ETHIOPIA
The first time I ever met Comrade Robert Mugabe was in 1976 when he came to Chimoio ZANLA Headquarters. I did not have the opportunity or the courage to speak to him then or during his two subsequent visits while I was there. I felt I was a nonentity, honoured to see my leader from a distance and content to join others in responding to his slogans. Two years later, I was hurriedly withdrawn from the battlefield and ordered to travel to Maputo to meet Comrade Mugabe. That was my first visit to Maputo and the first time I had the opportunity to shake hands with my president and talk with him one on one. Two weeks from that historic day, I had been briefed on my new assignment, issued with a British passport in my nom de guerre, and believe it or not, was on my way to Addis Ababa on appointment as the Chief Representative of ZANU to Socialist Ethiopia.
Since I had no first hand knowledge of Comrade Mugabe before joining the armed struggle and, to my knowledge, he had no personal knowledge of me, who convinced him that I was a suitable candidate for appointment to the prestigious responsibility of Chief Representative? At the time of writing this book President Mugabe is still alive and, therefore, I still have the opportunity to unravel the mystery from the man himself.
Could it be that the recommendation came from our Chief of Defence, Comrade Josiah Magama Tongogara? True, I became close and affectionately attached to Comrade Tongogara later in the struggle. True also, Comrade Tongogara hails from Shurugwi a small mining town in the midlands province of Zimbabwe and I, too, was born in Shurugwi where my father was working, but our ancestral home is in Gutu, in Masvingo province. I doubt that Comrade Tongogara could have associated the cadre known as Dragon Patiripakashata with Agrippah Mutambara born in Shurugwi. Besides, there is a much bigger Mutambara clan in Manicaland province than the one from Masvingo. These clans share a common name but no common ancestry. The majority of those who hear my surname today mistake me as originating from Manicaland province. Having said all this, it was taboo in our struggle to seek to know the origin of a comrade. Comrade Tongogara had no tribal leanings and would have surprised and confused me if he had sought to find out where I came from. I believe Comrade Tongogara’s affinity to ‘Dragosh’ (that’s how he affectionately called me) was purely based on identifiable competencies during the struggle. I became closer to Comrade Tongogara after my appointment as a Member of General Staff. Unfortunately, Comrade Tongogara is now deceased and I can never get his side of the story.
The late General Solomon Tapfumaneyi Mujuru, or Comrade Rex Nhongo as he was known during the struggle, was the first to be more familiar to me than Comrade Tongogara and Comrade Mugabe. He was the overall commander of ZIPA which was the engine driving our struggle during the period senior ZANLA commanders, including Comrade Tongogara, were languishing in Zambian jails between 1975 and 1976. Comrade Rex Nhongo frequented the ZANLA camps and it is probable that my promotion to Member of General Staff was recommended to him by those who were already Members of High Command or General Staff. It was faster to get promoted if you were assigned to assist in training recruits than when deployed in operational areas. Comrade Nhongo was the one who chose me to train a commando group and was responsible for my deployment to the operational areas on special missions. I believe he had a lot to do with my accelerated promotion. Like Comrade Mugabe and Comrade Tongogara, I do not come from the same area as Comrade Nhongo. Whatever role he played I can never confirm from him because he is also now deceased. Wherever the truth resides, I found myself posted to Socialist Ethiopia to represent ZANU.
Ethiopia bridged the geographic divide with Zimbabwe to become a true Frontline State through its immense contribution to our struggle. From the ZANU perspective, its contribution surpassed that of some contiguous Frontline States and was comparable to that of Tanzania and Mozambique.
Besides, Ethiopia was of strategic value to our struggle as its capital, Addis Ababa, is the permanent home of the headquarters of the African Union (AU), formerly the Organization of African Unity (OAU). Enlisting the undivided support of all African governments for our struggle was a vital step in pressuring the international community to accept the legitimacy of, and lend support to, our struggle. Ethiopia thus provided a platform for ZANU to garner widespread recognition from amongst African governments many of whom, in the early stages of our struggle, wanted ZANU to fight under the banner of ZAPU led by Dr Joshua Nkomo.
The OAU secretariat headed by a Secretary General was identified as the vein through which appeals for support for our struggle could be pumped into the hearts of every African Head of State and government. It was thus imperative that a rapport be established between the ZANU office in Addis Ababa and the Secretary General’s office if progress was to be made in broadening the ZANU support base.
