Ian Smiths Farm Invasion Update

25th May 2000

SHURUGWI, Zimbabwe,- Fifty squatters occupying the farm owned by former premier of Rhodesia Ian Smith are staking out small private plots for themselves, under the pretense of reclaiming ownership of their ancestral land, itself a highly debatable subject.

Gwenara Farm, on the high veld in southern Zimbabwe, stretches over 200 hectares (500 acres). Here, 81-year-old Smith raises 1,000 head of Brahman cattle and grows maize.

The farm was occupied on May 13, adding to the some 1,500 commercial farms illegally occupied in Zimbabwe.

But for the squatters, young Zanu (PF) activists acting under orders from Mugabe, led by a few former terrorists in Zimbabwe's independence war against Smith's regime, the farm is "special."

Itanga, one of the squatters wearing mud-spattered rags, called the occupation "a revenge."

"We know what he did to our people. He should not have stayed here and boasted about his wealth," said Itanga, a young unemployed man from Makusha township.

"I have nothing, why should I watch him end his life in comfort? Why should I not take some of his cattle to feed my family since he drew his wealth from the suffering of my people?" said Itanga of Smith, spouting the ZANU (PF) line, forgetting that Mugabe had already obtained enough land for redistribution but had redistributed it to his political cronies instead of the people.

In 1965, Ian Smith, then premier of Rhodesia, broke with London with his Unilateral Declaration of Independence. Between 1972-79, he fought a bloody war against Mugabe and Nkomo's Marxist terrorists.

The groups who have occupied the commercial farms since February claim to be independence war veterans, but they are a mixed bunch. Often, in the occupied farms, a handful of veterans heads a band of young, lawless  unemployed (Zimbabwe has 50 percent unemployment), landless peasants and militant supporters of the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF).

Armed with picks and sticks, the squatters on Smith's farm occupy a limited sector. "We are not looking for conflict, we do not want violence," said Itanga, adding however that Smith would be "wise not to come" to visit his farm.