Joshua Nkomo; Father of Zimbabwe’s Independence

Zimbabwe Vice President Joshua Nkomo, considered the father of his country’s fight for independence from white colonial rule, died Thursday in a Harare, Zimbabwe, hospital. He had been suffering from prostate cancer. Though the exact date of Nkomo’s birth was not known, he was believed to be 82 or 83.

President Robert Mugabe, with whom Nkomo had sometimes been at odds, said in a tribute broadcast over Zimbabwe state radio, “The giant has fallen.”

Former British Foreign Secretary Peter Carrington recalled Nkomo on Thursday as a robust nationalist with a keen sense of humor.

“Sometimes, when he was forcefully pressing his point and really looking quite fierce, he would suddenly burst into a roar of laughter,” Carrington commented to a reporter in London.

Nkomo’s political career spanned the years of nationalism that changed from mild civil resistance in the 1950s and 1960s to a bloody guerrilla war in the 1970s that finally ended white rule in the former British colony called Rhodesia in 1980. He spent 11 years in jail and seven in exile.

Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo, the traditional leader of the minority Ndebele tribe, was the son of black missionary teachers. He drove trucks to earn money for his education in South Africa.

He worked his way through the ranks as a union organizer to found and head Rhodesia’s African National Congress in 1952. Five years later he was elected president of merged groups forming the National Democratic Party, which was later banned by the white government.

After rivalries in the nationalist movement erupted into violence in the early 1960s, both Nkomo and Mugabe were detained. Released for 1974 peace talks that failed, Nkomo later joined his Zambia-based group with Mugabe’s Mozambique-based fighters as the Patriotic Front.

Nkomo courted controversy during the liberation struggle and traveled widely to gain military support from Moscow and the political respect of Western nations.

After the bush war ended, resulting in independence, Nkomo, known affectionately as “the old lion” and “Father Zimbabwe,” failed to become the first leader of an independent Zimbabwe. He reportedly wept when Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union party swept to victory in the first democratic elections in 1979.

Mugabe named Nkomo to his Cabinet in the post of home affairs minister in charge of police and internal security, only to oust him in 1982, accusing him of plotting a coup. Nkomo loyalists mounted an armed rebellion, which Mugabe crushed.

Nkomo fled to Botswana, but returned to negotiate peace with Mugabe in 1988. Nkomo was then made vice president.

Three years ago, Nkomo became the first public figure in Zimbabwe to acknowledge the loss of a family member to AIDS, when his son Ernest died of the disease.

The gesture was significant in a country with one of the world’s highest HIV infection rates.

Earlier this year, Mugabe acknowledged the enormity of the epidemic, saying that 1,200 Zimbabweans are dying of AIDS each week.

Nkomo, who is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son, will be laid to rest on Monday at a national shrine for political and former guerrilla leaders outside Harare.

On Sunday, traditional ceremonies for him will be held in Bulawayo, the provincial capital of his Matabeleland tribal stronghold.

* RABBI YELLIN DIES

Rabbi Isaac Yellin, Talmudic scholar and Orthodox Jewish leader in Southland, is dead. B8