Rhodesia Betrayed by the West, Zimbabwe Destroyed by Marxism and Mugabe

Rhodesia, Zimbabwe, Mugabe, PDF format

“When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.” (Proverbs 29:2)


Karl Marx said: “The first battlefield is the re-writing of history.” This is an age when, very rapidly, the truth about the past is being “revised” by Marxists, liberals and others, and unless this wicked revisionism is resisted, people will be thoroughly indoctrinated with lies and myths presented as “truth”. Already vast damage has been done, and even many who lived through more recent historical events have been so well indoctrinated, and conditioned to think along the “party” line, that they actually believe the lies and myths they have been fed. Very few people think critically anymore. They do not even know how to do so. They simply swallow whatever they are told by their Red, almost-Red, and religious-Red heroes and masters.
The purpose of these articles is to counter the deliberate re-writing of history with those stubborn things called facts, and that wonderful thing called truth. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil” (Isaiah 5:20).


On the 11th November 1965, Prime Minister Ian Smith of Rhodesia declared UDI (Unilateral Declaration of Independence) from Britain.  Exactly 52 years later, on the 21st November 2017, Robert Mugabe, the evil tyrant and dictator of Zimbabwe – which was what Rhodesia was renamed when his Marxist terrorists took power in 1980 in a fraudulent election overseen by Britain – was finally forced to resign by members of his own party.

Between those two November dates – 1965 and 2017 – is the story of a small country which, under conservative white rule, prospered and provided its people with a wonderful way of life even while waging a war of survival against Communist forces; and then, under a black Marxist government, descended into brutality and tyranny and suffered the greatest economic collapse of any country in history.

52 years: 15 years as independent Rhodesia, followed by 37 years of Marxist tyranny and suffering as Zimbabwe.

Between those two Novembers, what rivers of blood have flowed!

Robert Mugabe Resigns, November 2017: Jubilation in Zimbabwe and Throughout the World

  The resignation of Robert Mugabe in November 2017 was the most wonderful news to millions of Zimbabweans, and to hundreds of thousands of ex-Rhodesians now scattered throughout the world, whose lovely country was taken from them by the evil duplicity of the British and American governments and handed on a platter to one of the greatest tyrants of modern times.  There was rejoicing in the streets, and jubilation in living rooms across the world.  The tyrant had fallen!  Hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans poured into the streets in a frenzy of overwhelming joy and relief, shouting, singing, cheering.  Almost four decades of misery and suffering: the national jubilation was perfectly understandable.  Only those who have suffered under such tyranny could ever imagine what it suddenly felt like, to know that the man responsible for it was no longer in power.

It is true that the Scripture says, “Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth” (Prov. 24:17); but Scripture must interpret Scripture.   Although no Christian should seek private revenge against his enemies, nor rejoice at the fall of any private enemy, but rather seek to help him in any way possible, which is loving one’s enemy as oneself (Prov. 25:21,22; Rom. 12:19-21; Matt. 5:43-48), yet the Bible is perfectly clear that there is no sin, indeed it is perfectly natural and even proper, to rejoice before the Lord when the public enemies of the Lord’s people are brought down.  This is clearly shown in Exod. 15:1, when the army of Pharaoh was drowned in the Red Sea as it pursued after Israel: “Then sang Moses and the children of Israel this song unto the Lord, and spake, saying, I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.”  Likewise, when the Roman Catholic system, called the mystical “Babylon” and the “Great Whore” in prophetic Scripture, is destroyed one day, the Lord’s saints are instructed to rejoice at her destruction: “Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you on her” (Rev. 18:20); “And after these things I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluiah, Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore” (Rev. 19:1,2).

The fall of Mugabe from power, then, is something all true believers may rejoice in, as being a demonstration of the power of God, who “changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Dan. 2:21).  In His sovereign purpose the Lord permitted this man to rule over Zimbabwe for 37 years; but now, in His sovereign purpose, He has removed him.

And truly, Mugabe’s fall from power was a most humiliating fall indeed.  He did not die in office, as so many expected he would do given his great age of 93; he did not leave gracefully after being defeated in the polls in a free election (even though he had indeed been defeated soundly at the polls years ago, but refused to leave and nullified the election results).  No; he was forced to resign by his own evil, corrupt party!  His own old comrades, who had propped him up for so many years, finally turned against him!  What an absolutely humiliating exit from power for this arrogant, vicious tyrant who thought he was indestructible in office and would rule Zimbabwe till he died!  When he watched the news, all he would have seen was the joy and jubilation of the ordinary people of Zimbabwe, so ecstatic that he was no longer their president.  He now knows that, instead of being his people’s hero, they viewed him as an oppressor and a monstrous tyrant who ruined their lives.  And this knowledge will go with him to the grave.

But even in the midst of the joy, sadly a note of extreme caution must be issued, for:

Mugabe Departs, but Zimbabwe Remains Marxist

  It must always be remembered that the removal of Mugabe was not by an election which brought a better government into power in place of him and his party; and it was not even by a popular uprising of the masses (for which we are thankful, as this would have been disastrous).  His fall from power came about solely as the result of an internal coup within his own evil, corrupt, murderous Marxist party, Zanu-PF.  The fact remains that Zanu-PF is very much still in power.  Mugabe has gone, but Marxism still reigns.  The dictator has left power, but the dictatorship has not become a democracy.  It is still very much a Zanu-controlled state.

As David Coltart, a lawyer in Zimbabwe and an elected senator for the opposition MDC party, wrote: “In all of our euphoria we must never become so intoxicated as to forget that it was the same Generals who allowed Mugabe to come to power in 2008 and 2013 [who have now removed him].  We must never forget how the military and war veterans spearheaded the violence which followed the March 2008 elections to ensure that Mugabe got back into power.  They were behind the abduction and murder of hundreds of MDC activists that year.  Without their intervention Mugabe would never have won the run off election.  We must never forget how the military engineered the election victory of Mugabe in 2013.”[1]

Furthermore, it must always be borne in mind that the new president, Emerson Mnangagwa, although being hailed as a hero by many Zimbabweans, was closely connected with Mugabe for decades, even becoming vice-president to him; and therefore his own hands are far from clean.  As Leon Mighti, a Zimbabwean, put it in an article: “Beware ‘Crocodile’ Mnangagwa – Zanu-PF is not renewing, it is a snake shedding its old skin.”[2]  Mnangagwa was involved in the 1980s massacre of thousands of Ndebele.  He helped to rig the elections which kept Mugabe in power.  Even in his inauguration speech, he praised Mugabe as the “liberator” of the country and the “father of the nation.”  Any truly just leader would have seen to it that Mugabe was arrested and placed on trial for mass murder and all kinds of other crimes.  But no – he was simply allowed to resign and leave quietly, to “go and rest” as many said.  This is not justice for Mugabe’s hundreds of thousands, indeed millions of victims.

