adminThe results of the watershed 1980 elections in which former Vice President Joshua Nkomo’s Zapu secured 20 against Zanu-PF 57 out of the 80 seats reserved for blacks, did not quite please the veteran nationalist yet the situation presented him with stark choices: plunging Zimbabwe into the chaos of a contested outcome or moving the country forward. Expectedly, Father Zimbabwe chose the latter and along with his rival Robert Mugabe, worked a plan that would work for the country. In the following excerpt from his autobiography, The Story of My Life, Dr Nkomo tells us how he juggled the contradictions of personal ambition and nation building . . .
I SLEPT off the shock of the election’s declared result and awoke still as firmly convinced that my party and my followers had been cheated. But I never seriously doubted what I had to do.
Our nation had gained its independence by years of sacrifice.
Any bickering now would inflame passions, divide the people and encourage the enemies waiting on our borders to destabilise the country. We had to accept what we were told.
If we argued and won our argument it was possible that the results would be set aside.
But then the only prospect was that Britain — whose colony we still in theory remained — would take control for a year, or two, or three, or five. Neither we nor the British could possibly want that.
First I had to consult my senior party colleagues. They were deeply disappointed and angry.
Some had been candidates, declared defeated in constituencies where they knew a large majority of voters wanted them to win. The soldiers in particular were distraught: the zipra commanders had used every ounce of their personal authority to persuade the men to stay quietly in their assembly points throughout the election campaign, despite many provocations
To my relief and gratitude I found that my colleagues accepted my bitter analysis: there was nothing for it but to swallow the result and trust that the alleged victors would use their triumph generously and in good faith. So the message was passed along the party’s well-tried chain of command, through the members of the central committee and the officers of zipra.
I myself gave them full support. It was not easy.
I told them that they had fought, and their comrades had died, so that the people of Zimbabwe could rule themselves.
Everything else was secondary. What we had failed to win was government by our own party.
But these elections had been run by the British: the next round, in five years or less, would be under the control of Zimbabweans themselves, and it was our duty to prepare for that, and to win fairly then.
For the present the task was to create a national army and a national police force, and once those national institutions were created, free of foreign interference, they would — I really believed it — start to work on behalf of all the people of the nation.
This was what I told my people.
I was careful never to put the question to a vote: there was a real danger that it might have gone the wrong way, unleashing forces that I could no longer control.
I spoke, won their assent, and started planning for government.
Robert Mugabe did make an attempt to reconcile the nation to itself. In his cabinet of twenty-two members of parliament he included two white members of Ian Smith’s Rhodesian Front party and four members of my own Patriotic Front.
Between his naming as prime minister-designate on 4 March and the announcement of the cabinet list on 11 March he offered me the ceremonial post of president of the new republic, and I declined it.
I could not possibly have taken the presidency.
Both Robert and I had often, publicly, criticised the constitution given to us by Britain specifically because it provided for this purely ceremonial office.
In Britain the Queen — sanctified by tradition, standing as symbol of the nation far above day-to-day politics — fills an invaluable role.
I can see why the British think other countries would benefit from imitating constitutional arrangements which work so well for them. But the historic British institution of the monarchy cannot just be exported to countries with quite different national traditions. Certainly I, as an active politician, could not possibly perform that role.
The ceremonial head of state would be obliged to sign documents and make public speeches composed by zanu, embracing policies that I disagreed with and had in the past often denounced.
By pretending to agree with those policies I would only bring myself, and the office of the presidency, into ridicule: if I expressed my disagreement I would be abusing my constitutional powers.
Robert told me that the office of president was the most exalted in the country, and constitutionally he was right.
But personally he was entirely wrong.
For me, acceptance of the presidency would have meant retreating into an official prison, deprived of my right to speak my mind and take a lead on matters of great national importance.
I had spent too much of my life in prisons for that to be attractive, or even possible. I was obliged to decline.
His next offer was of the ministry of local government and housing. This was an important post, in which I believe I could have done much valuable work.
In fact I longed to do it, and to get in contact once again with the ordinary people of the towns and the country areas that I knew so well.
But there were still more important things to be done. I had visited the zipra camps: I knew the mood of disillusion in which our young fighting people were living, after their long years of insecurity and combat and distrust.
It was essential that one of the ministers responsible for security matters in the new government should have their absolute confidence.
With the full backing of my party colleagues it was, therefore, agreed that I should demand a senior ministry dealing with security matters. Robert Mugabe himself took the ministry of defence, responsible for the armed forces.
I took the ministry of home affairs, in charge of the police.
That seemed the formula best calculated to win the confidence of the fighting men of both armies and to contribute to the building of a real sense of impartial national security.
I moved into the same office from which for decades the ministers of the former regimes had watched and schemed.
At this same desk that I now occupied they had signed the restriction orders and detention orders and exclusion orders, they had received the prison reports and operated the whole apparatus of a repressive state.
At last, I thought, I had the chance to make sure that those bad days do not come back again, that the rule of law and the rights of the citizen are upheld at the same time as peace and order are preserved.
Online Reporter