By Saul Gwakuba-Ndlovu
CDE ROBERT MUGABE joined the Southern Rhodesia liberation struggle at a time the country’s black community regarded holders of university degrees as carriers of enlightenment in general, and also as incomparable assets to their respective families.
Throughout the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, there were not more than 30 of them, most of whom were in the teaching profession, especially in Southern Rhodesia. These were Cdes Ndabaningi Sithole (BA), Gideon Mhlanga (BA), Zacchaeus Gwaze (BA) – all from Manicaland; Enock Dumbutshena (MA), Joshua Nkomo (BSocSc), Stanlake Samkange (BA) Peter Sihlangu Mahlangu (BA), Miss Iwani Mothobi (BSocSc), Griffiths Malaba (BA) – all based in Matabeleland; Gwen Khumalo (BA) from Gwelo (Gweru) in the Midlands; Walter Kamba (LLB), Engeline Daniel Dube (BA), Herbert Wiltshire Chitepo (LLB), Theodora Malaba (BA), Dr Samuel Tichafa Parirenyatwa (Doctor of Medicine), Dr Edward Pswarai (Dr of Medicine), Eden Mwamuka (BA), Leopold Takawira (BA), George Kahari (BA) and Robert Mugabe (BA; BEd).
The BA graduates had virtually all done a postgraduate education diploma.
Coming hard on the heels of the top list followed quite a few among whom were Dr Simon Mazorodze (Medicine), Dr Sipho Zwana (Medicine), Obadiah Mlilo (BA) and two others from the Fort Victoria (Masvingo) District.
As has already been pointed out in an earlier instalment of this series, Cde Mugabe refused to teach in Southern Rhodesia after he graduated in South Africa because of racial discrimination in the country.
He was, instead, offered a post by the Northern Rhodesian Government and went to teach at Chalimbana Teachers’ College where one of his final year students was Kenneth Kaunda.
It is also erroneous that Cde Mugabe was at Fort Hare with Julius Nyerere as Nyerere never went to South Africa but to the UK for his education.
Zambian leaders who studied in South Africa during Cde Mugabe’s time were Dr Konoso (Medicine), Elijah Mudenda and Princess Nakatindi.
Other Zambian leaders such as Munukayumbwa Sipalo, Daniel Lusulo and Mundia studied at Indian universities.
After Chalimbana College, Kaunda got involved in politics full-time, and was later given an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree.
That apart, we see Cde Mugabe joining the few university graduates in the struggle full time. These were Ndabaningi Sithole who had become a reverend and was elected chairperson of the National Democratic Party (NDP) and later of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU); the other graduate, apart from Cde Joshua Nkomo, was Cde Leopold Takawira, a patriot of immense courage who left a highly lucrative headmaster’s post in Highfield to throw himself into the revolution.
Cde Josia Chinamano (BA) was initially not in the topmost echelons of the country’s nationalist leadership, but headed the Highfield Community School which, however, later became the perennial recruitment ground of the Zimbabwean armed revolution.
The presence of Cde Mugabe in the country’s nationalist organisation gave it much respect at home and abroad.
Many professionals, particularly schoolteachers who had earlier looked down on the black revolution, changed from being disdainful and became respectful.
The earlier disdainful attitude of some of the moderately educated black people was clearly expressed in a Salisbury-based predominately black-read newspaper editorial article by one relatively senior blackman, a holder of a three-year-long agricultural course in 1957.
He said: “Many leaders and members of the Salisbury City Youth League were so backward educationally that they were unemployable.”
The Salisbury City Youth League, as a pressure group, was headed by Cde James Chikerema as its president, with Cde George ‘Bonzo’ Nyandoro, Cde Paul Mushonga (a medical orderly) Cde Eddison Sithole (who ended up with a PhD in law, but was kidnapped by Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front security in Salisbury in 1978 and has never been traced) and Cde Henry Hamadziripi, a pioneer revolutionary who became a top ZANU PF leader right up to the achievement of Zimbabwe’s independence.
In any case, when the author of that piece was told that Cde Nyandoro was the first black person in Southern Rhodesia to qualify as a member of the Chartered Institute of Secretaries, he looked lost and asked: “Is that Charter not similar to or the same as the one given to the British South Africa Company of Cecil John Rhodes by Queen Victoria in 1889?”
He could never forgive Cde Chikerema for having been expelled from Cape Town University and for getting deported from South Africa for political reasons.
He would, some years later (1964), fly to Lusaka accompanied by his former African Newspapers boss, C.A.G Paver, to persuade Cdes Chikerema and Nyandoro to negotiate with the Rhodesia Front rather than wage a war.
They failed because negotiating with the Rhodesian regime would have been a betrayal of the commitment of such patriots as Cde Mugabe, a man whose commitment to the liberation struggle was noticed and asserted by Cde Nkomo as early as 1962.