"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"
Didymus Noel Edwin Mutasa is a Zimbabwean politician who served as Zimbabwe's Speaker of Parliament from 1980 to 1990. Subsequently, he held various ministerial posts working under President Robert Mugabe in the President's Office. He was Minister of State for Presidential Affairs from 2009 to 2014 and also served as ZANU-PF's Secretary for Administration.
"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."
Didymus Mutasa"There was nothing like that. No one gave him the power to change the figures"
Didymus Mutasa"There was no truth, no integrity. It was a lie—totally untrue"
Didymus Mutasa"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"
Didymus Mutasa"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"
Didymus Mutasa"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"
Didymus Mutasa