Lancaster House

Can you explain that to the family who aren't familiar with that and how that worked and how that took place and what's going on with it now?

Okay, well, it goes back to the Lancaster House negotiations in 1979.

Due to the impact and the success that Zimbabwe had on the battlefield against who was considered a superior military opponent, It forced diplomatic talks.

Jimmy Carter was part of those talks representing the United States.

Yes.

First of all, it all started sort of in the most formal way with the Lancaster House agreements in 2010, when the United Kingdom and France agreed to coordinate and to look together at security of the European continent.

I think that the big turning point, the turning point that has caught everyone's attention in the within the general population has been what has happened since the beginning of war in Ukraine, since the U.K. and France have made a very strong commitment.

They've also had the Northward declarations, which were last year, in which they agreed to start cooperating, not coordinating, not working together, but consulting each other on nuclear issues.

And instead of digging their toes in and trying to impose Malayan Union on an increasingly hostile Malay community, they moderated their approach.

And the eventual negotiations, which took place, I think, at Lancaster House between Tunku Abdul Rahman and the colonial officials in the UK, appear to have been basically fairly friendly and cordial.

Now, I want to ask you a slightly contentious question or refer to a rather contentious point of view.

I know you've made the choice to be part of Malaysia and you've been here for more than half a century.

Uh, and so land was a really, uh, contentious issue.

Uh, and so the independence constitution, uh, negotiated ultimately at Lancaster House in London, uh, as, uh, we see also, uh, uh, in Kenya and elsewhere.

Uh, even in, um, situations where independence came as a result of, uh, these liberation wars, uh, ultimately, uh, uh, you see people sitting around, um, uh, tables, uh, political conferences and negotiations and all that.

So the independence constitution did not, uh, uh, give leeway to the newly independent, uh, nation state of Zimbabwe, uh, to reclaim, uh, the lost land.

Uh, the rise of a new millennial opposition politics and what that meant, um, in terms of, uh, the presentation of threat to the establishment.

Uh, people had, um, you know, local farmers, uh, they tried to take the law into their own hands or to take history into their own hands, uh, by taking land, moving into these big commercial farms owned by something like 4,500, uh, no, no, no, 550, uh, former indigenous farmers.

Um, and the state was always ejecting them, uh, because, uh, of the Lancaster House, uh, structure.

Uh, so Africans were still defined as squatters, uh, in their own land, in their own country.