By ALEX DUVAL SMITH
BULAWAYO - As if to paint in blood President Robert Mugabe's claim that white farmers are "enemies of Zimbabwe," a black mob drove up at daybreak to Martin Olds' remote homestead at Nyamandlovu and butchered him in a hail of bullets and Molotov cocktails.
The cattle rancher's disabled wife, Katherine, whom Olds had driven to safety in nearby Bulawayo after receiving threats from land invaders, had only this to say: "He was my rock. He was a man of high morals and principles, not only to our family but to the entire farming community."
His mother, Gloria Olds, said from a neighbouring farm that she had called the police four times when her son rang to say he was being invaded,"and not a damn thing was done."
"They murdered by son. They beat him to a bloody pulp."
The political murder in Matabeleland, the sixth in Zimbabwe's land wars, sent the signal that Mugabe's ruling party, desperate to stay in power, has instigated an armed campaign to kill ordinary people. Until now, political activists, such as David Stevens, the white farmer killed in northern Zimbabwe at the weekend, had been the prime targets.
Olds, aged 44, had never been to a political meeting. He was feared in the area - fellow farmers use the word "respected" - because he was a good tracker who was tough on cattle rustlers who tried to poach from his cattle ranch 80km northwest of Zimbabwe's second city. This father of two teenagers was known for his strength and for having "the gentlest eyes you have ever seen."
Four years ago, he won a civic bravery medal for wrenching apart the jaws of a crocodile which had attacked another man.
His tin-roofed homestead, a charred wreck yesterday, is an unpretentious place with a yard rather than a garden and several old cars in pieces. The plot has none of the suburban-style trappings - bright, tidy flowers, manicured lawns and a pool - with which many white Zimbabwean farmers comfort themselves, as if hoping to forget they are in deepest Africa.
What unfolded at Compensation Farm in the early hours of yesterday (local time) was nothing short of a gun battle, between a lone former soldier and about 40 men, allegedly armed with new AK47s. Farmers who had kept contact with him until his radio and telephone were cut off provided an outline of the unfolding butchery.
Warned five days earlier that he was to be targeted, Olds had driven Katherine and his children, Martine and Angus, aged 17 and 14, to the family's house in Bulawayo. They usually stay there only in term time but Olds was not taking chances.
Katherine spoke to him when all was still quiet. But at around 6.30 am he used his VHF radio to call neighbours. A convoy of about 10 vehicles - Peugeot 504s and a new Nissan pick-up - had entered the yard. Shots were heard.
Serge Finck, a family friend, said: "Another farmer, Guy Parkin, went to help but had to retreat after coming under fire. Within 20 minutes Martin radioed again to say he had been shot, in the leg we think. We called an ambulance which, at 7.20, reached the farm but was turned away at a roadblock.
"By then, Martin's radio and his telephone line had stopped working. We alerted the police. Their station is 10 minutes from the farm. We do not know when Martin died or quite how because it was not until 10 am that the police went in and cleared the attackers. As the 10-vehicle convoy left, it was waved through a police roadblock, then disappeared," said Finck.
It is the complicity of the authorities which the farmers find most terrifying, said David Coltart, the legal affairs adviser for the opposition Movement for Democratic Change. Coltart, a reknowned human rights lawyer, said:
"All we have left is the international community. This was a planned murder of someone who was not even a member of an opposition party."
Coltart said the tactic was a carbon copy of the terror inflicted on Matabeleland in the early 1980s when thousands of people died - most of them not political activists - as part of Mugabe's campaign to humble the late Joshua Nkomo's rival liberation movement.
Such memories have not left John Rosenfels, another cattle rancher.
"The Commercial Farmers' Union is telling us that we must not resist or there will be a bloodbath. But as far as I am concerned, as a third generation Zimbabwean, I can't just stand there if someone comes to my farm with guns.
"Now we are going to start defending ourselves."
Man butchered in a hail of bullets and Molotov cocktails
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