"I am satisfied it has strengthened my hand tremendously. Nobody but a fool would disregard the kind of result we witnessed today."

“Smith was being realistic-if you give people something before they are ready they are going to mess it up. And that has happened. If he had had the opportunity to work with the people help bring them up, Zimbabwe would be a better place now. Smith did make it better during his government. There is no reason why he could not do that if he had been allowed to go on.”

“If I absolutely had to choose, I would take Mugabe in preference to Smith, though. I couldn't stand Smith. I thought he was a man who saw every tree in the wood but couldn't see the wood... He was a really stupid man, Smith; a bigoted, stupid man.”

“If Smith was a black man, I would say that he was the best Prime Minister that Zimbabwe ever had.”

“Africa is a continent which is subject to a great deal of friction and argument and change; that's of the world generally but more so Africa than anywhere else. So because of that we live in hope, we think that the people in the end will say "We've had enough.”

“Today is not such a tremendous day for us Rhodesians. We made our decision to become a Republic quite a long while ago, and this is simply the process of formalising it. Our Independence Day is the great day. Rhodesia did not want to seize independence from Britain. It was forced upon us.”

“To begin with, things went well because Mugabe was no fool. He realised it was important to maintain the economy and keep the country expanding. And in any case he was committed to do that by the Lancaster House Agreement which said that there could be no change in for at least seven years unless could get 100% support all the people. In no ways would he have been able to get the support of the white members of Parliament, and also the Matabeles. So we were satisfied that what we were doing was in keeping with the traditions and culture and what was expected of us, and Mugabe used to thank me for coming to see him, him the benefit of my advice and him what the white people were thinking. But he only did this for a while because he inherited the best economy in Africa. It was viable. And after two years he quickly changed his mind because he had a lot of money available. He had his commanders in control because he had removed the white commanders who would have taken action against him if he had defied the Lancaster House Agreement before the seven-year . He removed our commanders and put his commanders in so that he knew that he could defy this. And so he breached the Lancaster House Agreement.”