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Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo (1918 (date uncertain) – July 1, 1999) was a Zimbabwean nationalist leader, a Ndebele, and the leader and founder of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU).
Early life
Nkomo was the son of missionary teachers in Matabeleland and was educated in South Africa, where he met Nelson Mandela and other regional nationalist leaders at Fort Hare University. But he did not attend university at Fort Hare University. After returning to Bulawayo in 1948, he became a trade unionist for black railway workers.
Politics
Nkomo founded the National Democratic Party (NDP), and in 1960, the year British prime minister Harold MacMillan spoke of the "wind of change" blowing through Africa, Robert Mugabe joined him. The NDP was banned by Ian Smith's white minority government, and it was subsequently replaced by the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), also founded by Nkomo and Mugabe, in 1962, itself immediately banned. ZAPU split in 1963 and while some have claimed this split was due to ethnic tensions, more accurately the split was motivated by the failure of Sithole, Mugabe, Takawira and Malianga to wrest control of ZAPU from Nkomo. ZAPU would remain a multi-ethnic party right up until independence.
Armed struggle
Nkomo was detained by Smith's government in 1964, with fellow revolutionaries Mugabe and Sithole, until 1974, when they were released due to pressure from South African president B.J. Vorster. Following Nkomo's release, he went to Zambia to continue the liberation struggle through the dual process of armed conflict and negotiation. Unlike ZANU's armed wing, ZANLA, ZAPU's armed wing ZIPRA was dedicated to both guerrilla warfare and conventional warfare. At the time of independence ZIPRA had a modern military stationed in Zambia and Angola, consisting of Russian-made Mig fighters, Russian-made tanks and armoured personnel carriers, as well as a well trained artillery units. Though many of the historiography of the conflict has concentrated on the importance of ZANLA's guerrilla units in finally forcing the Smith regime to negotiate, in addition to this guerrilla threat was ZIPRA's conventional military strength which would have had the strength to overpower Rhodesia's military forces, depleted after years under constant attack.
ZAPU forces committed two acts of terrorism during their war to overthrow the Rhodesian government when his troops shot down two Air Rhodesia Vickers Viscount civilian passenger planes with surface-to-air missiles. The first, on September 3, 1978, killed 38 out of 56 in the crash, with a further ten survivors executed by ZIPRA ground troops. The eight remaining survivors managed to elude the guerrillas and walked 20km into Kariba from where the flight had taken off (it was headed for Salisbury). Some of the passengers had serious injuries, and were picked up by local police and debriefed by the Rhodesian army. The second shootdown, on February 12, 1979, killed all 59 on board. No-one has been brought to trial or charged with shooting down the aircraft due to amnesty laws passed by both Smith and Mugabe. In a televised interview not long after the first shootdown, Nkomo laughed and joked about the incident while admitting ZAPU had indeed been responsible.In his memoirs,Story of My Life,published in 1985,Nkomo expressed regret for the shooting down of both planes.Zipra had reason to suspect that the first plane was at the time carrying paratroopers for an assault on Zambia,as it had been used during the Chimoio/Nyadzonia operation.The real target of the second shootdown was General Peter Walls,who had been onboard for the first leg of the flight to Wankie,where he disembarked and switched planes,probably as a security precaution.In neither attacks were civilians specifically targeted.Nkomo's joke about the second incident was meant to conceal the presence of Zipra SAM sites within Rhodesia, that's why he told the BBC interviewer that the Zipra had used "stones" to shoot down the plane. It was his own joke that he was laughing at,not the deaths of innocent civilians.
Politics
An unpopular government called Zimbabwe-Rhodesia led by Abel Muzorewa was formed in 1979 between Ian Smith and Ndabaningi Sithole's ZANU, which by now had also split from Robert Mugabe's more military ZANU faction. However, the civil war waged by Nkomo and Mugabe continued unabated, and Britain and the USA did not lift sanctions on the country. Britain persuaded all parties to come to Lancaster House in September 1979 to work out a constitution and the basis for fresh elections. Mugabe and Nkomo shared a delegation, called the Patriotic Front (PF), at the negotiations chaired by Lord Carrington. Elections were held in 1980, and to most observers' surprise Nkomo's ZAPU lost in a landslide to Mugabe's ZANU. The effects of this election would be horrendous for Zimbabwe, as it made both ZAPU and ZANU into tribally-based parties, ZANU with the majority Shona, ZAPU the minority Ndebele. Nkomo was offered the ceremonial post of President, but declined.
He was appointed to the cabinet, but in 1982 was accused of plotting a coup after South African double agents in Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation, who were attempting to cause distrust between ZAPU and ZANU, planted arms on ZAPU owned farms, and then tipped Mugabe off to their existence. Mugabe unleashed the notorious Fifth Brigade upon Nkomo's Matabeleland homeland, operation Gukurahundi, in an attempt to destroy ZAPU and create a one-party state. After the Gukurahundi, in 1987 Nkomo consented to the absorption of ZANU into Zanu-PF, leaving Zimbabwe as effectively a one-party state, and leading some Ndebeles to accuse Nkomo of selling out.These Ndebele individuals were, however,in such a minority that they did not constitute a meaningful power base within the cross-section of ZAPU. In a powerless post, and with his health failing, his influence declined.
When asked late in his life why he allowed this to happen, he told historian Eliakim Sibanda that he did it to stop the murder of the Ndebele (who supported his party) and of the ZAPU politicians and organziers who had been targeted by Zimbabwe's security forces since 1982. Nkomo died of prostate cancer on July 1 1999, at the age of 81.
References
- The Zimbabwe African People's Union 1961-1987: A Political History of Insurgency in Southern Rhodesia.
- Terence O. Ranger, ‘Nkomo, Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo (1917–1999)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 18 June 2006
External links
"Joshua Nkomo"