White Farmers in Zimbabwe

(Thumbnail image from The Daily Telegraph)

“Zimbabwe’s for black people, not for white.”(The Daily Telegraph)

Race relations and land ownership are at the center of a new wave of violence in Zimbabwe.

White farmers are forced to give up their farms to black citizens under President Robert Mugabe’s “land reform” program. The program was a key for Mugabe’s appeal to black voters during the last presidential election.

For more on the issue we take a look at perspectives from CNN, The Daily Telegraph, and The Herald.

CNN brings us a story of a Zimbabwean farmer frustrated with the duplicity of the land reform system. He says he has given up one of his two farms and is being pressured to give up the second.

“Why do they want to remove me when I’ve complied with everything that they want?  What more do they want other than for me to pack my bags and leave? If that’s the case, then admit that that’s the policy. Say to the world, pass a law, ‘no whites are allowed to farm.’ Then it makes it clear.”

The Daily Telegraph shares the perspective of another farmer who experienced the increasing violence first-hand.

“Kevin DuBoyle, who owned the farm and lived there all his life, has now fled. ‘One guy with a pipe, another guy with a big club, another guy with a mallet, that’s what they smashed the gate with, a metal mallet, and yeah, as you can appreciate it was very, very hostile, very threatening.’”

Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai labeled the black citizens taking over the farms as “invaders,” but Zimbabwean news outlet The Herald says it’s just about reclaiming stolen property.

“…in terms of our history, there can be no worse language than that which denounces as mindless land invaders a dispossessed people who are reclaiming their stolen land from 100 years of settlerism."

The debate over whether the land reform policy is itself a violation of human rights is also racially charged. CNN interviewed Mugabe’s minister of state for presidential affairs Dydimas Mutasa.

“Human rights are beginning to be seen now because they benefit the whites, and when they were affecting blacks badly, as they did, the likes of us, it didn’t matter."