The sturdy leadership of Lieutenant Colonel Mengishtu Haile Mariam, and the personal chemistry that developed between him and Comrade Robert Gabriel Mugabe, cemented a relationship that went beyond the successful completion of Zimbabwe’s armed struggle and saw President Mugabe reciprocate a favour by providing asylum to his friend after he was toppled from power. What was even more remarkable about Chairman* Mengishtu’s relationship with ZANU is the fact that he was affiliated to Russia, while ZANU was allied to China. All governments allied to Russia were expected to support ZAPU led by Comrade Joshua Nkomo, and not ZANU. As alluded to earlier, the term ‘authentic six’ was used to distinguish those liberation movements in Africa that were allied to Russia. This was in reference to MPLA in Angola, PAIGC in Guinea Cape Verde, FRELIMO in Mozambique, SWAPO in Namibia, ANC in South Africa, and ZAPU in Zimbabwe. When it became evident that ZANU was the Party that bore the main brunt of the armed struggle in Zimbabwe, the Russians through their closest ally, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), wooed ZANU to close ranks with ZAPU and abandon the Chinese camp. In return, ZANU would be guaranteed unlimited support from Russia and its allies, especially in the form of modern and more sophisticated weaponry. ZANU rejected the offer and vowed never to accept being blackmailed into switching allegiance.
It is in the context of the above that the magnitude of the support rendered to ZANU by Chairman Mengishtu, against the wishes of his main backers and whilst embroiled in a bitter civil war, which subsequently toppled him from power, can be judged. He gave military training to 1,000 ZANLA cadres and later to a corresponding number to ZIPRA cadres and armed them with Russian weaponry. Had the war not ended when it did, he had promised to train and arm thousands more ZANLA cadres. In addition to troop training, Ethiopia was training ZANLA pilots, maintenance technicians and ground crews.
I would have preferred to remain in the battlefield. However, I did recognize that I was now going to shoulder an equally important and onerous responsibility. I was not exactly sure though how I was to discharge my new assignment as Chief Representative of ZANU to Socialist Ethiopia.
I reflected over my experiences as a guerilla commander with a view to extrapolating commonalities in strategy and approach. Both the military and diplomatic fronts had a single goal – to advance the cause of freedom and independence. In either case, the commitment and oneness of purpose of a commander, and those he commanded, were critical factors to achieving success. On the military front success was easy to gauge. It could be measured by how many engagements you had with the enemy, the number of enemy targets you destroyed and the enemy forces you killed or injured or captured, the support you enlisted from the masses, and your ability to minimise casualties on your side. The parameters for defining success on the diplomatic front were not so easily discernible and more dependent upon how much support you were able to marshal from potential allies.
ZANU Chief Representatives were drawn from trained guerillas as well as from students (mostly studying in capitalist countries) and other ZANU supporters who were not directly involved in armed struggle.
My staff was capable of delivering, but some had negative tendencies. On the administrative side I had only one comrade, Rodwell Hondo. To derive maximum utilisation of his competencies, I had to keep him under close supervision.
Occasionally Comrade Rodwell suffered from epileptic fits. In this condition he sometimes lost consciousness and experienced convulsions which caused him to bite his tongue. The seizures were always preceded by a headache. To avoid cutting himself, Rodwell kept a piece of wood which he placed between his upper and lower teeth whenever he felt he was about to have seizures. Once his clenched teeth trapped the tongue or piece of wood between them, no amount of force could disengage them. At times he would forget to carry the piece of wood with him resulting in deep cuts to his tongue. We simply would have to wait about five to 10 minutes before the process of disengagement commenced on its own.
I doubted that Rodwell had a driver’s licence. But even if he had, I would not have allowed him to drive given his medical condition. Thankfully he had never asked me if he could drive either of our two cars.
Not until the day the request came in a very unorthodox manner. We were at the Hilton Hotel, preparing to go to the airport to see President Mugabe off to Maputo. Whenever he came to Addis Ababa, Comrade Mugabe was always a guest of the Ethiopian government and would be accommodated at the five-star Hilton Hotel and provided with a chauffer driven official car. We were in a jovial mood after Chairman Mengishtu had acceded to Comrade Mugabe’s request to train a bigger number of ZANLA forces when the ongoing training of ZIPRA forces came to an end. I asked Comrade Rodwell Hondo, who had joined us in Comrade Mugabe’s room, to put the President’s suitcase in our car so that we could drive to the airport ahead of the president to carry out the check-in formalities. Having complied with the instruction, Rodwell returned as I was asking the President to excuse me.
