Chronicle Editor
Vusumuzi Dube and Bruce Ndlovu, Sunday News Reporters
RENOWNED historian, cultural activist and educationist, Mr Pathisa Nyathi (pictured) has died.
He was 73.
Mr Nyathi passed away at a local private hospital after a long battle with diabetes.
His son, Mr Butholezwe Kgosi Nyathi confirmed the passing of his father.
“We are just processing the news now as a family but our initial reaction is that of sadness. However, we have to acknowledge that he has not been well for a while now and there’s some relief that he is resting now because he was in pain for a long time. As the surviving family members we are in grief because he was a figure that occupied a very pivotal role in our lives and we will dearly miss him.
“Of course, the outside world regarded him highly but to us, he was just a father like any other. The overwhelming feeling we have right now is one of gratitude because he was there for us through thick and thin. When a man is there for you from your childhood right until you reach your adulthood, you have to thank him because it just shows the unwavering dedication that he had for his own family,” said Butholezwe.
Several Zimbabweans took to social media to mourn the death of the prominent historian who they described as instrumental in ensuring the recording of the nation’s history.
Former Sunday News Deputy Editor who is now the Director of Communication and Marketing at the National University of Science and Technology, Mr Thabani Mpofu who was instrumental in convincing Mr Nyathi to continue penning his weekly column- Cultural Heritage — which had become a permanent feature in the Sunday News since 1995, described him as a historian par excellence. “Pathisa Nyathi has gone and it’s so sad, that’s a huge loss not for the people of Kezi, not for this region but for the whole country. He was a historian par excellence. Some people might not have respected him maybe because academically he didn’t go as far as having a doctorate or professorship but for me, he was a Professor. We worked with him for a very long time, I remember when I was at Sunday News, he started a column in the Sunday News magazine.
When we launched the magazine in 2000 and from that time there was never an issue on Sunday News magazine that Pathisa did not submit his article, he would write and write,” said Mr Mpofu.
He revealed that over the years, Mr Nyathi became a reliable columnist, not doing it for the money but for the passion.
“I remember at one time some of our columnists dropped out for various reasons, some of them because of perhaps the numerations that were being given, but Pathisa continued writing because he loved writing, he didn’t do it for money, but he wanted to share the knowledge that he had with the whole nation and for that I respect him.
“Back when he started writing his columns, he would bring his articles handwritten and I had the responsibility of typing them as well setting them in terms of the designs up to a time when he learnt how to use a computer, then he started doing his articles typed, Pathisa never got tired,” said Mr Mpofu.
Fellow historian, Mr Thomas Sibanda (Mzala Tom), reproduced an article he once penned in honour of Mr Nyathi where he described him as a fundi in African cultural ceremonies who taught broad and comprehensive aspects of African spirituality.
“Ubaba uNyathi may be the longest-serving columnist in print media. He has been penning the Cultural Heritage column in the Sunday News since 1995. His articles also appeared in various newspapers and publications.
“He has written biographies, historical, cultural and political books. For a broad-based cross-cultural history of all of Zimbabwe’s diverse ethnic groups, I highly recommend his award winning book,” said Mr Sibanda.
Born in Sankonjana, Kezi, he did his primary education at Sankonjana School before moving to Mashonaland Central where he did his secondary education at Mazowe Secondary School.
Despite that early flirtation with writing, Mr Nyathi did not consider himself a writer, although he has written countless books and is considered an isiNdebele expert despite the fact that he only did and passed chiShona from Form 1 until A-level.
Few also know that when the time came for him to choose a field after he finished his A-levels, he chose science instead of the arts or languages.
He trained as a science teacher in 1970. Nyathi did his first degree in Geography at the University of South Africa in 1983, he got his second in 1985.
Before that, he had helped form the Mthwakazi Writers and Actors Association, alongside the likes of Felix Moyo and Mthandazo Ndema Ngwenya. As someone interested in several arts disciplines, he decided to take the cultural terrain after noticing a particular weakness in the field.
In one of his many interviews with Sunday News, Mr Nyathi once said his role was to throw the spanner in the works and upset the worldview of those who thrive on denigrating the African.
“If I’m to make a contribution it is understanding things African. We should stop trying to attribute everything to superstition. That’s just laziness. Investigate and find out. Africans could not have been stupid. Stupidity was never reserved for one kind of people. Before we move on to the next world, we should have done something to restore the confidence in culture because when you don’t have confidence in yourself, there is little that you can achieve in this world,” he said.
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