OWN CORRESPONDENT, Harare | Sunday 3.00pm.
FORMER Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith said on Sunday that his cattle and maize farm in central Zimbabwe has been invaded by a group of about 50 people, who have pegged out plots.
He however told journalists that he is not concerned about the situation. Speaking outside his house in Belgravia suburb in Harare, he said the invaders seem peaceful and farming operations have not been disrupted.
“I’m not worried, I have more black friends than [President Robert] Mugabe,” he said. He believes those who have invaded his land are unemployed miners from the town of Shurugwi, near his 200-hectare farm Gwenara, and not, as was first believed, self-styled war veterans who have occupied white-owned farms over the past months.
The veterans have invaded some 1200 white-owned commercial farms since February, with the support of the ruling Zanu-PF party, in an often violent land-grab that has the blessing of Mugabe.
“Our information is that they are not war veterans,” the 81-year-old Smith said on Sunday. “They have been told that everybody else in the country has gone on to farms and staked out the ground, so why shouldn’t they try.”
“And if they decide to try, whose farm is better than that bloke Ian Smith’s. Everyone knows him better than anyone else.” Describing his farm as “peaceful”, he added: “There is no politics on my farm.”
Smith’s son Alec earlier said that the group is “not confrontational in any way” and that normal farming operations are continuing. — AFP