Digging up the past.

The Zimbabwe government has said it will review the 1980s national reconciliation policy following remarks by former Rhodesian prime minister Ian Smith that he did not regret the murder of thousands of people during the country's 1970s war of liberation.

More than 30,000 black Zimbabweans were killed during the war, which spanned 14 years, with the Rhodesian forces making forays into neighbouring countries of Zambia and Mozambique on bombing raids.

"The more we killed, the happier we were. We were fighting terrorists," Smith said at a debate at Oxford, in the United Kingdom. Smith, in an interview with the Observer newspaper, brushed off threats by Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe to put him on trial for genocide and atrocities committed during the war of liberation.

He told the Observer: "I'm happy about it. I'd come to him, because I've got nothing to apologise for. He's the one who should be concerned about violations of human rights." Smith ruled Rhodesia for 15 years after making a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.

President Mugabe, who is under severe stress following the tabling of an impeachment motion in the Zimbabwe parliament by the opposition movement for Democratic Change against a background of a crumbling economy, run-away inflation, escalating cost of living, and murders of innocent rural people and farmers on invaded farms recently said his government was considering revoking the policy of reconciliation.

He said those involved in war crimes during Zimbabwe's war of liberation should be placed on trial, adding that some Nazis who committed atrocities during the Second World War were still being hunted down, and some of them were not as culpable as Smith.

Mugabe said extending the spirit of reconciliation to whites at independence, despite the bloodshed of the liberation struggle, was a grave mistake. He said the whites were taking advantage of reconciliation to launch a vicious campaign against the country s programmes, taking advantage of the fact that their bad side had never been exposed.

Fall from grace

Zimbabwe's whites have increasingly been made the scapegoat for Mugabe's fall from grace in the eyes of ordinary Zimbabweans. His parry, Zanu PF, which has been ruling the country since independence in 1980, faced a test of character during the June 24-25 parliamentary election where it lost 57 seats to the newly formed Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). Whites have been roundly blamed by Mugabe and his party for supporting the MDC, and "spurning the hand of reconciliation".

Veterans of Zimbabwe's war of liberation and ruling party supporters have, since February, invaded more than 1500 whiteowned commercial farms to "redress the land imbalance" in the country. Government has turned a blind eye to the atrocities on the farms, where attacks on farmers and their labourers have now become the norm.

Following South Africa's lead

Commentators have said the attacks are bound to increase as Zimbabwe creeps towards the 2002 presidential election, which will pit Mugabe against MDC president Morgan Tsvangirai. Information and Publicity Minister of State, Jonathan Moyo told a press conference that the government intended reviewing the national reconciliation policy and redrawing it along the same lines of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa.

Moyo said the arrogance shown by Smith was symptomatic of the attitude of the 200,000-strong white community in the country.

He said the situation in Zimbabwe was different from that in South Africa in that Pretoria had set up the commission where whites came up and apologised openly for the atrocities they had committed against blacks.

"Perhaps we can learn from them [South Africans] in terms of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the essence of the need to revoke this reconciliation policy. It is to revoke in order to correct it. When you correct, there is nothing wrong in drawing comparisons from your neighbours. They seem to have a better policy than ours," Moyo said.

The minister said most of those who dominated business in Zimbabwe had served in the Rhodesian security forces. He said these included captains of industry, mining, agriculture, and those who were sitting as judges, lawyers and accountants. Smith and all those who committed atrocities had to be held accountable for their actions.

"The government is now securing all records relating to their activities during the Unilateral Declaration of Independence era. We have to deal with these issues in a much more systematic way and be legal about it. We want to review the original legal instrument and hold these people accountable," Moyo said.

He also said that although there were those who said let bygones be bygones, "this was what the policy of reconciliation was intended to do. But what do you do if some people are rejecting that policy? I think the responsible thing to do is to hold these people accountable."