Former Minister Shamuyarira dies

HARARE – Former Zanu-PF Politburo member and ex-Cabinet minister Dr Nathan Shamuyarira (85) has died. Shamuyarira died at the West End Clinic in Harare last night after having been admitted on and off “for some time”. 

Zanu-PF political commissar Webster Shamu confirmed that the veteran nationalist had passed on and referred all questions to Zanu PF secretary for health Dr David Parirenyatwa for more details.

Shamu and Parirenyatwa were among several party cadres, relatives, Government officials and colleagues at West End last night when Shamuyarira passed away.

Parirenyatwa, a medical doctor who is also Minister of Health and Child Care, said: “He passed on at around 22:30 after having been admitted on and off for some time. In the end, he had problems with a chest infection; he had been unwell for a while.”

Shamuyarira left Government in 2000, saying he wanted to concentrate on his work in Zanu-PF, where he was secretary for information and publicity.

Shamuyarira was born in 1929. He retired from active politics in 2010 due to deteriorating health. At that time he was Zanu PF’s secretary for information, a position now held by Rugare Gumbo. He was currently a committee member in the politburo.

Since reports of his ill-health in 2010 Shamuyarira has barely been seen in public or at state functions. A frail-looking Shamuyarira was at Higher and Tertiary Education minister Stan Mudenge’s funeral at the Heroes Acre in October 2012.

At Independence Shamuyarira was appointed Minister of Information and Tourism. Some of the portfolios he held in government include that of Foreign Affairs.

In October 2006 Shamuyarira, making reference to the Gukurahundi massacres of the 1980s, sparked outrage when he declared Mugabe and the late cabinet minister Edison Zvobgo were wrong to apologise for the North Korea-trained 5 Brigade massacres in Matabeleland and parts of Midlands.

Asked if he ever regreted the atrocities, Shamuyarira, who served as Information minister during the 5 Brigade operation, is reported to have told a conference on national reconciliation in Vumba: “No, I don’t regret. They (5 Brigade) were doing a job to protect the people.”

During the liberation struggle, Shamuyarira fought at different times on behalf of and helped lead Frolizi, Zanu and Zapu.

Born in 1929 to an evangelist of the Methodist Church, Shamuyarira attended the famed Waddilove Institute and qualified as a primary school teacher.

After leaving Waddilove he taught at various primary schools and used the time to complete his secondary education and then taught for some time at Tegwani School in Plumtree.

From 1950-53 he taught animal husbandry at Domboshava and then in 1953 Shamuyarira got a job as a cub reporter with African Newspapers Ltd.

He did well in his chosen profession and rose through the ranks to become the first black African editor of the Daily News in 1956.

From 1959 to 1962 he was editor-in-chief of African Newspapers Ltd, at which time he left journalism when late national hero Dr Samuel Parirenyatwa asked him to join Zapu, which was recruiting African intellectuals to spearhead the struggle for independence.

However, the colonial settler regime banned Zapu that same year and the party’s leader, the late Vice President Dr Joshua Nkomo asked him to join a delegation to the United Nations in new York even though he held no official position in the movement at the time.

On returning from that sojourn, he was appointed lecturer at the University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland as a lecturer in Adult Education.

In 1963, he and other nationalists broke from ZAPU to form ZANU, and in September of the following year he left Southern Rhodesia to study Political Science at Princeton University in the United States – graduating in 1967.

After that he was appointed a lecturer at the University of Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania, where he doubled up as ZANU’s secretary for external affairs.

In 1970, he and James Chikerema engaged in deliberations on unifying ZANU and ZAPU in Lusaka, Zambia, resulting in him resigning his lectureship to take up the post of treasurer for the new Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe in 1971.

However, disagreements with leading lights of the struggle, such as Chairman Herbert Chitepo, saw him leave once again for the University of Dar in 1973.

At Independence in 1980 he joined government in charge of the information brief, a portfolio he was head again in the 1980s in between which he was Zimbabwe’s third Foreign Affairs Minister.