Freedom Nyamubaya was a rural development, gender and peace activist, farmer, dancer and writer who was born in Uzumba. Cutting short her secondary school education in 1975, she left to join the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army in Mozambique, where she achieved the rank of Female Field Operation Commander, later being elected Secretary for Education in the first ZANU Women’s League conference in 1979.
After Independence, she founded MOTSRUD, an NGO that provides agro-services to rural farmers, and she has worked on attachment with the United Nations in Mozambique.
A founding member of the Zimbabwe Peace and Security Trust, she has spent much of the last five years promoting peace throughout Zimbabwe.
Freedom’s home was a game farm in Mangura where she sought to work with villagers in the area promoting agricultural and development activities, and defend her own game against poachers and predators.
Her first volume of poetry, On the Road Again (Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, 1985) was followed by Dusk of Dawn (College Press, Harare, 1995), both being attempts to grapple with a brutal world using powerful images and disconcerting rhythms.
Her story ‘That Special Place’ was published in Writing Still (Weaver Press, Harare, 2003.)
Freedom had one son, Naishe.
Bibliography
Poetry
On the Road Again, Zimbabwe Publishing House, Harare, 1985
Ndangariro, Zimpfep Zimbabwe Foundation for Education with Production, 1987
Dusk of Dawn, College Press, Harare, 1995
Prose
‘That Special Place’ (short story), Writing Still, Weaver Press, Harare, 2003
Links
Profile for Festival Internacional de Poesía de Medellín
Feature profile on NPR
Obituary on NewsDay