The Sunday News
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu
The Lusaka Unity Accord, signed on 7 December 1974, three days after Joshua Nkomo’s release from Buffalo Range Prison where he had been transferred a couple of months earlier, faced two difficulties before the ink was dry.
The first was that the Rev Ndabaningi Sithole who signed on behalf of Zanu was no longer recognised as the legitimate president of that organisation as he had been deposed by senior Zanu leaders while they were in the Salisbury Maximum Security Prison a couple of years earlier. The Zanu leaders concerned were Robert Mugabe, Edgar Tekere, Leopold Takawira, Michael Mawema, Rugare Gumbo, Enos Nkala and Eddison Zvobgo.
He had been replaced by his deputy, Leopold Takawira, who had unfortunately later died of diabetes in prison. The next in command in that party’s hierarchy was Robert Mugabe, the secretary general. He was, however, not in Lusaka but still in prison back in Rhodesia.
The other problem was that Bishop Abel Muzorewa who was the African National Council (ANC) president, was opposed to the holding of a national congress back home to elect a legitimate leadership of the ANC as constituted by the Lusaka Unity Accord. He had led the ANC from its very inception in 1971.
Muzorewa had actually been identified by Joshua Nkomo while Nkomo was still at Gonakudzingwa. Nkomo had sent Josiah Chinamano who had already been released to suggest to Bishop Muzorewa to form and lead an organisation that could mobilise the black people against constitutional proposals agreed between the Rhodesian regime of Ian Smith and the Conservative Party of the British Government whose Commonwealth Relations secretary was Sir Alec Douglas-Home at the time. Bishop Muzorewa then formed the African National Council which led a campaign against a British government commission led by Lord Pearce to test the acceptability or otherwise of the constitutional proposals.
After the rejection of the Smith/Sir Alec Douglas-Home constitutional proposals by the masses of Zimbabwe under the auspices of the ANC, Bishop Muzorewa continued to lead that organisation right up to the release of Joshua Nkomo, Rev Ndabaningi Sithole and others leading to the signing of the Lusaka Accord.
After the Lusaka Accord, South Africa applied a lot of pressure on the Smith regime to negotiate with the Zimbabwean black leadership as represented by the accord. The Zambian government put pressure on the black nationalists (ANC) side, and a conference was held on a train on the Victoria Falls Bridge from 25 to 26 August 1975. Leading the Rhodesian delegation was Ian Smith and Bishop Muzorewa headed the ANC side. Differences were so deep between the two sides that nothing was achieved by that meeting.
As the political landscape had drastically changed following the release of Joshua Nkomo et al, it was obviously necessary to confirm Bishop Muzorewa’s ANC leadership or create a new one for that organisation.
Joshua Nkomo thus called for a national congress, but Muzorewa, Sithole and Chikerema opposed his proposal.
The three teamed up together. However, they lacked a vital factor which was a credible guerrilla force behind them. Chikerema had literally a score or two military personnel who had gone with him when he broke away from Zapu to form Frolizi. Rev Sithole had the support of a few Zanu guerillas but the vast majority followed those who condemned his leadership. Bishop Muzorewa had literally no military-trained personnel.
That was the political picture when Joshua Nkomo and his former detainees of Zapu organised an ANC national congress in Salisbury (Harare) in September 1975. It elected Nkomo as the ANC president.
There was a great deal of feeling that since Joshua Nkomo had assumed the ANC leadership, and in his capacity as the country’s most senior black nationalist, he should hold talks with Ian Smith if only to find out first hand why he (Smith) was so morbidly afraid of genuine democracy.
Joshua Nkomo, accompanied by four or five of his most senior aides, started talks with the Smith regime on 1 December 1975. They ended in March 1976. However, they too did not achieve anything. It is important to explain how Joshua Nkomo viewed those talks with the Rhodesian regime, for which, incidentally, he was very strongly criticised particularly by the Zanu leadership whose call was only for the intensification of the armed struggle.
Nkomo was by profession a social scientist whose most important wish was to be understood correctly, and also to be happy by, first and foremost, generating happiness in society.
He wanted Smith and his colleagues to appreciate that the black people of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), and indeed of any other country, were no less human than the white people. He also wanted Smith to appreciate that Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) was a black people’s country, and that those black people had an unquestionable right to rule themselves in their own land. He felt that how the black people would rule their country was their concern by and large, but that Smith and other white people had a right to remain in a black-ruled Zimbabwe and contribute to its socio-economic development and cultural diversity if they chose to live in a free Zimbabwe.
Nkomo felt that following the leftist Portuguese coup of 25 April 1974, and the subsequent installation of a predominantly Frelimo government in Mozambique, Smith could be made to see the inevitability of a black government in Zimbabwe, and that the sooner that type of government was allowed to come into existence, the less would be the loss of human life and destruction of property because of an armed revolution.
