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John Gambanga Special Correspondent
The thousands of friends and relatives who thronged his Warren Park D home to pay their last respect after his death speak volumes of the type of man Kanengoni was. A man among men, a die-hard patriot who sacrificed his very life for Zimbabwe.
Alexander Kanengoni is dead. Long live the works and life of this gangling former freedom fighter from Manyene in Chivhu who traded his AK rifle with the pen in 1980 and left an indelible mark both as an English fiction writer and a fighter for the liberation of the country from colonial rule.
The literary world was enriched by his five English books of fiction.
I first heard his name at the Harare Airport in February 1980 a few days before the independence elections.
He was among the 64 group of Vashandi who had just been released from three years of incarceration in Mozambique after they had staged a rebellion against the Zanu leadership.
Other members of this group included Augustine Chihuri, Tendai Pfepferere, Henry Hamadziripi, Rugare Gumbo, Jones Jichidza, Felix Chemandiwe, John Chifamba, Victor Maunde, Harry Tanganeropa, Grey Mapondera, Mukudzei Mudzi, Levy Gwarada,, Webster Gwauya, Crispen Mandizvidza, Tito, Keith Nyika, Joseph Taderera, Lelani Ndlovu and Wilfred Mhanda.
These independent-minded cadres had challenged the manner in which the party leadership was running the affairs of the war and were arrested.
I had gone to the airport to cover their arrival from Maputo for Moto, a weekly Catholic newspaper based in Gweru that I had joined a few months earlier.
I tried to engage some of them in interviews but they all refused bluntly.
But I managed to get a photograph of the group as they left the terminal, with their hands clasped and their arms lifted.
That’s the photograph we used on our front page that week on our caption story.
Two years later, I attended an education seminar for ex-combatants and refugees where Kanengoni was a facilitator as he had joined the Ministry of Education as a Project Officer.
We engaged in a discussion and he confided in me his liberation war background and we became friends. We later realised that we shared the same totem and had both attended Catholic schools.
Over the years we met and discussed a number of issues from politics, the war in Mozambique and Zambia and Kanengoni’s passion— literature.
Zanda, as we affectionately called him, or Comrade Gora, his nom de guerre, struck me as a forthright person, jovial and jocular but very independent minded. He would speak his mind on any controversial issue, without mincing his words.
His eldest son Tawanda described his father as a” fountain of wisdom and humility.” Indeed, that was the man.
He used his war experiences to write books in English after graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the University of Zimbabwe at the end of the war.
His five books are: Vicious circle; Echoing silence; When the rain bird cries; Effortless tears; and Writing still.
I met him soon after I had left state media to join the Daily News and he accused me of being a mercenary. I countered this by pointing a finger at him and his Vashandi group in 1977.
Then he explained what had led to the rebellion which he justified as a rebel with a genuine cause.
He asked me to read Edgar Tekere’s memoirs, A lifetime of struggle, in which the veteran nationalist in hindsight supported the Vashandi cause.
Born in 1951 in Chivhu, Alexander was the fifth born in a family of eight children. He attended Kangaire School and Marymount Mission School in Mt Darwin before enrolling at Kutama for his higher education.
After graduating with a teaching diploma he taught in Mufakose for two years before joining the liberation struggle in Mozambique in 1975.
He began his military training at Nyadzonia, then moved to Morogoro in Tanzania and then Doroi.
He was deployed in the war front where he rose to be provincial commissar and detachment commander.
After independence he joined the Ministry of Education as Project Officer in charge of the training of ex combatants and refugees.
He joined the ZBC in 1988 as a Research Officer and left in 2002 to become a farmer after getting a farm in Centenary, where he had operated during the war.
He also got a job as Deputy Editor of the weekly The Patriot, a job he held until his untimely death.
The thousands of friends and relatives who thronged his Warren Park D home to pay their last respect after his death speak volumes of the type of man Kanengoni was.
A man among men, a die-hard patriot who sacrificed his very life for Zimbabwe.
Among them were cabinet ministers, the police chief, the deputy director of the CIO and ordinary men and women who knew him in his 65 years on earth.
May his dear soul rest in eternal peace.
Online Reporter