The Sunday News
Vusumuzi Dube
WITH thousands of sons and daughters of the soil crossing our Zimbabwean borders to fight for the liberation struggle, many were to get varied duties — depending on training — these ranging from communication, intelligence right up to being on the battle front.
However, one such profession that could have been largely overlooked and questioned on its relevance is that of photography.
When the late Cde Zenzo Nkobi first took up the camera as a form of Avtomat Kalashnikova 1947 (AK47) rifle, most people back then would have looked at him, wondering at what contributions was he making towards liberating the country.
Most would have laughed at home seeing him walking around the Zipra camps with his cameras and lenses, “shooting” at everything he thought relevant. Some guerillas could have thought highly of this camera person despite his continuous hanging onto the Zapu leadership — taking pictures.
However, 36 years after the country attained its Independence, Cde Nkobi’s contribution to the liberation struggle is becoming obvious. His works are becoming even more relevant as historians and ordinary citizens are now largely relying on his photographic works to chronicle Zapu and Zipra’s contribution to the liberation struggle and further give a timeline to the journey to Independence.
When former South Africa treason trialist and ex-detainee Mr Denis Goldberg walked into the offices of the South African History Archives (SAHA) very few people, however, knew of Cde Nkobi and his illustrious works. Mr Goldberg had been fortunate to marry Cde Nkobi’s widow — Edelgard — after Cde Nkobi passed away in the mid-90s. It was after Edelgard’s death that he then took Cde Nkobi’s negatives to SAHA where the world began to see the liberation struggle through Cde Nkobi’s lenses.
Many previously unseen photographs of the late Vice-President Dr Joshua Nkomo and other liberations stalwarts emerged. Sad though that his illustrious work only became appreciated long after his death. Born at Dombodema Mission, in south-western Zimbabwe in Bulilima, Cde Nkobi’s father Thomas, left Zimbabwe for South Africa soon after his birth, where he spent the rest of his life in politics, rising to the top echelons of the African National Congress.
Zenzo remained in Zimbabwe, where he was raised by his mother and went to school, trained as a teacher, and then went to teach at a rural school not far from the Botswana border.
As a teacher, Zenzo was to encounter the cruelty of the colonial government once more when he was accused of teaching small kids anti-Smith songs and true indeed he would compose some songs in Kalanga or iSiNdebele which were talking about the regime. He then crossed the border to Botswana with the intention of joining the armed struggle.
From Botswana he reached Lusaka, and made contact with Zapu there. It was at that time that he first made the acquaintance of his father and developed a close relationship with him, as they were now both engaged in the liberation struggle within the region.
He then worked within the publicity department in Zapu offices, providing photographs for many Zapu publications.
Zapu eventually sent Cde Nkobi to German Democratic Republic (East Germany) on a scholarship to be trained as a photographer. He studied there for several years, proceeding beyond the first degree to complete a Masters.
He also returned to Lusaka on numerous occasions, and became something resembling an official or semi-official photographer for Zapu.
He met and married a German woman by the name of Edelgard, and they raised two daughters together, eventually settling in Bulawayo after 1980. During the armed struggle he accompanied the Zapu President, Joshua Nkomo, on numerous occasions, both to the military and refugee camps in Zambia and to international meetings and recorded the activities on film.
Cde Nkobi returned to Zimbabwe before Independence and began recording the events of the 1980 election campaign. After Independence he continued chronicling public and political events, particularly those relating to Zapu, but was not employed, and established his own photographic studio in order to earn a living. The artistic side of his personality seemed to predominate, however, and the business did not succeed.
Later he joined the staff at the Bulawayo Polytechnic where he taught photography until he died suddenly in the mid-1990s.
Because of his talent behind the lens Cde Caroline Mhlanga, another Zapu cadre who had been sent by Zapu to also study photography described Cde Nkobi saying; “. . . he made me understand photography better. I came to like it, you know, so that each time you know I saw a project I was looking at it as a picture, through him, and each time he saw whatever, even passing animals or anything, he would remind you that that is a picture, that is an object.” (as quoted in the SAHA profile on Cde Mkobi).
In describing Cde Nkobi, former Zapu representative to the United Nations and Cabinet Minister in Independent Zimbabwe, Professor Callistus Ndlovu noted that he was also a hot tempered individual who hardly accepted being ordered around.
He, however, revealed that despite his father being an ANC stalwart he remained as a committed Zapu member who fought the struggle using his camera.
“He met his father in Lusaka because he had not seen him. His father had spent all the time in South Africa, but was now in exile with the ANC. George Silundika introduced the two but he never became part of the ANC, he was always Zapu, although he was very close to his father from that point. Zenzo was sent to East Germany, where he did some degree, or some diploma specialising in photography and became very much involved, so when returning to Lusaka he was actively involved travelling around with Dr Nkomo,” said Prof Ndlovu.
Prof Ndlovu who was related to Cde Nkobi in an interview with SAHA said it was fortunate Cde Nkobi’s works had been finally made public noting that at one point he had thought that the photography had disappeared with the war.
“It seems he made a very big contribution to our knowledge because of these photographs. He made a tremendous contribution. I was always wondering where these photographs went,” said Prof Ndlovu.
