Ndabaningi Sithole was one of the founding fathers of the modern state of Zimbabwe in southern Africa. In August 1963, he became the first president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu), the militant liberation organisation that fought against white minority rule that he led for a decade before being deposed in a palace coup engineered by his rival Robert Mugabe. Mugabe went on to become the post-independence leader of Zimbabwe.
Sithole was the most prolific black writer in colonial Rhodesia from the 1950s until the country gained independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. In that period he published nine books (one serialised in African Parade magazine). He also left an incredible archive of the liberation struggle that was generated in real time. Surprisingly, most of Zimbabwe’s liberation figures did not leave behind a lot of their own writings. Sithole is unique in that regard.
