The copper telephone lines have been stolen. The giraffes, zebra, and other game have been trapped, killed, and eaten. The birds have been poisoned and the thatched safari lodge burned down.
But Mike Campbell clings to the remains of Mount Carmel farm, his anger leavened only by the company of his wife, Angela, his three children and six grandchildren, his dither of excitable dogs and the ancient horse, Ginger, who lives on the veranda.
One of a few hundred white farmers left in Zimbabwe, Campbell is resisting the government's final push to evict the last of them. A sunburned, feisty fellow of 73 who glares out at the world from under the wide brim of an old felt hat, he believes that ownership is defended by never giving up. Every last mango, every orange, and every potato on his 3,000-acre farm must be fiercely guarded, with guns if need be - 12 guards patrol the farm. Whenever a radio call from his security outfit comes in at night, he grabs his pistol and drives out into the dark.
He sleeps with his front door open, as if to show he's afraid of no one, the dogs scampering in and out at a whim. But he's enough of a realist to hide the one thing he cannot bear to lose if the government does take away his farm: his photographs.
Nothing in Zimbabwe is as bitterly contested as land. It arouses the tangled resentments and prejudices going back to colonization, a bitterness that has only hardened after nearly 30 years of independence from the British. The regime of President Robert Mugabe has gone further than most African governments in systematically unraveling the colonial pattern of land ownership.
But the cost to the country has been enormous. It transformed Zimbabwe from a modern agricultural economy that exported food across southern Africa into a country of subsistence farming, leaving millions on the brink of starvation.
"If you are going back to small-scale precolonial traditional farming, you are subjecting yourself to the same constraints that those people suffered from, that kept the population of this country at a few hundred thousand for thousands of years. The country has become poorer because of what's happened, much, much poorer," said John Robertson, an independent economist in Harare, the capital.
Zimbabwe's land reform began after independence on a willing-seller, willing-buyer basis. Britain initially helped its former colony with the program. But in 1992, the Zimbabwean government enacted legislation enabling it to seize land in return for compensation. Britain stopped its funding in 1997, demanding greater transparency and proof that land reform would benefit the poor and not hinder investment.
In 2000 Mugabe, blaming the British for reneging on the funding deal, encouraged war veterans and others to invade white farmers' land, and farms were seized without payment. Mugabe has handed the land to cronies in a system of patronage reminiscent of a traditional chief, Robertson said."The government was dispossessing people of land rights so that they could allocate land and restore what was essentially a patronage system, distributing the best land to the most loyal supporters," he said. "Individuals have no ownership rights and can be dispossessed at the first sign of disloyalty."
The man planning to move into Campbell's stately farm homestead is one of the country's big men, Nathan Shamuyarira, official spokesman for the ruling ZANU-PF party.
In rural Zimbabwe, with black farmers living beside white landowners such as Campbell, tension is ever-present.
Driving in his pickup past the cotton crop planted by black farmers, Campbell laughs. "Pathetic!" he snorts at the straggly plants on what used to be Carskey Farm, owned by his son, Bruce, until it was invaded in 2002 by ZANU-PF youths. The farm was divided among more than 50 black families. "They're producing nothing," Campbell said. "With that many people on the land, it doesn't work."
The bitterness runs both ways: Many white farmers lost everything, the toil of a lifetime, without compensation. Even the white social networks are frayed, with whispered gossip about those seen as "yes men" and collaborators who shell out money to local ZANU-PF officials, to keep trouble away.
The black newcomers believe they haven't received enough support from the government.
Sometimes the new farmers drive their cattle into Campbell's front garden. Trees are chopped down. The Campbells see the moves as belligerence, a way to wear them down.
Last year in the rainy season, old Ginger went missing. Campbell's son and son-in-law rescued him from one of the new farmers. Campbell said the animal was knee-deep in mud, unable to move, tethered overnight with barbed wire, a wire bit in his mouth running tightly over his ears. There was a scuffle as the Campbell side tried to free Ginger, who whinnied and charged away the moment he was set loose.
"It was just to get at us," said Bruce Campbell, whose pregnant wife and 6-month-old son and daughter died of malaria four years ago.
The government gave most of the remaining white farmers until the end of September to harvest their crops and leave. Dozens have been evicted by the army and police in recent months.
But everything on Campbell's farm outside Chegutu, about 60 miles southwest of Harare, trumpets his determination to stay: the golden orbs hanging like Christmas decorations from his mango trees, the fruit on his citrus trees, the corn and the potatoes.
With the ax likely to fall and the possibility of eviction any day, Campbell is still irrigating, fertilizing, and planning to plant trees for harvest in 2013. His survival tactic is to keep moving. "You've got to keep investing in the farm. The moment you stop, they'll take it away from you," he said.Boston Globe
