The Zimbabwean anti-colonial movement was the most advanced that ever fought on African soil, and its struggle the most brutal, equal in intensity to the war fought by the Mau Mau in Kenya.

Much of its international organisation was based in London, in and around Gower Street. The movement was led by a vanguard party, complete with Leninist structure: a central committee, a politburo, an international committee and the rest.

The late Godwin Matatu, one of the leading African intellectuals of the time living in London, held political classes for its members, for educated middle-class Rhodesians (as they then were) and for members of black organisations in Britain who stood in solidarity with the liberationists.

The movement was strongly influenced by the Chinese revolution. Rhodesia was similar to China in certain respects. The peasants were in revolt against the brutality of landlords, and they had allies among the middle classes who had been educated by paternalistic Christians. But the latter were a small section of Rhodesian colonial society. Unlike in China, race was important. The landlords were white people who had acquired land quite illegally - they seized it, bandit-style - and had reduced the independent peasantry to mere serfs. They ruled with the sjambok, that murderous weapon of slave masters in southern Africa.

The aim of the revolution was not just to seize power, but to redistribute the land, 98 per cent of which was held by whites. The revolution was supported by the vast majority of the peasants living in the country's villages. Tobacco, wheat and dairy products provided huge wealth, most of which was repatriated by the white land- owners to London.

The revolt shook colonial Rhodesia to its foundations. The revolutionaries moved under the cover of the villagers' activity, and won them over to the armed struggle. The retribution from the state was murderous. The white farmers were reservists called up to supplement the army, which also recruited many black urban workers. They wiped out entire villages, murdering men, women and children. Decapitation and the disembowelling of pregnant women were features introduced into this war by the whites.

The rural revolt triggered a mass movement that cut across Rhodesian society but, more importantly, it engendered a division between local whites and the colonial powers in London. Ian Smith, the white Rhodesian prime minister, declared independence unilaterally in 1965. His regime couldn't last, and didn't. Smith had to admit defeat, elections were called and the British tried to manoeuvre their black puppets into power. But Robert Mugabe, the main enemy of the whites, won.

Afterwards, he called for reconciliation. He did not wish to undermine a strong agricultural economy. The whites would not co-operate. The farmers would not have it. Mugabe's main task was to integrate the marginalised peasants into the economy of rural Zimbabwe. The white commercial farmers fought him all the way.

Mugabe turned to Rajiv Gandhi, then the prime minister of India. His mother, Indira Gandhi, had instituted an agricultural revolution in the Punjab. At the Non-Aligned conference in 1988, which I covered for Channel 4, I spoke to Rajiv at great length. But the idea died with him. Mugabe came to London, asked that I interview him, and I did. I asked about the agriculture question, pressed him about the drift of young men to the cities. He raised his hands in despair.

That, my friends, is the basis of the current revolt. The war veterans (the media here always refer to "the so-called war veterans") are a mixed bunch of old soldiers from the liberation war and village cadres. If some seem young, it is merely because they are the children of war veterans. The opposition to Mugabe, partly financed by white tobacco farmers, will not deliver. But the revolution, which I am proud to have supported, even from the margins of Gower Street, will one day be completed.

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