Truly, Zimbabwe is far from being out of the woods.  And it will never be out of the woods until all the former terrorists are out of power, and until the country officially and totally abandons the policies of Marxism-Leninism.

Mugabe and the Jesuits

  Robert Mugabe is a lifetime Roman Catholic, and has claimed to be very committed to Roman Catholicism.[3]  The Roman Catholic institution in Rhodesia, through its satanic doctrine of liberation theology (Catholic-Communism), massively supported the Communist organisations (such as Mugabe’s Zanu) waging their terrorist war against Rhodesia in the 1960s and 1970s.  Ignoring Mugabe’s atrocious deeds of terror, the so-called “Church” of Rome went all out to back him and his bloody campaign to take power.  And foremost among the advocates of Rome’s doctrine of liberation theology were the Jesuits.

Very significantly, Mugabe was educated by the Jesuits, and remained close to the Order ever afterwards.  This is very telling.  Throughout his years as president of Zimbabwe he had a personal Jesuit priest assisting him.  His name is Fidelis Mukonori, SJ.  For many years, in fact, this priest acted as the personal chaplain to Mugabe’s family.  He also gave the “blessing” at every celebration of the anniversary of Zimbabwe’s so-called “independence” in 1980.[4]  One could say, then, that ever since the birth of Marxist Zimbabwe in 1980, the Jesuits of Rome have been a major force, behind the scenes, in all that has taken place in that land.  And let it not be wondered at that they backed Mugabe even when he was committing his atrocities throughout the country.  Any study of Jesuit history, in virtually any country of the world where they have played a prominent part, will reveal that they will stop at nothing to get their way, and will readily use murder and massacre to achieve it.

On his first official day as pope of Rome, Francis I, history’s first openly Jesuit pope and a man committed to Marxism, met President Robert Mugabe, shook his hand – and even bowed his head to him in greeting![5]  Mugabe had been permitted to travel to the Vatican for the inauguration of Francis, defying an EU travel ban, and the Vatican placed him in the VIP section at Francis’ inaugural mass!  Was this just a slip?  This is not at all likely, given that Mugabe was educated by the Jesuits and considered himself to be a faithful Roman Catholic!  The pope’s greeting was surely that of a Jesuit to a man who, despite all his abominable crimes, nevertheless carried out certain Jesuit objectives in Zimbabwe.[6]

And when, finally, the army told him he must go, who was it who was right there, helping to “negotiate” his exit?  This same Jesuit priest, Fidelis Mukonori!  When the military seized power and confined Mugabe to his home, Mukonori mediated between him and the generals, helping to “facilitate” a “peaceful exist” for him.[7]  Mugabe should never had been permitted a “peaceful exist”, of course, but should have been arrested and put on trial; but the dictator was always a favourite of the Jesuits, and when the handwriting was on the wall and they could see that his time was up, they negotiated the best possible deal for this devoted disciple of the Jesuits behind the scenes.

Let us take a look back, at what Rhodesia was and what Zimbabwe became.[8]

Rhodesia: Betrayed by Its “Friends” in Britain and America

  For decades, the world has watched the deteriorating situation in the land that was once Rhodesia.  I was born in that beautiful southern African country, the jewel of Africa, known at one time as the safest country on earth.  What a country it was!

I well remember the words of the anthem we used to sing every week during the school asembly: the words of “We Who Follow”:

Once a column came a-marching
The early fathers of our land
And they came to found a country
On guard for all they won, we stand,
It was built on toil and courage
Rhodesia!  Our homeland,
So they gave us this our country
Rhodesia!  Our homeland,

In the long, long, long ago;
Have left their trust in us:
That the world would come to know.
As those who follow must.
Out of what was wilderness;
We’ll stand on guard for thee.
To preserve and ever bless.
We’ll ever cherish thee.

I can never think of those words without emotion, even all these years later.  It was a special country.  A land of sunshine, breathtaking beauty, cleanliness and orderliness.  Indeed the world came to know the country of Rhodesia.  And tragically, in time it came to hate it, to turn against it, and to support the Marxist terrorists who waged a murderous guerilla war against the white government and white Rhodesians in general, that left tens of thousands dead across the land; and finally culminated, thanks to international isolation and vast financial and other support for the terrorists, in Rhodesia becoming the Marxist state of Zimbabwe.

Britain and the United States, in particular, were responsible for the destruction of Rhodesia and the creation of Zimbabwe.  “Lord Arthur Christopher Soames, a son-in-law of Winston Churchill and the British-appointed Governor of Rhodesia during the transition period, was responsible to ensure free and fair elections in accordance with the Lancaster House Agreement.  However, while Soames acknowledged that Mugabe’s ZANU-PF was engaged in widespread, systematic violations and terrorism, intimidating the voters, he refused to dismiss the obviously fraudulent votes in favour of Mugabe.  In blatant violation of the Lancaster House Agreement, Soames handed over the government of Rhodesia to Mugabe and his disqualified terrorist movement, with disastrous consequences for all.”[9]

Ian Smith declared truthfully: “We were never beaten by our enemies, we were betrayed by our friends.”  The Rhodesian army was never defeated in battle.  Rhodesians faithfully and with distinction served Britain during two world wars.  In proportion to its population, more Rhodesians lost their lives fighting for Britain in the Second World War than from any other Commonwealth country.[10]  But Britain turned its back on them in their hour of greatest need.  The British government betrayed Rhodesia to its Communist enemies.

Let Ian Smith speak for himself concerning white-governed Rhodesia, in these words from his autobiography:

“[Sir Godfrey Huggins] informed us that the British government had informed him that Rhodesia was the success story of the Commonwealth.  We had succeeded in Africa where they had failed.  History proved the veracity of this belief.  Africa to our north was in chaos, and with the passage of time degenerated into disaster.  Africa is the continent of coups, assassination of political leaders, governments mesmerised by their communist mentors and thus riddled with corruption, incompetence, nepotism and top jobs for comrades irrespective of ability, experience, training or professionalism.

“By contrast, Rhodesia was an oasis of peace and contentment…. Proportional to population we had provided double the amount of facilities in the fields of education, health, housing, recreation and culture than Britain had to our north [in the British territories].

