Lawrence Vambe has died at a North London Care home on Saturday 14 September, 2019. He was 102 and until recently in good spirits and health considering his great age.
Vambe was one of Zimbabwe’s best-loved and most widely-respected journalists and authors.
His first book “An ill-fated People“ (William Heinemann, 1972) is the story of his early life in Southern Rhodesia and his growing awareness of a soaring need for change after that country’s small but powerful European community got rid of the country’s respected Prime Minister Garfield Todd and put in his place a few years later Ian Douglas Smith who, in November 1965, declared his country’s illegal “independence.”
The foreword to that seminal work was penned by the late Doris Lessing who wrote: “It was painful reading this book. I hope it will be painful for other white people to read it.”
His second book “From Rhodesia to Zimbabwe” (William Heinemann) was published in 1976.“Lawrence has enriched all our lives,” said Judith Todd, the widely- respected daughter of the late Sir Garfield and Lady Todd.
“Lawrence was one of our great journalists, authors and historians,” said the veteran writer Pius Wakatama.
Lawrence Vambe was born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution. His mother died soon after his birth and he was brought up by German nuns at Chishawasha Mission outside the then Salisbury (Harare).
He went on to become one of Africa’s leading journalists. He was a strong supporter of the Commonwealth and was awarded an MBE by the Queen for his services to the “club” in 1959.
Lawrence Vambe attended the same Jesuit/Marist Brothers-run Kutama College in West Mashonaland as Robert Mugabe. They were friends for decades until the Zimbabwean leader’s attacks on Africans in Matabeleland between 1983-1987 and then white farmers after 2000.
He returned to the UK, first to live along the border area between Wales and England with his wife Mary and after her death, to London where he lived with one of his daughters and son-in-law at their home in North London.
In the 1950s Lawrence became editor-in-chief of the Daily News, which championed black rights in white-run Rhodesia and his second in command was Nathan Shamuyarira, Zimbabwe first Minister for Information.
He rubbed shoulders with all the men who went on to shape the literary tradition in Zimbabwe including Stanlake Samkange, Pius Wakatama, Herbert Chitepo, Nathan Shamuyarira, Willkie Musarurwa, Ndabaningi Sithole, and Kingsley Dube.
In 1980s he was one of the founders of the Zimbabwe-Britain society and throughout his life he was a devoted Roman Catholic.
The funeral service will be held in North London on 9th October 2019 and I will be the key-note speaker at St Joseph's (Roman Catholic) Church Highgate.
