OBITUARY

of the most objective, truthful and professionally competent reporters ever to hold a microphone, camera or notebook in his hands.
He brought the cruel, twisted and (at the end) staggeringly violent saga of the death of white rule in Rhodesia, and the birth of black power in Zimbabwe, into the homes of millions of people
“He was one of the BBC’s all-time great correspondents,” said Peter Burdin, assignment editor at the BBC, when told about Ian’s death.
Ian Mills was not only a first class journalist. He was also a vastly talented musician, one of the finest jazz pianists ever heard in southern Africa .
He came from a humble Scottish home. After their marriage in 1930, Ian’s father William McLean Mills from Montrose and his mother Margaret Armstrong Mills (nee MacDougall) from Jarrow, Northumberland, moved south. Ian was born in Dorking, Surrey on December 21, 1932.
A sickly child, Ian lost time at primary school because of severe bouts of scarlet fever. He failed his eleven plus exam and so, instead of going to a Grammar School, he was enrolled at East Lane Secondary Modern School. He left there without any qualification, at 14.
His first job was as a messenger and tea boy. He earned two shillings a week. In his spare time he played kettledrum for the Greendale Citadel Salvation Army Band, graduating at 13 as a trumpet player with the Hanwell Silver Prize Band. So it was as a junior Salvation Army bandsman that a lifelong love for music was kindled in the young Mills.
“His lack of formal education left him scarred,” says his journalist wife, Heather. “He said he had such affinity for Peter Sellers, who also didn’t know quite who he was. Ian always thought people looked down on him. It was hard to make him think otherwise.”
In 1949, the Mills family, which included Ian’s sister Andrea, left England and sailed to Beira in Mozambique. From there they travelled by train to the picturesque border town, Umtali (Mutare), where Ian’s father joined Rhodesia Railways as an artisan.
Fortune smiled on the family. Mr Mills won the local lottery and changed occupations, becoming the owner of a jeweller’s shop that catered mainly for tourists.
In Rhodesia , Ian Mills blossomed. After a short spell as a customs officer, then as a soldier with the Rhodesia Army, he learnt the local language Shona and, at the age of 26, became a cadet journalist with The Rhodesia Herald. He ended up as that newspaper’s political editor.
In the early 1970s, Ian Mills went freelance. At one point in the 1970s, he represented 14 outlets including the BBC, the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Reuters, United Press International and a variety of Commonwealth magazines and radio stations.
Ian Mills has two sons by his first marriage, Stephen and Paul, and two daughters by his second, Melissa and Camilla.
His funeral takes place in Harare on Wednesday.
(Ian Mills, journalist and musician, born at Dorking, Surrey, England on December 21, 1932. He died after a long fight with leukaemia in Harare on 23 February 2007).
-TREVOR GRUNDY