100 Greatest Zimbabweans

100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS TO EVER LIVE

2015-11-21T09:32:00.000-08:00

We feature the top 100 Zimbabweans of all time

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Agnes Nyanhongo Zimbabwe's most prominent female stone sculptor

2011-05-01T11:01:00.000-07:00

Born in 1960 in Nyanga, Agnes Nyanhongo is now considered one of the most prominent and successful of Zimbabwe's sculptors and the most acknowledged woman in this field. She is the daughter of the well known sculptor, Claud Nyanhongo, and as a child spent a great deal of time helping him with the polishing of his work. The sensitivity with which she expresses her ideas and the respect for the material that is so apparent in her work could arguably have resulted from these early formative experiences.

She began sculpting full time atan early age and in 1983 embarkedon a three-yearcourse atthe B.A.T. Workshops in Harare, where she was considered to be one of the most promising students. Her quiet determination and belief in her work have carried it along a purposeful and individual path and have now earned her much critical acclaim and many awards. She works quite extensively with the human form, sometimes specifically with female issues, but always expressing a calm and watchful strength that seems so true to her own personality and character.

Agnes Nyanhongo derives some inspiration from the stone itself, but much of her work depicts the natural world around her; making close observations, but ultimately working from her own mental images of the subject. However, it is with traditional Shona myths that she has become increasingly involved recently. Not only does she feel that these have great relevance now, but she believes, as a sculptor, she has a responsibility in keeping them alive. "It is easier for artists as they can portray them in a striking figurative way which, when combined with a strong title, will remind or tell the viewer of an important story and this will remain with them." Her work is always attractive, with easy lines and areas of beautiful finish alongside other, unworked surfaces. As a result the images she produces, already universal by there nature, are presented in a combination of simplicity, quiet dignity, beauty and finesse.

Women's issues have run through her career. "I try somehow to express the role women play in society and the way they are being treated - they are still not free. They are struggling for freedom. Men must also see this because it is something that exists between men and women." At times her work has a rather

specific message; for example, Nehanda - Spirit Medium, depicts the role of the national heroine Mbuya Nehanda, who inspired the first uprising against the white settlers in 1896. Other memorable works are The Conversalion, with its Mona Lisa type effect of changing moods and tensions, The Family and The Thinker.

Nyanhongo has now worked at Chapungu Sculpture Park in Harare for seven years, and her work has taken its place alongside those of the greatest Zimbabwean sculptors in many successful exhibitions both in Zimbabwe and internationally. Together with Colleen Madamombe the exhibition "Woman Achievers in Africa" is presently on a world tour.

Oprah Winfrey and Maya Angelou are among the known collectors of her work.

References
Mawdsley, Joceline. Chapungu: The Stone Sculptures of Zimbabwe. Harare: Chapungu, 1997

100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS BIGGIE TEMBO AND THE BHUNDU BOYS

2011-01-12T17:27:00.000-08:00

The death by that most shockingly un-African of causes, suicide, of the singer and composer Biggie Tembo represents yet another tragic chapter in the arduous career of the Zimbabwean pop group the Bhundu Boys.

Even though Tembo left the band five years ago, his name and bouncy straw- boater-topped image will be most closely associated with the band he helped make one of Africa's most internationally famous during the mid-Eighties boom in interest in African music.

The Bhundus are currently back slogging around Britain on another of their long hard tours. The shock caused by the news of their old colleague's death was apparently mitigated by a certain grim familiarity: no less than three members of the band have died of presumed Aids-related diseases in the last four years.

Biggie Tembo joined the Bhundu Boys in 1980, shortly after the group changed its name from the Wild Dragons and its repertoire from rock covers to the new traditionally based jit music. Bhundu means "bush" in the Shona language and the name's association is with the liberation fighters who helped transform the renegade white-ruled Rhodesia into Zimbabwe in the same year the new group was born.

The Bhundu Boys' music was not directly political, except in the sense that it took as its main ingredient the traditional melodies of the Shona m'bira (thumb piano), transposed for joyfully ringing guitars. Its purpose, like the equally irresistible guitar-based pop of the nearby Congo basin, was to make punters dance and buy more beer in the open-air dance-halls and gardens like the Bonanza Bar in Harare, where the Bhundus served their apprenticeship playing 12-hour sets six nights a week.

By the time the Bhundus got to Britain, Biggie Tembo had already become the most prominent member, with his energy, charm and catchy song-writing: he was the author of tracks like "Hasitose", which topped the Zimbabwean charts for three months and rapidly became a favourite with their new European audiences.

The Bhundus arrived at Heathrow Airport in 1986 at the behest of Gordon Muir, a young Edinburgh graphic designer turned ad hoc concert promoter. The classic account has it they were disappointed at the humble van their new showbiz patron turned up in in lieu of a Rolls; while Muir was taken aback to find they hadn't brought any instruments. Nevertheless, Tembo's rallying cry of "Burruru! Burruru! Burruru!", the cantering snare drums and the delirious guitar lines were soon getting audiences on their feet, jit-jiving and grinning from ear to ear in, at first, pub backrooms, and gradually larger dance-halls around Britain.

The Bhundus' timing was impeccable; British interest in what shortly afterwards acquired the unfortunate name "World Music" was booming but the British public had not yet been sated by the subsequent influx of artists from around the world. The Radio 1 disc jockeys John Peel and Andy Kershaw became enthusiastic converts to the Bhundus' cause, and within two years the band had signed to a multinational record label, WEA, and played as supporting act to Madonna in front of a 70,000-strong audience at Wembley.

Then things began to go downhill. The WEA album, released in 1987, with its English lyrics flopped, judged anaemic and internationalised by critics and public. Biggie Tembo, whose erratic moods and increasingly extreme opinion of his own importance in the group had been creating tension for some time, decided to leave the Bhundus, a decision he was to try to revoke repeatedly thereafter, only to find the Bhundus didn't want him back. The World Music boom levelled off. The Bhundu Boys soldiered on, reduced in star status but hard-working as ever, while Tembo oscillated between London and Harare trying to revive his career, now releasing an unsuccessful solo album in Britain, now playing with another veteran Harare group, the Ocean City Band, and seeing his mercurial temperament slip into bouts of depression and intermittent psychiatric hospital treatment.

A projected tour of Britain last year was abandoned in chaos and Tembo turned up at Heathrow alone, without a work permit and desperate to find a way back up. He turned increasingly to Christianity but re-admitted himself to hospital in Harare shortly before hanging himself.

As much for bringing Zimbabwean pop to the outside world as for his work at home, Tembo was still famous in Harare - a local paper recently ran a lengthy campaign to encourage him and the Bhundus to team up again. His best songs are lodged deep in the public consciousness. Gordon Muir recalls going into a bank in Harare with Tembo once and all the staff bursting into a mass rendition of "Hasitose".

If Biggie Tembo's dark side triumphed at the end, his shining talent to entertain will continue to illuminate record collections around the world.

Philip Sweeney

Rodwell Marasha (Biggie Tembo), musician: born Chinhoyi, Mashonaland, Zimbabwe 30 September 1958; married (two sons); died Harare, Zimbabwe 30 July 1995.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/obituary-biggie-tembo-1595832.html

THE BUNDU BOYS

Biggie Tembo (vocals, rhythm guitar)
Rise Kagona (lead guitar, vocals)
David Mankaba (bass, vocals)
replaced by Shepherd Munyama (bass)
replaced by Washington Kavhai (bass)
Shakespeare Kangwena (keyboards, vocals)
Kenny Chitsvatsva (drums, vocals)

Probably the best known Zimbabwean guitar band, the Bhundu Boys broke the Harare sound to the UK and Europe in the mid 80s to much acclaim. Mixing Zimbabwean styles with rhumba influences from the Congo, the Bhundus labelled their fast-paced guitar music "jit-jive". The band formed in 1980 under the leadership of lead singer Biggie Tembo who was a "bhundu boy" during Zimbabwe's liberation struggle; an underage runner for rebel soldiers. The Bhundu's eventually reached the top of the Zimbabwe music scene, scoring four number one hits (Baba Munini Francis, Wenhamo Haaneti, Hastisitose, and Ndimboze) between 1981 and 1984. This success brought the attention of DJs from the UK.

Shabini, their first international album, received limited but successful airplay in England. As their sound gained popularity in the UK, they moved to Scotland and toured extensively, garnering praise form many top musicians including Elvis Costello. They even opened for Madonna in front of a 80 000 crowd at Wembley. Ultimate success arrived when the Bhundus inked a record deal with American majors WEA. Unfortunately their downfall began, as the contrived sound of their 1986 album True Jit didn't "jive" with their audeince. More attempts at finding their original success failed, and the Bhundus fell apart when frontman Biggie Tembo left to pursue a solo career in 1990 (he was asked to leave the band). The Boys continued to release albums under the lead of guitarist Rise Kangona, but never lived up to their early success.

Unfortunately tragedy has befallen the band. David Mankaba, the Bhundus bassist, was the first band member to publicly admit to having contracted AIDS. His replacement, Shepherd Munyama, also died of the disease. A third member, drummer Shakespeare Kangwena, also succembed to AIDS. Disaster struck once again when, in 1995, former lead singer Biggie Tembo hanged himself. To this day, Rise Kagona continues to tour with a new-formed group of Bhundus. Despite the fact that they never lived up to their early potential, the Bhundu Boys were a groundbreaking force in the African music industry, as they paved the way for more artists to reach commercial success in Europe and the US.

Patrick Chakaipa Zimbabwe's first black archbishop 100 Greatest Zimbabweans

2010-11-26T17:35:00.000-08:00

Roman Catholics in Zimbabwe will remember Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa, who died at St Anne's Hospital in Harare on April 8 after a long battle with cancer, with a mixture of love and sorrow.

The first black Archbishop of Rhodesia, Chakaipa was a close friend of Robert Mugabe. This controversial relationship was a source of considerable embarrassment to the church both at home and abroad. The archbishop invited criticism when he refused to allow the Catholic Church's commissioners for justice and peace to publish a devastating report, which revealed the full horror of the North Korean trained Zimbabwe National Army's atrocities in Matabeleland between 1982 and 1987. The government now admits to 10,000 civilian deaths. Some Catholics say many more died, possibly five times that figure. The report was eventually released, but never with the blessing of the Catholic hierarchy, which, basically, did not want to embarrass or anger Mugabe. The archbishop was also roundly condemned for the fact that, years later in 1996, he lobbied the Pope so that his friend Mugabe could marry a State House security worker called Grace Marufu who was at the time of her notorious affair with the president married with children to a Zimbabwean Air Force officer.

Patrick Chakaipa's warm relationship with Robert Mugabe was ideal for the latter, but Catholics both in Zimbabwe and Britain say it has cost the Church dearly. Born in Mhondoro in Rhodesia in June 1932, he spent almost 38 years of his life as a priest and just over 30 of them as a bishop, later archbishop of a country once called Rhodesia but now generally referred to as ''Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe''. From peasant stock, Patrick Chakaipa was ordained as a priest in 1965. Seven years later he was appointed auxiliary bishop for the diocese of Salisbury, and in 1976 was enthroned as the first black Archbishop of Rhodesia following the resignation that year of Francis William Markall SJ. For historic reasons, Catholics have been the loudest and most influential voice of Christianity in Rhodesia/ Zimbabwe.

When Sir Alec Douglas Home and Rhodesian leader Ian Smith worked out a plan to restore legality to Rhodesia in 1971, Patrick Chakaipa was one of the many local dignitaries who said ''no'' because it gave too much power to a small group of wealthy Europeans who hoped to perpetuate racism in Africa. At synods and Christian gatherings, the voice of Patrick Chakaipa was loud and clear. ''The Church,'' he said in Rome in 1994, ''can only promote justice if it makes all efforts to avoid injustice within the Church itself.'' When he died on April 8, hundreds of thousands of Catholics walked slowly around his coffin, which was later taken to the citadel of Catholicism in Zimbabwe, the mission at Chishawasha. At the start of the twentieth century, many Catholic blacks regarded the Catholic Church as a lighthouse of hope.

Many of the country's future leaders - including the Jesuit-educated Robert Mugabe - sat still and silent as they took in the words of Christ, only to throw them out of windows at the nearest ruling party headquarters when they came to power. Those who know Zimbabwe well say that it is no coincidence that the strongest Easter Pastoral Letter from the Zimbabwe Catholic Bishops' Conference since independence was issued to priests only a few days after the archbishop's death. In it, the Catholic Church in Zimbabwe accused Robert Mugabe of having ''failed to provide leadership that enables the creation of an environment that enhances truth, justice, love, and freedom''. With its release, President Mugabe has finally lost the vital support of the Zimbabwe Roman Catholic Church. The pastoral letter condemned what it called the ''frightening corruption, lawlessness, and abuse of power of the government''. It also expressed outrage at the regime's practice of demanding that people in famine relief queues produce a ruling-party card before they are allowed to receive food. ''People's lives are at stake and the nation cannot afford to entertain the politicisation of food while people are starving.''

Mugabe's wish underlines, if needs be, once again the closeness of the two men. If his wish becomes the Church's command it will embarrass Catholics who are now attempting to undo years of Church-State cosiness in order to identify fully with the spiritual and material needs of millions of starving people.

Archbishop Patrick Chakaipa; born June 25, 1932, died April 8, 2003.

Tribute by fellow Priest to Patrick Chakaipa

I remember in 1980 when I was much more enthusiastic about Zanu PF,

being disappointed that when the new Prime Minister asked to see the

archbishop, Chakaipa took a fortnight to reply. That disappointed some of us

then, but maybe he knew something we didn't know at that stage.

Later, he did seem to warm up to the party just as many of us were

cooling towards it, but, for example, his agreement to preside at the

wedding of Robert Mugabe and Grace Marufu did not prove he was a Zanu PF

lackey.

Their behaviour before their marriage may have left something to be

desired, but I can understand, even if I disagreed at the time and still

disagree, with the archbishop's view that the man was a Catholic and his

asking for a church wedding showed that he wanted to put things right so a

good priest (and we all knew Chakaipa was that) could not refuse him the

blessing and help of the church.

It is simply untrue to say he was the strongest supporter of the

"Third Chimurenga" among the bishops. When it began, he was already a sick

man and, if we criticised him, it was for not speaking against the

violence - something he may have been incapable of by then. At least he did

not defend the way the land-grab was carried out. Some of his colleagues did

go as far as to approve Mugabe's theft of the 2002 presidential election by

attending and blessing his inauguration, but not Chakaipa.

There is another aspect to the "national hero" business that the

archbishop might have recognised and not approved.

Do you remember when that MP declared Mugabe the Son of God? I am sure

that Mugabe does not want to be God. He'd rather be Pope, because that

carries more obvious power. If we, or his own thugs, offend God, we have

rather a long time to wait before we face judgment for that, but the Pope

has power over his own followers here and now and a lot of people who are

not his followers admit he has tremendous influence over them.

That is the power Mugabe wants, not the power to send us to Hell when

we die. He would rather control us here and now.

And, when you think about it, declaring national heroes is one way

that he tries to claim the sort of power the Pope has. The nearest parallel

I can think of is the way the Pope declares saints in a canonisation

ceremony. This is a way of saying that the dead person led a life that shows

they can be safely venerated and imitated by the faithful, and isn't that

very similar to what is being said when someone is declared a national hero?

They are saying: "This man may have been a greedy, self-serving thug, but he

was a loyal member of the party, and we want you all to be like that, even

if it doesn't reward you so well. To prove your loyalty, you may venerate

him by naming streets after him."

That is a kind of power over our minds that many politicians would

love to exercise, and the gentleman in State House revels in it.

If the dead really did turn in their graves, there would be permanent

earth tremors at Heroes' Acre as men like Rekayi Tangwena, Herbert Chitepo

and Guy Clutton-Brock protested at the kind of company they are forced to

keep there. If anyone had the impertinence to bury Chakaipa there, he also

would turn in his grave. He was a faithful enough follower of the Pope to

recognise when power-hungry politicians were using a ritual that he believed

only the Pope could use, and using it to boost their own power.

Archbishop Chakaipa may have been quiet when people expected him to

speak out against the evils that have been unleashed on our land in recent

years, but what could he have done when he was dying of cancer? It doesn't

make him a lackey of the party or of the mad professor or of the man who

used to wear a grass hat.

He was also a very humble man, who would not be fooled by cheap

honours. National hero? He'd have wanted none of that

May he rest in peace.
Magari Mandebvu is a Catholic priest who writes on political and

social issues.

Saki Mufindikwa Zimbabwe's Greatest Graphic Designer

2010-11-22T20:06:00.000-08:00

Born: 1955, in Harare, Zimbabwe
Resides: Harare, Zimbabwe

Saki Mafundikwa is a maverick visionary who left a successful design career in New York to return to his native Zimbabwe and open that country’s first school of graphic design and new media. Mafundikwa is the author of Afrikan Alphabets, a comprehensive review of African writing systems. He has participated in exhibitions and workshops around the world, contributed to a variety of publications and lectured about the globalization of design and the African aesthetic. In going home and opening his school, Mafundikwa’s ambition is nothing less than to jump-start an African renaissance.

Mafundikwa was moved to draw from an early age. Using a stick, he illustrated on every surface he could find—on the ground, in the sand, even tattooing his thighs and arms. He loved drawing letters in particular. Though he had not yet heard of printing and thought typeset words were done by hand, his aim as a child was to make letterforms as good as those he saw in books.

His father, a schoolteacher, recognized Mafundikwa’s constant scribbling as a talent to be nurtured. He enlisted his son to design classroom instruction materials, and soon other teachers were making use of Mafundikwa’s artistic gifts, too.

Mafundikwa left Zimbabwe as a young man in the late 1970s because his country was at war. As some of his peers were being drafted into the colonial army and others were joining the guerrilla force fighting for liberation, he summoned the courage to follow a different path. He journeyed to Botswana and declared himself a refugee. There, due to his high school achievements, he was able to secure a scholarship to study in America. Mafundikwa says, “Sometimes you have to leave home to discover yourself. If I hadn’t left home, I would never have become a graphic designer, and I would never have discovered African alphabets.”

It was at Indiana University that he finally recognized his true calling. Though he’d chosen a fine arts and telecommunications double major, Mafundikwa often volunteered to design flyers for university parties. Another student noticed his work and suggested that he really belonged in graphic design.

He was introduced to two professors in the design department. Since he had no portfolio to present, they queried him about his life and family. They were intrigued when he mentioned his mother was good at embroidery and crocheting, and that he drew patterns for her. Mafundikwa says, “These people were smart enough to know that this was design. [In Zimbabwe] we didn’t know what it was, didn’t have a word for it, but it was design.” He was invited to study with them, and eventually changed his major.

Mafundikwa went on to receive an MFA in graphic design from Yale. A flame was lit during his application interview with professor Alvin Eisenman. Eisenman was aware that certain African countries had writing systems, like the hieroglyphics of Egypt, so he asked Mafundikwa if there was a Zimbabwean alphabet. The idea that, in addition to the oral traditions of the continent, African knowledge had been passed on in unique written form centuries ago was a revelation to Mafundikwa. He became passionately devoted to the subject, finally taking it on as his thesis project.

http://www.itcfonts.com/Ulc/2621/DesignAfrika.htm
New York was Mafundikwa’s next stop. There he worked at various jobs as an art director for advertising and publishing (which he enjoyed immensely). He designed and art directed for various imprints at Random House. In addition to designing books, he took on a number of freelance jobs creating promotional materials for popular recording artists. And he took part in the media boom as part of the team developing the Fodor’s website. During this period Mafundikwa also taught a class at Cooper Union called Experimental Typography. The topic and his instruction elicited inspired work from his students.

At the end of 1997, Mafundikwa decided he could be more useful in Zimbabwe than in New York. He left a comfortable life and returned to his native land to open the Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts, or ZIVA. “Vigital,” a word of his own creation, refers to visual arts taught using digital tools. Ziva means “knowledge” in Mafundikwa’s native Shona language.

Through the school, Mafundikwa tries to illuminate graphic arts as a viable career path for Zimbabwe’s young people. He says, “It was the most natural thing for me to come home and start a school of design. Because I figured, my god, how many hundreds of young people in Zimbabwe would never know there is a field called graphic design. It was the right thing for me to do, because I felt so fortunate that I was able to figure it out.”

At the outset, Mafundikwa funded the school by cashing in his 401(k) from Random House. He continues to pour all of his freelance design earnings into ZIVA because the political climate in Zimbabwe has made it impossible for him to garner other financial support.

Zimbabwe currently suffers from an economic, political and social crisis, which can be attributed to its government. Scores of supporters of the opposition have been arrested and displaced. In April 2008, The New York Times published the indelible image of a woman with a child strapped to her back crawling under a barbed-wire border fence to escape. But while others flee, Mafundikwa remains committed to his country and his cause. He says, “We all live on this thread of hope that change is going to come. That’s why I’m still here. Those that are not eternal optimists like me—they left a long time ago. I believe in this country.”

In 2004, Mafundikwa published Afrikan Alphabets, a result of 20 years of research and a testament to Africa’s intellectual wealth. It is his hope that Africa can imprint itself on the canon of graphic design. Mafundikwa says, “The dream is for something to come out of Africa that is of Africa.” He knows it will be a monumental task, but he is confident that his book and his school are steps in the right direction.

by Camille Lowry

Saki is the founder of Ziva, Zimbabwe's first and only Graphic Design and New Media training facility. We offer a two-year diploma in graphic design, design history, advertising design, web design, motion graphics, interactive design, 3D modeling and animation, digital video, photography

http://www.ziva.org/

http://zw.linkedin.com/in/sakimafundikwa

The Cooper Union School of Art – Visiting professor, Graphic Design

Shona Studio – (own studio) Web design, book design and brochures

Random House – Designer, book jackets, designer – www.fodors.com

The Cooper Union School of Art – Adjunct Prof., Graphic Design ‘94 – ‘96

Freelance:Guggenheim Museum, St. Martin’s Press, Warner Brothers,

Scholastic Inc., Lockhart and Pettus Inc., Island Records

Oct ‘08 ICOGRADA MULTIVERSO Conference, Torino, Italy

May ‘08 Jury member ZGRAF 10, Zagreb, Croatia

Oct ‘07 Design Educator’s Forum of Southern Afrika, CT, RSA

Jun ’06 Congreso de Tipografia, Valencia, Spain

Feb ’06 Tasmeem Doha Design Conference, Qatar

May 05 Typo2005, Berlin, Germany

Aug ’04 ISEA 2004, Helsinki, Finland

Aug ’04 Madison Public Library, Madison, WI, USA

Jul ’04 Typecon, San Francisco, CA, USA

Nov ’03 University of Iowa, USA

Nov ’02 Yale School of Art, New Haven, CT, USA

April ’02 Cooper Union, New York City

April ’02 Moravian College, Bethlehem, PA, USA

May ’02 Indiana University School of Art, Bloomington, IN, USA

Feb ’02 Workshop, Intuit Lab, Paris, France

Oct ’01 California College of Arts & Crafts, San Francisco, CA

Sept ’01 ICOGRADA, Johannesburg, South Afrika

Dec ’00 Paper, International Symposium on Electronic Arts, France

Nov ’00 Graphic Artists from Around the World, Echirolles, France

Aug ’00 With Erik Spiekermann, San Francisco, CA

Jan ’00 Universidad ICESI, Cali, Colombia, South America

April ’99 UNESCO Workshop in Graphic Design and Textiles, Uganda

May ’96 London College of Printing, Visiting Artist Series

Sept ’95 AIGA 6th National Conference, Seattle, WA

Apr ’95 Indiana University School of Art, Bloomington, IN

Sep ’94 Organization of Black Designers, 1st Conference, Chicago, IL

Etapes Graphiques magazine, Paris, France, August 2009

Novum “Afrika Issue”, Munich, Germany, July 2009

AREA 2: Phidon, UK, Jan 2008

Author “Afrikan Alphabets”: Mark Batty Publisher, May 2004

“Harare’s Unsung Type Heroes” eye magazine UK, vol 15, Spring 2006

SocialDesignZine, Andrea Rauch & Gianni Sinni, Lcdedizioni Rome, 2005

Radical Type Design, Teal Triggs, Collins Design UK, 2005

World Graphic Design, Geoffrey Caban, Merrell UK, April 2004

Typography in Afrika (essay): Culture Types, Graphis Books 2003

Communication Arts, Design Annual, 2002

dwell magazine, San Francisco, CA, June 2001

Etapes Graphiques magazine, #72, Paris, France, April 2001

U&lc, NYC, USA, Fall 1999

“Shungu: The Resilience of a People” Official Selection IDFA 2009, Up for Audience Award, Amsterdam, Nov 2009

Yale University School of Art, MFA Graphic Design 1985

Indiana University, BA (Double major) Telecommunications & Fine Arts 1983

Chaz Maviyane-Davies Zimbabwe's best Graphic Designer

2010-11-22T19:48:00.000-08:00

Chaz Maviyane-Davies, a Zimbabwe national is Presently Professor of Design at the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

For more than two decades my work has taken on issues of consumerism, health, nutrition, social responsibility, the environment and human rights.

Credentials include an MA in Graphic Design (with distinction) from the Central School of Art and Design in London, and an Advanced Diploma in Postgraduate Film-making from the Central St. Martins School of Art and Design London.

Also spent a year in Japan studying three-dimensional design and ten months in Malaysia working on various world-reaching design projects for the International Organization of Consumers Unions and JUST World Trust.

STOP GENDER VIOLENCE
Poster to fight against Domestic Violence.

Design work experience in London includes time with Fulcrum (Design Consultants), Newell and Sorrell Design Ltd., as well as a stint in the Department of Graphic Design of BBC Television.

From 1983 until 2000 I was the principal of The Maviyane-Project, a design studio in Harare. As a result of the social, humane and confrontational nature of my work, I felt compelled to temporarily leave Zimbabwe because of the adverse political climate there.

FACISM/RACISM
Poster emphasizing where racism takes root

Films written, directed and produced by me include ‘After the Wax — personal view of nationality and identity’ (1991.17 min,16 mm in colour). This work has been screened at several film festivals and television channels around the world where it has won several awards and accolades.

As well as being published in numerous International magazines and newspapers, my design work has also been acknowledged in Who’s Who in Graphic Design, First Choice: Leading International Designers, Rewriting the Rules of Graphic Design, Digital Portfolios Unzipped, Graphic Agitation 1 & 2, Graphic Design Timeline — A Century of Design Milestones, World Graphic Design, Celebrating Posters, Area: Showcasing 100 of the world`s most innovative emerging graphic designers, History of Graphic Design, Design for Dissent, International Poster Excellence, Anatomy of Design, Designer Portraits, Lovely Language and was included in the list ID Forty, ID magazine’s annual honours list profiling leading-edge designers from around the world. New York 1998.

THE COST OF LIVING
Poster on HIV/AIDS awareness.

In 2009 I was conferred with an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Amongst other awards I am also the first recipient of the Anthon Beeke International design award, Amsterdam and recognised by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston with an award for outstanding innovator in his commitment to the struggle to transform society and create a just future as well as by Simmons College, Boston with an award for courage and integrity in using art to stimulate activism for social change. In November 2003 I gave the prestigious Dwiggins lecture sponsored by the Society of Printers and the Boston Public Library.

TUKU MUSIC
CD Cover for a musician whose totem is an elephant.

Besides extensive individual and group exhibitions worldwide, my design work has been represented in most of the largest international graphic, invitational and poster exhibitions from 1980 to the present time, while I have also been invited to judge several international exhibitions and competitions.

My work is included in several international permanent collections in various galleries.

I am presently writing a book about my work entitled “Creative Defiance”.

100% AFRICAN
Dignity and Identity T shirt.

EXHIBITIONSA list of the past 3 years.

