MyWeku

Mugabe and the White African

Mugabe and the White African, is a documentary that chronicles the plight of Mike Campbell – a white African in his fight against the government of Robert Mugabe. The documentary has been well received and has won numerous international awards including Best documentary – British Films Awards, nominated for a BAFTA for outstanding Debut Film and shortlisted for the OSCARs 2010.

The documentary tells how Mike Campbell battled to keep hold of Mount Carmel, a mango farm 70 miles south-west of Harare where his family had lived for 30 years, in the face of beatings by militia gangs loyal to Mr Mugabe. Mr Campbell eventually looses Mount Carmel to Nathan Shamuyarira, a former cabinet minister and President Mugabe’s official biographer.

Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson, the makers of this documentary have been “delighted by the reception the film has had, particularly with African audiences who really get the fact [that it] is about about human rights, the rule of law, and democracy for all, no matter what color skin.”

Really? Absolving Mugabe of wrong doing to his country’s men and women, the vast majority of whom are black is not my intention. However, a film that purports to highlight “human rights, the rule of law and democracy for all, no matter what colour skin”, that makes no mention of the historical, social and political context within which  land reforms should be seen is inauthentic and biased.

The film ignores the reasons why a vast majority of arable land ended up and to a large extent still are in the hands of a white minority. In 2000 just 6,000 white famers owned half of Zimbabwe’s most arable land with thousands of black peasants crowded into infertile ‘tribal trust lands’ – a direct legacy of colonial injustice both opponents and supporters of Mugabe recognised – and Mugabe exploited to gain widespread support across Africa

In the documentary, black farm workers were reduced to “nodding heads” with no attempt made to elicit their own views on their country’s land reforms or the treatment of their “white masters”.

This documentary’s biggest flaw though is to portray Mike Cambell, the white farmer as a saint. He was quoted in another documentary – A violent Response as saying  – “My faith in the African as a ruler in Africa has been shaken. I do not believe that any of them are capable of ruling themselves. Democracy is a joke”. Does Mr Campbell not consider himself African?

The brief story of the Scottish Laird who catches a poacher on his land provides the sort of context which this documentary lacks.

Laird: “You’re trespassing on my land”,
Poacher: “Why is it your land?”
Laird: “Because it was my father’s”.
Poacher: “How did he get it?”
Laird: “He inherited it from his father, and so on back to the first McTavish of McTavish”
Poacher: “And how did he get it?”
Laird: “He fought for it”
Poacher: “Well then, I’ll fight you for it”.

Until Western documentary makers learn to tell the whole story and not restrict themselves to convenient half truths, I doubt very much if Africans will sympathise with films depicting white farmers in Zimbabwe or indeed in Southern Africa merely as helpless victims of black Africans.

Felix Chidzambwa