Dear Mr Coltart
Replying to your message of the 17th August – for which many thanks, I am happy and encouraged to learn that Zimbabwean students at Cape Town University are ready and willing to return home upon completion of their studies to serve their country.
As you are no doubt aware, we in government intend to establish a non-racial society based on equality – and the promotion of the well-being of all our people in accordance with our socialist principles.
It is in this connection that we have adopted the policy of reconciliation whereby our people must put aside the hatreds and animosities of the past and approach the future in a positive and constructive frame of mind and with commitment and dedication to the all-round development of the new Zimbabwe.
As we struggle to re-build our country out of the destruction of war we look to young people like your-selves to assist us to achieve our objective of establishing a prosperous and harmonious and humane society in this country.
I call on all of you who have completed your studies to return and join us in the urgent tasks before us. I hardly need to remind you that this is as much your home as it is ours. As so often has been said, in identifying with a returning to the new Zimbabwe you have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Yours sincerely
R.G. Mugabe
Prime Minister of the Republic of Zimbabwe
Mugabe telegram to David Coltart – 19 August 1981