Jacob Chikuhwa

A national of Zimbabwe, JACOB CHIKUHWA holds degrees in economics and international relations. He has worked as an economist and administrator in the public and private sectors and has lectured on economics, finance and management information systems. Jacob Chikuhwa's interest in research and analysis of Zimbabwe's socio-economic developments started when he was ZANU's publicity secretary in Scandinavia in the mid-1970s. His childhood upbringing inspired him to research on the colonial era. His father (a Mufundisi) used to narrate his personal experiences about the Ngoni invasions of the 1880s and the arrival of European hunters on horseback. This captured young Jacob's imagination. His father also used to talk of segregation laws such as the Land Apportionment Act (1930), the Native Land Husbandry Act (1951) and the creation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953). Having been indoctrinated in politics at an early age, Jacob Chikuhwa became a nationalist activist during the ANC in 1957 when he was in boarding school at Old Umtali Mission. After obtaining his Cambridge School Certificate, he briefly worked for a couple of years. In August 1964, as a youth activist for a democratic Zimbabwe, Chikuhwa was arrested by the Rhodesian regime. He was released from detention in 1965 and in 1966 he escaped into Zambia where he secured an Afro-Asian scholarship to study in the former Soviet Union. After completion of his studies in 1972, he settled in Sweden where he has ever since lived with intermittent periods in Zimbabwe. Jacob has turned to writing full-time.