James Chikerema

James Robert Dambaza Chikerema (2 April 1925 – 22 March 2006) served as the President of the Front for the Liberation of Zimbabwe. He changed his views on militant struggle in the late 1970s and supported the 'internal settlement', serving in the attempted power-sharing governments.

Chikerema was born at Kutama Mission in Zvimba, in present-day Mashonaland West province; Robert Mugabe, who was his nephew, shared the same birthplace and the two were very close during childhood. He was educated at St. Francis Xavier College in Kutama, and in South Africa. He became President of the Southern Rhodesia National Youth League and in 1956 led a bus boycott by Africans to protest at their lack of political power (the electoral system in Rhodesia made it very difficult for Africans to be eligible).

With Didymus Mutasa, George Nyandoro, Guy Clutton-Brock, Michael and Eileen Haddon, white liberals who donated their land, he helped create Cold Comfort Farm to improve African farming methods and then form the African National Congress. The ANC campaigned for an extension of the franchise, but was banned within two years of its birth.

Together with Joshua Nkomo, Chikerema formed the Southern Rhodesia African National Congress in 1957 to press for meaningful reform. Although not a violent movement, the Southern Rhodesia government banned the group in 1960, and restricted its leading members to the Gokwe area. Chikerema remained with Nkomo when he established the National Democratic Party soon after; when this was also banned, Nkomo and Chikerema launched the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU). When the government banned this group, it remained in existence as a clandestine organisation. The movement restrictions on Nkomo and Chikerema were removed by the incoming government of Winston Field in early 1963.

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