Blacks dancing

Music

01.00.00.00

Mashonaland

Holmes: A century ago, Cecil Rhodes’ Pioneer Column marched north into the cool and fertile valleys of Mashonaland.

00.11

The colony that bore his name was founded on a wholesale land grab by British settlers. It went on for more than 50 years — and the independent nation of Zimbabwe is still wrestling with its consequences.

Ephraim in field

Like millions of other Zimbabweans, Ephraim Nyakajura and his family just scratch a living on an overcrowded plateau.

00.41

The soil is thin and sandy here. But Ephraim remembers the valley where he grew up. Rich land, well watered, with space to spare — and the day in 1944 when British soldiers came to take it.

00.53

Ephraim interview

Ephraim: I was very, very unhappy. In my heart I felt it was the end of the world. I was born on that land and where I was sent I felt like a slave or a foreigner from another country. We didn’t even know where we were going. So that’s how we felt — we really suffered.

01.08

Tobacco harvest

It’s harvest time at Serui Source Farm, on the rich black soil of Norton, west of Harare.

Tobacco is the farm’s most important cash crop, and Zimbabwe’s biggest export earner.

It pays the wages of 75 permanent farm workers and their families — and provides a handsome living for Jim Sinclair and his two sons.

02.06

Jim: You going to spray for that?

02.14

Doug: Yeah.

Jim: That’s frogeye, frogeye spot. We got to do something about that.

Holmes: Between them, Jim and the boys own two farms and lease a third.

02.20

Jim: Okay Doug, we’ll see you. You coming back for lunch.

Doug: Yeah, I’ll see you later.

Holmes: They’re good farmers, and they’re proud of it.

02.28

Jim in car with Holmes

Jim: We’re probably spending in terms of turnover, we’re probably pumping $8 million into the Zimbabwean economy every year, in terms of fertiliser, chemicals, capital equipment, that sort of thing.

Holmes: As well as tobacco, there are maize and hay crops, and a thousand head of cattle, fattening in Serui Source’s lush pastures.

02.43

It’s a good life, but Jim Sinclair feels that he and his family have earned it.

Car drives towards house

His father in law bought the land from another white settler in 1933.

03.00

Family pictures

Jim: Okay, Jonathan, I thought you might be interested in a couple of things we’ve got in here.

03.07

Holmes: When his wife’s father died, Jim paid top dollar to buy out her brothers and sisters.

Jim with Holmes

Jim: Our wedding, in this garden, in 1965.

Holmes: They’ve raised three children, and three grandchildren here so far.

Jim: My mother and all her children and grandchildren.

03.24

Photo of Jim

Holmes: When independence came, Jim was elected President of the Commercial Farmers’ Union.

Holmes: So that’s your friend the President?

Jim: Yeah, he was Prime Minister then, but we were quite friendly. He was accessible. And of course, led the policy of conciliation, reconciliation, after the war. But unfortunately today, he now sends out letters like this.

03.36

Holmes: The letter came at the end of November. It gives notice that Serui Source Farm has been designated for compulsory acquisition by the government.

03.49

Singing

Mugabe motorcade

Holmes: Robert Mugabe is no longer Prime Minister. He’s the all powerful President of what is in fact, if not in name, a one party state.

04.05

Singing

Holmes: The decision to acquire one-third of Zimbabwe’s most productive farms was made without consultation with the farmers, or with the international donors, who the President expects to pay for it.

04.17

Singing

Holmes: According to Zimbabwean law, the farmers are entitled to full compensation. But even Robert Mugabe admits that without foreign aid, the money to buy the land just isn’t there. If necessary, he’s said, he’ll take it anyway. And the British can pay the bills.

04.30

Mugabe speech

Mugabe: We couldn’t accept perpetual occupation of most of our fertile land by others and not by ourselves. That we objected to, and the British should know that, this is Zimbabwe, it cannot be an extension of Britain.

04.46

FX: Cheering

Holmes: The implication that the white farmers are not Zimbabweans, but “others,” goes down well with the ruling party elite. It’s not so welcome to Jim Sinclair.

05.15

Jim Interview

Jim: Well I don’t know what he means by others. If he means I’m others, then I’d be interested to know what I am. I’m a Zimbabwean born and bred.

05.26

I was born here, lived here all my life, made a commitment to this country.