“Comrade President, Comrade Dragon does not allow me to drive our cars.” I was taken aback by the random and unexpected complaint from Rodwell.
“Do you have a driver’s licence?” Comrade Mugabe enquired without casting a glance in my direction. The response was affirmative.
Comrade Mugabe switched his glance to face me and rebuked, “Why do you refuse to let him drive our cars?”
“He never told me he had a driver’s license. Neither did he ever ask to drive,” I responded apologetically. Without further ado I produced the car keys from my pocket and handed them over to Rodwell. I told him to go to the airport ahead of us to do the check-in procedures for Comrade Mugabe.
About thirty minutes later I sat next to Comrade Mugabe as we were driven to the airport. We arrived as people were beginning to board the plane, but Rodwell was nowhere to be found. After frantic efforts to find him, word reached us that the car Rodwell had been driving had been involved in an accident. Fortunately there had been no serious injuries.
The plane was delayed for almost twenty minutes to give time for President Mugabe’s luggage to be brought from our immobilised vehicle.
Five months after this incident, Rodwell drove to our house/office one day with a cracked windscreen. I asked what had happened and he responded that some youths had thrown stones at the windscreen and then run away. I had no reason to disbelieve him.
One of my responsibilities as Chief Representative was to represent my party at international conferences. I found international conferences boring because most of the time I was a passive observer, unable to directly influence or contribute to the deliberations.
Meetings of the OAU were of greater significance to me. They provided the opportunity to network with representatives of African governments and sway their opinions about our struggle in favour of ZANU PF. The informal contacts outside the conference halls were thus more productive than the actual discussions conducted inside.
Conferences by the organs of the United Nations, such as the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) or the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), tended to be too technical and uninteresting. Besides, they added no real value to our struggle. The verbosity of the speakers, trying to outshine each other, got on my nerves and would send me to sleep. The United Nations High Comission for Refugees (UNHCR) was the organ that attracted my interest because of the large number of Zimbabwean ‘refugees’ in Mozambique.
I was attending one of these boring ECA conferences one morning. English was not the only official language of the conference, so I had plugged in earphones to receive automatic translations for languages other than English. I simply wanted to make believe that I was following the proceedings of the conference when in reality I had turned off the translation system and used the ear-plugs only to reduce the ‘noise’ filtering through my ears from the participants at the conference. I drifted into sleep and occasionally would be awoken by applause for a good speaker or noises from participants and squeaking furniture when proceedings were briefly adjourned for whatever reason.
At first I thought it was one of those disturbances that had woken me up and was preparing to go back to slumber when in my sleep induced stupor I realised there was a difference in the nature of the interruption. I tilted my head upwards and towering over me were two Ethiopian policemen. With a beckoning finger, one of the policemen bade me follow them.
“Are you the owner of a white Lada sedan (number plate given) parked outside?” one of the policemen enquired as soon as we were out of the conference hall.
“Yes I am,” I responded casting an inquisitive glance in his direction. Meanwhile we were walking towards where the car was parked.
“What happened to the windscreen?”
We had reached the car and the policeman was pointing at the cracked windscreen.
“Some unruly kids threw stones at it, causing it to crack,” I responded.
“Were you the one driving the car?” the policeman persisted.
“No. One of my comrades was.”
“Where is he now, or is it a she?”
“I left him at our office,” I responded beginning to sense that something must be terribly wrong.
“Take us to him. We want to question him immediately,” the policeman ordered.
“About what?” I asked.
“Regarding attempted murder,” the shocking response was unexpected, but made with conviction. Murder is not a word you normally associate with an accident. Maybe what the policeman meant was ‘culpable homicide’.
When we got to the office, Comrade Hondo was handcuffed and whisked away to the police station for questioning. He did not try to resist or protest against the police actions, suggesting that he was not surprised by what was taking place. He remained under remand for just over a week.