“The commissioner of police in his annual report consistently referred to the fact that Rhodesia was the only country in the world, from which statistics were available, where the crime rate was decreasing.  Moreover, proportional to population we had a smaller police force than any other known country.  However, I am simply emphasising and reiterating the dreadful injustice to which Rhodesia had been subjected…

“Our Western civilization evolved over thousands of years, with many trials and tribulations, triumphs and disasters… With the passing of Rhodesia we were denied the opportunity of putting our philosophy to the test.  We must accept that there is no going back now.  What we cannot accept is that we should allow people, indeed nations, to succeed in twisting the truth against Rhodesia in order to support and preserve malignant dictatorships.  The vast mass of Rhodesians have always been moderate, middle-of-the-road conservatives.  Extremists, whether to the left or right, never succeeded in gaining support in our politics…. All of these actions [previously described], which clearly indicate Rhodesian moderation, reason, and fair play to all our people, black and white, are assiduously ignored while the rabble-rousers succeed in branding us as white racists, oblivious of the interest of our black community. In fact, they are the racists, fabricating their case against us for the reason that we are white people living in Africa.  Sadly, the broad mass of reasonable people in the world, who, once the position is made clear to them, sympathise with the injustice of the case against us, seem to be reluctant, or are otherwise too occupied, to resort to positive action.  The problem is obvious – the extremist, because of his nature, is obsessed with his cause and never tired of working for it.  On the other hand, the reasonable man, because of his nature, is moderate in his outlook and approach to life.  We must constantly remind ourselves and our friends, and continue to repeat those significant words: ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil, is that good men do nothing.’”[11]

Truly, Britain should hang its head in shame for inflicting the monster, Robert Mugabe, on the people of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe back in 1980, via rigged elections which Britain oversaw and permitted.  Yet when Mugabe was forced to resign, British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke of Britain as “Zimbabwe’s oldest friend” and offered to help!  Britain was no friend of Rhodesia and exerted massive pressure to get Rhodesia to capitulate to the Marxist terrorists.  Britain deliberately turned against its own colony and its own people who lived there.  No, Britain was no friend of Rhodesia’s.  And although Theresa May said Britain was “Zimbabwe’s oldest friend” – and there is truth in that, for Britain ushered Mugabe into power, fawned over him and hailed him as a hero – Mugabe himself constantly railed against Britain and the British, spewing hatred for them out of his mouth.

Rhodesia 1965 – 1979: Waging War against International Communism

  On the 11th November 1965, Ian Smith’s government unilaterally declared independence from Britain, because Britain had not been honouring its word or keeping its promises or agreements.  From 1965 to 1979 Smith served as Rhodesian prime minister, and these were the most turbulent and violent years of Rhodesia’s history.  The country was isolated by the United Nations, international sanctions were imposed, and Rhodesians courageously resisted the Soviet-backed black Marxist terror organisations’ assault.  They did remarkably well, and were it not for their betrayal by Britain and other western nations, Mugabe and his terrorist organisation, Zanu-PF, would not have come to power.  Through massively rigged, fraudulent elections overseen by Britain in 1980, Mugabe became prime minister, Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, and the country became a Marxist state.

I was born in Rhodesia two years before UDI.  Although our family moved to South Africa, we returned to Rhodesia for some years in the 1970s.  It was a wonderful life for any boy.  Despite the ongoing terrorist revolution, what a country it was!  As a young boy of eight or nine I used to cycle alone to school, part of my route lying through open veldt.  I was perfectly safe.  My friends and I used to play in the veldt, without parental supervision, for hours on end, only coming home in the evenings.  Everything was efficient, well run, well maintained, neat, clean, and tidy.  The wildlife reserves were pristine.  The cities shone in the African sun.  There were world-class hospitals, schools, roads, railways, etc.  None of these things existed before the whites arrived, for prior to their arrival the territory which came to be known as Rhodesia was under the despotic rule of black tyrants.

There was very little animosity between black and white.  Ian Smith himself, although he was prime minister, frequently travelled around without so much as a bodyguard or a policeman to protect him.  By contrast, Robert Mugabe, the supposed “liberator”, travelled with a massive entourage of motorbikes, police cars, armoured vehicles, soldiers, etc.  Why is it that Smith could travel alone even during the dark days when Rhodesia was under attack from terrorists, yet Mugabe did not feel secure unless surrounded by protectors?  If Mugabe really brought peace and freedom and joy to his people, what was he afraid of?

But the Marxist revolution began to take its toll.  I remember spending a weekend with a friend on his parents’ farm, and we were carefully instructed as to what to do if a hand grenade was lobbed through our bedroom window at night.  Such instructions were passed on to children matter-of-factly.  Everyone had to be prepared.  Mugabe’s terrorists were committing shocking atrocities.  In addition to young men going to the army, older married men, family men, were spending a few months every year in the armed forces as well.  The revolution was escalating.  But Rhodesians stood firm, isolated from the rest of the western world.  They were doing their utmost best, small as the country was.  “With incredible gallantry young national servicemen, as well as the regular army, took up the challenge in the 1960s and not once in all the years of the bush war that followed did they face defeat.  They defended the people especially in the rural areas with outstanding tenacity, irrespective of colour or tribe of people who needed protection.  It was the tribal people who suffered worst at the hands of terrorists.”[12]  Rhodesians had a sense of destiny; of a special, almost unique purpose in the world.  As the League of Rhodesia put it in 1976: “We in Rhodesia have a very strong sense of national purpose.  We feel we’ve been singled out by Providence to be the stumbling block in the path of communist aggression.  There is yet time for the Western powers to put Rhodesia’s stand in its historical perspective; but they are leaving it dangerously late”.[13]

This was correct.  This tiny country stood, almost alone except for the support of South Africa until near the end, and against overwhelming foes, against Communist aggression in southern Africa, for 15 years.  The Soviet Union picked off the immensely strategic southern African countries one by one.  Mozambique, Angola, Zambia – these were all in the Soviet camp.  The ultimate prize, of course, was the Republic of South Africa, the richest and most powerful of them all.  But to defeat South Africa the Communists first had to pick off each one of its neighbouring countries.  White-governed, conservative Rhodesia resisted.  And because it did, Communist victory in all of southern Africa was delayed for many years.  And this was an immense blessing not just for Rhodesia and South Africa, but for the entire West as well, even though the western liberal leaders could not see it, or rather – did not want to do so.

When a Rhodesian soldier, who had been paralysed while fighting for his country, was asked over 25 years later whether his injuries had been pointless, he replied, “We were fighting Communism and it was the right thing to be doing, and I am very proud to have been part of that.”[14]  That, in a nutshell, encapsulates the Rhodesian spirit.

Rhodesia Becomes Zimbabwe – and the Nightmare Begins: the Matabeleland Massacres

  Jesuit-trained Marxist terrorist Robert Mugabe came to power in 1980.  The West knew what kind of a sadistic, vicious, brutal, cold-blooded Communist he was… and still they supported him.  Yes, Britain and the United States, in particular.

Mugabe took over an incredibly well-governed, prosperous, beautiful land.  This, after all, is the country of the Victoria Falls, and some of the greatest game parks in Africa.  It was known as “the breadbasket of southern Africa”, feeding its own people and exporting food to other parts of the continent.  Education was of the highest standard.  It was rich in mineral resources.  It was so well-run and so prosperous that even in the late 1970s, during the height of the Bush War, the Rhodesian dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar.

So just how bad did Zimbabwe become, under Mugabe and his henchmen?  Read, and weep.  Weep, if you loved Rhodesia.  Weep, if you love liberty.  Weep for the suffering millions, black and white, who have had to try to eke out a living in Zimbabwe’s nightmare for almost four decades.

