BY BROOKS MARMON
ZANU killed him.
Or at least that’s what the late Callistus Ndlovu told me about the fate of Benjamin Madlela when I interviewed him in a Bulawayo bar in 2017. According to Ndlovu, Madlela was attacked by ZANU partisans in Tanzania during the early years of the ZAPU-ZANU rivalry and subsequently died as a result of his injuries.
This was a startling claim, especially as it came directly from a member of ZANU-PF’s Central Committee with a long record of service in both government and during the liberation struggle (at which time he was affiliated with ZAPU). Then again, Robert Mugabe had just resigned and the late November air throughout the country was abuzz with yearning for a ‘new dispensation. Still, given the intrigue and innuendo around the deaths of freedom fighters like Herbert Chitepo, Josiah Tongogara, JZ Moyo, Leopold Takawira, and many others, I was surprised that Madlela’s name did not feature in this discourse. I’ve attempted to learn more about his political career ever since.
Who Was Madlela?
At the time, I knew very little about Madlela. Six years later, I still don’t know much. In 2017 I was an aspiring historian, an American PhD student who had just arrived a few weeks earlier to begin ‘fieldwork’ on the pan-African dimensions of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle. All I had discovered by the time I met Ndlovu was that Madlela led ZAPU’s office in Tanzania from 1962 until the mid-1960s.
I further learned from Ndlovu that Madlela came to public attention as a result of his involvement in trade union activity in Bulawayo in the 1950s and was fiercely loyal to Joshua Nkomo once he became active in party politics. Pathisa Nyathi has written that Madlela attended Mzingwane School alongside other major future ZAPU officials like Jason Moyo and Edward Ndlovu, who led the party’s office in Accra, Ghana while Madlela was in Dar es Salaam.
Despite Madlela’s prominent position, leading one of ZAPU’s most important foreign offices for several years, he is barely a footnote in the history books. Timothy Scarnecchia noted that Madlela composed propaganda material that was highly critical of Ndabaningi Sithole’s connections to the US during ZANU’s breakaway from ZAPU in 1963. Stuart Doran cites a dispatch from a British diplomat who described Madlela as a “tough and bellicose individual.”
As I’ve advanced in my academic career and conducted additional research, I’ve not learned much more about Madlela, despite ongoing attempts over several years to assess the accuracy of Ndlovu’s claim.
(Mis)Understanding Madlela’s Passing
My first attempt to confirm Ndlovu’s assertion was with Saul Ndlovu, the veteran journalist who at the time of Madlela’s death was helping to produce the Zimbabwe Review, ZAPU’s official organ. Saul personally recalled Madlela and his passing but couldn’t remember the cause. He said he’d inquire with members of the Madlela family and get back to me. Unfortunately, I never heard from him again; he passed away at the age of 86 not much later.
I initially didn’t know when Madlela died, but I closely analysed the Zimbabwe Review and found an announcement of his death in February 1965. Oddly, there was no indication of what had felled this ‘tough’ cadre in his thirties.
I thought that some of my historian colleagues interested in the liberation movements operating out of Dar es Salaam might have come across Madlela. Initial inquries were not useful. However, three years after I first approached him, Jim Brennan from the University of Illinois wrote to let me know that he’d reviewed a document produced by the Czechoslovakian intelligence services in March 1966 which claimed that Madlela “died as a result of injuries caused by ZANU rioters.”
With multiple sources pointing in the same direction, ZANU’s culpability now seemed confirmed. Feeling that I had made something of a scholarly scoop, I wrote in my book, Pan-Africanism Versus Partnership, that Madlela “died of injuries” sustained following an altercation with ZANU.
However, while Madlela was indeed involved in a physical altercation with ZANU members, after further research, I am now less confident that the incident was connected to his passing.
Madlela’s Fight with ZANU
Madlela sustained relatively serious injuries in an October 1964 confrontation between ZAPU and ZANU partisans during Nigeria’s Independence Day celebration at the home of that country’s High Commissioner in Dar es Salaam. The ZAPU contingent seems to have lost the confrontation. According to a press account, Madlela broke his jaw, Edward Mhambi was stabbed in the chest, and Andrew Chikuse also suffered head injuries. All three were admitted to hospital but discharged within 24 hours. Another ZAPU official at the party, Francis Nehwati, seems to have escaped unscathed.
Two ZANU representatives were taken to a police station and questioned. The incident and their alleged role received only minor attention in the Tanzanian media.
