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Edgar 2boy Zivanai Tekere: 1 April 1937 to 7 June 2011
Ibbo Mandaza
June 14, 2011

Edgar '2boy' Zivanai Tekere died on 7th June, succumbing finally to an illness (prostate cancer) that had plagued him for the last five years. The last year in particular was a difficult one for Edgar; and here special mention has to be made with respect to those who attended to him to the very last moment: his wife Pamela who nursed him at home and at the clinic where he passed away last Tuesday, with her at his bedside; John Pfumojena who has been Edgar's doctor for the last 30 years and with whom I liaised and shared responsibility over this period; Cuthbert Dube of Premier Medical Aid and Mrs. Katuruza of the same office - without whose assistance the medical bills over the last year would have been unbearable.

But it is Edgar's tenacity of spirit, bravery and courage that remained a defining feature of his lifetime, as much in struggle as in illness. Not until last week Tuesday when we had to take him into hospital for the last did he confess the end was nigh: ''Ibbo, I feel very low today, very, very low . . . . . . .'', he muttered to me on the telephone. Prior to that, Edgar's tenacity of spirit bordered on self-denial: 'I am fighting fit, I will be alright . . . . . . ' And, not surprisingly, he would defy the odds, including the doctor's advice to stay in bed. So, on one occasion last year, while at Avenues Clinic, Harare, he tried to get out of bed unassisted: he stumbled and fell, broke his right leg and bruised his head seriously.

A Lifetime of Struggle indeed, a title he chose for his autobiography; and it was a struggle to the very end.

As acknowledged by President Mugabe's message of condolence, Edgar was one of the founding members of Zimbabwe's nationalist movement, along with Joshua Nkomo, Joseph Msika, Maurice Nyagumbo, James Chikerema and George Bonzo Nyandoro. But Edgar was hardly 22 years old when he was detained for the first time in March 1959, after the banning of the ANC of Southern Rhodesia a month earlier. Clearly the youngest political detainee among such senior nationalists as Maurice Nyagumbo, Stanley Parirewa and Sylvester Mushonga, Edgar was as fearless and defiant as he has always been throughout his life. To quote from his autobiography:

''The reason for my arrest was that a receipt of money - some ten pounds - that I had donated to the Party, had been found in a raid on the Party offices. During the questioning I denied nothing, because I was proud of my activities in the Party. In fact, during my arrest and questioning I gave the police something of a hard time''. (p57)

Thus, Edgar spent what would otherwise have been the best years of any young man, in detentions, restrictions and prison for more than ten years, until his release in December 1974, together with Ndabaningi Sithole, Robert Mugabe, Maurice Nyagumbo, Enos Nkala and Moton Malianga. This was ''Détente'' time, heralding a landmark in Zimbabwe's armed struggle, the beginning of the last but most difficult stage of it; the ''Final Push'', as Edgar refers to it in his autobiography.

Detention and prison broke many a nationalist in these days and, deservedly, history has to honour for all time those like Edgar Tekere who soldiered on regardless of the obvious hazards and tribulations ahead.

So it was that Edgar volunteered, in March 1975, following the assassination of Herbert Chitepo in Lusaka, Zambia, to accompany Robert Mugabe to Mozambique:

''Some, including Moton Malianga and Enos Nkala, did not want to join in the war, and considering violence that had just been taking place, this was perfectly understandable . . . I had always been committed to the armed struggle, and, moreover, as the leader of the Youth, I was the obvious choice. For the youth are after all lifeblood of the army: it is the young who do the fighting. But I was a junior member in terms of the Party structures, a younger man, and a deputy secretary only.'' (p72) And, so continues the fearless and selfless Edgar, on the eve of his departure for Mozambique: ''I knew that I would be away for a long time, so before we left, I returned to my parents' home to dispose of my belongings. Apart from a few items I needed, my clothes all went to my brothers. The family asked me why I was parceling out my inheritance this way, as if I was about to die. And I replied that what I was about to do was indeed a gamble with death, and a lot of people had already died out there in the camps. But I was not afraid.'' (p73)

I met Edgar Tekere for the first time in February 1979, at ZANU PF Headquarters in Maputo; although we had a glimpse of him and his fellow detainees while myself and other fellow students were in the Salisbury Remand Prison in July, 1973. Edgar had just been elevated to the position of Secretary-General of ZANU PF two years earlier in 1977. We bonded almost immediately, as I did with most of that group of nationalist leaders to whom we were irresistibly attracted as young radicals in those heady days of the struggle: Robert Mugabe, Nathan Shamuyarira, Edson Zvobgo, Dzingai Mutumbuka (who was my boss in the Department of Education and Manpower in Maputo during that period), Josiah Tongogara, Rex Nhongo (Solomon Mujuru), Sydney Sekeremai, etc. If these were our older brothers in the family that was so obviously so in those days, then such guerrillas as Teurai Ropa, Sobusa Gula-Ndebele and my former student (at Kutama) Chris Mutsvangwa were the younger brothers and sisters, to this day.