2010: Solo exhibition: ‘Creative Defiance’, Rose Lehrman Art Gallery,: HACC, Harrisburg, USA
2010: Selections, Bakalar Gallery, Massachusetts College of Art and: Design, Boston USA
2010: Solo exhibition: ‘Dissent’, Spencer Presentation Gallery,: Endicott College, Beverly, USA
2009: Voices in Freedom, Museo Franz Mayer in Mexico City, Mexico
2009: Migration, Athens International Poster Exhibition, Greece
2009: Visual Voices, Center Gallery, Fordham University Lincoln Center,: New York, USA
2009: Agitadores de Conciencia, Canary Islands, Spain
2009: Stop World Hunger, CdD Design Centre of Rosario,: Buenos Aires, Argentina
2009: Shigeo Fukuda Memorial Exhibition, Poster Art Gallery,: Helsinki, Finland
2009: World of Posters, The Danish Poster Museum, Aarhus, Denmark
2009: 17th International Lahti Poster Biennial, Finland
2009: Masterpieces, Ljubljana National Gallery, Ljubljana, Slovenia
2009: 3rd International Graphic Biennial of the Islamic World,: Tehran, Iran
2009: 9th International Poster Triennial in Toyama. Japan
2009: Solo exhibition: ‘Rights’, UMass Lowell. USA
2009: Ekoplakát / 40 posters from 11th Trienal Ekoplagát ilina 2008.: Czech Republic
2009: Politics, Protest, Poster, Tufts University, Boston, USA
2008: Speak Out, 516 Arts, Albuquerque, USA
2008: 10th International Biennial of the Poster. Mexico
2008: Many Rivers to Cross, Oval House, London, UK
2008: Golden Bee 8 Biennale, Moscow. Russia
2008: 11th Trienal Ekoplagát ilina. Slovak Republic
2008: 7th Ogaki International Invitational Poster Exhibition. Japan
2008: 21st Poster Biennale, Warsaw. Poland
2008: Thoughts on Democracy, Wolfsonian Institute, Miami, USA
2008: Reflections In Exile: Five Contemporary African Artists Respond: To Social Injustice, South Shore Art Center, Cohasset & Museum of the National Center of Afro-American Artists, Boston, USA
2008: Rights for Africa Day, Limerick City Hall, Ireland
2008: D’Ailleurs..., Espace Arlaud, Lausanne, Switzerland
2008: Ex-pression of Zimbabwe, Université d’Avignon, France
2007: Solo exhibition: ‘Rights’, Black Cultural Center,: University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA
2007: Eye Opener, Museum for Communication, Den Haag, Netherlands
2007: Lovely Language: Words Divide, Images Unite,: Centraal Museum Utrecht, Netherlands
2007: 10th International Triennial of the Political Poster, Mons, Belgium
2007: A Reflexive Journey: The Immigrant Experience in Art,: Stonehill College, Easton, USA
2007: AIDStop, CdD Design Centre of Rosario, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2007: Posters for Cultural Diversity, National Museum of Fine Arts of: Havana, Cuba
2007: Designer Portraits, D4 Business Center, Luzern, Switzerland
2007: Universal Language, Museum of Fine Arts, Novosibirsk, Russia
2007: NewAfrica, Rundetaarn, Copenhagen, Denmark: (will go on world tour)
2007: 16th International Lahti Poster Biennial, Finland
2007: The 9th Tehran International Poster Biennial, Iran
2007: Savannah College of Art & Design, USA. 2007
2007: Jury exhibition: 2nd International Poster Competition: ‘Anti AIDS - Ukraine’
2007: Repressed II, Gallery 5, Richmond, USA
2007: Associates Fanfare, St Botolph Club, Boston. USA
2007: Graphic Messages from GGG & DDD 1986–2006,: Ginza Graphic Gallery, Tokyo, Japan

Check out Chaz Maviyane-Davies work at http://www.maviyane.com/index.html

Dr. Robson Mafoti 100 Greatest Zimbabweans

2010-11-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

A true friend helped Dr Robson Mafoti plunge, unbelievable into the right career path he had always yearned for when he was still growing up.

In an absorbing and thoughtful interview with the chemical industrial scientist, Dr Mafoti was taken aback and recalled his friend, Patrick Mutasa, as a true friend who had a profound impact on his career.

"I had this burning desire to go to school. A friend of mine, Patrick Mutasa went to Bulawayo main post office and saw a sign written: 'If you need help call the Good Samaritan.'

"He called that number and told the 'Good Samaritan' that he wanted to go to school but he had no money. The 'Good Samaritan' told him to call Mr Fred Moorehouse at the United College of Education," Dr Mafoti said.

"This guy (Mutasa) called him and was told that there was the Budiriro Trust Scholarship which he could apply."
After work, Mutasa later told Dr Mafoti about the scholarship and urged him to apply for it.
This was in 1971 when Dr Mafoti was working at Springmaster as a production clerk.
He had just finished his O'levels at Mzilikazi High School in 1969 but had failed to get a place to study for his A'levels at Fletcher High School in Gweru despite the fact that he had passed very well.

So he decided to look for a job in 1970 at Springmaster in Bulawayo.
"I did very well at that job. I was earning $6,45 a week. That was enough to buy some few items and not adequate to feed myself," he said.

"And so, when my friend told me about the scholarship, I didn't know that this would have an amazing effect on my life. He told me to take my O'level certificate to Mr Moorehouse so that I could qualify for the interviews for the scholarship," Dr Mafoti recalls.

The competition for the scholarship was stiff with 100 candidates in Harare and another 100 in Bulawayo competing for just two scholarships.

A panel of eight whites interviewed the candidates in Bulawayo.
"We went for the interviews but unfortunately my friend, Mutasa never made it. It was myself and Canaan Dhlodhlo who made it to the second round after a rigorous screening exercise," Dr Mafoti says.

"We were later told that we had got the scholarship to go and study in Swaziland."
This was the beginning of his long and winding journey to the world of chemical and industrial science.
Listening to him speaking about his life makes you feel like you are being taken into the womb of knowledge.
You are kept chasing after the words which capture his vast knowledge and experience in the field of research and development.

Whenever he spoke, I found myself hanging on each word wondering with great anticipation what would come next.
Dr Mafoti was born in Wedza on 11 June 1949 and first attended school at the Methodist Church-run Chematendere Primary School from 1956 to 1961.

The Mafoti home was on the foothill of the Wedza mountain. In 1962, he dropped out of school because of lack of funding.

And in the year that followed he went to stay with his uncle in Bulawayo who later helped him enrol at Gampo Primary School at Matshobane. He did his primary education here until he finished his standard 6.

In 1966, Dr Mafoti enrolled at Mzilikazi High School which was opened in 1965 to serve blacks during the colonial era.
He finished his O'levels in 1969.
"When I was growing up in Wedza I didn't know that I would be a scientist. They say that I had a rare talent of moulding clay oxen and carving rocks of oxen pulling a plough," the veteran chemical researcher says. "I suppose the environment around me helped to shape and influence my career path."

He says he had this burning desire inside to excel in education and surpass some of the well-known and successful people and families at the time.

"I used to say: 'I will not stop at standard 6. I want to reach standard 18," he says laughing. "This is what motivated me most. In the environment I grew up I saw with my own eyes what school could do to our neighbour's children.

"Perhaps my biggest motivation was staying close to Sijabuliso Biyang (now a managing director of Sea Freight in Harare). He was the big brother I was always looking up to. I was always telling myself that: 'I want to be like this man. He was my role model. Sometimes role models influence our lives," he says.

Mentors at school also helped Dr Mafoti to have an interest in the sciences. "At high school, I was good in science. I had a natural inclination for sciences. Science and mathematics became my favourite subjects. I just loved the practical aspect of science. This was quite fascinating to me.

"I just could not write like historians. I was too scientific in my approach. I didn't have the gift for the arts," he says.

He says he got a lot of inspiration from Mr Godfrey Motsisi, a South African science teacher who taught him at school in Bulawayo before he later became a principal at Fletcher High in the early 1970s.

"Motsisi was a good scientist. He was inspirational in many ways. He led a good life and together with other white teachers at Mzilikazi I was taught to love sciences," Dr Mafoti says.

The road to Swaziland via Lorenco Maques, now Maputo was a tortuous one particularly for young blacks like Dr Mafoti and Dhlodhlo who could easily be mistaken for Frelimo cadres seeking the overthrow of the Portuguese colonial regime in Mozambique.

The two left the country at the end of 1971 and had to get British passport in Mozambique from the British consular general based in Maputo.

At that time, it was difficult to enter Swaziland with a Rhodesian passport. They got their British passports in Maputo and they proceeded with their journey to Swaziland. Little did they know that they were being trailed by Portuguese security agents who thought they were Frelimo cadres.

"Just before the Lomahatsha Border Post, a security agent told us we had reached our destination. He then led us to a police station. We were shown a three-quarter bed with blood stains all over it, a whip with iron spikes at the end," Dr Mafoti recounted their ordeal at the hands of the security agents.

"They accused us that we were Frelimo agents. One of them said: 'Lets beat them up.' Before we could be given this 'nice treatment', the immigration officer at the border called the British consular general to verify our travel documents.

"We were cleared just before they could torture us. On that day we slept on the back of a car. It was cold and we were afraid," he says.

Upon arrival in Swaziland, he enrolled at Waterford Kamhlaba School, a multiracial school were he studied for his A'levels from 1972 to 1973.

He stayed at the house where a Danish family ran a charitable organisation to assist afflicted children from apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia.

During that time, he met renowned eye surgeon Dr Solomon Guramatunhu and many other young Zimbabweans who later succeeded in life.

After completing his A'levels, Dr Mafoti got a place at the University of Sussex in England but failed to secure a scholarship to study there.

"So I had to join the University of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (UBLS) near Roma town in Lesotho in 1974 after getting a scholarship from a Geneva-based organisation. This is the same university where Dr Bernard Chidzero also went through," he says.

At Roma, Dr Mafoti majored in chemistry and biology. He graduated in 1977 and taught briefly at Amavheni Secondary School in Kwekwe.

Conditions of work for blacks were so bad that he was forced either to leave for Mozambique to join the armed struggle or to go and work in Lesotho.

"At Roma we were very active as Zanu supporters. I met the likes of Dr Aleck Mashingaidze (former Central Intelligence Organisation director), Dr Stan Mudenge (now Higher and Tertiary Education minister) who was the leader of the group and many other Zimbabweans," he says.

In 1977 he taught briefly in Lesotho and later left to study for MSc in the United States after getting a scholarship from the African American Institute.

Dr Mafoti attained a MSc in analytical chemistry from Texas Southern University (1980), a MSc and PhD both in organic chemistry from Rice University in Houston, Texas (1985).

From the academic, he later managed to break into the industrial and practical side of science. In 1985 he joined the Bayer Corporation (USA) researcher centre. Bayer was originally a German firm which was taken over by the Americans after the Second World War.

But the Germans later bought the firm again renaming it Miles which they later decided to change to Bayer Corporation.
Dr Mafoti gained vast experience and received training in various management programmes.
"At that time I was the only black research scientist. I was just one black token to signify – a symbol of racial integration in America. I said no and I felt the only way I can get accepted is for me to prove myself.

"A German scientist felt sorry for me. I was like a lost sheep. I had to do something drastic very quickly," he says.
He befriended technicians and learnt a lot about polymers. Dr Mafoti designed the fascia of cars used for making grills using material that could resist movement when heat was applied and conversely when it was subjected to very low temperatures.

He made a breakthrough and designed fascia material which was later used successfully by leading American motor companies such as MG, Chrysler and Ford. This became his first patent and one of his most prized and enduring innovations.

"They could not believe I had done it. Because I was black, it was subjected to several rigorous tests. I managed to retain 90 percent of the properties of the material I had designed," he says. "This earned me a lot of respect and recognition. My work expanded from this point onwards."

After working for five years at Bayer, he was voted the Most Proliferous Inventor. "I had 13 patents which were issued in one year at Bayer in 1990," Dr Mafoti says. "Invention is by serendipity. You cannot dream about it, no."

His inventions are in the field paints, plastics, decorative surfaces, sealants and adhesives. Dr Mafoti left Bayer Corporation and joined Wilson-Art International to expand his industrial knowledge in 1995.
"At Bayer, while they respected my technical ability they never gave me the chance to enhance my managerial skills because I was black," he says.

In Austin, USA, he oversaw the growth of Wilson-Art International from an annual turnover of US$500 million a year to US$1,2 billion a year by 1999 through research, product development and appropriate marketing strategies.

He said training and the identification of key drivers helped turn the fortunes of this company. Dr Mafoti invented laminate flooring materials which were scratch resistant, not prone to moisture attack and less slippery. In the first year when the flooring materials were commercialised, Wilson-Art sales hit US$250 million. The owners sold the company and invested the millions of dollars they had raked in on the stock exchange.

Dr Mafoti moved to Dallas in 2000 and joined Schneer Morehead Inc as a technical director of research and development for sealants and adhesives.

The death of his mother in January 2002 forced him to return home. "My mother died in 2002 and in the course of that, it was at the height of the land reforms. There was a revolution at home. Having spent 25 years in the US, I felt it was time to come back.

"I had missed the First and Second Chimurenga and I felt I had to join the Third Chimurenga," he says.
He saw an advert in the Sunday Mail looking for director general for Scientific Industrial Research and Development Centre (Sirdic) and he applied.

"I sent my CV to chairman Dr Gibson Mandishona. I felt there was no way I could get the job. I got a call from him in November 2002 to arrange for an interview. I was interviewed on January 17 2003 and I got the job," the chemical industrial scientist says.

He quit his job in the US and joined Sirdic on July 1 2003 taking over from Prof Christopher Chetsanga who had retired.
In addition to his personal achievements, Dr Mafoti's vision of corporate management, understanding of application and support of scientific research has led to the growth and maturation of Sirdic into a centre of excellence promoting the country's scientific and technological advancement.

One constant of Dr Mafoti's career has been his consistent call for Sirdic to connect industrial research and development to commercialisation. "Research for the sake of research is like milking a cow without feeding it. We have to train our people to say whatever they do in the lab it must be directly linked to application and the application should link with commercialisation," he says.

"I called that: 'from cradle to grave' –if you start it you have to finish it off by handing over to the end user."
After sourcing tile making machines from Cuba for US$100 000, the Sirtech commercial arm of Sirdic is now producing tiles with sales worth more than $200 million per month.

Tile factories have been opened in Harare, Bulawayo and Mutare and Dr Mafoti says the tile manufacturing project is expected to rake in about $2 billion and create jobs for more than 800 workers by the end of the year.

Sirtech runs four units –tile manufacturing, foundry which had just started, electronics which was producing Science Laboratory and Teaching Equipment for basic science teaching and the animal anti-biotic unit awaiting funding to buy equipment to ensure commercialisation veterinary products.

"We need US$1 million to buy fermentors to produce anti-biotics for animals," he says.
The isolation of Zimbabwe by western countries, he says, is forcing Zimbabweans to think outside the box and develop innovative ways of surviving.

"You are seeing more innovations because we have to survive. This is good, all developed countries once passed through such a phase and they had to find ways of surviving," Dr Mafoti says. "Funding that comes with no strings attached is most welcome. Lines of credit are much better than conditional aid. We should be able to borrow, develop and pay back. This is the type of help we need and not donor money."

A country develops with lines of credit and not with aid that comes with conditionalities, he says. Dr Mafoti says brain drain was disastrous in the short-term but good in the long run as skilled personnel return home to share their knowledge and experience once they decide to return to their country of origin.

"Until the economy improves, we must create a congenial environmental that is going to allow our children to dream," he says.

His public service activities have ramified into all kinds of government run institutions, boards and committees both local and international.

The list of awards and honours Dr Mafoti has received for both his personal achievements and contributions to science and to the field of research and development is impressive. Mafoti is a member of various professional societies including the Zimbabwe Academy of Sciences and the American Chemical Society.

He remains committed to turning Sirdic into one of the premier institutions in Africa and the world which acts as an engine for innovation in the country.

Mafoti is married to Ann Ntsoaki and the couple have two children – son Fadzanayi (29) a mechanical engineer in Oregon and daughter Muchaneta (19) who is studying law and accounting at a university in the UK.

He has another daughter Simphiwe who works for a South African government ministry. "The teaching of science needs to be skewed towards application. We need to start bringing the practical side of our education system. Science is the future. Chemistry is the basis of everything. Zimbabwe needs a university to teach polymer science," says Dr Mafoti.

The chemical industrial scientists maintains a persistent steady and positive approach to the challenges facing the country.

There is no doubt that his great enthusiam for and great support of science education and deep concern for Africans to drive the research agenda will consolidate Sirdic's thrust to find solutions to Zimbabwe's pressing problems.

Words from prominent African scientist Phillip Emeagwali capture the feeling that science can liberate Africa despite the enormous challenges the continent faces: "The greatest challenge in your life is to look deep within yourself, to see the greatness that is inside you and those around you.

"I once believed my supercomputer discoveries was more important than the journey that got me there. I now understand the journey to discovery is more important than the discovery itself.

"I learned that no matter how you often fall down, or how hard you fall down, what is most important is that rise up and continue until you reach your goal."

Tendai Biti MDC 100 Greatest Zimbabweans

2010-06-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

Tendai Laxton Biti (born 6 August 1966) is a Zimbabwean politician. He is the Secretary-General of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC-Tsvangirai) political party and a member of Parliament for Harare East; currently he is the Minister of Finance of Zimbabwe.

Biti was born in Dzivarasekwa, Harare. From 1980 to 1985 he attended Goromonzi High School, where he was appointed deputy head boy in 1985. He enrolled in the University of Zimbabwe law school as a freshman in 1986. In 1988 and 1989, as Secretary General of the Student Union, Biti led student protests against government censorship in academia. After school, he joined the Law firm Honey and Blackenberg, where he became the youngest partner by the age of 26.

Political career
In 1999 he helped found the MDC. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Harare East constituency in 2000. During the Fifth Parliament he served as a member of the Parliament Portfolio Committee on Lands, Agriculture, Water Development, Rural Resources and Resettlement and that on Defence and Home Affairs. In March 2005 he retained the constituency. He serves in the Portfolio Committee on Budget, Finance and Economic Development and is currently the MDC's Secretary General. In his legal career Biti has handled labour and human rights litigation representing large trade unions such as the Post and Telecommunications Trade Union.

He was arrested in 2007 with many others, including MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai, after a prayer rally in the Harare township of Highfield.

On June 16, 2007, Biti and Welshman Ncube met with Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa and Labor Minister Nicholas Goche, in Pretoria, South Africa. South African President Thabo Mbeki, appointed by the Southern African Development Community, presided over the negotiations which sought to end economic sanctions on Zimbabwe.[1]

2008 elections
Biti was re-elected to the House of Assembly from Harare East in the March 2008 parliamentary election. According to official results, he received 8,377 votes against 2,587 for the ZANU-PF candidate.[2] In the period following the election, he stayed outside of Zimbabwe (mainly in South Africa), along with Tsvangirai, amidst a post-electoral situation that the MDC alleges is marked by serious violence against MDC supporters.

Arrest
Biti returned to Zimbabwe on June 12, 2008 and was immediately arrested at the airport in Harare. Before his departure from Johannesburg, Biti said that he had already learned that he would be arrested, but maintained that his only crime was "fighting for democracy" and said that it was necessary for him to return to participate in the MDC's struggle.[4] Following Biti's arrest, police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijena said that he would be charged with treason, based on an MDC document about changing the government.[5] This document, which was called "The Transition Strategy" and was said to have been written by Biti on March 25,[6] included purported plans to rig the election in favor of the MDC.[6][7] Bvudzijena said that Biti would additionally be charged with making false statements "prejudicial to the state" due to his announcement of election results prior to their release by the Electoral Commission.[5][6] United States Ambassador James McGee expressed deep concern on behalf of the US government, saying that the document in question was an unobjectionable statement of the MDC's plans and goals; according to McGee, another, more extreme version of the document existed, but it was forged.[5] Biti's lawyer also claimed that the material in question was forged.[8]

On June 13, Biti's lawyers said that they had not been allowed to meet with him, and they filed an urgent application with the High Court on the same day. The MDC said that it was "deeply worried" about Biti's welfare and that it had sent a team to police stations across Harare, hoping to determine where he was being held.[9] He appeared in court on June 14.[10]

Biti's home was searched by the police on June 16, although the police did not take anything out of the home.[7][11] His lawyer, Lewis Uriri, said that Biti had been interrogated for a full 24 hours after his arrest; Uriri also said that he would seek an order from the High Court to release Biti on the grounds that he had been held without charge for more than the allowed 48-hour period.[7]

Biti again appeared in court on June 18; however, this hearing was postponed to the next day because the power failed, meaning that the hearing could not be recorded.[12] He was charged on June 19.[6][8] He faced four charges: "treason, communicating falsehoods prejudicial to the State, insulting President Mugabe and causing disaffection among the defence forces"..[6] Prosecutors argued against granting bail to Biti, noting that the charges against him were so serious that he could be executed. The defense submitted an application to have the charges thrown out, but on June 20 magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe dismissed this application, saying that he believed there was "reasonable suspicion that the accused committed the said offence". Biti's next court appearance was set for July 7, and Guvamombe ordered that he remain in custody until then.[8]

On June 26, Biti was granted bail at one trillion Zimbabwean dollars; he was also required to surrender his home's title deeds and to report to the police on a weekly basis.[13] Biti's lawyers later filed a petition asking for the return of his passport so that he could attend talks between the parties in South Africa, and as a result his passport was returned to him on July 9, enabling him to go. He led the MDC-Tsvangirai delegation to the talks, which began in Pretoria on July 10, although according to Tsvangirai the purpose of this was only to set the MDC-Tsvangirai's conditions for participating in the talks, not to actually participate in them.[14][15]

Uriri applied for the removal of Biti's remand on the grounds that a trial date should have been set and the police investigation should have been completed. On August 27, 2008, Chioniso Mutongi, a magistrate in Harare, rejected this request, saying that Biti had not been on remand long enough for its removal to be appropriate

Appointment to Government of National Unity
On 10 February 2009, MDC leader and Prime Minister-designate Morgan Tsvangirai announced the appointment of Biti as Finance Minister in the Government of National Unity. Though he has no known history in financial and economic matters, analysts suggest that Tsavingarai really had no other option considering Biti's position in the MDC. In addition, he is known to drive a hard bargain and could be the best person to deal with the Zanu-PF controlled public service. He was sworn in alongside other Ministers on February 13, 2009 in Harare.

(C) wikipedia

Champion Swimmer Charlene Wittstock 100 Greatest Zimbabweans

2010-06-23T18:33:00.000-07:00

ZIMBABWE-BORN champion swimmer Charlene Wittstock is officially engaged to Prince Albert II of Monaco, long one of Europe's most eligible bachelors, it was announced on Wednesday.

A brief statement from the palace in the 52-year-old's tiny Mediterranean statelet confirmed the engagement, but did not put a date on the eventual wedding, which courtiers will be hoping might produce a legitimate heir.

Prince Albert is the son of deceased Prince Rainier III and the late Hollywood actress Grace Kelly and has ruled Monaco, where he is broadly well-liked by his 8,000 subjects, since succeeding his father in July 2005.

Wittstock, who was born in Bulawayo on January 25, 1978, but competed for South Africa in swimming, is 20 years Albert's junior and a school teacher.

She is also a former Commonwealth 100 metres backstroke champion who has appeared on the prince's arm at several society events in Monaco, a Riviera millionaire's playground.

She also competed for South Africa in the Olympics in Sydney 2000, and won three golds in the 2002 swimming World Cup.

Prince Albert is a fellow Olympian, having competed in five Olympic games as a member of his country's bobsleigh team.

Wittstock was first spotted with the prince in 2001 at an event in Monte Carlo and was subsequently his guest at high profile events such as the Formula 1 Grand Prix in the principality and the opening of the 2006 Winter Olympics.

Her profile rose further when she was picked for a swimwear photo shoot by Sports Illustrated, but she has complained in the South African press of media intrusion into her private life.

With a fortune estimated at some two billion euros (US$2.4 billion), Albert has been seen with a string of beautiful women over the years.

He has managed to keep his love-life largely out of the public view -- in contrast with his sisters Caroline and Stephanie whose stormy affairs have been a constant source of celebrity gossip.

Albert has fathered two children, a girl and a boy who were officially recognised after he had acceded to the throne, but neither can succeed him as Monaco's constitution requires its rulers to be born in wedlock.

The children are Jazmin Grace, 20, whose mother Tamara Rotolo is a former American waitress and Alexandre Coste, 6, from a French-Togolese former flight attendant, Nicole Coste.

Albert's failure to marry and have legitimate children had resulted in a 2002 change to Monaco's constitution, under which the 700-year-old Grimaldi dynasty can continue through the female line if he dies without an heir.

Monaco, a super-rich enclave on the Riviera coast entirely surrounded on its landward side by France, covers only 200 hectares (494 acres). It is home to 32,000 permanent residents, only 8,000 of them citizens.

Low tax rates, a luxury yachting marina and a famed casino have attracted many wealthy expatriates, and around 36,000 mainly-French non-residents arrive every day to work in its tourism and financial services businesses.

Albert rules as head of state, supported by a senior French civil servant and a government of four senior advisers.

Story from : NEWZIMBABWE.COM NEWS:
Published On: Wednesday, June 23, 2010 9:50 PM GMT
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news/news.aspx?newsID=2702
© New Zimbabwe News

CHARLES MUNGOSHI TOP ZIMBABWEAN WRITER

2009-11-24T23:15:00.000-08:00

(b.1947) is a writer from Zimbabwe. His works include short stories and novels in both Shona and English. He also writes poetry, but views it as a "mere finger exercise." He has a wide range, including anti-colonial writings and children's books. While the colonial regime initially banned his work, he now writes about post-colonial oppression as well. The awards he won include the Noma Award in 1992 and the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Africa Region) twice in the years 1988 and 1998. Two of his novels, one in Shona and the other in English, both published in 1975 won the International PEN Awards. Is married to an actress Jesesi Mungoshi, who played in Neria (Zimbabwean Film) as Neria. Has an Honourary degree from the University of Zimbabwe. Mungoshi also took part in some of the local Zimbabwean drama series in the late 80's to early 90's, he played a role in a local drama "Ndabvezera" which was produced by Aaron Chiundura Moyo.

CHARLES MUNGOSHI & DAMBUDZO MARECHERA 1986

Charles Mungoshi is a writer in both Shona and English. He was born in 1947 in a village near Chivhu in Manyene Tribal Trust Land. His novel 'Waiting for the Rain' has been prescribed reading for years in Zimbabwean schools. This novel was published in1975, the same year as his Shona novel 'Ndiko kupindana kwa mazuva' (How time passes). He received an International PEN award for both these books. Mungoshi's other publications include two collections of short stories, 'The Setting Sun' and 'The Rolling World' (1987), two collections of children's stories, 'Stories from a Shona Childhood' (1989) and 'One Day Long Ago' (1991) and a collection of poems, 'The Milkman Doesn't Only Deliver Milk' (1998). His latest book is 'Walking Still', a collection of short stories, which was awarded the Commonwealth Writers Prize. He also has a short story in the anthology 'Writing Still' (ed. Irene Staunton, Weaver Press 2004).

The following text is from a conversation between Charles Mungoshi and Mai Palmberg, an event arranged within the framework of the series "The Writers' Africa" on 30 September 2003 at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala. The evening ended with questions from the floor, indicated below with Q. Mai Palmberg's two closing questions are indicated with MP.

Let me start by asking you why you became a writer?
I don't know what else I should have become. I don't know how these things come about, but I think my parents wanted me to be something else, and even as late as, well, just before Walking Still was published, which is about five years ago, my mother said, "I'd wish you'd burn your library". Anyway, she didn't mean it and some good things have happened also. It probably has got to do with having your nose in the book and hardly saying anything at all to anyone; I am talking about when I was growing up.

But I always want to think that it was the loneliness, the way I grew up that led to my choice of career. It was not a career that I chose, I think it chose me. Traditionally in Shona culture you live in a round village and with the head of the kraal, somewhere there. But some time in the 1950s my father had to move from our village to start a farm of his own, a farm in the modern sense, with machines and all the modern technology, although not that productive.

This farm was about 17-something acres and you could get out with 20, 25 to 30 head of cattle for the whole day, feeding on wild fruits and you did not come back home until probably five o'clock in the evening. So most of the time I was alone and when I could read, which was five years after I started school, four or five years, I could read very well in both English and Shona. I always had books with me.

I am the first son and first child and after me there were three girls, then four boys, and as a boy you are expected to work with men. I didn't have any friends on this farm; the nearest friend was about a mile or so away. We were not allowed to visit anyone at all, not because they were cruel, but there was so much work to do on the farm and I was supposed to be always there, minding the cattle or running errands, and so on.

Even when I started going to school, my father would go to the school and tell the headmaster that his son would not be attending the Sunday school because he was the only one he had to help him on the farm.

And in school, when on Monday, Wednesday and Friday pupils stayed over after school – which closed at about 1 o'clock – to do sports or outdoor games, my father made sure that I didn't join the other pupils in those games.

My sisters being girls, I couldn't heard cattle with them. I couldn't work with them because they were women and they would be with our mother doing other things, so I was always almost on my own. When I was with my father, you can imagine the kind of conversation we had, "Pick that", "Did I say to?", "Did I tell you to?", "Run!" and so on, so you would wish to be as far away from him as possible.

So most of my life was really lived in my head and talking to trees and birds and animals. So I want to think the loneliness, being on my own, turned me sort of inside and the reading helped along. It wasn't long before I thought, "Well, I think I can also write a story". I think that's what happened.

What kind of reading, do you remember?
The very first book I read and I could only identify words like 'this' and ‘was' and 'it' and 'the', something like that, but I couldn't tell how the story went. But I remember very well the title, it was "Flamingo Island" and I loved the sound of the word 'flamingo'. I would say that word 'flamingo' and I thought it was wonderful. I didn't know what it meant.

Later on there was a proliferation of Second World War comics and cowboy comics, American literature, I think, from a publisher called Dell. These are the kind of comics I read. I didn't realise that then, but I think from very early I was a victim of the power of the word, so from reading those comics I easily identified with the heroes there and I found I cultivated a hatred for the Germans, or the Jerries as they were called in these comics, and the Nips or the Japs, as the Americans put it, and I was several cowboys. I never thought about the Red Indians. They were my enemies and I looked down upon them.

At that time there was not much literature from here. We are looking at 1959 and the oldest published Shona novel had been published in 1956. Then there was of course the Christian Bible the Bible, and it was in a very weird, very old print with letters and it was hard to read. It had been translated I think by some very enthusiastic white missionary. Some of what was supposed to be poetry, sounded very strange to the ear. Well, nobody read much, they read the Bible but otherwise what we called stories we heard from our grandmothers.

I think I became a writer was simply something out of this loneliness, I had to make something out of my life. I was amassing a lot of words and you either sing them or you shout them, you have to do something with those words, and I started putting together stories.

So did you do that already in school?
I did. I remember; the first poem I wrote was when I was the first year in school. I had to ask somebody how to spell the name of a certain girl who sat next to me. I wrote the word down and sent the letter to her. I think that's the first poem I wrote. Siphiwe.

