Tonderai Ndira, a 30-year-old political activist, may not have had the international renown of Biko, the founder of the Black Consciousness Movement, but throughout Zimbabwe he was known as one of Robert Mugabe’s most implacable, fearless opponents. And the details surrounding his death certainly could have come from the darkest days of apartheid.
Beaten and tortured frequently, arrested more times, it’s believed, than anyone in Zimbabwe’s political history (32), for years, the tall, slender father of two and MDC security secretary for Harare province, had deftly kept one step ahead of the authorities. When things were hot, he moved. Twice he escaped custody by jumping out of a moving truck.
Last year, after five months in prison on charges related to a spate of petrol bombings, a High Court judge found that the police had fabricated evidence against him and 12 other activists, and ordered his release. But like Biko, it appears that in the end Ndira was an enemy that the state deemed too dangerous to live.
In English, he was quietly spoken and articulate. In Shona, he was almost poetic, with a humour that shone through even under the most adverse circumstances.
In 2002 he told BBC’s Panorama: “We are prepared to die. It is just the same, we are still dying in Zimbabwe. We are dying by hunger, by diseases, everything, so there is nothing to fear, nothing to [be] scared [of].”On the morning of May 14, they came. Around nine armed men in plain clothes descended on Ndira’s small home in Mabvuku, the ramshackle township east of Harare where hatred for Zimbabwe’s leaders seems to seep out of every pore. He was assaulted in front of his children, Raphael and Linette, then dragged in his underwear into a white Toyota truck. Over the past week, family and friends frantically chased every half lead and rumour that came their way, offering a reward for information. But there was nothing. When Ndira’s father, a traditional chief from Makonde, asked the police where his son was, they laughed.
Then they received the news they had dreaded. Ndira’s body was found by fellow MDC members at Parirenyatwa Hospital’s mortuary when they went to recover the remains of two other activists. He was so severely beaten, including deep wounds in his back and broken knuckles, that at first, his father had difficulty identifying him.People started gathering in Mabvuku, singing, dancing and paying their respects. Despite no electricity, little food and fears of disruption by Zanu (PF) youths – as happened at the funerals of Ndira’s fellow MDC activists Godfrey Kauzani and Cain Nyeve – hundreds of people are expected in Mabvuku.
Ndira’s memory will survive. According to a writer who followed him for months last year: He was someone who had turned the corner. The everyday, ordinary things no longer meant anything. The struggle was his life.
Zimbabwe has lost one of its bravest sons, added one of his closest friends.
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Post published in: News