Within a few years, Mugabe and his insane policies began to reduce once-prosperous, once-peaceful Zimbabwe to ruins.  The western world, far removed from southern Africa and, quite frankly, not much interested once it had seen to the overthrow of the white government and the installation of a black Marxist one, did not fully realise just how utterly devastated Zimbabwe was.  Words cannot adequately convey the full horror of the situation; the full magnitude of the destruction.  Way back when Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, the joke was, “One used to visit Rhodesia to see the Zimbabwe Ruins [Rhodesia’s ancient and mysterious stone temple and fortress]; now one will visit Zimbabwe to see the Rhodesian ruins.”  Liberals used to scoff and say that this was simply the view of white racists who could not believe that blacks could govern a modern, successful state.  Alas, those liberals (like liberals the world over) were living in dreamland: Zimbabwe was, indeed, ruined.  And it was reduced to ruins by the Communist philosophy of its evil dictator.

Mugabe put the blame everywhere except where it belonged: on his own shoulders and on those of his cronies in the ruling party.  He blamed Britain, the former Colonial power which ruled Rhodesia prior to Ian Smith’s UDI in 1965.  He blamed Zimbabwe’s now-tiny white population.  He blamed America.  But he knew very well that Zimbabwe was in ruins because of himself.  Yet his sycophantic cronies in the ruling party continued to pour praises on his head.  At one time, for example, Vice-President Joseph Msika said, in reference to calls for Mugabe to step down: “Mugabe go?  Go where?  He should rule even if it means he is walking with the aid of a walking stick.  He is the father of our nation; he is entitled to rule us forever.”  Ah, that, right there, is the perennial problem in Africa: the meaning of “democracy” to African Communists.  For them, whoever came to power against the white Colonialists by means of terrorism and bloodshed deserves to rule forever.  “Democracy” is what these wicked men hide behind, and the world is fooled by it.  Government of the people, by the people is anathema to these men.  It is government through the barrel of a gun; government by a strongman.

The two main black tribes in Zimbabwe are the Shona and the Ndebele.  Mugabe is Shona.  His main rivals came from the Ndebele tribe; therefore he decided to eliminate this possible threat to his power.  In the 1980s, he used his North Korean-trained 5th Brigade to carry out the massacre of multiplied thousands of Ndebele.  The dead were dumped in abandoned mine shafts, etc.  People were shot in public executions in front of their families, after being forced to dig their own graves.  Neither women nor children were spared.  At times large groups were herded into huts and then burned alive.  It is reliably estimated that at least 20 000 people were brutally killed during this time.

Mugabe’s Violent and Brutal Seizure of White-Owned Farms

  Zimbabwe’s economy is based on agriculture.  In the heyday of Rhodesia, the white population numbered approximately half a million.  But after the country became Zimbabwe, whites emigrated in droves as they saw the handwriting on the wall, reducing the white population to around 50 000 (if that).  But even so, the vast majority of farms were owned and operated – extremely successfully – by white farmers, who decided to stay on when white rule ended.  These farmers, numbering over 4500, fed the entire nation of some eleven million people, having farming expertise second to none in the world.  In addition, these farms were the largest employers in the country, with over two million black farm workers and their families living on them.

But in 2000, Mugabe began the violent seizure of white-owned farms.  Blaming all of Zimbabwe’s ills on the whites, which was completely unjustified and utterly ridiculous, and desiring their lucrative farms for himself and his cronies in government, as well as to pacify restless so-called “war veterans”, Mugabe permitted young thugs of the ruling party to violently invade and take over farms, evicting their white owners and the thousands of black farm labourers.[15]  He permitted this because officials of his ruling party, ZANU-PF, had looted the fund which was for the compensation of the so-called “war veterans” (terrorists) from the revolutionary 1970s; and these thugs then went on the rampage.  Most were far too young to have even fought against the Rhodesian government anyway!

In vain the farmers appealed to the courts; these had become abject servants of the Mugabe regime.  The rule of law had ceased to exist.[16]  A number of white farmers were brutally murdered.  The intimidation of the black farm workers was vicious, with hundreds being tortured and killed.  They and their families were also forced by the brutal young thugs who were invading the farms to attend political “re-education” sessions, during which they had to listen to hours of Marxist rantings and sing revolutionary songs.

Month after month the intimidation continued.  Month after month, farmers and their families lived in fear of their lives.  The months stretched into years.  A wave of sheer destruction swept over Zimbabwe’s once-productive farmlands.  The economy was destroyed.  Inevitably, famine began to stalk the land.  The rural poor began to die in large numbers.  So did those in the cities.  Yet when tons of food aid were sent into the country by overseas donors, Zanu officials took control of the distribution and only distributed it to Zanu supporters!  Supporters of the MDC, the opposition party, were denied food.  In the words of a senior Zanu leader: “We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle.  We don’t want all these extra people.”

The wife of the Commanding Officer of the Zimbabwean Army told a white farmer that “she had not tasted white blood since 1980 [when Mugabe came to power], and missed the experience.”

In true Communist fashion, ownership deeds were abolished, which meant that the few black farmers who attempted to operate the illegally-seized farms were denied collateral for loans to purchase equipment and materials.  The farming equipment was destroyed.  Farmers had to return to using hand-guided cattle ploughs, as if they were living in the nineteenth century.  Indeed in Zimbabwe, for all practical purposes, they were.

A formerly white-owned estate in the main grain-growing area of Chinhoyi (when I was a baby my father was an assistant farm manager in this very district), which once produced a quarter of Zimbabwe’s wheat, was divided up into small parcels of land for black subsistence farmers.  This once-mechanised property was being tilled mainly by animal-drawn harrows.

Mugabe also began to clamp down on religious groups, private charities, etc., calling them “conduits and instruments of foreign interference”, in particular of Britain, the former Colonial power.  Mugabe had his own plants in the churches.  The senior Anglican leader in the country, the bishop of Harare, Nolbert Kunonga, was one such Mugabe plant.  This religious hireling seized a farm outside Harare for himself, after the legal white owner had been kicked off the farm and replaced by black “settlers.”  The good bishop drove fifty of these “settlers” off the farm, and settled his son and his family there instead.

Today, there are perhaps 400 white farmers left – or less.  400, out of what was once over 4500.  They fled to South Africa, the United Kingdom, anywhere they could possibly go, leaving behind properties, possessions, loved ones, lifetimes of memories and hopes and dreams… and gravestones.  And the farms?  They were doled out to Mugabe’s cronies, and to black subsistence farmers with no experience of large-scale commercial and mechanized farming; and today they lie fallow.  The country is a wasteland.  There is not enough food being produced.  A nation of millions cannot survive on food produced by a mere 400 farmers.

Even Zimbabwe’s once-beautiful and pristine game parks were devastated.  These world-renowned parks, which brought in large amounts of much-needed foreign currency every year, were invaded as well. The wildlife was slaughtered on a massive scale, the carcasses simply left to rot in the sun.

