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Extract from "Lunch with Muzenda and the Mugabes".
My lunch with the Mugabes and the Muzendas was not the grand affair one might expect, and to me it emphasised, if emphasis were needed, the overriding influence of Sally Mugabe on the country's affairs.
I had gone to see the Deputy Prime Minister, Simon Muzenda, as I often did to give him a progress report on the Mwenezi oil palm development which fell within his constituency. He was at his place in the country near Gutu, a dry, almost but not quite semi-desert area. There are rivers to be sure, but they tend to flow only for four or five months of the year.
Muzenda's house was quite small, perhaps three bedrooms and a couple of reception rooms and the usual large verandah, but only on one side. Off to the side of the house was an old fig tree, and under it was his mother's grave.
On the other side, thirty yards or so across a large dusty patch which served as a parking area, there was a long house which was a barracks for the obligatory guard which he didn't like, and the whole was surrounded by a security fence, the gate guarded.
I arrived around 11 a.m. after a three hour drive from Harare, and the guard recognised the car and waved us through......A little later we heard a car draw up outside, and Muzenda got up to meet his guests. There was a pause while they said their hello's in the hallway, and then they all came into the room where I was seated. Muzenda, now with his wife, and the Prime Minister Robert Mugabe and his wife Sally.
I was seated next to the Prime Minister's wife Sally on the one side, and Muzenda and his wife were on the other side, with the Prime Minister at the end. It was all very informal, and everyone spoke English out of politeness knowing that my Shona was not up to lunch time conversation. Another understatement. Sally Mugabe, too, may well have been happier in English.
Sally was a revelation. I had heard a lot about her of course, but none of it did her justice. During lunch her interest in my affairs was intelligent and probing, and my own interest in hers was met with total frankness and courtesy. A really impressive lady, who gave the impression, to me anyhow, of having a great influence on her husband. Sally Mugabe was to die in 1992 of kidney problems.
The following week I had a much more formal interview with Robert Mugabe, with all the pomp and photographs one might expect for a visiting Head of State. But I have to report that over thirty minutes or so of detailed conversation I found him intelligent, very educated, well informed, and in fact my superior in matters of this sort. At the end, he said,
"Look, Mr. Kelly, I'm going to take a risk on you and grant your application. I'll tell Kombo so (the Governor of the Reserve Bank). Because even if you've got it totally wrong so far as the crop is concerned, at the end of it we still have a first class dam in a very needy area".
I find it very hard to reconcile that man with the one we see today.