So it's a one-word poem?
Yes, a one word poem with a whole lot of feelings behind it. Later on I wrote about valleys and mountains and trees and then the inevitable longer poem, longer version of Siphiwe, "The Love Story", which was published in a school magazine. And 4-years later in secondary school, 2-years away from my leaving school for good, I had a story published in a commercial magazine in Harare , Zimbabwe , and the following year another story. These stories were of course love stories and adventure stories. At that time I used to believe that a good story should have about two deaths on every page and a lot of blood right from page one to the end and so on and a bit of the bedroom scene, that was a good story as far as I was concerned.

Later on it came as a surprise when I was reading some English short stories in the school library. I read some stories, for instance, Ernest Hemingway's stories, and there didn't seem to be anything happening in those stories. I mean you can have a love story without people sleeping together; you can have a murder story without anyone being killed on the page and so on. It was something about the shot, the sound of the gunshot when the curtain is closed, that was something from Chekov I suppose, and the whole thing about writing a story in a manner that leaves a lot unsaid. I got interested in that and I found myself writing stories.

But what had happened again was this loneliness, which did not end by going to school. In fact I think it worsened because I couldn't sort of get myself together to become part of the other pupils at school. I think the final rift between myself and being part of whatever crowd I was supposed to have been part of came when I was, I think, thirteen and we were playing football. I always tried to avoid games where competition was required because I'd never lived or stayed with anyone or competed with anyone in anything, everything I did it by myself and I was the best by myself. So whenever I found myself competing I always came out the worst. So I was goalkeeper in this and somebody kicked the ball right on me and I fell back and I think I must have been out for two hours, and from there I hated football or any games that could kill, could hurt somebody.

From there I think I became friends with just my books and walking through the forest and I would maybe avoid going to, play truant from church and go out into the bush. I was very good at hunting for fruit and people like me for the strange fruits that I brought from the bush.

So when your stories got published and won these competitions, your parents were not very proud?
No, they were not. In fact what happened with this loneliness the other thing I did was I started keeping a diary. It was very strange, after writing about a painful experience, I felt very relaxed, very refreshed and very cheerful and in fact I became a kind of clown, I think. There was a kind of euphoria after writing a story or something that really pained me I became very funny. I don't know how to say it but one of the things that I became good at is acting on stage and so on.

And I think that also served me, that held me from writing gory stories, melodramatic stories into writing actually the kind of writing that I'm writing now, when.

Do you think that literature in Zimbabwe has gone through a stage of literature for education and social/political values?
Yes, when I went to school the teachers wrote on the black board "Think in English, Talk in English, Act in English". So they were very serious about education and that is what they taught. In secondary school we had plays, simplified stories; we had Shakespeare, we had Oliver Twist – all those stories. Some I don't know where they came from but I had those in primary school and in secondary school.

Well, I meant after independence. Some say that the early literature of independent Zimbabwe was not sort of following the nationalist call?
OK, looking at literature in Zimbabwe, and books like my 'Waiting for the Rain', Stanley Nyamfukudza's 'Non-Believer's Journey', Dambudzo Marechera's 'House of Hunger' and the other books – yes, they were seen as books without political ideologies, without any historical content, and as books that are individual or egoistic, and all that kind of things; there was nothing at all that would help there.

And our only response was that it was at least an analysis of and we were looking into the individual to see how and why the individual suffers and could you please offer an answer, if there is any answer? It's simply a laying open of what is bothering, a diagnosis of what's wrong with us, and they said, "No, ideologically this is empty".

But then, only recently I hear, and it's the same university and probably these might have been students in secondary school but now they are the lecturers, they are talking of this same book of mine again. I haven't changed a single word, but now they say it means something, this is one of the greatest things that have happened too. So it is interesting in the light of talk on self-censorship that a criticism of the present seems to have been written already in a book many years ago, which was then stamped as being ideologically empty.

Q. You have written your short stories, novels, and columns, but you have also translated, for example, Ngugi wa Thiongo's The Grain of Wheat. Could you tell us why you did that, and what that novel meant to you?
I was editor of a publishing house and we were all eyes open, looking around for the great novel of out of the struggle. I felt very bad, I couldn't write the Shona war novel. I really liked 'The Grain of Wheat', it was skilfully plotted and it did not tell that this is how it was, and this is right and this is wrong, and he has complex characters, and gave alternative interpretations.

And I felt reading The Grain of Wheat it that it was almost the same as in Zimbabwe, the British of the Highlands, the farms and the people living in the compounds and the people of the land dissatisfied, the educational system, the same sort of characters, headmasters and so on and the priests, all of it. I felt that Mau Mau was just like our Chimurenga.

So I felt that this would be of some help to the Shona writers who were trying to write about the war. I am not sure whether any of our authors did get inspired by it or learnt how to chisel the characters. But some have later written very well about the struggle, not as speeches but as subjective experiences, such as Alexander Kanengoni. 'Effortless Tears', I think that is one wonderful story. It is someone being honest about his or her experience, not trying to cover it up with pseudo-heroics and that kind of thing.

Q: You were talking about the characters in the Chimurenga, and you have described the second Chimurenga. If you wrote about it, how would you describe the characters in the third Chimurenga?
The characters? Which one is this third? Is it to be fought or has it been fought already?

Q: Are you very straight?
Where is it, the third Chimurenga? When was it?

Q: Why do you ask me?
Because you used the expression.

Q: But you know perfectly well what it is.
No, I don't. Oh, the one they call the third Chimurenga?

Q: The one going on right now.
I'm still confused about it, I don't know who is right or who is wrong. I don't even know whether we talk of right or wrong.

I think they are all what they've always been, trying to cheat each other. It's intrigue, and I'm better then you are and it is survival of the fittest. It is the old story, isn't it? It is lies you can do this thing it as long as you don't get caught. I think it's the same old - I need to sit down and write a story to illustrate. As the father who gives his children a snake when they ask for bread.

MP: Can I ask one thing that I forgot to ask before, this book 'Walking Still' was produced in 1997, right? Looking to the future, are you working on anything now?
I think I'll deal with the third Chimurenga.

MP: Now that you hear about it?
Now that I hear about it, it's interesting how we say third and second Chimurenga when the people are really the same people who are afraid, who fight, who are greedy, who hate their own or who twist, the same old - who love. I mean, they loved in the second, now they still love, they hate, and it's always about people who don't deliver, isn't it? It is the old hat and the same old characters, I suppose. With cell phones.
[Conversation with Charles Mungoshi on 30 September 2003 at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala]

PROFESSOR WALTER KAMBA irst Vice Chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-24T22:48:00.000-08:00

Walter Kamba was the first Vice Chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe. Appointed in 1981, his devotion to the principle of academic freedom led to public disagreement with Robert Mugabe, and eventually to early retirement in 1991.However, he was nevertheless appointed Vice Chairman of the Constitutional Commission set up with Mugabe's agreement in 1999 to advise on a route for the President's retirement - proposals which were never acted upon.

During the years of Southern Rhodesia's illegal declaration of independence, when senior academic positions were not open to black Zimbabweans, Kamba pursued his academic career abroad.

He obtained BA and LLB degrees from University of Cape Town and after serving his
articles in Harare, practiced as an attorney in the country before moving to Yale University in the US where he completed an LLM and later became dean of law at the
University of Dundee.

In 1979 he attended the constitutional conference on the future of Rhodesia at Lancaster House as legal adviser to the delegations of Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo, playing a substantial part in the development of the constitution of the newly independent state of Zimbabwe.

Returning to Harare in 1980, he took charge of the University, which he transformed from a small colonial university college . Kamba's great achievement was to expand substantially the overall size of the University, of its black Zimbabwean intake and of its range of academic studies, without compromising the quality of education.

At the ceremony for 1982 graduates, Kamba was brave enough to speak out publicly, and in the presence of Mugabe, about the undesirability of government interference in the academic affairs of the University.

Kamba was involved in numerous other organisations, as Chairman of the Association of Eastern and Southern African Universities, President of the International Association of Universities, Founding Dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Namibia, amongst others, and at the time of his death, was the Herbert Chitepo UNESCO Professor of Human Rights, Democracy, Peace and Governance at the University of Zimbabwe

REV CANAAN BANANA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-24T22:21:00.000-08:00

Canaan Sodindo Banana (5 March 1936 – 10 November 2003) served as the first President of Zimbabwe from 18 April 1980 until 31 December 1987. A Methodist minister, he held the largely ceremonial office of the presidency while his eventual successor, Robert Mugabe, served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe.

During his lifetime, Banana brought together two of the country's political parties, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU), became a diplomat for the Organisation of African Unity, and headed the religious department of the University of Zimbabwe. His later life was complicated by charges of sodomy - a crime in Zimbabwe - which he denied and for which he was later imprisoned.

Zimbabweans owe a great debt of gratitude to Rev Canaan Banana. As speakers from across the political divide and those representing the Christian community said, Rev Banana was, despite his weaknesses, a good and patriotic Zimbabwean. He played a very crucial role in the liberation struggle and in the unification of the country following the early 1980s Matabeleland troubles. He did justice, he loved mercy, he walked humbly with his God.

Banana was born in 1936 in Esiphezini Communal Area, Southern Rhodesia near Esigodini (now in Matabeleland South). His parents were a Ndebele-cultured mother and a Malawian father who had emigrated to Rhodesia. He was educated by missionaries in a local school and later studied at a teacher training institute.[1]

He married Janet Mbuyazwe[2] in 1961, and they had four children together. He took a diploma in theology at Epworth Theological College in Harare and was ordained as a United Methodist minister in 1962. He was a student at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. in 1974 and 1975. Becoming involved in politics, he denounced Ian Smith's practices as a prime minister, took part in the rising[3] transnational black liberation ideo-religious movements, and came to be vice-president of the African National Council.[1]

He wrote a book entitled The Gospel According To The Ghetto, and a personalised version of the Lord's Prayer.

Banana was born in 1936 in Esiphezini Communal Area, Southern Rhodesia near Esigodini (now in Matabeleland South). His parents were a Ndebele-cultured mother and a Malawian father who had emigrated to Rhodesia. He was educated by missionaries in a local school and later studied at a teacher training institute.[1]

He married Janet Mbuyazwe[2] in 1961, and they had four children together. He took a diploma in theology at Epworth Theological College in Harare and was ordained as a United Methodist minister in 1962. He was a student at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C. in 1974 and 1975. Becoming involved in politics, he denounced Ian Smith's practices as a prime minister, took part in the rising[3] transnational black liberation ideo-religious movements, and came to be vice-president of the African National Council.[1]

He wrote a book entitled The Gospel According To The Ghetto, and a personalised version of the Lord's Prayer.

Sodomy charges and imprisonment

The former president's term in office was a subject of scandal in later years, marking his legacy to national independence social movements in Africa and abroad. In 1997, Banana was arrested in Zimbabwe on charges of sodomy, following accusations made during the murder trial of his former bodyguard, Jefta Dube.[1] The charges related to allegations from the state prosecutor that Banana had misused his power while he was president to coerce numerous men in positions of service (ranging from domestic staff to security guards, and even members of sports teams for whom he had acted as referee) into accepting sexual advances. Banana was found guilty of eleven charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy and indecent assault in 1998. He denied all charges, saying that homosexuality is "defiant, abominable and wrong", and the allegations made against him were "pathological lies" intended to destroy his political career.[5] Janet Banana later acknowledged her husband's indiscretions, even though she considered the charges against him to be politically motivated.[6]

He fled to South Africa whilst released on bail before he could be imprisoned, apparently believing Mugabe was planning his death. He returned to Zimbabwe in December 1998, after a meeting with Nelson Mandela, who convinced him to face the ruling. Banana was sentenced on 18 January 1999 to ten years in jail, nine years suspended, and was also defrocked. He actually served six months in an open prison before being released in January 2001.

On 10 November 2003, Banana died of cancer,[7] in London, according to a report delivered by the Zimbabwean High Commissioner. The Guardian, a London-based newspaper, has claimed that Banana had traveled to South Africa, where he eventually died, in order to receive appropriate treatment for his cancer; however, this dispute relies upon uncorroborated testimonial evidence.[1] He was buried in Zimbabwe in late November 2003. President Robert Mugabe called him "a rare gift to the nation" in a radio address.[8] Banana was buried without the full honours that are traditionally accorded to former heads of state.[4] The then politburo Secretary for Information and Publicity Nathan Shamuyarira told state radio that "they (the politburo) could not accord Banana hero status as a matter of principle."[9] His wife sought political asylum in Britain in October 2000 under a preexisting accord.[4]

MARK CHAVHUNDUKA JOURNALIST & PUBLISHER 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-24T21:50:00.000-08:00

As founding editor of Zimbabwe's independent Sunday newspaper, the Standard, the award-winning journalist and publisher Mark Chavunduka, who died aged 36, was a champion for media freedom in southern Africa.

His paper became a symbol of resistance among his country's journalists, and a thorn in the flesh of President Robert Mugabe's government. He exposed the corruption and political intimidation rife in Zimbabwe, and his outspokenness made the Standard an internationally recognised voice for those opposed to Mugabe's tyranny.

Chavunduka entered the limelight in 1999, when the Standard's chief writer, Ray Choto, reported on widespread Zimbabwean army unrest over the deployment of up to 14,000 troops in the civil war then raging in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Choto claimed that 23 disgruntled soldiers had been detained for inciting mutiny against Mugabe.

For more than 10 days, Chavunduka and Choto were detained incommunicado at Cranborne barracks near Harare. Their lawyer, Simon Bull, said both men were subjected to electric shocks on their genitals, hands and feet by military interrogators, and had their heads submerged in drums of water.

They were also blindfolded, stripped naked, made to do push-ups in the rain, and to roll in wet grass to clean the blood from their bodies after beating.

Independent medical sources confirmed the torture allegations, and the incident, seen by many as the most outrageous attack on press freedom in Zimbabwe since independence, drew worldwide condemnation.

President Mugabe, however, refused to condemn the torture. Instead, he threatened "very stern measures" against the independent press, warned writers not to antagonise the army, and ignored a court order to release the two journalists.

Chavunduka was born into a prominent Zimbabwean family in the capital, Salisbury (now Harare). His father, Dr Dexter Chavunduka, was Zimbabwe's first black veterinary surgeon, and a member of parliament nominated by Mugabe for his expertise in animal husbandry.

As vice chancellor of the University of Zimbabwe, Mark's uncle, Professor Gordon Chavunduka, a veteran nationalist, had conferred an honorary degree on Mugabe. His aunt, Sarah Kachingwe, was a top civil servant.

Educated at the prestigious St George's secondary school, Chavunduka graduated from Harare Polytechnic with a diploma in mass communication and journalism. He began his career as a business reporter, and later news editor, with the Financial Gazette.

In 1991, aged 24, he became the youngest editor of a national publication when he took over the monthly magazine, Parade, whose readership he increased to more than two million.

He became editor of the Standard in April 1997, and, under him, the circulation rose from 12,000 to 37,000.

After his release, he was treated for post-traumatic stress disorder at the London-based Medical Foundation for the Treatment of Torture Victims.

Two years ago, Chavunduka won a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University, but, last year, returned home.

"My family all said I should have stayed in the US, but I am so angry about the way we were treated," he said, "and I won't give the government the satisfaction of knowing I've run away."

Last April, he resigned as editor of the Standard after taking over the majority shareholding in the local Thomson Publications (Pvt).

The cause of the illness that led to his death was not announced. He is survived by his wife, two daughters and a son.

Mark Gova Chavunduka, journalist and publisher, born November 28 1965; died November 11, 2002.

JUDGE ENOCH DUMBUTSHENA ZIMBABWE'S FIRST BLACK JUDGE

2009-11-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

Enoch Dumbutshena (20 April 1920 – 14 December 2000) was a distinguished Zimbabwean judge known for defending the independence of that country's judicial branch.

He became Zimbabwe's first black judge in 1980 and served as Chief Justice from 1984 to 1990. Dumbutshena's decisions were often highly critical of President Robert Mugabe and his government.

A former member of the International Commission of Jurists, he unsuccessfully attempted to launch a political career of his own in 1993 by founding the market liberal Forum Party. He died in late 2000 of liver cancer.

HENRY OLONGA ZIMBABWE'S FIRST BLACK CRICKETER 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-24T19:51:00.000-08:00

Henry Khaaba Olonga (born 3 July 1976 in Lusaka, Zambia) was a cricket player for Zimbabwe. He made his international debut in a Test match against Pakistan at Harare in 1995, at age 18 years, 212 days, becoming the youngest player to represent Zimbabwe. He helped Zimbabwe to its first ever Test victory in that game. A right arm fast bowler, Olonga was the first black cricketer to play for Zimbabwe and is the second Zambian-born Test cricketer after Phil Edmonds of England.

Olonga achieved international recognition (along with team mate Andy Flower) in 2003 by wearing a black armband in a Cricket World Cup match to protest against the policies of Zimbabwe's government, led by Robert Mugabe.

OLONGA WEARING A BLACK ARMBAND TO PROTEST POLICIES OF ZIMBABWE'S GOVT
He and Flower released a statement on 10 February, stating in part: In all the circumstances, we have decided that we will each wear a black armband for the duration of the World Cup. In doing so we are mourning the death of democracy in our beloved Zimbabwe. In doing so we are making a silent plea to those responsible to stop the abuse of human rights in Zimbabwe. In doing so, we pray that our small action may help to restore sanity and dignity to our nation.

This act led to a warrant issued in Zimbabwe for Olonga's arrest on charges of treason (which carries the death penalty in Zimbabwe) and forced him to retire from international cricket and temporarily go into hiding. He is now pursuing a career as a singer and a cricket commentator.
Tribute to Luciano Pavarroti by Henry Olonga, Nessun Dorma

Olonga played 30 Test matches for Zimbabwe, taking 68 wickets with a bowling average of 38.52, and 50 one-day internationals, taking 58 wickets at an average of 34.08. He holds the record for the best bowling in a one-day international by a Zimbabwean, with figures of 6/19 against England at Cape Town in 2000.

TATENDA TAIBU ZIMBABWE'S FIRST BLACK CRICKET CAPTAIN

2009-11-24T19:35:00.000-08:00

Tatenda Taibu (born May 14, 1983, in Harare, Zimbabwe) is a Zimbabwean cricketer. He is a wicket-keeper and batsman, and can also bowl right arm off spin. He became the youngest Test captain in history when he was given the Zimbabwean captaincy.

Taibu made his first-class debut at the age of sixteen, and his debut for the national team in 2001, at the age of eighteen. In 2003, he was appointed vice-captain to Heath Streak on the team's tour of England, and he was appointed national captain in April 2004, making him the youngest Test captain in history.^[1]

He played for the Cape Cobras in South Africa in the 2005/06 season.

He made his return to the Zimbabwean side in a series against India A in July 2007, registering a century. The following month Zimbabwe hosted South Africa for a three game ODI series and in the final game Taibu scored a career best 107 not out. It was the first ODI century by a Zimbabwean against South Africa.

On February 20, 2008, Taibu was successfully bid on by the Kolkata franchise of the Indian Premier League

Teams

WIKIPEDIA

PATRICK KOMBAYI 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T16:04:00.000-08:00

We acknowledge and recognize the contribution made by the late veteran politician and businessman Honorable Dr Patrick Kombayi.

Patrick Kombayi (November 2, 1938 – June 20, 2009[1]) was a Zimbabwean businessman, a former mayor of Gweru and an active member of the Movement for Democratic Change-Tsvangirai faction in the Midlands Province. He served in the Senate of Zimbabwe for Chirumhanzu-Gweru senatorial constituency.

Dr Kombayi was buried in Gweru on the 27th of July 2009, after he succumbed from gunshot wounds sustained in the 4 March 1990 foiled assassination attempt by the late Simon Muzenda’s bodyguards Kizito Chivamba and Elias Kanengoni.

The late Kombayi played a pivotal during the liberation struggle when he housed, clothed, financed and fed leaders of the revolutionary movements ZIPRA and ZANLA IN Zambia.

Robert Mugabe, Hebert Chitepo, Rugare Gumbo, and many other comrades in the liberation struggle all benefited from Kombayi’s courtesy during their stay in Zambia.

In 2001 he assisted several student leaders who had been expelled at the Midlands State Universty (MSU).The union continued to get assistance and support from him up until the time of his death.

Go well great politician, go well great businessman, go well great revolutionary, Five Star politician!

THE BLACKS; WAYNE, CARA, BYRON 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T15:51:00.000-08:00

Byron Black

He is the brother of Cara and Wayne Black, both professional tennis players. He attended the University of Southern California and was an All-American as named by the Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA).

In 1995 Black was a US Open quarterfinalist and in 2000 he reached the same round at Wimbledon. His highest career singles ranking was World No. 22, which he achieved in June 1996.

An accomplished doubles player, Black became world no. 1 in doubles in February 1994. He won the 1994 French Open partnering Jonathan Stark. Black was a doubles finalist in three other majors, the 1994 and 2001 Australian Opens and 1996 Wimbledon.

Black is one of the few professional players to have played with a double-handed forehand.

Black formed the core of the Zimbabwean Davis Cup team with his brother Wayne.

Byron's father Don had a grass court in Highlands, Harare on which Byron honed his skills. As a junior Byron played tennis for Prince Edward School in Harare. On one occasion as a 13 year old he thrashed an 18 year old Bunny Eales of Oriel Boys 6-1 6-1 in an interschools game. He moved to Oriel Boys High School to increase his exposure to stronger players, like Greig Rodgers and Mark Gurr, future Davis Cup players for Zimbabwe. Byron played in Club Open Tournaments in Harare as well as the Zimbabwe Open tournament for several years before turning professional. At that time, anyone could enter the Zimbabwe open and you could find yourself playing Byron in the first round.

SIMON CHOPPER CHIMBETU 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

Simon "Chopper" Chimbetu, one of ’s most successful and beloved local musicians died on Sunday, August 14, in Harare . He was 50. A veteran of Harare ’s intense nightlife for over two decades, Chimbetu saw his highs and lows. As he died, he was emerging from controversy surrounding his backing of the government’s land-grab policy. But his 2004 album “10 Million Pound Reward” was bringing him back into public favor in recent months. Six years earlier, when I lived in Harare, Chimbetu’s shows were the top draw in Harare, as stylish, polished, and tuneful a take on Zimbabwe’s own brand of guitar-based rumba—sometimes called sungura—as you could find.

Chimbetu was born and raised in Makwiru, Chegutu area, Mashonaland West in 1955. His parents were amateur musicians, and he fondly recalled his father drumming and his mother singing when he was a child. During the liberation war he and his three brothers and four sisters lived on Dendera Farm in Mozmbique. He returned after independence to work with a pioneering sungura band called The Marxist Brothers. When we spoke in 2001, he seemed a little embarrassed about the name, calling it a “nickname,” and explaining that it made more sense in the afterglow of the independence struggle, which was supported by communists in the USSR and China.

When he formed his own band in the early 90s, he called it the Dendera Kings. The name harks back to his experience during the war years, but as he explained in 2001, it has a deeper meaning. “Dendera is an African bird,” he said. “It is found in tropical savannah areas. In English it is called a ground hornbill. It’s quite a big bird. Why we chose that title is that the bird can be heard from 10 km away. Very early in the morning, it produces a powerful sound, like a drum. That is a very respected bird in the region.” The band too was very respected, producing over 15 albums, and performing long, ecstatic shows all over the country.

Chimbetu was never a political singer, but he did address social issues, and sometimes that was perceived as political. “I think when you are a writer, a musician, an artist,” he said, “an artist is mostly concerned about the poor. An artist is supposed to be concerned with the majority of the people. That’s where we belong.” His 2000 song “Ndare Newa” dramatized the plight of workers who spent their entire Friday paycheck by Sunday night, and had to scrounge all week before receiving another. The song stirred minor controversy as some took it as implicitly critical of the government. His loyalty to the Mugabe regime was later reinforced, however, when he participated in its aggressive land grab policy by occupying a 500 hectare farm in Kadoma. At the same time, he spoke out against violence and declared himself “a friend to all Zimbabweans.”

The farm episode nevertheless cost him some popular support, but at the time of his death, he was clearly on the rebound, playing frequent shows in the as well as . A journalist in 2004 described him as “fit as a fiddle,” and reports say he died quickly from an “undisclosed illness.” When he was buried on August 17, hoards of people clogged the streets of Harare . All Zimbabweans mourn Chimbetu, clearly one of the musical giants of his time.

Contributed by: Banning Eyre

GEOGE SHAYA "MASTERMIND" SOCCER PAYER 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T15:12:00.000-08:00

George Shaya was the best soccer player of the pre-Independence Rhodesia. He played for Dynamos Football Club.

GEORGE SHAYA was crowned Zimbabwe Player of the year 5 times!

Watch the Dynamos Cheer Song

DR SOLOMON GURAMATUNHU 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

Zimbabwe Surgeon Provides Relief to Cataract Patients

The current political and economic crisis in Zimbabwe has severely affected hospitals and other public service providers.. Essential drugs such as painkillers are in short supply and many medical personnel have left the country in search of money, status and safety. Despite the demand for Zimbabwean doctors and nurses overseas, some have remained home to assist their fellow countryman. From Harare, reporter Derek Moyo takes a look at one medical professional who’s bringing relief to thousands who never thought they’d see another day.

The 22-year-old woman had not seen her mother in years, and had never seen her own baby. Her life changed the moment Dr. Solomon Guramatunhu traveled to her village in Ndola, Zambia, and removed her cataracts.

He recounts the experience..

"You can imagine,he said, "this is somebody who is now totally blind, has given birth and [she] had not seen their child and had not seen her mother for 3 years. When we operated on her, she opened her eyes. She could see her child for the very first time and could see her mother again. I can never forget her face. She just could not believe it and then she smiled and she started crying and everybody around started crying."
Dr Solomon Guramatunhu (R)

The young woman is just one of thousands who’ve had their futures brought back into focus by Dr. Guramatunhu and fellow colleagues of the Eyes for Africa program.

Cataracts occur when any part of the primary focusing mechanism, the crystalline lens behind the iris, becomes cloudy, opaque or yellow. This result is the failure of the lens to let in light, and vision is reduced or eliminated.

For paying clients, the 30-minute operation would cost about 55 million Zimbabwe dollars For the continent’s poor, the service is free.

EYE SIGHT, AIDS, AND THE ELDERLY

Dr Guramatunhu estimates that one percent of all Zimbabweans is blind – and an overwhelming majority of the cases are due to cataracts.

Many of those affected are elderly people with children who have died of AIDS. As surviving grandparents, they are expected to look after the children. But because of their own blindness, it’s sometimes the other way around.

"In the rural areas today," he said, "we talk of a double tragedy because we have elderly people, grandmothers, grandfathers who have lost off spring due to hiv/aids, so they become the custodians of the orphans. The grandparents then go blind because of cataracts, which means they can not look after those orphans. [So] you end up with these little children looking after their grandparents, and most of them then opt out of school to be able to look after [them]."

ECONOMICS AND SURGERY

So far, over 10, 000 people, including the elderly, have been helped.

They include between 100 and 120 people over the three-day periods Dr Guramatunhu allots for travel to rural areas.

He says logistical problems prevent the doctors from reaching more people.

" A lot of these people cannot afford the bus fare to come to the hospital." he said. "….The ordinary person, if you have a grandmother or grandfather has cataracts or is blind, we do expect you to do your bit maybe provide them transport to come to the clinic."

A LIFE OF PRIVILEDGE

Most of those helped are the disadvantaged.

In contrast, the well-known ophthalmologist has led a life of relative privilege, with a costly education in Scotland cushioned by scholarships.

He said, "If you speak to a lot of people who today are privileged, somewhere along the line they would have obtained assistance from somebody else. So I think, privilege comes with responsibility. One can help in various ways and I think everybody is in a position to help somebody else regardless of their status."

Today, Dr Guramatunhu is an honorary lecturer at the University of Zimbabwe and has his own private eye surgery in Harare.

During a stint in government, he helped convince medical aid societies to purchase eye equipment so that local people no longer had to travel to South Africa for cataract surgery and laser treatment.

EYE ON THE FUTURE

Dr. Guramatunhu’s own future means expanding the number of operations, and the number of countries, Eyes for Africa can cover.

The group conducts up to 5,000 operations per year, but the Zimbabwean ophthalmologist would like to see that number doubled, or even tripled.

For this, the soft-spoken doctor has a new hat – as aggressive fund-raiser.

His group has been raising money in various countries to ensure that more people have their sight restored. Dr Guramatunhu said this year several golf tournaments have raised millions of Zimbabwean dollars. Rotary clubs in Zimbabwe and South Africa have offered generous support to the program.

A holder of the International Ophthalmologist Education Award, Dr Guramatunhu is the founding president of the Ophthalmological Society of Zimbabwe and the founding chairman of Eyes for Africa.

He is also a member of the American Society of Cataracts and Refractive Surgeons, the European Society of Cataracts and Refractive Surgeons, the International Society of Refractive Surgery, the Corneal Society, the European Vitreo-retinal Society and Euretina.
Apart from heading Eyes for Africa, he has partnered with regional and international colleagues to offer free surgery in Zambia, Namibia, Angola and Vietnam.

Earlier this month, Dr Guramatunhu participated in The Sunday Mail and Partners in the Community initiative, which seeks to facilitate sustainable relief and growth to vulnerable members of society.
He conducted an eye clinic at Copota School for the Blind in Masvingo where he examined 50 students. There was renewed hope among some of the students that they could regain their sight once corrective measures were taken.

