The Zimbabwean nationalist politician Edgar Zivanai 'Two-boy' Tekere played a crucial role in the liberation struggle. Tekere's reached the peak of his political career during the reign of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front (Zanu PF) party when he was a cabinet minister.
Background
Edgar Zivanai Tekere was born on April 1 1937 in Iyang'ombe village, Umtali district of eastern Rhodesia, one of several children of an Anglican priest. He studied at mission schools and became an altar boy at Salisbury’s Anglican cathedral. His first job was selling religious books. By his teens his interest had been fired by the nascent nationalist movement, and at 22 he became the youngest black ever detained under the country’s security laws.
Education
Edgar Tekere began his primary school at Iyang'ombe village then later at St. Faith's Mission. His secondary education was at St. Augustine's Mission. It was during his student days at St. Faith's Mission that Tekere was nicknamed "2-Boy" because of his soccer exploits when he played like two people in one.
In 1955, Tekere enrolled for teacher training at St. Augustine's Mission, but lost interest midway into the training in 1956.
He moved to Harare where he found work with a religious bookstore, SPCK, belonging to the Anglican church as a shop assistant, and later rose to costing clerk. By this time, Tekere had already become an active member of the Youth League.
He studied for a bachelor of Commerce and Administration degree at the University of South African and a diploma in Marketing at the Institute of Marketing in the UK.
His political career gathered momentum in the early 1960s when he joined ZAPU under the leadership of Joshua Nkomo. However, in 1962, Nkomo engaged in an initiative to get rid of his internal opponents resulted in him expelling the likes of Tekere together with Robert Mugabe, Enos Nkala and Ndabaningi Sithole. In 1963, Tekere helped found the Zimbabwe African National Union, or Zanu, in Rhodesia. The following year, the party was banned, and Tekere and Robert Mugabe, then the party’s secretary general, were jailed as Prime Minister Ian Smith’s government sought to crush demands for black majority rule. He spent ten years at Hwa Hwa prison. After their release in 1975, they crossed into Mozambique, which had become a base for a guerrilla warriors. Soon after independence, Tekere was appointed a cabinet minister. At the Independence celebrations in 1980, he personally invited the popular reggae icon Bob Marley to perform at Rufaro Stadium.
In the early 1980s, Tekere was involved in a murder case in which he, together with his seven body guards were accused of killing a white farmer. In the early 1990s Tekere fell out of Mugabe's favour when he began to oppose the newly adopted one party state ideology. He was expelled from the Zanu PF party and formed his Zimbabwe Unity Movement (ZUM) party. In 1995, he successfully contested the elections against Zanu PF and effectively averted the birth of a one party state in Zimbabwe. His defeat in the elections of 1995 ushered in his political demise which saw his departure from public life.
From around 2007, Tekere began to sympathise with opposition movements such as the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai which opposed his former party Zanu PF. In 2009, he was a guest at the MDC's 10th Anniversary in Harare. He also attended the Launch of Simba Makoni's Mavambo Party. After his death, he was declared a national heroes was buried at the National Heroes Acres.
Achievements
Works
book
A Lifetime of Struggle
(The book is an autobiography in which he portrays himself...)
2007
Religion
Despite born into the home of an Anglican father, Edgar Tekere ceased from attending church in his adulthood, and on rare occasions he did, it was not Anglican.
According to him, "....I dislike the Anglican Church. My father suffered persecution by the church because of my activities." He was considered a terrorist by the Colonialist.
Politics
His political views can be seen in his fight for the independence of his Nation. Edgar Tekere was a key figure in the struggle for independence from white minority rule.
Views
In his memoirs, A Lifetime of Struggle (2007), Tekere wrote that he accepted his “share of responsibility” for the failure to build democratic institutions in Zimbabwe. But he blamed Mugabe for building a nation whose people “live mostly in fear of their own government, of a state machinery, born out of the forces of liberation, but now, regrettably, more associated with ruthlessness and naked force”. Yet Tekere’s own commitment to democracy seemed to owe more to opportunism than high principle.
Quotations:
"The ending shows they did not go well. But whatever happens, one thing is clear: Robert Mugabe lost, he got chewed up by Morgan Tsvangirai, and now he is trying all sorts of tricks to hold on. But he is finished and can never be an effective head of state again."
Personality
Edgar Tekere was known as a very resilient man who never gave up despite the challenges he faced.