18 March 1975:Remembering Herbert Chitepo [Rare Video]
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18 March 1975:Remembering Herbert Chitepo [Rare Video]

TODAY, Friday March 18, 2016 is exactly 46 years after that nefarious bomb blast which claimed the life of one of the standout liberation war hero — Herbert Wiltshire Pfumaindini Chitepo. Just after 8am on March 18, 1975, history records that an explosion shattered the morning routine in Chilenje South and echoed across the southern suburbs of Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, headquarters of the liberation movements fighting against colonial or minority administrations in Southern Africa.

Smoke and dust billowed in the early morning sunlight, casting grey shadows across the drive at Number 150 Muramba Road, shrouding the muddled remains of a blue Volkswagen.

In the wreckage lay the body of Chitepo (51), national chairman of Zanu and leader of Dare reChimurenga, the war council that was coordinating the infiltration of freedom fighters into Southern Rhodesia.

46 years down the line, 94-year-old Mr Bowden Mabvira vividly recalls the intelligence and astuteness that Chitepo exuded during his lifetime.

“I recall that Chitepo was a very intelligent young man. We used to call him Wiricha (Wiltshire). Though born in poverty, he is one person I know who managed to use his intelligence to live a better life. Poverty pushed him to do better in his schoolwork.

“His father died in 1925 when he was only two-years-old, thus his sister, Erica was taken by missionaries, while Cecilia went for marriage. Their mother died when he was only four-years-old, that is two years later.

“I stayed with his sister Erica, who was older to Herbert. They were poor orphans. At one point, Wiricha was actually taken care of by his brother-in-law’s family, the family whose sons intended to marry his sister,” said elderly Mabira in a heavy Manyika accent.

According to historical records, Herbert Chitepo was born at Bonda on June 15, 1923 — the year that the British South Africa Company, a legacy of Cecil Rhodes, lost its grip on the country they called Southern Rhodesia.

Born into a peasant family and endowed with a clarity and strength of intellect which he further developed, Chitepo rose to become his country’s first black lawyer.

His parents died when he was very young and he was raised by Anglican priests at St Augustine’s Mission School near Mutare, popularly known back then as KwaTsambe.

The young Chitepo was a brilliant scholar, always at the top of his class. Even the classroom that the late national hero attended school at Bonda Mission is still there, in a derelict state though.

There is, however, a plan to resuscitate the classroom to make it a national monument. He went to South Africa for secondary school and for a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Fort Hare College. He studied Law in London and was called to the bar at the Middle Temple.

It is on record that, back home in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chitepo defended many nationalist figures in Rhodesia before accepting an appointment as the first African Director of Public Prosecutions in Tanganyika (Tanzania) in 1962, soon after that country’s independence.

Chitepo was a tireless worker and leader who devoted his life to achieving this goal, and ultimately died for it.

He was known as a strategic thinker and a gifted orator.

Such activities and speeches did not endear Chitepo to the Rhodesian regime, or the West; nor did his role in the formulation of Zanu’s military strategy in the 1970s.

Mr Mabvira told The Manica Post of one of the cases that Chitepo successfully represented an accused black person.

“I remember of one of the cases that Chitepo successfully represented an accused black person. It was a popular traditional healer who was accused of murder.

He was nabbed in Mozambique and brought to court here in Zimbabwe (then Rhodesia). I can safely say I will never forget the wisdom that young Chitepo showed until the man was eventually acquitted,” he said.

“I remember how he harassed young white police officers using his wits. They all knew that he was quite intelligent. They respected him,” he added. Internet research and information recorded from those that were privileged to have known and interacted with his indicates that Chitepo was a man of contrasting images.

He was a warm and compassionate family man whom his Rhodesian adversaries regarded as the “brains” behind the guerrilla war and whom his comrades described as the “architect” of the Second Chimurenga, the struggle for freedom and independence.

He combined his legal base with nationalist political work and was a founder member of the National Democratic Party in 1960.

After the NDP was banned, he was a founder member of the Zimbabwe African People’s Union in 1962, and one of those who broke away in August 1963 to form the Zimbabwe African National Union.

Chitepo was instrumental in the decision of the Liberation Committee of the Organisation of African Unity, based in Dar es Salaam, to recognise Zanu as well as Zapu.

At Zanu’s first congress in Gweru in 1964, he was elected in absentia as national chairman. In 1966, Chitepo decided to leave his prestigious job in Tanzania and move to Zambia to devote himself full-time to reorganising the party and beginning the armed struggle in earnest.

It was a decision that separated Chitepo from many of his contemporaries who sat out the struggle in academic institutions and comfortable jobs, and it was a role that radicalised his views.

He was Zanu’s most senior leader at liberty and under his guidance the party shaped its military wing, the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), under the command of the late national hero Josiah Tongogara.

April 28, 1966 marked the start of the armed struggle when seven armed freedom fighters died in combat with Rhodesian troops in the Battle of Sinoia (Chinhoyi). This was the first organised act of armed insurrection since the First Chimurenga of the 1890s following the settler occupation of the land.

In the country’s history of the liberation struggle, Chitepo is known for insisting that that the only language the Rhodesian prime minister would understand was violence.

“Zimbabwe was taken from us through bloodshed. Only bloodshed – a bloody chimurenga involving four and a half million of us – can restore Zimbabwe to its owners.

“We have tried to correct this tragic error by politicising and mobilising the people before mounting any attacks against the enemy. After politicising our people it became easier for them to co-operate with us and to identify with our programme,” Chitepo was quoted as saying in one of his speeches. When he addressed the Sixth Pan-African Congress in Dar es Salaam in 1974, he proposed a global strategy against imperialism.

“By cutting off the tentacles of imperialism to the periphery we will deprive the white working class in capitalist countries of their high standards of living they have enjoyed because of the super profits that the multi-national corporations reaped in under-developed countries.

“It is only when the exploited working class of both black and white realise that they have a common enemy, a common oppressor and a common exploiter that they will unite and jointly seek to overthrow the capitalist system.

This is our global strategy against capitalism, racism and imperialism,” Chitepo was also quoted as saying. Such is the fearless, intelligent man that the country lost and will forever be remembered.

 

Herbert Wiltshire Pfumaindini Chitepo (15 June 1923 – 18 March 1975) led the Zimbabwe African National Union until he was assassinated on 18 March 1975.The blast, believed to have been caused by a land mine, reduced Mr. Chitepo’s car to twisted metal. A two-year-old boy standing nearby was also kills by the explosion, and so was one of Mr. Chitepo’s two bodyguards–the other was critically injured.

 

2 Comments

  • Bvanyangu Magochazizi 19/03/2016

    It’s 41 years since the death of Chitepo. Please do your basic arithmetic right.

  • Chimuti 01/04/2016

    3/5 very ghudhu

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