Independence Day – A Betrayal of Lookout Masuku’s Vision

By Dumisani O. Nkomo

“We wanted to vote and choose our own destiny “was the comment the late Lieutenant General Lookout Masuku made in an interview with Time magazine in 1980. A couple of weeks before the 32^nd anniversary of our Independence this dream is still elusive. Lookout Mafela Khalisabantu Vumindaba Masuku died on the 7^th of April 1986 two days after his birthday and eleven days before the country’s sixth anniversary of independence. He died after spending four years in prison even after the Supreme Court ruled in 1983 that he and Dumiso Dabengwa were innocent of charges of plotting to overthrow the government of Robert Mugabe. It would be most fitting to commemorate Zimbabwe’s 32 anniversary of Independence by celebrating the life of one of Zimbabwe’s finest soldiers and commander of ZAPU’s Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army from 1978 to 1980. Masuku then become deputy commander of the Zimbabwean National Army at independence but died literally at the hands of a government he had helped to construct.

Masuku was released together with veteran ZAPU nationalist Vote Moyo in March 1986 when he was seriously ill and Judith Todd in her book Through The Darkness expressed doubts whether the “specialist who attended to him was “indeed a specialist or even  or even a registered doctor at all”. On April 7 he succumbed to cryptocococal meningitis at Parirenyatwa Hospital and this after the government had refused to grant him one of his dying wishes to see his comrade Dumiso Dabengwa who was still languishing in jail. General Lookout Masuku  will go down in history as the first martyr of post independent Zimbabwe.

Perhaps it would be critical to reflect on Masuku’s comments to Time Magazine when he told the publication just after independence that  “we have been fighting so people could express their will “.Yet 32 years after independence what Mafela  fought for is still a mirage.

Lookout Masuku was one of the first victims of ZANU P.F’s flagrant disregard of the rule of law and he paid the ultimate price and as such we should not be fooled to think trampling on and of the rule of law and impunity only began in 2000, it has been with us since independence and Lookout Masuku twenty six years later afterwards is a  sad reminder of an aborted revolution.

Joshua Nkomo summarized Masuku’s supreme contribution to the struggle on April 12 1986 at the funeral of the ZIPRA commander when he said “Mafela, Lookout after all his sacrifices, died a pauper in our own hands, we cannot blame colonialism and imperialism for this tragedy”. Up to today there is no major street or building in the country which is named after Masuku, what a betrayal!

Masuku’s life and death is a sharp rebuke of the very notion of independence when the country still boasts of an array of repressive legislation which infringe on fundamental liberties of speech, association ,assembly ,freedom of the press and expression. If Lookout Masuku, Jason Moyo, Nikita Mangena, Lazarus Nkala, Josiah Tongogara and Herbert Chitepo were to rise from the dead I am sure they would not be sure whether they were in Rhodesia or the Zimbabwe they fought so hard and long for.

Independence day this should not be a time of celebration but rather of moaning the betrayed liberation values of the likes of Lookout Masuku who literally died in chains in the same way that Steve Biko died in prison. Independence Day should remind us that we are yet to enjoy a new Zimbabwe were people can “vote “freely and choose their own destiny”. Our history syllabus at schools needs urgent revision  so that it captures the contribution of General Lookout Masuku  and his ZIPRA forces  as the current history being taught at schools reduces Nkomo, ZAPU, ZIPRA and Masuku to political Lilliputians who made an insignificant contribution to the  struggle for Zimbabwe.

As Nkomo said at Lookout’s funeral “Those who rule our country know inside themselves that Lookout played a very big part in winning our struggle and yet they let him die in prison …he is not being buried at heroes acre but they can’t take away his hero status, you don’t give hero status, you recognize it, yes he can be temporarily forgotten by the state, but young people who do research will one day unveil what Lookout was doing” [Judith Todd, Through the Darkness, Life in Zimbabwe].

As we tread cautiously towards Independence Day Commemorations it should be a time of reflection and indeed mourning for the betrayed ideals of the liberation struggle which Lookout Vumindaba Mafela Khalisabantu envisaged.

Dumisani is the Chief Executive Officer of Habakkuk Trust and political analyst. He can be contacted on Dumisani.nkomo@gmail.com