By Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu

SOUTHERN RHODESIA, now Zimbabwe, was going through serious socio-economic strains and stresses at the time Cde Robert Mugabe burst onto the African nationalist scene in the early 1960s. 

One cause of that environment was purely indigenous and it was that the country’s people, like those of the entire continent, had begun to demand, most fearlessly, their inalienable right to rule themselves. 

The then British Prime Minister, Harold Macmillian, described the phenomenon in 1961 as ‘winds of change blowing across Africa’. 

A second factor was that the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was heading for inevitable dissolution sooner rather than later. 

The initial idea to amalgamate the two British protectorates north of the Zambezi River, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, together with Southern Rhodesia had been floated as early as the 1940s. 

The idea to abandon ‘amalgamation’ and pursue ‘federation’ was mentioned first to Sir Roy Wellensky in London in 1948 by the then colonial secretary, Arthur Creech-Jones. 

It was thereafter discussed by either wholly white Rhodesian,   Nyasaland and British government delegations or with a meaninglessly few pliable black delegates and the Federation was eventually inaugurated on September 3 1953 in spite of extreme opposition by the Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesian black delegates. 

The third factor that took Cde Mugabe by surprise was a sudden civil war and anti-white violence that caused thousands upon thousands of Belgians to flee — some utterly naked — the former Belgian Congo immediately the former Belgian colony became independent on June 30 1960. 

Most of these Belgians were airlifted from Elizabethville, Jadotville, Kolwezi and other Congolese urban centres by Federal aircraft from Salisbury (now Harare), from where Belgian Government air transport ferried them to Brussels. 

Strangely, the Federal Prime Minister, Sir Roy Wellensky and his Southern Rhodesian territory counterpart, Sir Edgar Whitehead, publicly said handing over power to black people in the Federation would result in another Congo inter-racial as well as inter-tribal bloody tragedy in Southern Rhodesia. 

Cde Mugabe was at pains to explain that there had not been any such violence in the former Gold Coast (Ghana) or in nearby Ivory Coast. 

He pointed out that what was happening was a result of the failure by the Belgians to prepare the country for independence. 

A story had been published showing how the Congo tragedy had more or less developed. 

It went like this: 

“The Belgian Congo had never had an army but had a group of gendarmes known as Force Publique, and the highest rank achieved in that force by a black person was that of ‘sergeant major’.” 

It was said in the early 1960s that Sergeant Joseph Desire Mobutu preferred to be referred to then as a ‘journalist’ and not as a soldier. 

The story continues that there was a colonial military officer who ordered members of the Force Publique to salute and call him ‘Le general’. 

Three or four days after attaining independence the Force Publique sent a 10-men delegation to that Belgian character asking for an increase in their allowances or rise in their wages. After the delegation saluted, he offered them a bench to sit on. 

He proceeded to a blackboard, for the meeting place was a classroom. 

He took a piece of chalk and wrote on the board (in French, of course): ‘Congo before independence = Congo after independence’. 

A day-or-two after that comic encounter, all hell broke loose in the Congo as the Force Publique rioted, murdered, looted, raped, vandalised and racially targeted Europeans. 

Their white general was believed to have flown out of the country a few hours before the mayhem had started. 

He returned to Belgium. 

In Southern Rhodesia, fingers of many white people, particularly those of French, Belgian extraction, were pointed at Cdes Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, accusing them of being neo-Nazis.

They said Cde Mugabe was what Dr Joseph Goebbels was to Hitler’s Nazi Party. 

Cde Mugabe and the entire African nationalist leadership successfully turned the tables and asked how else could Belgium’s King Leopold II’s indescribably brutal rule end up. 

Was sir Roy Wellensky’s mind warped up, probably by having been born in the Warsaw ghettos which were the first to be indiscriminately bombed by the Nazis in September 1939 at the very start of the Second World War? 

Polemics apart, in Southern Rhodesia, the first constitutional conference in which black people were represented started at the beginning of February 1961. 

Cde Nkomo headed a six-man delegation, the others being Rev Ndabaningi Sithole (the NDP chairman); Advocate Herbert Chitepo, who was given special leave of absence by the Tanganyika Government of which he was the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP); T.G. Silundika, an NDP adviser and strategist; Advocate Enock Dumbutshena, another then prominent lawyer; and Cde Nkomo himself. 

The chairman was the British Commonwealth secretary, Dunken Sandys, who cheated Cde Nkomo’s delegation without any respect whatsoever, and bulldozed the British and Rhodesian views through the conference without any feeling for the Africans.

The conference later came up with a Constitution that gave what were called 15 ‘B’ Roll parliamentary seats to the then four million black people, but a hefty 50 ‘A’ Roll seats to 22 500 colonial settlers. 

Cde Nkomo’s delegation publicly rejected that document and Cde Mugabe took it upon himself to explain why. 

Both  the black and the white communities organised two separate referenda to give an opportunity for the people to say whether or not they accepted the glaringly anti-black document. The whites who supported it were 41 949, and those opposing it were 21 848. 

