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He succeeded Cde Joseph “Bruno” Msika who passed away in 2009. Cde Msika had stepped in the shoes of the late Dr Joshua Nkomo who died in 1999.
The writer of this obituary worked with Cde Landa John Nkomo in Zapu in Lusaka, Zambia, from 1975 till Zimbabwe’s attainment of independence.
Cde Landa Nkomo had been in the liberation struggle since the middle of the 1960s during the National Democratic Party (NDP) era while he was a teacher and a Bulawayo district official of the African Teachers’ Association (ATA).
The ATA was a trade union organisation that protected and promoted the professional and socio-economic interests of black school teachers of Southern Rhodesia. At that time, black school teachers taught only in what were called Group B schools. Those were, in fact, African schools.
European and Coloured/Indian schools were referred to as Group A schools. They had by far much more and better facilities and infrastructure than the Group B class of schools.
Not only that, their teachers and non-professional staff-members were better paid than those of the Group B schools. The ATA was struggling against these socio-economic racially discriminatory measures.
On the political front, teachers were prohibited from taking part in any type of politics, local as well as national. But it was strange that the Southern Rhodesia Prime Minister from 1953 to 1958, Garfield Todd, had been the principal of Dadaya Mission, a teacher-training institution immediately before taking over from Godfrey Huggins as the colony’s Prime Minister.
Huggins had become the Prime Minister of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as from September 1953, when Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland were brought together to form that short-lived federation.
When Cde Landa Nkomo joined the teaching service, the ATA president was Caleb Somkence, son of the Rev Somkence who had been associated with the African National Congress of Southern Rhodesia in the late 1940s.
His son, Caleb, was, however, politically associated with the European-led pro-federal party, the United Federal Party (UFP) and not with the African nationalist NDP. He was later sent to Lagos, Nigeria, as one of a federal diplomatic team headed by Mike Masocha.
His ATA position was taken over by Jameson Mtetwa, an NDP political activist. Cde Landa John Nkomo who was based in Bulawayo like Mtetwa worked closely with the ATA president (Mtetwa). The NDP was soon banned and Zapu was born. The ATA top national leadership changed when Mtetwa was replaced by Cephas George Msipa who was based in Salisbury, now Harare. Msipa is a former Dadaya Mission student of the famous Garfield Todd.
Mtetwa had trained at Dombodema Mission, Plumtree, under the principalship of AE Walden who had for many years headed Inyathi Mission, some 72km north of Bulawayo.
Under Msipa’s presidency, the ATA became more militant, leading to the arrest and detention of both Cde Landa John Nkomo and CG Msipa. They and many other black school teachers were restricted to the Gonakudzingwa area where they joined their leader, Joshua Nkomo, the Zapu president.
Other former teachers who were with them at Gonakudzingwa were Daniel Ngwenya, Welshman Mabhena, Josiah Chinamano, and Joseph Msika. Ngwenya took over the Roads and Communications Ministry after TG Silundika’s death in 1981. He was later appointed Matabeleland North provincial governor and on his death was succeeded by Welshman Mabhena.
On his release from Gonakudzingwa, John Nkomo briefly worked for a Bulawayo industrial company, during which he was actively involved in the African National Council (ANC) anti-Pearce Commission, nationwide demonstrations in 1972.
The ANC should not be confused with the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC) founded by Aaron Jacha Rusike at Makwiro in 1934. Rusike was actively helped and encouraged by his brother, the Rev Matthew Rusike and the Rev Thompson D Samkange. Both clergymen were Wesleyan Methodists.
The three-man team was assisted by the famous Southern African scholar, Professor JJ Jabavu, who prepared the organisation’s founding documents. It was actually from the Rev Samkange that Joshua Nkomo took over the SRANC presidency in the early 1950s.
In September 1957, the SRANC absorbed the Salisbury City Youth League led by a charismatic team headed by James Robert Dambaza Chikerema, the high-spirited George “Bonzo” Nyandoro, the studious Eddison Sithole, the courageous Paul Mushonga, and the perseverant Henry Hamadziripi.
At a historic meeting held at Mai Musodzi Hall in Harari Township (now Mbare) the delegates resolved to dissolve the City Youth League and merge it with the SRANC.
To elect the enlarged SRANC’s president, a vote was taken and 32 voted for Joshua Nkomo and 31 for Chikerema. The returning officer was Willie Dzawanda Musarurwa. He proposed that Chikerema should be the SRANC’s deputy president. Nyandoro was elected secretary general, Msika secretary for youth, and JZ Moyo treasurer-general.
That organisation was succeeded by the NDP, ZAPU, People’s Caretaker Council (PCC) and the African National Council (ANC) of which Landa John Nkomo prominently featured. The ANC was led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa who had been asked by Joshua Nkomo to mobilise the masses against the Pearce Commission’s British government’s settlement terms.
Joshua Nkomo was still in detention at Gonakudzingwa at that time. When he was released on 4 December 1974, he was flown to Lusaka where under the auspices of Dr Kenneth Kaunda-led Zambian government, he, Bishop Muzorewa, Rev Ndabaningi Sithole representing at that time the Zanu, and Chikerema standing for his newly founded party, the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe (Frolizi), signed a unity agreement that brought all those movements under Muzorewa in the African National Council (ANC).