How can you actually say to somebody “I’m going to buy your farm, by law, the law says I’ve got to pay you for it. But I haven’t got any money, so actually I’m not going to pay you for it.” Now, have we got a government that’s above its own law?

Chen interview

Super:

CHEN CHIMUTENGWENDE

Minister for Information

Chen: Well, you know, constitutions can be amended any time by Parliament. The law can be changed any time by Parliamentarians. The principle of acquiring land is the overriding principle. We want to follow the law, but whose law is it? It is ours.

05.53

Holmes: Well, some white farmers have said that if you do take the land without compensation, that amounts to just state sanctioned robbery.

06.10

Chen: Well, that’s exactly what they did themselves. When they do it, the question of human rights is not raised. When we do it, the question of human rights is raised.

Black farmers at Mhondoro

Holmes: Bordering Jim Sinclair’s land at Norton is the communal area of Mhondoro, home to around 70,000 people, and half as many cows.

06.37

Before the white men, there were perhaps one million people in what is now Zimbabwe. Now there are 12 million and the numbers keep growing.

Tendai on land

FX: Cow

Holmes: Tendai Masiwa has seven cows of his own, and four children. He’s one of 12 children himself.

07.04

His father, Langton, was allocated his fields 40 years ago. Now they’ve been subdivided between his six sons.

07.15

After decades of use, Tendai’s little maize field is not much more fertile than a sandpit.

Holmes: By this time of year, on good soil, the cornstalks would be standing taller than a man.

07.31

Tendai Interview

Tendai: Since my grandfather, they start using this soil, otherwise it’s 40 years ago, 50 years ago.

07.37

Holmes: And can’t you move somewhere else?

Tendai: There’s nothing I can go. There is grandmother’s field, and this one is my mother’s field. So there is nothing I can go. Only this area.

Tendai in cornfield

Holmes: As far as Tendai’s concerned, the answer’s simple. The government should let him move his family on to the white owned farms next door. In fact, he’s fully expecting to do just that before the next planting season starts in August.

07.58

Holmes, Tendai and Langton

After all, as his father Langton says, land was what the war of independence was all about.

08.12

Langton Interview

Langton: All riches come from the soil. They wanted soil. That was the first question.

08.18

Holmes: And they still want soil?

Langton: They still want it.

Holmes: And they still haven’t got it?

Langton: They still haven’t got it, since independence.

Holmes: So if there ware all kinds of problems and delays and you don’t get that land by August, what do you think people here are going to do?

08.31

Tendai: If it is that, I get organised, we young generation, and go to those farmers, and starting squatting there.

Tendai hoeing

Holmes: Like most Shona peasants, Tendai Masiwa is a loyal member of Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF party. Such a public threat must have had the party’s tacit approval. And certainly it strengthens the government’s hand.

08.47

Chen Interview

Chen: Either the government does it, or else the peasants will do it. And when they do it on their own, having taken the law into their hands, anything could happen. It could create a lot of violence.

09.02

Jim interview

Holmes: I mean surely they’re right when they say that it is not politically acceptable to continue to have four and a half thousand, mostly white, commercial farmers owning more than 50 per cent of Zimbabwe, when you’ve got 9 million, or 12 million on the poverty line.

09.16

Jim: Well to start with — yes, sure there is injustice. I don’t deny that. And that’s why I support the need for a properly structured , organised, funded land resettlement and reform program, agrarian reform. Nobody’s opposed to that, it’s in the interests of the country.

09.33

FX: Pig

Piggery

Holmes: The problem, as Jim Sinclair sees it, is that the current program is anything but structured, organised and funded.

09.54

Holmes and Jim

Jim: You see, the problem that we have is that this government’s treating this issue as a political issue.

It’s not a political issue, we are talking about economics - exports, feeding people, and employing people, and this piggery is a good example.

Holmes: Because he owns the land, Sinclair has been able to borrow funds to finance improve improvements like his piggery. But the peasants won’t have private title, so the banks won’t lend them money.

10.18

FX: Pigs

Holmes: The World Bank, the IMF, and major donors like the European Union, are just as concerned as Jim Sinclair. They’re worried that the crash redistribution scheme will lead to a dramatic decline in food production, and the loss of vital export income.

