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| Tony Close (added June 5, 2009) |
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I have seen Neil Stirks questions about Tony Close in the guest book. |
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| This might be of interest and is my personal acount in brief
of working with Tony. |
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| At
Forbes in the 60's Tony had a metal caliper on his leg and sometimes used a crutch He had bright red Ford Cortina GT
, which he spent hours cleaning . |
| I am not sure where or when but he smashed it up with very little injury to
himself. He then acquired the later model Ford Cortina GT, metallic gold in colour. |
| His favorite drinking place was Vila Manica and that car
certainly knew its way home, often at great speed. |
| The Portuguese Customs had recently moved to their new premises
in the petrol station buildings . One evening, or early morning, that GT came thru the |
| petrol station at great
speed and took a corner very wide, straight into the steps of the old Portuguese Customs House, He hit those steps so hard
that they were |
| actually dislodged from the building.
In this accident he messed up his leg and arm and his throat/voice. |
| When he came back to work he used a small tree trunk as a
crutch!! |
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| I next
came across Tony at Beitbridge, driving his white Landy. He Mauby and Scotty were at one time in the house on the river,
where he tried, unsuccessfully, |
| to raise ostrich chicks. I think
at that time he acquired an Alstion that he called Chibules. The army suddenly
found that Tony Close was not doing his fair |
| share of military training and sent him forms to fill in
In his terrible writing he filled it in and when he came to the part where they asked
if he had had any opertations, |
| he thought for a while and wrote PTO. On the reverse
of the form he listed 16 operations, and sent it back, Nothing more was heard from the Army. |
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| Tony's
mom lived in Pietermaritzburg and for some reason he never kept in touch with her, and she, annually, used to phone the Collector
Beitbridge and enquire |
| whether he was still alive. Tony
and Chibules were transferred to Byo in the late 70's where he acquired a newer, more modern, blue Landy. |
| He lived
a few houses from where I lived and when he went on leave he entrusted me with the care of his old white Landy. This Landy
had a sticker across the centre |
| of the steering boss "DO NOT DRIVE THIS LANDY WHEN PISSED ". |
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| When
I resigned and left for SA Tony was in examining in Byo office. On occasion my daughter, who at the time worked for Tupperware
needed guidance/info on |
| Customs procedure and phoned
Tony. The last time she phoned him he could hardly speak and had to call on the services of another customs officer to relay
the |
| answers. When we went up to Byo
for Dan Schoonraads daughters wedding we popped in to see Tony, now driving a Toyota Cressida ,and sitting in what I knew |
| as the drawbacks office At first he did not recognise
us, but when we told him who we were he was delighted and pointed to a certificate on the wall |
| acknowledging his long service in the Customs Dept. It
was very difficult to follow what he was saying and it was obvious that his health had deteriorated . |
| Chibules had long since passed on but he now had two Alsations
. |
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| Despite his difficulties Tony was a super person to know
and had a real good sense of humour and I often wonder how he is. |
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| Alan Howard |
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The following is
a letter from John "Aussie" Austin to Nick Hurd MP in response to news reports that the British Government is considering
a billion dollar aid package to assist Zimbabwe. (This added to the website on April 5, 2008)
LONDON
03 April 2008 Thursday
Dear Nick,
I am sure you
& many of your colleagues will already be well aware that many former Zimbabwean pensioners forced out of that country
have, for some many years now, not received a penny of their pensions.... particularly pensions earned by former employees
of the Zimbabwe/Rhodesia government, forces, and statututory corporations. Furthermore, most of these now unpaid pensions
have never been adjusted at all in terms of Zimbabwe's mind boggling inflation (now officially over 100 000% and unofficially
much more than double that number). I am only one of many of them....... My own Zimbabwean pension used to be around
£180 per month when I arrived here in 1988 - having been forced into early retirement via wrongful detention-without-trial
for two years (1986-1988), after 21 years service rising to Head, Customs & Excise, Harare (my retiring civil service
grade equates to somewhere between Asst Secretary to Under Secretary in the UK).
That pension(?)
was part of the historic 1979 Lancaster House package, most fine print of which has long been reneged upon by the Mugabe regime.
Moreover, that which the regime has not directly & deliberately disrupted has additionally been rendered worthless
by the systematic criminal wreckage of the Zimbabwean economy by it's own regime. I personally know of a number of folk (including
widows) who have worked all their lives in Zimbabwe, only to find themselves now penniless in the UK..... and eking out a living on the benefit regime here (these are the lucky ones - those who were born here or have
some sort of ancestral right to return here). Many of the unlucky ones live in near poverty or actual poverty in South Africa or elsewhere, and in Zimbabwe too. Quite simply, this is just not right. Moreso, when you understand that the Mugabe regime
has simultaneously rewarded so-called war veterans etcetera with ongoing multi million dollar pensions.... I say "so-called"
because the age of many of them clearly makes their claims to being "veterans" of anything highly questionable. Moreover,
I have no doubt that the pensions of the outgoing regime will be at the top of their priority lists whilst haggling deals
concerning their relinquishment of power.
My 1988 Z$486
per month non-index-linked Lancaster House pension that used to yield around £180 in 1988, and which shrunk to about
£3 before it was stopped altogether years ago by the Zimbabwe government, will today be worthless if re-instated. I say this because the Z$ has had three zeros removed twice in
recent years. So, my non-index-linked pension of Z$486 now amounts to Z$0.000486 in now Zim currency. As I write, an egg (yes
one egg) costs over Z$5million. So, if the current Head of Harare Customs & Excise (who will be a ZANUpf appointee) were
to retire post Mugabe, I doubt very much whether he would accept a monthly pension of Z$0.000486...... so why should I and
the other surviving Zimbabwean pensioners. And if not, why then should we approve of UK taxpayers' money being used to reward those who have stolen from us?
