PASSING two people in the street, I could not help but overhear one say: "But they have been there for four generations."

'Zimbabwe' White settlers? Relatives?

What are four generations compared with 4,000 over 40,000 years?

And what have four generations of whites done for Zimbabwe? Divided the land, so that an increasingly-diminishing white-to-black ratio -- 1-30 and of which only one per cent are farmers -- have taken possession of 50 per cent of the country's area.

I recollect 20 years ago when white Rhodesia became independent Zimbabwe, the British government granted the new state £3 million, "Not £3 million we need," Robert Mugabe said, "but £30 million -- to buy back land from white settlers."

Even up to the last decade before independence, tribal chiefs were making direct entreaties to the Queen because their people were being driven off their rich pastoral land and resettled in arid, rocky hills. I never heard how the Queen responded. I owe this letter to those countless black Africans who so generously offered me kindness and hospitality, though even while teaching in Tanzania, newly and proudly independent, I ventured the sensitive suggestion: "White rule in South Africa and Rhodesia is an advantage. For with centuries of commercial and industrial experience, white government can create a prosperity from which a black population can benefit."

This was my conviction -- until I travelled into Rhodesia. Within 48 hours I was overwhelmed with alarm and disillusion. I could fill columns relating the verbal and even physical abuse blacks had to suffer from the whites -- in public.

The native Africans suffered and were brutalised in a guerrilla struggle for freedom which Ian Smith said would never be theirs.

We condemn justifiably the murderous brutalities some black Africans engage in now. But we cannot condemn without condemning ourselves.

For this is the legacy our BrItish heritage and traditions have bequeathed to the countries of the African continent.

R PARKER (Mr), St Chad's Avenue, Chatburn.