Speaking after the clinic, Dr Guramatunhu said: “I believe it is important for us to make a difference in society.

“We should have new thinking and change our mentality towards society.”

Contact Information:

704308.; Dr. Guramatunhu: 175 Fife/8th Street, Harare.

PROFESSOR CHRISTOPHER CHETSANGA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T14:36:00.001-08:00

Professor Christopher Chetsanga is a holder of a PhD Degree in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Post-doctoral studies, University of Toronto (USA), 1969 - 1972. He was an Assistant Professor from 1972 and Full Professor in 1979 at the University of Michigan (USA).

He also holds a D Sc Honorary Degree granted by the University of Zimbabwe where he served as a Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry 1983 before he became the Pro-Vice Chancellor in 1991 and Acting Vice Chancellor in 1992. In his field of expertise he has published many articles and researched in the various scientific projects of national interest.

Professor Chetsanga is a UNESCO Gold Medal Award winner and former UNESCO Executive Board member among others. In 1993 he became the Director General of Scientific and Industrial Research and Development Centre (“SIRDC”). He was appointed Independent Non-Executive Director and Chairman of ReNaissance Financial Holdings Limited (“RFHL”) on 31 May 2004. His other directorships include Africa First ReNaissance Corporation Limited (“Afre”) and ZESA Holdings Limited.

BETTY MAKONI GIRL CHILD NETWORK 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS CHIEF

2009-11-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Hope was 14 years old when her uncle raped her.

"He trapped me to the ground and covered my mouth with his hand," said the 18-year-old from Zimbabwe. "He threatened to kill me if I ever told anybody."

So, she kept quiet.

"After a while people around the villages started saying that I looked pregnant," she said.

Hope was not only pregnant, but her uncle had infected her with HIV.

Like many young girls in Zimbabwe, Hope was the victim of a widely held belief that if a man with HIV or AIDS rapes a virgin he will be cured of his disease. This so-called virgin myth, perpetuated by Zimbabwe's traditional healers, has led to the rape of hundreds of girls, according to UNICEF. Some of those victims are too young to walk, much less protect themselves.

Betty Makoni has fought for nearly a decade to protect her country's young girls from sexual abuse. And she's witnessed some of the worst cases of the myth in action.

"The youngest girl I ever came across was a day-old baby who was raped," said Makoni, 37.

Through her Girl Child Network (GCN), Makoni has helped rescue 35,000 girls from abuse -- including Hope; thousands more have found an empowering community and a public forum in which to speak out. Vote now for the CNN Hero of the Year

"Ten girls per day report rape cases," she said. "It means if we keep quiet, at least 3,600 girls per year may just be contracting HIV and AIDS."

Makoni's own tragic experiences fuel her fierce determination.

"I was raped when I was 6 years old," she recalled. Her attacker was a local shopkeeper. Makoni said her mother would not allow her to report the abuse.

"She said, 'Shh, we don't say that in public,' " Makoni remembered. "I had no shoulder to cry on."

Three years later, she witnessed her father murder her mother. In that moment, Makoni said she realized the potentially deadly consequence of a woman's silence.

"I told myself that no girl or woman will suffer the same again," she said.

Believing an education would provide her the best opportunity and means to speak out, Makoni earned two university degrees and became a teacher. While teaching, she noticed that girls were dropping out of school at an alarming rate. She approached her students with an idea.

"I [said] to girls, 'Let's have our own space where we talk and find solutions,' " Makoni said. Girl Child Network was born.

By the end of the first year, there were 100 GCN clubs throughout Zimbabwe where girls could find support. Makoni said she was not surprised: "Every woman and girl identified with the issues that we were raising," she said.

In 2000, she quit her teaching job to volunteer with GCN full time. "I decided to become an advocate because I walked my own journey to survival," she said.

The following year Makoni successfully procured a piece of land and opened the organization's first empowerment village, designed to provide a haven for girls who have been abused. Girls are either rescued or referred to the village by social services, the police and the community. The healing begins as soon as a girl arrives.

"In the first 72 hours, a girl is provided with emergency medication, reinstatement in school, as well as counseling," said Makoni.

It is important to her that the girls are in charge of their own healing. "It gives them the confidence to transform from victims to leaders," she explained.

The process helped Hope work through the times when she said "I thought my life had come to end."

"They offered all they could ... as I was in a traumatized state," she said. "I really appreciate what [Betty Makoni] has done and is doing in my life."

Today, GCN has grown to 700 girls' clubs and three empowerment villages across Zimbabwe. An estimated 300,000 girls have received assistance.

For those who were at greatest risk, Makoni believes that help was especially critical. "If my organization didn't exist, the 35,000 girls I've saved from rape and abuse could have died by now," she said.

But for Makoni, speaking out came with a high personal cost. In 2008, she was forced to flee her native country. "I left Zimbabwe because my life was in danger as a result of my project being interpreted politically."

Today, she lives with her family in the United Kingdom. She still serves as executive director of her organization and shows no signs of slowing down.

GCN has partnered with the DOVE project, a group based in Essex, England, that deals with domestic violence.

"We are now bringing the girls from a local community to the international scene," she said.

Her efforts in Zimbabwe will also be highlighted in an upcoming documentary, Tapestries of Hope.

Makoni says nothing will end her fight for the rights of women and girls. "This is the job I have always wanted to do, because it gives me fulfillment. And in girls I see myself every day."

Want to get involved? Check out the Girl Child Network and see how to help.

GEOFFREY NYAROTA JOURNALIST 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T13:52:00.000-08:00

Geoffrey Nyarota began his journalism career at The Herald in Zimbabwe in 1978. Nyarota also served as editor of The Chronicle, a daily in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city. During his tenure, The Chronicle published a series of articles exposing large-scale corruption involving government ministers and officials. As a result, the government, which owned the paper, removed Nyarota as editor. He then moved to The Financial Gazette, a weekly business and financial newspaper, and later joined the Nordic-Sadc Journalism Centre in Maputo, Mozambique.

On his return to Zimbabwe in 1999, Nyarota founded The Daily News, the country's only independent daily newspaper. The newspaper's aggressive efforts to uncover corruption and human rights abuses made it the most widely read paper in the country. On Dec. 30, 2002, Nyarota was fired as editor on what management said were administrative grounds. But his dismissal came amid an escalating campaign by President Robert Mugabe's government to quiet criticism from independent news outlets. Nyarota fled to South Africa after police visited his home at midnight. Previously he had been arrested on six occasions while his newspaper was the target of a bomb attack twice.

He has been at Harvard University since the beginning of 2003 under the auspices of the Nieman Fellowship Program for Journalists. As a Carr Center Fellow, he proposes to undertake research on ethnicity as a factor in the liberation struggle and post-independence national politics of Zimbabwe. He was awarded a Knight International Press Fellowship Award in 2001 and an International Press Freedom award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In May 2002, Nyarota was awarded the 2002 UNESCO/Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize and the World Association of Newspaper Golden Pen Award the same year. In all, he has received nine international media awards for his work as a journalist in Zimbabwe.

KUBI CHAZA INDI DEVEOPMENT ACTIVIST AND BUSINESS WOMAN 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T13:37:00.000-08:00

Kubi Chaza Indi is a Zimbabwean development activist and businesswoman. Under her maiden name, Kubi Chaza, she was an actress in the UK, appearing in Live and Let Die in 1973 as a saleswoman picking up James Bond. After returning to Zimbabwe, she and actor husband John Indi started a company making beauty products specifically for black skin and African hair. Kubi is now a well known brand in southern Africa.

Indi is very active in the development community, particularly with respect to issues affecting women, and is secretary-general of the Indigenous Business Women's Organisation in Zimbabwe.

The Indis have continued to work in film-making, John as an actor, but Kubi on both sides of the camera. In 1989 she produced I Am the Future, a film about a young woman (played by Stella Chiweshe) who travels to the big city to escape Zimbabwe's independence war in the rural areas. In 1993 she played the eponymous heroine's modern neighbour in Neria, Tsitsi Dangarembga's script about widowhood in Zimbabwe. Both films were directed by Godwin Mawuru, and Neria featured a soundtrack by Oliver Mtukudzi.

Indi is a member of the Women Filmmakers of Zimbabwe

PROUD CHINEMBIRI "KILIMANJARO" ZIMBABWEAN BOXING CHAMPION 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T13:21:00.000-08:00

SOMEWHERE in the rural area of Buhera, lies the Man Mountain -- known to the world simply as Kilimanjaro -- who boxed his way from Mbare to rule the African continent.

Proud Chinembiri, the late heavyweight boxing champion, took his sport to another level in this country in the category where the biggest and meanest boxers fight.

The big man turned himself into a fierce fighting machine and made his country proud by winning the African heavyweight championship and even getting into contention for a fight for the world heavyweight crown.

No Zimbabwean heavyweight boxer has scaled similar heights like Kilimanjaro.

Even those who lost in their duel against him are proud of the moment that they went into the ring with this fighting machine.

One of them is John "Bombaphani Bonyongo Destroyer" Mutema -- the last man to fight the Man Mountain.

He was beaten in the fourth round of their contest and, this week, told The Herald Sport about his pride of having faced Kilimanjaro.

"I was the last man to fight Kilimanajaro and he beat me on technicality after I suffered a gash above the right eye," said Bonyongo this week.

"It was the greatest fight of my life. I quit boxing in 1999 after the death of Kilimanjaro since there was no longer a heavyweight boxer to fight at that time.

(C) herald zimbabwe

BENJANI MWARUWARI 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T13:04:00.000-08:00

ZIMBABWE soccer captain and Manchester City striker Benjani Mwaruwari’s success story reads like a fairytale. He played in the Zimbabwean Premier League for not more than a year, and he was off on a journey that has taken him around the world. This is The Truth About Benjani Mwaruwari:
Born: August 13, 1978

Home Town: Bulawayo

Marital Status: Married to Thembi, with four children.

Briefly, tell us where it all started, and how you got here?

I first played for Young Blood, a junior team in Bulawayo, and then I moved to Highlanders and played in the reserves there. I joined Lulu Rovers, and then moved to the University of Zimbabwe before a stint at Air Zimbabwe.

I was on the verge of joining AmaZulu in 1999 but I was called up for the Zimbabwe national team which played at Thabo Mbeki’s inauguration in South Africa. I played well in the game and I was approached by Jomo Sono who signed me for Jomo Cosmos.

I didn’t stay long there as I soon moved to Grasshoppers Zurich in Switzerland. A move to Auxerre in France followed. Harry Rednkapp signed me for Portsmouth in 2006 and a few years later, I am here at Manchester City.
What did you want to be when you were little?

I never really wanted to be anything … You can say I had no serious ambition. Some kids had all these grand ambitions of being doctors and so on, but I never really set myself a target. I was just floating along.

What were you like at school?
I was always an athlete at primary school. I liked running, long jump and football. I did everything, I was a proper athlete and I was quick. I think I set the 100m and 200m records at Mhali Primary School in Bulawayo.

I lost interest in running when I got to secondary, because I got more hooked on football. At that time, I was inspired by Ian Wright. I followed his career like religion, and I liked his natural goal scoring ability. I guess that makes me an Arsenal supporter, yes I was!

What would you say has been the highlight of your career?

I think more than anything else I would say playing for all these years in Europe. It’s the hardest thing to break into European teams and I have managed it at four teams. I have scored some memorable goals along the way. Two goals stand out -- one scored against Barcelona when I was still at Grasshoppers, and the other for Jomo Cosmos against Kaizer Chiefs. The goals were almost similar in that I just stepped out of the centre circle and struck the ball sweetly into the nets.

What habit do you wish you could change?

I am always sleeping when I have nothing to do. When I do have some things to do, I am usually tired.
How do you deal with anger and what gets you upset?

That’s my other problem. I have a short temper, but now I am trying to be calmer. There are a lot of things that get me upset, because usually when you have a short temper, you easily get angry at the slightest provocation. Sometimes you get upset but handle it better. I guess it goes with patience, I have no patience. When I want something, I want it done there and then. I don’t want to wait.
What are you most afraid of?

Ships and planes! I use planes because there is no other means, but flying wrecks my nerves. With ships, I tell myself that if there is any funny mishap, then I am dead because I am a very bad swimmer. So before going on one, I would be thinking what will happen when it sinks?
If your house burnt down, what would you save?

My phone and passport. Invaluable.

How would you describe yourself in a personal ad?

I am very, very shy and you know when you are shy, you are also quiet. I like being where the people are, because I grew up among people. I am very sociable and easy going.
How is your love life?

I am married to Thembi and have four kids -- Colines, Benjani Junior, Belle (which is French for Beauty) and Tiyezhe who was born in January.
What’s your idea of a sexy woman?

Someone like Angelina Jolie. Perhaps I would do myself a favour byHow would you describe yourself in a personal ad?

I am very, very shy and you know when you are shy, you are also quiet. I like being where the people are, because I grew up among people. I am very sociable and easy going.
How is your love life?

I am married to Thembi and have four kids -- Colines, Benjani Junior, Belle (which is French for Beauty) and Tiyezhe who was born in January.
What’s your idea of a sexy woman?

Someone like Angelina Jolie. Perhaps I would do myself a favour by saying someone like my wife!
When you stop playing, how are you going to spend your time?
TRIBUTE TO BENJANI MWARUWARI FROM FANS

I want to raise my kids until they are employed and able to fend for themselves. I want them to have a better childhood than I had and a good life. I also plan to have a football academy in Zimbabwe for our promising young players and hopefully get them to play in Europe. There is no reason why we can’t have more Zimbabweans playing in the European leagues. saying someone like my wife!
When you stop playing, how are you going to spend your time?

I want to raise my kids until they are employed and able to fend for themselves. I want them to have a better childhood than I had and a good life. I also plan to have a football academy in Zimbabwe for our promising young players and hopefully get them to play in Europe. There is no reason why we can’t have more Zimbabweans playing in the European leagues.

Story from : NEWZIMBABWE.COM NEWS:
Published On: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 1:57 PM GMT
http://www.newzimbabwe.com/news/news.aspx?newsID=712
© New Zimbabwe News

MOSES CHUNGA RAZORMAN 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T12:46:00.000-08:00

Moses Chunga (born 17 October 1965 in Lytton, a suburb in the west of Harare) played for Dynamos, one of the greatest Zimbabwean football teams, and for the Zimbabwe national football team in the position of playmaker. He was born to parents of Malawian descent and like Benjani Mwaruwari chose to represent his nation of birth, Zimbabwe, internationally.

Moses Chunga is considered by many football enthusiasts as arguably the greatest football player ever produced in Zimbabwe. Actually, he has attained legendary status, and many rumours abound him.

One frustrating issue when trying to gather information about him, other Zimbabwean legends of his time, and before is that there is sparse written literature on them, which may tend to reduce anything said about them to red herring. However, there seems to be some verifiable facts about him that give him his legendary status. For example, Moses Chunga was the first (black) Zimbabwean to join a European league (after independence). Only one or a very few (Black) player(s) – e.g., Freddie Mukwesha- appear to have achieved this feat before him, although many more were to follow his footsteps, some joining much better leagues than the Belgian second division, which he had played for (e.g., Peter Ndlovu, Benjani Mwaruwari, Norman Mapeza etc). Therefore, those who question Moses Chunga’s brilliance point out that he never managed to play for Europe’s elite leagues.

Chunga is also revered for being a midfielder who managed to score a record 46 goals in a single season, a record that has stood ever since; for being a dead ball specialist who could even score from corner kicks, an exceptionally good passer of the ball, and a dribbling wizard. For example, it is widely rumored that he once dribbled and bamboozled a defender to the point where he back peddled and twisted his knee causing a career ending injury. As a crowd puller, it appears Moses Chunga sometimes enjoyed playing to the gallery, which included standing on the ball.

Sunday Marimo, the former Zimbabwe National Team coach, who led Zimbabwe to its first appearance at the African Cup Nations final in 2006, admitted that Zimbabwe “lacks a natural ball player, a playmaker in the mould of Moses Chunga”.

Chunga’s professional career fizzled out within less than 5 years in Belgium, possibly because of a knee-injury. He tried his luck with his former team Dynamos after quitting his Belgian team, but it never really worked out well for him on the field, forcing him to retire from playing. He then began his coaching career, which has produced mixed results, but which most football followers in Zimbabwe would consider an utter failure.

For all his brilliance on the football field, it appears Moses Chunga had some major flaws in his personality. It is widely believed, for example, that he refused to play for the Zimbabwe National Team during his days in Belgium as they were offering him “peanuts”. This is difficult to verify. However, what can be said with certainty is that he is an assertive character, which does not seem a common trait in the cultural environs of Zimbabwe. Therefore, people may struggle to understand or accept him.

Moses Chunga's legendary status was not misplaced as he truly was a genius with a ball, although he did like to take the mickey out of other players on the football field. He arguably rivals people like David Beckham as a dead ball specialist. He was however stubborn to the point of obstinacy which is why some national coaches could not work with him and left him out of the Zimbabwe national teams (especially the European coaches). Most local coaches however bowed to popular pressure and named him in their squads.

Chunga had an elder brother, Kembo, who also played for Dynamos.

PETER NDLOVU 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T12:09:00.000-08:00

Peter Ndlovu was originally spotted by John Sillett, prior to his official signing from Highlanders by Terry Butcher in July 1991. He made an immediate impact by scoring away at Arsenal and then became the toast of Highfield Road with a thunderbolt winner against Aston Villa in November 1991, endearing him to the Sky Blues fans.

Although he would go on to play a major role at several clubs in the second tier, his time at Coventry will always stand out due to its top flight status. He would play a significant role in two major teams, Bobby Gould's attacking team of the early 90s and Ron Atkinson-Gordon Strachan's expansive squad of the mid-late 1990s.

Bobby Gould's team in 1992/93 must surely go down as the archetypal under-achievers. Having acquired the legendary striker Micky Quinn in November 1992 they continued what had already been a blistering start, with away wins at Tottenham Hotspur (2-0) Sheffield Wednesday (2-1) and Wimbledon (2-1) to add to already impressive home wins against the likes of Middlesbrough (2-1). By the early autumn the Sky Blues briefly topped the inaugural Premier league and would only lose five league games prior to Christmas. The addition of Micky Quinn to the squad led to further outstanding home wins against the likes of Aston Villa (3-0) and Liverpool (5-1). They would eventually go to Championship contenders Blackburn Rovers and leave with a (5-2) victory in February 1993. However, a barren March/April programme and a run in that would see back to back games against Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea and Leeds Utd saw them slip from 5th in the league in February to 15th by the end of May. A league position secured with a thrilling performance from Ndlovu in a last day 3-3 draw against Leeds Utd. Ndlovu was a key component throughout the season in Gould's fast pacey front line which included John Williams, Kevin Gallacher (until his departure to Blackburn) and Robert Rosario, who formed a worthy partnership with Micky Quinn. Peter Ndlovu's goal against Norwich City, in a 1-1 draw in late September, was a signature piece of Ndlovu flare which earned him the Match of Day 'Goal of the month' competition.[1]

The 1993/94 season would see a managerial shift in the autumn as Phil Neal, Bobby Gould's No.2, took over the reins from his passionate Coventry born boss but not before the legendary curtain raiser to the 93-94 season. Bobby Gould's first day gamble would be to play without traditional full backs. This novel formation gave Peter Ndlovu full licence to play a large part in a memorable opening day triumph in the capital. The 3-0 victory on a sunny 14 August, against double-cup winners Arsenal, saw Micky Quinn score a hat-trick in front of the newly refurbished North Bank. It also ensured that the Sky Blues made one of their customary lightning starts to the season, so synonymous of the early 1990s. After an early Ian Wright threat on the Coventry goal, it was Ndlovu who made a darting run into the Arsenal penalty box which produced a clumsy challenge from Lee Dixon. The resulting penalty was calmly converted by Micky Quinn for the opener. The second half would see Ndlovu and Roy Wegerle lead the Gunners defence a merry dance-Wegerle in particular enjoying possibly his finest game for the club. So shocked were Arsenal by the 3-0 defeat that manager George Graham cancelled the proposed post-match lap of honour at the final whistle, which was to parade their Coca Cola and FA Cup silverware. The explanation given by Arsenal was 'Reasons beyond the club's control!'. It is thought the Sky Blues turned down a then-massive £4 million offer from Arsenal at the end of the same 1994 season for Ndlovu's services. The dramatic resignation of Bobby Gould, after a 5-1 mauling at Loftus Road in October 1993, was reputedly inspired by the possible imminent sale of Ndlovu to a top six club. However, Ndlovu stayed but the 11th place finish secured that season was not repeated in the 94-95 campaign. Phil Neal was replaced by Ron Atkinson. Big Ron saved the club from relegation in the spring of 1995 whilst also bringing in Gordon Strachan as his player-coach No.2.

This second significant phase for Ndlovu would once again promise much; the 'new era' of big money signings heralded by Atkinson's appointment saw the arrival of Huckerby, Whelan, Salako and McAllister together with earlier signing Dion Dublin. Big Ron provided vital impetus in the spring of 95, but the following season his stylish and classy team sheet rarely 'clicked' in the traditional sense. However, Ndlovu scored some memorable goals for the Sky Blues during this period, including the first away player to secure a hatrick at Anfield for 30 years. Other memorable goals in Sky Blue included a vital winning goal away at Wimbledon in a relegation six-pointer and a dynamic last minute rifling winner in a 3rd Round FA Cup tie at West Bromwich Albion.

Ndlovu gradually suffered due to inconsistency. The large and expansive side Gordon Strachan inherited, well equipped with attacking options, saw fierce competition for places from the likes of Whelan, Huckerby, Salako and Telfer. An increasingly cosmopolitan Premier league too would eventually see Coventry turn to the likes of Steve Froggatt and Moroccan internationals Mustapha Hadji and Youssef Chippo in the years following Ndlovu's departure. However, if a 'Best Of' goals compilation were ever undertaken by Coventry City, focusing on their top flight era, then Peter Ndlovu's name would figure prominently. He was known as 'Nuddy' by the die hard Coventry City fans in Highfield Road's 'West End' and as 'The 'Bulawayo Bullet' by the media of the day. A likeable and mischievous character off the pitch, Peter Ndlovu is well placed in the top flight Coventry City goalscorers table with a return of 41 goals. The 'Gould-Neal' and 'Atkinson-Strachan' tenures in the Premiership remain some of Coventry City's most exciting-and indeed frustrating-spells in top flight football.

NICK PRICE ZIMBABWEAN GOLFER 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T11:57:00.000-08:00

Nick Price was born in South Africa to English parents who moved the family to Rhodesia when Price was very young. Price would become a citizen, even serving in the Rhodesian Army during that country's civil war (from which it emerged as Zimbabwe).

An older brother introduced Price to golf, and Price ran with the new game. As a junior, he dominated in his native country. At age 17, Price traveled to San Diego, Calif., where he won the Junior World Championship.

Price turned pro at the age of 20 in 1977. He played the European Tour in those early years, claiming his first victory at the 1980 Swiss Open. He won four more times on the Euro Tour in 1982, then joined the U.S. PGA Tour in 1983.

He experienced immediate success, holding off Jack Nicklaus to win the 1983 World Series of Golf. It was 8 years before Price won again on the PGA Tour, but when he did, he emerged as one of the best players in the world.

Price won the British Open in 1992. In 1993, he won 4 times in the U.S., led the PGA Tour in money and won the Vardon Trophy for low scoring average. In 1994, Price won his second British Open, plus the PGA Championship.
NICK PRICE PERFECT SWING

Price was a short hitter off the tee, but his fabulous iron play and clutch short game kept him at or near the top of the golf world for several more years. In 1997, he won his second Vardon Trophy on the PGA Tour.

Price hasn't won a major since 1994, but remains highly competitive. He has represented the International team at the Presidents Cup in each staging of that event from 1994 to 2003.

Price flies his own jet plane to and from tournaments. In 1997, Price published the instructional book, "The Swing" (compare prices).

Nick Price was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2003.

Awards and Honors:

• Member, World Golf Hall of Fame
• PGA Tour money leader, 1993, 1994
• PGA Tour Vardon Trophy (scoring) winner, 1993, 1997
• PGA Tour Player of the Year, 1993, 1994
• 5-time member, International team, Presidents Cup

AMBUYA STELLA CHEWESHE 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T11:34:00.000-08:00

Stella Chiweshe (also Stella Rambisai Chiweshe, Stella Rambisai Chiweshe Nekati, or Stella Nekati Chiweshe, b. Mujumi Village, Mhondoro, Zimbabwe, July 8, 1946) is a Zimbabwean musician. She is internationally known for her singing and playing of the mbira dzavadzimu, a traditional instrument of the Shona people of Zimbabwe. She is one of the few female players of the instrument, which she learned to play from 1966 to 1969 when even fewer females played the instrument.

Chiweshe has performed numerous times in Germany and has also participated in the WOMAD festival (1994 in the United States, 1995 in Australia, and 2006 in Spain). In 2004 she toured England with her daughter.

In addition to performing as a soloist, Chiweshe often performs in combination with guitars. She has also organized an international women's music festival in Zimbabwe.

In 1989, she starred in I Am the Future, a Godwin Mawuru film about a young woman who travels to the big city to escape Zimbabwe's independence war in the rural areas.
www.stellachiweshe.com

LEONARD DEMBO MUSICIAN 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T11:13:00.000-08:00

Leonard Dembo {Musoro We Nyoka (lit. meaning.- Snake-Head)} (1961-1996), was a Zimbabwean guitar-band musician who became extremely popular in Zimbabwe during the 1990s with his band the 'Barura Express'.

Leonard "Musoro We Nyoka" Dembo was born in 1961 in the rural areas of Chirumhanzu, Midlands province of Zimbabwe. But his ancestral orrigins of his Karanga tribe,which is the largest tribe in Zimbabwe, is Masvingo—Where anyday one visits the local stores in the province, can only hear Leonard Dembo's music being played. The real name of Leonard Dembo is Kwangwari Gwaindepi The early childhood of Leonard Dembo is not fully documented, however, from his relatives, Leonard Dembo is believed to have grown up without his father, an experience he later on reflected in his song writing, particularly in such songs as Nhamo Moto and Nhamo Iya ndakura Nayo.

THE FAMOUS CHITEKETE SONG

It is believed that Leonard Dembo had been interested in singing from as early as nine years when he was first a shepherd-boy and later when he moved to Bulawayo to look for work to do soon after the Zimbabwean Independence.

He was largely inspired by the success of such other musicians such as Jonah Moyo and the Chimbetu Brothers.

Failing to make it in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city, Leonard Dembo moved to Harare where he joined an outfit known as the Outsiders. Here he was quickly identified as a talented young guitarist as he used to play the lead guitar. He even broke the charts with his early hit Dambudzo and Manga Majaira Matsotsi, the later song which he released under the name of a band known as Five Notes.

The Barura Express
Due to some disagreements over partnership laws and band management, Leonard Dembo quickly broke ranks with his colleagues in the Outsiders/Five Notes outfit. This was especially precipitated by his success in his first album, Mai vane Vana Vavo(1984) and a single hit, Venenzia.. He succeeded to team up with few other friends and formed the Barura Express.

Despite the widely attributed meaning of this name to "Nonstop beats", Dembo's childhood friends and especially his young brother believes that The name "Barura" could have been inspired from the mountain in Buhera called Barura Mountain, since his mother hailed from that area.

Dembo's Works with Barura Express

From the time Leonard Dembo took charge of his new outfit, he never looked back. In fact, from the year 1985, Dembo had been releasing hit after hit, beginning with Murombo (Poor Man). This track appealed to most young men of the time as it addressed the question of poor bachelors who expect to get married soon.

Other tracks included Chidhidhi, Kugaro Roja and so many other singles.

His first album was Nhamo Moto (1986). Others soon followed. These include: Kuziva Mbuya Huudzwa (1987), Sharai (1987), Kukura Kwedu (1988), Ruva Rashe (1989), Kukura Hakutani (1990, which was a twelve-inch disc), Chitekete (1991), Tinokumbira Kurarama /Madhiri(1992), Mazano (1993), Kutinya Marimba(1993), Nzungu Ndamenya (1994), Pawpaw (1994), Shiri Yakangwara (1995) and Babamunini (1996).

The Chitekete Hit

Dembo grew in popularity during the late 80s, but his breakthrough was the 1991 hit Chitekete, which became the most popular song in Zimbabwe since 1980. The song was written years earlier when Dembo was a cattle herder, and it is about a young man who desperately wishes to get married to a beautiful lady. The track seemed to have introduced a new style of playing the rhythm guitar at the time. It popularity can also be attributed to its heavy use of Shona proverbs and poetic stanzas. It sold more than 100,000 copies in the first 3 months it went on sale. During this time, it became a popular wedding song. It was the only Zimbabwean song played at the Miss World Pageant in Namibia in 1996.

Dembo's Style of Composition

Leonard Dembo seemed to have been interested in songs of love. In fact, most of his songs are particularly loved by youth as they find them appropriate to their situations.Leornard was known as the King Of Sunguramusic,due to the lead guitarist skills he had from the creative melodies he created and which would match his beautiful unparalleled lead-vocal voice.The great mastery which he used to construct his music,and the amount of album production he did,gave him the nick name "Musoro We Nyoka", which literary translates to "Head of a snake".This refers to the slyness ,willy attitude and intelligence of a snake,which Leonard Dembo was compared to.The poetic lyrics of his songs are cleverly crafted full of deep-rooted meanings.Arguably today still unmatched by any artist to come out of Zimbabwe.

