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Dr Milton Chemhuru
JZ Our hero.
The devoted leader of freedom and unity.
The dedicated fighter for peace and liberty.
Your task you completed with expertise.
Your death was not in vain but that of a committed guerrilla.
You represented the brave men and women.
Those men and women living and those dead.
Unbelievable that you are gone! Now I recall how you talked very simple.
The easy words that your low voice produced. Your lips yielding those unforgettable parables.
Teachings full of wisdom and bravery.
The tales which few revolutionaries have.
Without more of your wise words, my memory dries up.
Oh! How I leapt to faint.
When I heard about your unexpected fate
That enemy bomb that shattered your belly.
The tummy upon your life hanged was destroyed.
The surprise that ended your precious life.
That devastating blast that disfigured your face.
Oh! Heaven how I curse that cowardly act.
We cannot honour the fear but to face the challenge.
To continue disrespecting the fear of propaganda.
Time is always ripe for us to unite against evil.
In those khaki clothes you looked a simple commander.
The khaki clothes which your figure always covered with.
I remember, a clean revolutionary in India.
He who was as uncomplicated as JZ Moyo.
Always he in ordinary slippers in his feet shaved.
Tucked in those cheap clothes round his body.
A sign of the magnitude of dedication.
Dedication towards fighting injustice.
Fight to melt away racial segregation.
Struggling to restore brotherhood and neighbourhood.
That greatest peace lover.
The admirer of God creation.
The great Mahatma Gandhi
Likewise, JZ Moyo.
Your life was like a missed penalty kick.
Off! The goal your life was kicked.
JZ. Moyo, the society emulated your natural dressing.
Mahatma Gandhi in your khaki clothes you were.
Let it be at Zimbabwe House, Lusaka,
As the day approaches,
In the cause of the night,
Amid the cold time,
Or a harsh day,
You still looked the unchallenged JZ Moyo.
JZ. Moyo, Ziyapapa.
I continue to pursue the exclusiveness of your character.
Impressive your presence to all that is revealed.
You displayed a rare quality of patriotism.
That as shown during your life time in the struggle.
You believed that no man can live alone.
That our world is made of ethical fraternity.
That all should live as neighbourhoods.
Your humour and speeches were exceptional.
Those extracts from Martin Luther King.
You extended your wisdom with nutrients.
You enriched your thinking with supplements from Abraham Lincoln.
I shall not take your time to quote more.
A word from a celebrity is more than a novel.
JZ. Moyo.
Your attributes to the struggle are white like snow.
Your desire for togetherness and freedom,
Freedom and alliance of the people of Zimbabwe.
That was your credit as a dynamic leader.
Your death has become eternal torture to me
It is like the dripping! Drapes! Drops of water!
That anguish the innocent experience.
The drips that the Germans NAZI dropped and draped-
Upon the heads and through the hearing of the victims.
Drops dripping from the hanging sacks.
Drops crushing over the victims’ heads.
Tearing their cochlear bones to numbness.
An intended cruelty survivors subdued.
What a brutal acts against the honest.
You are among the sufferers of the truth.
Among you is Patrice Lumumba of great Congo.
Who met the most terror murder ever existed.
Martin Luther King (Jr) encountered the comparable provocation.
John F Kennedy was consumed in the unvarying manner.
Your compatriot Chitepo gained his admission to heaven equally the same.
These heroes recognised that different ethical groups need to live together.
Live together as brothers and sisters.
“All men are born equal in front of the Law”.
Creation has all those indicators.
That all men must live together in love and harmony.
You were dedicated to that fundamental belief.
More than anything, we must learn to love and live together.
My heart bleeds always when I remember your death.
I’m in agony to recall that you are gone.
You are always with my spirit.
My face has developed extra wrinkles due to that misery.
Your death still curves my mind.
My eyes continue to itch with pain and a scratch of vacuum.
Tears crawl through my eyes but vapours before my chicks.
The chili pepper stream irritates my eyeballs.
With powdered dust it scratches my eyelids to sweat the tears.
Tears with hot chili that erodes my eye brows above the forehead.
Acidic waters from my eyes drips and drops.
Am tormented and tortured by the burning eyes.
Those that continuously leak the burning tears.
My eyeballs are dry.
Dehydrated like leaves in winter in the arctic region.
Shrunken like broken balloons in outer space. .
I see no more but guess my way.
My eyes are tormented,
They are enslaved by your departure.
Your death blinded my eyes and shut my memory.
Ache and distress is my daily and nights diet.
Yam like the prisoner of Chillon.
Am in a state of my heart failing to contract.
Its muscles are electrocuted and numbed.
Stiffness caused by that blast.
The Valves are deprived of air.
That oxygen that makes them live.
Your blast bomb,
“The Little boy”
The little Hiroshima.
A nuclear bomb.
That mutates the body system.
That causes cancerous body.
Yesterday shall be today in history because it was a day towards your departure.
Tomorrow too shall be history because of celebration fatigue.
Yesterday and tomorrow shall be forgotten because of today event.
But never to forget today a tragic moment.
The day your soul forcibly departed pitifully.
Today 22 January 1977 you cheerfully executed your duties. The day you decided sadly to depart.
Today shall forever be awfully remembered in our diaries.
Today, the fatal date, shall always be today an unfortunate day.
Dr Milton Chemhuru is a former Provincial Medical Director for the Midlands Province. During the war he served as a ZPRA military instructor and was known by his pseudonym Cde
Jimmy Ntonga or Mbeya. He trained together with Zimbabwe Defence Forces commander, General Philip Valerio Sibanda.
Sidumisile Mabena
Online Reporter