Dr Muzenda the organiser

had instituted well-organised women and youth wings of the branch, which wereabletodrawlargecrowdsforrallies.

As shall be seen, Muzenda was first arrestedforpoliticalsubversionwhenhe wasbranchchairmanofNDPinMvuma.

It soon became obvious to Joshua Nkomo, the President of NDP, that Muzenda was being underutilised as a chairman of a branch; he needed to be elevated to a provincial position where his political talents and skills could benefit the party even more.

Joshua Nkomo personally drove down to Mvuma to appoint Muzenda inaugural and leading executive of what wascalledthesouthernprovinceofNDP which covered Masvingo, Zvishavane, Mberengwa, Mwenezi and other districts.

HegaveMuzendaanewLandRover andaskedhimtogoandopenpartyprovincial headquarters in Masvingo, since Mvuma was in Midlands province.

Right from the Bulawayo days, Nkomo had developed an admiration for Muzenda’s skills as an organiser and his unrivalled capacity to reach the ordinary people both in urban and rural areas.

Moreover, he was courageous and hadanastonishingstayingpower;sothat hecouldbecountedontopersevereinan unpromising field until he built a large following for the party in the Province.

Muzenda’s first task in Masvingo was to identify reliable allies. He soon got the assistance of Samuel Munodawafa, Alois Hwingwiri, Mangena, Nolan Makombe, Charles Gutu, John Mundondo and others, all of whom were chosen for their intimate knowledge of the province’s political terrain and of key people around whom local cells and branches could be set up.

Unfortunately, it did not take long after Muzenda’s appointment before NDP was banned on 9 December 1962. And his Land Rover was confiscated by the colonial regime, which sold it with other party properties to defray the party’s debts.

On 18 December 1962 only ten days after the banning of NDP, Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU) was launched. Like its predecessor, ZAPU dedicated itself to liquidating imperialism and colonialism and to the establishment of a democratic government in free society, on the basis of ‘One man One Vote’.

Muzenda remained in Masvingo as the leader and chef administrator of the party in the province.

Augustine Nyashanu, who was the organisingsecretary,assistedhim.Anew Land Rover had been purchased for the province. Indeed, Solomon Marembo believesthatMuzendawasabletogethis political propaganda across to the rural masses partlybecauseofuttersimplicity, which enabled people to identify easily with him.

By the time Zapu was banned, Marembotellsus,“Masvingohadavery strong organisation . . . basically because Muzendawasaruralman...hadagood understanding with the people in the rural areas. He could sleep anywhere, unlike most people, who thought that because they are educated they could not just put up anywhere . . .

“Because of this, those of us who worked with him did not see any difference between us and those living in the rural areas. The leadership of Muzenda was exemplary.

“We thus managed to penetrate everycornerofMasvingoandtheparty became highly organised in the province. Moreover, Muzenda and NyashanuharmonisedtrulywellwithZAPU’s emphasis on African culture.”

To lodge the nationalist spirit in the hearts and minds of the people, ZAPU decided to go back to African culture.

Asitturned,Muzendawasanaccomplished traditional dancer, while Nyashanuwasfirstclasssingerandcomposer.

Nyashanu would open every rally withasongandhissongswererendered in such a powerful voice and often had powerfulmessageswhich‘drovepeople into weeping’, Marembo says.

A champion traditional dancer, Muzenda would ask drummers to get on with their part whilst he borrowed mituzu namagagdo (rattles made out of small calabashes) and tied them on the calves of his legs. Equipped thus, he would jump into the dancing arena andperformtothedelight,ululationand appreciative whistling of the spectators.

This is the sort of thing he had always enjoyed from his school days at Gokomere. With those preliminaries over, Muzenda and Nyashanu would then deliver their political orations and, again, they were good speakers in their Shona language.

On the literary side, Muzenda and the other champion of written African culture were not disappointed either.

InMashonaland,SolomonMutvairo published the nationalistic novel Feso with Oxford University Press in Cape Town in 1956.

ThepoemFeso,asweshallseelanded Muzenda into trouble.

Moretothepointinconnectionwith Muzenda’s arrest was Solomon Mutsvairo’s novel entitled Feso, and its poem Nehanda Nyakasikana.

The poem expressed African outage and bitterness over white people.

Itpointedoutwhitehumiliating,rapacious robbery of African wealth, and it underscored African yearning for the daythatexploitativeandoppressiveburden of white rule would go away.

