Thursday, November 11, 2010

A Man of All Seasons: A Tribute to Canaan Banana

I will never forget the very first day I had my own personal encounter with this very enigmatic man. It was one of those afternoons when I was relaxing in my office. At that time I was the President of the University of Zimbabwe Students Union in Harare. This was sometime in 1998.
The student body’s lady administrator Thandiwe, came to my office and informed that I had an important visitor who wanted to meet me. I then duly gave her the green light to allow the visitor to walk into my office. A few moments later I had one of the most unforgettable moments of my entire life.
This was so because when my eyes looked up to see who had just entered into my office, I was so shocked to see the smiling face of a very familiar person. This was none other than Canaan Banana, the first President of the independent republic of Zimbabwe!
Throughout my childhood, he was more of a larger than life figure to me. I saw his face everywhere. I saw it on television, magazines and newspapers. But up until now, when I was a final year law student, I still had never met the man in person.
Still in a state of shock and rather a bit stupified by this unexpected experience, I then sheepishly welcomed him into my office and asked him to take a seat. When I return to my own seat behind the desk, I could not even muster enough courage and resolve to look him straight in his eyes. He must have realized how I was so overwhelmed by his surprise visit so much that he coughed up a little bit and initiated our conversation with such a broad smile and very excited eyes.
After a few moments of chatting to him, I soon found myself in top waffling gear and at my talkative best! He was such a free person and so easy to relate with. He was such a very friendly person. I was also taken up by his very so down to earth disposition. To say that he struck me as a humble person is such a huge understatement!
Out first ever meeting might have lasted a little over an hour but to me it seemed to have lasted a much less period. We spoke about a lot of varied subjects. We spoke about my childhood experience in the coal mining town of Hwange where Banana had once stayed there and shot to national fame after he courted controversy with his highly politicized sermons as a local churchman.
We spoke about his political experiences such as his detentions, his time as the President, his passionate commitment to soccer and his role as a peace maker across Africa after his retirement from State House.
But what was the most poignant aspect of my entire first meeting with him was the whole talk about the failure of the liberation movement to develop a clear succession plan that would have allowed it to embrace emerging leaders like myself from the younger generation. He seemed to be so passionate about this issue a lot. 

From that day onwards, it seemed he had resolved to take it upon himself to be my kind of mentor. We would meet again and again later that year. He also asked me to be the chairperson of the Disciplinary Committee of the highly successful University of Zimbabwe soccer team that included such stars as Nkululeko Malaba and Benjani Mwaruwari, among others. 
Being a passionate soccer fan like him, he also surprised me with a complimentary VIP ticket that enabled me to watch one of the national soccer team matches I Harare where I had the privilege of watching the legendary Peter Ndlovu at the peak of his excellent soccer career. In fact Banana has never got credit for the support he provided not only to lots of soccer stars but also to Zimbabwean soccer in general especially in his role for many years as the ZIFA Patron.
Then one day he invited me over to his home in Mount Pleasant. I managed to walk over there from my campus residence with my then girlfriend and my wife, Samukeliso. When we got to his home, we were both fascinated by his home. It was like a mini museum. It had a lot of books, portraits, artifacts and gifts that Banana had collected over the years.
I was so inspired by that visit to his home so much that I felt that the man’s contribution not only to the people of Zimbabwe but to also the people of Africa and the world at large had not been given some due recognition. I really felt that he had become somewhat of a forgotten hero. There was thus a genuine need to document his contribution and highlight all those many aspects of his illustrious long public career.
I then resolved to help preserve his contribution by writing down the story of his life. When I approached him about my idea he took to it like a duck to the pool waters. This was how I got his express permission to write the book about his public career; his own authorized biography.
I actually expected to finish the book with a two year period. According to my estimations at that time, the book would have hit the shelves by the end of 2000. However this was not to be, a few months later the sodomy court trial against him broke out and completely disrupted all our plans for his book. He then had to endure a jail term and afterwards we reconnected again when I was now in legal practice in Bulawayo and later on when I was at the National Constitutional Assembly regional offices.
Work on the book was then resumed in earnest and a new target of by the end of 2002 was set. But as fate would have it, it was not to be. The strain of the difficult experiences he had endured in the previous two years had had their toll on him. His health started to fail him. Our plans to launch his book were completely derailed yet again.
Sadly for us, he never recovered from the illness and he passed away on 10th November 2003. He was 67 years old. This was a relatively young age when compared to the longevity of his nationalist peers such as Robert Mugabe, Joshua Nkomo, Abel Muzorewa, Ndabaningi Sithole, Simon Muzenda, Joseph Miska, among others.
To add more salt to injury, the Zanu (PF) government showed some extreme levels of determination to underplay his lifelong contribution to the people of Zimbabwe. Banana was not declared a national hero. He was eventually laid to rest as a national outcast somewhere in his rural home in the Matabeleland South. 
And since then, he has become such a pariah so much that his name has become such a by word in the corridors of power in Harare. Today Banana’s name is now simultaneous with his infamous conviction and jail term as a result of the controversial sodomy case. All that he worked for throughout his long public career has now been conveniently forgotten. 
To put it more bluntly and in no uncertain terms, Banana is now a fully accredited forgotten national hero. 
But all this will not last for long. The good news is that his good works will soon allow him to speak from his grave. His life story will soon be read and talked about not only in Zimbabwe and Africa but also in the rest of the world that he served so tirelessly throughout his life.
If all goes according to my plans, then by the end of 2010, exactly ten long years after the initial set deadline for the publication and launch of his book, the inevitable will happen at last!
Do all watch out for his authorized biography that will soon hit the bookshelves; A Man of All Seasons.