Having drawn a blank, Nkomo returned to Lusaka to intensify the armed struggle. A large number of people followed him, and the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army (Zipra) grew by leaps and bounds from then till about August 1979.
For their part, Bishop Muzorewa, Rev Ndabaningi Sithole and Chikerema began their own negotiations with the Smith regime in 1977. Bishop Muzorewa’s ANC was now called the United African National Council (UANC). The Nkomo-led ANC had reverted by then to the name Zapu and done away with the ANC. Zapu felt that it was important to forge unity with an organisation with a capacity to prosecute an effective armed revolution, and that was Zanu.
Unfortunately that organisation had experienced internal conflicts that resulted in the deaths of some of its senior leaders such as the national chairman, Advocate Herbert Chitepo, a highly committed patriot who was killed by a bomb planted in his motor car on 18 March 1975. Another revolutionary who lost his life in that internal Zanu conflict was John Mataure, one of the founders of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (Zanla), a fearless economics degree graduate whose death caused a void in the revolutionary circles of Zimbabwe in exile.
In spite of those unfortunate developments which resulted in the imprisonment of some of the Zanu leaders by the Zambian government at Kabwe’s Mukubeko Maximum Security Prison, Zapu and Zanu brought their guerrilla forces together under the name “the Zimbabwe People’s Army, ZIPA”.
Joshua Nkomo was truly excited and happy about that development, and would repeatedly refer to it (ZIPA) in his Press conferences. But that was not to be as armed clashes occurred at a number of integrated military (ZIPA) camps in Tanzania and Mozambique, resulting in the loss of lives of hundreds of patriots.
Meanwhile, the American government was active in the region pressurising various relevant governments to force the Smith regime to agree to attend constitutional negotiations. That led to the holding of such a conference in Geneva, Switzerland from October 1976 to early January 1977.
The failure to unite Zanu and Zapu guerrilla forces was followed by the creation of the Patriotic Front (PF) in early October 1976, just before the convention of the Geneva Conference.
As the Zanu top leaders in Zambia were still locked up at Mukubeko Maximum Security Prison, there was immediate need to resolve that matter so that the Patriotic Front could be well represented at the Geneva Conference.
The Zanu middle level leaders indicated that their party’s spokesman would be the secretary general, Robert Mugabe, who had by then been released. He clandestinely left the country for Mozambique in the company of Edgar Tekere and Chief Rekayi Tangwena. The middle-level Zanu leaders indicated that they would deeply appreciate if high-level interventions were made for the release of their leaders from Mukubeko Prison.
Joshua Nkomo took up the matter with President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia and subsequent to consultations, Jason Ziyapapa Moyo was sent by Joshua Nkomo to acquaint the imprisoned Zanu comrades with the current developments. They were released and were able together with Robert Mugabe and Edgar Tekere to represent their party at the Geneva Conference which commenced in October 1976 and ended at the beginning of January 1977.
The meeting did not achieve anything save to bring Zapu and Zanu together as Patriotic Front components. Zapu later called itself PF-Zapu and Zanu named itself Zanu-PF.
Asked whether or not he thought it was a politically wise decision for him to have used his influence to get the Zanu leaders out of prison in view of their extremely strong criticism of his talks with the Smith regime, Joshua Nkomo replied: “The freedom of Zimbabwe is much more important than the personal feelings of any one person, including those of Joshua Nkomo.
“In a revolution, the most important thing is the freedom and future of the country. Some of us will die, some of natural causes, some by assassination, some in the battlefield. It will all be a part of the sacrifice to free Zimbabwe . . .”
No sooner did Nkomo and his delegation return to Lusaka after the abortive Geneva Conference than JZ Moyo was killed by a parcel bomb on 22 January 1977. Moyo had been in charge of PF-Zapu’s military department in addition to being one of that organisation’s two vice-presidents.
Joshua Nkomo was deeply shaken by Moyo’s tragic death in spite of Moyo having been an open critic of Joshua Nkomo’s meetings with the Smith regime. He had actually told Nkomo on one face-to-face occasion that he was an anti-revolutionary and that he had damaged Zapu’s international image by holding meetings with Smith.
Nkomo replied that he would hold such meetings with Smith if he thought that they could resolve the Rhodesian issue without further loss of human life and destruction of property.
In January 1978, another abortive conference on Rhodesia was held, that time in Malta. It did not last more than a day and was of no significance. At that time Smith had virtually agreed with Bishop Abel Muzorewa, Rev Sithole, James Chikerema plus a traditional leader, Jeremiah Chirau, to form what they called a “Transitional Government” for Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, a name they gave to the country.
