One other aspect was the smoke thrown into Western diplomats' eyes by events in Harare, where Mnangagwa, moved from causing chaos in the health service, to the interior ministry.  
He oversaw a clearing out of senior whites in the police, army, agriculture, customs and revenue services who had stayed on after 1980.  "Africanization" or black advancement, or whatever you want to call it had already started under the Bishop's government.   ZANU PF wanted it speeded up.  Mnangagwa, for example insisted that tests to check police recruits could read a write be scrapped, and got rid of all the police hierarchy which opposed this, using gun-waving threats.  The result was the "biggest keleptocracy of a civil service all cloaked in Marxist rhetoric" according to a note from one UN official.
Foreign diplomats in Harare were left scrabbling around, trying to get the measure of the new administration, leaving little time or inclination for potentially risky trips to the "bush".