By The Sun
NATALIE Gumede, star of UK television show Strictly Come Dancing has revealed that her grandfather was president of the short-lived Zimbabwe-Rhodesia.
Teacher Josiah Zion Gumede’s stay in office was short lived – just a matter of months between 1979 to 1980 – but he claimed the distinction of having been the only president of the self-proclaimed state which failed to win international recognition.
Gorgeous Natalie, who formerly starred in the ITV soap Coronation Street as husband-batterer Kirsty Soames, never met her grandfather who died in 1989.
But of him she said, “I have done some research and managed to acquire some medals and coins that show my grandfather as president.
“It was a great achievement.”
Meanwhile, Natalie is still battling against critics who reckon that her former dance training gives her an edge over her fellow celebrity contestants on Strictly.
Josiah Gumede
She recently said, “I have danced a bit before, I went to Italia Conti (stage school).
“(But) I’ve never done any dancing professionally at all and I haven’t danced for over ten years.”
She added, “I feel like I have more to prove. We all have to work hard and improve.
“There is so much talent – it is up to the public to decide.”
Josiah Zion Gumede (19 September 1919 – 28 March 1989) was the only president of the self-proclaimed, and internationally unrecognised, state of Zimbabwe Rhodesia during 1979, before Rhodesia briefly reverted to British rule until the country’s independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. He died in 1989.
Gumede was born in Mbembesi, in the Bubi District (now in Matabeleland North). He was educated at the David Livingstone Memorial Mission and Matopo Mission before matriculating in the Cape Province (South Africa) in 1946.
He taught at various mission and government schools and ended his teaching career as a headmaster. He was the assistant information and education attache for the Government of Rhodesia and Nyasaland at Rhodesia House in London between 1960 and 1962. He then joined the Ministry of External Affairs (1963–1965).
He was at one time general secretary for the then African Teachers’ Association of Rhodesia; a member of the Wankie Disaster Relief Fund’s Board of Trustees; a director of the Tribal Trust Land Development Corporation; and a board member of the National Free Library of Rhodesia. He was also an ordained elder of the Presbyterian Church of South Africa.- The Sun
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