Ethnic Cleansing of White Farmers in Zimbabwe

Original Post Date: 2001-08-19  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 8/19/2001 1:29:22 PM
Ethnic Cleansing of White Farmers in Zimbabwe

Chris McGreal in Doma
Wednesday August 15, 2001
The Guardian

They see it as their Kosovo. The last few dozen white farmers left in a
sprawling patch of northern Zimbabwe have fallen back on tactics learned
from the Rhodesian bush war three decades ago, but without the guns.
From before dawn until after midnight the white men of Doma patrol the
sprawling web of farm tracks in pairs, staying in touch by radio, in an
attempt to counter the organised plunder of their homes.

It is a largely futile attempt to protect property but the broader intent
is to establish that, while their wives and children may have gone, Doma”s
farmers will not be driven out.

“This is an attempt at ethnic cleansing,” said Vernon Nicolle, a farmer
who has come under attack in the past few days. “There”s absolutely no
doubt that it”s orchestrated and aimed at driving whites out of the area.
It”s not the poor little farm workers like the government is saying. That
bastard Mugabe is behind it. In Europe, you call that ethnic cleansing.”

There is little doubt that Zimbabwe”s masters have shifted away from
enforcing partial land redistribution towards driving whites off the farms
altogether, and perhaps eventually out of the country.

President Robert Mugabe has said the liberation war against whites
continues. The Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, chose to stop in troubled
Chinhoyi on a recent state visit, and called for all whites to be booted
out of Zimbabwe. The state media gave his comments great prominence.

On Saturday, Zimbabwe”s vice president, Joseph Msika, took it a step
further, saying: “Whites are not human beings.”

The attacks evidently orchestrated by Mugabe loyalists over the past week
cover an area of about 100 square miles north of the town of Chinhoyi.
Worst hit are farms around Doma where a third of white-owned houses have
been comprehensively looted, with even baths ripped out. So-called
veterans of the independence fight have warned whites never to return to
the area.

Women and children have fled all 90 white-owned properties in the area,
mostly to Harare or South Africa. Among them is the family of Anthony
Manning, who mans the security radio control room from a Doma farm house.

“We moved every single person out of this area – women, children, the
elderly, the sick. We didn”t know if the convoys would get out because of
the mayhem and roadblocks. Where we couldn”t fly, we had to take all sorts
of back roads. We are the only ones left,” he said.

So now 34 white men remain. In the Rhodesian war, it was white farmers as
part-time soldiers against black insurgents. The division is much the same
these days, but now it is the farmers who have the state against them.

“We”re not going to capitulate, come hell or high water. They can wreck
our property but we won”t be driven out,” said Mr Manning. “There”s a lot
of experience among us. There”s a guy who was in the [Rhodesian] SAS. We
know how to organise these things. We would love to go in and deal with
these guys because we have the weapons. I can tell you last night it was
touch and go whether we did. But we know that would be counter-
productive.”

“Our strategy has been to try to monitor where they are next. We are
operating in three groups. If they go for the southern front and we move
there then they hit the northern or eastern front.”

The patrols can do no more than report a house under attack or a convoy of
looters to the police. Farmers comment sarcastically on how swiftly the
police turned up to arrest the 21 farmers whose alleged attack on black
settlers sparked the crisis, according to the government. They say the
same force is nowhere to be seen when whites are attacked.

“The police pulled back to let places be looted,” said Mr Manning. “There
was an attack on a farm five kilometres from the police station. When we
called, the police said they had no vehicles. When we offered to take
them, the police said they can”t go in civilian vehicles.”

Mr Manning”s farm is among those targeted.

“About 250 people arrived in seven tractors and trailers. They had axes
and sticks. One of them broke my foreman”s arm with an iron bar. If we had
stayed I am 99% sure we would be dead,” he said.

About three dozen looters descended on another property, Dawn Farm. One of
the farm workers watched the scene. First went the curtains, bedding,
carpets and wall hangings. Attention turned to electronic goods then beds,
cupboards and even toilets.

With the house emptied, the looters went for fertiliser and farm tools. It
was all piled high on tractors and trailers and hauled away. Tractors
laden with plundered property can be seen quite openly making their way on
the main road out of Doma towards Chinhoyi.

But the destruction goes further than mere theft. On Stirling Vale farm
someone took to the electric stove with a vengeance, ripping off its door
and destroying the hot plates, not in an attempt to steal it but to ensure
it could not be used again. Almost every window in the house was smashed
and the bath ripped out but not taken away.

The farmers see such destruction as evidence of an attempt to drive them
out.

“Why would you destroy an oven or the freezer or rip out the bath? They
want to prevent us coming back. To be honest, I think that will work in
one or two cases. I know one woman who has told her husband she is never
coming back even if it means the end of their marriage. But that is not
the case with most of us. We will help each other rebuild and try to sit
it out until that bastard [Mr Mugabe] is gone,” said a farmer on patrol at
Stirling Vale.

The crisis flared a week ago with the arrest of 21 white farmers near
Chinhoyi for allegedly assaulting black settlers. The government”s version
is that the farmers assaulted defenceless peasants in an attempt to drive
them from land given to them under the redistribution programme.

“The farmers have been attacking property and legally resettled
farmers … it is the farmers who are unleashing this violence,” said the
home affairs minister, John Nkomo.

The government claims that popular outrage at the farmers provoked the
looting.

The whites see it differently. They believe the arrested men were led into
a trap. They say the war veterans attacked a white-owned farm knowing that
neighbours would come to the aid of the trapped family. Then the war
veterans called the police and claimed they were the ones under attack.
The arrests were then used to justify the unleashing of war veterans and
others against farmers across the area.

The attacks appear to be well coordinated. The farmers say the operation
in Doma is run from a farm seized from an outspoken opposition supporter.

Alan York – Zimbabwe”s “Cattleman of the Year” – was in Australia on
business when the war vets moved on to his land a week ago. First the
house was trashed. What was not taken was tossed into the swimming pool.
Almost half his 5,000 cattle were driven away and roadblocks thrown up
outside the farm.

Among those visiting the farm over recent days has been the local
government and housing minister, Ignatius Chombo, who is at the forefront
of pushing land redistribution.

Caught in the midst of the violence are the black farm labourers. About
9,000 workers and their families are hit by the upheaval in Doma.

Because the government wants to portray the land seizures as spontaneous
and led by farm workers against abusive white owners, the labourers are
pushed to the forefront of land occupations.

Some are torn between genuine resentment at poor working conditions and
the fear of not having a job. Others stand up to the war veterans.

“Our labour is in an incredibly difficult situation,” said Mr
Manning. “Those bastards are going to twist this. They said our guys are
landless and they did it and it”s not true. That is their home there. We
have a proper village – lights, water, a school. They are not the
perpetrators. They are caught in the middle.”

It is probable that having stirred the cauldron, the government will quell
the violence and then claim to be moderating between land-hungry peasants
and unreconstructed Rhodesian white farmers.

The first signs came in yesterday”s Herald newspaper which trumpeted the
arrest of 40 suspected looters in Doma as evidence that the police were
not standing idly by. But even that report had a spin. The Herald claimed
most of those arrested were farm labourers, implying that the white
farmers” own workers had turned on them.

The message to Mr Mugabe”s supporters has been pressed home: the
constraints have been loosened a little more.

URL for the original article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,2763,537150,00.html

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