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IT is said that the dead do not write their epitaph but their actions do. Gibson Jama Sibanda, throughout his life, through his actions wrote his epitaph. Our task is merely to place in written record those actions.
But how does one, with all the limitations of language, the frailties of human nature and its proneness to failure and error, accurately record a life which was so rich and full and yet so complex in its actions and thoughts?
Gibson Jama Sibanda’s over four decades of service to the people of Zimbabwe distinguishes him as an extraordinary man, a fighter and advocate for the common man and woman.
In times of darkness he always chose to light a candle rather than curse the darkness. His life was the embodiment of the triumph of humility over arrogance, the conquest of pride by humbleness, the trumping of fear by courage, graciousness in failure and defeat, the celebration of human diversity, steadfastness and resilience in adversity and the personification of empathetic servant leadership.
He was always slow to judge and never one to condemn. He was firm but even-handed and fair. Slow to anger and never to abuse. Always careful and measured in his choice of words and in his pronouncements. Never easily offended. Forgiveness came naturally to him. He typified the best of humanity.
Those of us who had the privilege and honour to have worked with him have permanently etched in our memories the dignity with which he stood up to adversity and abuse. To this day, tears never fail to swell in one’s eyes when remembering the day he walked into court at Tredgold Building in Bulawayo in leg irons and handcuffs, like a dangerous common criminal, something he was certainly not, dressed in an appalling prison garb, the shirt of which was so small and short that it left his entire stomach exposed.
The whole charade was calculated to humiliate, demean and dehumise and yet Gibson stood in the dock in that comical depiction with poise and dignity projecting graceful defiance against his tormentors. The irony was not lost on some of us that here was a man, who had been imprisoned by the Smith regime for the “crime” of seeking the freedom of his people, now standing in mocking silence against our erstwhile liberators who had turned what was a glorious, triumphant national liberation struggle into a brutal, petty, mean, angry, vindictive, vengeful and repressive nightmare. Now he stood in the same court accused of the “crime” of organising people to demand the fruits of the liberation struggle from a post-independence government, which had transformed itself into a caricature epitomising the total negation of just about everything that the liberation struggle had been about.
Notwithstanding all the abuse and torment which Gibson had suffered at the hands of the post-independence government, when he was called upon to work in the President’s Office as part of the trio of ministers running the Organ on National Healing, Reconciliation and Integration, there was never a trace of bitterness or anger.
When we moved around the country addressing rallies after the inception of the inclusive government he was invariably met with a torrent of questions when he preached peace, tolerance and forgiveness. He often quoted his colleague, at the Organ, Sekai Holland, chastisising those who demanded an eye for an eye by telling his audience, that if an eye for an eye would be our motto, Zimbabwe would be a nation of the blind.
I had first met Sibanda in the mid-1980s when he was part of the leadership of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU).
The late Kempton Makamure, Shadreck Gutto, the late Shepherd Nzombe, Justice Ben Hlatshwayo and I being colleagues at the Faculty of Law, were often invited to be resource persons at various workshops of the labour movement. It was then that I had first met Sibanda.
Then I knew him from a distance. It was not until the early days of the process of the formation of the MDC that I really got to know Gibson very well. He had nominated me to the Interim National Executive Committee of the MDC in which I sat as one of a very few representatives of the non-trade union elements of civil society.
One late Friday afternoon in 1999 when Isaac Maphosa then the national coordinator of the National Constitution Assembly (NCA) and myself, at that time being the national spokesperson of the NCA, we received a telephone call from Sibanda asking us to assist them as they had had a breakdown at Mvuma on their way to Harare from Bulawayo to attend weekend meetings of the MDC. Isaac and I quickly drove to Mvuma, getting there just as it was getting dark. There was Sibanda, Fletcher Dulini Ncube and Esaph Mdlongwa, sleeves rolled up and using a torch trying to repair Gibson’s old and battered blue Peugeot 504.
We joined them. Soon they gave up and we left the vehicle parked at the shopping centre and they got into our car and we drove to Harare. It was during that drive that I began to know Sibanda up close. Up until then, he was, to me, this distant, very important figure, the president of the formidable ZCTU.
During that two hour drive, here I was, sitting in this car with the Who is Who of Zimbabwe, Gibson Jama Sibanda, President of the ZCTU; Fletcher Dulini Ncube a veteran of the liberation struggle and a former Zapu stalwart who had spent years and years in detention in Gonakudzingwa; and Esaph Mdlongwa, a veteran trade unionist and member of the ZCTU National Council.
I could not have felt more insignificant and awe-striken and yet within a few minutes I was relaxed and listening to the various narratives of the different experiences of these veterans of Zimbabwe’s struggles. It was then that I experienced firsthand and close up the humility, the humbleness, the courage, the commitment, the kindness and the love of these men for their country and their people. Gibson was the quieter, the more deliberate, and the more considerate of them. He talked of his time in Smith’s Marondera prison and the torment of being away from his beloved wife and children.
He spoke of the struggles in the trade union movement, the scandals, the fights and his peacemaking interventions.
Months later, just a few weeks before the MDC inaugural congress a few of us gathered at Evon Mahlunge’s flat in Avondale. There was Sibanda, Fletcher Dulini Ncube, Sekai Holland, Esaph Mdlongwa, Grace Kwinjeh, Tendai Biti, Learnmore Jongwe, Isaac Maposa, Evon Mahlunge, Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga, Paul Themba Nyathi and myself. The subject of discussion was what leadership we wanted to emerge from congress.
Everyone at the meeting except for Holland, was of the view that having regard to the election we would have to fight against Zanu PF, it made more strategic sense to support Morgan Tsvangirai for president even though Sibanda was the interim president of the MDC and was eminently suited to be president. Holland argued passionately but fruitlessly that Sibanda was the better candidate for president and that we should support him.
