The Musekiwa I knew

The Musekiwa I knew

THIS week I will depart from my normal thrust and focus of my regular column analysis. I will take some time and give my perspectives and insights on a rather very personal matter. I am going to give my opinion on the life and times of one of Zimbabwe’s youngest politician ever, Tafadzwa ‘Changamire Dombo Tabby’ Musekiwa.

For the record, Musekiwa burst into international limelight after he was elected as the MDC MP for the Zengeza constituency during the June 2000 elections. This effectively made him the youngest ever MP in the history of Zimbabwe since he was just 24 years old at that time.

Prior to that, Musekiwa had added another milestone to his young life by being at the forefront of the process of setting up the Chitungwiza Residents and Ratepayers Association. He was duly elected as its interim Chairperson and led it for some time.

However, it was at the University of Zimbabwe where he launched his political career. He was admitted as a political science student in March 1995. He was actively involved in the student politics as an avid political activist almost immediately. During that period I had a little interaction with him especially in my capacity as the then Acting President of the SRC.

But it was in October 1996 that our paths of destiny crossed each other. I was elected as the Vice President of the SRC (the President was the late Learnmore Jongwe) and he in turn was duly elected as the Secretary for Entertainment. It was thus during the 1996-7 SRC days that I had the first real opportunity to personally relate to him.

"Musekiwa also showed his seriousness and commitment by hosting other student leaders like Wiwa and Joseph Sanyangore at his family home for months"

DANIEL MOLOKELE

During that year, I managed to interact with Musekiwa on numerous occasions. I must confess that during the said period I never got to view him as a mere opportunity. He came across as a passionate student leader who seemed to be passionate about the ideals that we stood for as a union. To be fair, he was not necessarily one of the articulate and outspoken members of that SRC. But he compensated for his lack of public oratory skills by giving a lot of critical analysis at a political strategic level.

At the end of our term of office, I retired from student politics and actually became a sub-warden at New Complex One. But on his part, Musekiwa was retained into the student leadership as part of the Student Representative Assembly in terms of the new Constitution. As such for almost a year, I had little or not much interaction with him.

But fate would have its way again. Our paths of destiny crossed again in April 1998. This was when there was a serious leadership crisis that threatened to tore apart the entire student body. I was then persuaded to return to student politics by one of the factions and in the process stood for the presidency in the subsequent by-elections. Musekiwa also stood against me with another student called Lovemore Mondo. Subsequently, I was elected as the new President with Musekiwa as my Vice President. In the following week, Job ‘Wiwa’ Sikhala was also elected as the new Secretary General.

Contrary to an earlier representation, the voter turnout in that by-election was good enough since as the winner I managed to garner up to 848 votes. In fact more than 1200 students voted in that poll.

I thus had another opportunity to work with Musekiwa but this time at a much closer level since he was my deputy in the student leadership hierarchy.
I verily believe that his election as the Vice President resulted in a deepening of his political maturity. He became more involved not only in the backstage scenes of the union but was also at the forefront in the public arena. It was at this time that he was seen chairing public meetings and addressing demonstrations. His oratory skills and public speaking confidence levels were developed largely during that year.

During the long forced closure of our university, Musekiwa was also suspended but had his charges later dropped. During that time he showed his commitment to the students cause by actively participating in all our public campaigns as we lobbied the various stakeholders concerning the plight of our student body members. He was also instrumental with Jongwe in mobilizing a series of powerful demonstrations and class boycotts at all the tertiary institutions in Gweru.

Musekiwa also showed his seriousness and commitment by hosting other student leaders like Wiwa and Joseph Sanyangore at his family home for about four months.

After the university was reopened in October 1998, Musekiwa completed his term of office and retired from active student politics.

During the closure, he had developed the idea of launching the rate-payers body for Chitungwiza. As such, during the last months of his stay at UZ, he was mainly involved in the process of launching the new association.

It was thus no surprise that when the MDC was launched, he was duly elected as the interim chairperson of its Chitungwiza branch.

Subsequently, he also managed to get the party to endorse him as the candidate for Zengeza constituency. In the resultant elections, he was overwhelmingly elected as the MP for that constituency. The rest as they say is history.

But as fate would have it, Musekiwa never managed to complete his tenure as the Zengeza MP. Initially, I was also disappointed that he had left the post but I later realized that this was no easy decision for him. Musekiwa had a profound passion for his electorate and was deeply committed to the ideals of the MDC, his political party.

However, the reason why he left the country is very clear. He discovered that his life was in danger. This was after he had endured a series of arrests and drummed up charges. Not to mention the trauma of being barred from attending his very own father’s funeral by suspected Zanu-PF activists and State security agents.
CONTACT DANIEL: danielmolokela@yahoo.com
Daniel Molokele is a human rights lawyer based in Johannesburg. He has been elected as the Interim Chairperson of the Zimbabwe CSO Forum (South African chapter) National Committee. His column appears here every Monday
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