The Shamuyarira that I knew

Dr Charles MB Utete
I FIRST came to know Dr Nathan Shamuyarira when I came to the then Salisbury as a secondary school student attending Tegwani School near Plumtree in the late ‘50s and he was an editor, initially of the African Weekly and then of the Daily News. He struck me then as an affable and approachable man, ready to listen to ideas, and even taking time to examine the scribbling of young students.

I was later to interact with him, again as a student but this time at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (UCRN) where he was now employed in the Adult Education Division in the early ‘60s.

This time the interaction was predominantly political.
Following the banning of ZAPU in September 1962 we – as student activists – insisted that a new nationalist political vehicle be established to carry the struggle forward. (Just as a tiny footnote to the events of that traumatic era, three of us, all members of the UCRN Current Affairs Society:  the late Sheba Lishomwa Muuka from Zambia, Themba Malumo and myself, had that September managed to secure an appointment to meet the Rhodesian prime minister, Sir Edgar Whitehead. Whereas he gave us what I recall as a polite hearing on our protest against the banning of ZAPU, he came across as unyielding and quite adamant that his decision was not only justified but also irreversible.)

Eventually Cde Shamuyarira, together with the likes of the late Henry Hamadziripi, Noel Mkono, Tranos Makombe and others seemed to agree to our suggestion and liaising with other stalwarts of the struggle within the country at that time (eg Enos Nkala, Stanley Parirewa, etc), took steps to launch ZANU on August 8, 1963.

Note though that we as students had not been aware that in fact other more senior ZAPU leaders then in Dar-es-Salaam had earlier made the decision to launch the new organisation.

My later encounters with Cde Shamuyarira were in the USA and Tanzania (University of Dar-es-Salaam) in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, respectively.

Thereafter our careers overlapped in the new Zimbabwean Government following Independence in 1980.
Among other things we jointly edited the first book of “President RG Mugabe’s Speeches: Our War of Liberation” (1983).

I shall remember him, as many I am sure do, as a first rate intellectual, writer, freedom fighter and highly committed nationalist.
He was also a humble, unassuming, polite and genial human being.

The country is the poorer for his passing away at this time.
My deepest condolences and those of my family go to his widow Amai Dorothy Shamuyarira at this time of family and national grief.

Dr Charles MB Utete is Chairman of Zimpapers (1980) Ltd and former Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet