By Johnson Siamachira
Harare (New Ziana) – The late Reverend Ndabaningi Chandiwana Sithole, one of the leaders of Zimbabwe’s war of independence, is posthumously being celebrated as a teacher, clergyman and intellectual leader of the country’s black nationalist movement.
He died on December 12, 2 000 in the United States, and is buried in his rural home in Chipinge. At the time, despite his prominent role in the independence war, he was denied hero status by the government of the late former President, Robert Mugabe.
But President Emmerson Mnangagwa reversed the decision, and posthumously awarded Sithole national hero status recently in recognition of his independence war effort.
The status befits his immense contribution to freedom of the country from British colonial bondage, to which the black majority had been subjugated for more than a century.
The reversal of the decision on Sithole’s hero status clearly demonstrates President Mnangagwa’s continuos thrust to right wrongs of the past.
By virtue of him being the founder member of ZANU in 1963, President Mnangagwa says Sithole deserved national hero status. He is quoted as saying: “Whatever his mistakes and missteps later in the struggle, he deserves mention and acknowledgement in national annals.”
ZANU PF launched its 2023 harmonized elections campaign on Saturday in Chipinge district in Southern Manicaland Province.
After the campaign launch, Zimbabwe celebrated the life and nationalism work of Sithole in the small town of Chipinge.
Born on July 31 1920, in Nyamandlovu area in Umguza district in Matabeleland North Province, church mission-educated Sithole was a teacher before studying theology in the United States of America (1955-1958). When he returned to Rhodesia, he became congregational minister, school principal and president of the African Teachers Association (1959-1960).
It was in 1960 that he launched his political career by joining the new National Democratic Party (NDP) led by nationalist leader Joshua Nkomo, and became its treasurer. He immediately became an influential member of the party.
When NDP was banned by the colonial government in 1961, he helped form the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU). After that party was also outlawed, he travelled widely in search of nationalism support, making broadcasts into Rhodesia from Tanzania.
When Sithole returned to Rhodesia in 1963, he broke away from ZAPU and formed a new party, the Zimbabwe African National Union(ZANU) backed by another nationalist, Robert Mugabe,
Regarded as dangerous by the white minority government, Sithole and other nationalists were arrested a few days before Rhodesia unilaterally declared itself a sovereign state from Britain on November 11, 1965.
While in jail, Sithole was deposed as leader of ZANU and replaced by Mugabe; his secretary general and the party was rebranded to ZANU-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF). His ouster was as a result of his public renunciation of the armed struggle during court proceedings.
Sithole was in prison until December 1974. But he was allowed to participate in a meeting of black nationalists with the Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith in Lusaka, Zambia. He was arrested again on March 4, 1975. In 1978-79, he served on the Transitional Executive Council, preparing the transfer of power in short-lived Zimbabwe Rhodesia.
He became a member of parliament in 1979. Though continuing as leader of a reconfigured ZANU, he was defeated in the elections of 1980, and his influence waned thereafter. In 1984, he moved to the United States after claims that Mugabe was plotting his assassination.
While in self-imposed exile, he remained in active opposition politics, and in 1992 he returned home and contested in the 1995 elections and won a seat in parliament.
However, that same year he was arrested for plotting to kill Mugabe. His influence declined further. Sentenced in 1997 to two years in jail, he did not serve any jail time due to ill-health and died in the United States while seeking medical treatment.
But perhaps, his most important contribution to Zimbabwe was through his writings. He was author of poetry, polemics, and fiction.
His books, published since 1956, were banned in then Rhodesia. At independence in 1980, Sithole had been displaced from any form of moral or political leadership.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, Sithole was one of the most prolific writers in Rhodesia at the time, including Stanlake Samkange, Lawrence Vambe, among others.
He published the first Ndebele novel in Zimbabwe, AnaNdebele ka Mzilikazi in 1956. The book was later republished a year later as Umvukela wamaNdebele. He also wrote the first novel in English serialized in African Parade between 1959 and 1961.
Tinashe Mushakavanhu, a researcher in African and comparative literature writes: “Sithole was not read as a writer but as a politician. Yet, he wanted politics to have a literary quality. He had a high regard for language, which he believed was an instrument for tearing people out of their ordinary perceptions.”
His most famous book, African Nationalism, was the first popular autobiography by a black politician of his time.
“In that sense, he was a trailblazer,” Mushakavanhu, who is also the author of the book Ndabaningi Sithole: A Forgotten Founding Father, writes.
New Ziana
