World News 06-09-2001 Zimbabwe: Mugabe Thugs Threaten Ian Smith With Axes who: Former Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith what: Driven out of his farm by supporters of president Mugabe where: Zimbabwe when: Yesterday snippet: "Supporters of Zimbabwe`s President Robert Mugabe, wielding axes and knives, have attempted to force the former prime minister Ian Smith from his farm," reports The Guardian today. Mr Smith, the 80 year-old former Rhodesian leader who declared independence from Britain in 1965, fled to his home in the capital city Harare on Tuesday when attackers drove him from his cattle farm in Shurugwi. He is a "strident critic of the Mugabe regime," says The Telegraph, "and has called the president a gangster who has wrecked the country`s once-prosperous economy." Britain`s foreign secretary Jack Straw will be at a Commonwealth one-day crisis summit in Nigeria today to discuss Mr Mugabe`s controversial land reforms. "There are fears that instability in Zimbabwe could spread across Africa," says the BBC, "and sour the climate for foreign investment." Joseph Msika, Zimbabwe`s vice-president, said yesterday that he plans to go ahead with the seizure of 5 million hectares of white-owned farmland. Landowners had previously offered to to hand over hundreds of thousands of hectares to resettle 20,000 black families, although, points out Tony Hawkins in The Financial Times, "most of the 531 farms offered had already been gazetted for takeover". [... more]

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