The Sunday News
Obituary Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
YESTERDAY Zimbabwe buried its celebrated oldest citizen, Tafi Zibuya Moyo, who passed away at the city’s Roman Catholic-sponsored Mater-Dei Hospital on 8 December 2014.
To the average Bulawayo resident, Moyo was an amiable well-known businessman; one of his sole trader’s shops is at the Vundu Flats near the Old Location (Makokoba).
But to the older former freedom fighters, especially those who were occasionally or repeatedly arrested and locked up at one of the notorious Southern Rhodesian jails, Tafi Moyo was an old former die-hard revolutionary patriot whose massive courage enabled him to withstand a series of torture episodes at either Grey Street Remand Prison in Bulawayo, Wha Wha Prison in Gweru, Marondera Prison, or at Bulawayo Khami Maximum Security Prison.
He was among thousands who spent various restriction periods at Gonakudzingwa where Joshua Nkomo, Joseph Msika, Josiah Chinamano, Daniel Madzimbamuto, Willie Musarurwa, Ruth Chinamano, Stanslaus Marembo and a host of others were restricted for long periods, some for more than 10 years.
Born on 11 June 1906 in the Matobo District of Matabeleland South, Moyo’s main occupation as he grew up was herding his family’s livestock, something that had been done by his older brothers, Dzingani, Ndubiwa, Nyemu, Mnindwa, Tjalila, before him, and his two younger brothers, Mawulusa and Simon after him.
So old was he when he went to school that the teacher would not have him in his class, as a result he taught himself how to read and count but not how to write as that required a teacher.
He went to South Africa where he worked for a while and then bought a private motor vehicle he wished to register as a taxi, but could not because he was unable to fill the forms required for the registration process.
He returned home and went to enroll as a pupil at Tegwane Mission (koCarter, so called, after Rev Carter, the mission-school founder).
While he was at that Methodist institution, he decided to supplement his meagre financial resources by buying and selling chickens. His market comprised some Bulawayo restaurants and the Rhodesia Railways. When he had acquired the necessary writing skills, he left Tegwane and returned to Bulawayo where he continued buying and selling, this time pigs, sheep, goats, chickens, hides and skins.
He was one of the elderly people consulted by Joshua Nkomo when he (Nkomo) entered African nationalist politics in the late 1940s. The others were Rev. Mongwa Tjuma, who was based at Zamanyoni School, near Kezi; Charles Carlton Ngcebetsha of Bulawayo’s Mzilikazi suburb, and a former fellow teacher of Robert Mugabe at Hope Fountain Teacher Training Institution, Tennyson Hlabangana, a university graduate who died in 1948 in Bulawayo.
Tafi Moyo was to keep very close to Joshua Nkomo from those early days of the liberation struggle up to the time Nkomo was gathered to his last resting place at the National Heroes’ Acre in Harare in August 1999.
So involved was he in the national political movement that in the early 1950s he lent the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress three hundred and fifty pounds (sterling) to enable Nkomo to go to London to attend a conference about the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, a British Government-sponsored imperialist political creation that brought Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia) and Nyasaland (now Malawi) together under a settler white government headquartered in Salisbury (now Harare).
The idea was strongly opposed by the black people of the three countries. However, it was imposed on them in September 1953. Nkomo’s trip to London in 1951 was made in his capacity as the SRANC president. The SRANC opposed the idea.
His organisations did not have any funds, so, it pleaded with Tafi Moyo to loan it some money. Tafi did not have such an amount either. The SRANC then sent a delegation to a Bulawayo-based Jewish buyer of hides and skins, Harry Schuur, to help.
Schuur would not lend such an amount to the SRANC but could, however, loan it to Tafi Moyo, a man he knew through their trade relations. Moyo thus borrowed the money from Harry Schuur on behalf of the SRANC.
He repaid the loan a year or so before Harry Schuur died in 1955. President Robert Mugabe sent the then Vice President, John Landa Nkomo, to pay back Tafi Moyo in 2006.
The issue had been raised by Moyo at the 2006 celebrations of his 100th birthday, an occasion at which President Mugabe was the guest of honour.
Earlier, attempts had been made by the Zanu-PF Bulawayo Province to settle the loan, but Moyo politely turned that down, saying the debt was a responsibility of the government of Zimbabwe and not that of a political party.
Tafi Moyo actively participated in the underground activities of the struggle, especially during the ZAPU period, by either carrying arms himself or by offering his vehicles to ferry arms or personnel.
Some former guerilla fighters such as Velaphi Ncube recall how on one occasion he placed greased guns on his pick-up truck in the Lupane area, then piled some kraal manure on them. He then loaded the vehicle with pigs and thereafter instructed his driver to head for Bulawayo, while he himself was standing on the manure among the pigs at the back of the truck.
No police road block, and there were quite a few along that busy highway, suspected anything about that truck. He would supply guerilla units with medicines, food, clothing and information.
Tafi Moyo was arrested more times than he could remember. Every time he was picked up, the Rhodesian police would torture him. That resulted in his hearing getting impaired. On one occasion he almost died of excessive cold in a police cell in June.
The white police had opened the cell in the early hours and poured a full bucket of ice-cold water on him, and then closed the cell.
However, that did not daunt him. Instead, it stiffened him and each time he was released, he would continue his revolutionary underground activities. For example, after he was released from Gonakudzingwa, the Wankie battles began in August 1967, and he was arrested and locked up at the Khami Maximum Security Prison where he was soon joined by Callistus Dingiswayo Ndlovu, now Bulawayo Provincial Zanu-PF chairperson.
So courageous was Tafi Moyo, “uMatatazela” to those who were socially close to him, that when Jason Ziyaphapha was killed by a parcel bomb in Lusaka in Zambia in January 1977, Tafi Moyo went to his burial, and came right back to Zimbabwe thereafter. He was arrested and detained, of course.
A man of incomparable courage, he financially supported the struggle throughout, and was one of several Bulawayo black business people who stood solidly behind the armed revolution. The others were William Sivako (Nleya), Grey Mabhalane Bhango, Daniel Tonye Ngwenya, William Tonye Ngwenya (WT), Samuel Ndebele, Frank Hlalo, Patsika, James Khahlu, D N Naik, TV Desai and several others such as Naran.
Tafi Moyo was a man of few words but a great deal of action, including philanthropic action such as paying Obadiah Mlilo’s (Fort Hare) university fees until he graduated. Mlilo’s home was near Tafi Moyo’s not far away from Kezi.
He persevered and persisted in whatever he undertook to do. No wonder his company’s trade name was “Try Again”.
One of his children, Tradesman (also known as Mazongo) would recall after his father’s death: “If you start a business and it fails, don’t give up. Try again, you’ll finally succeed”.
Yes indeed, perseverance is the mother of success. That was how the freedom of Zimbabwe was achieved, and Tafi Zibuya Moyo was one of those who initiated the freedom fighting process, and was also one of those who finally achieved their objective. They tried and tried again until they embraced success.
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu, a Bulawayo-based retired journalist is also a former freedom fighter. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or through email [email protected]
