Joshua Nkomo
*Joshua Nkomo was born on this date in 1917. He was a Black African revolutionary and politician.
Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomo was born in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) to a poor Ndebele family, one of eight children. His father (Thomas Nyongolo Letswansto Nkomo) was a preacher and a cattle rancher for the London Missionary Society. His mother was Mlingo Hadebe.
After completing his primary education, Nkomo took a carpentry course at the Tsholotsho Government Industrial School, where he studied for a year before becoming a driver. He later tried animal husbandry, then taught carpentry at Manyame School in Kezi. In 1942, at the age of 25, he traveled to South Africa to further his education, pursue carpentry, and advance to a higher level. He attended Adams College and the Jan H. Hofmeyr School of Social Work in South Africa, where he met Nelson Mandela and other future nationalist leaders, including those at the University of Fort Hare. However, he did not attend that university.
After returning to Bulawayo in 1947, he became a trade unionist for Black railway workers. He rose to the leadership of the Railway Workers Union and then to the leadership of the Southern Rhodesian chapter of the African National Congress. Nkomo married Johanna Fuyana on October 1, 1949. He received a diploma in social work from Jan H. Hofmeyr School in 1952. In 1953, he ran for Parliament in the first federal election, although he lost. The Southern Rhodesian ANC branch became the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (SRANC), and in 1957, Nkomo was elected chairman. Nkomo was out of the country in 1959 when SRANC was banned, its property confiscated, and many of its leaders arrested.
On January 1, 1960, the National Democratic Party (NDP) was founded by Nkomo and others, and he became president of the NDP with the support of Robert Mugabe. The NDP was banned in December 1961 by the Rhodesian government. He was jailed for ten years by Rhodesia's white minority government. After his release in 1974, Nkomo immediately formed the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU). The Rhodesian white minority government also banned that party, but it would remain a multi-ethnic party right up until independence in 1980. In 1983, fearing for his life in the early stages of the Gukurahundi, Nkomo fled the country. Later in 1987, he controversially signed the Unity Accord allowing ZAPU to merge with ZANU to stop the genocide. Nkomo earned many nicknames, "Father Zimbabwe" and "the slippery rock."
He was Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1990 until he died of prostate cancer on July 1, 1999, at the age of 82. Letters to the prime minister, Robert Mugabe, allegedly written by Nkomo while in exile in the United Kingdom, began to resurface following Nkomo's death in 1999. In the letters, he argues against his persecution and accuses the government of cracking down on opposition. On June 27, 2000, the Post and Telecommunications Corporation of Zimbabwe issued a set of four postage stamps featuring Joshua Nkomo.