What had actually happened on the fateful day Rodwell alleged unruly kids had thrown stones at our car sounded like a script out of a movie. It was dusk and Rodwell was driving from a residential area in the outskirts of the city. An old man suddenly stumbled on to the road in front of him. Because of the speed at which he was driving he could not avoid hitting the old man. The man sustained injuries and was unconscious. Fearing that he was dead, Rodwell panicked. He looked around him and was satisfied that no one had witnessed the accident. If only he could leave the scene of accident without being noticed, no one would ever know it was him who had killed the man. To be absolutely certain the man was dead, Rodwell pulled at the unconscious form and laid him with his head in the path of one of the rear wheels. He got behind the steering wheel and reversed the car. Believing the man’s head had been crushed, Rodwell then sped away fast. Fortunately for the old man, he regained consciousness just in time to roll away from beneath the car. Also, unbeknown to Rodwell, someone had witnessed the incident, noted the car’s registration number and made a report to the police.
Through the police, I was able to make contact with the family of the victim. I was profusely apologetic about the conduct of my officer and assumed responsibility for the treatment and upkeep of the old man until full recovery. Periodically, I also bought grocery items for other members of the victim’s family. At the end of two weeks I had become like a member of the family and was able to influence them to withdraw charges against my officer. Long after the old man had recovered, I remained very close to his family.
Another comrade with whom I had disciplinary concerns was Stalin Mau Mau. He was head of our Information and Publicity department. Stalin’s main problem was that of self projection. The policy within ZANLA was always to project our President and none other. Even though the responsibilities of our office could be categorised as falling under the ambit of ZANU, as opposed to its military wing ZANLA, I insisted that our code of conduct be bound by the same ethos that bound ZANLA forces.
Comrade Mau Mau had printed posters of his portrait and had them posted in many places, including hotels. I took great exception to this and instructed that all his posters be recalled. He did not fully comply with the instruction, thereby leaving me with no other option but to have him recalled to our Headquarters in Maputo.
Comrade Mau Mau never reached Maputo. When he got to Dar-es-Salam he took a flight to Europe. That was the last I heard of him until after independence.
The co-existence of the ZANU/ZANLA cadres and the ZAPU/ZIPRA cadres was yet another major challenge. Over the past few months there had been simmering tensions between ZANU and ZAPU cadres, numbering about13 and 27 respectively, training to be pilots and aircraft maintenance technicians at Ethiopian Airlines in Addis Ababa. The genesis of the problem could be traced back to Tatek Military Training camp, situated about 21 kilometres from Addis Ababa, where 1000 ZANLA cadres had completed military training and had been shipped back to Mozambique for operational deployment. A similar number of ZIPRA cadres had moved into the camp for similar training. Hardly a month after their arrival, a renegade group of about 14 ZIPRA cadres declared to Ethiopian officials their desire to switch loyalties from ZAPU to ZANU. The 14 immediately became targets for retribution by loyalist ZAPU cadres. The Ethiopian government had to order that they be separated and protected from the rest of their colleagues. Later it was learned that Chairman Mengishtu Haile Mariam had signaled his willingness to accede to their demand.
Faced with the prospect of further defections and the attendant embarrassment it caused to the image of his organisation, the Chief Representative of ZAPU, Raphael Baleni, put the blame for the defections on my shoulders, the Chief Representative of ZANU, whom he accused of conniving with some Ethiopian instructors to recruit for ZANU from among the ZAPU cadres.
It became glaringly evident that the atmosphere between cadres at Ethiopian airlines from the two organizations was poisoned and polarized. The ZAPU representative and I agreed on the need to defuse the tensions between our cadres. We jointly organized a function at the ZANU office/residence one Saturday evening during which occasion we attempted to reduce tensions amongst the students by appealing for the projection of our national, rather than party identity, in our dealings with our hosts. We emphasised that there was nothing untoward for cadres from one party to freely associate with cadres from another party. By dwelling on the differences between our parties we were being injurious to the broader interests of our national struggle.
Despite all the wining and dining throughout the night, courtesy of contributions from various embassies based in Addis Ababa, the get-together ended without incident and there was high expectation that the tensions that had dogged us in the past weeks had finally been laid to rest.
