The son of the late Vice President Joshua Nkomo says it pains him that his father was laid to rest at the National Heroes Acre in Harare despite Father Zimbabwe’s indication that he wanted to be buried at his rural home in Matabeleland South.
Speaking at a memorial service of the late former ZIPRA military intelligence supremo, Dumiso Dabengwa, Sibangalizwe Nkomo, who is the current Zapu leader, said, “It’s so painful to think that your parent was buried where he never wanted to be laid to rest. People are asking me all the time about this issue. They are saying ‘what should we do about Father Zimbabwe’. I have no answer to that question. In the first place I lost the vote for determining where Nkomo was supposed to be laid to rest. I did not stop there in my push for Nkomo to be laid to rest at our homestead.
“I need your assistance in this matter people of Zimbabwe who were and are still followers of Father Zimbabwe. You all know that he did not want to be laid at that place (National Heroes Acre). I wish to be always at his gravesite every July 1st during the memorial service of my father Joshua Mqabuko Nkomo and all this to be done at our homestead in Maphaneni, St. Joseph’s where he wanted to be laid to rest near his mother and father.”
The late Nkomo, who fought against colonial rule and was persecuted by the late former President Robert Mugabe’s government, died of prostrate cancer on July 1, 1999.
At least 20,000 people aligned to his PF Zapu in the 1980s were killed by the North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces.