Zimbabwe: white farmer Mike Campbell mounts last stand over land grab

Source: Timesonline

Date: 23 March 2008

Author: Christina Lamb

The names on the court affidavit are stark; William Michael Campbell vs Robert Gabriel Mugabe.

While 4,000 white farmers have been thrown off their land in Zimbabwe, Mike Campbell is the first to take the president himself to an international court. On Tuesday his case will open at the new tribunal of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in the Namibian capital of Windhoek.

“It took some guts to sign my name to that,” said 73-year-old Campbell, glancing at the court papers. “But then I thought, what have I got to lose? My life I suppose . . .”

Both he and Mugabe are stubborn old men but there the comparison ends. Campbell is a white farmer fighting to retain his land, one of fewer than 500 still clinging on after eight years of violent farm invasions.
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His has been a lonely stand that has seen his wildlife killed, his safari lodge burnt down, his mangoes stolen and the death of a pregnant daughter-in-law. He and his family have also been virtually ostracised by fellow white farmers.

“We tried to get other farmers to join the fight but they said you’re mad . . . you’ll stick your neck out and get your head chopped off,” Campbell said.

Many have changed their minds since his first approach to the SADC tribunal resulted in a court order last December requiring the Zimbabwean government to stay off his land until the full case has been heard.

A further 77 farmers have now asked the tribunal if they can join the action – interventions that could be used by the Zimbabwe government to delay Campbell’s case next week.

Driving down the dirt track to his Mount Carmel farm in Chegutu, 80 miles southwest of Harare, under a wide blue sky, it is easy to see why anyone would want to hold on to it. Neatly spaced rows of trees are laden with swollen purple mangoes that will be sliced and packaged for sale in British supermarkets.

Water-sprinklers play on the roses and other country garden flowers surrounding his stone and thatch house. The only sounds are the twitter of the colourful birds that flash in and out of the trees and the belching croak of a frog.

It seems the most peaceful place on earth. But nearby are the charred ruins of a barn burnt down by invaders, and a mournful chestnut horse mooches around. Her name is Ginger and she has followed Campbell’s wife Angela everywhere since she was attacked by Mugabe’s war veterans.

The Campbells’ British son-in-law Ben Freeth eventually found her tied up with barbed wire through her mouth and knee deep in mud. “She won’t let Angela out of her sight since then,” Campbell said.

In the garage Freeth, 37, shows the skull of a young giraffe that caught its head in a snare. “The skull grew around the wire until finally the wire cut into the brain and killed her,” he said. “To me, this symbolises what has happened over the last eight years here – the slow strangulation of everything.”

A former South African army captain, Campbell moved to what was then Rhodesia in 1974. An enormous kudu head dominates his sunny living room, testifying to the love of hunting and fishing that first attracted him to the country.

When he bought the 3,000-acre farm, he began stocking it with game and eventually opened a safari lodge by the river that runs through the land. “One of my dreams as a young man was I wanted a farm where I could keep game,” he said. “Until three years ago we had 45 giraffes, 300 impala, 150 wildebeest, 50 eland, waterbuck, warthogs, zebra, game birds . . . It was a paradise.

“But these guys have systematically killed them and now we have nothing, not even a wart-hog. It’s been a bitter pill.”

The war vets arrived in 2000 after the farm was listed by the government for takeover. “About 20 or 30 turned up and I gave them a shed to live in because I told them I don’t want you chopping my trees to build your huts,” said Campbell.

After a year with Campbell refusing to leave they moved off onto adjoining land owned by his son Bruce. They have stayed there to this day, making it impossible for Bruce to farm.

They make regular forays on to Campbell’s farm, where they set fire to his lodge and hay bales. Once they drove 600 cattle into his wife’s garden.

The man planning to move into Campbell’s farm is one of the country’s big men, Nathan Shamuyarira, official spokesman for the ruling Zanu-PF party.

Campbell is undaunted, though he knows what he is taking on. “It was a bad time, particularly at the beginning of the land invasions, as anyone who showed any resistance was taken out, some even horribly murdered in front of police, so we realised there was no protection and every man for himself.

“But nobody wanted to stand together and we all went our own ways and the government gradually picked us off one by one until there was only very few left.”

One Sunday lunchtime three years ago, a delegation arrived at Campbell’s farm. One of them was Shamuyarira, who offered to let Campbell stay on as manager. Campbell was having none of it.

“I told Shamuyarira, if you want my farm you will have to steal it and you will have to kill me, so then you will be guilty of murder too,” he said.

He admits he would not be able to carry on without the support of his family and their strong Christian faith. But they have paid a high price, and not just in terms of property.

The war vets who took over Bruce’s farm brought cerebral malaria into the valley, killing 11 workers. When Bruce’s wife Heidi was four months pregnant with twins, she caught it and died, leaving him a single parent to their five-year-old daughter.

“That was the hardest blow to the family,” said Campbell’s daughter Laura, who also lives on Mount Carmel in an adjoining farmhouse with her husband Ben and three tousle-haired children, running her company, Laura’s Linens.

“This whole land issue has really divided the white community. For me the white reaction has been the most distressing thing. I haven’t felt hatred towards Mugabe himself, but I’ve felt anger and resentment towards the white community.

“We’ve been totally isolated because of the stand we’ve taken. Dad and Ben haven’t been invited to any farmers’ meetings for six years. I’ve had women turn and walk away in the Chegutu club. We’re not wanted because we rock the boat.”

Despite the SADC order, war vets turned up only two weeks ago at the Freeths’ and started a fire in their car port before spending the night chanting and singing. When Ben Freeth showed them the order and asked them to move off, the leader replied: “I am SADC. You are greedy, greedy, greedy and you must go back to your own country.”

His reaction suggests that even if Campbell wins the case, this might not be the end of their battle, which will be portrayed in a film, Mugabe and the White African, in British cinemas this year, followed by a screening on television.

“The trouble with the law always is that it works on the assumption that a policeman will carry out the court order,” said their lawyer, Jeremy Gauntlett. “This could all end up as papier-mâché. But it will be very embarrassing for SADC if they rule in our favour and Mugabe ignores it.”

With elections six days away, the focus has moved on from the farm takeovers, even though the resulting collapse of agriculture is the reason more than half the population needs food aid in the region’s former breadbasket.

Meanwhile the invasions continue. In Chiredzi, a police chief recently invaded a cane farm owned by Digby and Jess Nesbitt. He has moved into their farmhouse, alongside the owners, with his family and about 15 members of a youth militia. The property has been the Nesbitts’ home for more than 20 years.

Another white farmer who went to court, Roy Bennett, believes legal challenges will achieve nothing as long as Mugabe remains.

“He can go to whatever court he wants, even to the Hague,” said Bennett, who is treasurer of the opposition MDC and was forced to seek asylum in South Africa after a year in prison.

“The only way there will be justice for Mike or any of these people who have suffered is when there’s political change.”

Click here to see Christina Lamb's book on Zimbabwe, House of Stone