Known as ‘Two Boy’ during his long innings as a nationalist leader, Edgar Tekere was a massively charismatic but wildly erratic man, one of the few survivors of the Second Chimurenga (1966 -1980) who dared stand up to Robert Mugabe and denounce him for betraying the Zimbabwean revolution and surrounding himself with third rate guerrilla wannabes and corrupt Mafia-like drones and sycophants.
After hearing about his death on 7 June, every politician, church leader, journalist and civil servant worth their salt told the now fragile and out-of-touch Mugabe to put aside Two Boy's past "errors and political inconsistencies" and declare the man a National Hero.
In previous days, when Mugabe reigned supreme, anyone who had crossed swords with him on who should, and who should not, be declared a national hero would have been dismissed out of hand.
But because of his age and appalling record, Mugabe’s opinion no longer carries the weight it used to on this and other subjects. Tekere was buried at the national shrine, Heroes’ Acre, on the edge of Harare.
Sellouts and conmen
A nation ruled by sellouts, conmen and poseurs, bent is knees and dipped its head.
Earlier, one of the founders of Zanu in 1963, Enos Nkala, dismissed the role of Mugabe when it came to the creation of nationalist ”saints” asking, with a hint of thunder in his voice – “Who is Mugabe to declare Tekere a hero? No-one in the current party’s (ruling) politburo qualifies to deliberate on the heroism of the late, great nationalist Tekere.”
Tekere was known as Two Boy to classmates at St Augustine's Mission, Penhalonga, when he was an unruly teenager. Fellow guerrillas called him that during the war against Ian Smith’s white–officered Rhodesian Army and Air Force. His many critics asserted that he well-deserved the nickname because he so often revealed signs of schizophrenia.
His revolutionary credentials were impeccable: his temperament, mercurial. He spent almost 10 years in Hwa Hwa Prison with Mugabe after they were arrested in 1964 for ‘subversion’ by officials from Smith’s Rhodesia Front, which the following year declared UDI, breaking with Britain and the Commonwealth.
Son of a pastor
Born near Rusape in April 1937, Tekere was the second son of an Anglican pastor and his schoolteacher wife who claimed descent from a high-ranking princess of the Makoni people of eastern Zimbabwe. Young Edgar was educated at St Augustine's Mission College at Penhalonga.
At the birth of militant African nationalism in 1956, he joined the City Youth League founded by James Chikerema and George Nyandoro. Detained briefly in 1959 as a member of a radical organisation, he joined Zanu at its birth at the home of Nkala and was elected Deputy Secretary General for Youth and Culture at the party's congress in 1964.
After the surprise release of key black leaders, including Joshua Nkomo, Ndabaningi Sithole and Robert Mugabe at the end of 1974 so they could attend detente and unity talks in Lusaka with the South African Government and African Frontline State leaders, Tekere and the many-degreed Mugabe left Rhodesia in 1975 to continue organising the fight for black majority rule from guerrilla camps in freshly independent Mozambique.
At Zimbabwe’s Independence in April 1980, Tekere was not only Secretary General of the victorious Zanu (PF). He was also briefly a minister in the post-independence government.
He hit the world’s headlines when he shot dead a 68 -year old white farmer Gerald Adams at a homestead near Harare. The High Court found him “not guilty” with defence lawyers saying that Adams resisted a security sweep by the new regime at his property outside the then Salisbury (Harare). But his reputation as a wild card in the nationalist pack made him a figure of terror in the rapidly diminishing European community.
Dismissed as a minister, Two Boy denounced corruption in the ruling party. From the wilderness he told Mugabe to make straight the way for a real revolution. But he was laughed at and ignored as Mugabe and his men set about demolishing opposition power and civilian life in Matabeleland and the Midland (Gukuruhundi).
Disgusted
Tekere said he was disgusted by the way former freedom fighters had grown so fat on the fruits of freedom. He fell out with Mugabe in 1988 after telling a mass rally at Mutare: “Democracy in Zimbabwe is in intensive care and the leadership has decayed.”
He said that leaders around Mugabe were stashing cash into Swiss accounts “just like the Mafia” and that the revolution that cost so many lives had been betrayed.
He was expelled from Zanu (PF) in 1988 and the following year formed his own party, the Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) that received 20 percent of the vote in presidential and parliamentary elections held in 1990. But because of the first past the post system in Zimbabwe, ZUM only had three seats in the enlarged 150 seat House of Assembly.
After the collapse of ZUM, Mugabe was not much bothered by his erstwhile right hand man who he had assisted personally and financially during dark days when Two Boy was battling a severe alcohol problem.
Treason
In February 2007 he did what Mugabe and his cronies, saw as an unforgivable act of treason. He published a book called ‘A Life Time of Struggle’ in which he said Mugabe had never fought in the liberation war, knew nothing about guerrillas or weapons and had destroyed not only Zimbabwe but also Zanu (PF).
Tekere even denounced himself for encouraging Mugabe to give up his teaching career in 1960 to join the nationalist struggle for an end to racism and then for extolling Mugabe’s virtues as a national leader after 1980 when Mugabe was seen as a liberation hero worldwide.
“We produced a creature who has destroyed this country,” said Enos Nkala. Tekere nodded in agreement.
Mugabe was attending a regional summit in South Africa when Tekere was buried at Heroes’ Acre on Sunday 12 June. For the first time since 1980, Mugabe did not officiate at his party’s shrine for fallen guerrillas and political leaders. The well- respected journalist Angus Shaw said in an obituary for Associated Press: “Mugabe’s absence at a crucial summit on the Zimbabwean crisis spared him from praising the veteran guerrilla leader who enraged him by speaking out against corruption and misrule in the first decade of independence.”
Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara, who was a child when Tekere fought white farmers and soldiers in the Rhodesian bush, joined in the demand for national hero status and burial for Two Boy saying – “There is no Zimbabwean hero, dead or alive, who has a higher rank of heroism than Edgar Tekere. He is heroism personified.”
(Edgar Tekere was born at Rusape on 1 April 1937 and he died at Murambi Clinic, Mutare on 7 June 2011. He is survived by his wife Pamela and their daughter Maidei).
Post published in: News