Black people who rejected it numbered a staggering 467 187, and a paltry 584 supported it. 

Cde Mugabe had to explain these figures to the masses. 

It was on the basis of that 15 ‘B’ and 50 ‘A’ Roll Constitution that the Rhodesian Front got into office in December 1962 and demanded independence. 

Cde Nkomo had been said to have accepted it, a false accusation made by Cde Leopold Takawira who was the London-based ZAPU representative. 

He alleged Cde Nkomo had accepted the pro-white document by signing it in London and sent a telegram to Salisbury (Harare) asking Cde Nkomo to withdraw his signature. 

Cde Nkomo angrily said he had publicly rejected that Constitution and had not signed any document either in support or in rejection of any aspect of that document. 

He challenged Cde Takawira to produce and publish a copy of the document with his signature. 

Cde Takawira could not. 

Cde Mugabe mounted a vigorous campaign to put the record straight, especially just before the referenda already mentioned above. 

On one occasion, Cde Nkomo was criticised after he had publicly said he would ‘call on’ Sir Edgar Whitehead (the then Prime Minister) to tell the British Government to call another constitutional conference. 

Cde Nkomo’s critics said: “Oh, you see what he would like to do? 

“He wants to go fawning on the Southern Rhodesian regime, begging them to free our country from themselves.” 

Cde Mugabe quickly explained that the phrase ‘to call on’ does not necessarily mean going cap in hand to beg them to do whatever, it can mean contacting them by telegram or by telephone or by letter or by a human-borne message. 

That silenced Cde Nkomo’s critics. 

Cde Mugabe asked if those criticising Cde Nkomo were ignoring the recent referendum results. 

While Southern Rhodesia was getting more and more explosive, the Congo had already exploded, of course. 

Patrice Lumumba and his Cabinet ministers Joseph Okito and Maurice Mpolo had been duped and whisked away in a Belgian aeroplane from a Congolese prison to Katanga to be murdered in cold blood on January 17 1961.  

How the Belgians teamed up with the Americans, the British, and their Congolese lapdogs to get rid of Lumumba is a crime that has not yet been given the full glare of the world’s publicity. 

Then came the year 1962; an unforgettable trauma in the form of the assassination of Dr Samuel Tichafa Parirenyatwa by a group of soldiers near the Shangani railway siding on the night of August 14 along the Bulawayo-Salisbury (Bulawayo-Harare) Road. 

His official driver, Edward Ngozi Danger Zengeni Sibanda, lived to tell the tale. 

He said: “They had been followed by a special branch motor vehicle driven by Inspector Savage all the way up to Kadoma, Kwekwe and Gweru. 

“When they pulled out of Gweru in the evening, the special branch vehicle was no longer there. 

“About 10km south of Shangani Business Centre, they found a road block manned by military personnel in camouflage and were ordered to park on the extreme left of the road. 

“Suddenly, there was a very, very, loud explosion and he lost consciousness. 

“When he regained consciousness he was at Mpilo general hospital in Bulawayo, and it was very early in the morning. 

“He heard a voice say: ‘The doctor is dead, but this one is alive’.” 

Cde Mugabe, as the then ZAPU information and publicity secretary officially announced Dr Parirenyatwa’s death to the world the following morning. 

He became the master of ceremonies and Cde Nkomo was the principal mourner who accompanied the body from Bulawayo past Salisbury to Murehwa where it was buried a few days after the horrific crime. 

Cde Mugabe handled the extremely large crowds magnificently, but something strange happened. 

When Dr Parirenyatwa’s boyhood friend, Reuben Jamela, arrived in the morning of the burial, accompanied by three friends, the body had just been taken out of a house in which it had spent the night and was ready for public viewing. 

Jamela’s vehicle, a VW Beetle, had hardly parked when Cde Mugabe shouted: “You are cowards! You are cowards I say!” 

All hell broke loose as the ZAPU youths milling around broke branches of trees and heavily assaulted Jamela. 

In 15-20 minutes, he was a mass of blood, the white shirt he had been wearing was in shreds and its collar and the red tie were hanging on the gasping man’s neck. 

Then and only then did about five-or-six black police officers led by a white one move into the arena to pull out Jamela, a sorry spectacle. 

They must have taken him to either Murehwa Hospital or Nyadiri Mission Hospital. 

It will be recalled that Jamela was one of three people, trade union leaders, who signed a declaration in Bulawayo in 1954 that trade union movements would support the liberation struggle. 

He later, however, said trade unions should not be compelled, but should support political parties of their choice freely.

That resulted in a split in the worker’s movement; the Southern Rhodesia Trade Union Congress (SRTUC) and the African Trade Union Congress (ATUC) led by Jeremiah Terry Maluleke as president and Thomas Mswaka as the secretary-general. 

The ATUC but not SRTUC worked closely with ZAPU.

Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734 328 136 or through email. sgwakuba@gmail.com