They constituted a ministerial council of that short-lived regime comprising nine Rhodesian Front members and nine black members, that is three from Muzorewa’s UANC, three from Rev Sithole’s ZANU, and three from Chief Chirau’s Zimbabwe United People’s Organisation, Zupo.
In April 1978, a pseudo-election was held, and Muzorewa’s UANC was declared the winner. Shortly thereafter the top leaders of that regime decided to invite Joshua Nkomo to return home and take over the leadership of the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia regime.
Smith himself secretly flew to Zambia where he met Nkomo, Kaunda and Brigadier Joseph Garba of Nigeria at a government guesthouse in that country’s Eastern Province. Smith said they were all agreed in the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia administration that Joshua Nkomo was the country’s most senior political leader, and that in that capacity he should come back home and head the government.
Nkomo told the three men that he would comply on condition that he returned with Robert Mugabe, co-leader of the Patriotic Front. Brigadier Garba, who was Olusegun Obasanjo’s Government’s foreign minister, then offered to fly to Maputo, Mozambique, to brief and consult Cde Mugabe.
Joshua Nkomo and Kenneth Kaunda waited for word from Brigadier Garba but instead Kaunda received a telephone call from President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania most strongly condemning the whole idea. That was the end of that project.
If Joshua Nkomo was power-hungry, he could have accepted the invitation, packed up his bags and baggage, commanded Zipra forces to march into Zimbabwe-Rhodesia, integrated them with the Zimbabwe-Rhodesia troops, and fought Zanla guerillas, with his much larger troops facing Mozambique. But not Joshua Nkomo; he was tempted with power but acted with honour and patriotism.
On another occasion, the British government invited him to London for what were said to be highly confidential consultations. He said he would willingly go if Robert Mugabe were also invited.
On being told that the consultations were of no interest to Cde Mugabe but to him in his capacity as the most senior African nationalist of Rhodesia, he was persuaded to go. He briefly met the British Foreign Relations secretary, Lord Carrington and four or five other high-ranking British Government officials at Lancaster House.
Lord Carrington asked him how he (Nkomo) would like the British Government to return his (Nkomo’s) country to the black people: Either as the British found it in September 1890 when there was a State of amaNdebele with a sovereign king whom the British defeated militarily in November 1893, and Mashonaland was a group of chiefdoms, each with its own sovereign head; or would he like it to be returned to the black people as the British had created it after they conquered the Ndebele state and King Lobengula in 1893 and then brought the amaNdebele territory together with the Mashonaland chiefdoms to form Southern Rhodesia?
Joshua Nkomo most strongly condemned the very idea of looking at the country in terms of Mashonaland and Matabeleland, and told the British Government officials that the vast majority of the black people wanted their country to be given back to them as a unitary state, and not as bits and pieces.
With that the chairman, Lord Carrington, thanked Cde Nkomo and declared the meeting ended. If Joshua Nkomo had been after political power, he certainly could have demanded some form of federation based on historical considerations; not Joshua Nkomo, he stood for national unity from the beginning up to the end of his illustrious political career. Some of us may feel or think differently, but not Joshua Nkomo; the man was a macro and not a micro nationalist.
Zipra and Zanla military successes became so overwhelming in 1978 to 1979 that the Smith Regime and its puppets headed by Bishop Muzorewa realised that their end was obvious. The shooting down by Zipra of two Rhodesia airways aircrafts, and the destruction of Salisbury fuel reservoir were without doubt an indication the Smith regime was losing the war.
The British government decided to convene a constitutional conference to transfer power to the black people of Zimbabwe. It started in November 1979 and the final agreement was signed on 21 December that very year, detailing how state power would be transferred to the black people within the next four to five months.
After signing, the Lancaster House constitutional agreement on 21 December 1979 in London, Joshua Nkomo was asked by the BBC what he thought about the whole struggle and the end of it.
He replied most pensively: “Could we not have done precisely the same thing in 1962 and saved the country all that unnecessary bloodshed and destruction of property? Should the British government not have convened a similar conference at that time rather than refuse and cause all this misery?”
On his return home, the Patriotic Front contested the 1980 pre-independence general elections as PF-Zapu and as Zanu-PF following, Zanu-PF’s refusal for the two to contest as the Patriotic Front.
During the dissident disturbances in Matabeleland and parts of the Midlands, Nkomo said he was not part of what was taking place because and I quote, “I did not struggle in order for me, Joshua Nkomo, to rule this country personally”.
Speaking in siNdebele umdala wethu said: “Ngalwela ukuthi ilizwe libe ezandleni zomuntu omnyama, ukuthi umuntu omnyama lowo ngubani angilani lakho.”
- Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo- based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. [email protected]
