The Sunday News
Pathisa Nyathi
JACK Portipher Nhliziyo, a distinguished District Administrator in the period soon after independence is no more.
He passed on in Bulawayo on Wednesday the 2nd of May 2018. Nhliziyo passed on at the time when Marieke Faber Clarke and I are about to publish a book titled, “Inyathi: The Cradle of Revolution” which documents experiences of scores of former Inyathi students ranging from Walter Mthimkhulu, Aleke Banda, J Z Mzilethi, Mildred Mkandla, Moffat Ndlovu to Obadiah Moyo.
Our interest in penning the book was kindled by our realisation that many of former Inyathi School students got involved in the liberation struggle.
However, what is special about Nhliziyo has been his role in the documentation of the vicious evictions that took place in Filabusi and Emakhandeni in the 1950s following land alienation in the wake of cessation of hostilities in World War II.
“Then in 1952, we were evicted forcibly. There were soldiers and police involved. The whole thing was done in a very cruel way. For instance, my home was destroyed at midnight.”
While he served as District Administrator at Nkayi, Nhliziyo was extensively interviewed by researchers Professor Terence Ranger, Professor Jocelyn Alexander and Professor JoAnn McGregor.
The culmination of that research was the production, in 2000, of the book, Memory and Violence: 100 Years in the Dark Forests of Matabeleland. He was again to contribute to this writer’s book titled, “Fluid Ethnic Identities: A History of the Makhalima People in Zimbabwe.”
I have fond memories of our last conversation late last year when I spent the night at his home in Nkayi. I was coming from Tshanke and Guwe en route to Mbazhe where I was going to undertake field research on the Makhalimas.
He remembered that at the time of their evictions there was one Ngama Makhalima who was settled at Kwesobunyonyo.
This year we are due to publish yet another book where, this time, he was interviewed in 2012 by Marieke Clarke and Kudzai Chikomo in Bulawayo. In the book he renders a lucid and cogent account and personal feeling on their experiences in the hands of the callous colonial government.
“It was the eighth time that we had been moved since Conquest. Earlier, we had been moved from Malole to Singwango under Chief Sibasa. We were moved back to the other side of Malole near Wanezi Mission. We had been promised we would not be moved again.”
They left Filabusi at midnight, passed through Bulawayo and on to Nkayi and Gwelutshena, all strange places to them.
“Then a few days later, at midnight, soldiers came in open trucks to carry our belongings away without warning or even giving us time to pack. We arrived at midday the following day.” Evictees, imikutulwa, implying being emptied out of trucks, faced a grim future in a strange and unwelcoming land.
The one technological contraption they came across was a borehole pump, isibhorane. “We didn’t know what a borehole (pump) was, only to learn it was for collection of water. We were then told that this machine is a borehole (pump). Next came agriculture officials who showed us where we were to clear our crop fields. We resorted to amalima to clear the dense bush.”
There was disaster when it came to livestock. Their animals were transported by rail to Gwayi Siding in Tsholotsho where some evictees from Emakhandeni were resettled under their chief Siphoso Dlodlo. Upon disembarking, their cattle were thirsty and hungry.
The first greenery they saw they consumed with abandon. The green plants were the obnoxious umkhawuzane which decimated most of their herds. Why the animals were taken to Gwayi in the first place was intelligible only to a cruel colonial mind. Kwekwe Railway Station was nearer Nkayi than Gwayi Siding.
Evictees’ children had their schooling disrupted. Nhliziyo was no exception. He repeated Standard 1 the following year. When he completed primary school, he went to Inyathi Mission, a London Missionary Society (LMS) institution. Many of the people resettled in Nkayi had been evicted from Bubi District where the LMS was the dominant church. Inyathi Mission was, apparently, to become a cradle of the revolution. Many of its products went on to take part in the liberation struggle. While at Inyathi, Nhliziyo came into contact with Marieke Faber Clarke, a young lady teacher from the United Kingdom.
Nhliziyo was relatively advanced in age in comparison to fellow students. In 1964, he was the school’s head boy and was to accompany Marieke Faber Clarke when she was deported from Inyathi Mission and Rhodesia by the Ian Smith regime at a time when nationalists were upping the struggle for independence. Aleke Banda, later a cabinet minister in the Kamuzu Banda government, had been shown the exit.
Nhliziyo had the unenviable task of escorting Marieke on the day the police escorted her out of Inyathi Mission in September 1964. “All hope is gone, there are no more memories left with you, of the boy who left with you from the hall (at Inyathi Mission) where we had a film show, and was bidding you farewell and desirous to know your future plans,” said Nhliziyo in a letter he wrote to his teacher of English Language, History and Latin.
At independence the new government was employing African District Administrators (DA), who replaced District Commissioners who too had replaced native commissioners. Nhliziyo already worked for the government. After school, he briefly did temporary teaching in 1965 and in 1967 he joined Registry. At the time of independence, he was already serving in the Ministry of Local Government as a District Officer.
The task of identifying suitable candidates to take on the new responsibilities was given, in Matabeleland North, to J Z Mzilethi who had been at Inyathi with Nhliziyo. The Public Service Commission Chairman, one Mr Thompson agreed with Mzilethi’s choices, six people and, among them, Jack Nhliziyo who served as District Administrator from 1981 till his retirement in 2000.
The districts he served in were Nkayi, Bubi and Tsholotsho. He served in Nkayi at a time there was civil unrest but at no time did he abandon the district and, as Mzilethi acknowledges, played a crucial role in ending the strife.
Nhliziyo married Molly Ngwenya and the couple had seven children, only three of whom survive him. He has 15 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.
May his very dear soul rest in eternal peace.
