Julia Tukai Zvobgo

Cde Julia Tukai Zvobgo (November 8, 1937 - February 16, 2004) was a nationalist and businesswoman from died in Harare on February 16, 2004 following a heart attack.

Life

Julia Tukai Zvobgo was born of the Whande family of Shurugwi on November 8, 1937. She went to Usher Mission in 1961 and met her future husband Cde Eddison Zvobgo, who was soon to leave for the United States on an educational scholarship a while later. Cde Julia Zvobgo’s earliest experience with racist repression was when she witnessed the arrest of her husband, then returning from America.

He was subsequently sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment. Having become a member of Zanu at its formation in August 1963, Cde Julia Zvobgo and other young women bore the brunt of suppressive racist colonial rule which peaked under the Rhodesian front. The banning of Zanu in 1964 saw her husband detained and restricted at Sikombela and other camps of incarceration across the country. Her commitment to her family and nationalist values made her endure the constant harassment and torture at the hands of the Rhodesian security agents who accused her of smuggling political messages to and from her detained husband and his colleagues. From 1968-1978 she studied abroad and later joined her husband in the armed struggle in Mozambique where she was elected Administrative Secretary for Women’s Affairs. She attended problems of women in military and refugee cams and was one of the pioneers of the Women’s League. She was among the first group of Zanu-PF cadres to return to Zimbabwe in December 1979 as part of election directorate and helped open the party’s office at the end of the Lancaster House Conference. She was imprisoned for two weeks during the 1980 election campaign for allegedly assisting Zanla forces in the Zvishavane area and was only released after the polls. She was elected MP for the Midlands constituency of Zvishavane at the historic 1980 elections. Cde Zvobgo was also a member of the Zanu-PF Central Committee during the first decade of Zimbabwe’s independence. She was elected Secretary for Publicity and Information in the Women’s League in 1984 and re-elected MP in 1985 and retired from active politics in 1990 to concentrate on family business.

Death

Zvobgo died February 16, 2004 after a heart attack at her Kambanji home in Harare following a stroke that she suffered the previous year year while attending to her sick husband in South Africa.