adminSaul Gwakuba Ndlovu
Dr Lawton Hikwa’s death which occurred during the night of 10 October 2015 stunned the nation, especially the academia of which he was a prominent member.
A son of the chiefly family of Nilukawo (Mnigau) Nleya of the Bulilima District’s Dombodema Mission farm, he was the sixth and last child whose late father, Harrison Phuthuma Hikwa Nleya, was a highly respected professional school teacher.
His mother is a daughter of a tailor, Nsengwane Ncube, of the Tjehanga area of the Nata Communal Land.
Lawton spent a part of his teenage life with Masunga Mabhiza Khupe’s family in one of Bulawayo’s western suburbs (Magwegwe). Mrs Khupe was Lawton’s clan sister, and among the currently well-known Khupes is Thokozani, deputy president of the Morgan Tsvangirai– led MDC.
Lawton’s siblings are Dr Dennis Hikwa who is based in Harare, Oliver, Mrs Mlilo, Mrs Ruth Gumede who are all resident in Bulawayo as is their widowed mother. Mrs Mlilo is a renowned educationist.
Lawton’s father was treacherously murdered by an unknown group of armed criminals who, after shooting him, threw his body into one of his houses at Dombodema and set it alight at the height of the post-independence disturbances in the early 1980s.
Lawton was a member of the post-independence crop of young intellectuals who joined the academia instead of commerce and industry.
Prominent among those highly focused intellectuals were such people as Dr Maclean Mackson Solomon Matihha Bhala, founder vice–chancellor of the Lupane State University (LSU) who also died in Bulawayo 14 months ago. He was buried at the Bhala homestead in the Thekwane Mission farm, some 15km or so east of Dombodema.
Dr Lawton Hikwa’s and Dr Maclean Bhala’s parents were educated by a Christian missionary-guided system. Harrison Phuthuma Hikwa Nleya went through the hands of the then London Missionary Society (LMS) to become a teacher.
The LMS is now an integral part of the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa( UCCSA).
Solomon Matihha Bhala (Ndlovu) was educationally nurtured by the Wesleyan Methodists at Thekwane Mission and also became a highly respected teacher. Dr Lawton Hikwa, like Dr Bhala, chose to serve the country rather than go abroad to the attractive proverbial greener pastures in the Diaspora.
He gave his professional services at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) where he headed the communications faculty. One of the degree subjects offered by that faculty is journalism. Although the writer of this obituary article is not closely acquainted with the syllabus of that NUST academic programme, he can more or less say that it certainly includes not only the professional handling of features, advertorials, feuilleton, and opinion articles.
It also has most probably some aspects of the psychology of communication, the well-known AIDA formula (attention, interest, desire, action) as well as political journalism. Freedom of thought and expression are surely a part of that syllabus.
We can also rightly assume that the syllabus has sections on how media ownership influences not only the media’s political slant, but also its editorial policy and news item selection.
At that level, he must have been dealing with the philosophical aspects of various journalistic genres to identify and analyse causes and effects of attitudes of various social and cultural communities towards news items, advertisements, features, opinions articles, criticism, fiction and light literature.
These are some of the aspects of the communication process some journalism syllabus are likely to deal with, including the dogmatic aspects as represented by a number of religions.
A philosophical analysis shows us that people who believe in a written religious dogma, (people of the book) are much more likely to support the print media than non-believers who live in a sound as compared to that of literacy and numeracy. Such aspects of the communication process are likely to have been a part of Hikwa’s intellectual stock-in-trade.
In addition to the above, Dr Lawton Hikwa’s role included teaching his students life’s realities as opposed to superstition and mere wishful thinking. He himself was a culturally transformed person, hence his decision that he should be cremated and not buried. That is a very radical decision in a cultural environment where virtually everybody else is laid to rest two metres in the ground.
Opposition to cremation is caused most likely by the fear of the Biblical Gehenna fire that causes eternal torment to those who would have spent an evil life on earth. Dr Lawton Hikwa was a scholar of the Bible, and must have discovered in his researches that nowhere is Gehenna mentioned in the Old Testament. The name occurs in the New Testament, and is derived from the Hebrew “ge hinnom” which means “hell”.
That Hebrew word was derived, in turn, from the name of a valley, Hinnom, which was near Jerusalem, where children were sacrificed by the ancient inhabitants of that city. Another possible cause of opposition to cremation may be that survivors of those who are cremated who may wish to hold grave side memorial occasions have nowhere to go as cremated people have no graves.
The considered opinion of the writer of this orbituary piece is that cremation is a much better option in hygienic, economic, and in land usage terms.
There have been instances where potable water sources have been contaminated by graves located some 100 or so metres higher up from them. Some soil such as that at the Luveve Cemetery is so porous that it collapses after a few rainy seasons, leaving coffins, at time even parts of corpses, exposed.
Some carnivorous wild animals, including some poorly kept scavenging dogs may devour those bodies, a most unfortunate possibility. The economic advantage of cremation is obvious. Burials cost literally thousands of dollars, leaving survivors of the deceased in dire financial straits, whereas cremation is by far much cheaper.
