Gordon Beale’s Mine Protected Land Rover was first used for peace keeping duties during Zimbabwe’s 1980 elections
’Removing the doors allowed the occupants to sit with their rifles on their laps with barrels facing outwards’
There are an estimated 30 million land mines strewn across at least 18 African countries. The International Committee of the Red Cross offers up the following figures for some of those most affected: Angola, more than nine million; Mozambique, up to two million; and Somalia, one million. Ethiopia, Eritrea and Sudan also face severe problems while countries like Rwanda, Liberia and Libya all have issues. Zimbabwe is another country still dealing with the destructive legacy of these indiscriminate killers – more than 2.5 million were laid during the country’s War of Independence, both by the Rhodesian Army and the insurgents they were fighting.
The war, which began in July 1964 and would last until December 1979, claimed the lives of more than 20,000 people. Government statistics from the time reveal that from December 1972 to December 1980, 632 people lost their lives in 2,504 vehicle detonations while 4,410 were injured. And it didn’t stop there. An estimated 1,550 people have bee…