Rhodesians in the 1960s and 1970s fought long and hard to prevent the very tragedy that occurred under Mugabe, by warring against the Marxist terrorist onslaught led, in large measure, by this man.  They knew that he and his terrorist organisation would bring ruin to Rhodesia if they ever came to power.  This tiny, happy country, a beacon of decency and true civilization in the Dark Continent, fought valiantly to defeat the terrorists.  But they were sold out by Britain and by the United States.  The duplicity of successive British governments brought about the Marxist victory in the end.  And the suffering, struggling whites of Zimbabwe, thrown to the wolves by Britain, were forced to come like beggars to Britain’s door, hoping to be let in and to try to start life over again.

Inflation: the Highest in the World

  Mugabe also inflated the Zimbabwean currency, and printed more money.  Massive impoverishment followed.  The Rhodesian dollar was worth more than the U.S. dollar in the late 1970s.  But in the mid-2000s it took multiplied thousands of Zimbabwe dollars to buy just one U.S. dollar.

The masses could no longer afford to live.  Their salaries were woefully inadequate.  Mugabe then commanded price-fixing; and he tried to fix the exchange rate.  He went so far as to command bakers to sell loaves of bread for less than they cost to bake!  The stores, of course, ran out of bread in no time.

Inflation rocketed to the highest in the world.  It was so bad that pensioners could only afford to buy a single egg when they went shopping; for that egg cost about 1000 Zimbabwe dollars, which was a fifth of the average daily income!  As for education, hardly anyone could now afford it.  People were struggling just to survive from day to day.  An estimated 5000 children were living on the streets of the capital, Harare (formerly Salisbury).  In many families, only one meal a day was being eaten – if that.  Doctors reported that increasing numbers of retirees were suffering from vitamin deficiency because they could not afford fruit.  At that time a basket of fruit could cost more than a monthly pension.  Unemployment in the country was estimated at 70% – and then it rose higher still.  Prostitution mushroomed as women desperately tried to make just a few cents.

Of the tiny white population still remaining and unable to leave the country, there were between 7000 and 12000 pensioners, many British-born.  Their position was absolutely desperate.  Their minuscule pensions could not possibly keep up with the inflation, but they could not leave.  These people built Rhodesia into the success story it was.  Many of them came out to Rhodesia after World War Two, encouraged to do so by Britain – the very country which then abandoned them in their desperate hour of need.  The pensions for some of them were as little as US $10 a month, and they would have starved to death were it not for gifts sent from relatives living abroad,  and what charities were able to give them.  Many elderly people, and many young people too, committed suicide.  The retirement homes could not cope financially.  Some pensioners were living in cardboard boxes, others in stables.

  This is what the wonderful people of once-beautiful Rhodesia were reduced to!

Yet Robert Mugabe himself lived in the lap of extreme luxury.  Not for him the suffering he inflicted on millions.  He and his wife, Grace, built a vast palace outside Harare.  Grace invested heavily in another mansion (nicknamed “Gracelands” by the locals), and she also acquired not one, not two, but a number of former white-owned farms.  She frequently flew to Cape Town and Johannesburg in South Africa on shopping sprees.

Health Care, Infrastructure: the Collapse of Everything

  The health care sector fell into such a pitiful state that the government introduced wooden cart “ambulances” drawn by oxen to carry pregnant women and other non-emergency cases along rural dirt roads to clinics.  Midwives had to seal off the umbilical protrusions of newborn babies with string. Skilled doctors and others had emigrated in droves, and it was said that most Zimbabweans could no longer understand their doctors’ speech, because they were from Cuba, having been imported by the government from fellow-Marxist Fidel Castro’s disastrous country.

The State-run railroad system started to use gunpowder charges on the tracks, detonated by a train’s front wheels, to warn trains of danger ahead.  There were regular power blackouts, and the fuel shortage was absolutely critical.  As firewood consumption increased, massive deforestation occurred.  And in desperation, disused mine shafts were being unsealed by people searching for the remnants of ore.

Fuel was in such short supply that people who had cars queued for days just to obtain a few litres.  With at one time at least 3000 people a week dying of AIDS, bodies piled up at funeral parlours because there was no fuel to operate the freezers or furnaces, and in many cases the relatives of the deceased could not afford to bury them.  Hearses actually had to produce the family of the deceased, and the corpse itself, at petrol pumps to obtain petrol to drive to the cemeteries!

Zimbabweans Flee Their Country

  Literally millions of black Zimbabweans fled the country, crossing over into South Africa illegally, desperately trying to find work.  They were prepared to brave the crocodiles of the Limpopo River, electric fences, and the South African police.  When caught they were sent back to Zimbabwe, but they immediately tried to return, and many succeeded.  Tens of thousands also fled to Botswana, one of Africa’s few success stories, placing a huge strain on this country of only 1.7 million people.  Still others fled to Mozambique, another poverty-stricken country, unable to even properly feed its own people, let alone tens of thousands of refugees.

Amazingly, some of Zimbabwe’s white farmers were welcomed in Mozambique, Zambia, and even as far afield as Nigeria!  The governments of these states recognised the vast experience and expertise of these farmers, and land was allocated to them.  Zimbabwe’s loss was their gain.  And astoundingly, some of the black Zimbabweans who fled to Mozambique ended up working for the very same white farmers for whom they worked in Zimbabwe before they were driven off their farms!

Rigged 2005 Election to Keep Mugabe in Power

  By 2005 the people were desperate for change.  Zimbabwe held an election in that year; but after a massively rigged election Zanu-PF and Mugabe maintained power.  There was widespread intimidation of opposition candidates and voters.  The press was almost completely shackled, and foreign journalists were not permitted into the country to properly cover the election.  The main opposition newspaper was closed.  Independent radio stations were jammed.  All Zimbabweans outside the country were barred from voting.

The army, devoted to Mugabe because of the perks and salaries he paid the troops, was in charge of the election; and the army stated that even if the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) won the ballot, it would not be allowed to take over the country.  This was the same army which controlled the internal coup which removed Mugabe from power in 2017!  This just shows that by 2017 even the army could no longer stomach Mugabe’s rule – but the army itself has not changed!

The Continuing Collapse

  After the rigged 2005 election, things continued to spiral downward.  Words cannot do justice to the devastation.

Harare, the capital, began to reach a state of complete collapse.  In one suburb of Harare which was home to 100 000 people, there was no water or fuel for weeks, there were power blackouts often lasting half a day, and burst sewage pipes were not repaired.  Residents survived on water from boreholes and streams which were considered a health hazard.  The water supply was interrupted in six other residential areas in and around Harare.

Harare used to be known as Salisbury, when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia.  It was a modern, clean, efficient, beautiful city, that arose out of the African wilderness by the ingenuity and expertise of white settlers.  My parents and grandparents, who worked so hard to make Rhodesia what it was, would doubtless not recognise it today.  Perhaps it is a good thing that the city and the country were renamed.  At least then those who built Rhodesia can know that it is not Salisbury, nor Rhodesia, that has collapsed.  It is another country.

