Snippets from the Audio Archive V – Freedom Nyamubaya and Ruth Weiss

Freedom Tichaona Nyamubaya (1958 – 2015) was a Zimbabwean freedom
fighter, activist and poet. In 1975, she left what was then
Rhodesia to join the Zimbabwe National Liberation Army (ZANLA) in
Mozambique. She achieved the rank of Female Field Operation
Commander and was elected the Secretary for Education in the first
ZANU Women's League conference in 1979. After independence she
worked as a rural development, gender and peace activist as well as
a farmer, dancer and poet. Ruth Weiss (*1924), who grew up in South
Africa, was one of the few prolific female journalists for southern
Africa during the 1960s to 1990s and reported extensively on the
position of women in politics, in exile and in liberation
movements. On 6th May 1982 she conducted an interview with Freedom
Nyamubaya in Harare, Zimbabwe. In the extract from this
conversation presented in the podcast, Nyamubaya talks about her
experiences as a woman in the liberation army and on the front
line.