Benjamin Burombo

Trade Unionist and Founding Nationalist

Benjamin Burombo was one of the earliest African nationalist in the then Rhodesia. Born 1909 in Buhera, Zimbabwe to peasant parents there are no records of Benjamin receiving any formal education, he was a self taught man.

He worked in South Africa for a lengthy period where he came under the influence of the South African trade unionist Clement Kadali. He returned from South Africa in the 1940’s and settled in Bulawayo, it was during this time that he founded a trade unionist organisation the British African National Voice Association and assumed the organization’s Presidency. 

In 1948 he helped organise a country-wide strike that led to an urgent examination of wages by the Native Labour Board. When the Rhodesian government made a proposal of the Native Land Husbandry Act, Benjamin and his team opposed it out-rightly and he succeeded in overturning some wrongly implemented cases.

As a pioneer nationalist and through his leadership and the numerous programmes he undertook, Benjamin Burumbo paved a way for future generation of nationalists.

He died in 1959