Farms Destroyed, the Nation Starving

  Zimbabwe faced widespread starvation, the result of Mugabe’s insane destruction of the agricultural sector by violently throwing all but a handful of the farmers off their land.  White farmers and their black workers were murdered, agriculture collapsed, land was seized and occupied by black squatters.  Yet Mugabe assured his people that the land seizures were necessary, and that millions of people would benefit!  Yet after the 2005 rigged election, Mugabe castigated the new black landowners for not making use of over half of the land.  Vast tracts of prime farmland lay idle, the new occupiers both unable and unwilling to make productive use of it.  Mugabe finally admitted that millions of acres of prime agricultural land had not been used since the white farmers were driven off.  It was an admission that his violent, illegal, anti-white land grab policy had been an utter failure.

Basic food commodities ran out in Harare.  Bread, maize meal, sugar, salt, and cooking oil – staples for poor Zimbabweans – could no longer be found on supermarket shelves.  The shelves were empty.  Such food as was produced, or imported, was used by the regime as a political weapon.  It was distributed – but only to Zanu-PF supporters.

The new, illegal black “farmers” had no idea what to do, and were rapidly destroying what was left of Zimbabwe’s farms.  According to the Reserve Bank governor, on resettled farms the people who were supposed to be the new farmers were chopping down productive orchards to sell the wood as firewood.  They were chopping down mature coffee plantations in order to plant a little maize.  They were stripping assets, destroying infrastructure, and selling whatever they could.  “He spoke of massive environmental degradation and a rape of the land so widespread that there would soon be nothing left for Zimbabwean children to inherit.”  “The people who have the power to stop it, the Ministers, politicians and government officials continue to do absolutely nothing.  They do nothing about… widespread felling of decades old indigenous trees.  The rape of the environment has become so widespread that it is now a huge treat to see anything whatsoever in our world famous African bush – even a guinea fowl is a huge treat”.[17]

When Zimbabwe was Rhodesia, it was the breadbasket of the region.  By 2005 it was the basket-case.   From bread basket to basket case!  Rhodesia was a massive exporter of food.  Zimbabwe had to rely on food grants from international charities.

And as the population starved, what did Mugabe do?  In an utterly insane and hideous move, he directed the county’s national parks officials to kill the wildlife in the world-renowned conservation areas, to provide meat for the four million starving rural Zimbabweans!  When the farm invasions occurred, wildlife was slaughtered all over the country and the parks were devastated, as party militants poured into game parks and wreaked havoc; and now Mugabe sanctioned the lunacy to continue.

And of course, in true African style, the country’s resources were viewed as being there solely for the entertainment and usage of those in power: in 2005, ten elephants were slaughtered for barbecue meat at festivities to mark Zimbabwe’s 25 years of independence!

The Destruction of the Street Vendors

  Next, under orders from Mugabe, Zimbabwe’s police swept across the country, destroying and burning the stalls of thousands and thousands of black street vendors in cities and towns, in what was called “Operation Drive Out Trash.”  Smoke continually filled the skies from this massive destruction.  The poverty-stricken people, trying desperately to make a few dollars just by selling vegetables, curios, and other goods at makeshift stalls, had even this feeble means of livelihood taken away from them.  Not only street stalls, but hundreds of houses were bulldozed to the ground.  Many of these were not squatter shacks, but solid brick houses.  In Bulawayo, utter chaos reigned on 5th Avenue: stalls trashed, produce destroyed, rats running everywhere.  The stall operators were not illegal, they had licences to run their businesses and paid rent for the sites.  In Harare there was “a trail of destruction and burning”, with residents of one suburb milling around afterwards, “stunned by the speed and ferocity of the attack”.[18]  “At Victoria Falls the police burnt a 10 km long line of curio stalls that have been there for as long as anyone can remember”.

The United Nations estimated that over 200 000 people were left homeless in the middle of Zimbabwe’s winter, and 30 000 street vendors were arrested, according to police.  And the purpose of this madness?  According to the opposition MDC, it was designed to drive MDC supporters – the urban poor – back to the rural areas, where Zanu forces could more easily control them by denying them access to food supplies.

The Zimbabwe dollar was utterly worthless, and there was rampant inflation.  The prescribed wage for a domestic worker was a million dollars a month; a retired person who received a pension of $8000 was unable to use it to buy more than a single Coca-Cola!

The 2008 Election: Zanu-PF Soundly Defeated

  In March 2008 Zimbabweans again went to the polls.  It was pretty much assumed that, as in previous elections, Mugabe and his Zanu-PF would win the election by rigging the results.  And certainly they tried to do so!  But the world was in for a surprise.

Astoundingly, the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), led by Morgan Tsvangirai, won the elections – overwhelmingly.  Even more astoundingly, Tsvangirai had clearly won the presidential election as well.

The results caught Mugabe and Zanu-PF by surprise.  Although they certainly rigged the elections to some extent, they were so confident of winning anyway, thanks to massive intimidation over many months, that they did not bother to rig the results sufficiently – and the people voted overwhelmingly against him.  So overwhelmingly, in fact, that even with the rigging that went on, it was just not enough to ensure Mugabe’s victory.  His defeat was total.  It was crushing.  The MDC had snatched an amazing victory from the jaws of what looked like certain defeat, being up against an incredibly brutal, vicious police state with vast resources, whose president had boasted that he had degrees in violence.  After all, there was nothing whatsoever free or fair about this election from the Zanu-PF side.  There was massive intimidation countrywide.  MDC supporters were beaten, tortured, kidnapped, murdered.  Tsvangirai himself was savagely beaten.  The voters’ roll had something in the region of two million dead or departed people still on it, allowing massive organised “ghost” voting.  Zanu-PF had also filled the voters’ rolls with hundreds of thousands of false names and addresses.  There were “ghost” polling stations, known only to Zanu-PF agents.  And the government had printed millions more ballot papers than there were voters in the country, so that they could be filled in as needed in favour of Zanu-PF.  Police, mostly very pro-Mugabe, were allowed into polling stations to “help” voters vote for the “right” party.

The ordinary people of Zimbabwe had stood firm against such a monstrous regime.  They had said, “Enough is enough!” and voted the tyrant and his cronies out of power.

Was the nightmare finally going to be over?

Alas, no.

Mugabe’s Revenge: White Farmers Targeted Again – and Mugabe Retains Power

  Those of us who live in Africa, study Africa, and know Africa, were cautious.  And sure enough, it eventually dawned on everyone that Mugabe was not going to concede defeat.  He was going to do everything he could to cling to power, using every brutal tactic of suppression and terror of which he was a past master.  And very soon the world started to see him taking revenge, and consolidating his grip in defiance of the election results.  Tsvangirai and the MDC won the election, they were the true new leaders of Zimbabwe, but in Africa it’s not the man with the most votes who takes over, it’s the man with the guns.  And Mugabe still held all the guns in his blood-stained hands.

