Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo (19 June 1917–1 July 1999) was the leader and founder of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and a member of the Kalanga tribe. He was affectionately known in Zimbabwe as "Father Zimbabwe", "Umdala Wethu", "Umafukufuku" or "Chibwechitedza" (the slippery rock).
Early life
Nkomo was born in Bukalanga or Bulilima, now referred to as
Semokwe Reserve,
Matabeleland South and was one of eight children. His father (Thomas Nyongolo Letswansto Nkomo) worked as a preacher and a cattle rancher and worked for the
London Missionary Society. After completing his primary education in
Rhodesia, Nkomo took a carpentry course at the
Tsholotsho Government Industrial School and studied there for a year before becoming a driver. He later tried
animal husbandry, then became a schoolteacher specialising in carpentry at
Manyame School in
Kezi. In 1942, at the age of 25, during his career as a teacher, he decided that he should go to
South Africa to further his education, do carpentry and qualify to a higher level. He attended Adams College and the
Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work in South Africa. There he met
Nelson Mandela and other regional nationalist leaders at the
University of Fort Hare, though he did not attend that university. It was at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work]] that he was awarded a
B.A. Degree in Social Science in 1952. Nkomo married his wife Johanna MaFuyana on 1 October 1949.
After returning to Bulawayo in 1947, he became a trade unionist for black railway workers and rose to the leadership of the Railway Workers Union and then to leadership of the African National Congress in 1952. In 1960 he became president of the National Democratic Party, which was later banned by the Rhodesian government. He also became one of Rhodesia's wealthiest self-made entrepreneurs.
Armed struggle
Nkomo was detained at
Gonakudzingwa Restriction Camp by
Ian Smith's government in 1964, with fellow rebels
Ndabaningi Sithole,
Edgar Tekere,
Maurice Nyagumbo and
Robert Mugabe, until 1974, when they were released due to pressure from
South African prime minister
B.J. Vorster. Following Nkomo's release, he went to
Zambia to continue opposing the Rhodesian government through the dual processes of armed resistance and negotiation. Unlike ZANU's armed wing - the
Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army -, ZAPU's armed wing - the
Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army - was dedicated to both
guerrilla warfare and conventional warfare. At the time of independence ZIPRA had a modern military, stationed in
Zambia and
Angola, consisting of
Soviet-made
Mikoyan fighters, tanks and armoured personnel carriers, as well as well trained
artillery units.
Joshua Nkomo was the target of two attempted assassinations. The first one, in Zambia, by the Selous Scouts, a pseudo-team. But the mission was finally aborted and attempted again, unsuccessfully, by the Rhodesian Special Air Service (SAS). In August 2011 it was reported by the BBC that Nkomo had been tipped off by the British government.
ZAPU forces committed many acts of violence during their war to overthrow the Rhodesian government. The most widely reported and possibly the most notorious were when his troops shot down two Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount civilian passenger planes with surface-to-air missiles. The first, on 3 September 1978, killed 38 out of 56 in the crash, with a further ten survivors (including children) shot dead by ZIPRA ground troops, sent to inspect the burned-out wreckage. The eight remaining survivors managed to elude the guerrillas and walked 20km into Kariba from where the flight had taken off (it was heading for Salisbury, Rhodesia's capital, now renamed Harare). Some of the passengers had serious injuries and they were picked up by local police and debriefed by the Rhodesian army. The second shooting down, on 12 February 1979, killed all 59 on board. The real target of the second attack was General Peter Walls, head of the COMOPS (Commander, Combined Operations), in charge of the Special Forces, including the SAS and the Selous Scouts. Due to the large number of tourists returning to Salisbury a second flight had been dispatched. General Walls received a boarding card for the second flight, which departed Kariba 15 minutes after the doomed aircraft. No one has been brought to trial or charged with shooting down the aircraft due to amnesty laws passed by both Smith and Mugabe. In a television interview not long after the attack on the first aircraft, Nkomo laughed and joked about the incident while admitting ZAPU had indeed been responsible. In his memoirs, ''Story of My Life'', published in 1985, Nkomo expressed regret for the shooting down of both aircrafts.
Politics
Nkomo founded the National Democratic Party (NDP) and in 1960, the year British prime minister Harold Macmillan spoke of the "
Wind of Change" blowing through Africa, Robert Mugabe joined him. The NDP was banned by Smith's white minority government and it was subsequently replaced by the
Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), also founded by Nkomo and Mugabe, in 1962, itself immediately banned. ZAPU split in 1963 and while some have claimed this split was due to ethnic tensions, more accurately the split was motivated by the failure of Sithole, Mugabe, Takawira and Malianga to wrest control of ZAPU from Nkomo. ZAPU would remain a multi-ethnic party right up until independence.
