Bread basket case

THE fall from power of Robert Mugabe brings back memories of my trip to the newly independent Zimbabwe with a number of agriculture and computer experts.

We got together with 20 local senior IT people and agriculturalists to formulate a plan for plots of ten acres apiece to be assigned to 4,000 smallholders, on the lines we had followed successfully in Uganda.

Zimbabwe was then the breadbasket of southern Africa, producing vast quantities of maize. ICL, the computer company, had prepared software to run in the local languages, Ndebele and Shona. I returned to Britain after the software had been installed in Zimbabwe and staff had been trained.

The prospects seemed promising. But within two months, Mugabe gave into the pressure from his cronies and army veterans. The white agriculture minister Denis Norman was dismissed, and the smallholdings were handed to the veterans.

And Southern Africa’s bread basket became a basket case. GRAHAM TOTTLE, Llanbedr, Gwynedd.