British officials feared Mugabe backlash over wife's treatment

British officials feared Mugabe backlash over wife's treatment

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By Staff Reporter

BRITISH government officials feared a refusal to grant residency to Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's late wife, Sally, would harden his policy towards Britain in an independent Zimbabwe.

The ministers' fears are contained in archive documents released under the UK Freedom of Information Act under which public records are closed until they are 30 years old.

In departmental communications, officials spoke of "a bad effect" a decision to deny Sally Mugabe permission to stay and work in the UK in the late 1960s and early 1970s would have on her husband who was in political detention then.

Also released for the first time are hand written letters by Mugabe, one to then Prime Minister Harold Wilson and the other to the Foreign Secretary James Callaghan pleading with them to grant stay to his wife who had just lost her 3-year-old child, Nhamodzenyika, to cerebral malaria.

Sally was never allowed to stay in Britain, although Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith's stepson was allowed to stay and work in the country at around the same period.

Donald Macaulay from the UK's Rhodesian Political Department appears to have correctly predicted that the incident would influence Mugabe's present day hardline stance on Britain.

Macaulay wrote to the Home Office in 1970: "Whatever Mr Mugabe's attitude towards Her Majesty's Government may be at the moment in view of his request for his wife to stay in this country, it may well change completely if Mrs Mugabe is not allowed to stay."

Following a refusal of Sally's application to remain in the UK, a string of letters from senior UK government officials were sent to the Home Office suggesting a review of her case.

The Home Office remained unbowed, insisting that Sally was holding a Ghanaian passport and could go to Ghana without a threat to her life. This prompted Mugabe to write a letter to Prime Minister Harold Wilson, expressing dismay at the Home Office's refusal to accept his wife as a Rhodesian citizen.

In the letter, Mugabe wrote to Wilson: "Although my wife has had to use a Ghanaian passport, she is first and foremost a Rhodesian and, therefore, a British subject. Her home, since our marriage, has permanently been in Rhodesia. As I explained in my letter to Mr Callaghan, it was by sheer force of circumstances that my wife used a Ghanaian passport to enable her to enter Britain. For, when I and other nationalist leaders decided in 1963 to return from temporary exile in Tanganyika, I could not bring my wife, who had just given birth to our late son, back with me as she was liable to imprisonment for a political offence she was alleged to have committed, and as it, naturally, would have operated to the detriment of our son.

"Am I to conclude that merely by virtue of the technicality of her possessing a Ghanaian passport, my wife's Rhodesian citizenship by virtue of her being married to me must cease? Has she ceased being my wife merely because she has a Ghanaian passport and cannot produce Rhodesian papers in support of her being Rhodesian?

"I pose these questions, Mr Prime Minister, because it is clear to me that the Home Office is hanging onto legal technicalities completely deprived of morality. My wife belongs to Rhodesia where I am and not to Ghana where your government wants her to go."

Mugabe ended his letter by asking Prime Minister Wilson to "personally exercise your mind on the case I have placed before you so that justice is done to my wife and myself."

The future Zimbabwean leader's stinging letter, which barely hid his disgust at Britain's refusal to help his wife already stressed by his imprisonment and loss of her child, forced UK officials to once again try and lobby the Home Office to reconsider its decision. The Foreign Office was also asked to intervene by officials from the Rhodesian Political Department who feared Mugabe would take the decision in a bad way and never forgive the British government.

In one such letter, a P.R.A Mansfield from the Rhodesian Political Department wrote."Whilst we cannot gainsay the main arguments of the Home Office in support of the decision reached, there remains one aspect of the case which we consider may not have been given adequate consideration. This is the possible effect upon Mr Mugabe of a decision not to allow his wife to remain in the United Kingdom. We propose, therefore, that the Secretary of State should return to the charge on his point."

Mugabe was finally released from his 11-year political detention in 1974 together with other nationalist leaders.

Political observers say Sally's death due to kidney problems in 1992 severely affected Mugabe whose policies since then have reversed initial gains in education, agriculture and the economy.

Mugabe regularly attacks Britain which he has placed at the center of Zimbabwe's problems, insisting that the former colonial power still wants to influence political events in his country.

Following Sally's death, Mugabe remarried his former secretary, Grace, and they have three children.
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