The day after the elections the MDC offices were raided by the police.  Then so-called “war veterans”, supposedly from the terrorist war of the 1970s – but mostly unemployed youths who played no part in that revolution as they were either not born or too young to have done so, but were useful thugs Mugabe had no qualms about using to achieve his goals – marched through the streets of Harare, threatening to again start seizing white-owned farms as they had done in previous years.  Clearly, Mugabe was targeting Zimbabwe’s whites once again.  But his storm troopers started beating up black MDC supporters, threatening them, etc.

Tsvangirai called on Mugabe to accept defeat and step down.  Reports started pouring in of “war veterans” again starting to take over the few remaining white-owned farms.  Very soon some 30 farms had been invaded.  For the few remaining commercial white farmers, this was a time of great fear: crowds of angry “war vets” outside farm gates, beating drums, chanting, smoking joints and drinking alcohol, working themselves up into a frenzy.  Inside the farmhouses, frightened families clustered together, uncertain, wondering what to do, their exit roads off their farms blocked by “war vets” baying for their blood.  The president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union said, “We were told that they [the orders to invade] come from the very highest levels of government.  They said they wanted to see white farmers’ bodies on the streets.”  He also correctly said, “People are being paid to basically carry out the wishes of the highest office.  This is purely racial.”

This was Mugabe’s revenge against those who had supported the opposition MDC in the election: farmers, their labourers, everyone.  It was payback time – and as always in the Zimbabwe of Robert Mugabe, it was brutal.  Not only were the white farmers forcefully kicked off their own land, but their black labourers were beaten up and their huts were burnt down.

Mugabe was quoted as saying, “Land must remain in our hands.  The land is ours, it must not be allowed to slip back into the hands of whites.”  His words showed yet again that despite the fact those whites were Zimbabwean citizens, Mugabe viewed them as foreigners who did not belong.  And this despite the fact that Zimbabwe’s remaining whites were a very tiny minority in the country, and that his crushing defeat at the polls was brought about by the millions of black voters.

Those white farmers who could do so took their families to the cities, abandoning their farms to the drunken mobs of thugs.  But others were blocked from leaving and were holed up in their homes on their farms, cowering behind security fences and bullet-proof doors.

One farmer, driven off his land, said: “I have wondered what this day would be like, whether it would come after all these years, and now I am wondering if this is it, or if I will be able to get back.”  He was forced to leave his farm, abandoning his hundreds of black farm labourers, as well as the fields full of mature crops at a time when Zimbabwe faced its worst food crisis ever.

Mugabe came under international criticism, with calls from the United Nations, the United States, and the European Union for the electoral commission to release the results of the presidential election.

Such criticism from the West was lame-duck criticism of course, and Mugabe knew it. Britain and the United States interfered constantly in Rhodesia’s affairs in the 1960s and 1970s, pressurising Ian Smith to capitulate to the terrorist Mugabe.  The disaster in the former Rhodesia was very much their doing.  But after Mugabe had destroyed his country, murdered tens of thousands, etc., they lamely bleated, but that was all.  They were more than willing to stick their noses into Rhodesia’s business back then, but very reluctant to do the same with Zimbabwe!

Some three weeks after the election, Mugabe vowed that Britain and the MDC would never “steal” his country.  His reference to Britain had become a constant theme in his speeches, as he endlessly made the claim that Britain, which once ruled Rhodesia as a colony, was trying to “re-colonise” the country through the MDC.  In his speech he said: “You want the British to come back again?  You saw what they did when they heard that the MDC was winning.  The whites in the UK, Australia and South Africa started coming in and some are still here in the hotels” – an apparent reference to Zimbabwe’s white farmers evicted from their land.  “That [land being returned to white farmers] will never ever happen.  Down with the British.  Down with thieves who want to steal our country.”  This from the man who had not only stolen it time and again, but raped it as well.

The previous day Mugabe said: “We should not let our children down by dropping our guard against imperialism, British imperialism, which is surreptitiously and clandestinely weaving its way through our society, trying to divide us.”  Like any true Marxist, he sought always to divert the attention of the people from the real problems and the real enemies – namely, from himself and his party – to some imaginary danger, one which he had warned about so often that in the minds of many of his foolish followers it was very real.  As the old saying goes: tell a lie, tell it often enough, and the people will believe it as truth.

“Authoritative military sources said provincial joint committees manned by senior military, police and intelligence officers loyal to Mugabe will spearhead the campaign that they said will see unprecedented violence unleashed on supporters of opposition MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai,” said Zim Online, an independent Zimbabwean news service.  “The level of violence is going to be shocking,” a senior army officer was quoted as saying.  “It is going to be a wave that will keep Tsvangirai’s supporters indoors and displaced.  It is meant to ensure that only supporters of Mugabe will dare come out in large numbers to vote in the run-off election.”

Certainly there was a massive increase in State-orchestrated violence since the election.  As one example: a black woman who worked for the MDC was awoken at midnight by ten men who barged into her house and dragged her, her sister and her aunt from their beds, saying, “Your man did not win this election.  Next time you must get it right or you will die.”  The truck they were in had no number plates, typical of those used by the feared Central Intelligence Organisation, the secret police.  The women were pulled out onto the street and their bound hands were tied to the truck’s tow bar.  The truck then sped off, dragging the women behind them with their flesh scraping off on the tarred road.  Before she passed out from the pain, one of them heard the men shouting, “This is a war.  We will keep fighting until we win.”  After finally being dumped on a roadside, it took her three days to receive hospital treatment for her by-then infected wounds.

Her story was just one of multiplied thousands that could be told, of the sheer brutality of the Mugabe regime, desperate to hold on to power and willing to stop at nothing to eliminate its opponents.  In an area east of the city of Bulawayo, youth militia armed with AK-47s stopped traffic and ordered people off buses, then forced them at gunpoint to chant slogans praising Zanu-PF.  They were beaten if they did not do so.  The thugs said, “There will be a re-run for the presidential election and if you try and vote for the MDC again we will go to war.  We are not asking you to vote Zanu, we are ordering you – or else you will be killed.”

In the lower-income Harare suburb of Glenview, soldiers went house to house, beating up men and youths.  And this was just the tip of the iceberg.  Reports continued to pour in of the burning of people’s houses, beatings and torture – including burning molten plastic being dripped onto men’s backs.  The Zimbabwe Association of Doctors for Human Rights reported that they had treated 62 people over a three-day period who had suffered violence and torture, and that this number under-reported the true total.  Nine of these were women, and one was 84 years old.  She was struck in the face with stones when she opened her door to unknown assailants, and sustained serious facial injuries.  The youngest was a one-year-old baby boy who suffered gastroenteritis with dehydration when he slept in the bush with his mother after their home was burnt down.

