African Tears by Cathy Buckle (ISBN 1-919874-27-5)
White farmers don’t get a good press. They do get coverage - worldwide, on TV and in print - on a scale that black Zimbabweans do not, but the effect is double-edged, with the graphic pictures of mayhem on the farms confirming negative stereotypes as much as provoking sympathy.
It is a simple story, if one believes Jonathan Moyo, Mugabe’s spindoctor. A very few white farmers own too much land and have been stalling in every way they can to avoid letting the landless poor have any of it. Solution : let the landless poor take back their land, and if a few casualties occur in the process, it is a small price to pay. Simple problem, simple solution.
Not quite. As with most things in Zimbabwe’s current agony, things are, at the same time, both very simple, and very complicated. And the uncomfortable truth, for those who still believe in the stereotypical image of the reactionary farmer living the life of Riley, is that the past eighteen months in Zimbabwe’s history have exposed Moyo’s simple analysis for what it is – a lie.
African Tears is the story of Stow Farm, and the struggle to keep farming once President Mugabe had launched his monumental act of spite on the people of Zimbabwe in February last year. Originally told in the form of a weekly email newsletter, the book sets out how, for seven interminable months, the Buckles and their employees endured day-to-day intimidation as their farm was used as a local base for the political re-education of the surrounding area. Assaults, torture, death threats, arson, large and small scale corruption, and common or garden theft form the backdrop to Cathy Buckle’s story.
Some farmers undoubtedly do live close to the leopard-skin hatted stereotype. There is an alarming disparity between the living standards of many white farmers, on the one hand, and their employees, and their even less fortunate near-neighbours across the fences in the communal lands on the other. No one can seriously deny that. And there has been a shocking lack of foresight by many – farmers and city dwellers, black and white, alike - in thinking that such disparities could continue indefinitely without consequences. Cathy Buckle does not shirk from admitting all this.
But many farmers do not fit this caricature. Education, health care and accommodation are provided for vast numbers of workers and their families. The arrangement may seem paternalistic, even colonialist, to the Western mind used to a liberally funded welfare state, but in Africa, welfare states are a pipe dream, and if the state does not provide, others should, and many do.
But if Zimbabwe’s white farmers bear part of the blame for the land problem reaching its current anarchic state, the lion’s share of the responsibility rests squarely on the shoulders of President Mugabe himself. Nothing happens in Zimbabwe without the nod from State House. Twenty-one years of absolute political power, substantial, readily available funding for land purchase and agricultural extension schemes, and all he has to show for it is swathes of farmland lying idle – owned, and left to rot, by the government, his generals, and his closest cronies. And he shares with no-one the blame for the last eighteen months. All white farmers – good and bad – have been declared "enemies of the state" by President Mugabe, and, with the sanction of the rule of law suspended, both official terrorism - there is no other word for it – and the resurgence of petty individual grievances, have wreaked havoc on the farms.
The most venal low-lives have crawled out from under the skirting boards to take advantage of this lawlessness. Some of the characters in this book are so grotesque as almost to defy belief. Edward, the incompetent ‘war veteran’ and fraudster, a station full of Kafka-esque policemen who can never quite lay their hands on the incident book, a gang of surly hired hoodlums, given to juvenile games of staring-out, and much worse. But there are also the Buckle’s – fighting furiously to stave off bankruptcy. And most impressive of all, for they have everything to lose and nothing to defend themselves with - the unyielding dignity of their employees and their families, stoically enduring the physical and mental torture of Zanu PF’s cultural revolution.
African Tears gives a blow by heart-rending blow account of the effect of this lawlessness on individual people – easily forgotten when groups are made scapegoats for political failure. It is not, nor does it pretend to be, an all-encompassing account of the same kind of terror on the communal lands, or in the urban townships, or, as has become the recent pattern, the ‘invasions’ of businesses and factories in an attempt to cow the cities and towns. The rural and urban poor have all become "enemies of the state", and suffered accordingly. And this is the final proof that Moyo’s simple analysis is a lie. Here the stereotypes break down completely. This is oppressor versus oppressed, but not - as Moyo would have it - white versus black. This is the powerful against the weak – and skin colour is irrelevant, except as political spin.
Educated and articulate, Cathy Buckle has been able to tell her personal story to the world at large. But this is more universal a Zimbabwean story than one just about a single farm and the people on it. The whole country has been put through the same trauma : shattered dreams, shattered bodies, shattered minds. The hope must be that all the other Zimbabweans who have suffered the most alarming cruelty, but who have endured it behind the scenes, away from the television crews, will eventually find a way to tell their stories too.
This is not an easy or a pleasant tale. If you are happy with the stereotypes as to who is the victim and who the villain on Zimbabwe’s farms, read this book, and then mentally put yourself in the place of Jane the storekeeper. Ask yourself truthfully whether you would have behaved as she did. Then judge her character against Mugabe’s rhetoric. This book is very moving, and I urge you to read it. Buy it as soon as you can.
A portion of the profits from the sales of this book will be donated to the Patrick Nabanyama Trust, set up to help Patrick’s family after he was kidnapped by Zanu PF supporters just before the 2000 elections. He has disappeared without trace. His abductors are known, but have not been tried.
back to top |
