Peerless is level 1 of 4 in the Zimbabwe Hall of Fame: changed the field itself. Tell the country's story without them and the story breaks. See how the levels work.
Why they are here
He founded and led ZAPU from 1961 and is called Father Zimbabwe — the elder of the liberation movement, and later its most prominent victim.
Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo trained as a social worker in South Africa, where he knew Nelson Mandela, and came back to Bulawayo to organise the black railway workers' union.
He led the African National Congress of Southern Rhodesia and its successors through the 1950s, and in 1961 founded the Zimbabwe African People's Union. He was the senior nationalist figure of his generation and the first to take the Rhodesian question to the United Nations. When ZANU broke away in 1963 the movement split along lines that were also ethnic and never fully closed.
He spent ten years in detention, from 1964 to 1974, and then led ZAPU and its army, ZIPRA, from Zambia through the war. He negotiated at Lancaster House and came home in 1980 to a hero's reception — and lost the election decisively to Robert Mugabe's ZANU.
He served in the first cabinet until 1982, when arms caches were found on ZAPU-linked farms and Mugabe dismissed him. The Fifth Brigade campaign in Matabeleland followed, killing an estimated twenty thousand civilians among his own people; Nkomo's home was raided, his driver was killed, and in 1983 he crossed the border on foot and went into exile in Britain. He returned and signed the Unity Accord of December 1987, which merged ZAPU into ZANU-PF and ended the killing on terms that gave him a vice-presidency and no accountability for what had been done. He held that office until his death in 1999, and is buried at Heroes' Acre.
He led the African National Congress of Southern Rhodesia and its successors through the 1950s, and in 1961 founded the Zimbabwe African People's Union. He was the senior nationalist figure of his generation and the first to take the Rhodesian question to the United Nations. When ZANU broke away in 1963 the movement split along lines that were also ethnic and never fully closed.
He spent ten years in detention, from 1964 to 1974, and then led ZAPU and its army, ZIPRA, from Zambia through the war. He negotiated at Lancaster House and came home in 1980 to a hero's reception — and lost the election decisively to Robert Mugabe's ZANU.
He served in the first cabinet until 1982, when arms caches were found on ZAPU-linked farms and Mugabe dismissed him. The Fifth Brigade campaign in Matabeleland followed, killing an estimated twenty thousand civilians among his own people; Nkomo's home was raided, his driver was killed, and in 1983 he crossed the border on foot and went into exile in Britain. He returned and signed the Unity Accord of December 1987, which merged ZAPU into ZANU-PF and ended the killing on terms that gave him a vice-presidency and no accountability for what had been done. He held that office until his death in 1999, and is buried at Heroes' Acre.
- Britannica — Joshua Nkomo
- BlackPast — Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo (1917-1999)
- Wikipedia — Joshua Nkomo
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