At various times, Dembo also used to address other social ills of his times, especially the suffering of the orphans and young kids. Although Dembo lived through the tumultuous years of Zimbabwean liberation struggle, he never seemed to be very much interested in the political affairs of his day. However, he sang a few tunes such as Kana Ndorangarira found on his 1987 album, Kuziva Mbuya Huudzwa which immediately found itself a hit on all the radio stations in the land. He even alluded to the struggle in such songs as Matsotsi (when he said that now that people were free, those who used to thrive in pickpocketing were to be punished).

Dembo is still a legend in Zimbabwe as his songs still continue to sell widely and budding musicians find inspiration from his hits. By 2008, despite other great hits on the market, no song has so far surpassed the popularity of Chitekete released seventeen years previously.
(c)wikipedia

LEONARD KARIKOGA ZHAKATA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T10:44:00.000-08:00

Leonard Karikoga Zhakata (born 1968) is a popular Zimbabwean musician and singer. He writes and performs songs mainly in his native Shona tongue. Zhakata, who adorns trademark glittering outfits, is best known for his hits Hupenyu Mutoro ,Batai Mazwi and "Gomba Remarara". However, it was his 1994 smash hit Mugove, from the album Maruva Enyika, which evaded government censorshipand propelled him to national stardom.

In 1994at age 26, he became the youngest Zimbabwean musician to sell more than 100,000 copies of an album, when his solo album Maruva Enyika sold more than 120,000 copies.

In 2006, Zhakata spoke out about the government and asked for the radio waves to be freed to allow Zimbabweans to operate radio stations. Some of his music is blacklisted by the government and banned on state radio due to perceived political statements.

Leonard Zhakata is a qualified Fitter and Turner and the only boy in a family of seven. Leonard Zhakata used to sneak from home and play music with his primary school mates. Then at Shiri Yedenga School in Glen Norah, Harare, at the age of thirteen, he had his first music composition "Baba vaSamson". Pursuing school and later serving for an apprenticeship, it took Leonard sometime before he could record. After, the frustration of being turned down by recording companies, he had his lucky break and recorded his first 12-inch entitled "Moyo muti" sometime in 1989, to be followed by an album "Yarira Mhere"in 1990.

Leonard Zhakata's songwriting skills continued to rise with the releases of chart busting songs such as 'Tungidza Gwenya' and 'Shungu dzemwoyo'. He however seemed to remain in the mediocre periphery of "Who is Who" on the Zimbabwean music scene, until the release of his mega chartbusting album Maruva Enyika with hit song Mugovein 1994. Backed by a very tight musical outfit, The Zimbabwean All Stars Band and a well choreographed dance display, this album set Zimbabwe on fire during the festive season of the same year. No party was complete without "Mugove" being played. Those who had doubted Leonard's music mastery had to think again. All albums that followed thereafter Nzombe Huru, Vagoni Vebasa, and three others, established Leonard Zhakata within the Zimbabwean music household.

Leonard Zhakata nicknamed himself Karikoga, a word that means "Loner." This nickname appears to stem from the poverty he endured as a lone child. In fact, many of his albums have included at least one song dedicated to the suffering masses as well as to people whose upbringing was full of mishaps.

However, despite his distinctive playing style and mastery of lyrics, Zhakata's popularity began to wane due to the public's outrage at his continued lamenting when in fact he had become rich. Some people accused him of being political albeit doing so (being political) with deliberate obscurity.

(C)Wikipedia

LEARNMORE JONGWE 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T10:29:00.000-08:00

Learnmore Jongwe was the first spokesman for the Zimbabwean Movement for Democratic Change Party and Member of Parliament for Kuwadzana.

He was young (28) already well known as the MDC spokesperson and student activist. He had been Chairman of the SRC at University and then threw his weight behind the drive for a new constitution, after that he joined the MDC and became the MP for Kuwadzana and a member of our National Executive.

He had an incisive mind and quick wit which made him a popular figure with the media. A trained lawyer, he quit his job to become a full time employee of the MDC so that he could maximize his contribution. He was a key player in the Youth Assembly and a good public
speaker. In the debates in the National Executive he could be relied upon to stand clearly for principle - even when it was unpopular. He will be sorely missed.

What happened - we will never know unless someone inside the system spills the beans. But the facts point to him being poisoned in some way while in the hands of the CIO. Why kill him when he was about to go to court on a murder charge and was probably going to face the gallows? That is a mystery, a revenge killing? Fear as to what might come out in the court? Whatever the

reason, like the senseless killing of Steve Biko in South Africa, we have lost a very talented young Zimbabwean who was poised to make a significant contribution to the life of his country.

The funeral was well attended - several thousand people, mostly young and angry. The sight of them pouring into the stadium where it was held roaring "hondo, hondo" (war, war) was disturbing if you want to see a peaceful transfer of power in Zimbabwe. These young people were angry - very angry and the police (after tear gassing the mourners again at the funeral parlor) wisely stayed away from the venue.(C) ZimbabweSituation

The Zimbabwe Leanmore Jongwe wanted

THIS week has been a very sentimental one for me. I was remembering the tragic and rather untimely death of one of the most influential young people in the history of Zimbabwe ever.

This week I was in deep mourning but also somewhat, celebrating the life and times of the late Learnmore Judah Jongwe. The late young national hero died under mysterious circumstances at the Harare Remand Prison on 22nd October 2002. This was after his indefinite detention in the aftermath of the tragic murder of his wife, Rutendo, under very acrimonious circumstances.

I had the privilege of being one of the last people to see him alive. I had visited him and spoken to him in his very last afternoon in this planet. This was to be the end of a political friendship and rivalry that I had shared and cherished with him for several years.

I first met Jongwe in March 1995 when we were both admitted at the faculty of law at the University of Zimbabwe (UZ). I was his classmate and peer until his graduation day ceremony, when I had the honour of sitting next to him during the entire academic ritual in August 1999.

But I must confess that I have a very limited number of memories of Jongwe as my classmate. The Jongwe I knew most was a politician. During our stay at college, we had a lot of political experiences together. Suffice for me to say that I served as his Vice President both at the levels of the UZ Students Union and Zimbabwe National Students Union (ZINASU).

Jongwe is obviously one of the brightest political prospects ever to emerge from the ranks of the Zimbabwean students movement. He was a naturallly born leader. He was a very talented, intelligent and ambitious young man. He was also very articulate, an orator extra-ordinaire who had a very lyrical voice.

His clarity of purpose, vision and direction so much belied his tender age. It is obvious that at the time of his sad death, he had achieved much more than many people double or even treble his age would have ever dreamt of achieving in their entire long lives.

In fact until his untimely death, many political observers in Zimbabwe easily regarded him as far ahead of his peers. But perhaps, he was even peerless.

It was thus no surprise that during his four-year tenure as a law student at the University of Zimbabwe, Jongwe rose through the ranks of the student leadership with such ease.

He was first elected as an executive member of the Zimbabwe Law Students Association at the end of his first year. Towards the end of his second year, he was elected overwhelmingly as the President of the entire university student union.

At the beginning of his third year, he was also elected as the first-ever national President of the revived ZINASU. During his final year at law school, he also served as the Sub-warden of the university’s most luxurious hall of residence, the New Hall.

Shortly after he left the university, he got a good job as a Professional Assistant in what was then regarded as the biggest firm of legal practitioners in Zimbabwe, Gill Gerrans and Godlontons.

Outside legal practice, Jongwe’s political career continued to flourish. In October 1999, he was among the founding members of the nation’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). As a result, he was duly elected as the first ever Youth Chairperson of the MDC in the interim leadership of the party.

The high level of his popularity was affirmed when the MDC held its first ever People’s Congress. During the subsequent elections for a substantive leadership, he was overwhelmingly elected as the new MDC Secretary for Information and Publicity. It was after he assumed this venerated role as the MDC’s public face and spokes-person that the world at large started to notice his brilliant political acumen.

As if it was not enough, Jongwe’s ever growing reputation was further enhanced during the controversial June 2000 Parliamentary elections. The young man earned more kudos for himself when he successfully vied for a seat in the fifth Parliament of the country. He was overwhelmingly elected as the Member of Parliament for Kuwadzana, a high-density suburb in Harare.

But for me, as a person who had shared a lot of intimate political experiences with him during his illustrious days as a student leader, it did not come much as a big surprise. I had always expected a lot from him. I was thus only pleased to note that he had already begun to realize his full potential as a prospective source of future national leadership for Zimbabwe.

But as we all know, Jongwe never lived to realize his fullest potential. Tragically, death dealt him its cruel blow just as his political career was beginning to take off. In fact, it was just when many were beginning to tout him as a potential successor to Morgan Tsvangirai.

Indeed, many thought that Jongwe was a President in waiting, not only at an MDC level but also at a national level. It is therefore doubtless that had he lived long enough, he would have managed to storm into the corridors of power at the State House itself.

As such, Jongwe did not only represent the future of MDC, his party but also that of Zimbabwe as a nation at large.

So when he died, I can dare say that his death did not only rob his family of a breadwinner, his party of a charismatic leader, but also the nation, was robbed of a potential national leader and statesman.

Having said that, I wish to suggest that Jongwe did not go down to his grave with the future of Zimbabwe. He may have died but his dreams for a new Zimbabwe did not die with him. They in fact, remain with us today, as his legacy for our posterity.

Jongwe dreamt of and hoped to see a Zimbabwe that was the complete apposite of what we see today. The Zimbabwe he wanted is still not here with us. It remains elusive, like a desert mirage, hiding somewhere in our future.

The Zimbabwe he wanted was completely different from the Zimbabwe that the likes of Mugabe have led us unto, today. The Zimbabwe he wanted was a new country with a new political culture founded on the premises of freedom, tolerance, integrity and self-respect.

He always dreamt that one day there would be a new Zimbabwe that would celebrate plurality, diversity and all-inclusiveness as the foundation of the entire nation human fabric.

He always envisioned a new Zimbabwe that would be bereft of the retrogressive politics of hatred, violence, cronyism and patronage. He always aspired for a new Zimbabwe that would seek to promote and sustain all efforts of individual and national human endeavor on the basis of diligence and excellence.

The Zimbabwe he wanted would have to be a completely new one. It would be a Zimbabwe that would be like the Biblical Canaan, flowing with rivers of justice and dripping with the milk and honey of peace and democracy.

I therefore appeal to all Zimbabweans, whether at home or in the Diaspora. More so even to the youths and students, to strive to continue with his legacy.

The Jongwe legacy is a lifelong quest for a full transition towards a truly peaceful and democratic Zimbabwe. We owe this not only to Jongwe but our own posterity. History will judge us harshly if we fail to rise up to this crucial but inevitable challenge for our generation.

Let us therefore do whatever we can, in our very own personal way and make our contributions towards the birth of the new nation. I mean, the new Zimbabwe we all want to have.

No matter how discouraging the situation in Zimbabwe might seem today, let us not allow ourselves to wallow in the murky waters of political despair. Let us not agonise but seek to organize ourselves.

Let us all rise up and join forces in the on-going struggle for a new Zimbabwe. And as Jongwe would have loved it, let us all seek to fight for our country until final victory. “Vincere caritate!” We all have no excuse because whether we like it or not, the struggle remains our birthright - danielmolokela@yahoo.com
Daniel Molokela is the National Co-ordinator of the Peace and Democracy Project Johannesburg, South Africa.

DELMA LUPEPE BUSINESSMAN 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T10:17:00.001-08:00

WE FEATURE Delma Lupepe, one of Zimbabwe's successful businessman who has helped create employment and sustain the livelihood of fellow Zimbabweans.

He is one of the richest men in Zimbabwe and “he has seen it all and done it all”, but the now repentant and God fearing Delma Lupepe, revealed that he would rather have God than money because at the end of the day, all his riches are vanity.

In an exclusive interview with zimGossip.com Lupepe who is a devoted Seventh Day Adventist revealed that his money never brought him peace and a comfortable life until he accepted Jesus as his personal Savior.

“I have money, not that I am boasting, I am only stating a fact and through my money I have seen and done it all, there is nothing you can tell me about life. There is nothing that I have not done but I am not proud of it. I have been all over the world, stayed at the most expensive hotels, some of the suits I have cost me 30 000 to 40 000 Rand. I have driven almost every version of the Mercedes Benz and almost every car. Right now I have two Porsche models, a Boxster and a 911 which if I am not mistaken is the only one in Zimbabwe, but its all nothing and it does not give me joy.

“And I have dated numerous beautiful women but I can tell you I never got any peace or satisfaction from that. I want people out there to know that all that glitters is not gold. It is better to live a humble and sinless life than to have riches that will lead you to death,” said Delma.

Lupepe, who is the owner of Maydeep Investments, which incorporates Merspin, Gloweave and Ascot Clothing Company, likened his life to that of the Biblical prodigal son who asked for his inheritance from his father and went away to a far-away country to squander it all.

“Just like the prodigal son, I was a youth with money and I used it wrongly. I was a slave to sin and like many youths of to day I believed that life was one big party but its more than that. So I am saddened by what the youth aspire to be. Frankly they should know that quality life is not in money, money does not bring any peace – peace comes from knowing God. All the other things are vanity, Solomon was one of the richest and best-dressed men but he admitted that the lilies on the ground were better than him.

“Don’t misunderstand me, God wants us to be prosperous and rich, he has plans for us, plans of prosperity not of harm. But we should know that riches come with responsibility, the prodigal son was irresponsible and I was irresponsible but I am glad that like him I found my senses.”

Delma believes that God gave him money not to buy cars and other worldly material but to use it as a vehicle to preach the gospel.

He said: “I used to hire a private jet from South Africa to come and pick me up for a shopping spree in Johannesburg. I had money but just like the prodigal son, my riotous spending meant I was eating with pigs. That was foolish, now that I am back in my father’s house. I use my money to spread the Advent message and to build churches. Not to buy worldly things, which are worthless at the end of the day.

“Whatever we do in life we must put God first. I thank God for knocking sense into my head before it was too late.”

Asked to reveal the event that led him to repent, Delma refused to divulge his life altering experience, but said: “I repented when I found myself in a situation that made me realise that God does exist.”

However, it is believed that one of the reasons why Delma sought God was an incident in which he escaped a kidnap and car-jacking attempt by a group of armed robbers in North End in 2002. He was also involved in a number of car accidents in which he believes that he was lucky to survive.

Delma added that God always had good plans for him that hinged on his repentance, revealing that one of the blessings he has received is his wife Abigail Lupepe who is a dentist.

“Some people are unfortunate that when they were wild, diseases such as AIDS and even death caught up with them. But God smiled on me even when I was still in the wilderness and he gave me a beautiful wife who I love dearly. A good wife comes from God and I encourage the youth to wait on the Lord and he will definitely send them the showers of blessings.”

He reiterated that God is always “looking for an excuse to do good things for us but we have to come back home for that to happen. If you want an education or employment it all belongs to you the secret is to accept God. And after accepting God you have to give him his tithe and offering. People think it’s a form of extortion but in reality it is a way of recognising that everything you get is from God. And if you are faithful with that he will look after you, at the end of the day tithe is only 10 percent of your earnings.”

Delma also took time to urge the youth to respect their parents and elders, unlike the prodigal son who disrespected his father by asking for his share of the inheritance before his father’s, because “failure to respect parents is a sign that you do not respect God.”

Lupepe is famous for his role in turning the Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League (PSL) into a semi-professional league. He introduced incentives for Amazulu Football Club players such as monthly salaries, medical aid, bonuses, training and camping allowances at a time when most clubs just paid winning allowances or salaries based on the number of games played per month.

JOSIAH MAGAMA TONGOGARA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T09:20:00.000-08:00

Josiah Magama Tongogara

Zanla Commander Tongogara

One is the ZANLA chief General Josiah Magama Tongogara who died just before the country attained its independence (his father worked at Ian Smith's father's farm near Shurugwi where he grew up and the two used to play together as children before politics separated them to fight on opposite sides, however, there was no bad blood between them when they met at Lancaster House for talks that led to Zimbabwe's independence.

Tongogara Mapping the road to freedom for Zimbabwe

We used to throw stones at each other in Salisbury. We cannot pass this on to our kids. We are going away and we must leave a stable Zimbabwe to the new generation . . Let’s leave a really united Zimbabwe. I don’t want to see my kids throwing stones over these minor divisions. I think they will laugh at me because I did.'
These are the words of Josiah Magama Tongogara,

"One of Tongo’s geniuses lay in his belief in the youth, he was inspired by the youth. He had tremendous faith in the youth, he believed that the salvation of the country lay in mobilising the youth to fight the liberation struggle. He demonstrated in Mozambique that the lowest of the cadres was as important as the leader. He was a politician, a visionary, a military genius — and a youth."

Listen to Josiah Tongogara's vision for a new Zimbabwe(from 6:10)

Josiah Magama Tongogara (1938 - December 26, 1979) was a commander of the ZANLA guerrilla army in Rhodesia. He attended the Lancaster House conference that led to Zimbabwe's independence and the end of white minority rule. Many expected him to be the first president of Zimbabwe, with Robert Mugabe, head of Zanla's political wing, ZANU, as prime minister.

Tongogara and his parents lived on the farm owned by the parents of Ian Smith, Rhodesia's last prime minister.

At the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979, Tongogara was a crucial "moderating" force, according to Lord Carrington, the then British Foreign Secretary, who chaired the talks. By then Tongogara openly favored unity between ZANU and Joshua Nkomo's ZAPU. "Robert Mugabe referred to unity with Zapu as sharing the spoils with those who had not shouldered the burden of fighting," says Mhanda. As Lancaster House concluded, Tongogara returned to Mozambique, where Zanla was based, to inform his soldiers of the ceasefire. Margaret Dongo was among them. At fifteen, she had crossed into Mozambique to join the guerrillas, adopting the chimurenga (liberation war) name of Tichaona Muhondo ("we shall see/resolve this in the battle").

Six days after the Lancaster House Agreement was signed Robert Mugabe, on the Voice of Zimbabwe radio station, conveyed "an extremely sad message" to "all the fighting people of Zimbabwe": the forty one year old Tongogara was dead, killed in a car accident in Mozambique on December 26, 1979.

Josiah Tungamirai, the ZANLA High Command's political commissar relates that on the night of the fatality, he and Tongogara had been travelling with others in two vehicles from Maputo to Chimoio. Tungamirai said he was in the front vehicle. It was dark and the roads were bad. Tungamirai's car passed a military vehicle that had been carelessly abandoned, with no warning signs at the side of the road. After that, he could no longer see the headlights of the following car in his rear view mirror. Eventually he turned back, and, as he had feared, they found Tongogara's car had struck the abandoned vehicle. Tongogara was sitting in the front passenger seat. Tungamirai told me that he had struggled to lift Tongogara out of the wrecked car. He said that as he was doing so, Tongogara heaved a huge sigh and died in his arms.

Margaret Dongo was one of the last people to see him alive. "We were eighteen girls who were having a function and he came to say a few words to bless the occasion."

Death
ZANU released an undertaker's statement saying his injuries were consistent with a road accident, but no autopsy results or pictures have been released(the undertaker who gave the report was indeed Mr K.J Stokesand not Mr R Silke).

Theories on death

A CIA intelligence briefing of 28 December 1979 said Tongogara was a potential political rival to Mugabe because of his .. ambition, popularity and decisive style. On the same day, the US embassy in Zambia reported: Almost no one in Lusaka accepts Mugabe's assurance that Tongogara died accidentally. When the ambassador told the Soviet ambassador the news, the surprised Soviet immediately charged 'inside job'.[2]

Ian Smith also insisted in his memoirs that Tongogara's "own people" killed him, and that he had disclosed at Lancaster House that Tongogara was under threat. "I made a point of discussing his death with our police commissioner and head of special branch, and both assured me that Tongogara had been assassinated," Smith wrote.[3]

A former Detective in the Law and Order Section of the now defunct BSA Police ( now Zimbabwe Republic Police ) saw photographs of Tongogara's body. There were three wounds, consistent with gun shot wounds, to his upper torso. The undertaker's statement (described above) was not a formal autopsy report and as such was dismissed by all but the senior politburo of ZANU.

In spite of all these rumours, Mr. R. Silke, the pathologist for Mashfords Funeral Home in Zimbabwe, confirmed, in a television documentary in 1982 called "Tongo", that this theory of gunshot wounds on Tongogara's body was false as he personally inspected the body. He confirmed that the injuries he found were consistent with road accident trauma.

Another theory is that he was killed by the Rhodesian SAS.

Tribute to Tongogara by Chiwoniso Maraire and Andy Brown

EDSON ZVOBGO 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T09:06:00.000-08:00

Edson Jonasi Zvobgo (2 October 1935 - 22 August 2004) was a founder of Zimbabwe's ruling party Zanu-PF,[citation needed] was the Patriotic Front's spokesman at the Lancaster House in late 1979, a Harvard-trained lawyer, and a poet.

His name is often misspelled by the media, either as Eddison instead of Edson or Zvogbo instead of Zvobgo.

He was born in then Southern Rhodesia in 1935, near Fort Victoria (now Masvingo), where his father was a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church. In 1960, Zvobgo won a scholarship to Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts aged 25. After taking a bachelor's degree there in 1964, he returned home to be arrested and detained for political activism against white rule in Rhodesia, along with Robert Mugabe and Joshua Nkomo.

Zvobgo was freed in 1971, and he spent a period in exile in Canada. He then studied law at Harvard and international relations at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, followed by a position as associate professor teaching criminal law at Lewis University College in Illinois.

Zvobgo played a key role in international negotiations at Lancaster House that ended the bitter bush war and led to British-sponsored all race elections ahead of independence in 1980. He was the Zanu-PF spokesman, and impressed many in the international press with his quick repartee and astute analysis of the negotiations. In the 1980 elections, he won a seat in parliament for Masvingo, which he continued to hold until his death.

An influential member of Zimbabwe's first fully independent cabinet, Zvobgo was minister for local government and housing until 1982, and minister for justice until 1985. As minister of parliamentary and constitutional affairs, in 1987 he made several amendments to the Constitution that concentrated power in the hands of the president and moved Zimbabwe towards a one-party state.

Initially a staunch supporter of Zanu-PF policies, in later years he criticized Robert Mugabe's autocratic rule.

In 1992 Zvobgo was moved to the less influential post of Minister of Mines. In 1996 he survived a car accident, in which both his legs were broken. This accident was considered suspicious by many. Shortly after the accident Mugabe demoted Zvobgo further to Minister Without Portfolio, and, in 2000, he was dropped from the cabinet altogether.

In the 2002 presidential elections, he refused to campaign for Mugabe, but did not endorse the opposition challenger Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). He also voiced his opposition to the sweeping media law, passed the same year, calling it "the most serious assault on our constitutional liberties since independence".

Despite his criticism, Zvobgo eventually voted for the legislation, which was used to close off Zimbabwe's only privately owned daily newspaper, The Daily News, and to arrest at least 31 independent journalists.

He became the subject of an internal party disciplinary inquiry in 2003 for his refusal to campaign for Mugabe and after describing the laws as a weapon to stifle opposition to the government, but allegations of disloyalty were eventually dropped.

Zvobgo had also been accused of holding private talks with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as the ruling party abandoned formal dialogue between the two parties.

ALFRED NIKITA MANGENA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T08:48:00.000-08:00

Alfred Nikita Mangena (-1978), born Alfred Mangena in the Maranda area, commanded the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), the militant branch of the Zimbabwe African People's Union, in the Rhodesian Bush War. Lookout Masuku led ZIPRA after Mangena's death in 1978.

In November 1975 ZAPU and the Zimbabwe African National Union formed the Zimbabwe People's Army in Mozambique. While the joint military force soon fell apart, when it successfully functioned Mangena served as the second-in-command.

Mangena led a ZIPRA uprising against ZAPU moderates in 1977 with hundreds of followers in camps in Zambia attacking ZAPU's headquarters in Lusaka. While Mangena did not intend to lead a coup against Joshua Nkomo, he wished to reassert his power over the organization's militant activities. Soon after the uprising he was assassinated.

FARAI RWODZI ENTREPRENUER 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T08:42:00.000-08:00

Farai is a leading entrepreneur with interests in various sectors including financial services, hospitality, manufacturing, industrial, property development and mining.

Farai served his articles with Ernst & Young Chartered Accountants (Zimbabwe) from 1991 to 1995 and qualified as a Chartered Accountant (Zimbabwe) in 1996. Upon leaving Ernst & Young, he worked for Delta Corporation Limited briefly and then moved to Real Africa Durolink (Private) Limited where he was the Executive Director responsible for corporate finance. He left in October 1999 to set up Interfin Merchant Bank of Zimbabwe Limited (“Interfin”).

Farai Rwodzi is a Zimbabwean entrepreneur in financial services, agriculture, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, property, and mining.

Farai is a leading Zimbabwean entrepreneur with interests in various sectors of the economy including financial services, hospitality, industrial, property development and mining. He has been instrumental in the founding and/or transformation of several businesses and enterprises throughout the volatile economic environment that has characterized Zimbabwe since the late 1990s.

Farai Rwodzi is a Zimbabwean entrepreneur with significant investments in various sectors of the economy including financial services, agriculture, retail, hospitality, manufacturing, property development and mining. Farai is a chartered accountant by profession having served his articles of clerkship with Ernst & Young. He is the founder member of Interfin Holdings Limited incorporating Banking, Insurance and Stock broking businesses. He is currently a shareholder and a director of several listed and unlisted companies including the following:

Farai is shareholder, chairman and director of several listed companies including:

Apex Corporation of Zimbabwe Limited – a diversified manufacturer of engineering products, including cast iron products, mining equipment and grinding mills.
Meikles Limited – a diversified hotel and retail agro conglomerate, dual listed in London and Zimbabwe.
Phoenix Consolidated Industries Limited – manufacturer of brushware, bathroom fittings, protective materials, clothing and wire products.
Gullivers Consolidated Limited – manufacturer of heavy engineering products such as railway wagons and steel fabrication products.
Interfin Financial Services – established in 1999, comprising of 4 core businesses, banking, term, life and health insurance and stockbroking and asset management. Interfin Bank merged with CFX in June 2010 to become a leading merchant and commercial bank in Zimbabwe. Farai no longer holds an executive role in the Interfin group of companies, but is non executive Chairman of Interfin Financial Services which is listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange of which Interfin Banking Corporation is a subsidiary.
Aico – has diversified over the past 5 years from major player in the cotton sector to the FMCG business (with 49% purchase of Olivine from HJ Heinz in 2007). Aico owns 50.9% of SeedCo, and purchased Exhort Enterprises, vegetable packers, in 2006.
SeedCo – the largest seed producer in Southern Africa with branches in Zambia, Botswana, Kenya and South Africa.
Savannah – is the leading cigarette manufacturing company in Zimbabwe. Having started operating in 2002 as a threshing company, they are the proud manufacturers of Pacific, Pegasus and Branson families of brands. Headquartered in Zimbabwe, they are also found directly and indirectly in South Africa, Mozambique, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi and DRC.

African Sun Limited (Regional) – with properties and management contracts in southern, central and west Africa.
Dawn Properties – property company on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange.

Altfin Holdings Limited – holding company to a short term insurer and life assurance company.
Duration Gold Limited – is a Zimbabwe focused, private, emerging gold producer and explorer. Duration currently has a global resource base of 4.2 million oz of gold and is licensed to market and sell its gold on the open market.
Africom – is a Zimbabwean provider of telecommunications services, providing solutions in mobile and fixed wireless telephony and internet access.
James North – manufacturer and retailer of protective clothing.
Zimbabwe Alloys Limited – leading producer of high and low carbon Ferro Chrome as well as Ferro Silicone Chrome.
He is also a member of the board of stewards of the Mashonaland Turf Club which operates both the race courses in Zimbabwe as well as related betting operations and the Lotto in Zimbabwe.

Farai is on the Parents Liaison Committee of St Johns College and Parents Teachers Association of Peterhouse Girls School.

About Farai

I believe in Zimbabwe…it’s truly the last frontier…it’s the only place I want to be, Zimbabwean through and through, it has never occurred to me to live anywhere else

What drives me is the search for opportunity and creating long term relationships which translate these opportunities to wealth/value over the next several decades, money per se does not excite me.

I feel as if I am the luckiest person in the world, to be here, now, with the best people in the world, in a country that must surely possess the greatest potential in the world.

I travel widely in search of opportunity, including to the US, Europe, where I have business partners in Spain, as well as within Africa and to the East.

My odyssey is an annual outing for meditation and spiritual upliftment, being a firm believer that we are, after all, ”spiritual beings having a temporary human experience” .

I am passionate about what I do; what do I do, you might ask, I run Farai Rwodzi Inc, an investment vehicle which has a number of interests in most sectors of the Zimbabwe’s diverse economy.

The country’s resource and mineral wealth are stupendous; how to unlock value, responsibly, equitably and profitably , for the benefit of all Zimbabweans, is what drives me.

At 40, I believe time is on my side to quietly do my homework, patiently cultivating the conditions that will bring about the necessary conditions for Zimbabwe’s recovery. My primary tool is influencing.

What matters to me is whether I can live with what I do. I talk to people from all walks of life, of all persuasions and convictions. Each time I am left with the enduring view that we all have something to offer-we can all bring something valuable to the party. All people are yearning to be understood; they want to relate to others, and seek to be accepted for who they are.

We have a public persona that we must project, while at the same time we have our private persona, which often is who we really are…this private, little known person is the one I seek in each relationship I cultivate – that is the level at which we get the most out of each other…but peeling off each layer takes time!