Following the first majority-rule election in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia in which around 60% of the population voted, a government led by Abel Muzorewa, was formed in 1979 between Ian Smith and Ndabaningi Sithole's ZANU, which by now had also split from Mugabe's more militant ZANU faction. The civil war waged by Nkomo and Mugabe continued unabated and Britain and the USA did not lift sanctions on the country. Britain persuaded all parties to come to Lancaster House in September 1979 to work out a constitution and the basis for fresh elections. Mugabe and Nkomo shared a delegation, called the Patriotic Front (PF), at the negotiations chaired by Lord Carrington. Elections were held in 1980 and to the surprise of Nkomo but few others, the Common Roll vote split on predictable tribal lines, with the 20 seats in Matabeleland going to ZAPU and all but three of the sixty in predominantly Shona areas falling to Mugabe's ZANU. Nkomo was offered the ceremonial post of President, but declined.
Coup d'état
Despite reaching their ultimate goal, overthrowing Ian Smith and the minority white government, Mugabe and Nkomo would not reconcile their differences. While ideological differences kept the two men far enough already, Nkomo's ethnic background was grounds for distrust by Mugabe who constantly feared an uprising by the historically turbulent Ndebele population. Nkomo would make concessions and attempts to improve relationships but met with varying results, the most successful being the ones where
Sally Hayfron would intervene, as she was the only person within Mugabe's Party who was supportive of Nkomo. Allegedly, when Mugabe was offered a seat by
Julius Nyerere in his office where he met Nkomo months before, he refused and instead told him ''"If you think I'm going to sit right where that fat bastard just sat, you'll have to think again"''.
Initially, Mugabe refused to give Nkomo the position of Minister of Defense which Nkomo had been hoping for. After the intervention of Sally Hayfron, Nkomo was appointed to the cabinet (as minister without portfolio), but in 1982 was accused of plotting a coup d'état after South African double agents in Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organization, attempting to cause distrust between ZAPU and ZANU, planted arms on ZAPU owned farms and then tipped Mugabe off to their existence.
In a public statement Mugabe said, "ZAPU and its leader, Dr. Joshua Nkomo, are like a cobra in a house. The only way to deal effectively with a snake is to strike and destroy its head." He unleashed the Fifth Brigade upon Nkomo's Matabeleland homeland in Operation Gukurahundi, killing ca. 3000 Ndebele civilians in an attempt to destroy ZAPU and create a one-party state. Nkomo fled the country. Mugabe's government claimed that he had "illegally" left dressed as a woman:
Nkomo ridiculed the suggestion that he escaped dressed as a woman. "I expected they would invent stupid stories about my flight.... People will believe anything if they believe that". He added that "...nothing in my life had prepared me for persecution at the hands of a government led by black Africans."
After the Gukurahundi massacres, in 1987 Nkomo consented to the absorption of ZAPU into ZANU, resulting in a unified party called ZANU-PF, leaving Zimbabwe as effectively a one-party state and leading some Ndebeles to accuse Nkomo of selling out. These Ndebele individuals were in such a minority that they did not constitute a meaningful power base within the cross-section of ZAPU. In a powerless post and with his health failing, his influence declined.
When asked late in his life why he allowed this to happen, he told historian Eliakim Sibanda that he did it to stop the murder of the Ndebele (who supported his party) and of the ZAPU politicians and organizers who had been targeted by Zimbabwe's security forces since 1982. "Mugabe and his Shona henchmen have always sought the extermination of the Ndebele," he said.
Nkomo had been an inactive member of the Missionary Church for most of his life. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1999, shortly before he died of prostate cancer on 1 July at the age of 82 in Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare.
Nkomo letters
Letters allegedly written by Nkomo to the prime minister Robert Mugabe while in exile in the United Kingdom began to resurface following his death in 1999. In the letters he argues against his persecution and accused the government of cracking down on opposition.
National Hero status
In 1999 Nkomo was declared a National Hero and is buried in the
National Heroes Acre in Harare.
On 27 June 2000, a set of four postage stamps were issued by the Post and Telecommunications Corporation of Zimbabwe featuring Joshua Nkomo. They had denominations of ZW$2.00, $9.10, $12.00 and $16.00 and were designed by Cedric D. Herbert.
References
Joshua Nkomo with Nicholas Harman, ''Nkomo: The Story of My Life'' (autobiography), 1984; ISBN 0-413-54500-8,ISBN 978-0-413-54500-8.
''The Zimbabwe African People's Union 1961-1987: A Political History of Insurgency in Southern Rhodesia''.
Terence O. Ranger, ‘"Nkomo, Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo (1917–1999)", ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004. accessed 18 June 2006
External links
We who fought against these things now practise them. Why? Why? A speech by Joshua Nkomo at the burial of Lookout Masuku
BBC Obituary
Joshua M Nkomo: A Bulawayo man who became "Father Zimbabwe"
Nkomo's Letter,"Zimbabwe Metro"
Nkomo's Letters Part 2
Nkomo's Letters,The Conclusion
A Foundation Dedicated to the Legacy of Joshua Nkomo
Category:People from Matabeleland South Province
Category:Zimbabwean politicians
Category:Vice Presidents of Zimbabwe
Category:Converts to Roman Catholicism
Category:Zimbabwean Roman Catholics
Category:Deaths from prostate cancer
Category:Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army personnel
Category:Zimbabwean revolutionaries
Category:Cancer deaths in Zimbabwe
Category:1917 births
Category:1999 deaths
Category:Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front politicians
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