Free Republic

The Borrowdale Country Club, a once-elegant retreat in the northern suburbs of Harare, is a good place to measure the state of Zimbabwe’s beleaguered white population. Founded in the mid-1950s, when Zimbabwe was the British-administered colony known as Rhodesia, the club served as the sports and social center for two generations of ranchers, farmers, traders, administrators, and other members of the country’s once-coddled white minority. Above its polished mahogany bar, rows of plaques commemorate the winners of club tennis tournaments dating back fifty years; the wide veranda looks out over a lawn fringed by blooming jacarandas and frangipanis—and, beyond, a...

Zimbabwean farmers attend a meeting of white commercial farmers in capital Harare Zimbabwe's Supreme Court heard a case on behalf of three farmers who claimed the constitution excluded confiscation of their land because they bought their properties after the colonial era ended with independence in 1980. The Supreme Court did not agree and quickly dismissed their application. One of the farmers, Colin Cloete, a former president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union at the height of often violent land invasions seven years ago, was one of the applicants. He, like many of his colleagues, has been arrested, harassed and appeared in...