Father Zimbabwe”, “Umdala Wethu” and “Chibwechitedza” (the slippery rock).

He was born in Bulilima which was referred to as Semokwe Reserve in Matabeleland South province and was one of eight children. His father, Thomas Nyongolo Letswantse Nkomo, worked as a preacher and a cattle rancher for the London Missionary Society.

After completing his primary education in Southern Rhodesia, Father Zimbabwe took a carpentry course at the Tsholotsho Government Industrial School and studied there for a year before becoming a driver.

He later tried animal husbandry, then became a schoolteacher specialising in carpentry at Manyane School in Kezi.

In 1942, at the age of 25, during his career as a teacher, he decided to go to South Africa to further his education. He attended Adams College and the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work. There he met the late South African icon Nelson Mandela and other regional nationalist leaders at the University of Fort Hare.

It was at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work that he was awarded a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Science in 1952. Dr Nkomo married his wife, the late Mama Johanna Fuyana on October 1, 1949.

After returning to Bulawayo in 1947, he became a trade unionist for the black railway workers and rose to the leadership of the Railway Workers Union and then to the leadership of the African National Congress in 1952.

In 1960, he became president of the National Democratic Party, which was later banned by the Rhodesian government. Nkomo was detained at Gonakudzingwa Restriction Camp by Ian Smith’s government in 1964, with other nationalists including President Robert Mugabe, the late Ndabaningi Sithole, Edgar Tekere, Enos Nkala and Maurice Nyagumbo, until 1974, when they were released.

Following his release, Dr Nkomo went to Zambia where he continued to fight the then Rhodesian government through the dual processes of armed resistance and negotiation. Zapu’s armed wing — the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (Zipra) — was dedicated to both guerrilla warfare and conventional warfare.

At the time of independence in 1980, Zipra had a modern military, stationed in Zambia and Angola, consisting of Soviet-made Mikoyan fighters, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, as well as trained artillery units.

Dr Nkomo was the target of two attempted assassinations. The first one, in Zambia, by the Selous Scouts — a pseudo-team. But the mission was finally aborted and attempted again, unsuccessfully, by the Rhodesian Special Air Service.

Zapu forces strategically weakened the Rhodesian government during the country’s liberation struggle. The most widely reported and possibly the most effective of these attacks which had an impact on the Rhodesian’s social life was the downing of two Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount civilian passenger planes with surface-to-air missiles.