Sithole's legend lives on

ZIMBABWEAN journalist Michael Hartnack pays respect to one of the country's most influential political leaders, Ndabaningi Sithole, who died on Tuesday.

The death of Ndabaningi Sithole, founder of the Zimbabwe African National Union, opened a can of political worms just as the party's main faction convened on Wednesday to endorse Sithole's protege and longstanding rival, 76-year-old Robert Mugabe, as their presidential candidate for 2002-2008.

For 40 years the joker in the African nationalist pack, Sithole has succeeded, posthumously, in creating yet another severe embarrassment -- his lifelong speciality.

The Shona, Zimbabwe's majority ethnic group, have a saying: ''Wafa wakanaka'' -- ''to be dead is to be good''.

But Mugabe will have difficulty finding words to describe his relationship with the prickly Congregationalist minister whom he once called a ''failed missionary, failed nationalist and failed terrorist''.

As his 1970 novel-cum-history ''The Polygamist'' shows, Sithole lived in a world in which it was often hard to distinguish fact from fantasy.

His entire career was punctuated with claims of dark conspiracies in which everyone from Mugabe and the late Rhodesian Federal Prime Minister, Roy Welensky, to Sithole's long suffering wife Vesta, were supposedly implicated.

Most sources say he was born at Mount Silinda Mission on the Mozambique border in July 1920, among the Ndau-Shangaan people, descended from peoples who fled Zululand in the 1820s but intermarried with the Shona.

Sithole some-times claimed to have been born at Nyamandhlovu, in Matabeleland.

He trained as a teacher at Dadaya Mission, Zvishavane, where the superintendent was the future Southern Rhodesian prime minister, Sir Garfield Todd, undertaking further study in the United States, with which he formed longlasting ties.

Sithole died on Tuesday in the US, three days after an operation for a heart defect.

Sithole launched into African nationalist politics in 1959, leading a hardline faction in the movement led by Joshua Nkomo. He was credited with persuading Nkomo to reject the 1961 constitutional agreement with the British and Rhodesian governments, after Nkomo's initial acceptance of a deal to give Africans greatly expanded parliamentary representation.

In 1963 Sithole sought Chinese arms to launch a guerilla struggle against white rule, then broke with Nkomo's Zapu and formed Zanu with Mugabe's support.

Sithole's declared aim, to force Britain to send troops into Rhodesia ''to restore order'', may have contributed in prompting Ian Smith's 1965 Unilateral Declaration of Independence.

Detained with Nkomo and Mugabe under a state of emergency, Sithole's plot from prison to have Smith assassinated was easily exposed in 1969 by Rhodesian intelligence.

A controversial statement from the dock denounced violence.

Mugabe, freed with Sithole under John Vorster's 1974 ''detente'' initiative, ousted Sithole as spokesman for Zanu guerillas infiltrating from Mozambique, led by Josiah Tongogara.

Tongogara, like Zanu chairman Herbert Chitepo, was to die mysteriously in exile.

In 1978 Sithole made terms with Smith and Bishop Abel Muzorewa in a pact aimed at bringing black rule. Sithole's armed ''auxiliaries'' perpetrated a wave of atrocities aimed at intimidating voters.

Sithole's Zanu faction was annihilated at the 1980 election won by Mugabe, but made a comeback in his South-Eastern home area in 1985, regaining two seats.

As the Mozambican civil war flared, Sithole allied with Afonso Dhlakama's Renamo and fled to the US, where he was funded by the right-wing Heritage foundation.

Granted immunity, he was allowed to return in 1993, but made scant political impact until he turned a farm on Harare's outskirts into an informal township, whose residents provided a core of support.

Mugabe responded by demolishing the entire township on ''health grounds'', defying repeated court orders.

Veterans of Sithole's ''Chimwenje'' dissidents in Mozambique then tried to ambush Mugabe's heavily armed motorcade with an anti-personnel mine, but were easily caught.

Sithole again found himself in the dock for conspiracy to murder.

He was convicted but freed on bail pending appeal. His wife Vesta, publicly accused by Sithole of plotting with Mugabe's Central Intelligence Organisation, testified that he was senile and deranged.

As early as 1970, Zanu sources reported Sithole had approved plans for the ''Shonafication'' of Matabeleland when the party came to power.

Most observers believe had he, not Mugabe, led Zimbabwe to independence, it would have suffered a vastly more troubled history than did occur.

Sithole specifically ordered he was not to be buried at Heroes Acre among Mugabe loyalists.

But Mugabe, faced with the re-emergence of bitter factionalism within his party, will be eager to win to his side those who have longstanding ethnic links with Sithole's followers.

Vice-President Simon Muzenda said Sithole's death was ''a very, very terrible loss to the country when we look at the heroic role he played in the struggle''.

Mugabe will want to glorify Sithole's militancy, and relate it to continuing agitation for redistribution of white owned land to black Zimbabweans, while glossing over Sithole's devious methods.

Sithole is survived by his wife and four children.