Before the fight erupted, Herbert Chitepo and Madlela worked the crowd, each pressing the case for ZANU and ZAPU respectively. A British diplomat in attendance spoke with both and sent a cable back to London. He described the relations between the two parties as being “extremely bad” and was particularly surprised by the militancy of Chitepo, who delivered an “unusually strong denunciation” of Ian Smith’s minority white government.
After the publication of my book, I spoke to Tobias Chizengeni, one of the ZANU attendees at the party who was questioned by Tanzanian police about the altercation. He recalled that as Chitepo mingled with other guests, ZAPU officials trailed him. Once Chitepo moved on, a ZAPU representative would approach the guest and denounce Chitepo and ZANU as sell-outs. Chizengeni remembers that the Cuban Ambassador in Tanzania was one of the high-ranking officials who was subjected to this lecture by their ZAPU opponents.
According to Chizengeni, Chitepo left early. Toward the end of the party, a fracas broke out between the two competing groups. He firmly rejects Callistus Ndlovu’s claim that this struggle was connected to Madlela’s death months later, noting that Ndlovu wasn’t based in Tanzania at the time and had no immediate knowledge of what transpired.
Madlela’s Final Months
Chizengeni says that he gave his statement, was released, and the matter was never raised again by the authorities. He told me, “if there was an issue concerning us, the police would have charged us, but they didn’t, so there is nothing.” The absence of criminal charges and Madlela’s swift discharge from medical supervision would indeed seem to point against the fight being a factor in his death a full four months later.
However, Madlela did endure a prolonged physical recovery. The last substantial reference to Madlela that I have located in the historical record is a synopsis of his meeting with the British High Commissioner in Tanzania nearly two months after the fracas. The Commissioner, whose credibility is somewhat diminished as he mistakenly thought Madlela’s forename was ‘Bernard’, documented that ZAPU’s chief official in Tanzania was still “nursing a broken jaw.”
Some point thereafter, although I’ve found no material to indicate exactly when, Madlela’s health deteriorated. An announcement of his death on 2 February 1965 at a government hospital in Kitwe, Zambia, stated that Madlela suffered from “a long illness which necessitated his being flown from his base of operations in Dar es Salaam to Kitwe.”
The Zimbabwe Review made no attempt to exploit Madlela’s death at ZANU’s expense. A tribute declared, “he had no personal enemies besides imperialism. His was a world of peace, freedom, and brotherhood.”
According to a radio broadcast in Tanzania, a ZAPU spokesperson stated “that Madlela had been suffering from blackwater fever and malaria.” It is unclear why an individual suffering from malaria would have been transferred from a hospital in Tanzania’s capital to a comparatively remote facility on the Zambian Copperbelt.
However, Madlela’s passing in Zambia made it easier to return his body to Zimbabwe where he was honoured with a massive funeral service in Bulawayo. Both the Zimbabwe Review and The Chronicle stated that it was the largest memorial service in the country since the passing of Tichafa Samuel Parirenyatwa two and a half years earlier. They estimated that about 10,000 to 15,000 mourners were in attendance. ZAPU’s Zimbabwe Review also condemned the large Rhodesian police presence at the peaceful ceremony. Tributes from both Joshua Nkomo and the President of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda, were read (notably Julius Nyerere seems to have remained silent).
Conclusion
This new information, much of it gleaned in the last several months, raised more questions than it answered.
Why did the large number of attendees at his funeral fail to cement Madlela’s reputation in ZAPU and the liberation struggle at large? Why didn’t ZAPU attempt to exploit Madlela’s death as a result of his physical altercation with ZANU? Why did Callistus Ndlovu believe that ZANU was responsible but his contemporary in ZAPU, Saul Ndlovu, not recall any allegations of foul play?
Why was a gravely ill Madlela flown from the capital of Tanzania to a comparatively remote hospital in Zambia? How were the negotiations between ZAPU and the Rhodesian government for the repatriation of the body conducted? Do the seemingly contrasting reactions to the death by Nyerere and Kaunda have deeper political meaning?
While the inability to get to the heart of a research interest is vexing for a historian, it is these sorts of challenges that make historical research rewarding. One thing that is clear however is that Madlela’s legacy deserves greater recognition.
His tribute in the Zimbabwe Review (perhaps written by Saul Ndlovu?)urges this historian along: “His name shall go into the history books of our revolution and all the honour that he deserves shall be accorded to his dead spirit.”
Brooks Marmon is a historian affiliated with The Ohio State University and University of Pretoria. He is the author of Pan-Africanism Versus Politics: African Decolonisation in Southern Rhodesian Politics, 1950-63. He encourages anyone with knowledge of Madlela or the events discussed here to contact him: eb.marmon at up.ac.za
