The battleground in Zim remains the farms where invasions are not only about land but also votes
Chris McGreal in Wedza
Comrade Edward Musuaka’s note was to the point. “The hour has come to take what is rightfully ours. You have clearly shown us that you have ill feelings against the land issue. If you continue doing that we will bring five lorries of war vets tomorrow or any day,” he wrote.
The note warned a white Zimbabwean farmer, Richard Bedford, to stop resisting the occupation of his sprawling tobacco farm by hundreds of poor blacks who now claim the land as their own. Their leader, Musuaka, arranged for a few dozen men to pound out revolutionary songs while demonstrating what their machetes could do to a tree. Bedford gave in.
On a neighbouring farm, Derek Hinde has spent three weeks answering distress calls on the radio. When they come, he cannot help reflecting that there was a time when Zimbabwe was Rhodesia and all he had to do was shoot the enemy. Now he has to negotiate.
“Confronted by guys trying to take your farm away, you lose your head. Some of our guys want to kill them. I can understand it but where will it get them? When you’ve got a guy standing two feet away shouting, ‘Down with white people,’ it’s hard to negotiate, but we do,” he said.
Hinde’s tobacco and rose plantation is one of about 20 farms that have been invaded in the Wedza district, an hour’s drive south-east of Harare.
On the face of it, Zimbabwe’s political crisis is a tussle over land between the descendants of British settlers, who stole it at gunpoint, and those of the black Zimbabweans robbed of their birthright. But almost everyone involved knows that is not the real issue. Parliamentary elections loom, and land has become a political weapon in a myriad of ways: redistribution is a means of buying votes from landless peasants; farmworkers’ votes will be critical in deciding whether the ruling Zanu-PF party is humiliated at the polls; and racial confrontation is a convenient distraction from the imploding economy.
President Robert Mugabe accuses Zimbabwe’s whites of more than just trying to cling to the land. He says they are trying to reassert political power by providing the cash and organisation for the fledgling opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC). It is, he alleges, an unholy alliance between white business and black trade unions led by Morgan Tsvangirai.
Mugabe is not wrong. For the first time since independence, whites are sticking their heads above the political parapet. When Mugabe came to power in 1980, he viewed whites as a defeated people. Under Zimbabwe’s new Constitution they could remain citizens and keep their property. But they were implicitly expected to keep out of the business of governance and not to criticise publicly.
That is the way it stayed for 20 years. But now influential whites among the 70E000 who remain argue that the weeks and months ahead could decide whether they even have a future in Zimbabwe, and that they cannot remain bystanders.
Many farmers have already swung their support behind the MDC in the belief that if Mugabe’s government is not reined in, Zimbabwe’s economy will collapse and with it will go their businesses.
“Monty” Montgomery heads the MDC’s campaign in the Hurungwe and Kariba regions where he is responsible for three constituencies crucial to the opposition. His family’s lineage in Zimbabwe goes back to the 1890s. His parents were teachers in Bulawayo at the junior school once attended by HF Verwoerd, the architect of apartheid.
Montgomery (49) came of age during Ian Smith’s rule. By the time majority rule loomed, he was an officer in the notorious special branch responsible for the interrogation of political prisoners and “terrorists”.
These days Montgomery runs an agricultural supply business fallen on hard times. “I am not a party political person but the economic state of the country and business is so bad I had to get involved,” he said. “If democracy does not return, the economy will collapse.”
White support is proving crucial to the opposition. The party will not say how much money it has raised, or from where. But the head of its campaign in Mashonaland West’s 10 constituencies, Duke du Coudray, concedes that a significant proportion comes from white businesses.
“It is not that black businesses don’t support us, it is just much more difficult for them to get involved. Zanu-PF has forced representatives on to the boards of almost every big company and corporation and they make sure no donations come to us,” he said. When 5 000 black MDC delegates elected the party’s executive in January, three out of the top four were whites.
“There’s only one reason we whites are so visible,” said Du Coudray. “The mass of this party is black but the black bourgeoisie is afraid to take a public stand … They are pushing us to the fore, saying we support you but we can’t do it in public.”
Mugabe sees it as a conspiracy in which blacks are a front for unreconstructed Rhodesians. He was delighted at Smith’s efforts to use the political crisis to make a comeback. But Du Coudray says that the former Rhodesian prime minister’s posturing gave whites a chance to show they had changed.
“Ian Smith did us a favour because he gave white people of this country a choice. They could back him or back Morgan Tsvangirai, and they went with Tsvangirai. This is not about reviving white political power,” he said.
For the moment, the primary battleground remains the farms, where the invasions are not only about grabbing land but also votes. Each of the 1 000 or so occupied farms is home to about 800 workers and dependants who are potential voters. They account for almost one-fifth of the electorate, and will cast the deciding ballots in many constituencies.
The government does not want them to slip beyond its grasp. On some farms the squatters have insisted that the labourers join them. On others, workers have been ordered to attend political meetings. But it all has the same purpose: making sure the farmworkers’ votes go to Zanu-PF.
For some whites, the upheaval has proved too much. The final straw for John Guimbeau was a note from the 250 or so squatters on his tobacco farm demanding to strip the roof off his house for their shacks. On Saturday, Guimbeau visited the Australian high commission to lodge an application to emigrate. It is the favoured route for many farmers.
“If the opposition gets in I’ll stay. But if this government stays I’ll go because I’ve seen how vicious they can be,” he said. “Groups of these guys swear at us and wave pangas. They throw stones on to the roof all night to keep us awake. The kids were terrified. I had to send them away. I know what these poor Jews felt like with the Nazis. We haven’t been gassed yet but they want to take everything from us.”