The Sunday News
Bruce Ndlovu
Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo loved his suits.
WHILE this simple fact could be verified by a quick search into his picture archive, one now only needs to pass by the intersection of a street named after him, Joshua Mqabuko Street, and Eighth Avenue to confirm this.
On that busy intersection stands a giant likeness of the liberation stalwart, his head held up high and proud as pedestrians and traffic rush past.
While he stands like a towering lord over Main and Eight Street, the country’s late vice-president, unlike the proverbial emperor, is not naked.
Perfectly cut the three-meter tall bronze likeness is a suit that completes a look that many Zimbabweans are familiar with.
While the stature is a supreme work of art and craftsmanship, where did this larger than life figure get the suits that seemed tailored to fit his big frame in the flesh?
“He used to love a shop called Eric Davis in Bulawayo,” his son Sibangilizwe Nkomo told Sunday Life. “That’s just in Bulawayo. Whenever he was in the city he would go to that shop to get his shirts and suits. All those blazers he used to wear he got from that shop. It was quite popular at the time,” he said.
“It pays in the end to get the best in the beginning!” ran the popular man’s clothing shop’s advert, and it was within its doors that the classic shirts and suits, snapped by state function hunting photographers, were bought.
Between 1994 and 1999, the phenomenon known as the Mandela Shirt was born. A hand printed batik shirt handed to Mandela’s bodyguard by designer Desre Buirski, gave birth to the South African presidential shirt, one that Mandela was to make famous during his single term as South Africa’s first post-apartheid president.
Unknown to most of the world, according to Sibangilizwe, it was a shirt that Nkomo had thrown on his huge frame two decades earlier. Usually adorned in bright and colourful print, it was a favourite of the late veteran nationalist.
“When he needed some of his big shirts done he would go to this woman called Miss Mkhwananzi. She was one of the people who tailored the shirts for him. The shirts that are known as Mandela shirts were first worn by him in the 1970s,” he said.
But Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo was as much a man as he was a myth, a myth that was born before state functions and diplomatic engagements were the order of the day after the country’s independence.
Tales of his exploits in the war, to those that grew up listening to them, would have left an indelible mark.
In some stories, it was said that he would disappear from custody, leading ruthless colonial law enforcers counting their losses as they would find an empty jail cell when they were certain the night before that they had captured a liberation struggle mastermind.
In other stories, he would reportedly turn into a cat when again he was cornered by those that craved to see him behind bars.
The stories were always vivid and imaginative, owing as much to Zimbabwean folklore as they did to Hollywood action flicks.
Indeed, if the stories are to believed, the country’s late Vice-President was both the naughty hare found in Zimbabwean folktales or Angus “Mac” MacGyver, the 80s protagonist of an 80s hit TV series who always pulled off the impossible.
Central to those myths was his staff, something that he never left behind such that at times it felt like an extension of his arm than a mere accessory.
“He was as cultural as he was political,” said historian and cultural activist Phathisa Nyathi. “He loved culture. That’s why you would see some pictures of him with the likes of Professor Terrence Ranger putting on those fur hats. It was an expression of their drive towards an African awakening.
“There was a deliberate thrust towards going African. This was exemplified by the staff that he used to carry around. It went together with the hat that he used to wear. The staff was more spiritual than anything. Those were symbols of African spiritual power,” he said.
In fact, from head to toe, everything that the late nationalist wore was tailored to illustrate who he was and what he stood for as he fought valiantly to relieve Africans from colonial bondage.
When Joshua Nkomo entered politics, colonial powers around the globe were in a race to annihilate indigenous culture wherever they found it around the globe.
When he was born in 1917, a mere 22 years after the Berlin Conference had carved up the continent like slices of pizza, European powers were eagerly trying to bleach the black face of Africa.
To the early nationalists, what one wore or how one carried oneself was therefore an integral part of their overall struggle for emancipation.
However, culturally, the fur hats that he used to don served another purpose too.
“The hats were made by some guys in Matobo,” Sibangilizwe said.
“They went together with the staff that he used to carry. It all had cultural significance. There’s a phrase, in Ndebele, it says ‘induku ayibi yodwa, zibanengi’. It came together with several others. There was one that was meant for rainmaking. I can’t disclose the purpose of others because it’s against our cultural practices.
“I can only tell you about the one that was meant for rainmaking. They each held different duties and they would be carried according to whatever role that they were supposed to play on that cultural occasion,” he said.
For most Zimbabweans, Joshua Nkomo will always be that nationalist who cut a big yet dashing figure in a well tailored suit.
In some images, taken in the era of black and white, one is left wondering what combination of colours he was wearing when the camera lens found him.
Despite the fact that a suit is regarded as a typical example of Western style and grace, he still found a way to tame an alien style and impose his own African flair on it. Eric Davis suits, tailored to the perfect inch, would be crowned by a traditional Ndebele fur hat.
All this, Nyathi argues, had its genesis in the 1960s.
“To understand the way he used to dress and the significance of his staff and fur hat you have to go back in history. The first party to be formed in Zimbabwe was the Southern Rhodesia National African Congress.
“After that, came the birth of the United Democratic Party (UDP). The UDP was more culturally oriented that its predecessor.
So the period following that party’s formation also coincided with a period of cultural awareness and restoration in a lot of its members,” he said.
