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(PRESIDENT) EMMERSON (MNANGAGWA)’s father, Mafidhi Mnangagwa, was the leader of his village community.
What the settlers called the “Sub Book” or village headman.
As such, he was the local representative of the tribal leadership in the area and both served and managed this local community, settling disputes and making sure that the welfare needs of all the members of the village were met.
Because of his father’s position, Emmerson was allowed to sit on the outskirts of the village dare, or meetings of elders, where local disputes and family problems would be discussed and decisions made.
He would, through these experiences, have had first-hand knowledge of the traditional systems of law and justice.
Through this, he would have also witnessed the intensively democratic way Shona society was organised, with all decisions being taken by consensus and no decisions going forward until all points of view had been taken into account.
These principles were to guide him for the rest of his life as a lawyer and advocate and, eventually, as Minister of Justice, and responsible for drafting his country’s Constitution.
But for now, he was a small boy, in an African village, in a country called Southern Rhodesia, after the man who had organised and funded the colonisation process that had swept through Africa at the turn of the century.
His family found a place for him at Lundi Primary School, where he quickly learned to read and write — the first of his family to do so.
It was after reading a book by a famous English author at his school in Northern Rhodesia that he decided to adopt the name Emmerson, instead of his original family name of Dambudzo, on his birth certificate.
The settler regime at the time recognised, probably correctly, that the areas occupied by tribal villages were being overgrazed and that land degradation was setting in.
Instead of consulting tribal leaders and working out what solutions were necessary, the Government made decisions about limiting livestock numbers and access to grazing.
Probably technically sound proposals, but livestock were the very life of villages in the south. These ideas eventually translated into the “Native Land Husbandry Act”, which was to become the first focus of black opposition to white rule.
In the early 50s, when a young white government official arrived in the village in a Land Rover vehicle and demanded that the village reduce their stock levels, Emmerson’s father organised the village and sabotaged the vehicle.
This was taken seriously by the local government administration, led by the district commissioner, and as he was viewed as the ring leader, Mafidhi Mnangagwa was advised to leave the country and he fled to what was then Northern Rhodesia. He settled in that country and when he felt that he was able to support the family, they followed him into Northern Rhodesia in 1955.
Eventually, quite a significant small community of people from their home area would find themselves living in the area, close to the capital city of Lusaka.
Emmerson resumed his education once settled in the area of Mumbwa.
It was here that he first met a man called Robert Gabriel Mugabe, who was to play such an important part in his later life.
He completed his primary school education at Mumbwa in 1957 and then, possibly for financial reasons, or simply the fact that further educational opportunities were scarce, he enrolled at the Kafue Trade School, where he studied building and construction for two years.
Dissatisfied with the standard of education at the school, he applied for a place at the well-known Hodson Technical College in 1959.
As he did not have O Levels, he had to write an entrance examination, and it is a tribute to his natural intelligence that he passed with flying colours. His ambition at Hodson was to obtain a British qualification in building and construction, which would enable him to practise in this field.
But students will be students, and after a year at his new college, he joined a new political party called the United National Independence Party, or UNIP.
The federation, to which Northern Rhodesia belonged, was in difficulty and the local nationalist leadership were actively campaigning against its continuation.
Emmerson played a key role in the student leadership at the time and after violence on the campus, he was expelled.
After a short period trying to get established as a building contractor, Emmerson decided that politics was more to his liking and he moved to Bancroft in the north of the Copperbelt to become a full-time organiser for UNIP.
He spent a year in Bancroft and then returned to Lusaka, where he took up a post with a construction company and worked part-time with UNIP in its struggle to end the federation and secure independence and majority rule from the colonial power, Great Britain.
Excerpts from “A Life of Sacrifice”, a biography written by Eddie Cross.
Online Reporter