The last gamble of Zimbabwe"s White Tribe

Original Post Date: 2001-08-21  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 8/21/2001 9:58:58 PM
The last gamble of Zimbabwe"s White Tribe

Hello everyone

This just in today from Zimbabwe. A grim reminder for South Africans,
who still believe that this kind of thing ‘will never happen here’.
Think again!
******
National Post
The last gamble of Zimbabwe’s white tribe

David Blair The Daily Telegraph Packing companies are working overtime,
the flights out of Harare are fully booked and animal lovers have placed
notices in shop windows reading:
“Leaving Zimbabwe? Don’t forget to take care of your pets.’ Quietly,
with no fuss and few tears, white Zimbabweans are fleeing their country
day after day. With every plane that leaves Harare’s new airport, a way
of life draws nearer to its end and President Robert Mugabe comes closer
to achieving his goal — ridding his people of the “white oppressor.’
Whites had clung to the crucial reassurance that, despite the racist
diatribes of Mr. Mugabe (he usually calls them “greedy, arrogant and
conceited’ and claims they are scheming with the British to recolonize
Africa), it was still possible to walk the streets unmolested. That
solace died on the pavements of Chinhoyi recently, when the President’s
mobs went on the rampage and forced all whites to flee, for a few hours
ethnically cleansing the market town that lies in Zimbabwe’s agricultural
heartlands.

That Chinhoyi was singled out for these brutally effective shock tactics
was particularly demoralizing for the white community. The surrounding
farms were among the first to be invaded by squatters and, when landowners
were feeling the heat, they often sought refuge in the town. Now their
haven has been overrun. Mr. Mugabe’s regime may be incapable of stocking
the gas stations or repairing the roads, but it knows a thing or two about
terror tactics. Ripples of fear from Chinhoyi have spread far and wide.
For many whites agonizing about the future, it has been the final straw.

The scale of their exodus has been extraordinary. Today, there are
perhaps 50,000 whites left, about 0.3% of Zimbabwe’s population. When Ian
Smith made his unilateral declaration of independence from Britain in
1965, Rhodesia had more than 300,000 whites. When independent Zimbabwe
was born and Mr.Mugabe won power in 1980, there were still 200,000.

It seems inconceivable now, but Mr. Mugabe, the hardline Marxist fresh
from leading a guerrilla war, did all he could to persuade them to stay.
In his first broadcast to the nation, he urged black and white to “join
hand in hand in a new amity.’ For the whites, Mr. Mugabe had a special,
quite extraordinary plea. “Yesterday you hated me. Today you cannot
avoid the love that binds you to me, and me to you,’ he proclaimed. To
drive the point home, he took the leader of the white farmers’ union and
made him Zimbabwe’s first agriculture minister.

Pleasantly astonished whites cancelled their flights and decided to stay.
The swimming pools of Borrowdale still glittered and the panelled calm of
the Harare Club was still filled with wise, elderly men, saying quietly
that “this bloke may not be so bad after all.” Until last year, white
emigration was a trickle rather than a flood.

The turning point was Mr. Mugabe’s defeat in a referendum on a new
constitution in February 2000. Queues of whites waited to cast their
votes.

Farmers drove their black workers to the polling stations. Whites were
involved in the Movement for Democratic Change, the new opposition party.

Summoning his formidable reserves of paranoia, Mr. Mugabe blamed them for
his defeat, concluded they were turning the black population against him
(How else could he have become so widely loathed?) and decided they were
still his sworn enemies. Whites had broken the implicit deal that Mr.
Mugabe had offered them in 1980 — you can stay in Zimbabwe, but don’t
cause trouble and, above all, keep out of politics.

The farm invasions and the national terror campaign followed, accompanied
by a merciless barrage of racist rhetoric. In one speech, Mr. Mugabe
listed all the border posts through which whites could leave imbabwe. “If
you want a plane, we can escort you to Harare airport,’ he added
helpfully.

Young whites were the first to buckle and seek opportunities abroad.
Almost every school-leaver was quick to disappear. The first thing you
notice about white Zimbabweans is how old they are. Their average age
cannot be under 65. The young have gone; the grandparents remain.

In their last redoubts, white Zimbabweans display astonishing resilience.
Some weeks ago, I visited a couple, both in their seventies, clinging
tenaciously to their farm near Mvurwi. I bumped along a dusty track,
winding through dense bush and rocky outcrops, turned a corner and there
stood a passing imitation of an English manor house, ringed by an emerald
lawn.

Tea was on the verandah, served by black servants clad in white from head
to foot. The corridors were lined with paintings of scenes from a fox
hunt.

Dinner was in an imposing room lined with portraits of the family’s
ancestors — generals, air marshals, admirals. The conversation was,
naturally, about cricket and the weather. Nothing else. Mr. Mugabe was
not even mentioned.

Yet the great unmentionable was that, barely a mile away, 30 of the
President’s supporters were camped on a football pitch. The farm was
listed for seizure. At any time, the couple could lose everything. This
small patch of pre-war England, whose last vestiges disappeared from the
mother country long ago, was on the verge of being wiped off the face of
Africa.

Many whites cling to the hope of rescue at the 11th hour. Like besieged
homesteaders in a western, they still believe that the cavalry will arrive
in time. If Mr. Mugabe were to lose the presidential election that must
be held by next April and relinquish power without insisting on a civil
war first, then Zimbabwe would have a new government, keen to enlist the
help of whites in rebuilding the country.

In other words, they hope to survive the brutal election campaign that Mr.
Mugabe has already launched and then vest everything in the belief that he
will prove a good loser who will go quietly after the votes are counted.
When this argument is put to you by an elderly, well-meaning farmer in a
country club outside a Zimbabwean farming town, it seems churlish to point
out its obvious flaws.

The hope that Mr. Mugabe will lose office next year is all they have to
cling to. It is the last gamble of Zimbabwe’s white tribe. If it doesn’t
pay off, the English manor houses in the heart of the bush will be
preserved only as theme parks — or memorials to colonial oppression.

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