April 26, 2000. Copyright 2000. Graphic News. All rights reserved. LEGACY OF AN EMPIRE LONDON, April 26, Graphic News: THE DEATHS of two more supporters of ZimbabweÕs biggest opposition party Ð the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) Ð brings to eight the number of people killed in the escalating tide of violence sparked by the illegal occupation of white-owned farms. President Robert Mugabe has insisted that the occupation of nearly 1,000 farms by 60,000 so-called Òwar veteransÓ of the ruling ZANU-PF party is a justified campaign for the redistribution of land still mainly in white hands 20 years after independence from Britain in 1980. But opponents of the government accuse Mugabe of encouraging the violent land-grabs by mobs of ZANU-PF party youths to shore up his flagging popularity ahead of national elections expected to be called in May. The 76-year-old president and his ruling ZANU-PF party suffered a major defeat in a referendum in February on a new constitution. Mugabe, in power for two decades and who does not face re-election until 2002, took the rejection as a personal insult. Within days the occupations, led by war veterans of the 1972-80 guerrilla war against the regime of then Prime Minister Ian Smith, started. The ÒveteransÓ are demanding the fertile farm land of the ÒveldÓ, saying it was stolen by the British from their forefathers in the 1890s. It was then that Cecil Rhodes, the Victorian adventurer and imperialist, inspired ox wagon pioneers with talk of gold to trek into the region from the south. In 1890, after battling hostile terrain, climate and warring tribes, they hosted the Union flag on a hill called Harare, proclaiming ÒOccupation DayÓ. By 1987 the countries of North and South Rhodesia had been created but RhodesÕ dream of creating a giant Southern African nation stretching from the Cape in the south to the source of the Zambezi in the north were destroyed by the Anglo-Boer war in 1899. Under the auspices of RhodesÕ British South Africa Company his followers took land by whatever means they thought appropriate, justifying their actions under the then current European belief that whites were simply morally and culturally superior to the natives. Within a decade the white settlers, who had been handed 16 million acres of RhodesiaÕs 96 million acres of land, formed the backbone of the economy. Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, won independence from Britain in 1964. Southern Rhodesia finally did in 1980 after a bitter international diplomatic dispute and a bloody civil war. The Unilateral Declaration of Independence by Ian SmithÕs Rhodesia Front white supremacist government in 1965 and the countryÕs withdrawal from the Commonwealth in 1970 forced the administration to turn to its natural ally, white South Africa. Sanctions and a bush war led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe slowly drained the country until in 1979 Smith was forced to the negotiating table in LondonÕs Lancaster House, resulting in black rule and independence on April 18, 1980. Renamed Zimbabwe Ð which means Ògreat stone houseÓ in the local tongue Ð Mugabe became President in 1980 and initiated the ÒMatabeleland massacresÓ to eliminate tribal opposition to his ruling party. In the interim his government became mired in corruption and the economy suffered. The Zimbabwean dollar, which was worth slightly more than the U.S. dollar in 1980, is now worth less than three U.S. cents, inflation soared to 70 percent last October, tourism to the Victoria Falls and Lake Kariba has suffered and the jobless rate stands at almost 50 percent. And the land issue, a key stumbling block in the Lancaster House talks 20 years ago, still remains unresolved. /ENDS Sources: UPI, Reuters, BBC World Service