Human rights defender Godfrey Phiri, who has died of kidney failure at the age of 54, was a true pan-Africanist and an unacknowledged hero of Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle.
He touched many lives during his 13 years in Johannesburg, where he volunteered as an activist, mobiliser and educator in various rights and social justice formations.
A tall, gentle, humane man, remembered for his humility, uncompromising principles and fierce commitment to justice, Phiri was instrumental in building coalitions against corruption, xenophobia and secrecy, working tirelessly for the Right2Know campaign, Corruption Watch and the People’s Coalition against Xenophobia, among others. At Phiri’s memorial, someone remarked that if his various volunteer positions had been salaried, he would have been a rich man.
The depth and breadth of his work, encapsulated in many tributes from across race, class and creed lines, abundantly attest to Phiri’s wealth of knowledge, nonsectarianism and empathy.
Born in Bulawayo in what was then Rhodesia, Phiri grew up in Njube township. The third son among eight siblings, the young Phiri’s sympathy towards the “insurgents” fighting the Ian Smith regime inevitably caused tension in a household where his eldest brother served in Smith’s Rhodesian army.
During the mid-’70s, Phiri left school to take over his retired father’s job at Typocrafters, a Bulawayo printing company, but the lure of freedom soon saw him joining the underground liberation forces, and he left for Zambia in 1976, at the age of 14. Following his induction into the Zimbabwe People’s Revolutionary Army, the armed wing of Joshua Nkomo’s Zimbabwe African People’s Union, Phiri participated in the Rhodesian Bush War.
After Zimbabwe’s liberation in 1980, he joined the army, notably serving in Mozambique against Renamo during the ’80s.
Although Zimbabwe’s government paid lip service to the ideal of an apolitical defence force, Phiri was disillusioned by the ongoing politicisation of the army, ultimately resigning and becoming a civilian activist.
Even then, Phiri stood out as a unifier who opposed tribalism and xenophobia. Colleagues recall he would declare he was not Zimbabwean, but African, with antecedents in both Malawi and Zimbabwe.
In 1999, having worked extensively with trade union and civil society groups, including the Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, Phiri became a founding member of the Movement for Democratic Change in Zimbabwe. Working within the MDC’s security department in Bulawayo, he inevitably became a target of the Mugabe regime’s crackdown on the MDC, and was severely tortured on various occasions.
Phiri left Zimbabwe for South Africa in 2003, where he was eventually granted refugee status.
Phiri hit the ground running in South Africa, which was experiencing an influx of Zimbabwean refugees. An invaluable resource for migrants needing advice and direction, Phiri worked with a wide spectrum of organisations, including the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, Zimbabwe Torture Victims Project, Tree of Life, Peace Action Group, African Diaspora Forum and Global Zimbabwe Forum.
Baptised a Catholic, Phiri remained devout, and brought his passion for social justice to Holy Trinity Church in Braamfontein, where he was active in both the LGBT and the HIV/Aids ministries, and a regular volunteer at the church’s weekly soup kitchen.
In recent years Phiri was at the forefront of activism and mobilisation for social justice groups such as Section 27, Amnesty International South Africa and Unite against Corruption. Working from the grassroots, he was everywhere, and he knew well-nigh everyone and everything.
As an elected member of Right2Know’s national working group and its elected co-ordinator for Gauteng, Phiri’s self-effacing persona embodied democracy at its finest.
He never put himself forward, but when chosen to lead did so with wisdom and integrity. His collaborative approach sought out and nurtured the best in his colleagues, and with characteristic humour he could defuse potentially tense situations as well as deliver a telling rebuke to a recalcitrant team member.
He possessed an innate dignity, which was unimpaired by his habit of frequently positioning his spectacles askew, so that he appeared to be peering out from four eyes instead of two.
Phiri’s death, at a critical time for both his native land, Zimbabwe, and his adopted one, South Africa, underlines the imperative for his unfinished work to be taken forward, to fulfil his conviction that a better world is, indeed, possible. As Elinor Sisulu noted, it is a sad indictment that Phiri was not accorded a burial at Zimbabwe’s Heroes Acre. If we had more leaders like him as heads of state, our continent would be a better place.
Phiri was buried in Zimbabwe. He is survived by four siblings, his daughter, Charmaine, and grandson, Sphamandla.
1962 – 2016