Note: Not just
UK taxpayers' money, but all donor countries' taxpayers' money - for
the pensioners affected are scattered throughout the free world donor-contributing diaspora of Zimbabwe.
The reason I
write is to ask you to forcefully & effectively make the case for Zimbabwe pensioners in the House of Commons to tie any future Zimbabwe aid package(s) to a some sort of rectification of the theft of our collective
pensions. I and my family have lived here and paid our taxes and dues for twenty years now, since 1988. Obviously
any UK aid bundle will be paid for by the electorate and taxpayers of the
UK. It must therefore be wholly reasonable that strings are tied to
such new aid/gift money at the very least to put right that which has been stolen from our pensioners. To do otherwise is
to reward theft and ignore old-age hardship caused by a criminal regime.
I shall be copying
and blind copying this email out to a wide and multi-national church of interested folk in my network. It is my hope that
you might be prepared to canvass this principle & policy to your parliamentary network also. I am very
concerned that in the post-Mugabe era and the aid-fixes being bundled together, that the vulnerable and damaged pensioners
are not excluded from the repair processes (it is already too late for many --- simply because they have since died).
I am fully aware
that Zimbabwe has monumental issues to deal with - post Mugabe, and that
plans and packages will be being hatched even as I write. That is precisely why I write just now; I don't want to see the
forgotten pensioners left out of the equation. Please assist me to assist those many destitute Zimbabwe pensioners very much in distressed circumstances. Circumstances that neither you nor
I would like to find ourselves nor our nearest and dearest. Thank you.
Sincerely,
John Vincent
Austin
Former Head,
Harare Customs & Excise
21 Potter Street, HA6 1QJ
______________________________________________________________
| Chris Heron in the London marathon, April 22, 2007 |

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Chris finished in position 10221 out of about 35000 runners and 338th in his age group. Chris
thinks that's pretty good for an old toppie. Mom & Dad look suitably proud!!
_____________________________________________________________
Click here to read the swradioafrica report on Adrian Stanley
Adrian Stanley of Reps passed away
on August 9, 2006. Many will remember him. He was in his late 80's.
Adrian faithfully served our society, as it’s first
professional Director Of Productions, for a period in excess of forty years. It is due to his efforts and talents that Reps
can proudly hold it’s collective head up and say that we are truly one of the most “professional” amateur
societies in the world, whose high standards of theatre are the envy of many.
Anna and 2 of my sons get involved with REPS now and then - costumes (Anna ) stage
design and lighting ( Colin and Robert ) - they met the old man a few times in the last 3 years .
Terry Norman ( nee Goodwin ) and her family are also quite involved with
REPS
I had never met him but he was a legend in the Harare theatre circles.
Ken Swinton
________________________________________________________
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THE LATE MICHAEL HARTNACK : 1945 -
2006 : AGED 60
I personally never knew the man, but he reported extensively
in the media on our case(s) during my & Neil Harper's two year detention without trial in Harare, Zimbabwe (1986-1988).
In subsequent years after our release, I have not always fully identified with Mike Hartnack's angle of reportage, but neither
have I ever found it to be dishonest either. However, I have no doubt whatsoever regarding his integrity as a reporter.
Mike always was clearly his own man in his chosen
profession.
I recall one occasion after one of many releases from Chikurubi
Maximum Security Prison, following upon orders of the Supreme Court (the then Chief Justice - Enoch Dumbutshena,
himself, no less - on one occasion); we were tailed into town from Chikurubi by the CIO with a view to re-detention of us
by them.
We beat them to our lawyers' offices literally by a whisker,
and locked ourselves into our lawyer's office.
The CIO mob arrived soon after into the Atherstone &
Cook reception area..... which we could see across from the office we were holed up in. My colleague and co-detainee Neil's
instant tactic was to use our lawyer's telephone to phone the international press correspondents to come on down and witness
this scoop. One of those was Mike Hartnack, as Mike used to also go to a kennel club that Neil's then teenage daughter Jenny
also attended with her dog. Indeed, I think Mike Hartnack was the very first correspondent whom Neil phoned. I think another
correspondent was Mills (of BBC?) and, once the word was out, the media pack descended on the offices of Atherstone &
Cook in goodly numbers.
Man, were we pleased to see them arrive....... it was fascinating
to watch the quickly changing arrogant & officious behaviour of the CIO bullies - once they fully realised
the components of their audience (to this day, I am convinced that CIO operatives have a genetic ancestral link to chameleons
- a very significant link, as it happens, in terms of Shona folk lore concerning chameleons in Zimbabwe).
And so, as the independent media all arrived long before
the siege was broken, we do believe they contributed greatly in obviating a messier outcome so far as Neil and I were
concerned, and at that particular point of our long-winded woes at the hands of the already criminal Zimbabwean regime. Needless
to say, we were still re-detained when we agreed to break siege. However, we did so only on condition that we be allowed certain
"privileges" , like -
an exclusive cell (as against a deliberately over-crowded
one),
sufficient louse-free blankets (it was winter),
toilet cleaner and paper (which our families paid
for),
toothpaste & brushes (one each - at our expense),
pencils & paper (at our cost),
the daily paper (at our cost),
daily visits with food from family,
hot water (from a bucket) for bathing, plus soap &
shampoo at our cost,
and any-time access to our lawyers.
Had they, the independent journalists, and Mike Hartnack
not been present witnessing this tense stand-off, I have no doubt our re-detention would have been considerably less "comfortable"
at Harare Central Police Cells for the next many months.
Sincerely,
John V Austin
Former Head, Harare Customs & Excise
Detainee - Chikurubi Maximum - 1986 to 1988
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