The third aspect is land, a finite resource whose importance to every community is vital. Cemeteries cover hectares and hectares of land, space that could be used for residential, social or industrial purposes, particularly if we consider the uncontrollable rate at which our country’s population is currently increasing.
Dr Lawton Hikwa, a former Zimbabwe Newspaper board member, and a prince by birth, has set an example for all enlightened people to follow. That should be particularly so for the educated since they are easily able to understand the socio-economic problems facing the country.
People who were socially close to Dr Lawton Hikwa were deeply shocked by his death, coming as it did very unexpectedly. Some type of pneumonia was said to have been his death’s cause as he had told one of them the evening before that he was feeling some slight chest pain whenever he was breathing.
- If it was pneumonia, it could have been one of five types:
- Pneumonia caused by a germ called pneumococcus. It is characterised by a chest pain which may involve the abdomen or one of the shoulders. The pain is felt when one is breathing. Temperature may reach almost 410C.
A person with such symptoms should be rushed to a doctor, especially if they are coughing and spitting out blood-stained spatum, and their breathing rate is becoming rapid, and also if they are sweating profusely.
Medical doctors say that pneumococci pneumonia takes two weeks to run its course if it is not treated. It has a mortality rate of about 30 percent. But if promptly attended to, that comes down to about five percent or less.
- A doctor’s attention is very important for people with the above symptoms as hospitalisation is usually necessary in most cases.
- Virus pneumonia is a type caused by one of a number of viruses some of which are not known even to virologists. Its symptoms are like those cause by bacteria found in the bronchial tubes. Many virus pneumonia cases can be treated by home-based care-givers. It is, however, always much safer to take all pneumonia patients to the hospital as some cases may require oxygen and other equipment found only at hospitals.
- There is a type of pneumonia said to be caused by a particular kind of bacteria that is not pneumococcus. Among those bacteria are streptococcus, Friedlander’s bacillus and staphylococcus. These bacteria cause usually bronchopneumonia. The mortality rate among Friedlander’s pneumonia patients is relatively high. That pneumonia usually occurs after another illness such as influenza, or measles. The patient should be taken to a hospital where appropriate laboratory tests can be carried out and effective treatment applied.
- Mycoplasma pneumonia is caused by a virus scientists refer to as “mycoplasma pneumoniae”. The disease usually attacks people aged between 10 and 30 years, and represents about seven percent of the world’s pneumonia cases. It is spread by inhaling droplets of coughs or sneezes of those suffering from it. Symptoms are a headache, a high temperature and a cough. That disease does not appear to be easily treatable, but patients usually recover in 10 or so days.
- Home-based care is more or less adequate for those cases. However, professional medical care is always the best.
- Legionnaire’s pneumonia is a very serious disease whose symptoms are high fever, diarrhea, rapid breathing, general weakness and chills. It is caused by a bacterium named “Legionella pneumophilla”. The bacteria are transmitted by air and not by physical contact.
Epidemiologists advise that although this is a serious disease, only about two percent of those exposed to the germ become sick, and that it affects almost all the time those with very low disease-resistance levels for whatever reason.
Treatment is by means of antibiotics administered under the guidance of a medical doctor.
A patient showing symptoms of that illness should be rushed to a hospital lest they get dangerously dehydrated because of the diarrhea.
In addition to these types of pneumonia, two other upper respiratory tract ailments can cause chest complication. Medical professionals call those ailments “chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases – COPD” and the diseases are bronchitis and emphysema.
Both are common among cigarette-smokers. They kill literally hundreds of thousands of people worldwide annually. There are also cases of acute bronchitis caused by germs found in the throat and the nose.
Repeated attacks of acute bronchitis may lead to chronic bronchitis, one of the COPD stated above.
Emphysema occurs by large scale destruction of pulmonary sacs, causing the lung to lose its elasticity which it usually shows with the taking in of every breath.
Loss of weight follows and eventual death is a result. Doctors say there is no certain cure. Preventive measures are recommended. These and a couple of other chest maladies can be avoided by sticking to a strictly healthy mode of life that reduces contamination and infection risks to a minimum
It is, of course, not possible to rule out illness from one’s life. We can only try and but leave all else to God Almighty in whom Dr. Lawton Hikwa had unstinting faith.
The best way to remember and honour, Dr Hikwa as well as other departed Matabeleland educationists such as Dr Sikhanyiso Duke Ndlovu and Dr. Maclean Mackson Bhala is to establish educational centres in their memory.
That can and should be done only by people of this region. As Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko recently told the people of the Beitbridge area: “No-one will come by a Shu-Shine or any other bus to develop your area. You yourselves should plan and implement the development of your own areas…”
Similarly, we and only we the people of the respective areas where our intellectual luminaries were born and grew up should perpetuate the great ideals for which they stood for, that is to say their lives’ passion, which was the univer
Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a retired, Bulawayo-based journalist. He can be contacted on cell 0734328136 or through email. [email protected]
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