Mr Ian Smith, who was prime minister in the former Rhodesia, said yesterday that he had no intention of renouncing his British citizenship and would fight President Robert Mugabe's government if it tried to take away his Zimbabwe passport.
"They haven't got a hope. They are on such shaky ground that the whole thing will collapse," the veteran white leader told reporters yesterday at his home in Harare.
Mr Smith spoke to reporters shortly after hearing that his cattle ranch had been occupied in the latest development of the illegal three-month-old land grab by government supporters. He responded also to a report in the partly state-owned Herald newspaper on Saturday that the government would order about 86,000 British nationals with dual citizenship to surrender their Zimbabwe passports.
The Herald quoted a statement from the Zimbabwe Citizenship Office saying: "The British nationals ineffectively renounced British citizenship in the form and manner prescribed by the Zimbabwe citizenship law. They are, therefore, deemed residents and not citizens of Zimbabwe. These people who have not renounced must surrender all Zimbabwe passports because they are now citizens of the United Kingdom."
Zimbabwe banned dual citizenship in 1984, but Britain has never recognised the renunciation of rights to British nationality by Zimbabweans with links to London.
The British Foreign Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, yesterday warned Mr Mugabe not to implement the passports plan. "It would be an enormous mistake for Zimbabwe to attempt to expel British citizens with resident qualifications because these are people who are making a big impact on the economy. They provide the backbone for so much of the exports of Zimbabwe in the agricultural sector," he told BBC television.
Opposition critics in Zimbabwe say the action against Britons is part of a campaign to intimidate opposition supporters ahead of parliamentary elections due by August.
At least 19 people have died in violence associated with the invasion of hundreds of white-owned farms by liberation war veterans and supporters of President Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF.
Mr Smith, asked if he would renounce his British citizenship, said: "I have no intention of doing that. Why should I do that?" He said he was forced to get a British passport when the government seized his Zimbabwe papers, which were later returned. "I gave my British passport back to the British consulate. They said they were not interested. `It's yours. We don't take passports from anybody now.' "
"I have a Zimbabwe passport. I am a Zimbabwean," he added.
Mr Smith led a quarter of million white Rhodesians in a unilateral declaration of independence from Britain rather than accept proposals for black majority rule.
Mr Smith's farm, about 200 km south-west of the capital, was untouched by the land crisis until Saturday, when a small group of unemployed people moved on to a part of it.
"I've got a peaceful farm and there are no politics on my farm," he said, adding that he did not believe the invasion was a result of his record as prime minister of white-ruled Rhodesia. "They all love me. I've got more black friends in this country than Mugabe," he said.
John Weeks, shot in the abdomen during a shootout with armed intruders on his farm at Beatrice south of Harare on Thursday, died of his wounds yesterday, hospital authorities said. He became the fourth white Zimbabwean farmer to be killed in the ongoing violence.