Chipo Chung was born to her loving father Rugare Gumbo. Rugare is a politician who has served the Zimbabwean government for many years.
Fans may remember Chipo from her appearance in the American television series Into the Badlands, created by Alfred Gough and Miles Miller. The actress portrayed the role of The Master in the series, which premiered on November 15, 2015.
Born to veteran war parents Fay Chung and Gumbi, Chipo’s birth was remarkable in many ways. Her mother gave birth at a refugee camp in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, during the Zimbabwe liberation war.
Chipo spent her first two years with her family in refugee camps in Mozambique, with thousands of people escaping the war in then-Rhodesia. Later, the family moved to Harare, Zimbabwe, where she studied at Dominican Convent High School.
She slowly developed her acting with Over the Edge, a Zimbabwean mixed-race theatre company from 1994 to 2004. She moved to the United States at age 18, where her mother, Fay, worked for the United Nations.
Chipo Chung Father Is Rugare Gumbo
Chipo Chung was raised by her father Rugare Gumbo in Zimbabwe. Rugare previously served as the Minister of Economic Development.
The politician was born on March 8, 1940, in Rhodesia and Nyasaland and is eighty-two years old. Growing up in the district of Rhodesia, Rugare studied at a government secondary school. He was involved in national policies from his early teens.
At twenty-two, he became the branch chairman of the Fort Victoria (currently Masvingo) ZAPU party under Joshua Nkomo, a Zimbabwean revolutionary and Matabeleland politician.
In April 2005, Rugare was appointed Minister of Economic Development after the March 2005 parliamentary election. The appointment also included splitting a new ministry of Economic Development from the previous Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.
During his time, Rugare launched the National Economic Development Priority Programme on April 19, 2006, focussing on reviving the country’s struggling economy within six to nine months. In February 2007, he was appointed as Minister of Agriculture.
Later, Rugare was suspended from ZANU PF for five years with immediate effect on November 14, 2014. He was expelled from ZANU PF a few weeks later. Many other politicians who were said to support former Joyce Mujuru, Vice President, were to be suspended and expelled.
Rugare also serves as a founding member and elder of the political party Zimbabwe People First (ZIMPF), formed in 2015. However, the party disbanded following the differences with Mujuru.
Since 2003, he is on the United States sanctions list. Moreover, Rugare was named on the European Union sanctions list the following year.
Chipo Chung Also Has Chinese Descent
London-based actress and activist Chipo Chung is of half-Zimbabwean and half-Chinese descent. The actress’s name Chipo means “gift” in the Shona language.
Chipo spent her early years in a war zone with her mother in the Mozambican refugee camp where she worked. At eighteen, she moved to the US, where her mom, Fay Chung, was serving for the UN. Of mixed race and from a diaspora, she says she has always been an outsider.
Chipo’s mother is the third generation of a Chinese immigrant family. Fay’s grandfather, Yee Wo Lee, was the fifth son of a large peasant Chinese family. He emigrated to Rhodesia at the age of seventeen in 1904 and became a successful cafe owner.
Fay’s mother, Nguk Sim Lee, a Chinese-trained nurse, emigrated to Rhodesia to get married. Her father, Chu Yao Chung, was a successful businessman. Her mom passed away while giving birth when Fay was only three years old.
Fay and her two sisters were raised by her grandparents, assisted by a Shona nanny, Elina. She grew up in a Roman Catholic Chinese family in Rhodesia in the 1950s. She was trained as an educator at the University of Rhodesia (now the University of Zimbabwe).
In 1968, she attended the University of Leeds to obtain her post-graduate degree in education and master’s degree in philosophy in English literature. Fay also joined the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies to obtain a BA in economics.
Chipo Chung As Xaphania In His Dark Materials
Chipo Chung portrays the role of Xaphania in the fantasy drama television series His Dark Materials. The series is based on the trilogy of novels of the same title by Philip Pullman.
It is produced by New Line Productions and Bad Wolf of HBO and BBC One. The eight-episode first season premiered on November 3, 2019, on BBC in the United Kingdom. It landed on November 4 on HBO in the United States and other markets.
The seven-episode second series landed on November 8, 2020, in the UK, and on November 16, 2020, in the US. The eigh-episode third and final series will premiere on December 5, 2022, on HBO Max and on December 18, 2022, in the UK.
The cast of the series includes Dafne Keen, Ruth Wilson, Anne-Marie Duff, Clarke Peters, James Cosmo, Ariyon Bakare, Will Keen, Lucian Msamati, Gary Lewis, Lewin Lloyd, Daniel Frogson, James McAvoy, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Lindsay Duncan, Sean Gilder, and more.
His Dark Materials follows the orphan Lyra (portrayed by Dafne Keen), as she looks for her missing friend and later finds a kidnapping plot to an unseeable cosmic substance called Dust (Rusakov particles).