10.36

Chen Interview

Chen: Well, unfortunately, we have a country to run. And we have to run it. If we are faced with a problem, we are not going to sit and not solve the problem, just because the international community may not understand us.

10.52

Tobacco harvest

Holmes: There’s another group of people who don’t understand — the 120,000 people who are employed on the threatened farms.

11.13

The displaced Shona were reluctant to work on their own land for the white man’s wages. So most of Zimbabwe’s farm labourers came from Malawi and Mozambique, 30 or 40 years ago.

11.23

They’re far from well paid, but Jim Sinclair’s workers have a house, a maize plot, a living wage — and nowhere else to go.

And these days, even young, well-educated Zimbabweans like Gift, the foreman of the piggery, are being forced to leave the towns and find work on the commercial farms.

11.45

Gift interview

Holmes: Has anybody come and told you what’s going to happen to you?

11.55

Gift: No, not so far. The government is just silent so far.

Holmes: So if this goes ahead, you lose your house.

Gift: Certainly I’m going to.

Holmes: You lose your income.

Gift: Yes.

Holmes: What would happen to you if you went to Harare?

Gift: Well, I’m going to struggle then, that’s what it means.

People running for bus

Holmes: If the farm workers are forced to join the job queues, life in the bleak suburbs of Harare will get even tougher than it already is.

12.24

More than half Zimbabwe’s citizens have no work. And with interest rates at 35 per cent, there are few investors rushing to create new ones.

12.34

Inflation is over 20 per cent, the Zimbabwe dollar has crashed, and living standards have plummeted. It’s in the cities and not on the land, that the real time bombs are ticking.

12.44

Riots

FX: Riots

Holmes: There’s already been one explosion. For three days in January, rioters stormed through Harare and its suburbs, looting and burning.

13.04

The police lost control of the streets and shopping malls.

The riots were set off by huge tax hikes, and a jump in the price of basic staples, like maize meal and cooking oil.

13.25

In the streets, they pinned the blame squarely on a corrupt and incompetent government.

Rioter: We want a new government.

13.37

Holmes: For the first time since independence, Robert Mugabe was forced to send the army into his own Shona heartland.

13.44

But he hasn’t accepted the blame for the price rises. Instead, his government has tried to play the race card — again.

13.52

Chen Interview

Chen: We have four big millers in this country. They increased their prices one day with the same percentage.

14.00

And as you know, our economy is owned about 95 percent by the white community in this country, or by foreign company owners. So when we talk of the white community, that’s precisely what we mean.

14.07

Holmes: So it is, in a sense, a white conspiracy?

14.24

Chen: Yes. The white farmers and some of the white producers or businessmen would be very happy that we are in a fix.

Beer hall

Holmes: On the Sunday after the riots, in the beer halls of the black suburbs, we found the government’s attempt to blame the whites got short shrift.

14.35

Man in beer hall: It wasn’t the opposition parties, it wasn’t the white people who caused that, whoever...no! It was just we people who thought of that — we wanted to show the government that we disliked what they did.

14.42

Simba Interview

Simba: We can’t say it’s the white man because yeah, things can go up, and just like you have your own company, and the government says, okay we’ll raise the taxes. For you to get that money it means you have to raise your things as well. So we all blame the government for that.

14.59

Kids playing table soccer

Holmes: City people realise that without the approval and investment of the rich white world they’re doomed to a life of joblessness and poverty.

15.23

Musicians

Music/Singer

Holmes: But out in the rural areas, where ZANU still has a powerful hold, it’s land that’s always been the linchpin.

15.40

Singer: Our land is gone, brother, our land is gone.

Holmes: They’ve been patient here a long time, but times are hard, and a desperate government is looking for a scapegoat.

Sinclair home

Holmes: Ann and James Sinclair are not racists.

16.12

Holmes: Mr Mugabe says you should all go home.

Ann: We haven’t got anywhere to go.

Doug: This is home. It’s the only home I’ve ever known and I don’t know any other. I’ve got a Zimbabwean passport, it’s the only passport I can get and that is it

Singer

Singer: Come on, men and boys, let’s form an army.

Holmes: It may not be good economics to hand flourishing farm land back to the peasants. But even in one party states, it’s sometimes politics that comes first.

16.40

Singer: This is the message of the drums...

16.50

ENDS

17.04