Didymus Noel Edwin Mutasa (born July 27, 1935)is a Zimbabwean politician, currently serving as the Minister of State for Presidential Affairs and as the Secretary for Administration of ZANU-PF.
Background
Didymus Mutasa was born in Rusape, a town close to the Zimbabwe/Mozambique border in Africa, in 1935 to that of a devout Christian couple; as their sixth child. The Mutasa surname relates to a Chieftainship name that comes from Mozambique. A Chief Mutasa is referred to in Portuguese documents of old and was known to the slave traders and explorers of the day and was commonly called 'Famba Basuku' which more or less means 'The leopard walks'. Chief Mutasa befriended early Portuguese traders called 'Capita Mors' with the grizzly slave trading of Mozambique. Ref: 'Zambezia' E.P.Mathers 1891. Reprinted by 'Rhodesiana Reprint Library' Mardon Printers, 1977.
Education
Former student of Fircroft College of Adult Education in Birmingham, Uk. Attended the Access to Higher Education Course.
Career
Before independence he was chairman of the Cold Comfort Farm society, a non-racial cooperative community near Salisbury (as it then was). This was located on a farm formerly belonging to Lord Acton. It was promoted by Guy Clutton-Brock and others.(Personal visit in 1971).
Following independence, Mutasa was Zimbabwe's first Speaker of Parliament from 1980 to 1990. He has served as the Member of Parliament for Makoni North and as a member of the ZANU-PF Politburo; he is the party's Secretary for Administration and has also served as its Secretary for External Affairs.
In April 1998, Mutasa, in defending President Robert Mugabe, said that if Mugabe were pressed to step down, then the entire Cabinet and Politburo should step down along with him, because, in Mutasa's view, if Mugabe had truly "stayed for too long and misgoverned", then those who had governed with him, "including those who are calling on Mugabe to step down", must have done so as well. In 2002, he controversially said that it would be a good thing if the population were halved: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who supported the liberation struggle. We don't want all these extra people.
He was appointed as Minister of Special Affairs in the President's Office in charge of the Anti-Corruption and Anti-Monopolies Programme on February 9, 2004; he was then appointed as State Security Minister in mid-April 2005, following the March 2005 parliamentary election,later Minister of State for National Security, Lands, Land Reform and Resettlement in the President's Office.
In the March 2008 parliamentary election, Mutasa was nominated by ZANU-PF as its candidate for the House of Assembly seat from Headlands constituency in Manicaland. He won the seat with 7,257 votes against 4,235 for Fambirayi Tsimba of the Movement for Democratic Change, according to official results.
In 2007, he was involved in a bizarre hoax involving a witch doctor and refined diesel gushing from a rock.