Two Farms: One Black, One White

Graham has decided that Nyagambe Farm will inevitably end up being confiscated. He has been to Zambia to look for a new farm; if that does not work out, then he may try Australia.

Glenda, back on the farm, cannot bring herself to move, even though Graham is leaving, even though the triumphant war vets are more hostile than ever. Most of the black MDC supporters she has grown to know during the election campaign cannot leave the country, so why should she? ‘The worst feeling after the election result is this anger and sense that people must hate us,’ she says. ‘All this time in the MDC we haven’t felt that, we felt part of the struggle and the future, only now there’s no future because they hate us. In my heart I think if we stay here it’ll be okay sooner or later, but that’s what my father thought and he got shot for it. But this is my home and I’m not going to leave. It’s strange, but I feel I just can’t go.’

Pearl has had enough. She has a brother in America, and the possibility of a university place in Britain. She can choose where she belongs, and is determined her children should have that choice too. They can be anyone they want to be. She says, ‘I never thought in Zimbabwe we’d become like the rest of Africa.’

Phil wants to stay. His despair has turned to anger, and the pent-up frustration of his youth is propelling him towards an African destiny that he never envisaged in the years he was trying to work out who he was and where he belonged. After the election, twenty-six of his farm labourers sued him for failing to pay their wages. He told them to ask Robert Mugabe for the money, whereupon the police charged him on twenty-six counts of defaming the president, one for each worker who heard the remark. Other cases have been brought against him, and he travels with a bodyguard now. ‘I used to brag that we were different Africans. I never thought it would come to this,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what we have to do to bring change in Africa. You see me today as a democrat, but you realize that tomorrow I could be a warlord.’