SITHOLE, NDABANINGI

born July 31, 1920, Nyamandhlovu, Matabeleland, Rhodesia [now Zimbabwe] teacher, clergyman, and an intellectual leader of the black nationalist movement in Rhodesia, later Zimbabwe. Mission-educated, Sithole was a teacher before he studied theology in the United States (195558). On returning to Rhodesia he was a Congregationalist minister, school principal, and president of the African Teachers' Association (195960). His political career began in 1960, when he joined the new National Democratic Party and became its treasurer. Sithole helped form the Zimbabwe African Peoples' Union (ZAPU) in December 1961 and, after it was banned, traveled widely in search of support, making broadcasts into Rhodesia from Tanzania. By July 1963 he returned to Rhodesia and formed a new party, the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU). Considered dangerous, Sithole and other nationalists were arrested a few days before Rhodesia unilaterally declared itself to be a sovereign state on Nov. 11, 1965. Sithole was imprisoned until December 1974, when he was allowed to attend a meeting of black nationalist leaders with the Rhodesian prime minister, Ian Smith, in Lusaka, Zambia. Sithole returned to Rhodesia and again was arrested on March 4, 1975. He was released one month later and attended a meeting of the Organization of African Unity in Dar es Salaam, Tanz. He then went to Lusaka and continued to fight for the cause of black majority rule in Rhodesia. In 197879 he served on the Transitional Executive Council, preparing the transfer of power in Zimbabwe-Rhodesia. He was a member of Parliament in 1979. Though continuing as leader of ZANU, he was defeated in the elections of 1982, and his influence dimmed thereafter. Sithole published his influential African Nationalism in 1958 (2nd ed., 1968). In addition to numerous newspaper and journal articles, he also wrote a biography of Obed Mutezo (1970), the novel The Polygamist (1972), and an account of the Zimbabwe struggle, Roots of a Revolution (1977).