I truly believe that Zimbabweans do not spend enough time really talking to each other. We are quick to judge and exclude. We do not seek to listen and understand another’s world view. We place each other in boxes; this compartmentalisation kills cooperation and collaboration. Who suffers – we do. This is an over-simplification, I know, but we have to get over the past, some time, and focus our energy on the future; not 2 or 5 years from now, but decades hence.

We Zimbabweans are the turn around agent, the catalyst for our country’s recovery – no one else.

We have to accept that there are certain things that may not happen in our lifetime, but we can, and must, set the preconditions for them to be a reality in the future.

Sport – I was left wing and wore the “famous” no 11 jersey for Churchill Boys High School, Harare, 1st XV. I still hold the second fastest time for 100m sprint in Zimbabwe, set in 1989.

Hobbies – meditation, reading

Culture – love to watch my children perform, across their various areas of interest

Vision – to leave the world a better place than I found it

The principles / values you live by – live life with passion, make a difference

www.farairwodzi.com

DOMINIC BENHURA 100 GREATEST ZIMBAWEANS

2009-11-22T08:20:00.000-08:00

At the age of 10 Dominic Benhura began to assist his cousin, the sculptor Tapfuma Gutsa, an soon after to create his own works. Many early formative years were spent at Chapungu Sculpture Park and he is today regarded as the cutting edge of Zimbabwe sculpture with one-man exhibitions in Zimbabwe, Australia, Belgium, Holland, Germany and America.

His subject matter is extensive including plants, trees, reptiles, animals and the whole gambut of human experience. Benhura has an exceptional ability to portray human feeling through form rather than facial expression. He continues to lead by experimentation and innovation and has created many memorable works including Euphorbia Tree, Our H.I.V. Friend, Swing Me Mama, The Dance of the Rainbirds, and Lazy Sunday.

The Dance of the Rainbirds

DOMINIC BENHURA, born in 1968, is in a league of his own. He began his career in sculpture at the age of ten when he studied under his cousin, Tapfuma Gusta, a Master Sculptor. Dominic sold his first piece professionally to architects at the age of twelve. His work is bold and daring and he captures balance and movement both physically and emotionally. His prime motivation is to explore new ideas, concepts, techniques and methods and to express and communicate powerfully simple ideas. Nature, family and the relationships with his children are his main inspiration for his sculptures.
EUPHORBIA TREE CHICAGO EXHIBIT

Dominic often combines materials such as steel, wire and stone to create a beautiful mixed medium, which works together in harmony. The stone itself is selected for its luminosity and color, and is carved and ground down and reconstructed to create a striking plant or human form, for which he has become world renowned. Dominic's work has been included in many major exhibitions both in Zimbabwe and internationally. He has also been involved in workshops in Botswana, USA, Holland, Belgium, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He now works out of his home and is passing down his knowledge and skill to many international artists and local apprentices.
OUR HIV FRIEND, 1997

EXHIBITIONS:
# Millesgarten Museum,Sweden
# Yorkshire Sculpture Park, United Kingdom
# EXPO 92, Seville, Spain
# Loveland Colorado, USA
# Trinkhaus Unt Burkhardt, Dusseldorf
# Bank Sparkasse Wuppertal, Germany
# Helsinki, Finland 92
# Galerie IM Schlossgarten Gauengaloch, Germany
# Westfalen Park, Dortmund
# Shona Sol Gallery, Santa Fe NM, USA
# Barbara Ackerman Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, USA
# Kastel Henkenshage, St. Oedenrode, Holland
# Kastel Alden Biezen, Bilzen, Belgium
# International Workshop Remise Academy, Denmark
# Workshop, Ft. Canning, Singapore
# Modern African Art, Berlin, Germany
# Chapungu Sculpture Park, Harare, Zimbabwe - permanent exhibition
# Award of Distinction- Annual Mobil Oil Zimbabwe Competition '97
# Workshop and Exhibition in Hamburg, Germany '98
# Judging the Annual Mobil Oil Sponsored competition for the National Gallery of Zimbabwe
# Workshops at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens- South Africa
# One man show at Chupungu gallery- Australia '99
# Judging the Women's Annual Competition '99
# Representative of Zimbabwe at the Standard Bank National Arts Festival- Sothe Africa
# Artenium Gallery- Hamburg, Germany
# Edinburgh Arts Festival, Scotland '00
# Group Exhibit at Kew Gardens, England with Chapungu Gallery
# Group Exhibit at Artspace 2000, England
# One-man Exhibition at Kubatana Gallery, Atlanta, Georgia
# One-man Exhibition at Expo 2000, Hanover, Germany

JAIROS JIRI 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T08:05:00.001-08:00

JAIROS JIRI BAND ZIMBABWE

Jairos Jiri was a philanthropist bornin the Mutenyami Village in Bikita, Masvingo, close to Chitsanga Primary School. In the early day of his childhood he had a dream of helping the disabled people. He started creating facilities in the 1940s for disadvantaged and disabled people in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, using Christian principles of charity, patience and non-judgmental tolerance.

The Jairos Jiri Association was founded in Bulawayo in 1950. The art centre outlet for the association quickly achieved prominence and by the 1960s was a prime source of curios for tourists. These items were made by disabled people and included tiles and tiled tables and wall plaques, carvings, pottery, painted artworks and sculptures. His rehabilitation centre in Bulawayo also fostered music and dance. By 1974 the centres had expanded and diversified to include homes for the disabled, and legal representation was gained locally and in the United Kingdom. Jairos Jiri centres and his philosophy are still a major resource for community action and charity in Zimbabwe.

Jairos Jiri had 18 children in total and was divorced three times. He lived with his last wife Ethel Jiri and their six daughters: Patience, Precious, Primrose, Priscilla, Penelope and Pamela who was 11 days old when he died in 1982. Ethel Jiri died from throat cancer and was buried alongside her husband in Bikita - Mutenyami village.

Jairos Jiri was accorded a national hero's status in 1982 but his brother Ziwumbwa refused as he wanted him to be buried in the village. Jairos was buried in the Mutenyami Village in Bikita and the burial was attended by prominent people including the then Prime Minister of Zimbabwe Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

SEKURU KAGUVI GUMBORESHUMBA FREEDOM FIGHTER 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T07:07:00.000-08:00

Gumboreshumba (meaning: The foot / claws of a lion) also known as Kagubi, lived in Chikwaka's Kraal in the Goromonzi Hill, near Harare Zimbabwe. He was obviously a man of some substance in the area. He was married to a daughter of Chief Mashonganyika whose kraal was some three miles to the south of the Goromonzi Hill and he also had wives from the kraal of headman Gondo which is also in the vicinity of Goromonzi Hill. He became known as a supplier of good luck in hunting and was able to speak to people “from the trees and the rocks”. He was believed to be the spirit husband of the other great Shona spirit, Nehanda.

He was a powerful spirit medium, along with Mbuya Nehanda and Mkwati, he was instrumental in organizing the first nationwide resistance (known in Zimbabwe as the First Chimurenga), and known to the then colonial rule as the Rebellion of 1896-7 in the then Rhodesia.

The historical Kaguvi lived in the land currently known as Zimbabwe and was active between 1660 and 1680 as one of the founders of the Rozwi Empire. He was at that time the leader of Guruuswa, the area occupying the south-west quarter of Zimbabwe, and he took over leadership of the Rozwi dynasty from Gumboreshumba who is called the progenitor of the Rozwi dynasty which eventually ruled most of this country.

Kaguvi's spirit or his mudzimu (Shona for ancestral spirit) lived on from that time occupying the human form of a spirit medium, svikiro. Before the European occupation of present day Zimbabwe, Kaguvi's spirit medium was Kawodza who lived on the present day Kaguvi Hill on the southern bank of the Umfuli River approximately 13 miles west of Beatrice town. Below this hill is a pool in the Umfuli River which has never been known to dry up and which according to Shona tradition used to give forth the noises of cattle, sheep, goats and cockerels. Kawodza himself was killed in a Matabele raid and the family of his son fled north, eventually settling in these hills. One of his sons was Gumboreshumba, presumably named after the founder of the Rozwi dynasty and prior to the European occupation in 1890, Gumboreshumba found himself possessed of the Kaguvi spirit previously held by his grandfather, Kawodza.
As colonialism began to get its grip on the natives of Zimbabwe, there was military drive to rid of the British settlers. The collective efforts of the locals to get rid of the British colonialist in the period of 1896-7 have become known as the First Chimurenga a.k.a the Rebellion.
Matemai & Simboti - Nehanda Mudzimu Woye

Due to the cultural beliefs of the locals, the leading roles behind the rebellion were by three spirit mediums. The rebellion was initiated in Matebeland in May 1896, the leading role there being Mukwati, in October 1896 Gumboreshumba and Nehanda from Mashonaland joined in; these were the three critical people behind the rebellion

Gumboreshumba, who is hereafter called Kaguvi, whilst he was in the Umfuli area sent messengers to the spirit medium, Mukwati, who lived in a cave in the Matopos and who was the svikiro (voice) of the Supreme God, Mwari. These messengers were sent to obtain medicine to destroy locusts but they came back to Mashonaland with the news that Mukwati had revealed that the Shona should rise up against the whites in the same way as the Matabele were doing and that Kaguvi would have the same powers to kill the whites as Mukwati had. Kaguvi being the spiritual husband of Nehanda managed to convince her to preach the gospel of war in Mashonaland.

Because of Kaguvi’s Goromonzi connection, it is not surprising that his message was acted upon quickly in the area. In fact the commander of Chief Chikwaka's warriors, one Zhanti, actually travelled to the Umfuli to receive the message and returned to this place eager to act upon it. The rebellion broke out on or about 16 June, 1896, with the first killings being in the Umfuli / Hartley area and in the Norton area. So it was that Kaguvi, who was a emanciated looking 'man of about forty years of age', who had previously specialized in providing 'medicine' to ensure success in hunting; now he preached war to the death.
There is a historical eyewitness account of some of the events Kaguvi was involved in:
“Kaguvi and Dakwende arrayed themselves in striking feather caps and fastened horns upon their heads …. These two worthies would then rush into the centre of the people….. then falling into trance, presumably possessed, gave out orders as though coming from the ancestors whom they all revered”
By the end of 1896, the authorities had at last recognised the importance of the 'spirit mediums' to the rebel cause. Lord Earl Grey wrote to his wife, “Kaguvi is the witch-doctor who is preventing the Mashona from surrendering. Whilst a Native commissioner in the then Salisbury wrote, “If we capture Kaguvi the war is over”. From then on the military began to exert increasing pressure on the areas where Kaguvi and Mkwati had set up their headquarters, but both men escaped when, after three attempts, the stockaded kraal was stormed. They took refuge in the Mazoe valley with Nehanda.

The prisoners, Nehanda and Kaguvi were perplexed by the white men's long processes of the law which only ended in the March of 1898 with their conviction; they were hanged seven weeks later. It is necessary to read the account of Kaguvi last days, written by a priest from Chishawasha Mission. He came to offer Nehanda and Kaguvi religious instruction and baptism, and, although Kaguvi at first refused to listen to him, he came to believe later that it might help him to avoid the gallows; somewhat pathetically he even offered his clerical visitor "10 head of cattle, his children, etc., if only I could get his sentence changed'.
Nehanda on the other hand loudly and constantly rejected the priest's services. Nehanda was hanged first, in the view of Kaguvi.
“After which though very much frightened Kaguvi listened to me and repeated he would no longer refuse to receive baptism. After he had made the necessary acts of faith, repentance, etc., I baptised him, giving him the name of the chief Dismas . . . Kaguvi did not give the least trouble nor did he make any lamentation. He died. . . quiet and resigned, and, as I hoped, in good dispositions."
He was hanged in 1898 at the same time as Nehanda, but unlike Nehanda who remained proud and unrepentant to the end, Kaguvi appeared to recant and shortly before his execution.
It seems clear that despite this somewhat abject ending, Kaguvi should be credited with the spark which set alight the rebellion and yet his spirit wife, Nehanda, seems to have received more acclaim for this than he has. Is it that the people remember and compare his lack of courage at the end with the steadfastness of Nehanda or is it that his spirit was not as powerful as that of Nehanda? One hears of the Nehanda spirit being resurrected not only in the war that led to the independence of Zimbabwe but also in other times of crisis between the first and second Chimurenga wars. Charles Bullock in a footnote in his book, The Mashona, published in 1927, has this to say:
"It was no leading Mashona chief who fermented the rebellion in Mashonaland but Kaguvi. That false charlatan with his concertina and paraffin tins deceived the people into believing that he was the host of the God of Battles - the Lord of Sabbath; and that his spirit power would blind the white enemies or turn them into mountain hares. He was an impostor to us - but even so to the natives eventually; for the spirit he claimed as he did, did not rise again in another. "
A similar sentiment is expressed by Native Commissioner Wiri Edwards which was published in early editions of NADA. the quote goes as follows:
“The Mondoro or Mwari was no god of war, but a new priest or mouthpiece comes upon a scene in Kaguvi alias Gumboreshumba. Kaguvi was a ventriloquist of this Native Commissioners Campbell, Kenney and myself were convinced by our investigations and comparing notes after the rebellion. Through Kaguvi the Mondoro spoke from the trees and the rocks to the people. According to Mwari the cause of all the trouble that had come upon the land was the white man. They had brought the locusts and the rinderpest, and to crown it all, they, the owners of the cattle which had died, were not allowed to eat the meat. The carcasses had to be burned or buried. Mwari decreed that the white men were to be driven from the country. They, the natives, had nothing to fear, Mwari would turn the bullets of the white man into water. Nehanda, the high priestess of Mwari and the most influential in the northern and central parts of Mashonaland, was not at first inclined to follow Kaguvi's lead but was finally convinced on hearing the trees and rocks give out the message from the Mondoro”

(c) Bulawayo1872

DR TICHAFA SAMUEL PARIRENYATWA ZIMBAWE'S FIRST BLACK MEDICAL DOCTOR 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T06:37:00.000-08:00

Dr. Tichafa Samuel Parirenyatwa (1927-1962)

Zimbabwe's first black medical doctor. Dr. Parirenyatwa grew up in the high density surbub of Mutare called Sakubva.

The largest medical center in Zimbabwe, the famous Parirenyatwa Hospital in Harare was named after him.

Dr. Tichafa Parirenyatwa was born in Rusape. He graduated to be a doctor of medicine at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1957, where two of his fellow students and countrymen were Silas Mundawarara and E M Pswarayi.

There was backlash from the white people when he was appointed medical officer in charge of Antelope Mine Hospital in Matabeleland as some of the local white farmers were horrified. During his era, racial tensions were rising between the whites and the black people. A group of white people wrote to the Chronicle in protest, the inference not quite spelt out but nonetheless clear that it was unacceptable to have a black man attending to their wives.

When he resigned from government service in 1961 to go into politics full time, there was another letter to the Chronicle from local white farmers. They were wholeheartedly thanking him for his services and the inference not quite spelled out but nonetheless clear was that a future without Parirenyatwa at Antelope Mine Hospital was bleak beyond words for the farmers and their wives.

In January 1962 he was appointed deputy president of Zapu, having proved his mettle by laying the foundations of a party network from grassroots to national executive level. On 14 August of that year, he reportedly died in a car crash on the Gweru-Bulawayo road.

HERBET CHITEPO ZIMBABWE'S FIRST BLACK LAWYER 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T01:04:00.000-08:00

HERBET CHITEPO is Zimbabwe's first black lawyer.
(15 June 1923 – 18 March 1975) led the Zimbabwe African National Union until the Central Intelligence Organization of Rhodesia assassinated him in March 1975.
Chitepo was born in Watsomba village in the Inyanga District of Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. His family came from the Manyika clan (Samanyika) of the Shona people. He was educated at St David's Mission School, Bonda, St Augustine's School (Tsambe, same school that Dambudzo Marechera attended), Penhalonga and then at Adam's College, Natal, South Africa, where he qualified as a teacher in 1945.

After teaching for a year, he resumed his studies to graduate with a BA degree from Fort Hare University College in 1949. He qualified as a Barrister-at-Law, and called to the bar by Gray's Inn, alumni included Winston Churchill. Further still whilst in London as a research assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was the first African in Southern Rhodesia to qualify as a Barrister. In 1954 Chitepo became Rhodesia's first black lawyer (a special law was required to allow him to occupy chambers with white colleagues).On returning to Rhodesia in 1954, he practised as a Lawyer and defended many African nationalists such as Ndabaningi Sithole in court. In 1961, he served as legal adviser to Joshua Nkomo, founder of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), at the Southern Rhodesia Constitutional Conference in London. Ian Smith's government did not detain him as he did not come out in the open as an official of the nationalist movement and the regime also feared that being the first lawyer, Chitepo was too internationally well-known to be locked up.

In May 1962 ZAPU was banned because of militarism and Chitepo was persuaded to go into voluntary exile to escape possible detention. He became Tanganyika's first African Director of Public Prosecutions. The Ndabaningi Sithole and Joshua Nkomo factions of ZAPU split apart in July, 1963. Nkomo's supporters founded the PCC-ZAPU (later just called ZAPU again) and favoured a more militaristic approach. As the more moderate faction, Chitepo sided with Sithole and was elected Chairman of ZANU ( having defeated Nathan Shamuyarira ) from its foundation. He held this post until 7 December 1974, when the Lusaka Accord was signed.

Both parties vied for domination but in 1964 both were banned and the leaders were all arrested. Both parties chose to leave the country and reorganize and form armies from outside Rhodesian borders, although they chose different countries to make their base. ZAPU based itself in the West and Zambia where it organized ZIPRA (the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army.) They allied with the Soviet Union and organised a vanguard of highly trained soldiers. ZANU, however, moved into Tanzania and then to Mozambique and set up ZANLA (Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army) which concentrated more on mobilizing the masses in the countryside in a method pioneered by the Chinese.

In January 1966 Chitepo resigned as Director of Public Prosecutions and moved to Zambia in order to concentrate on the armed struggle. He toured world capitals canvassing support for ZANU and for the enforcement of total economic sanctions against Rhodesia. With his friendly disposition, he was very effective and earned for ZANU international recognition and respect.
Sithole and others prepared a comprehensive document giving powers to Chitepo to lead ZANU while Rev. Sithole was in detention and specifically authorising him to carry out the armed struggle. Accordingly, Herbert Chitepo with the military supremo Josiah Tongogara from the Karanga ethnic community,organised and planned successful military guerilla attacks and underground activities in Rhodesia from 1966 onwards. In 1972, he co-ordinated war operations with FRELIMO and opened up the North Eastern region of Zimbabwe as a new and effective war front.

Chitepo died at 8:05am on March 18, 1975 in Lusaka, Zambia when a car bomb, placed in his Volkswagen Beetle the night before, exploded. He and Silas Shamiso, one of his bodyguards, were killed instantly. Sadat Kufamadzuba, his other bodyguard, was injured. The explosion sent part of the car onto the roof of his house and uprooted a tree next door. Hours later one of his neighbors died of injuries he sustained in the explosion.[4] ZANU at the time blamed Rhodesian security forces.

Zambian president Kenneth Kaunda commissioned an inquiry into Chitepo's death. Documents released in October, 2001, placed the blame on ZANU infighting. However, in his biographical account, The Legend of The Selous Scouts, Lt Col Ron Reid-Daly, Officer Commanding, Selous Scouts Regiment, Rhodesian Security Forces, clearly states that the Rhodesian Central Intelligence Organization (CIO) under the leadership of Director General Ken Flower, masterminded the assassination of Herbert Chitepo, subsequently planting documentary evidence blaming ZANU members.

"The decision by Ken Flower...to assassinate Herbert Chitepo, head of the ZANU War Council, now showed how badly Flower has misread the ZANU/ZANLA situation. The death of Chitepo purged ZANU of its many dissenting factions and a new and highly successful leader emerged. Robert Mugabe gave ZANLA the means to consolidate its efforts by providing ZANLA with an indispensable factor - unity." [pg. 173 The Legend of The Selous Scouts]

VERNON BENELE MWAMUKA ZIMBABWE'S FIRST BLACK ARCHITECT 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-22T00:30:00.000-08:00

MWAMUKA DESIGNED SOUTHAMPTON LIFE CENTER, HARARE

VERNON BENELE Mwamuka, the first black architect, still stands out as one of the foremost and most prominent architects Zimbabwe ever produced. In his architectural portfolio, he has to his name the imposing Southampton Life Centre (now Intermarket Life Centre), Construction House, Kopje Plaza, Old Mutual Centre, the Four Ways Mall in Johannesburg and the Joina Centre project (Harare)which is set to become the largest city development in years.
Other most significant projects that brought him praise and respect include Africa University (Mutare),the National University of Science and Technology (Bulawayo), Harare Domestic Airport, BulawayoInternational Airport,FOURWAYS MALL in Johanesburg (South Africa) the School of Hotel and Catering (Bulawayo) and a chain of post offices strewnacross the country.

All these completed commissions attest to Mwamuka’s creative identity. His works have left a very unique aesthetic impact on the immediate environment of the structures revitalising the surrounding urban expanse as in the case of the Kopje Plaza (West of Harare's skyline). The Kopje Plaza changed the sky of the Kopje area where a number of neglected buildings had become an eyesore and a sign of urban decay.
Not only did the Plaza succeed as a retail and office centre, but it also helped to propel the Kopje areainto its phenomenal redevelopment boom. This, in the years when there was a lot of construction activity, at least helped to reverse urban decay.

KOPJE PLAZA HARARE, ONE OF MWAMUKA'S BEST ARCHITECTURAL PIECES

Mwamuka’s distinctly identifiable commissions have become a source of pride which gives Zimbabweans a huge cause for celebrating one of the country’sphilosophical and architectural icon. The buildings he designed, stand today as a tribute to the renowned architect’s attention to buildings that also capture his passion to blend the intimate relationship of topography and materials in siteplanning.

He is also credited for building elegant residential homes and small scale works for top company executives ((in zimbabwe) such as Pindi Nyandoro, Charity Murandu, Albert Nhau, Shingai Mutasa and Kennedy Mandevhani among others.

He also designed his beautiful house in the leafy Borrowdale suburb but unfortunately died before hecould move in.
Mwamuka died in a road accident on December 30 2001 when the car he was travelling in was involved in a head on collision with another at the 196km peg along the Bulawayo-Harare highway.
He was aged 46 at the time. He was returning from Bulawayo where had attended agroundbreaking ceremony of the re-building of the Bulawayo International Airport –renamed the JoshuaMqabuko Nkomo International Airport. Mwamuka was one of the driving forces behind the callto establish a school of architecture in Zimbabwe.
“It is still very distressing….to note that 12 years after independence, we still do not have a school ofarchitecture when Botswana and Zambia boast a schooleach,” he once lamented way back in 1992. “Without a school, there is no active development of the profession as such and there is no way we candevelop architecture which is indigenous to this country, hence our urgent need for such a school,”Mwamuka said when he was the president of the Institute of Architects of Zimbabwe. His exceptional intellectual talent was blended with uncompromising patriotism.
“We need those who are prepared to stay here and get to grips with Zimbabwean conditions,” he once said. Mwamuka was also vocal and called for Zimbabwean architecture firms to start taking positive steps to employ black architects.

In the 1980s and 1990s, black architects trained
outside Zimbabwe could not get employed by local firms
which were white dominated. “We need more blacks to come into the profession since there were not many who ever thought of joining the
profession before,” he said.

Today Zimbabwe has a school of architecture at Nust
thanks to his advocacy. Friends in the engineering and business fraternity say Mwamuka was humble, a true and principled professional
and a gifted and man of exceptional talent. They say he was a charismatic personality who paid extreme detail to his work and who apart from pressure of work managed to touch the hearts and lives of
others who needed assistance.

NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY BULAWAYO ZIMBABWE

“It was his passion (architecture). Anything to do with art, creativity and education was his passion,”says Mrs Margaret Mwamuka, the wife of the late architect at her Borrowdale home.
“I believe his father, Mr Arthur Mwamuka, one of the first black contractors in the early 1950s in Rusapewas influential in his career. That’s where all his passion came from. “When we were still dating he would take me to see buildings. He would say: ‘Tarisa uone, look at thatbuilding. He loved buildings.”She says her husband’s favourite designs were the Kopje Plaza, Intermarket Life Centre and Nust in Bulawayo.
“In Harare, the Kopje Plaza and Southampton Life Centre were his best designs. He would talk about them endlessly. He would take the kids to just look at the buildings,” says Mrs Mwamuka.
“Sometimes he forgot that we were not all architects. He didn’t like short cuts in his works. He feltstrongly that his work and creativity would not come out.” Mwamuka was not materialistic and the love of science, technology and education was the main driving force behind his work. “Money was not his thing, it was the work. A lot of people owed him millions of dollars, but he wouldn’t worry much, he soldiered on with his work,” Mrs Mwamuka says.
“Whenever we went around some major cities in other countries, he would take pictures of buildingseverywhere we went,” she says.
“Vernon was not a deeply religious person but he was very generous in everything he did. He was passionate about his country. He always said he would work things from within despite the numerous challenges he faced in his work. And this is what inspires me to go on. It keeps me going.”
Mwamuka paid fees for students to study architecture overseas. “He helped many students and wanted more blacks to take architecture. He loved sciences and loved to help young people. I learnt a lot from him. I’m grateful for that,” the widow says recalling the life of her husband.

“He was not materialistic in nature. He left a good legacy for my children and the youth in this country.I would be happy if one of my children take up architecture. Kids today are so much fascinated aboutmoney and banking and not sciences,” she says. “He didn’t like the easy route to fame and fortune.
One thing that he said is that you get a lot of satisfaction from working from the bottom right to thetop. When you reflect back you get a lot of satisfaction than rising quickly through corruptionand connections,” Mrs Mwamuka says.

“Vernon had his education and brains. He did not need connections or deals to get going. He relied on his personal skills and education to excel. It wasn’t about money and buying people, but skills and
education that mattered most to him,” she says. Mwamuka was born on January 12, 1955, at Bonda Mission and did his primary education at Vengere Primary School in Rusape.

CONSTRUCTION HOUSE HARARE

He did his secondary education at St Augustine’s Mission, Penhalonga. After passing his A’levels with flying colours – 3’A’s and a ‘B’ in maths, physics, biology and chemistry, he enrolled briefly at the University of Zimbabwe in 1975. By September of that year, he got a scholarship to study architecture at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. He completed his studies in 1978 and proceeded to do a post graduate diploma in architecture in London.
After completing this diploma, Mwamuka left for the United States where he worked for DBTM, anarchitectural firm, between 1979 and 1980. The lure of an independent Zimbabwe was too strong forhim. He returned home in 1981 and joined the ministry of construction.
After working in the civil service, he later joined an architectural firm, Harvey Buffet, where he rose tobecome a senior partner and the firm changed its name to Harvey Buffet Mwamuka Mercuri.
Around the early 1990s he broke away with another Italian born senior partner Eugene Mercuri and formed the Mwamuka Mercuri and Associate Architects.“It was hard when we started this firm. We used our Datsun Pulsar car,” says Mrs Mwamuka.Mwamuka met his childhood sweetheart Margaret in the late 1970s in Sakubva, Mutare just before he left for overseas.

“We had a saying: ‘When we meet, if the relationship works it will be mission accomplished, if we fail, itwill be mission impossible,” Mrs Mwamuka says recalling the time when his late husband left for theUK.
“He was a very private person and never wanted achurch wedding. Pomp and ceremony wasn’t for him. So we settled for a private wedding in June 1990 at the Chisipite United Methodist Church,” she says. “They were only two witnesses and the pastor.” “Vernon loved simplicity. He loved substance and ofcourse, his Scotch Whisky.”
“We have to encourage our children to value education and hard work. Life is about giving back to society.
Its not about being billionaires but about having a decent life, God fearing honest and humble people thanbeing greedy billionaires,” she says. “We have to teach our children that Zimbabwe through science and technology can be a better country.”

ALICK MACHESO 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T23:51:00.000-08:00

Alick Macheso is a contemporary Zimbabwean musician, often referred to as the king of sungura. Born and raised in Shamva, Alick rose to fame in the late 1990s as a solo-artist with Orchestra Mberikwazvo.

lick Macheso was born in 1968 in Shamva, 90 kilometres to the north of Harare, to parents of Malawian origin - a fact that was to inspire him to be able to speak and sing in five languages - Shona, Chichewa, Sena, Venda and Lingala. He is working on perfecting his Ndebele. Growing on a farm, especially before Zimbabwe's Independence from Britain in 1980, the environment did not offer him many opportunities. In 1983, at the youthful age of 15, he left the farm compounds of Shamva to head for the dizzy lights of Harare.

Arriving in the capital at the invitation of a relative, who had been inspired by Macheso guitar-playing prowess at the farm compound, things did not go according to plan and soon Macheso was to switch camps. He moved in with Nicholas Zacharia: "He really acted like an uncle to me and took me into his home. They provided me with everything up to the time I married my wife," recalls Macheso. The two went on a music-inspired journey, joining several bands, mostly sungura-playing outfits.

In 1997, he broke ranks with Zacharia, to form his own Orchestra Mberikwazvo, the outfit that backs him to date. "I remember we used to be regulars at Murambinda in Buhera and there was this braai-man who used to do it differently from others. And I would comment 'mberi kwazvo zvaunoita' and the saying stuck. When the managers at Gramma (his recording studio) asked me what the name of my band was, I simply said Orchestra Mberikwazvo."

