Produced by David Pearson and Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock

A dog woof production (2009)

THE issue of land is a very complicated and controversial issue in that each person who writes on the topic always gets to decide where the story began. In the documentary “Mugabe and the White African”, the story of Michael Campbell and his son-in-law Ben Freeth began in 2000. However, for the blacks, the story started a long way back, on September 12 1890 when the British pioneers arrived and pitched tent. In most white narratives, the story starts on April 18 1980, when the Africans came to power with the majority voting for Robert Gabriel Mugabe. The story of Mike is similar to other stories of displacement and how the past shapes the present. Though the story makes you sympathise with the Campbells, there is one factor that the white farmer fails to appreciate, that there were Africans who died fighting to take back the land. These are the blacks who decided to rise up against the settlers who had taken their land. They were human too, but possibly the settlers did not think they were. After the war, there are spoils to be given to the soldiers who sacrificed their lives so they can reclaim what was initially theirs. The whites did that after the First Chimurenga. They were each given 6 000 acres of land and shared the cattle they had confiscated from the blacks. It’s on record. The morality of the story cannot be sought outside the historical facts. Henning Mankell, a Swedish writer, says the white farmer should shoulder some responsibility in the land issue. According to the writer, Mugabe went to the commercial farmers and asked that they talk, instead they refused and in their arrogance assumed they were untouchable. The Campbells take the Government to the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal court in Namibia and they win, yet their fight for survival is an illusion. The Zimbabwean Government overrules the verdict of the tribunal on the grounds that the court had not been ratified by member states. The tribunal was eventually dissolved at the SADC meeting in Namibia three weeks ago. Ben Freeth proclaims that the President is a racist who does not want the races to co-habitat and that is the message that the film wants the world to hear. The interesting point is that it required Mugabe to force the whites to accept that they were Africans. All along, they claimed they were Europeans. But still, one cannot understand why the whites insist on a surnamed title if they are Africans, why should they call themselves white Africans? Is it to distance themselves from the negativity that is often associated with the continent and its natives? It is words like ‘primitive’, ‘poor’, ‘undeveloped’ and ‘un-advanced’ that rob African people of their confidence and blinds those who see them to what is important about them. The farm workers cry when their baas is told to pack and go because they cannot imagine life without him as their guide. The Rhodesians must surely love that bit. As the documentary unfolds, there is a moment when Ben goes to the compound where the workers stay and one can see that the condition of the labourers has not improved since the Rhodesian era. It is these small details that would seem trivial, yet they are what matters. In fact, it required Government intervention to force the white farmers to improve the conditions of their farm labourers decades after independence. In such a situation, who should the farm workers cry for, the white farmer or the Government? The black man shall rise from servitude to independence, to be master of his own destiny. Perhaps the method used to take the land was harsh. This is what Mugabe tried to do at independence, when he extended his hand of reconciliation towards the whites, a hand that was spurned. The whites refused to reciprocate the gesture and unfortunately this is where we are at the moment — at Mugabe’s white Africans. Those who watch the documentary are being urged silently to cry for the whites and hate Mugabe. It is a film intended for a white audience and those blacks who believe the white lie that the Victoria Falls were discovered by a man called David Livingstone. It is another grieving Rhodesian story about what they perceive Robert Mugabe to be.