When Mugabe visited Meath

When recently deceased Robert Mugabe came to power in Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia, in 1980, it was following a bloody war between the white forces of Rhodesia and the black nationalists, and diplomatic negotiations between British and African leaders to create the newly independent state.
Mugabe won a landslide victory. The newly enfranchised black majority recognised those who had fought for them, and Mugabe’s national address of reconciliation between black and white mollified almost everyone. Mugabe began his rule as an internationally acclaimed freedom fighter and apostle of reconciliation. 
It was a reputation he was to lose as his government seized the lands of the white farmers, he bankrupted his country and he held on to power as prime minister, and then president, until he was ousted himself in a coup in November 2017.
When he arrived in Kiltale, Dunsany, in 1983, to visit the Grange Agricultural Research Centre, Meath Chronicle reporter Richard Moore reported that it “was the first occasion that Mr Mugabe was able to shake off the considerable media interest in his visit. Both the BBC and ITN television crews, who had been pursuing an evidently harassed prime minister over the re-arrest of air force officers, left Mr Mugabe to himself as he set out across the fields at Grange to see the progress of the cattle research centre.”
Tight security was placed around the quiet farmlands of Dunsany on Friday afternoon prior to the visit, and the prime minister saw virtually every operation at the centre, including experiments in automatic dosing and the quick weight gain methods. 
“Indeed, it was the latter particularly which interested the prime minister, who declared afterwards, while sipping a quick cup of tea in the administrative block, that his country would be pleased to adopt Irish methods of beef production,” the Chronicle continued.
“Evidently, glad to relax in the quiet, rural setting of Dunsany, the normally reticent and undemonstrative Mr Mugabe even signed a few autographs for local children who had gathered at Grange.”
 Adrian Santry, who was one of those children present, with his brother, John, and neighbour, Rory Hannon, recalled the visit. His late father, Jerry, worked at Grange, and they lived beside the research farm.
“We saw the big entourage of black cars going up to the yard, so we hopped on our bikes and went up to see what was going on,” he remembers.
“Mugabe stopped to talk to us, and signed autographs, which my mother still has in an old photo album at home. He even wrote the date on it - 9th September 1983. But that was before his leadership took a turn for the worst.”

 

Robert Mugabe's signature