Tongogara conversion to MDC

Tongogara was a commander of the Zanla guerrilla army in Rhodesia. He attended the Lancaster House conference that led to Zimbabwe’s independence and the end of white minority rule. Many expected him to be the first president of Zimbabwe, with Robert Mugabe, head of Zanla’s political wing, Zanu, as prime minister.

Tongogara’s young brother Joshua is now the MDC’s Shurugwi South district chairperson. Tongo’s young sister, Lucia Gladys nee Tongogara-Matibenga, is the immediate past vice president of the umbrella trade union body, ZCTU.

Matibenga was also MDC Women’s Assembly chairperson before her dramatic ouster last year. Speaking on the sidelines of an MDC South provincial council meeting held at the Midlands Hotel last weekend, Joshua Tongogara said Zanu (PF) had lost direction and betrayed the founding ideals of the liberation struggles.

“It is time they stepped off the political stage and let the MDC exclusively rule this country,” Tongogara said. “Zanu (PF) has failed, its an albatross in this inclusive government.”

Joshua speaks fondly of his early childhood with his brother, sisters and parents, living on the farm owned by the parents of Ian Smith, Rhodesia’s last prime minister. However, he speaks bitterly about the death of his brother, Josiah Tongogara. Six days after the Lancaster House Agreement was signed, Robert Mugabe announced on the Voice of Zimbabwe radio station that Tongogara was dead, killed in a car accident in Mozambique on December 26, 1979. On the fateful night, Tongogara had been travelling with others in two vehicles from Maputo to Chimoio. The car Tongogara was travelling in rammed into an abandoned military truck during the dark night.

Zanu released an undertaker’s statement saying his injuries were consistent with a road accident, but no autopsy results or pictures have been released.

A CIA intelligence briefing of 28 December 1979 said Tongogara was a potential political rival to Mugabe because of his ambition, popularity and decisive style. On the same day, the US embassy in Zambia reported: “Almost no one in Lusaka accepts Mugabe’s assurance that Tongogara died accidentally. When the ambassador told the Soviet ambassador the news, the surprised Soviet immediately charged ‘inside job’.”

A former detective in the Law and Order Section of the now Zimbabwe Republic police, saw photographs of Tongogara’s body. There were three wounds, consistent with gun shot wounds, to his upper torso. The undertaker’s statement was not a formal autopsy report and as such was dismissed by all but the senior politburo of Zanu.

Joshua insists that his brother was assassinated. “They killed him.”