The Sunday Mail
On July 15, 2016; Zimbabwe lost one of its foremost technocrats, Dr Charles Utete, who served as the head of the civil service for 22 years. Apart from setting up a service that spoke directly to majority interests and aspirations, Dr Utete is widely respected for ably acquitting himself as Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet up until his retirement in 2003.
As the nation reflects on his remarkable life, we reproduce an article that we published on April 6, 2003; around the time of Dr Utete’s retirement.
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Munyaradzi Huni
Deputy Editor
Many people called him “the invisible man behind the scenes”.
Some called him “the man who has seen it all in Government”.
Others called him “the smooth operator who lets his actions do the talking”.
It has been a good 22 years, and the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet, Dr Charles Utete, is saying adios to Government.
Dr Utete was appointed as the Secretary to the then Prime Minister Mugabe on February 25, 1981.
Since 1981, Dr Utete has been at the centre of things in Government.
When The Herald announced his retirement on April 1, 2003; many people must have thought it was just an April Fools’ Day joke.
But then it was not.
“It’s time to move. I am going to rest,” said Dr Utete at his office on Thursday.
Of course, as a man who has been at the centre of the nation for the past 22 years, his mobile phone kept ringing as those he did business with phoned him to get details about this and that.
“There are two things I will be doing. First, I will continue with my activities as a farmer. And second, I have some assignment which you will be told about quite soon. That assignment is not in the civil service. This assignment will take my time in the next few months,” said Dr Utete.
But what has Dr Utete been doing as the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet?
“The role of the Chief Secretary to the President and Cabinet involves a complex set of functions and activities which are difficult to sum up. But you are talking about the Head of the Office of the President and Government from the civil service side of the matter.
“Head of the civil service from the point of view of those aspects to do with policy formulation. More specifically, the Chief Secretary works at the behest of the President because in our system, the President is both Head of State and Government. So, the Chief Secretary takes instructions from the President.
“It’s really a whole range of matters. The Chief Secretary is also in the centre of business of Cabinet. The Chief Secretary attends Cabinet to make sure that decisions in Cabinet eventuate to decisions which must be properly captured.
“The Chief Secretary is head of the civil service. He interacts with the heads of various ministries to make sure that each one of them is performing as expected by the Head of State and Government,” said Dr Utete.
And with so much to do and so many people to deal with, the job comes with a lot of challenges.
“Yes, there was a lot of pressure. You come to the office thinking I am going to deal with this or that, then someone calls with another matter that has to be dealt with. You are diverted from what you wanted to do,” said Dr Utete.
He said that his family “after all these years had to adjust to the situation”, adding that, “This applies to all senior people in Government, even the President and ministers, they work very long hours, so the family must learn to live under this situation.”
Dr Utete was born in Chikomba, Mashonaland East in 1938 and attended primary schools in the area, including Kwenda Mission.
He then went to Tegwane School, now Tekwane, in Plumtre, for secondary education before enrolling at Goromonzi High School for his Advanced Level
After that, he went to the then University of Rhodesia where he obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics.
He then went to Tufts University in Medford, near Boston, Massachusetts, in the US, for a Master’s degree in Political Science.
From Tufts University, Dr Utete went to Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he studied for a Master’s degree and a PhD in International Relations and Public Administration.
After that, he taught at Montclair State University in New Jersey, then in Dar es Salaam before coming to Zimbabwe after lndependence, where he lectured at the University of Zimbabwe.
But then there are those people saying Dr Utete is not retiring but “running away” from Government because he is leaving at a time when the Government is under lots of pressure because of the British stance against the land reform exercise.
He does not agree.
“I have been wanting to retire for the last several years, but many things kept coming. I regret that some people would say I am running away. But remember, there are those saying I stayed too long.
“I am not leaving because there is something I am running away from. It’s not because of disappointment or anything, but it’s the clock. The time for me is up,” said Dr Utete
The man is not new to such kinds of accusations and he seems to understand why things have to be like so.
In the past, he has been accused of appointing “his people” into the civil service.
In 1993, Vice-President Simon Muzenda had to come to the defence of Dr Utete after he was accused of “appointing his relatives from Chikomba to key posts in Government”.
During the interview on Thursday, Dr Utete spoke about the matter saying, “Some people have said I was responsible for appointing my people into Government.
“That was not my responsibility. It’s the responsibility of the Public Service Commission.
“I don’t know why some people had a tendency to say if someone they didn’t like was appointed to a Government post, they blamed me.”
Dr Utete was also at one time accused of using his influence to order the Government Tender Board to alter its decision to award a tender jointly to Econet and Telecel, but as a man at the centre of things for many years, he soldiered on.
Despite the hustles, Dr Utete says he will miss the challenges he has faced for the past 22 years.
“I will miss the company of those I worked with for all these years, colleagues in this office, colleagues in the Public Service Commission and ministers. I never had any real serious problem with any minister and I knew most of them on a personal level.
“I will also miss the opportunity to interact and the challenges I faced in this office. It might sound strange, but the complexity of Government and difficulties that come with it are some of the things I will miss.
“You know, when you have participated or helped in finding a solution, you feel good about it. That daily challenge is something that I will miss, but it’s time to move on,” he said.
When asked how he had managed to keep his job for all these years, Dr Utete put on a smile and said, “I don’t know. It’s difficult to answer. If I want to be modest, I would say I didn’t commit too many glaring errors.
“The other thing is that as you get enmeshed in work, you gain that kind of experience that makes you perform to satisfaction.
“There is no school or college that teaches you how to handle this kind of job, so you acquire knowledge on the job. That experience becomes an asset.”
Dr Utete has interacted with the President almost on a daily basis for the past 22 years, but one thing that he will not do is describe “his boss”.
When asked how he would describe the President Mugabe, he smiled and said, “You want me to describe my boss? Do you do that at your workplace?”
The response was enough to show how much Dr Utete respects the President. Remember, it has been a good 22 years.
Government will never be the same without Dr Utete.