Simbaradzo was to be the turning point is his career, and Mundikumbuke and Mai Rubhi, which remain national chants even to this date, brought Macheso into the limelight, and suddenly everyone took notice. He was the phenomenon that the music industry had been waiting for. He was to follow on the success of Simbaradzo with Zvakanaka Zvakadaro, the album which confirmed that, indeed, Zimbabwe, had given birth to a new sensation.

Zvakanaka Zvakadaro was followed, in 2003, by Zvido Zvenyu Kunyanya, yet another confirmation that Macheso had not only arrived on the Zimbabwean music scene, but that he was determined to stay there for as long as possible. It is only a question of time before Macheso becomes the first Zimbabwean musician to sell a million copies of his music.

Macheso whose scintillating live performances and charismatic stage presence have rocked audiences of all stripes made his debut international tour when he performed in London at the Southern African Summer Sunsplash Festival in June 2002. After attempts to carve a niche with his unique bass-strumming technique, his original rhythms resonated with music lovers and his album Simbaradzo disappeared from the shelves at a phenomenal rate, selling more than 350,000 copies. This was a historic record breaking success in his native land of Zimbabwe.

Even the album Zvakanaka Zvakadaro that followed Simbaradzo garnered attention and sold in excess of 100,000 in the first week alone. Macheso honed his skills and refined his musicianship when he was with Khiama Boys. He later assembled a team of talented musicians and came up with Orchestra Mberikwazvo.

His energetic stage presence has become fireworks particularly with his trademark dance, The Razor Wire. He is an entertainer extraordinaire whose performances leave revelers yearning for more.

ALICK MACHESO/MBERIKWAZVO. Discography

(Detailed Discography)
	Released	Title	Label	Country	Format	Samples	Cat.No.	£
	04 Aug 2008	VAPUPURI PUPURAI (2005)	GRAMMA RECORDS	ZIMBABWE	CD		CDJLP1092	12.95
	11 Dec 2007	NDEZVASHE-EH	MUSIC REPLICAT.	ZIMBABWE	CD		CDISIG183	13.45
	11 Dec 2007	GREATEST HITS LIVE IN JOHANNESBURG	MUSIC REPLICAT.	ZIMBABWE	2CD		CDISIG184	15.95
	11 Dec 2007	NDEZVASHE-EH	MUSIC REPLICAT.	ZIMBABWE	DVD		DVDISIG016	14.95
	11 Dec 2007	GREATEST HITS LIVE IN JOHANNESBURG	MUSIC REPLICAT.	ZIMBABWE	DVD		DVDISIG017	14.95
	11 Oct 2004	ZVIDO ZVENYU KUNYANYA	GRAMMA	ZIMBABWE	CD		CDJLP1084	12.95
	20 Feb 2004	ZVAKANAKA ZVAKADARO	GRAMMA	ZIMBABWE	CD		CDJLP1079	12.95
	28 Mar 2001	SIMBARADZO	GRAMMA	ZIMBABWE	CD		CDJLP1074	12.95

OLIVER "TUKU" MTUKUDZI 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T23:10:00.000-08:00

Oliver "Tuku" Mtukudzi (born in 1952 in Highfield, Harare) is a Zimbabwean musician, one of the most beloved performers from that country. He began performing in 1977 when he joined the Wagon Wheels, a band which featured Zimbabwean legend Thomas Mapfumo. Their single, "Dzandimomotera," went gold and Tuku's first album followed, and it was also a major success. Mtukudzi is also a contributor to Mahube, Southern Africa's 'supergroup'

His husky voice has made him the most recognized voice to emerge from Zimbabwe and has earned him a devoted following across Africa and beyond. A member of Zimbabwe's KoreKore tribe he sings in the nation's dominant Shona language along with Ndebele and English. He also incorporates elements of different musical traditions giving his music a distinctive "Tuku Music" style.

WATCH TUKU PERFORM AT BBC STUDIOS IN LONDON

Unlike Mapfumo, Mtukudzi has refrained from directly criticizing the repressive government of President Robert Mugabe, perhaps because he still lives in the country. However, some of his most emotive hits prodded the aging authoritarian ruler, including "Ndakuvara," which bemoans the political violence engineered by Mugabe's ZANU-PF party and "Wasakara (You Are Getting Old)," which most Zimbabweans took as a direct plea for Mugabe to retire.

He is a father of five children and has two grandchildren, two of them are also musicians. He has four sisters and a brother who died. He enjoys swimming in his guitar shaped swimming pool, has released more than 40 albums and cannot remember the number of awards he won.

Oliver Mtukudzi Albums

* 1978 Ndipeiwo Zano (Re-released 2000)
* 1979 Chokwadi Chichabuda
* 1979 Muroi Ndiani?
* 1980 Africa (Re-released 2000)
* 1981 Shanje
* 1981 Pfambi
* 1982 Maungira
* 1982 Please Ndapota
* 1983 Nzara
* 1983 Oliver's Greatest Hits
* 1984 Hwema Handirase
* 1985 Mhaka
* 1986 Gona
* 1986 Zvauya Sei?
* 1987 Wawona
* 1988 Nyanga Yenzou
* 1988 Strange, Isn't It?
* 1988 Sugar Pie
* 1989 Grandpa Story
* 1990 Chikonzi
* 1990 Pss Pss Hallo!
* 1990 Shoko
* 1991 Mutorwa
* 1992 Rombe
* 1992 Rumbidzai Jehova
* 1992 Neria Soundtrack
* 1993 Son of Africa
* 1994 Ziwere MuKobenhavn
* 1995 Was My Child
* 1995 The Other Side: Live in Switzerland
* 1997 Ndega Zvangu (Re-released 2001)
* 1998 Dzangu Dziye
* 1999 Tuku Music
* 2000 Paivepo
* 2001 Neria
* 2001 Bvuma (Tolerance)
* 2002 Shanda sountrack
* 2002 Vhunze Moto
* 2003 Shanda
* 2003 Tsivo (Revenge)
* 2004 Greatest Hits Tuku Years
* 2004 Mtukudzi Collection 1991-1997
* 2004 Mtukudzi Collection 1984-1991
* 2005 Nhava
* 2006 Wonai
* 2007 Tsimba Itsoka
* 2008 (anticipated release) Dairai (Believe)

THOMAS MAPFUMO 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T22:31:00.000-08:00

Thomas Tafirenyika Mapfumo (born 1945) is a Zimbabwean musician known as "The Lion of Zimbabwe" and "Mukanya" for his immense popularity and for the political influence he wields through his music, including his sharp criticism of the government of President Robert Mugabe. He both created and made popular Chimurenga music and his slow-moving style and distinctive voice is instantly recognizable to Zimbabweans.

He now lives in exile in the United States, although he occasionally returns to Zimbabwe, where his music is not played on state-controlled radio and TV.

Mapfumo was born in 1945 in Marondera, Mashonaland East, a town southeast of Harare the capital of Zimbabwe. He lived a traditional, rural Shona lifestyle until the age of ten, when his family moved to the Harare township of Mbare. He joined his first band, the Zutu Brothers (Encyclopædia Britannica says it was the Cyclones), as a singer at the age of 16. From then he was always in one band or another, sometimes doing odd jobs on the side as well, including chicken farming. Hence the name of his 1972 band, the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band.

WATCH THOMAS MAPFUMO LIVE IN CONCERT IN 1994

He played mostly covers of American rock and soul tunes, such as Otis Redding or Elvis Presley, until he was in the Hallelujah Chicken Run Band. There he introduced the innovation of adapting traditional Shona music to modern rock instrumentation.

He worked with guitarist Joshua Dube (Leopard Man's Africa Music Guide says Jonah Sithole) to transcribe the sounds of the chief instrument of traditional Shona music, the mbira to the electric guitar. He also started singing primarily in the Shona language, rather than in English.

Just the fact that he was drawing on the native musical tradition and singing in his native language was a political statement. Rhodesia was ruled by a minority of white individuals who derogated the native black population and culture. But more than that, his lyrics became overtly political, supporting the revolution that was developing in the rural areas, what Mapfumo calls "the communal lands". He called his new style of music Chimurenga. In Shona it means "struggle", and was the name of a previous revolutionary movement in the late nineteenth century. His songs openly called for the violent overthrow of the government, with lyrics like "Mothers, send your sons to war." But since the white government didn't understand Shona, they didn't realize how radical it was.

Eventually they caught on, though. The climax came with a song called "Hokoyo!", which means "Watch out!" The government banned the record from the state-controlled radio and threw him into a prison camp without charges in 1979. But they couldn't stop his records from being played in discos or on radio they didn't control, like the Voice of Mozambique. Large demonstrations in protest of his arrest and an inability to trump up charges against him forced the government to release him after three months.

Free elections were held in 1980 and a new government was installed. Mapfumo performed at a celebratory concert which also featured Bob Marley.

The PRI-syndicated radio program Afropop ran a feature on Thomas Mapfumo in late 1988/early 1989. Host Georges Collinet describes Mapfumo as living in the low-density suburbs with his wife, who worked at a law office in downtown Harare, and his two children - a boy and a girl. And he drove a blue Ford with fake leopard-skin seat covers.

Most of his songs were still political, dealing with poverty and other social issues. Mapfumo comments on the fact that he doesn't sing many love songs: "All you need if you wanna get into the bedroom... You've got a wife. You do it. You don't have to sing a song about it." Collinet also observes that Mapfumo can't sing anything he wants : "Clearly he can't sing 'Down with President Mugabe' - but he wouldn't want to. He supports the present government." However, that would soon change.

Recorded at Shed Studios Harare, by legendary engineer Benny Miller, Mapfumo released the album Corruption in 1989. It criticized Mugabe and his government, with which Mapfumo was becoming more and more disillusioned. Mugabe wasn't happy with Mapfumo, either, and Mapfumo became the target of government harassment. Mapfumo was accused of being involved with a stolen-car ring. Things got uncomfortable enough that Mapfumo moved to Oregon in the late 1990s, where he lives now.

Thomas Mapfumo tours internationally, and still sings and speaks out about the problems of Zimbabwe. His chimurenga style of music influenced other Zimbabwean musicians, including the Bhundu Boys and Stella Chiweshe.

TENDAI MTAWARIRA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T22:06:00.000-08:00

Tendai "Beast" Mtawarira (born 1 August 1985 in Harare, Zimbabwe) is a Zimbabwean-born South African rugby union player for the Sharks in the Super 14 competition. Mtawarira, a prop, is fondly known by friends and fans as "The Beast". Roars of "Beast" are shouted by spectators and fans of the Natal Sharks team whenever Mtawarira attains possession of the ball or makes a big tackle. Mtawarira was selected as part of the South African National Rugby Union team and made his debut playing against Wales in a test match on the 14th of June 2008. The following week, on the 21st of June 2008, Mtawarira scored a try against Italy as well as winning the 'Man of the Match' award.

He attended Peterhouse Group of Boarding Schools in Marondera in Zimbabwe, along with Stormers and recently capped Springbok player Brian Mujati. Notably, despite living in South Africa and representing the country internationally, Mtawarira remains a Zimbabwean national; he qualified for South Africa by three years' residency, as allowed under International Rugby Board rules.

Mtawarira attended Churchill Boys High School for 5 years before being given a full scholarship to Peterhouse. At the age of 15, while at Churchill, he was spotted by legendary Zimbabwean Coach Joey Muwadzuri who invited him to join the Under 19 side at the National Schools Festival. Later that year Coach Joey invited him to be part of Cats and Dogs Rugby Academy Team that won the National Seniors 7's tournament. He played with Stars Dan Hondo,Pete Benade,Tonderai "Kawaza" Chavhanga, among many others. Despite his young age he used his strength and will to learn to tread with the bigger boys. He also represented Zimbabwe in the under 19 age group.

After a fantastic 2008 Super 14 season with the Sharks it was apparent that he had fantastic potential and his speed would be beneficial with the new rules (ELV's).

He was then selected in the Springbok squad and at first received limited game time. Later on he had the opportunity to be a reserve during the test against the Wallabies in Perth. Once he came on his impact was significant and had two long distance runs with the ball. He went on to be a part of the starting lineup in all the subsequent Tri-nations tests.

The highlight of Mtawarira's career to date came in the first test of the British and Irish Lions Tour in 2009. Scrumming against Phil Vickery, Mtawarira dominated his more experienced opponent, leading to Vickery being substituted after 45 minutes, and a man-of-the-match award for Mtawarira[3]. However, he conceded several penalties in the second test when playing opposite Welsh prop Adam Jones. Similarly, in the third test, Mtawarira was largely ineffectual in the scrum, with the returning Vickery, and replacement John Hayes, subduing him up front.

ARTHUR MUTAMBARA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T21:34:00.001-08:00

Arthur Guseni Oliver Mutambara (born 25 May 1966) is a Zimbabwean politician. He became the President of the Movement for Democratic Change-Mutambara faction (MDC) in February 2006. He has worked as the Managing Director and CEO of Africa Technology and Business Institute since September 2003. Under a September 2008 power-sharing agreement, Mutambara became Deputy Prime Minister on 11 February 2009.

Mutambara was a noted leader of the student movement within Zimbabwe in 1988 and 1989, leading anti-government protests at the University of Zimbabwe which led to his arrest and imprisonment. He was later educated on a Rhodes Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford in the United Kingdom where he obtained a PhD in Robotics and Mechatronics, and in the United States where he spent time as a visiting Fellow in the same field, including both California Institute of Technology,Massachusetts Institute of Technology and FSU College of Engineering. He also worked as a lecturer on Business Strategy and as a consultant for McKinsey & Company.

Mutambara criticized government ministers for abusing Zimbabwe's land reform program, engaging in: "monopolistic politics of domination, corruption, and petty bourgeois accumulation."

Mutambara, a self-professed admirer of Che Guevara, has also expressed his intention to visit Cuba to learn more about its "successful resistance" to American sanctions.Mutambara added: "We have a lot to learn from Cuba which started its revolution in 1959, we will continue with our solidarity, continue with the struggle and strengthen our co-operation."

After Mutambara and Tsvangirai failed to unite on a single MDC candidate for the March 2008 presidential election, Mutambara said on 15 February that he would not run for President and that his faction would instead back Simba Makoni. Mutambara instead ran in the concurrent parliamentary election for a seat from the Zengeza East constituency, but he was placed third, with 1,322 votes, according to official results, behind the candidate of the Tsvangirai faction, who won 7,570 votes, and the ZANU-PF candidate, who won 3,042 votes.

The Tsvangirai faction won 99 seats in the parliamentary election and the Mutambara faction won 10, compared with 97 for ZANU-PF. On 28 April 2008, Mutambara and Tsvangirai announced that their factions were reuniting, thus enabling the MDC to have a clear parliamentary majority.

On 1 June 2008, Mutambara was arrested at his home in Harare. According to his lawyer, the arrest was due to an article he wrote in The Standard in April, which allegedly included "falsehoods" and "contempt of court". In this article, he blamed Mugabe for the state of the economy and accused the security forces of committing abuses.[13] On 3 June, Mutambara was released on a bail of 20 million Zimbabwean dollars but he did not go to jail, with the next court date being set for 17 June. After the hearing on 3 June, he described his own suffering as minor compared to that of the people, saying that Mugabe's "human rights violations" would fail and vowing that "we will triumph over evil".

On September 15, 2008, the leaders of the 14-member Southern African Development Community witnessed the signing of a power-sharing agreement between the two MDC factions and ZANU-PF. Under the deal, Mugabe will remain President, Tsvangirai will become Prime Minister, [15] the MDC will control the police, ZANU-PF will control the Army, and Mutambara will become Deputy Prime Minister.

NKOSANA MOYO 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T21:12:00.000-08:00

Dr. Nkosana D. Moyo, Vice President & Chief Operating Officer at African Development Bank

Nkosana D. Moyo is a national of Zimbabwe. He holds a PhD in Physics from Imperial College, University of London and an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, UK, an Eisenhower fellow. He is married and has two children.

Before joining the AfDB, Dr. Moyo served at Actis Capital LLP as partner and Chairman of the Actis Africa Advisory Board. He also served on the boards of a number of companies in the cement, sugar, finance, tourism, mining, airline and food sectors. He served as well as Minister of Industry & International Trade of Zimbabwe.

He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Investment Climate Facility (ICF) and a Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the future of Africa.

Managing Partner, Africa – Actis LLP (formerly CDC Group plc) (January 2004-May 2009)
Associate Director, IFC (May 2001-December 2003)
Minister for Industry & Trade, Zimbabwe (2000-2001)
Managing Director, Batanai Capital Finance (BCF) (1997-July 2000)
Managing Director, Standard Chartered Bank, Tanzania (1995-1996)
Africa Regional Head – Corporate Banking – Standard Chartered Bank, London (1993-1995)
Managing Director, Standard Chartered Merchant Bank, Zimbabwe (1990-1993)

MUTUMWA MAWERE 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T20:31:00.000-08:00

MUTUMWA CREATED A US$400 MILLION DOLLAR EMPIRE EMPLOYINH 20,000 ZIMBABWEANS!

He was educated in Zimbabwe, Swaziland, United Kingdom and United States. He holds B.Sc (Economics), M.Sc (Management), MBA (Finance & Investments) degrees as well as other professional qualifications.

He began his professional career as an Acturial Student in 1984. He then joined the Industrial Development Corporation of Zimbabwe in late 1984 as a Research Economist amd rose through the ranks to become a Senior Research Economist in 1987 before joining the Merchant Bank of Central Africa in the same year as a Corporate Finance Executive.

In 1988, he joined the World Bank as a Young Professional. After completing the program in 1989, he was appointed as an Investment Officer for the International Finance Corporation, the private sector lending arm of the World Bank. He rose through the ranks to become a Senior Investment Officer in 1994. In 1995, he resigned from the World Bank and immigrated to South Africa where he has been based since.

In 1995, he founded Africa Resources Limited (ARL), an investment holding company incorporated under the laws of the British Virgin Island, before moving to South Africa. In August 1995, he approached T & N Plc the UK domiciled parent company of Shabanie & Mashaba Mines Private Limited (SMM) with a proposal to acquire the company's Zimbabwean subsidiaries i.e. the asbestos mines, two Zimbabwean industrial companies and a Zambian manufacturing company. Negotiations began in September 1995.

In November 1995, he formed a partnership with Investec Bank Limited, a South African investment bank, to structure and mobilize financing for a mining private equity fund.
While working on the private equity fund, he continued his negotiations with T & N that culminated in an agreement in March 1996 pursuant to which ARL, a company in which he is the sole shareholder, acquired the remaining mining and industrial assets of T & N in Zimbabwe and Zambia.

Since the acquisition of T & N's two UK based companies that were the sole beneficial owners of the Zimbabwean and Zambian companies, the ARL group of companies grew organically and through acquisitions to become one of the largest and diversified black controlled conglomerates with operations in South Africa, UK, Zambia, Namibia, and Malawi employing about 20,000 people and generating a turnover of about US$400 million.

In 1997, the group established a warehousing and forwarding business, Shipping Consolidated Holdings ("SCH") with operations in Zimbabwe (container depot) and Durban, South Africa (warehouse). Acquired a 100% stake in a cellular service provider, CST Cellular Private Limited, later renamed Firstel Cellular Zimbabwe.
Was the promoter, sponsor and investor in a greenfield commercial bank, FBC Bank ("FBC"). FBC was registered as a commercial bank in February 1997 in accordance with the Zimbabwe Banking Act. FBC is one of the first three commercial banks to be provided with an operating license by the Registrar of Banks and Financial Institutions since 1981. Since opening its first branch in August 1997, FBC has established 14 branch locations countrywide.

As part of the acquisition from T & N, ARL acquired:

(1) Tube and Pipe Industries (TPI) (www.tubepipe.co.zw), a wholly owned Zimbabwean company, established in 1968 as Morewear Tubes (Pvt) Ltd. It commenced operations in 1972 at the current premises in Harare's Willowvale industrial site. The company changed its name to Tube and Pipe Industries in 1978 after being acquired by Turner and Newall (Manchester - UK).

(2) Turnall Fibre Cement (TFC) (www.turnall.co.zw), a division of SMM that is involved in the production of building material including fibre cement roofing products, piping and accessories. TFC manufactures conduit steel conduit pipes and couplings, water pipes, tubes, steel places and borehole casings.

a. In November1997, ARL listed through a reverse takeover of the Acacia Group, SMM's industrial assets being Tube & Pipe Industries and Turnall Fiber Cement and changed the name to TH Zimbabwe Limited. This was one of the most successful listings in Zimbabwe that created a platform for a broad-based ownership of the company including workers and management. The operations of the Acacia group and SMM's industrial divisions were successfully merged to create one of the strongest black-owned and controlled groups of manufacturing companies. SMM became the controlling company of THZ and strategically offloaded about 30% of its stake in the company to institutional shareholders i.e. pension funds as a broad-based empowerment initiative.

b. To create more focus and give more value to shareholders, in 2002, ARL unbundling the TH Zimbabwe group into three separate listed companies as follows: Steelnet (Zimbabwe) Limited comprising three divisions:- TPI, BMA FASTENERS, a company that was part of the Acacia Group, engaged in the manufacture of a range of bolts and nuts, wire nails, roofing products, rock support systems and specialized forgings. It also offers complementary services like hot dip galvanizing, electro plating heat treatment, wire drawing and general engineering, and Hastt Zimbabwe - www.hastt.co.zw also acquired from the Acacia Group whose activities included the manufacture of a range of engineered equipment and spares for the agricultural, transport and manufacturing industries, General Beltings Limited, also part of the Acacia stable whose activities included the manufacture of Rubber, Plastics Hoses and Belting.

He was the pioneer of an initiative to mobilise investment funds from Zimbabweans in the diaspora through a special purpose vehicle, Africa Resources Invesments Limited (ARIL) that was established in 1996. The fund was launched in 1997 in Johannesburg, South Africa. Through this initiative, a special purpose vehicle was established in Zimbabwe in 1998 to deploy the funds mobilised from the diaspora into investments. The vehicle, Ukubambana-Kubatana Investments Private Limited (UKI), was incorporated as an investment holding company through which investments were made in the financial services industry including taking a significant shareholding in FBC.

In 2000, the group made a significant inroad into the financial services sector by acquiring the largest stake in the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of Zimre Holdings Limited (Zimre) (www.zhl.co.zw) company that was formerly a state-owned company that was privatised by the state together with Dairiboard, Cottco, Rainbow Tourism Group. The government subsequently sold its controlling stake in Zimre and ARL through UKI and Endurite Properties became the largest shareholder of the listed company. ARL then unbundled the Zimre Group and listed the life company, Fidelity Life, and merged Nicoz Insurance Company with Diamond Insurance, a wholly owned subsidiary of ARL, to form Nicoz Diamond Limited, a company that was then subsequently listed on the ZSE.

In 2001, the Group established FSI Agricom Holdings (Private) Limited (Oct. 2001) as a vehicle to investing in commercial agriculture as well as provide a wholesale supply chain and trading solution to the new black farmers. During the same year, the Group established a stockbroking firm, UKI Securities (Private) Limited that was subsequently acquired by Fidelity Life Asset Management Private Limited (FLAM), a wholly owned subsidiary of Zimre.
In 2002, a number of acquisitions was made and new businesses were established by the group including the following:

(1) Cernol Chemicals - 100% - a manufacturer of industrial and domestic cleaning chemicals;

(2) CFI Holdings Limited
Company Profile: CFI Holdings Ltd
Ticker: CFI
Exchanges: ZIM
2006 Sales: 41,200,000
Major Industry: Food & Beverages
Sub Industry: Grain, Flour & Cereal
Country: ZIMBABWE
Employees: 3100

CFI Holdings Ltd Key Data:

Ticker: CFI Country: ZIMBABWE

Exchanges: ZIM Major Industry: Food & Beverages

Sub Industry: Grain, Flour & Cereal

2006 Sales 41,200,038
(Year Ending Jan 2007). Employees: 3,100

Currency: Zimbabwe Dollars Market Cap: 27,692,661,150,000

Fiscal Yr Ends: September Shares Outstanding: 503,502,930

Share Type: Ordinary Closely Held Shares: 200,391,095

(3) (www.suncrest.co.zw), a diversified agro-industrial and trading company listed on the ZSE - Group's principal activities are carried out through its Poultry, Retail and Specialised divisions. Poultry is involved in stockfeed manufacturing, poultry breeding, production, processing and selling and veterinary products. Retail is involved in the retailing of farming inputs and fresh farm produce. Specialised is involved in the assembling, distribution, selling and repairs of irrigation equipment. This division also operates property companies and provides financial services.

(3) Midsec Security and Investigations services company; (4) Media Africa Group was established to house the group's newspaper interests in the two weekly titles: The Business Tribune and the Weekend Tribune; (5) Words and Images was established as a PR company for the group and third party clients; (6) Fortress Travel and Tours, a travel services company was established to provide solutions to the group and third parties; (7) Best Practices Human Resources and Management Consultants was established to provide human resources solutions to the group and third parties; (8) Petter Transport and Logistics was established to provide transport and logistics solutions to the group as well as third parties; (9) First Banking Corporation (www.firstbank.co.zw) was listed on the ZSE; and (10) Tandem, a trailer manufacturer, was acquired.
In 2003, Schweppes Zimbabwe Limited was acquired from the Coca Cola Company. FEIC (Private) Limited, a text book and office equipment sales, printing and publishing company.

In 2004, the entire group was nationalised by the government of Zimbabwe. The nationalisation is being challenged in a number of pending litigations in Zambia, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The ARL group of companies employs about 20,000 people and generates about US$400 million in turnover. Seven of the subsidiary companies are listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange. The ARL interests are attached marked MDM1.

In 2004 - Date, In 2004, Mr. Mawere was one of the founder of Africa Heritage Society (www.africaheritage.com), a not-for-profit organisation organised under the laws of South Africa. He was also a founding director of AHI (www.ahinvestments.co.za), an investment holding company with interests in the logistics, manufacturing and supply chain businesses in South Africa. The AHI business model is similar to that one pursued by ARL with the only difference that a broad based black economic empowerment model is being used as a vehicle for creating a critical mass for driving the transformation agenda. The ownership structure of AHI is no different from union investment holding companies with a trust holding the shares in an investment holding company and members of the union being the beneficiaries. In our case, AHS is the union that is the ultimate beneficiary of the investment activities of the AHI group. Instead of anchoring the model with only union members, our model has chosen to have a multisectoral approach and membership is open to both employers and working people but benefits are targeted to the previously disadvantaged groups.

The distribution model is unique with 30% of the benefit stream being reserved for AHI investee employees who are eligible under the BEE framework for benefits, 20% is reserved for AHI employees and the balance is reserved for AHS members who have no affiliation with the AHI group.

As a strategy, AHI has developed an innovative and creative financing structure taking into account the knowledge, execution and capital gaps that are inherent in BEE transactions that seeks to use leveraged financing underpinned by strong and experienced brand ambassadors in the form of experienced management teams with proven track records to acquire businesses in carefully selected sectors. A brand champion is normally selected by AHI who will then drive the strategy.
The seed capital for AHI was provided by Africa Resources Limited (ARL). ARL's interests in Salister Diesel (Pty) Limited, a distributor of Lister Petter diesel engines and generators, were transferred to AHI in 2005. Using this base, AHI subsequently acquired other businesses including a 52% stake in an infrastructural services company, Tractionel Enterprises. Both Tractionel and Salister have common interests in the power sector and have been grouped together as a nucleus for AHI investments in the infrastructure solutions market to take advantage of emerging opportunities in the sector.

AHI is a 75% shareholder in Cade Transport (Pty) Limited, a company incorporated under the laws of South Africa, that is a market leader in a unique franchising owner operator logistics model. Investec holds 25% of the equity of Cade. Cade subsequently acquired a 100% equity stake in Tony's Logistics. AHI believes that a black controlled logistics conglomerate is beneficial and strategic to the transformation of the country and plans to use Cade as a platform for growing organically and through acquisitions a solution provider that adds value to the industry. The partnership framework in which the motive portion of the transportation is owned by independent business partners and the payload by Tony's Logistics.

AHI is identified champions for the following sectors: Auto, Engineering, ICT and Steel that it intends to invest in.

NIGEL CHANAKIRA 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T20:24:00.000-08:00

Nigel Chanakira founded the financial services firm Kingdom (now Kingdom Meikles Africa) in 1994 in his late 20s.

Notwithstanding the intense political and social turmoil that has characterised Zimbabwe for the past decade, building a business that is now one of the largest listed groups by market capitalisation on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE), with a secondary listing in London, is an immense achievement.

In the space of 15 years, Mr Chanakira has transformed a small, four-man money broking operation into one of the largest financial services groups in Zimbabwe, with operations in Botswana and Malawi. The company is still growing. In late 2007, Kingdom concluded the largest merger ever undertaken on the ZSE. It formed Kingdom Meikles Africa through the merger of hotel chain Meikles Africa, the Tanganda Tea Company and textile firm Cotton Printers.

Mr Chanakira was appointed the inaugural group chief executive of the new company, which was subsequently voted the top quoted company on the ZSE in 2007. Among the litany of awards that he has accumulated, stand-out achievements include the Zimbabwe Institute of Management’s Manager of the Year in 2000, Zimbabwe’s Entrepreneur of the Decade and the University of Zimbabwe’s Alumni of the year, both in 2003.

Mr Chanakira also sits on numerous boards, including the chair of business consultancies the Success Motivation Institute (Africa) and Velociti Solutions (South Africa), as well as on the board of the Christian Community Partnership Trust, a coalition of businesses that combine their resources to have greater impact on the communities in which they operate.

