LOOKING BACK

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 50 YEARS AGO

Dutch Reformed clergy will try to reconcile their differences on the Pill and other artificial birth-control devices before a decision on the entire birth-control question is taken at the General Synod of the N.G. Kerk in 1970. Dr. W.B. de Villiers, liaison officer of the Christian Institute, said that although the question had been raised at synods there had not been “real open discussion” of birth control. “Perhaps we are still too inhibited about it,” he said. — August 11 1968

FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES 25 YEARS AGO

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe said if his government had to choose, it would give up aid and investment in favour of resettling peasants on white land. In a week of angry words, Mr Mugabe denounced some ambassadors to Zimbabwe as “racial bigots” in defence of his government’s plans to nationalise white-owned farms. Then on Friday he threatened to seize white farms without compensation if Western powers tried to prevent the nationalisation. “We can just take the farms without paying anything because the white settlers never compensated our forefathers when they took that land from them,” Mr Mugabe said at a rally outside Harare. About 4 000 white families own a third of Zimbabwe’s farmland, and many of the country’s 10-million blacks have no land. About 100 farms have been designated for seizure. — August 15 1993