The reference to ''family'' is most pertinent for our story here because it helps to highlight the historical significance of the ties that should bind us beyond whatever political differences may have developed since the return home in 1980; regardless, too, I hope, of where post-independence finds us respectively today. This, I believe is the essence of President Mugabe's message of condolence at the passing of his comrade-in-arms; but how that might have touched Edgar had it been said before his death!

My relationship with Edgar grew also because his late wife, Ruvimbo, was a close family friend to both my wife Diane and I, and was witness at our wedding in Dar es Salaam in 1979.

At independence in 1980, Edgar was appointed Minister of Manpower Planning and Development. As an entirely new Ministry in the maze of the state structures that were still largely Rhodesian in content, Manpower Planning and Development proved to have been pivotal if not also central in the process of transformation, not to mention the task of human resources development and genuine indigenization. As both Secretary-General of the ruling party and Minister of such a key section of the new State machinery, Edgar's role and leadership was palpable. Without him, it is doubtful that we, as officials in the Ministry, could have achieved such feats as were both controversial and even resisted, not only by the former settlers but also by some within the new State itself: for example the National Manpower Survey of which I was Director in 1980-82, the ''Bonding of Apprentices'' which overnight indigenized artisanship in Zimbabwe, and the Scholarship Programme which, under the Ministry of Manpower Planning and Development, produced many of the professionals in this country, including the many now serving in neighboring countries and abroad.

Edgar Tekere was a true nationalist, a genuine patriot: like Joshua Nkomo, he lived beyond race, tribe and ethnicity. So it was that his Ministry of Manpower Planning and Development was staffed by cadres from both ZANU and ZAPU; it was a genuine ''Patriotic Front'' Ministry, with Herbert Murerwa, Buzwani Mothobi and I at the apex of it, and former ZANLA and ZIPRA cadres serving as Manpower Survey officers across the country. Recruitment, training and scholarship awards were made without regard to ethnic or political affiliation.

As is well-known, Edgar's stint in the state was short-lived, following the ''Adams Case'' (in which a Mr. Adams was shot and killed in a bizarre incident involving Edgar and his bodyguards). But the real fall-out between Edgar Tekere and Robert Mugabe was at the Party level when, on 8 April 1981, he ''was suddenly sacked from the position of Secretary-General of the Party, at a meeting I did not attend'' (p135). After this, Edgar entered the political wilderness, so to speak, became a thorn in the flesh for Mugabe and those who remained around him, virtually immune to advice, even from those of us close to him.

I recall in particular the confrontation I had with him in late 1988, just as he began the process towards the launch of his party, Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM). My wish had been to have him exit politics altogether; and, as far as I was concerned, there were obvious risks for him to launch a political party when the ''One-Party-State'' outfit was at its most virulent. In retrospect, this was mere self-interest on my part, trying to safeguard and protect an elder brother. Yet, it was the formation of ZUM that heralded the end of the One-Party-State in Zimbabwe, the beginnings of the multi-partyism we are enjoying today.

Later, in December, 1989, during the ZANU PF Party Congress, I was quoted in the Financial Gazette (then edited by Trevor Ncube) as having said that ''The One-Party-State is out of touch with reality.'' I have reason to believe that this was one reason I found myself out of a job a few months later, forced retirement from the Public Service at the age of 42 in July 1990.

Thereafter, Edgar teased me endlessly about how ''my introduction of multi-partyism got people like Ibbo fired''!

Yet it is true that the formation of ZUM in 1989 constituted the foundations of a new democratic Zimbabwe, of the kind Edgar believed should have accompanied the post-independence period throughout. For him, this would amount to the reassertion of the very principles and goals of the struggle for national independence.

In many respects, therefore, Edgar leaves us in the midst of a transition that promises to usher in a ''New Zimbabwe'', emerging from a tumultuous decade of immense political and economic problems, towards a growing convergence, among the Zimbabwean people as a whole, around obvious national priorities.

Edgar ''2boy'' Zivanai Tekere is survived by his wife Pamela, daughter Maidei, sister Mary Kada and brothers Farai and John.

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