Zimbabwe has been paying off a US$700 million debt incurred by the Ian Smith (pictured) regime for buying weapons to fight liberators, a researcher has claimed. 

Australian health practitioner Jane Woods, a board member and trustee of the Zimbabwe Information Centre in Sydney, made the stunning suggestion to guests attending last week’s commemoration of the legacy of Bishop Abel Muzorewa.

Woods said she came across the revelations recently while researching material on sanctions and was alarmed.

“The freedom that Zimbabwe regained in 1980 was actually short-lived,” she told guests.

“It (Zimbabwe) inherited a whopping debt from Rhodesia…to the amount of US$700 million. The mind boggles when you try to calculate what the interest on that amount could be, from 1980.

“So, in signing (the peace deal) in London, the new political leaders agreed to take on the debt that had been incurred by Ian Smith and his regime for the purchase of weapons that were used to kill black Zimbabweans!”

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Woods surmised that the new leadership knew that they were taking on this debt but probably thought it would be easy to pay off given the country’s rich resource base.

Since it was a condition of the negotiations, she felt strongly that they signed off under duress..

“Smith used that loan to kill. I mean, it is so ugly, it is very hard to understand how im moral it is. It also may not have been legal for Britain to do this because it was not theirs to negotiate.” 

Woods’ claim is corroborated by the UK-based Debt Justice organisation, which says on its website: “At Zimbabwe’s birth in 1980, the country inherited a US$700 million debt from the Rhodesian government of Ian Smith.

"The loans had been used to buy weapons in the 1970s, breaking UN (United Nations) sanctions. The new government came under international pressure to take on the debt, whilst being promised over US$2 billion by western governments for reconstruction and development”.

Woods further asserted that the debt owed by Zimbabwe, including to other countries and the Bretton Woods institutions, amounted to around 50% of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP).

“That is half of your GDP,” she said in an interview.

“Debt is a tool of poverty. It is a way of keeping poor countries from getting ahead. But Zimbabwe is in a unique position to make debt forgiveness a reality.”

Pope Francis said recently that  it was impossible for poor countries to repay trillions of United States dollars in debt they owed to rich countries. He said debt was the worst tool causing misery and distress to poor nations.