Smart was forced to leave his farm at gunpoint, by riot police armed with tear gas and AK-47 assault rifles, Reuters reported.
He returned last week to his farm near the small village of Rusape, just before Christmas to tears of joy from former black farm workers and their families who had also been kicked out.
The jubilant return is the first sign that the new president Emmerson Mnangagwa, who replaced Robert Mugabe in a bloodless coup, will keep his promise to stop illegal land seizures and restore property rights.
Overjoyed black Zimbabweans “nearly knocked the 71-year-old off his feet as he and his two children stepped out of their car and onto their land for the first time in six months” according to Reuters.
During Mugabe’s 37 years in power, Zimbabwe’s economy collapsed, especially after the seizure of thousands of white-owned commercial farms.
Because of the dire economic hardship, the “white colonialist oppressor” narrative has collapsed in Zimbabwe. Mnangagwa’s new agriculture minister, Perrance Shiri, last week ordered illegal occupiers of farms to vacate the land immediately.
“We are overjoyed, over the moon. We thought we would never see this day coming,” Rob’s son, Darryn Smart, told Reuters.
“Getting back to the farm has given not just us, but the whole community hope that it’s a new Zimbabwe, a new country.”
The Smart family had built up the farm from “virgin bush” in 1932, and had never occupied black land. The 83-year-old Anna Matemani, a black women whose late husband worked on the farm, expressed her joy.
“I‘m so happy he is finally back. He always helped us and the farm provides jobs for many of our young people,” said the grandmother of 15, wiping away her tears.
Mugabe’s henchmen had ransacked the once pristine farmhouses, looting children’s toys, guns, bottles of 100-year-old wine and Smart’s late father Roy’s medals from when he served with the Police Reserve Air Wing in the former Rhodesia.
“I‘m sad about my grandfather’s medals,” Darryn told Reuters, looking at a ransacked room in the house. “You can buy tables and chairs, you can’t buy that family history.”
