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The Herald, 2 July 1999

INTABA yadilika. The mountain has collapsed. Umdala wethu sesitshiyile. Our great old man has gone. He has passed the torch on to us.

So it came to pass yesterday that the nation woke up to the sad news that Cde Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo, our Vice President, a tireless and fearless fighter for freedom and founding father of the Zimbabwe nation, had passed away.

Cde Nkomo is a true hero who dedicated his whole life to the liberation and unity of the people. Even when he was extremely ill, he embodied and held on to the twin ideals of freedom and national unity. People who were old enough to know what was happening around them in the 1960s remember fondly the man and name Joshua Nkomo.

They recall the liberation songs woven around him that set the whole country ablaze, from the cities to the remotest corners of the rural areas.

Cde Nkomo was a living legend. People believed he was endowed with magic powers which helped him fight and overcome imponderable barriers.

The Southern Rhodesia and Rhodesian regimes were extremely vicious in their treatment of Africans. Imprisonment, detention, torture and death awaited those who dared demand that the rights and freedoms of the African people be respected.

It thus took men of extraordinary character, courage and complete dedication to fight for the liberation of Zimbabwe. Dr Nkomo was prepared to sacrifice his own life and the comforts of his family for freedom and unity.

Cde Nkomo underwent the most inhuman and humiliating experiences in his quest for freedom. He was persecuted, jailed and detained in the most atrocious places. He was a wanted and hunted man, living in exile and in the bush. As he showed us, heroes are people who are humble enough to suffer for the sake of others and tenacious enough to pursue national ideals to the bitter end.

Having achieved Independence, Zimbabwe faced the darkest chapter of its history in the mid-1980s.

The nation succumbed to internecine strife and faced the threat of being torn apart. All the good things people had fought and died for, and had dreamed of, seemed to be disintegrating.

Cde Nkomo seemed, once again, able to dig deep into his legendary magic powers when he and President Mugabe signed the Unity Accord.

Cde Nkomo will forever remain a symbol of the unity that we have achieved within the Zimbabwe nation.

Unity has given peace and political stability, the prerequisites for our spiritual and material development. It is now up to us, the survivors, to build on that and achieve the kind of development we want. As we mourn him, Cde Nkomo can justifiably say to us: “I am going, I have done my part, and the rest is up to you.” That is the great challenge to surviving and coming generations.

Some people have expressed fears that the Zimbabwe nation will fall apart with Cde Nkomo’s death. As the whole Zimbabwe nation grieves and mourns, let us remember the lesson to be drawn from the life of Cde Nkomo: the primacy of freedom and national unity over personal comforts, complete dedication to people and country, making supreme sacrifices for the Zimbabwe nation, tenacity in pursuit of national ideals, and undying faith and hope that things can be done. Hamba kahle, Baba Nkomo.

LESSONS FOR TODAY

The saying, “if your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader”, aptly explains nationalist and liberation fighter Dr Joshua Nkomo, the man called Father Zimbabwe or Chibwechitedza.

Dr Nkomo is not only a larger than life figure in Zimbabwe’s narrative, but is among the chief cornerstones in its foundation. His principles   need to be studied and understood in order to deal with the challenges faced by Zimbabwe, and take it forward.

Unity, freedom and hard work, which are the embodiment of the former Vice President are values that should not only be cherished, but should continue to be hallmarks of Zimbabwean society.