Edson Sithole: Law, Liberation and the Cost of Dissent

This book is the first compendium of the political thought of Edson Sithole (1935-1975?), a trailblazing anticolonial nationalist and pan-African intellectual in Southern Rhodesia. In 1963 he became the second black person in the colony to qualify as a lawyer (after Herbert Chitepo). A decade later, Sithole became the first black person in southern Africa to become a Doctor of Law (UNISA) and the first individual in all of colonial Zimbabwe to earn the title. Sithole was a self-made intellectual, born to illiterate parents. Most of his higher education was pursued through correspondence programs while he was a political prisoner; about half his adult life was spent under government custody. Sithole was active in Zimbabwe’s liberation struggle from the mid-1950s until his kidnapping in 1975. He was a leading official in several Zimbabwean liberation movements. He was a co-founder of the African National Council and the party’s publicity secretary at the time of his disappearance. He had previously held the same role with the Zimbabwe African National Union and was also an executive for the Zimbabwe National Party and the Pan African Socialist Union. In these capacities he was one of the most significant intellectual voices in Zimbabwe’s struggle for independence. However, his direct voice has not, until now, featured prominently in the historical record. Sithole and his secretary were last seen outside the Ambassador Hotel in downtown Salisbury (today’s Harare). It is widely believed that they were eliminated by the Rhodesian Special Branch. This book contains transcripts of several interviews with Sithole and some two dozen original writings, spanning the period from 1958 until his final publication, just days before his kidnapping. This unabridged account is supplemented by primary research (through archives, research repositories, and interviews across three continents) that recovers Sithole’s life and the circumstances around his disappearance.