Victoria Chitepo

Victoria Fikile Chitepo , née Victoria Mahamba-Sithole (born March 27, 1928 in Dundee , South Africa ; † April 8, 2016 in Harare , Zimbabwe ) was a Zimbabwean politician, activist and teacher. Chitepo was, among other things, the minister of her home country between 1980 and 1992 and a high political functionary of the Zimbabwean ZANU-PF . Her husband, Herbert Chitepo, was one of the leading figures in the Zimbabwean liberation movement.

Life

Youth and education

Victoria Fikile Chitepo was born as Victoria Mahamba-Sithole in the South African coal city of Dundee in the province of Natal . She grew up in South Africa and attended school there. After finishing school, she studied at the University of Natal and the University of Birmingham .

After completing her training, she started working as a teacher in Natal Province in 1946. At Adam's College, near Durban, she met her future husband, Herbert Chitope. In 1955 she moved with her husband, whose name she took on when they married on November 29, 1955, to Salisbury (now Harare) in the British colony of Southern Rhodesia , where he worked as a social worker.

activism

In 1960 Chitepo began to be politically active in the National Democratic Party , a party that campaigned for the black majority in southern Rhodesia to take over power. Among other things, she led a "sit-in" (sit-in) of women in the Magistrates' Court of Salisbury, with the aim of promoting citizenship of black people in Southern Rhodesia.

In 1961, Chitepo followed her husband, who went into exile in Tanganyika (now Tanzania ). There she supported, among other things, for three years (1966-68) black refugees from southern Rhodes who had fled the settler regime to Dar es Salaam. While Chitepo stayed in town, her husband went to neighboring Zambia to promote the violent struggle against the southern Rhodesian settler regime. There he was killed in 1975 by the South Rhodesian secret service by a car bomb. Victoria Chitepo did not return until 1980, after Southern Rhodesia became independent as Zimbabwe.

Call to the civil service

As part of the first free elections in Zimbabwe in 1980 , Chitepo ran in the Mutasa / Buhara-West constituency for the ZANU-PF party that emerged from the ZANU independence movement. She won the mandate in the small chamber of parliament, the House of Assembly . She then appointed Prime Minister Mugabe as Deputy Minister for Education and Culture. In 1982 Chitepo changed departments and headed the Ministry of Natural Resources and Tourism.

In the 1985 parliamentary elections , Chitepo ran again and defended her mandate. She was also represented in the new government, she headed the Ministry of Information, Post and Telecommunications. In 1992, at the age of 64, Chitepo retired from active politics and worked as an advisor to the then UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali in preparation for the 4th World Conference on Women (1994–95).

In 2005, Chitepo ran again for the constituency of Glen Norah in the Zimbabwean capital Harare, but lost the election. Despite her withdrawal from active politics, Chitepo was considered an important leader in the ZANU-PF, and she was also a member of the ZANU-PF Politburo. The United States and the European Union - along with other Zimbabwean politicians - imposed sanctions on Chitepo because it would "impede the Zimbabwean democratic process".

death

On April 8, 2016, Victoria Chitepo was wounded dead in her home in Mount Pleasant, Harare. She was buried on April 13, 2016 in the National Heroes Field. She left four children.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i} Ruramisai Charumbira: Chitepo, Victoria Fikile . In: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Eds.): Dictionary of African Biography . tape 6 . Oxford Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5 , pp. 86 ff .
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Victoria Chitepo found dead. In: The Harald. April 9, 2016, accessed December 5, 2016 . 
3. ^ All set for Chitepo, Mwashita historic burial. In: The Herald. April 13, 2016, accessed December 5, 2016 .