The following Monday at around 1 pm, I was preparing to leave my office for a lunch break when the phone rang. The voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar, but I soon established that it was from one of the ZAPU cadres studying at Ethiopian Airlines. Following the momentous get-together of the past Saturday I was curious, but not totally surprised, that a ZAPU cadre should ask to meet the Chief Representative of ZANU. I saw no reason at all why I should deny the ZAPU cadre the request he had made.
“By all means you can come to see me at my offices,” I responded, “what time do you intend to come?”
“We finish our classes at 5 pm and I will immediately catch a bus, maybe I will be there around 6 pm,” the ZAPU cadre replied.
I was embroiled in my office work at around 4 pm when the same ZAPU cadre phoned again.
“Comrade Dragon, I am informed that our classes will run late and I cannot be at your place at 6,” the young man said, “may I propose that we meet at 7 pm but not at your place, it is too far away from our school. If you don’t mind we can meet at the Rendezvous by the Revolutionary Square,” he concluded.
The Rendezvous is a restaurant located in a building overlooking the Revolutionary Square, a place famous for its fancy military parades to celebrate important national occasions. The Rendezvous was situated on the first floor and, as the building had no elevators, the only way to reach or leave the restaurant was by use of stairs.
It was approximately 6.45 pm when I pulled our car into the parking lot beneath the Rendezvous and, accompanied by Comrade Rodwell Hondo, we went up the stairs to the restaurant. There were about a dozen customers, some drinking tea or coffee and others nursing their beer bottles. We chose a table opposite the entrance/exit and, with our backs against the wall, were strategically positioned so that we could see whoever was entering the restaurant. A metre to my left was a door that led on to the balcony. Just after seven one of the ZANU cadres, Comrade Choto, doing an aircraft maintenance course at Ethiopian airlines, entered the restaurant and we beckoned him to come and join us. Moments after Comrade Choto joined us, and seeing that I now had company, Rodwell excused himself to go to our house to start preparing our supper, since we did not have a cook.
At 19.50 hours I told Comrade Choto that I would have to leave at 20.00 hours since the ZAPU cadre had not turned up at 19.00 hours as promised. I emptied my glass of beer in readiness to leave when I saw three ZAPU cadres entering the restaurant. I was expecting only one, but three had turned up. Odd as it seemed, I was not fussy about it. The trio came to the table where Choto and I were seated and took their seats on the opposite side of the table so that we were facing each other. I offered to buy the three some drinks, but they all politely refused. I then enquired from the cadre who had rung me earlier why he wanted to meet me. Before he could answer, one of his colleagues stood up and went out to the balcony to see “if there is no better place for us to sit.” Within seconds he returned and declared that the place we were seated at was better than being out on the balcony. As he returned to his seat the cadre who had asked to meet me began to respond to my earlier enquiry.
“Comrade Dragon I wanted to see you because we have finished our training and we don’t want to go back to Lusaka, but to Maputo,” the young man began to explain.
“But you have a representative in Maputo, why didn’t you communicate your wishes to him?” I interjected.
“For the simple reason that we no longer want to belong to ZAPU, we want to join ZANU. It is for this reason that we considered it proper to see you here instead of at your house. We feared that if our Representative got wind of our meeting with you he might suspect the motive,” the cadre concluded.
My sixth sense reported something was not quite right, but I could not put a finger on it. There were inconsistencies in his story. Now he was referring to ‘we’ and yet when he phoned he had only been talking about ‘I’. Secondly, his reason for meeting me at the Rendezvous had been because he was finishing lessons late and our house was rather too far away. Now the story was different. They did not want to meet me at our house for fear their Representative might find out and suspect the motive. Wherever the truth lay, something was just not right.
“I am not mandated to accept or reject a request such as you have presented to me. The decision can only be taken at the higher echelons of our Party. Fortunately, tomorrow I am scheduled to fly to Maputo and I will take the opportunity to present your case to our leadership. Whatever their response I will communicate it to you when I return,” I responded to the petitioning by the ZAPU cadre.
Just then a large group of ZAPU cadres entered the restaurant. “Finish,” was the only word that came from my lips. All of a sudden everything began falling into place. I had been set up for assassination. The ZAPU cadre who went to the balcony to see if there was a better place to sit was in fact giving a signal to the others that their prey was in the net.
I watched about thirteen ZAPU cadres advancing towards our table leaving five others at the only entrance/exit. Outwardly I remained calm and composed, but inside my mind was in turmoil. I knew as I looked at the determined expressions of the ZAPU cadres that I was minutes, if not seconds, away from death.
