‘Like a fly in a glass of milk’

Press, 9 April 1980, Page 19

‘Like a fly in a glass of milk’

By

DAVID MARTIN,

“Observer.” London

“Are you looking for work?” the young coloured receptionist asked a smartly dressed African at the Ministry of Education and Gulture. He was not, replied Dr Dzingai Mutumbuka. He was the Minister!

That is just one of the many amusing anecdotes as . Rhodesia’s whitedominated Civil Service grapples with the shock of a new team of Ministers who until a few weeks ago were mostly referred to as "terrorists.” The shock is mutual. Robert Mugabe’s men, after years in the bush fighting to end white domination, now find themselves sitting selfconsciously behind large desks surrounded by white civil servants.

One Minister,' who discovered that the top 40 civil servants in his Ministry were all white, said: “I feel like a fly in a glass of mil£.” .

Their white private secretaries, described by one awed Minister as “ferociously competent,” seem generally pleasantly surprised and rather amused by their new bosses. One patronisingly complimented her new lawyer Minister: “He’s very confident and. welleducated. It’s almost like •.working for a European.” Fifteen years ago Kumbirai Kangai earned $79 a month as a public assististry of Labour and Social ance officer in the MinWelfare. He resigned, went to America for his university’ education, and then joined the guerrillas. Today, he is back in his old Ministry as Minister. Like tlie rest of Mugabe’s men, he has no idea what his salary is ($3OBO a month, plus $732 allowances, for the outgoing administration, said a white civil servant in the Cabinet office);?; .

The manner of dress is one of the most stark physical changes. In the past most of the guerrilla leaders wore jeans. Now Mugabe, a puritanical aesthetic leader, has insisted his Ministers must wear suits.

Bodyguards are identifi-

able by their snappy threepiece suits. “We are all gentlemen now’,” one joked as he w’ent into the toilet adjoining his Minister’s office to hand over his pistol to a relief bodyguard. ' . ' : i Between them, Mugabe’s men served well over 100 years in detention; Maurice Nyagumbo, the gentle, softly-spoken Minister .of Mines, holds the

record — he spent '2O years and eight months as a political prisoner. He was released on December 12 and flew immediately to London to meet his daughter Chipo for the first time. She is now 20 and married with two children.

Nyagumbo was 45 minutes late for Mugabe’s first Cabinet meeting. He had spent so much time in detention that he did not even know where the Prime Minister’s office was. Denis Norman, Minister of Agriculture, and one of the two whites in the Cabinet, met most of his African colleagues for the ” first time a few hours before the Cabinet

announced. Mugabe introduced them to him one at a time, explaining where they had all come from.

The Prime Minister gave no explanation about Nyagumbo’s background, and when Norman, former head of the white farmers’ organisation, asked him where he had come from the reply was "Salisbury Prison.” Few whites have so far resigned from the Civil Service. Nearly all are adopting a wait-and-see attitude, but there are indications that some are not prepared to serve a “guerrilla" government. Some whites estimate that 40,000 of Rhodesia’s 210,000 white community may leave by the end of the year. Dr Nathan Shamuyarira. Minister of Information and Tourism/ was subjected to one of the few overt racial incidents after moving into his office. A

white departmental head refused to shake his proffered hand. Other incensed whites in the Ministry took the case to the Public Service Commission and had the man dismissed.

Given the brutality of the war, the lack of apparent bitterness, particularly on the African side, is one of the most remarkable aspects of the transformation from Rhodesia to Zimbabwe which is now beginning. Simon Muzenda, Foreign Minister and greying grandfather figure of Mugabe’s movement, lost an 18-year-old daughter in a Rhodesian bombing raid into Mozambique. “Don’t worry, I understand,” he told,.a local reporter who was embarrassed when the subject was raised. “It’s all in *the past now and it is better-forgotten.”

—Copyright. London Observer'--' Service.