Mr Chanakira is a shining example of a success story to emerge from a troubled country. He has managed to build a flourishing business in exceptional circumstances.

"My principles and values emanate from the Word of God which is my reference manual. I cannot claim to have perfected my usage of the true business manual because of my frequent reference to it. I am learning all the time on how doing business God’s way is a sure recipe for success despite adversity, trials and tribulations that come from running a business in Zimbabwe. There is an inherent principle in expanding Kingdom financial holdings by spiritual linkage to the vision of the church and by advancing the Kingdom.”

Profile of an Entrepreneur: Nigel Chanakira

Nigel Chanakira was raised in the Highfield suburb of Harare in an entrepreneurial family. His father and uncle operated a public transport company Modern Express and later diversified into retail shops.Nigel's father later exited the family business. He bought out one of the shops and expanded it. During school holidays young Nigel, as the first born, would work in the shops. His parents, particularly his mother, insisted that he acquire an education first.

On completion of high school, Nigel failed to enter dental or medical school, which were his first passions. In fact his grades could only qualify him for the Bachelor of Arts degree programme at the Universityof Zimbabwe. However, he "sweet-talked his way into a transfer" to the Bachelor in Economics degree programme. Academically he worked hard, exploiting his strong competitive character that was developed during his sporting days. Nigel rigorously applied himselfto his academic pursuits and passed his studies with excellent grades, which opened the door to employment as an economist with the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ).

During his stint with the Reserve Bank, his economic mindset indicated to him that wealth creation was happening in the banking sector therefore he determined to understand banking and financial markets.While employed at RBZ, he read for a Master's degree in Financial Economics and Financial Markets as preparation for his debut into banking. At the Reserve Bank under Dr Moyana, he was part of the research team that put together the policy framework for theliberalization of the financial services within the Economic Structural Adjustment Programme. Being at the right place at the right time, he became aware of the opportunities which were opening up. Nigel exploited his position to identify the most profitablebanking institution to work for as preparation for his future. He headed to Bard Discount House and worked for five years under Charles Gurney.

A short while later the two black executives at Bard, Nick Vingirayi and Gibson Muringai, left to form Intermarket Discount House. Their departure inspired the young Nigel. If these two could establish abanking institution of their own so could he, given time. The departure also created an opportunity for him to rise to fill the vacancy. This gave the aspiring banker critical managerial experience. Subsequently he became a director for Bard Investment Serviceswhere he gained critical experience in portfolio management, client relationships and dealing within the dealing department. While there he met Franky Kufa, a young dealer who was making waves, who would later become a key co-entrepreneur with him.

Despite his professional business engagement his father enrolled Nigel in the Barclays Bank "Start Your Own Business" Programme. However what really made an impact on the young entrepreneur was the EmpretecEntrepreneur Training programme (May 1994), to which he was introduced by Mrs Tsitsi Masiyiwa. The course demonstrated that he had the requisite entrepreneurial competences.

Nigel talked Charles Gurney into an attempted management buy-out of Bard from Anglo -American. This failed and the increasingly frustrated aspiring entrepreneur considered employment opportunities with NickVingirai's Intermarket and Never Mhlanga's National Discount House which was on the verge of being formed - hoping to join as a shareholder since he was acquainted with the promoters. He was denied this opportunity.

Being frustrated at Bard and having been denied entry into the club by pioneers, he resigned in October 1994 with the encouragement of Mrs Masiyiwa to pursue his entrepreneurial dream.

The Dream

Inspired by the messages of his pastor, Rev. Tom Deuschle, and frustrated at his inability to participate in the church's massive building project, Nigel sought a way of generating huge financial resources.During a time of prayer he claims that he had a divine encounter where he obtained a mandate from God to start Kingdom Bank. He visited his pastor and told him of this encounter and the subsequent desire to start a bank. The godly pastor was amazed at the 26year old with "big spectacles and wearing tennis shoes" who wanted to start a bank. The pastor prayed before counselling the young man. Having been convinced of the genuineness of Nigel's dream, the pastor did something unusual. He asked him to give a testimonyto the congregation of how God was leading him to start a bank. Though timid, the young man complied. That experience was a powerful vote of confidence from the godly pastor. It demonstrates the power of mentors to build a protégé.

Nigel teamed up with young Franky Kufa. Nigel Chanakira left Bard at the position of Chief Economist. They would build their own entrepreneurial venture. Their idea was to identify players who had specificcompetences and would each be able to generate financial resources from his activity. Their vision was to create a one - stop financial institution offering a discount house, an asset management company and a merchant bank. Nigel used his Empretec model todevelop a business plan for their venture. They headhunted Solomon Mugavazi, a stockbroker from Edwards and Company and B. R. Purohit, a corporate banker from Stanbic. Kufa would provide money market expertise while Nigel provided income from government bonddealings as well as overall supervision of the team.

Each of the budding partners brought in an equal portion of the Z$120,000 as start-up capital. Nigel talked to his wife and they sold their recently acquired Eastlea home and vehicles to raise the equivalentof US$17,000 as their initial capital. Nigel, his wife and three kids headed back to Highfield to live in with his parents. The partners established Garmony Investments which started trading as an unregistered financial institution. The entrepreneurs agreednot to draw a salary in their first year of operations as a bootstrapping strategy.

Mugavazi introduced and recommended Lysias Sibanda, a chartered accountant, to join the team. Nigel was initially reluctant as each person had to bring in an earning capacity and it was not clear how anaccountant would generate revenue at start up in a financial institution. Nigel initially retained a 26% share which assured him a blocking vote as well as giving him the position of controlling shareholder.

Nigel credits the Success Motivation Institute (SMI) course "The Dynamics of Successful Management" as the lethal weapon that enabled him to acquire managerial competences. Initially he insisted that allhis key executives undertake this training programme.

Birth of the Kingdom

Kingdom Securities P/L commenced operations in November 1994 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Garmony Investments (Pvt) Ltd. It traded as a broker on both money and stock markets.

On 24th February 1995 Kingdom Securities Holding was born with the following subsidiaries: Kingdom Securities Ltd, Kingdom Stockbrokers (Pvt) Ltd and Kingdom Asset Managers (Pvt) Ltd. The flagship KingdomSecurities Ltd was registered as a Discount House under Banking Act Chapter 188 on 25th July 1995. Kingdom Stockbrokers was registered with the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange under ZSE Chapter 195 on 1st August 1995. The pre-licensing trading had generated good revenuebut they still had a 20% deficit of the required capital. Most institutional investors turned them down as they were a greenfield company promoted by people perceived to be "too young". At this stage National Merchant Bank, Intermarket and others were on themarket raising equity and these were run by seasoned and mature promoters. However Rachel Kupara, then MD for Zimnat, believed in the young entrepreneurs and took up the first equity portion for Zimnat at 5%.

Norman Sachikonye, then Financial Director and Investments Manager at First Mutual followed suit, taking up an equity share of 15%. These two institutional investors were inducted as shareholders of KingdomSecurities Holdings on 1st August 1995. Garmony Investments ceased operations and reversed itself into Kingdom Securities on 31st July 1995, thereby becoming an 80% shareholder.

The first year of operations was marked by intense competition as well as discrimination against new financial institutions by public organisations. All the other operating units performed well except forthe corporate finance department with Kingdom Securities, led by Purohit. This monetary loss, differing spiritual and ethical values led to the forced departure of Purohit as an executive director and shareholder on 31st December 1995. From then the Kingdomstarted to grow exponentially.

Structural Growth

Nigel and his team pursued an aggressive growth strategy with the intention of increasing market share, profitability, and geographic spread while developing a strong brand. The growth strategy was builtaround a business philosophy of simplifying financial services and making them easily accessible to the general public. An IT strategy that created a low cost delivery channel exploiting ATMs and POS while providing a platform that was ready for Internet andweb-based applications, was espoused.

On 1st April 1997, Kingdom Financial Services was licensed as an accepting house focusing on trading and distributing foreign currency, treasury activities, corporate finance, investment banking and advisoryservices. It was formed under the leadership of Victor Chando with the intention of becoming the merchant banking arm of the Group. In 1998, Kingdom Merchant Bank (KMB) was licensed and it took over the assets and liabilities of Kingdom Securities Limited.Its main focus was treasury related products, off-balance sheet finance, foreign currency and trade finance. Kingdom Research Institute was established as a support service to the other units.

The entrepreneurial bankers, cognisant of their limitations, sought to achieve critical mass quickly by actively seeking capital injection from equity investors. The aim was to broaden ownership while lendingstrategic support in areas of mutual interest. An attempt at equity uptake from Global Emerging Markets from London failed. However in 1997 the efforts of the bankers were rewarded when the following organisations took up some equity, reducing the shareholdingof executive directors as shown below: ïEUR Ipcorn 0.7%, ïEUR Zambezi Fund Mauritius P/L 1.1%, ïEUR Zambezi Fund P/L 0.7%. ïEUR Kingdom Employee Share Trust 5%, ïEUR Southern Africa Enterprise Development Fund - 8% redeemable preference shares amounting toUS$1,5m as the first investee company in Southern Africa from the US Fund initiated by US President Bill Clinton, ïEUR Weiland Investments, a company belonging to Mr Richard Muirimi, a long standing friend of Nigel and associate in the fund management businesstook up 1.7%, Garmony Investments 71.7% -executive directors. ïEUR After a rights issue Zimnat fell to 4.8% while FML went down to 14.3%.

In 1998, Kingdom launched four Unit Trusts which proved very popular with the market. Initially these products were focused at individual clients of the discount house as well as private portfolios of KingdomStockbroking. Aggressive marketing and awareness campaigns established the Kingdom Unit Trust as the most popular retail brand of the group. The Kingdom brand was thus born.

Acquisition of Discount Company of Zimbabwe (DCZ)

After a spurt of organic growth, the Kingdom entrepreneurs decided to hasten the growth rate synergistically. They set out to acquire the oldest discount house in the country and the world, The DiscountCompany of Zimbabwe, which was a listed entity. With this acquisition Kingdom would acquire critical competences as well as achieve the much coveted ZSE listing inexpensively through a reverse listing. Initial efforts at a negotiated merger with DCZ were rebuffedby its executives who could not countenance a forty year old institution being swallowed up by a four year old business. The entrepreneurs were not deterred. Nigel approached his friend Greg Brackenridge at Stanbic to finance and effect the acquisition of thesixty percent shares which were in the hands of about ten shareholders, on behalf of Kingdom Financial Holdings but to be placed in the ownership of Stanbic Nominees. This strategy masked the identity of the acquirer. Claud Chonzi, the National Social SecurityAuthority (NSSA) GM and a friend to Lysias Sibanda (a Kingdom executive director), agreed to act as a front in the negotiations with the DCZ shareholders. NSSA is a well known institutional investor and hence these shareholders may have believed that they weredealing with an institutional investor. Once Kingdom controlled 60% of DCZ, it took over the company and reverse listed itself onto the Stock Exchange as Kingdom Financial Holdings Limited (KFHL). Because of the negative real interest rates, Kingdom successfullyused debt finance to structure the acquisition. This acquisition and the subsequent listing gave the once despised young entrepreneurs confidence and credibility on the market.

Other Strategic Acquisitions

Within the same year Kingdom Merchant Bank acquired a strategic stake in CFX Bureau de Change owned by Sean Maloney as well as another stake in a greenfield microlending franchise, Pfihwa P/L. CFX was changedinto KFX and used in most foreign currency trading activities. KFHL set as a strategic intention the acquisition of an additional 24.9% stake in CFX Holdings to safeguard the initial investment and ensure management control. This did not work out. Instead,Sean Maloney opted out and took over the failed Universal Merchant Bank licence to form CFX Merchant Bank. Although Kingdom executives contend that the alliance failed due to the abolition of bureau de change by government, it appears that Sean Maloney refusedto give up control of the extra shareholding sought by Kingdom. It therefore would be reasonable that once Kingdom could not control KFX, a fall out ensued. The liquidation of this investment in 2002 resulted in a loss of Z$403 million on that investment. Howeverthis was manageable in light of the strong group profitability.

Pfihwa P/L financed the informal sector as a form of corporate social responsibility. However when the hyperinflationary environment and stringent regulatory environment encroached on the viability of theproject, it was wound up in early 2004. Kingdom pursued its financing of the informal sector through MicroKing, which was established with international assistance. By 2002 MicroKing had eight branches located in the midst of, or near, micro-enterprise clusters.

In 2000, due to increased activity on the foreign currency front within the banking sector, Kingdom opened a private banking facility through the discount house to exploit revenue streams from this market.Following market trends, it engaged the insurance company AIG to enter the bancassurance market in 2003.

Meikles Strategic Alliance

In 1999 the entrepreneurial Chanakira on advice from his executives and the legendary corporate finance team from Barclays bank led by the affable Hugh Van Hoffen entered into a strategic alliance with MeiklesAfrica whereby it injected some Z$322 million into Kingdom for an equity shareholding of 25%. Interestingly, the deal nearly collapsed on pricing as Meikles only wanted to pay $250 million whilst KFHL valued themselves at Z$322 million which in real terms wasthe largest private sector deal done between an indigenous bank and a listed corporate. Nigel testifies that it was a walk through the incomplete Celebration Church site on the Saturday preceding the signing of the Meikles deal that led him to sign the dealwhich he saw as a means for him to sow a whopping seed into the church to boost the Building Fund. God was faithful! Kingdom's share price shot up dramatically from $2,15 at the time he made the commitment to the Pastor all the way to $112,00 by the followingOctober!

In return Kingdom acquired a powerful cash-rich shareholder that allowed it entrance into retail banking through an innovative in-store banking strategy. Meikles Africa opened its retail branches, namelyTM Supermarkets, Clicks, Barbours, Medix Pharmacies and Greatermans, as distribution channels for Kingdom commercial bank or as account holders providing deposits and requiring banking services. This was a cheaper way of entering retail banking. It proved usefulduring the 2003 cash crisis because Meikles with its massive cash resources within its business units assisted Kingdom Bank, thus cushioning it from a liquidity crisis. The alliance also raised the reputation and credibility of Kingdom Bank and created an opportunityfor Kingdom to finance Meikles Africa's customers through the jointly owned Meikles Financial Services. Kingdom provided the funding for all lease and hire purchases from Meikles' subsidiaries, thus driving sales for Meikles while providing easy lending opportunitiesfor Kingdom. Meikles managed the relationship with the client.

Meikles Africa as a strategic shareholder assured Kingdom of success when recapitalisation was required and has enhanced Kingdom's brand image. This strategic relationship has created powerful synergiesfor mutual benefit.

Commercial Banking

Exploiting the opportunities arising from the strategic relationship with Meikles Africa, Kingdom made its debut into retail banking in January 2001 with in-store branches at High Glen and Chitungwiza TMsupermarkets. The target was principally the mass market. This rode on the strong brand Kingdom had created through the Unit Trusts. In-store banking offered low cost delivery channels with minimal investment in brick and mortar. By the end of 2001, thirteenbranches were operational across the country. This followed a deliberate strategy for aggressive roll-out of the branches with two flagship branches ïEURïEUR one in Bulawayo and the other in Harare. There was a huge emphasis on an IT driven strategy with significantcross-selling between the commercial bank and other SBUs.

However, it was further discovered that there was a market for the upmarket clients and hence Crown banking outlets were established to diversify the target market. In 2004, after closing three in-storebranches in a rationalization exercise, there were 16 in-store branches and 9 Crown banking outlets.

The entrance into commercial banking was probably held at the wrong time, considering the imminent changes in the banking industry. Commercial banking does provide cheap deposits, however at the price ofhuge staff costs and human resource management complications. Nigel concedes that, with hindsight, this could have been delayed or done at a slower pace. However, the need for increased market share in a fiercely competitive industry necessitated this. Anotherreason for persisting with the commercial banking project was that of prior agreements with Meikles Africa. It is possible that Meikles Africa had been sold on the equity take-up deal on the back of promises to engage in in-store banking, which would increaserevenue for its subsidiaries.

Innovative Products and Services

KFHL continued its aggressive pursuit of product innovation. After the failure of the KFX project, CurrencyKing was established to continue the work. However this was abolished in November 2002 by governmentministerial intervention when bureau de change were prohibited in an effort to stamp out parallel market foreign currency trading.

Sadly this governmental decision was misguided for not only did it fail to banish foreign currency parallel trading but it drove underground, made it more lucrative and subsequently the government lost allcontrol of the management of the exchange rate.

In October 2002, KFHL established Kingdom Leasing after being granted a finance house licence. Its mandate was to exploit opportunities to trade in financial leases, lease hire and short term financial products.

Regional Expansion

Around 2000 it became evident that the domestic market was highly competitive, with limited prospects of future growth. A decision was made to diversify revenue streams and reduce country risk through penetrationinto the regional markets. This strategy would exploit the proven competences in securities trading, asset management and corporate advisory services from a small capital base. Therefore the entrance had low risk in terms of capital injection. Considering theforeign exchange control limitations and shortage of foreign currency in Zimbabwe, this was a prudent strategy but not without its downside, as will be seen in the Botswana venture.

In 2001, KFHL acquired a 25.1% stake in a greenfield banking enterprise in Malawi, First Discount House Ltd. To safeguard its investment and ensure managerial control, an executive director and dealer wereseconded to the Malawi venture while Nigel Chanakira chaired the Board. This investment has continued to grow and yield positive returns. As of July 2006 Kingdom had finally managed to up its stake from 25,1% to 40% in this investment and may ultimately controlit to the point of seeking a conversion of the license to a commercial bank.

KFHL also took up a 25% equity stake in Investrust Merchant Bank Zambia. Franky Kufa was seconded to it as an executive director while Nigel took a seat on the Board.

KFHL had been promised an option to gain a controlling stake. However when the bank stabilized, the Zambian shareholders entered into some questionable transactions and were not prepared to allow KFHL toup it's stake and so KFHL decided to pull out as relationships turned frosty. The Zambian Central Bank intervened with a promise to grant KFHL its own banking license. This did not materialize as the Zambian Central Bank exploited the banking crisis in Zimbabweto deny KHFL a licence. A reasonable premium of Z$2.5 billion was obtained at disinvestment.

In Botswana, a subsidiary called Kingdom Bank Africa Ltd (KBAL) was established as an offshore bank in the International Finance Centre. KBAL was intended to spearhead and manage regional initiatives forKingdom. It was headed by Mrs Irene Chamney, seconded by Lysias Sibanda with the concurrence of Nigel after managerial challenges in Zimbabwe. Two other senior executives were seconded there. She successfully set up the KBAL's banking infrastructure and hadgood relations with the Botswana authorities.

However, the business model chosen of an offshore bank ahead of a domestic Botswana merchant bank license turned out to be the Achilles heel of the bank more so when the Zimbabwe banking crisis set in between2003 and 2005. There were fundamental differences in how Mrs Chamney and Chanakira saw the bank surviving and going forward.

Ultimately, it was deemed prudent for Mrs. Chamney to leave the bank in 2005. In 2001 KFHL acquired the mandate as the sole distributor of the American Express card in the whole of Africa except for RSA.This was handled through KBAL. Kingdom Private Bank was transferred from the discount house to become a subsidiary of KBAL due to the prevailing regulatory environment in Zimbabwe.

In 2004 KBAL was temporarily placed under curatorship due to undercapitalisation. At this stage the parent company had regulatory constraints that prevented foreign currency capital injection.

A solution was found in the sourcing of local partners and the transfer of US$1 million previously realised from the proceeds of the Investrust liquidation to Botswana. Nigel Chanakira took a more activemanagement role in KBAL because of its huge strategic significance to the future of KFHL. Currently efforts are underway to acquire a local commercial bank licence in Botswana as well. Once this is acquired there are two possible scenarios, namely maintainingboth licences or giving up the offshore licence.

The interviewees were divided in their opinion on this. However in my view, judging from the stakeholder power involved, KFHL is likely to give up the off shore banking licence and use the local KingdomBank Botswana (Pula Bank) licence for regional and domestic expansion.

Human Resources

The staff complement grew from the initial 23 in 1995 to more than 947 by 2003. The growth was consistent with the growing institution. It exploded, especially during the launch and expansion of the commercialbank. Kingdom from inception had a strong human resourcing strategy which entailed significant training both internally and externally. Before the foreign currency crisis, employees were sent for training in such countries as RSA, Sweden, India and the USA.In the person of Faith Ntabeni Bhebhe, Kingdom had an energetic HR driver who created powerful HR systems for the emerging behemoth.

As a sign of its commitment to building the human resource capability, in 1998 Kingdom Financial Services entered a management agreement with Holland based AMSCO for the provision of seasoned bankers. Throughthis strategic alliance Kingdom strengthened its skills base and increased opportunities for skills transfer to locals. This helped the entrepreneurial bankers create a solid managerial system for the bank while the seasoned bankers from Holland compensatedfor the youthfulness of the emerging bankers. What a foresight!

In-house self-paced interactive learning, team building exercises and mentoring were all part of the learning menu targeted at developing the human resource capacity of the group. Work and job profilingwas introduced to best match employees to suitable posts. Career path and succession planning were embraced. Kingdom was the first entrepreneurial bank to have smooth unforced CEO transitions. The founding CEO passed on the baton to Lysias Sibanda in 1999 ashe stepped into the role of Group CEO and board deputy chair. His role was now to pursue and spearhead global and regional niche financial markets. A few years later there was another change of the guard as

Franky Kufa stepped in as Group CEO to replace Sibanda, who resigned on medical grounds. One could argue that these smooth transitions were due to the fact that the baton was passing to founding directors.

With the explosive growth in staff complement due to the commercial bank project, culture issues emerged. Consequently, KFHL engaged in an enculturation programme resulting in a culture revolution dubbed"Team Kingdom". This culture had to be reinforced due to dilutions through significant mergers and acquisitions, significant staff turnover because of increased competition, emigration to greener pastures and the age profile of the staff increased the riskof high mobility and fraudulent activities in collusion with members of the public. Culture changes are difficult to effect and their effectiveness even harder to assess.

In 2004, with a high staff turnover of around 14%, a compensation strategy that ring fenced critical skills like IT and treasury was implemented. Due to the low margins and the financial stress experiencedin 2004, KFHL lost more than 341 staff members due to retrenchment, natural attrition and emigration. This was acceptable as profitability fell while staff costs soared. At this stage, staff costs accounted for 58% of all expenses.

Despite the impressive growth, the financial performance when inflation adjusted was mediocre. Actually a loss position was reported in 2004. This growth was severely compromised by the hyperinflationaryconditions and the restrictive regulatory environment.

Conclusion

This article shows the determination of entrepreneurs to push through to the realisation of their dreams despite significant odds. In a subsequent article we will tackle the challenges faced by Nigel Chanakirain solidifying his investments.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4198650

MORGAN TSVANGIRAYI 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

2009-11-21T20:05:00.000-08:00

President of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe and former Secretary General of the powerful Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions. A labor and human-rights activist, he has also advocated a new constitution in Zimbabwe.
Birthdate:
March 10, 1952, in Gutu (what was then Southern Rhodesia), the eldest of nine children.
Personal life:
Married to Susan Nyarandzo Mhundwa on July 10, 1979. Has three sons and three daughters.

Political affiliation:
By advocating real democracy and economic reform through the MDC, Tsvangirai put himself directly at odds with longtime President Robert Mugabe. He lost the 2002 presidential election to Mugabe under allegations of massive voting irregularities. In the 2008 elections, Tsvangirai received more votes than Mugabe but not enough -- officially -- to cross the 50%-threshold needed to avoid a runoff.
Career:
A onetime worker and then foreman in a nickel mine, Tsvangirai became vice president of the Mine Workers Union in 1985 and then Secretary General of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions in 1988. In 1997 and 1998, he led a series of strikes against high taxes. A split in the trade union confederation led to Tsvangirai becoming president of the Movement for Democratic Change in 2000. He is also founder and chairman of the National Constitutional Assembly, and organized opposition to Mugabe's defeated 2000 constitutional referendum.

MORGAN MEETS OBAMA

Future:
Tsvangirai, by his count, has survived four assassination attempts, including a 1997 attempt to toss him out of a 10-story window. In March 2007, Tsvangirai was badly beaten for proceeding with a banned protest. The MDC offices are constantly raided by government forces and supporters are harassed or worse. A reported assassination plot delayed Tsvangirai's return to Zimbabwe in 2008 after forcing Mugabe into the runoff election. Tsvangirai vows to soldier on despite the arrests and intimidation, and has presented the most viable challenge to Mugabe's iron-fisted rule.
Quote:
"How can global leaders espouse the values of democracy, yet when they are being challenged fail to open their mouths? Why is it that a supposed 'war on terror' ignores the very real terror of broken minds and mangled bodies that lie along the trail left by Mugabe?" -- Written by Tsvangirai in a Guardian editorial, April 2008

ROBERT GABRIEL MUGABE 100 GREATEST ZIMBABWEANS

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(born Feb. 21, 1924, Kutama, Southern Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe]) the first prime minister (1980–87) of the reconstituted state of Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia. A black nationalist of Marxist persuasion, he eventually established one-party rule in his country, becoming executive president of Zimbabwe in 1987.

The son of a village carpenter, Mugabe was trained as a teacher in a Roman Catholic mission school. He was introduced to nationalist politics while he was a student at the University College of Fort Hare, South Africa, and between 1956 and 1960 he taught in Ghana.Mugabe returned to Rhodesia in 1960, and in 1963 he helped the Reverend Ndabaningi Sithole to form the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) as a breakaway from Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU).

In 1964 he was arrested for “subversive speech” and spent the next 10 years in prison. During that period he acquired law degrees by correspondence courses. While still in prison he led a coup in 1974 deposing Sithole as ZANU's leader.In 1975 Mugabe was freed, and during the civil war that pitted Rhodesia's black majority population against Prime Minister Ian Smith's white-ruled Rhodesian government (1975–79), Mugabe was joint leader, with Nkomo, of the Patriotic Front of Zimbabwe. The party's guerrillas operated against the Rhodesian government from bases in neighbouring Zambia, Mozambique, and Angola.

Fresh negotiations in London in 1979 ended the war and led to new British-supervised parliamentary elections in February 1980. Mugabe's party won a landslide victory over the other black parties, and he became prime minister.As prime minister, Mugabe initially followed a pragmatic course designed to reassure Zimbabwe's remaining white farmers and businessmen, whose skills were vital to the economy. He formed a coalition government between his party, ZANU (which drew its support from the majority Shona people), and Nkomo's ZAPU (which drew its support from the minority Ndebele people), and he abided by the new constitution's guarantees of substantial parliamentary representation for whites.

At the same time, Mugabe took steps to improve the lot of black Zimbabweans through increased wages, improved social services, and food subsidies. In 1982 Mugabe ousted Nkomo from the coalition cabinet, and ethnic strife between the Shona and the Ndebele subsequently troubled the country. Zimbabwe's economy steadily declined despite Mugabe's measures, and whites continued to emigrate in substantial numbers.Mugabe had always intended to convert Zimbabwe from a parliamentary democracy into a one-party socialist state. In 1984 his party, now called the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front, or ZANU-PF, held a congress, made Mugabe its unchallenged leader, and set up a new party structure with a Central Committee and a Politburo that were designed to rule both the party and Zimbabwe. In 1987 Mugabe's and Nkomo's parties merged into one under the name of ZANU-PF, and as first secretary of the new party, Mugabe retained absolute control over it.

On December 31, 1987, he became Zimbabwe's first executive president, effectively establishing one-party rule. In 1990 he was reelected president in a multiparty election that was marked by intimidation and violence.Mugabe faced growing unrest in the late 1990s. A failing economy and his decision to send troops to assist President Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in his fight against rebels led to strikes, and in November 1998 riots occurred following Mugabe's announcement that he and members of his cabinet would receive pay increases. Factions within ZANU-PF continued to press for a true multiparty system. The first real opposition to Mugabe's government came from the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), formed in September 1999 and led by trade unionist Morgan Tsvangirai. In the parliamentary elections of 2000, the MDC won about half of the contested seats, but ZANU-PF won or controlled most of the remaining seats and thus maintained firm control of Zimbabwe. Meanwhile, war veterans, demanding immediate land reforms, threatened to occupy some of the country's white-owned farms. Mugabe showed sympathy for their cause, doing nothing to dissuade them.

In the months leading to the 2000 parliamentary elections, the veterans acted on their threats, which led to heightened tensions in the country.Although Mugabe was reelected in 2002, the elections were tainted by violence and criticized by observers. A law passed later that year allowed Mugabe to pursue an aggressive program of confiscating white-owned farms; more than half of the country's white farmers were forced to relinquish their property. Unfortunately, property was often claimed by politically connected individuals with little or no farming experience. The government's lack of forethought in forcing out the white farmers and failing to replace them with experienced farmworkers contributed to a significant decline in agricultural productivity; this, as well as a drought, led to severe food shortages in Zimbabwe.

As Mugabe's popularity further declined, his regime became increasingly brutal and repressive. Media freedom was curtailed, the opposition was harassed and beaten, and a controversial program that caused the demolition of illegal housing structures was implemented, rendering hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans homeless. The economy continued to decline, and in 2007 the country had the highest rate of inflation in the world, as well as one of the highest rates of unemployment. Most Zimbabweans did not have adequate access to basic commodities, such as food or fuel, and Mugabe's administration continued to be the subject of much international criticism. Despite this, Mugabe remained popular within ZANU-PF, and in December 2007 the party endorsed Mugabe as their presidential candidate in the 2008 elections.

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