Bill McCollum
Florida Attorney General, former Republican
Joshua Nkomo
Zimbabwean politician (1917-1999)
Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomowas a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1990 until his death in 1999. He founded and led the Zimbabwe African People’s Unionfrom 1961 until it merged in 1987 with Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Unionto form ZANU-PF after an internal military crackdown called Gukurahundi in western Zimbabwe, mostly on ethnic Ndebele ZAPU supporters.
Table of Contents
Occupation
About the Joshua Nkomo
Joshua Mqabuko Nyongolo Nkomowas a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Vice-President of Zimbabwe from 1990 until his death in 1999. He founded and led the Zimbabwe African People’s Unionfrom 1961 until it merged in 1987 with Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Unionto form ZANU-PF after an internal military crackdown called Gukurahundi in western Zimbabwe, mostly on ethnic Ndebele ZAPU supporters.
He was a leading trade union leader, who progressed on to become president of the banned National Democratic Party, and was jailed for ten years by Rhodesia’s white minority government. After his release in 1974, ZAPU contributed to the fall of that government, along with the splinter rival ZANU, created in 1963.
In 1983, fearing for his life in the early stages of the Gukurahundi, Nkomo fled the country. Later in 1987, he controversially signed the Unity Accord allowing ZAPU to merge with ZANU to stop the genocide.
Nkomo earned many nicknames like “Umafukufuku” in Ndebele, “Father Zimbabwe” in English, and “Chibwechitedza”in Shona.