Following that development, the ANC sent from Zimbabwe two co-representatives to Zambia where they would look after the interests of that organisation as agreed in the unity agreement signed at State House in Lusaka on 7 December 1974.
The two ANC co-representatives were Cde Landa John Nkomo and Cde Simon Vengesai Muzenda. They were duly received in Lusaka early in 1975 and opened an ANC office at the city’s African Liberation Centre.
Meanwhile, the other organisations, Zapu, Zanu and Frolizi, were operating from their offices as before. No sooner was the unity Agreement document signed than a difference emerged in the supposedly unified ANC top leadership. For a start, the ANC had no trained guerillas.
The Zapu leadership wanted a national congress to be held to elect the unified ANC leadership. The Zanu party and military leadership disowned Rev Ndabaningi Sithole, saying that he had been removed from the party’s presidential position while in prison after he had denounced the armed struggle “in word, thought and deed” in a Salisbury court while he was being tried for plotting to assassinate Ian Smith, Walter Clifford Dupont and other white minority Rhodesian regime’s officials.
They said Rev Sithole had no authority to sign the unity agreement, so the document was of no consequence to their party. Frolizi went along with the Bishop Muzorewa ANC section. That development resulted in a split in the ANC’s co-representatives, with Muzenda and Landa John Nkomo mutually agreeing to share equally the assets of the ANC Zambia office, and each man going to his own political destination.
Muzenda went to Zanu and Landa John Nkomo headed for Zapu. At that time, a pro-Joshua Nkomo ANC section had organised a national congress inside Zimbabwe, and Joshua Nkomo had been elected president of the ANC in the country and of Zapu in exile.
Landa John Nkomo worked closely with Dr Joshua Nkomo and became more or less his right-hand man. Some misinformed observers would allege that Joshua Nkomo was practising nepotism by shouldering Landa John Nkomo with a great deal of responsibility. The truth is that Landa John Nkomo was not related to Joshua Nkomo. He was, in fact, of Kalanga extraction whereas Joshua Nkomo was of Suthu paternal blood. Not that any of that was significant or important to the thoughts or actions of either man. What matters was each person’s utter commitment to the liberation of Zimbabwe.
On a lighter note, however, Joshua Nkomo would tell Landa John Nkomo in the presence of us all: “John, please remember that whenever I am in the same room with you or wherever when you are close to me, you are not plain Nkomo but Nkomo John, and I am Nkomo of course.”
It was a joke that amused us all, and we would all chuckle.
That apart, one special quality of Landa John Nkomo was his ability not to argue against authority. I remember some discussions that Zapu delegates held about British government constitution proposals at Geneva. Some of them got quite heated up, with some of us calling others “sellouts” or something similar, and Willie Musarurwa emphasising freedom of expression.
In all those, Landa John Nkomo’s voice was conspicuous by its silence. He was a very good listener and less of a talker. I should know because he and I were Zapu’s vanguard to Geneva.
On our return to Lusaka from that abortive two-month long conference, Jason “Ziyaphapha” Moyo was killed by a parcel bomb, about 10 or so metres away from where John Nkomo, Dumiso Dabengwa, Sikhwili Kohli Moyo, Jane Lungile Ngwenya and Desire Khuphe were in John Makhiwa Moyo’s Anglo-African Glass Company’s workshop.
Amos “Jack” Ngwenya, the then Zapu administrative secretary, was actually across the table over which he had handed the parcel to JZ Moyo.
In addition to the massive blast cutting open Moyo’s abdomen, it started a fire on the litter on the floor, and Landa John Nkomo, Dabengwa, Jane Ngwenya were burnt as they fought the flames.
At a conference held about a week or so later, emotions were very high about the tragedy, but Landa John Nkomo was his usual cool, old self, busy taking down minutes of the occasion without saying a word about scars of burns on his arms.
In January 1978, a year after JZ Moyo’s death, Landa John Nkomo was a part of a Zapu (actually Patriotic Front) delegation that left Lusaka for Valletta, in Malta, to attend yet another British government’s attempt to ram down the throats of the people of Zimbabwe another bogus constitutional arrangement.
On the delegation’s departure from Lusaka International Airport, Dr Joshua Nkomo sent “Nkomo John” to buy him a newspaper about 40 or so metres away.
As he strode away to the newspaper vendor, Joshua Nkomo remarked in SiNdebele “UJohn useyindoda sibili, usekhulile!”
Amon Jirira responded: “Wakasvika kuGonakudzingwa achiri kamfana.”
The following year, Landa John Nkomo and other Patriotic Front officials left for the same airport, that time for London to attend the Lancaster House Constitutional Conference that was used to confer nationhood on Zimbabwe on 18 April 1980.
It had been a long demanding and very risky haul from which the feeble-minded pulled out, but the gallant such as Landa John Nkomo soldiered on until the objective of their patriotic dream, an independent and African-ruled Zimbabwe was achieved.
He left Tsholotsho in particular a better place than it was when he was born in it in August 1934. May the school named in his honour, Landa J High, be worthy of his name.
l Saul Gwakuba Ndlovu is a Bulawayo-based retired journalist who spent some 17 years full-time in the liberation struggle. He can be contacted on cell 0735101464 or email [email protected]
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