African Laughter - Doris May Lessing [162]
On his release he joined the Zimbabwe African People’s Union (ZAPU), led by Joshua Nkomo, but broke away the following year with others including Robert Mugabe to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). When ZANU was proscribed in 1964, he was arrested and spent the next 11 years in various prisons and restriction camps. Released in 1975, he was soon convicted of recruiting young people for guerrilla training and was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment.
He was released in 1979 in time to observe the closing stages of the Lancaster House Conference in London which led to Zimbabwean independence. Afterwards he held several government posts including minister for mines and minister of state for political affairs and cooperative development.
In 1980 he published an autobiography whose credo was: ‘Some of us must remain to be with the people, even if it means to be in jail with them.’ Undoubtedly he was a courageous man, prepared to suffer for his beliefs. After Independence, in his cloth cap at President Mugabe’s side, as senior minister for political affairs, he was one of the symbols of the struggle.
He is survived by a wife and six children.
The Times, Obituary
TWO-BOY TEKERE
Edgar Tekere, the maverick, the outsider, is discussed with the relishing, sardonic disbelief we use to salute disreputable but entertaining possibilities.
If you play that private game, of sitting rather outside a conversation and listening to the sound rather than to the sense of it, Tekere Tekere Tekere clicks through the talk like a cricket.
He is mounting a one-man opposition to Mugabe, and has been thrown out of Mugabe’s party Zanu PF because of his criticisms of corruption and Mugabe’s toleration of it. His new political party is called the Zimbabwe Unity Movement. (It is interesting how often the word Unity, or United, is used for political movements that are in fact divisive.) But Zum is making an impact because everyone knows his criticisms are just. What sort of impact? No one knows. He appeals too, to some people–not a few–who would like to see more whites in Parliament, because of their expertise and know-how. (When whites are valued in black countries it is seldom for their charm, their wit, their delightfulness, their kind hearts, but rather because they are equipped to deal with the modern world.) Everywhere campaigning goes on in preparation for the next election, on lines familiar to Zimbabwe–to Kenya–to India–to communist countries–and, of course, to England in the eighteenth century. Every kind of dirty trick is employed to outwit or discredit opponents. Gangs of bully boys break up Tekere’s meetings and threaten possible supporters with violence or actually beat them up, and are never rebuked or punished. This is because they are members of Zanu PF’s youth section. (Why doesn’t Mugabe…?) By-elections are rigged. Tekere himself is publicly vilified and there is a cleverly managed whispering campaign.
It was Tekere who, when drunk, murdered a white farmer just after Liberation. This certainly darkened the shining image of a Soldier of Liberation. The incident is again being discussed, and, too, his willingness to work with Smith. In addition, the authorities leaked Tekere’s medical records, which made him sound like a schizophrenic. That he is an alcoholic does not seem to discredit him: it is this fact that makes some people think that ‘they’ (this time, the Povos) don’t take Tekere seriously.
Tekere has turned criticism to his own advantage, describing himself as a ‘Two-boy’, which is how schizophrenics are known in these parts. On campaign posters he is describing himself as ‘Edgar Tekere Two-boy, the Christian Alcoholic’, and making everyone laugh.
Tekere is in fact playing a familiar political role, or allowing himself to be in a position where other people ascribe the role to him. He is seen as the opposite of everything Mugabe is. Mugabe has never made anybody laugh. Mugabe needs a whole motorcade and darkened bullet-proof windows if he so much as