Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday Life Reporter
THERE is a photograph, taken by Zenzo Nkobi at Zimbabwe House in Lusaka in the aftermath of Nikita Mangena’s death, which captures what might have been a lost part of the country’s history.
In the picture, derived from a colour 35mm negative which was digitised by Africa Media Online in 2009, the late Zimbabwe Vice President Joshua Nkomo, flanked by fellow nationalist Samuel Munodawafa, salutes the casket of the late ZIPRA commander as pallbearers pass by.
For Zimbabweans at large, the picture is historic. It shows the last moments before the burial of a military mastermind, cut down well before his time, at a time when Zimbabweans could not afford to give befitting farewells to its most gallant sons and daughters.
For others however, the picture is a time capsule transporting back to Zimbabwe House, a place they once called home. One of these people is Albert Nyathi, a man who has, since the dawn of independence, grown to become one of Zimbabwe’s foremost poets, perhaps best known for his song Senzeni Na, a eulogy to assassinated South Africa liberation leader Chris Hani.
The assassinations of Hani and Mangena, coming when both their nations were on the cusp of independence, have eerie similarities. While Nyathi penned a song that would have soothed the ears of wounded South African listeners after Hani’s murder, a younger version of himself could have perhaps used a similar lullaby when Mangena was killed in 1978.
This was, after all, only two years after Mangena had given Nyathi shelter at Zimbabwe House when he was a young lad. Three years prior to that, Nyathi had left the then Rhodesia with dreams of striking it rich in the gold mines in South Africa and then coming back to become successful a successful subsistence farmer.
“I went to a school called Chobeni in the district of Kezi until Grade 3,” he said in an interview captured in a book that recalls Nikita Mangena’s great life. “I left school in 1973. I never really liked school. I used to play truant. There was no role model in our district in education terms. Even the teachers weren’t local. Our only role models were those who used to work in the gold mines in Johannesburg. I actually never thought of education as an important factor in my life. All I wanted was to go to Joburg, work in the gold mines, come back, buy a few goods and cattle, be a peasant farmer, marry and make merry.”
Nyathi, the self-confessed truant, would leave for Botswana, where he would become a herd boy, only to leave behind the cattle he was supposed to tend behind when the call to join the liberation fighters in Zambia came.
“After I left school, sometime around 1976, I worked in Botswana as a herd boy. There and then, people were coming and going to join the [Zimbabwe liberation] struggle. As a herd boy, I knew some of them. So, I joined them, and left the cattle behind. I went to Zambia towards the end of 1976. We travelled with the fighters to Botswana, and eventually to Zambia,” he said.
Nikita Mangena
In Zambia however, there was a problem. Nyathi was too young to go to the frontline and battle for Zimbabwe’s freedom together with young men and women that were prepared to lay down their lives for the liberation of their country. Sometimes, he confessed, he would miss his father, a man he said used to beat him up mercilessly.
“We joined Zapu. At the time, the movement had no idea what to do with us. Initially, it was only elderly people who went to join the struggle, but now there were many of us who were relatively young. They didn’t know what to do. And while they were thinking about it, we just sat in a transit camp called Nampundwe.
“Sometimes it was fun. We were mischievous, but it was also boring, and I missed my mother. My father also. He used to beat me up a lot, but I still missed him. We were sometimes homesick. So, if you were lucky, you would sneak out and join a truck in which they collected guys for training,” he said.
It was in the midst of his misgivings, while missing a father figure in his life, that Nyathi finally came across Mangena.
“I was lucky, so I ran away to a training camp called Mwembeshi, but then I was unlucky. I was spotted by Alfred Nikita Mangena, the army commander, and he said, “Hey, Young man! Come join me and have something else for you,” and so I went to stay at a place called Zimbabwe House in Lusaka for some months,” he said.
It was here under the tutelage of leaders like Mangena, that a young man who had once despised school and only dreamt of finding himself deep underground in a gold mine in South Africa, started to discover the true value and importance of education.
While others fought fire with fire on the battle front, he was being prepared for life after the war, a different time, when he could become a nation’s leading poet.
“…Zapu decided to open some schools for the youth, and I went to JZ Moyo school a few kilometres from Lusaka. The girls had their own school called Victory Camp, popularly known as V.C. I went into Grade Four. Umdala Joshua Nkomo told us, “Now, look, your gun is your ballpoint”.