Career
After teaching for a year, he resumed his studies to graduate with a BA degree from Fort Hare University College in 1949. He qualified as a Barrister-at-Law, and was called to the bar by Gray's Inn, alumni included Winston Churchill. He was a research assistant at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was the first African in Southern Rhodesia to qualify as a Barrister. In 1954 Chitepo became Rhodesia's first black lawyer (a special law was required to allow him to occupy chambers with white colleagues). On returning to Rhodesia in 1954, he practised as a lawyer and defended African nationalists such as Ndabaningi Sithole in court. In 1961, he served as legal adviser to Joshua Nkomo, founder of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union (ZAPU), at the Southern Rhodesia Constitutional Conference in London. In the same year (1961)he was also appointed to the Board of Governors of Bernard Mizeki College. Ian Smith's government did not detain him as he did not come out in the open as an official of the nationalist movement and the regime also feared that being the first lawyer, Chitepo was too internationally well-known to be locked up.
Read more about this topic: Herbert Chitepo
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