Didymus Mutasa

"We brought in students. The students’ programme went on a little longer, because it involved not only students from South Africa, but from Southern Africa. We had students from Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, Zambia and Namibia. It was very interesting to watch these youngsters discussing and thinking about the future"

"Those countries gave us clothes, food and many of the things that we wanted, but not arms. But we understood why, because the racist regime that we were fighting against was to a great extent white and many of the people who came to settle in Rhodesia were not from England. Some had come from Italy, some from Holland and others from all over Europe."

"There was nothing like that. No one gave him the power to change the figures"

"There was no truth, no integrity. It was a lie—totally untrue"

"It was very difficult for these governments to give us arms to fight against their own people. But they did not mind giving us food, because I think that in their own argument we had to exist"

"We could see that they were absolutely concerned about us and would like our situation to change. When we found that extending to the Swedish government, we realized that they must have the same heart because with Amnesty International and the schools that were involved in sending letters and clothes, adopting children or detainees and their families, it was tremendous, absolutely tremendous. It could not come from any other group of people, except those that had the correct heart"

"Our mission was not really to go and kill people, but to protect them. In the course of the events, we might find it necessary to kill the enemy, but that was not the objective. The objective was to change his way of thinking and let him see that what was going on in Rhodesia was wrong"

"They could not give us arms, but they could give us food and after they had taken that stand there were a few who did that, like Sweden, Belgium to some extent, Norway again to some extent and Holland to quite a great extent. In Holland it was not the government, but non-governmental organizations, as in Denmark"

"When we got the money directly, we also became more enthusiastic. You could then say to the youngsters: ‘Go inside the country. You can take this amount of food, and when you need it you can use it.’ And when there were areas within the country that needed food, they could actually come and get some from us. During the later stages of the struggle, the liberated areas inside the country needed food. And sometimes the food was brought from Mozambique"

"There were many fronts in the war. Within the country we had to make our people understand what was going on and within the liberation movement itself all of us had to understand the purpose of the war. We also found that our friends needed people who could work with them almost on a full time basis. Our external relations office in Maputo was very busy, collecting newspaper cuttings and giving out information to the people that assisted us"

"When you go beyond the Limpopo, you must realize that you are going beyond apartheid and when you return we hope that you will keep it that way and start to influence people who will not be able to cross the Limpopo, but nonetheless should leave apartheid behind.’ It was important for them. We had some South African farmers who came here and lived with fellow Zimbabwean farmers, sharing the peace and quietness and the development that these communities of farmers were experiencing."