[The Conversation Africa] Ndabaningi Sithole was one of the founding fathers of the modern state of Zimbabwe in southern Africa. In August 1963, he became the first president of the Zimbabwe African National Union (Zanu), the militant liberation organisation that fought against white minority rule that he led for a decade before being deposed in a palace coup engineered by his rival Robert Mugabe. Mugabe went on to become the post-independence leader of Zimbabwe.