The ZAPU cadres formed a horseshoe around Comrade Choto and me, trapping us between the wall behind us and the cordon they had formed and reinforced by the three cadres who had come earlier on.
“Dragon, what are you doing here?” their commander asked wearing a very serious expression. He was huge, hefty and intimidating.
“Why do you ask me such a question in a public place?” I responded calmly.
“Dragon, I said what are you doing here?” Patrick repeated the question as if he had not heard my response. I gave the same response. For the third time he repeated the same question and I was going to give exactly the same answer when his hand swiftly went to the inside pocket of the jacket he was wearing and came out with a knife. Simultaneously his colleagues did the same and came out with an assortment of knives and screwdrivers.
Without even thinking I pushed the table that separated us towards them. Many lost their balance and in the ensuing confusion I went under the table and through their legs, and dashed for the exit. The five cadres who had been left at the exit had been watching events as they unfolded and had their weapons ready in their hands lest I should attempt to escape. I got to them faster than they had anticipated and broke through the human barrier they had formed at the exit. I began descending the stairs when I felt the first stab in my back. As I continued running down the stairs a few more knives and screwdrivers found their mark there. I was taking three, four steps at once, and by the time I reached the ground floor I had created a small gap between my assailants and me.
Our car was still parked where I had left it. To attempt to take it would have been suicidal, as I would have been killed before even unlocking the car doors. I ran along the pavement that was parallel to the main road leading to the city center. Ahead of me the traffic lights facing the direction I was coming from turned amber and in a second or two they would turn red. A middle aged white lady driving a Lada was slowing down in preparation to stop at the traffic lights. I went for the rear door of her car and fortunately it was not locked. While still in motion I jumped into the rear of the car and locked the door. The white lady panicked at the sudden intrusion and wanted to stop the car and flee.
“Drive!” I barked out the order “can’t you see the blood oozing from my back and the people trying to kill me?” At that precise moment my assailants reached the car and tried unsuccessfully to wrench open the back door. The white lady was galvanized into action. There were cars in front of her that had stopped. She swerved her car on to the pavement and beat the red traffic lights. My assailants watched frustratedly as their prey got away. Despite protestations that she did not have sufficient fuel, I ordered the woman to drive to Arat Kilo (meaning four kilometres in the Amharic language). As I got out of her car I gave her the fifty American dollars I had withdrawn for use as allowances for my trip to Maputo the following day.
At Arat Kilo I rushed up the stairs to the flat where Mr Murerwa’s family lived. Mrs Murerwa and her children were at home. Tapiwa, the youngest daughter, shouted “Uncle Dragon” in welcome, then saw my shirt drenched in blood and ran away from me in panic. Until the end of my mission to Ethiopia in 1980, Tapiwa was traumatised and never wanted to come near Uncle Dragon again. Being a nurse by profession, Mrs Murerwa was able to stop the bleeding and administer first aid before calling the police, who then drove me to hospital.
Comrade Choto, who had watched helplessly as the attempt to assassinate me was unfolding, became the unintended victim after I managed to escape. He got two stab wounds to the head and two others to the body before Ethiopian soldiers fired shots in the air and apprehended all the ZAPU cadres involved.
After independence Air Zimbabwe employed most of these ZAPU cadres as maintenance technicians. I made it clear to them that I bore no malice against any one of them because they had no personal hatred of me but were doing the bidding of their Party. Had I been given a similar mission by my Party then, most probably, I would have carried out its bidding too.
One of the memorable moments of my stay in Ethiopia was when I met the reggae king, Bob Marley. I briefed him in greater depth about our struggle in Zimbabwe. By the time I left his hotel he had promised to finance our operations in Ethiopia. Unfortunately, he must have communicated his intentions to officials from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, some of whom were avid sympathisers of ZAPU. He was told that if he wanted to fund ZANU’s operations, he would have to fund ZAPU’s operations to the same level. In the end he decided he would contribute to our struggle through our Headquarters in Maputo.
I remained in Ethiopia until 11 April, 1980, just a week before our independence.
* The Ethiopian government used the title ‘Chairman’ instead of ‘President’ or ‘Prime Minister’ for its Head of State.