There is a saying in Swahili - adhabu ya kaburi aijua maiti, which means only the corpse knows the torture of the grave. Being the fourth generation farmer of the white race in present Zimbabwe qualifies me to describe what kind of torture we Zimbabweans are facing in present Zimbabwe. It is exactly due to the situation of the white farmer in Zimbabwe, the black farm worker is the one who is bearing the burnt of the abysmal situation that has arisen out of Robert Mugabe’s land reforms redistribution policies, which even I support, and the real practice on the ground.

Mugabe’s great lie and the reality

Mugabe tried to portray the current situation in Zimbabwe, which has attracted world wide condemnation for his undemocratic and dictatorial regime, as a ‘white Western conspiracy against black Zimbabweans’. Nothing can be further from the truth than this.

After independence from Britain in 1965, the whites seized power and just a handful of whites, roughly about 4,500, took control of over 70 percent of the fertile land. Between 1965 to the late 70s thousands of other whites fought for a fair government and took up the cause of the minority. My grandfather was an active member of Zimbabwe African National Union - patriotic Front (ZANU-PF), was Zimbabwe’s own African National Congress of South Africa.

The whites not only fought alongside the blacks for an egalitarian regime along with blacks inside Zimbabwe, but played critical role highlighting the plights of the majority blacks in then Rhodesia all across the world. This includes American and European politicians especially from Britain and their policy makers too. Robert Mugabe was my hero just as he was to a common Zimbabwean at that time.

With advancing age, Mugabe turned more and more eccentric, a person who was losing his sense of judgment and reasoning rapidly. He started behaving like a communist dictator, and has finally managed to become one. Today, the ZANU-PF has turned into a criminal organization run by thugs and goons who operate above the law.

Stance of the white farmers and the reality of land redistribution

White farmers generally agree to the principle behind the land redistribution to common black Zimbabweans. However, what we have seen after the expiry of the Lancaster Agreement in 1990, that had provisions for fair compensation to the white farmers whose land were taken away, much of the land that was redistributed went to the elite class of blacks. The poor black Zimbabweans especially the farm workers who worked in white-owned farm for generations getting absolutely no access to the ‘freed’ land. White farmers had been ordered to stop farming that included feeding of cattle and leave their farms immediately. This has put out of jobs hundreds of thousands of black farm workers who made a living working in the rich farmlands of Zimbabwe that fed most of Africa. One of my in-laws’ was beaten and chased away from his farm by ZANU-PF goons and the police, along with his wife and children a couple of years back. As a result of this large numbers of cattle died, huge tracts of agricultural land lay unused and barren evoking very strong emotions in people who had been associated with them for generations, and that includes people from both the hues.

This has brought in untold misery to the common Zimbabwean making Mugabe one of the most loathed dictators in Africa’s history. The once thriving economy has collapsed beyond imagination, political opposition being systematically silenced through use of hideous means like brutal torture, summary extra-judicial executions by the police and ZANU-PF goons, intimidation of the judges etc.

How some like me managed to survive

I was lucky to have survived this because of the foresight of my late father who never trusted a black government coming to power by some kind of revolution would be ever able to rule a country democratically. He had sensed way back then that the best way to be in Zimbabwe is to be on the side of whosoever is in power or political ascendancy. This way, he patronized not only the ZANU-PF, but went ahead to make friends and create personal relationships with Mugabe and his cronies, and despite that I am writing this, I still do make the monthly pilgrimage to Harare. This has ensured that my family, my 700 odd farm workers are well off than the one who lost everything. Many of the white farmers are now moving to other parts of Africa like Zambia and Nigeria who are welcoming Zimbabwean commercial farmers with open arms. Many of the whites in Zimbabwe, being financially well off, escaped to Europe, Australia and America leaving their black workers without jobs or land, facing starvation and at the mercy of the current barbaric regime.

The ongoing turmoil, international role and the future Mugabe’s stunt to call back farmers who left that country over two and half years back was nothing but sham. Mugabe offered that they can have uninterrupted tenure between five to ten years of faming along with security to prevent disruptions.Would anyone return in such a volatile and rapidly deteriorating situation where many white farmers were killed, tortured, farm workers beaten and evicted? Naturally, it was met with an outright rejection from the evicted and fleeing farmers.

Zimbabwe is in complete anarchy now with rampant corruption, starvation, disease and all evils. We are already on the brink of a civil war (if it isn’t going on already) that has been Africa’s plague from times immemorial. The international community, especially Europe and America are doing their part to rope in Mugabe, but it is still not enough. Undemocratic countries with poor human rights track records like China is actively supporting Mugabe, and Mugabe is courting them as means to counter-balance Western pressure and sanctions.

I am particularly upset along with the majority of Zimbabweans about the way Thabo Mbeki’s government in South Africa is underplaying the current situation here and patronizing Mugabe. South Africa is perhaps the only country that can bring some change in Mugabe’s dictatorship.

Unless that happens, tilling the barren lands of my beloved Zimbabwe in every manifestation of its underlying meaning will remain a fantasy for a dying country.