adminDumisani Sibanda Features Correspondent
AS a journalist, I have worked for eight news publications and each time I joined a newsroom, apart from my notebooks and books, I have taken the story of Father Zimbabwe, Dr Joshua Nkomo with me.
It’s an important story and I am happy to reflect on it as I have chosen to do for his 17th anniversary since he passed on.
A larger than life character like Dr Nkomo “does not die. He is called to higher places for greater duties” to quote the eloquent Cde Simon Khaya Moyo, who was the icon’s personal assistant. His spirit and legacy lives on.
Amid the gloom and doom that sometimes we journalists find ourselves having to cover, it is such an enriching personal feeling when a progressive editor, like the Sunday News one, Limukani Ncube, gives you a carte blanche licence to reflect on such a great man.
I am almost persuaded to ask the sub-editors to use the title of this story, Joshua the Great and it is meaningful because at school during the colonial era propaganda celebrating characters from the West was being forced down our throats.
In a subject called Content, which really was a misnomer, because we were taught to parrot that David Livingstone discovered Victoria Falls, what hogwash. All this was because the colonialists were in-charge of the education system and were writing the text books. As the saying goes: “Until the lion learns how to write every story will glorify the hunter”. Now the lion has learnt how to write, that is why we can proudly write about Joshua The Great.
At the Chronicle, I have written features on Dr Nkomo’s anniversary and Unity Day and so on while at the sister paper Sunday News where I cut my teeth in journalism I have written about his passion for land and agriculture, at the Alpha Media Group I penned articles about the statue of Dr Nkomo which was finally erected on formerly Main Street now named after him and 10th Avenue in Bulawayo after several false starts of the project.
I was also briefly at the Zimbabwe Mail, where we re-produced articles based of various aspects captured at his house in Bulawayo’s Matsheumhlope suburb which was turned into a museum about him. The stories about Dr Nkomo’s life as depicted in the museum were carried in the Zimbabwe Mail in 2014. But what has fascinated me most is the manner in which Dr Nkomo articulated complex but significant agricultural developments in an easy to understand manner.
Some of the things that he said are now making sense earning the political legend, the status of an “economic prophet”.
Read thoroughly the Zim Asset, that blueprint, that we agree should turn around the fortunes of this country’s economy if implemented to the letter. Ask yourself whether agriculture is not the fulcrum on which the economy will grow as amplified by Dr Nkomo.
One of the projects — which despite its huge size is a microcosm of his huge vision — is the Nuanetsi Ranch in Mwenezi owned by the Development Trust of Zimbabwe, a development vehicle that Dr Nkomo used to demonstrate to all and sundry the true meaning of agricultural development. It measures more than 800 000 acres.
At its height and former Senior Business Chronicle Reporter, Wilson Johwa, an award winning journalist — who used to visit the ranch to write stories on it while employed by the Chronicle — now plying his trade in South Africa will testify that the Nuanetsi Ranch had about 35 000 cattle. I will confess, I have never been to Nuanetsi but I am reliably informed its state now is a far cry from what it was then, Dr Nkomo must be turning in what should be his resting place. But interestingly, the ranch whose acquisition was facilitated by Dr Nkomo through the DTZ, has a history.
Last year, in an interview for a Sunday News Supplement to celebrate the 16th anniversary of the passing on of Dr Nkomo, Father’ Zimbabwe’s eldest daughter, Thandiwe Nkomo-Ebhahim told the paper’s Senior Reporter Robin Muchetu the historical significance of Nuanetsi.
“When the white settlers arrested our father in 1964, they flew him to that area to Gonakudzingwa detention camp. He was tied to a big baobab tree and they left him there while they drank tea. My father said as he stood there he told himself that the farm was going to be one of the first farms they were going to repossess after independence,” Dr Nkomo’s eldest daughter, Mrs Thandiwe Nkomo Ebrahim, said.
Gonakudzingwa was a place used by the Rhodesian Security forces during the Second Chimurenga. It was used as a restriction camp for liberation war activists from Zapu and Zanu. Political prisoners that included Father Zimbabwe, the late Josiah Chinamano and his wife, Ruth, who is also late and Jane Ngwenya, who lives here in Bulawayo, among others were incarcerated and isolated right in the middle of the jungle. It is a symbol of the personal sacrifice and suffering that Dr Nkomo went through for the liberation of this country.
Another project, was the tomato canning venture, Dr Nkomo wanted to see blossom into greater things. Father Zimbabwe imported equipment for the project but it was just stored at Agricultural Rural Development Authority Balu Estate in Umguza, for more than 20 years. I remember, a few years ago, sneaking into the estate and asking the photographer to take photographs of the equipment while I created a diversion of the workers there by keeping them in engrossed in a discussion about Highlanders and Dynamos, as if I was just a passerby. Sneaking in was to avoid the bureaucracy that could be involved had I taken the official route. Later on making telephone enquiries from DTZ, I was told the equipment was meant for Norton near Harare.
I kept on doing follow-ups but without any movement on the project until a young but brilliant business reporter who specialises in Agriculture, Dumisani Nsingo, started writing the story about that equipment — which had remained at the estate for over 20 years — perhaps thinking the “old man” not Umdala Wethu but I had gotten frustrated as his stories on the project had not caused seismic shifts in terms of implementation.
But this year during the tour of Arda Balu — covered by Dumisani Nsingo — one of Dr Nkomo’s Zipra commanders, Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko, was not amused that his former Commander-In- Chief’s project was being let to waste.
He went bellicose threatening to institute the dissolution of the Agriculture Rural Development Authority Board.
“Why do we have a board that gets paid for absolutely nothing when there is no production at this place? These people clearly should not be here, they need to also explain clearly why after such a long time equipment is lying idle and yet they are supposed to be the leaders,” he was quoted as saying.
VP Mphoko said what was unfair was that the board responsible for the estate had clearly shown that they undermine the legacy of revolutionaries such as the late Father Zimbabwe and President Mugabe.
“It is unfair for someone who had the opportunity to run Arda property to leave it in this state; it is clear sabotage to the development of the people. What kind of board runs this place?”
This did the trick as soon afterwards the equipment was moved to Esigodini, where there is progress on tomato canning.
Dr Nkomo’s dream was to also build a factory which would do all the processing and canning of fruit, with the factory housing machinery which he had sourced from Italy.
Machinery that is still to be used after 30 years includes electric motors, storage tanks, piping material, steamers, mixers and various farming implements like tractors, harvesters and sorting machines. The proposed utilisation of the tomato processing equipment was a welcome development towards ensuring value addition and presents an opportunity to come up with a financial model to assist on the production side as well as the marketing of the end product.
The tomato processing and canning factory is a public-private partnership arrangement between Zagrinda, a company owned by Arda and Development Trust of Zimbabwe (DTZ) and beverage manufacturer, Schweppes Zimbabwe. Zagrinda is owned by Arda and DTZ on a 50-50 basis. There are now plans to get new computerised equipment and the latest technology from Italy as some of it has become “rather archaic”.
Zagrinda is an Arda subsidiary, in which Arda and the Development Trust of Zimbabwe (DTZ) have a 50-50 ownership stake. The DTZ is a national independent trust whose main thrust is to focus on development at national level and is chaired by Economic Planning Minister Simon Khaya Moyo. The plant will mainly focus on the processing of mango and tomato into jam and paste as well as canning. As we celebrate the life and vision of Dr Nkomo, we wait with bated breath for the day the project and other which he initiated, will go ahead full steam.
Online Reporter