By Rudo Saungweme

President Emmerson Mnangagwa has said that the late Minister of Agriculture, Dennis Norman was among a handful of white leaders who offered to serve under a black-majority Government at Independence.

President Mnangagwa said this today, in his condolence message.

“A long-time leader of the Agriculture Sector before our Independence in 1980, Mr Norman was among a handful of white leaders who offered to serve under a black-majority Government at Independence, thus validating our Policy of National Reconciliation following 15 years of our armed struggle against white settler colonialism,” said the President.

President Mnangagwa said that the move by the late Norman of serving the black-majority Government was a bold gesture which ended racial polarisation.

“This was a bold gesture which ended racial polarisation and laid a lasting basis for racial amity and peace in the country,” he said.

President Mnangagwa also mentioned some of the late white leaders who served the black-majority devotedly.

“Leaders like Mr Norman, David Smith, Chris Anderson and Dr Timothy Stamps, all late, will be remembered in our country`s history for playing a salutary role in the formative years of our Nation,” said President Mnangagwa.

President Mnangagwa said that Norman worked hard towards a unified, on-racial agricultural sector where farmers related to each other and collaborated on grounds of their calling, and not along the racial divide of colonial times.

Norman died on 20 December, 2019 in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom after a long battle with cancer.