Before the fateful August 21, 2020 which heralded the end of Job Saro Wiwa Sikhala’s revolutionary campaign against corruption outside the iron bars of Mnangagwa’s prison, he had a few days before proclaimed that revolutionaries do not cease their transformative and radical people-centered work until their liberation objective is met. My curious question to his perception of Malcolm X’s tragic end was answered with “I am ready to lead a revolution and for martyrdom.”
The foregoing is what inspires this great son of the soil who is now languishing in Chikurubi Maximum Prison where he risks exposure to the deadly duo of Covid-19 and a litany of KGB-like nefarious machinations of the repressive Mnangagwa regime. He had publicly stated and privately confided that the people’s rights superseded his own personal pursuits and as such championing the fight against corruption and the rapacious aggrandizement characteristic of the Zanu PF regime was paramount and sacrocanct to him.
Job Saro Wiwa Sikhala pondered at the prolonged democratic musings of the Zimbabwean people and the delayed ideal destiny that he had passionately fought for ever since his youthful days at the University of Zimbabwe. In his unrelenting and Karanga dialect he roared “zvokwadi mwana wamai this repressive regime will meet the same fate as that of Cambodia’s Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.”With revolutionary optimism he bellowed, “My friend look at the demise of Pinochet, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Omar al Bashir, Jean Bedel Bokassa, Adolf Hitler, Mobutu Sese Seko, Hastings Kamuzu Banda, Sani Abacha, and Idi Amin Dada.” He ended up writing a three part series article which could not transition to the third part because of his arrest and it was entitled, “All Dictators Die Miserable Deaths.” In what he termed epistles to Zimbabweans, he reassured his fellow countrymen that unrelenting fighters who have the resolve and tenaciousness to liberate the oppressed ultimately guide dictators to miserable endings.
In his humble and organic style of prosecuting the anti-corruption struggle against the Zanu PF elites which had been championed by his comrades Hopewell Chin’ono and Jacob Ngarivhume, Job Sikhala had managed to appeal to Zimbabweans across the political divide. The 31st July call for national action and the unprecedented security deployment which culminated in the Zimbabwean lives matter international hysteria was a net effect of his visionary hope of a post-repressive and corruption free nation. In the safety of his contrasted hide outs ranging from guerrilla-like settings to unknown locations as far as Zambia and Mozambique, he used social media to an anticipating population delivering his famous “Zimbabweans I come to you.”
By the time the state illegally apprehended him in Tynwald, Harare, Job Saro Wiwa Sikhala had forged ties with the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) in a rare and welcome southern African post- independence regional alliance that he envisioned as the climax of the struggle for a democratic and prosperous Zimbabwe. As he entered the Magumete (Prison Van) at Harare Rotten Row Court, he shouted “The People Shall Be Victorious, Vincere Caritate, Zimbabwe Para Todos” and was whisked away by the prison guards to Chikurubi Maximum.
Charles M. Mutama (Exchanging revolutionary notes with Wiwa)