Staff Reporter
Whilst speaking at the burial of the late National Hero, Father Emmanuel Francis Ribeiro yesterday, His Excellency, the President and ZANU PF First Secretary Cde E. D Mnangagwa explained how Father Ribeiro passed on, in the midst of working towards telling the correct narrative about the cruel colonial history, something the new dispensation is working on as they refuse to endorse ill-informed narratives.
Father Ribeiro died at 86years of age on Thursday last week at St Annes Hospital after a short illness and he was a Roman Catholic Priest. Father Ribeiro was the first ever cleric to be buried at the National Heroes Acre.
President Mnangagwa said, “The decision by our National Hero to trace the lives and families of such ill-fated cadres of the struggle was part of his attempt to have that part of the cruel colonial history correctly told. His life came to an abrupt end before he had completed this assignment.
“Thankfully, the bulk of the research work had been done, laying a solid base for our historians to pick up the tab so the story is conclusively written for posterity. To lay him to rest here at the national shrine is thus a call to re-engage our past and our history as a nation born out of a bloody and protracted struggle for our independence.
“Under the 2nd Republic, we continue to tell the correct history. We refuse to endorse narratives that depict our struggle, for liberation as having been mindless efforts by an ill-informed race fighting and resisting Christianity and civilization,” said the President.
Speaking at the same gathering, President Mnangagwa recalled how the late Father Ribeiro had fought and campaigned against the death penalty issued on black people by the colonizers.
“Our late national hero would recall the numerous cases where 15year olds or younger teenagers were hanged by the savage settler’s regime. There were other incidences were condemned men and women who would have miraculously survived the noose were finished off in cold blood by the regime’s teams of the hangmen.
“This took a heavy toll on Father Ribeiro and others in this position, creating never-ending trauma. We shared strong views against the death penalty. He was against death penalty, fought and campaigned against it.
“Although my fate was painful, I was one of the lucky few to be spared the gallows. My colleagues in the Crocodile Gang and many other captured freedom fighters and collaborators, who came after us, were brutally hanged,” President Mnangagwa recalled.
