David Pallister
Robert Mugabe may be losing friends around the world at an alarming rate but he still has one unusual and influential capitalist supporter in Uckfield, southern England.
Nicholas Hoogstraten (54) a controversial property multi-millionaire who regards hikers as the scum of the earth, and his tenants and women with even more contempt, has emerged as a long-standing financial backer of Zimbabwe’s ruling Zanu-PF.
Hoogstraten, who is building a R300- million Renaissance-style palace with a mausoleum to preserve his remains, confirmed on Thursday that he had funded Mugabe and his party since the early 1960s when he acquired land in the country. He now owns nine farms covering 400E000ha and a huge cattle company but, he says, only one of his nominee managers is white.
Hoogstraten is in no doubt where Zimbabwe’s current problems stem from. Using his characteristically forceful language, he said: “This has all been stirred up by white disenfranchised trash who still think it’s Rhodesia. I have some good white friends in Zimbabwe but those Rhodies, as we call them, are disgusting people.”
Hoogstraten revealed he continues to provide funds for Zanu-PF candidates. Over the years, he said, he must have contributed hundreds of thousands of pounds.
His money, and his friendship with Mugabe, he believes, will ensure that his properties are not the subject of attacks by the war veterans.
He says of Zimbabwe: “It’s a decent, civilised ex-colonial country. It’s a paradise compared with places like Nigeria.” He dismisses reports of government corruption with a shrug. “It’s no more than 10%. In Nigeria it’s 90%. I used to own the tin mines there until I flooded them in the early 1980s.”