Muzenda recited the poem at one of the rallies in Mvuma, which was addressed by the President of the NDP, Joshua Nkomo and that led to his first arrest. He was charged with subversion and inciting people to rise against the white people. Hebert Chitepo, who had become director of prosecution in Tanganyika, was hired to defend Muzenda in the High Court.

The prosecutor was John Bull. The prosecution picked out the part of the poem which says, ‘neriri pfumojena rakasvika munyika’, (this spear which came to our country).

The prosecution also singled out, ‘Fumayenyikanhasivakatoravakagovana pahukama hwavo vepfumojena’, (these people of the white spear robbed the country of its wealth and shared it among themselves). Muzenda says that theyspenttwodayswithChitepobuilding up their defence and rehearsing it.

TheprosecutioncalledinCIDauthoritiesfromHarareandKwekwe,together withinterpretersfromGweruandMasvingo.

Muzenda’s defense brought in witnesses who spoke the different dialects ofShona,allofwhomdeniedthat‘fumojena’ meant white people.

Then Muzenda suddenly pulled off an unexpected piece of defence. As he put it:

Then in court I told them if you don’t agree with me, I will begin to sing and you will hear the whole court singing in unison. Without giving them any chance, I started singing:

Hee-hee Gwindingwi rine shumba inoruma Hee-heevanavaPfumojenavachauya Hezvo masango ese anoona All the African people in the court joined and started singing with Muzenda. Wheneverybodywasquiet, he pointed out that what he had just led thepeopleincourtinsingingwasawell- known traditional song, sung by Zimbabwean ancestors perhaps long before theappearanceofBritishcolonialrulers.

As it turned out, Muzenda had not warned Chitepo either, as it was something he thought of on the spur of the moment.

Itworkedbecausewhenthewitnesses fortheprosecutionwerecalledback,they also said it was a traditional song, sung with no reference to whites.

Muzenda also argued in his defence that the police translation of the poem waswrong. Healsocouldnotseewhyhe shouldbeprosecutedforapieceofliterature that was prescribed as a school text.

To demonstrate that he had only reproduced work that was being used in schools, he asked the court to secure from the nearby Belmont Bookshop copiesofthebook,Feso,sothathecould recite the poem while they followed in the book itself.

Theywentandbroughtboughtforty copies of the book and he asked them to open page 42 and then he recited the poem verbatim.

The judge cautioned Muzenda and dischargedhim.MuzendaandChitepo were immediate heroes in Masvingo.

In1962,Muzendawasagainarrested. On this occasion he went to address a rally at Mandava Township in Zvishavane,whichwaspartofhisZapuSouthernProvince. Atthismeetinghetoldthe hugegatheringthatwhitesinZimbabwe had huge problems in their own countries where they came from.

They had nowhere to go, so that, even if Africans won majority rule, they would remain in the country.

Zimbabwe,hesaid,wasbeautifuland endowed with a lot of riches so that the white settlers could not afford to leave.

He was arrested for that speech and charged with four counts. To show his popularity, when he was being taken to the police station a big crowd followed.

Fearingtrouble,thepoliceaskedhim topersuadethepeopletogobacktotheir houses. He stood on an elevated place and called on the people to go return to theirhomes,astherewasnotroubleatall.

Hehadjustbeenaskedtogoandsign some papers relating to the just ended meeting.Althoughmanyrespondedto hiscall,others,especiallyyouths,wanted to register their protests trough acts of arson and sabotage. Some made petrol bombs and tried to burn up petrol stations. Police responded by opening fireindiscriminatelyandshotdeadthree people. The following day sixty women fromMandavaTownshipbroughtfood for their leader and hero.

Each had a plate of sadza (meal porridge). The police tried to stop the women but they insisted that they wanted to see their leader.

In the end they were allowed to go through. Muzenda was immediately transferred to Gweru prison to avoid trouble from his followers.

His brother, Davison, hired the famous Bulawayo lawyer, Leo Baron, to defend him. He was found guilty on three of the four charges by the Zvishavane magistrate, who sentenced him to twelve years’ imprisonment as each of the charges carried a four year sentence.

On appeal, his prison sentence was reducedtofouryears,becausethemagistratewassaidtohave erredbynotallowing the three sentences to run concurrently.

Intheendhedidnotservethefullfour years and was released in 1964.

By the time he came out of prison, Zapu had split into Zapu and Zanu.