The crisis in Zimbabwe as President Robert Mugabe bids to extend his 22 years of rule has enraged former colonial master Britain where people are overcome by a mix of nostalgia and frustration.

British newspaper reports decry the violence and chaos in the run-up to presidential elections next weekend with a regularity and prominence unmatched by stories from strife-torn countries elsewhere in Africa.

"It is the historical and personal connection," Jesmond Blumenfeld, associate fellow of the Royal Institute for International Affairs think-tank, told Reuters.

"Many people in the UK have friends or family in Zimbabwe.

"The accusations from the Zimbabwean government that Britain is to blame for the situation may be somewhat far-fetched, but they are repeated often enough and are possibly believed by enough people elsewhere in Africa for it to rankle," he added.

Thousands of people — black and white — have fled and more than 100 supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) have been killed in two years of violence. On Mugabe's orders, self-styled veterans of the former Rhodesia's liberation war have invaded hundreds of white-owned commercial farms aiming to right what they perceive as a century of colonial misrule.

Despite good race relations and the fact that many white farmers who stayed after Mugabe came to power did plough money back into their farms, their lifestyle remained highly privileged and a constant reminder of the past.

Many whites admit they were not blameless in the failure of early attempts to redistribute land to poor blacks as Mugabe's henchmen simply took the best farms for themselves.

Mugabe has accused Britain and the whites of backing the MDC headed by former union leader Morgan Tsvangirai — his main challenger in the closely fought presidential election — in a bid to bring back the colonial era.

Britain rejects the accusation, but the government feels it is being stonewalled by Mugabe at every turn.

"British policy is strongly orientated to promoting trade and investment with Africa, recognising that it isn't going to help very much if African governance doesn't improve," Blumenfeld said.

Relations between the 78-year-old Mugabe and British Prime Minister Tony Blair have sunk well below the normal diplomatic threshold with Mugabe telling Blair to "go to hell".

Mugabe himself described the landlocked country of 11 million people — of whom less than one in 100,000 are white — as the jewel of Africa when he came to power in 1980.

"Of all places Zimbabwe is undermining everything. You might have expected that of Congo or Nigeria or Sierra Leone but we didn't expect it of Zimbabwe," Blumenfeld said.

"Mugabe has turned families against one another, encouraged friends to betray friends, and excluded the bulk of the populace from the dignity and prosperity that was supposed to have come with liberation," Zimbabwean-born author and columnist Graham Boynton wrote in the Sunday Telegraph newspaper. — Reuters