Janet Banana (1938–2021) — a timeline of a First Lady
I. Janet Mbuyazwe is born to farmer parents in Mthwakazi/Mathebeleland, then Southern Rhodesia. (1938)
II. While teaching, she meets Canaan Banana (March 5, 1936 — November 10, 2003) and the two get married. (1961)
III. Her husband becomes an ordained minister of the Methodist church which leads him to Pan-African and international portfolios of church governance while criticising the then Rhodesian white colonial government. She and her family are forced into exile in the United States as Rev. Canaan’s profile has grown to him being elected vice–president of the first fully fledged and national black liberation movement, Southern Rhodesia African National Congress (1957–1959). The SRANC (not to be confused with the “old ANC” [1934–1957] of the same name both led by Joshua Nkomo) initially was the Bulawayo-based rejuvenation (1945–1957) of Africa’s oldest liberation movement, South Africa’s African National Congress (since January 8, 1912). There often were overlaps in membership of prominent figures of the Southern Africa strong “one great union” of Black Man, the Industrial and Commercial Workers Union (1919 — various dates in various countries) a Black trade union which was much bigger than the scattered nationalist political movements and had much membership in the form of working women and the wives of union leaders like Janet. The ANC in Rhodesia is one of many failed projects in over a thousand years either by Blacks or whites to unite Bantu Southern Africa.
IV. The family returns to rogue state Rhodesia (1964–1980) in 1975 in the middle of the Bush War/War of Liberation (1964–1979).
V. As first lady (1980–1987) of independent Zimbabwe, she and the non-executive president attend the UK wedding of Charles and Diana, Prince and Princess of Wales (1981) while Robert Mugabe is snubbed. The president passes a law criminalising press and public ridicule of Banana, a Maghrebi Arabic family name (بيننا — baynana pron. /beɪˈnænə/, “between us”), presently most occurring in Morocco.
VI. Janet experiences loneliness, missing extended family and isitshwala/pap at the State House which her five children describe as an “executive prison” as they were excitedly uprooted from the high density Njube and Luveve ‘hoods in Bulawayo and went to living at the Meikles with “table manners and food schedules” that quickly started to resemble “military school”.
VII. Just before leaving government house at the end of tenure, one of the presidents’ body guard tells her “Canaan is gay,” a rumour that long circulated in Harare. The couple continues to live together.
VIII. Trouble brews as now executive president and increasingly unpopular Robert Mugabe goes off the rails about gays in his usual style of publicly berating unnamed colleagues who fall out of his favour. (1995)
IX. She braves years of frenzy by local and international press standing by Rev. Banana’s accused side who is found guilty of 11 charges of sodomy, attempted sodomy, and indecent assault even though he had skipped the country to exile in South Africa while on bail and only returned at South African president Nelson Mandela’s behest. Ever poetic Banana, and author of The Woman of My Imagination (Mambo Press, 1980) calls the charges a “mortuary of pathological lies” intended to tarnish his political career while his former bodyguard had shot dead a colleague who accused him of being “Banana’s homosexual wife”.
X. Her children suffer being called the “gay family” or Banana’s paternity of them questioned, something which still occurs online to date.
XI. While her defrocked husband serves six months in an open prison appearing as a jovial inmate on the news, she leaves for England with her 18-year-old daughter seeking for political asylum. (2000)
XII. She lives in London in a one room flat with a refugee budget of US$14 per week.
XIII. British security clears her to grant an extraordinary wide-ranging interview to the Guardian just before the 2002 election as about 100 Zimbabwean refugees knock on the UK’s door.
XIV. She reunites with her ailing husband in London who later succumbs to prostate cancer but skips the rural Mathebeleland burial of the former president who joins a long list of pre-dominantly Ndebele liberation war figures denied national hero status . Mugabe describes Banana as “a rare gift to the nation”. (2003)
XV. In 2006 she is granted British citizenship.
XVI. Her children maintain their father’s insistence before he died that the charges of 1997 were politically motivated while believing that he may have had consensual relationships with some of the accusers. The family says the global debates for and against gay rights has not made forgetting that past any easier. (2012)
XVII. Son Michael is accused of social assistance benefits fraud in the UK with his wife Caroline who had won more than US$130,000 on popular TV show Deal or No Deal. (2013)
XVIII. Janet approaches the new Zimbabwe government regarding her pension and benefits which had been illegally denied by the previous administration. (2017)
XIX. She returns to Zimbabwe in 2018 up until her time of death and is buried next to her husband in a state-assisted funeral. (2021)
Sonny Jermain is a verbalist (verb-a-list: one who heals people with words) and a Mutwa-Bantu custodian. He is author of I Deserve to Be: Self-worth Is a Silent Killer.