2008: Zimbabwe’s Hyper-Inflation the Worst in All Human History

By 2008 the hyper-inflation in Zimbabwe was the worst ever seen in all of history.  A hundred trillion dollar note could not buy a loaf of bread – and that was after sixteen zeroes had been dropped from the currency!  By November of that year, inflation was estimated at 79.6 billion percent.

And yet Mugabe himself was incredibly wealthy – indeed, one of the world’s richest people with a personal net worth of well over US $1 billion.  He owned property in a number of countries.

Conclusion

Every single day, as the world watched Mugabe destroy Zimbabwe, Ian Smith’s position was vindicated.  Every single day, Mugabe provided Rhodesians, scattered across the earth, with the proof that they were right all along.  Every Rhodesian, who fought so hard to keep his beloved country from falling into the hands of Mugabe and his murderous Communist terrorists, can hold his head up high, despite the liberal lies spouted by the media, and say, “We were right.”  He can say, “We were right to resist.  Mugabe proved us right every time he opened his mouth, every time he put another insane policy into practice.”

Ian Smith was right.  Rhodesians were right.

Men never learn.  They still continue to trust in their politicians, in dictators, in murderous madmen, to supposedly bring them “freedom” and “liberty”.  They never learn the truth of what the Son of God said so long ago: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” (Mk. 8:36).  Black Rhodesians, later Zimbabweans, thought that paradise could be created through the barrel of a gun, by defeating the white government and installing a black Marxist one.  But they learned, to their great cost, that the man they pinned all their hopes on was so vastly worse than the conservative white Rhodesian government they had been taught to hate so much.

My mother grew up in Rhodesia in the 1940s and 1950s and married my father in Salisbury in the early 1960s.  Following the news reports of the scenes unfolding in Harare’s streets as the army rolled in and Mugabe was confined to his home while the internal coup took place, she commented: “The Zimbabwe situation is amazing…. when I worked in the Reserve Bank [in Salisbury in the early 1960s] how could I ever have envisaged tanks patrolling the very street outside it and the whole beautiful city having been brought to such a sorry state roughly 55 years later? I was young, engaged to be married, owned a house etc., the whole world seemed to be euphorically happy, settled and safe – painful lessons to be learned from reality!”

Yes, indeed.  How swiftly the world may change.  Those far-off times were blissful days of peace and sunshine, when the world seemed bright and happy and the future so sure.   This is how all Rhodesians felt.  Everything was new and exciting.  It was a young country on the brink of great things.  The post-World War Two years were times of great prosperity and peace.  The future looked so promising.

But alas, it was not to be.  For true Christians, this world is not our home.  Sometimes the Lord in His providence grants that we live in times of peace; and sometimes in times of trouble and conflict.  When Rhodesia was hated by the whole world, and even for much of the period of Mugabe’s reign in Zimbabwe, people in western nations such as Britain, the U.S., etc., could never have imagined that their own countries would one day come under assault from the same forces.  But it has come to pass.  Back then, the problems of little Rhodesia, and then Zimbabwe, seemed so remote to the West; so far away.  Most people in these countries hardly gave it a moment’s reflection after reading of the latest atrocity.  But today?  Rhodesia was a bastion against the very forces which are now engulfing the entire western world.  The West did not come to Rhodesia’s aid; and today the West is under such tremendous pressure from those same evil forces that it is highly doubtful if any western country will survive in the long term.

Wherever believers are in the world, it is perfectly natural for them to have deep affection for the land of their birth, or the land where they live.  In His providence God places His people in all the countries of the world.  But at all times they are to live as the men and women of faith described in Hebrew 11, who “confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11:13).  For truly, all believers “seek a country”, “a better country” than any on this earth, “that is, an heavenly [country]”; and God “hath prepared for them a city” (Heb. 11:14,16).  It is “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:10): heaven itself, the glorious final and perfect home of all who walk as strangers and pilgrims through the wilderness of this earth here below.

December 2017

Shaun Willcock is a minister, author and researcher.  He runs Bible Based Ministries.  For other articles (which may be downloaded and printed), as well as details about his books, audio messages, pamphlets, etc., please visit the Bible Based Ministries website; or write to the address below.  If you would like to be on Bible Based Ministries’ email list, to receive all future articles, please send your details.

ENDNOTES:

[1].  Daily Maverick, 19 November 2017, article: “Much of our Current Euphoria in Zimbabwe is Misplaced.”  www.dailymaverick.co.za.

[2]. Daily Maverick, 21 November 2017, article: “Beware ‘Crocodile’ Mnangagwa – Zanu-PF is not renewing, it is a snake shedding its old skin.”  www.dailymaverick.co.za.

[3]. Rhodesia: Last Outpost of the British Empire 1890-1980, by Peter Baxter, pg. 309.  Galago Books, Alberton, South Africa.

[4]The Southern Cross, November 29 to December 5, 2017, article: “Priest’s Key Role in Mugabe-Army Resignation Deal.”

[5]. Daily Mail, 19 March 2013. www.dailymail.co.uk.

[6]. The Jesuit Roman Pope Francis I, by Shaun Willcock, August 2014 (article).  Bible Based Ministries.  Available from our website: www.biblebasedministries.co.uk.

[7]The Southern Cross, November 29 to December 5, 2017, article: “Priest’s Key Role in Mugabe-Army Resignation Deal.”

[8]. In writing this article, extensive use was made of previous articles about Zimbabwe, written by the author.

[9]. Frontline Fellowship, 22 November 2017, article: “Zimbabwe Celebrates as Mugabe Falls.”  www.FrontlineMissionSA.org.

[10]. We Shall Never Forget, article in the Rhodesia Christian Group Occasional Newsletter, November 2006.

[11]. The Great Betrayal, by Ian Smith, pgs. 408-411. Blake Publishing Ltd., London, 1997.

[12]. We Shall Never Forget.

[13].. Frontline Fellowship, article: “Rhodesia: Myths and Facts.”  www.frontline.org.za.

[14]. We Shall Never Forget.

[15]. See Cry Zimbabwe, by Peter Stiff.  Galago Books, Alberton, South Africa, 2000.

[16]. See Mugabe and the White African (DVD).  Arturi Films Ltd., UK, 2009.  www.dogwoof.com.

[17]. “Looting of the Land,” by Cathy Buckle, 21 May 2005. http://africantears.netfirms.com.

[18]. “Out of Sight is Not Out of Mind,” by Cathy Buckle, 28 May 2005, and “So Few Are Left,” by Cathy Buckle, 4 June 2004. http://africantears.netfirms.com.  Also Sokwanele Newsletter, 2 June and 4 June 2005.  www.sokwanele.com.

Bible Based Ministries
info@biblebasedministries.co.uk
www.biblebasedministries.co.uk

This article may be copied for free distribution if it is copied in full
WORLDWIDE CONTACT FOR BIBLE BASED MINISTRIES:
Contending for the Faith Ministries
695 Kentons Run Ave
Henderson, NV 89052
United States of America
BBMUSAorders@gmail.com