SUBSTANTIAL MEN CALLED NKOMO

Its good to have lived long enough to see some of the stuff that is coming out of archives, public and private. This internet is the source of so much that would otherwise have passed me by. For instance, Joshua Nkomo's letter to Mugabe, written in 1983, has surfaced. (click on to yesterdays's swradioafrica.com).Zimbabweans were sickened by the massacres in Matabeleland soon after the euphoria of a new Zimbabwe had faded but we were not surprised when ZANU (PF)'s curtain raiser was so violent. Joshua has been dead for several years but his letter speaks from the grave. You should read it, but be warned, it makes a hundred and ten points - each paragraph is neatly numbered and every one is worth noting. The man was a genius at record keeping. The Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace and the Legal Resources Foundation together brought out their full report on the atrocities of Gukurahundi but Joshua Nkomo's letter is almost blinding in its revelation of the truth of what the megalomaniac Mugabe had in store for us. It is a monument to Joshua's his huge personality and his reputation for devotion to the cause of uniting Zimbabweans and to the tragedy that ultimately overtook him and the nation when his fellow liberator destroyed everything they had fought for.
John Nkomo, currently the Speaker in Zimbabwe's Parliament, has just cancelled his trip to Geneva where he was to attend an inter-Parliamentary Union conference - or has he been banned? We do not yet know. But let me tell you a little about this Nkomo. He was a top lieutenant in Joshua's (PF) ZAPU party. I met him in Chinamano's little house in Highfield. (You will hear a lot about Chinamano from me because it was he and Joshua's publicity secretary, Willie Musarurwa were the men through whom I got to know so many nationalists in their best days). The younger Nkomo was just recovering from an eye injury sustained at the close of the liberation war. Like his colleagues in ZAPU, he was at that time still a man of hope, patiently enlightening, even inspiring us with his quiet conviction that peace was at hand. There he sat at Chinamano's table, the same elegant, well groomed, quietly charismatic gent that you see, more gray-haired, today. The difference now is that he, like several other top men in ZAPU, if they lived long enough, were sucked into the power vortex if they wanted to survive and more importantly, to prosper. John Nkomo has gone along, willingly it seems, with every new abomination that unrestrained power has wrought. Unlike Big Joshua who was so shamefully lured, in his last years into that warlock's coven from which only his old age released him.