She argued that Tsvangirai should be the secretary-general and that if we elevated him to be the president we would be live to regret it.
There were no takers for her argument. Eventually, the debate came to an end when Sibanda, in his typical selfless manner, implored Holland that he had heard her arguments, but the preponderance of the collective opinion was that he should stand aside and allow Tsvangirai to be elected unopposed and that he should accept the position of vice-president.
Without any touch of disappointment and with wholesome respect for all those of us who had urged him to let Tsvangirai be president, Gibson closed the discussion and thanked us for our honest appraisal of the nature of Zimbabwe’s politics which dictated that even though he was the better candidate for president of the party we perceived that he could not lead us to victory in the elections.
Even though I and Fletcher Dulini Ncube had strongly supported the view that Gibson should stand aside for Tsvangirai to be president, I was surprised at the meeting when he proposed that I should be supported to be the secretary-general and Fletcher Dulini Ncube to be the treasurer-general of the party.
He undertook that he would discuss these matters with Tsvangirai so that we could have a frictionless and tension-free as well as cohesive and celebratory congress which would be dominated by discussions on the tasks ahead rather than contestations for positions. Such was the graciousness, vision, kindness and humility of the man. At the subsequent congress, he kept his commitments in every respect. Others did not.
Being the gentleman he was Gibson never cried foul. He continued to focus on the bigger picture and the daunting challenges ahead. He was one never to hold a grudge, never vindictive and perpetually prepared to accept the frailties of the human spirit in others but always holding himself to the highest standards.
Before that, mostly with the late Milton Gwetu, another veteran trade unionist, surviving on sugar beans and the occasional Coca-Cola he had crisscrossed the width and breadth of the Matabeleland provinces and the Midlands organising the formation of the MDC structures among the rural communities. Literally brick by brick they had constructed what became the formidable MDC.
Little wonder that he was deeply hurt and disappointed when a few years later his construction, achieved with his sweat broke up. Not one to dwell on idealised abstractions he took it with graceful resignation, always teaching us that it was better to have nothing than to betray one’s conscience. Let them have the earth and the heavens and let us keep our humanity, values and principles he would implore us.
During the heady days of the conflicts and processes leading to the split of the MDC and thereafter even when abuse after abuse was hurled at him, and at all of us generally he remained firm in his conviction that we had to hold and maintain the moral high ground on the issues. Many a time we were tempted to dive into the sewer of gutter politics and slug it out with those who had taken to that type of politics, but Gibson repeatedly counselled us against it. He cautioned that the day we did we would have lost the struggle for a different, more humane, democratic, respectful, tolerant and dignified society. He held onto this conviction to his last day on earth.
When Fletcher Dulini Ncube, Priscilla Misihairabwi-Mushonga and I went to visit him at his house on Sunday August 22 2010 the day before he passed away, we were ushered to his bedroom where he sat on the edge of the bed looking, drained and frail but still dignified and focused as ever.
He barely allowed us to dwell on his health before asking us to brief him on the outcomes of the Sadc Summit in Namibia and the goings on at Copac . He was worried that there were so many discordant voices on what had really happened at the summit, but he was even more worried about the problems he had heard were being encountered on the constitutional outreach programme. Particularly worrisome to him were reports that people were being bussed to Copac meetings and that in many areas there had been thoroughly coached on what to say.
He wondered if the exercise was not one in futility if it was true that political parties were frog-marching people to Copac meetings and demanding that they merely echo the party views. He was worried about the violence reported in Mashonaland West and other areas.
Regrettably, we could only confirm his worries over these matters. We confirmed to him that indeed it was true that bussing was taking place; that party supporters were being extensively coached on what to say; that in some areas dissenting voices were often booed and heckled. He asked if anything could be done to redeem the situation. Again, regrettably we told him that it was too late to reverse the situation and that in our view it was perhaps inevitable that things would turn out his way having regard to the fact that we were trying to craft a national constitution in a highly polarised, pervasively intolerant society. We thought that history would record that when people are appropriated in their entirety by this or that or other political party they are incapable of acting as independent free-thinking and self-determining citizens. They become but mere agents and vehicles of political party gladiators.
As we left his house we reflected on the fact that here was Gibson Sibanda, in considerable pain, and yet he did not appear worried about his health. He was still worried about the fate of his country and yet as he sat on that bed he seemed so lonely, so alone and yet he had devoted his entire life to the service of the ordinary working people. His wife had passed away in 2003 and he never remarried. It seemed to us that at this very moment he needed the loving, considerate and kind care of his loving dear wife more than ever. But she was long gone.
The following day, Fletcher Dulini Ncube asked the Party Secretary for Health Stella Allberry to go to Gibson’s house and see what we could do to provide closer care and observation to him. She did. The result was his admission at Mater Dei that afternoon. By 12:30am he had been taken away from us.
We salute him, we honour him, and we cherish his memory. He left us when we needed him most. He taught us by example what empathetic servant leadership is. We will forever honour his memory. He is our hero.
Our leader who fought the good fight. For four decades he served the people as a messenger of peace, the bearer of kindness. Let his legacy be a memento for the triumph of humility, of graciousness, of kindness, of honesty, of tolerance and of fairness and justice. While he cannot today write his epitaph, we do so for him with humility and sadness. We pledge that his fight will be our fight, his pain our pain; his dreams our dreams. We will not betray his memory.
May the Almighty, the God of the Heavens and the Earth let his soul rest in peace.
*Welshman Ncube is MDC-M secretary general
BY WELSHMAN NCUBE
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