Posted on 08/15/2002 3:19:16 PM PDT by Clive
Within 48 hours of President Robert Mugabe telling the world that white farmers who owned a single farm could stay, the Hinde family were forcibly evicted from their only piece of land.
Terry Hinde and his British-born wife Sue woke up to a screaming mob of Mr Mugabe's supporters surrounding their house on, hurling insults and threatening them with violence for staying beyond the August 8 deadline for 2900 white farmers to abandon their homesteads.
"We knew we had come to the end of the road, so we called the removal company and decided to leave," said Mr Hinde, 59, his eyes red-rimmed with exhaustion.
Before Mr Mugabe's land seizure campaign he was a big producer of wheat, tobacco and soya at his 880-hectare farm at Condwelani, north of Harare. But on Wednesday morning he became the target for a mob of Mr Mugabe's militant backers, who surrounded the home and began to smash to windows.
Their fury intensified when we were joined by Precious Shumba, a reporter from the independent Daily News, a persistent critic of the Government. After handing them his business card he slipped into the house shaking. When they realised who he was, Mr Mugabe's supporters started screaming and banging windows, demanding the "journalists" come out to to explain his lies.
"The Daily News demonises President Mugabe; they tell lies, every day. They are enemies," screamed a youth wielding a homemade axe. For more than an hour they laid siege to the house. The Hindes telephoned the police asking for help. The police said they had no vehicle to send.
The Hindes, who have had squatters on their farm since April 2000, have been threatened and prevented from growing all but a few crops, had scores of their cattle slaughtered, and until Wednesday had soldiered on.
The mob began pushing through the front door, looking for Shumba. Mr Hinde resisted. "This is my last stand; they cannot come in here," he said. A neighbour offered to go to collect the police. The mob shouted that they were the police, and that we were British, that blacks in Britain did not own land, and that there were 2 million whites in Zimbabwe. In fact, about 30,000 are left.
"Give us beer, give us cigarettes," they roared. The removal company then arrived.
By this time Shumba had shed his navy jacket and tie and disguised himself in a T-shirt and khaki hat. When they tried to storm the sitting room, we hid him under a bed. Eventually two older men, genuine veterans of Zimbabwe's independence war, arrived. They told the mob there were "no orders for any violence today", and escorted Shumba out of the house and into my car. We sped down the dusty driveway, five hours after we arrived, leaving the Hindes behind.
They, too, later made it safely to Harare.
A rallying cry right up there with "Aux Barricades"
They'll do you a damn lot of good when you're starving because you evicted all the farmers and let Mugabe's mafia take the land.
Fools and suckers, all of them. And probably dead men walking, sadly. And when Zimbabwe is starving, they'll come begging to the West for help, because "it's all the white man's fault and you are white men."
Let them starve until they prove themselves civilized.
}:-)4
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