Aeneas Chigwedere
|
The Right Honourable Aeneas Chigwedere |
|
|---|---|
| Provincial Governor of Mashonaland East | |
|
Assumed office 25 August 2008 |
|
| President | Robert Mugabe |
| Prime Minister | Morgan Tsvangirai |
| Minister of Education, Sports, & Culture of Zimbabwe | |
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In office August 2001 – August 2008 |
|
| President | Robert Mugabe |
| Succeeded by | David Coltart |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
25 November 1939 Southern Rhodesia |
| Political party | Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front |
Aeneas Chigwedere (
pronunciation ) (born 25 November 1939) is a Zimbabwean politician, historian, educationist, and traditional leader. He served as the Minister of Education, Sports, & Culture since August 2001, and was appointed as the Resident Minister and Governor of Mashonaland East Province in August 2008. He was installed as Headman Svosve Mubayiwa the 10th in March 2008.
Aeneas Soko Chigwedere was born in Hwedza district, Zimbabwe. His father was a teacher and had worked as a foreman at a commercial farm, and his mother was a communal farmer. His grandfather was the Chief of the area representing one of the senior houses of the Svosve dynasty. He was schooled at Chigwedere School, Chemhanza Mission, and Waddilove Institute before going to Goromonzi High School.
Chigwedere enrolled at the University of London, College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, in 1962 as one of the 25 African students accepted then from Zimbabwe, Zambia and Malawi. As the first black student to be admitted to study for the History Honors program, from which he graduated in 1964, he strongly felt that he had a duty to work in producing an authentic history of Zimbabwe. He embarked on studying Chimurenga, the 1896–97 anticolonial war, in 1966 towards an MPhil degree. His main theme, contrary to colonial historians who had presented the war as a disjointed response to the 1890 colonisation, was that the war was a coordinated national traditional war: it was inspired by Murenga (the spirit at the Matopos) assisted by Mkwati, Kaguvi, Nehanda and Mbonga, all national Shona spirits; the fighting was led by chiefs with the Rozvis, the last national rulers, taking the command; the aim was to restore Shona sovereignty and Mudzinganyama had been selected to be installed as the national Rozvi chief in 1897; and the Shona targeted all foreign elements. Accordingly, Chigwedere argued that without painstakingly studying the organisation of traditional Shona society and unravelling who Murenga and Nehanda were, or what the Rozvi kingdom was, no meaningful exposition of the war could be made. His main contribution has been to unravelling both the substance and methods of studying precolonial Zimbabwean and African History.
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