Part 2 – Paradise Plundered. This is a small series of excerpts from a book of the same name and is written by Jim Barker who took over a piece of bush with nothing on it and turned it into a viable and valuable tobacco farm (Rhodesia produced some of the finest tobacco in the world and buyers came from all over to purchase it, shooting the country into the second biggest tobacco producer in the world). The story revolves around the establishment of this farm and how hard he had to fight to defend it, turning his house and barn into a fortress in addition to adding weapons to his light aircraft for top cover, so to speak. The blog is in snapshots.
Can you imagine that the snippet above was being played out at over 4500 white-owned commercial farms for a major part of our seven year war?
Can you imagine having to take your children to boarding school at the end of holidays, on roads infested with landmines and gooks lying in ambush?
My own sister-in-law was killed by a landmine buried in a tar road, one of only two mines laid in tar. Her sister, father and mother were not scratched although she was vaporized along with most of the car. (Author). I cannot contain my admiration for those people, they were amazing and kept producing crops no matter what came their way. Today there are about 250 white farmers on the land out of an initial figure of about 5000, reducing the bread-basket of Africa to a nation that is full of hungry people. Ironically, Zimbabwe now imports food from the same Rhodesian farmers who have established farms in Zambia, just to the north.
