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Lincoln
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Canaan Banana
(Filed: 12/11/2003)
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Canaan Banana, the colourfully-named former president of Zimbabwe who died on Monday aged 67, became his country's first black head of state in 1980 following the bloody and prolonged war of independence that toppled Ian Smith's white-only regime; but his career ended in disgrace 18 years later when he was convicted and jailed for sodomy.
Although not well-known outside Southern Rhodesia before independence, Banana had had an honourable career as an opponent of the Smith regime, and as a radical theologian. He served as the country's president, a largely ceremonial position, from March 1980 to December 1987, when he was effectively forced out by the increasingly autocratic Robert Mugabe, who took over as executive president, after serving as prime minister.
Banana might have expected to spend the rest of his days as his country's respected elder statesman, but his retirement was rudely interrupted by a sexual scandal which led to his trial on charges of sodomy.
The story broke in February 1997 when a former bodyguard, Jefta Dube, who was on trial for murder, pleaded in mitigation that he had been systematically raped and sodomised by Banana over a three-year period when Banana was president, and that he (Dube) had been taunted by the murdered man as "Banana's wife".
Banana had allegedly spotted Dube playing for the police football team, the Black Mambas, in late 1983 and invited him to join his household. Dube described how Banana drank, danced and played cards with him before drugging him and raping him on the carpet of the State House Library.
Dube had complained at the time to the country's police commissioner, but was told that nothing could be done. When he asked Banana to stop, Banana refused, telling him: "I am the final court of appeal."
Banana denied the allegations, claiming that the charges had been trumped up by his opponents. But by May, Dube had been joined by a veritable army of accusers, including dozens of former students of the University of Zimbabwe (where Banana had been Chancellor from 1983 to 1988), several members of the State House football team, the Tornadoes (who testified that their patron's fascination for scoring extended beyond the pitch), and assorted policemen and air force officers. There was, in addition, testimony of sex with cooks, gardeners and several aides, a jobseeker and a hitch-hiker.
Homosexuality is regarded as beyond the pale in Zimbabwe and is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. In 1995, President Mugabe had famously described homosexuals as "worse than pigs and dogs" and urged Zimbabweans to turn them over to the police. Banana's arrest contributed to growing public disillusionment with the regime, since rumours of Banana's sexual profligacy had been rife in the capital for many years and it was generally assumed that Mugabe must have known, but had done nothing to stop it.
In 1998 Banana was found guilty on 11 charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy and and other "unnatural acts" with men. The case took a further dramatic twist when, shortly before sentencing, Banana went on the run to South Africa after receiving a tip-off that Mugabe intended to have him assassinated. After meeting Nelson Mandela, he returned to Zimbabwe, where he was sentenced to 10 years in jail, of which nine were suspended.
Canaan Sodindo Banana was born on March 5 1936 at Esiphezini, in Essexvale District, near Bulawayo, Southern Rhodesia. He was educated at a mission school, followed by Tegwani Teacher Training Institute and Epworth Theological College, where he was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1962.
He worked at various missions and was chairman of the Bulawayo Council of Churches in 1969-70 and of the Southern African Urban Industrial Mission from 1970 to 1973. He alarmed the authorities by publishing his own version of the Lord's Prayer, encouraging Africans to resist white supremacy.
Banana spent a year travelling in South-East Asia and Japan (where he took a diploma at Kansai Industrial Centre). On his return he became an active nationalist, joining the newly-formed African National Council (ANC), of which Bishop Abel Muzorewa was president. He became its vice-president and campaigned for the rejection of the agreement between Rhodesia's prime minister Ian Smith and Sir Alec Douglas-Home during the Pearce Commission inquiry.
In 1972, Banana accompanied Muzorewa on a visit to London to press for another constitutional conference. In consequence, Banana's passport was confiscated on his return, and he fled on foot to Botswana in 1973. He ended up in America on a three-year scholarship and studied for a master's degree in Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary, Washington DC.
On his return to Rhodesia in 1975, Banana was arrested at the airport and jailed for leaving the country without a passport. On his release in January 1976, he flew to Bulawayo but was kept under house arrest. Later in the year he was allowed to join Muzorewa's team at settlement talks in Geneva, during which he defected to Robert Mugabe's Zanu (the Zimbabwe African National Union).
On his return to Rhodesia in December 1976, he dismissed Muzorewa as "irrelevant and gullible" and the following year established the People's Movement to represent the internal wing of Mugabe's party. He was again detained, but was released shortly before Lord Soames arrived as Governor in 1979.
Banana became first president of an independent Zimbabwe on April 18 1980, when he received the constitutional instruments from the Prince of Wales. As a former political detainee and a member of the minority Ndebele people, he had impeccable political credentials, and was the only person nominated by Zanu.
Banana used the presidential platform to attack the churches for their mealy-mouthed approach to the liberation struggle, and in 1980 called for a "radical transformation" of the content of the Christian message: "When I see a guerrilla, I see Jesus Christ," he declared. Later, he suggested that the Bible should be rewritten to make it relevant to people in post-colonial societies.
In September 1980 Banana was an intermediary in talks about merging Zanu-PF and Joshua Nkomo's Zapu and was credited with brokering the 1987 Unity Accord which brought to an end the Matabeleland massacres in which Mugabe's army is thought to have killed an estimated 20,000 civilians.
Banana had some difficulty investing the office of president with the required aura of reverence and in 1982 a law was passed in Zimbabwe forbidding jokes about the president's name, though it continued to invite cheap jibes, illustrated later in such headlines as "Man raped by Banana" and "Mugabe Slips on Banana".
Banana took a great interest in raising chickens at Mrs Banana's farming co-operative in the grounds of State House and acquired his own farm just outside Harare. He sent Prince Charles a poem for his wedding, and wrote five books on theology and politics. His other interests included refereeing football matches, conducting a choir, and playing tennis and Ping-Pong.
The loss of office in 1987 was not without its compensations. Banana retired that year on very favourable terms, with a tax-free pension for life of £25,443, lifetime immunity from import duties, and with a secretary, two security guards and a vehicle allowance.
Thereafter he served, in 1989, on the United Nations commission of eminent churchmen investigating business in South Africa. At the end of 1991 he was one of a group of Commonwealth "Eminent Persons" which observed Codesa (Convention for a Democratic South Africa). He also played an active part, on behalf of the Organisation of African Unity, in seeking to broker peace in Liberia.
After the scandal broke, Banana lost his university chair of theology, religious studies and philosophy, was stripped of his clerical rank by the Methodist church in Zimbabwe and was dropped by the OAU. When, as president of the Zimbabwe Football Association, he went on to the field to meet the players he was booed by the crowd.
Banana was convicted by Zimbabwe's high court, but served only six months of his sentence in an open prison that allowed him to make shopping trips to the capital. He continued to protest his innocence, describing homosexuality as "deviant, abominable and wrong", and denouncing the charges against him as "a mortuary of lies".
He married, in 1961, Janet Mbuyazwe and had three sons and a daughter. After standing by her husband during his trial, Mrs Banana left Zimbabwe for Britain, where she claimed political asylum.
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Sorry for defiling the Apolyton mascot...
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12-11-2003 07:25
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