The family fled to Zimbabwe’s capital, Harare, and borrowed money from friends to rent an apartment. The whites say they were targeted for helping a neighbor who shot one of those occupying his land. The occupiers say the woman maliciously grazed cattle in their corn field, and tried to drain a pond they were using to water a tobacco patch. Whatever the facts, for a time the white family thought all was lost.
But this family returned to their farm in Mashonaland West. Three months after being dispossessed, they negotiated a deal with officials of Zimbabwe’s ruling party, ZANU-PF. The price was their cooperation with the invaders, the very people who had violated their property rights and shattered their peace of mind. Their adjustment is a sign of the times. President Robert Mugabe has set the legal stage for the wholesale appropriation of white-owned land. If he still holds power after watershed national elections Saturday and Sunday, farmers such as this family will face a stark choice-adapt, or give up a cherished way of life. “Yes, these were imposed neighbors, but one has to accept reality and make due with what is available,” says Colin Cloete, president of the powerful Commercial Farmers’ Union, which represents the 3,500 farmers who have had property occupied, then expropriated by the government without compensation. “You have to build bridges and share your problems with the new neighbors.”
It’s easy to see why this couple was ready to compromise. Leaving this land would break their hearts. It has been in the family since 1956. The farm is a little piece of paradise. And not so little at that. The pleasantly rolling property stretches over almost 4,000 acres. Fat beef cattle-“the best bloodline in the world,” the owner says-graze in green, irrigated pastures. And although the corn is wilting from drought, the tobacco crop, just ready for harvest, is lush. The couple is so land-rich that for years they could afford to live from the revenue off less than 20 percent of their property. The rest lay fallow.
Such privilege disgusts Mugabe. He has empowered members of the ruling party, especially the former guerrillas who help him take office in 1980, to occupy white-owned land. Over the last year, his tame Parliament has amended the law to formalize this takeover, and he has packed the Supreme Court to head off any challenges.
Looking beyond the weekend elections, he speaks of a massive government program to support the country’s new black farmers. Given these plans, those who occupied the tobacco farm in Mashonaland West are in the vanguard of his radical movement. And while press coverage of the campaign centers on Mugabe-backed intimidation aimed at opposition party workers, this different group of shock troops has advanced steadily. Although the white farmers ridicule their efforts, the squatters already may have statistics on their side. At least on this one farm, Mugabe’s anarchistic brand of radical land reform has doubled tobacco production in their first year. (It is hard to tell if similar successes are being repeated elsewhere. Drought has distorted production figures, and the Farmers’ Union has not provided exact statistics.)
The invaders sweat for profits, but they also want to prove a point. Lawrence Hungwe, leader of those who took over part of the farm in 2000, claims to have “shattered the tobacco-growing myth”-that only whites with long expertise can get in and cure a top-quality crop. It’s a contested point-the white farmer says Hungwe still “doesn’t have a clue”-but there’s no denying progress. Cattle ate the first year’s corn crop and banks denied the new farmers credit, but then a government bank came up with $27,000 U.S. This year the war vets’ tobacco looks as good as that grown by the white farmer.
And why not? Because of the deal they struck, the newcomers this season rent the white farmer’s equipment, and hire some of his skilled laborers. They beat the drought by watering the young tobacco plants from jugs transported in the trunks of their cars. For next season, they’ll lay irrigation pipe and try to triple production, to 100 hectares (247 acres.)
Is this the shape of a future Zimbabwe? Everything depends on whether Mugabe can cling to power this weekend. If he does declare victory-and survive the potential for a popular revolt-there’s every sign that the transformation taking place on the tobacco farm will be at the core of government policy. White farmers, without legal recourse, will have to decide whether to remain to live in diminished circumstances-sometimes only the homestead-or flee the country.
If they stay, many whites could qualify for the same amount of land being parceled out to black Zimbabweans-400 hectares or 988 acres. And many may stay. “Give me those 400 hectares,” says Cloete. “And give me three to four years to adjust, and I’ll have high turnover again.” First, though, they’ll have to wait to see if the election brings peace-or further turmoil.
