Murder, mourning, acceptance, then hope: Returning to my family farm in Zimbabwe

Originally published on Medium.

I don’t quite know why I wanted to go back to my family farm in Zimbabwe. We were evicted in 2002 and my grandfather, a farmer from the south of the country and now living in Bulawayo, chastised me when I shared my plans to return.

I had been back once before, as a 17-year having just finished school in Australia. It was not a positive experience.

The destruction I witnessed left me distraught. What had been my home and a large, thriving enterprise — employing over 60 staff, housing about 400 people, growing vegetables for local suppliers, and exporting specialty flowers to Europe — had been reduced to, what appeared to me, a desolate wasteland.

It was almost unrecognisable — the power lines had been cut, much of the boundary fence along the main entrance road was missing, vital infrastructure was no longer in place, and cropping lands were overgrown with thorn bushes. Driving through, the local community was clearly suffering — Zimbabwe was in economic and political turmoil. I had the sense that there was little hope.

The anger I had felt as a 17-year-old subsided in the following years, transforming into acceptance, and then a yearning to be part of something new, to work alongside those displaced and oppressed by the situation in the land of my birth.

Going back this time, I knew it would be different.

Approaching the turn off to what had been our home, signalled by what was the local Farmers Hall — a now derelict building — I spied a man on the side of the road. At the sight of his khaki uniform and green cap displaying a large red star, my ease and built up confidence evaporated.

Through my early years in Zimbabwe, I developed an immense distrust and fear of the country’s service personnel. Many of them were used to ensure the longevity of an oppressive political regime. This was done through instilling fear and inciting violence, especially within rural communities. I have memories of our farm workers returning to work beaten and bruised; victims of violent intimidation campaigns that generally increased in frequency around elections. Even many years later, the sight of the uniformed man on the side of the road had resurrected my distrust and fear.

I did the most reasonable thing I could think of to alleviate my concerns. I pulled over and spoke to him, posing as a lost tourist on the way to a town about 50km away.

He pointed me straight ahead, past the farm. I asked further: “What’s up this way?” His reply stunned me, as he said the name of the company our farm had traded under more than 15 years ago. How did he know that? Still cautious, I asked him what he was waiting for. He was going to church, in his church uniform — it was not as I had thought, a military uniform.

I thanked him and drove on, no doubt puzzling the man as I turned down our old road, the opposite direction to the instructions he had just given me.

As I drove slowly along the farm’s dirt track, I crested a hill with a view across the land and toward our former farmhouse. Memories of the trauma and heartache that plagued me as an 8-year old boy came flooding back.

In the year 2000, farm invasions had started to take place. The invasions were seemingly random, often politically motivated, and frequently carried out with violence designed to instil fear in Zimbabwean farmers, and anyone who worked for them. Word of the nature of the invasions had spread through our communities, and the word soon became a confronting reality when a murder took place within our farming community.

Ian Elsworth, a 20-year old neighbour who me and my brothers looked up to and admired, was driving home with his father late one afternoon. When getting out to open a farm gate, men with automatic rifles opened fire. It was a calculated attack; they had been waiting for the Elsworths. Ian was shot nine times and miraculously survived. His father died at the scene.

Although I didn’t experience it, the trauma of that incident haunted me.

As an 8-year old, I stood by Ian’s hospital bed as he recovered and later, we visited him on their farm; the farm where he was shot. The curiosity of my brothers and I unfortunately got the better of us. We snuck off and inspected the bullet strewn ‘bakkie’ (farm ute) they had been driving. It looked like a movie prop, strewn with bullet holes, smashed windscreen and side windows, and an engine that would never operate again.

After that shooting I became paranoid about the safety of my family.

Whenever I knew either of my parents were expected home, I used to wait anxiously sitting on the driveway, stomach knotted, and watch for their vehicle to appear over the hill. Fortunately, we never suffered such brutality; but that was the backdrop in which we lived for several years in Zimbabwe.

Continuing down the dirt road, I eventually reached the farmhouse. On my last visit I had turned back before this point, concerned about my personal safety. This time however, I walked up and headed towards the front door, curious to see who would emerge and hoping to find out more about this person.

I was greeted by an exuberantly friendly man. He looked a bit puzzled but shook my hand enthusiastically. I told him my name and that I used to live on the farm. He knew exactly who I was. He asked after my father, Andrew, and my brother David. Surprised, I told him they were doing well.

The man graciously received me. He told me I was most welcome to go visit my grandfather’s grave, and to go look around the rest of the farm for that matter.

We then launched into an in-depth conversation, where he asked me if I was feeling excited about the prospect of land compensation; a major topic of discussion since the recent removal of Robert Mugabe as President. I told him I was hopeful but not confident and that I personally thought Zimbabwe has other issues to address before paying out farmers.

I then asked him “What do you do?” “Politician”, he responded. I didn’t have much prior knowledge about him, except that he must have at one time been politically aligned to President Robert Mugabe to have been handed the farm.

I then asked him what he thought about the changes since Mugabe’s removal in late 2017. He was optimistic — talking about major improvements to police practices, and about the new President’s views that are pro-transparency and encourage international investment.

The man’s manner and conversation put me at ease. He was charismatic and seemingly diplomatic. I decided I could ask some more challenging questions.

I asked him about the chances of a fair election in 2018 and then about the new and increasingly popular MDC-T (opposition party) leader Nelson Chamisa. Throughout our conversations, his ability to engage impressed me. He was obviously a supporter of ‘ED’, the affectionate term he used to refer to President Emmerson Dambudzo ‘ED’ Mnangagwa, however he was diplomatic in response to my questions that could easily have been perceived as hostile.

He then asked me a final question.

“Do you have hopes to return to Zimbabwe?”

And the answer I gave him was, “Yes”.

I told him about my hopes to work alongside marginalised communities. Then about my concerns with the historic commercial farming model in Zimbabwe. This model had a white farmer, or a black farmer for that matter, living in a homestead in relative abundance, employing people from the community who live in relative poverty, with inadequate access to sanitation, healthcare and education.

I told him that I don’t think that model should ever exist again and it is up to both the people and the politicians to find a more equitable model.

My paternal grandfather was buried on the farm in 1990 and I was escorted to his grave by a relative of the man I had been speaking with. After walking through thick, chest-high, grass we found it and had what struck me as a real moment of shared humanity as he helped me right the fallen headstone. We then stood together in silence for a few minutes. I reflected on the history of this land that was settled long before my life, or the life of my grandfather for that matter.

I reflected on the cycle of dispossession. The injustice of being kicked off a farm by the same government that gave my family a ‘letter of no interest’ in the farm when we bought it after independence. Of the injustice of destroying lives and tearing families apart — the millions of Zimbabweans living in other countries. And the need for healing. The need to stop this cycle — to build something new, something better.

It was in the few hours I spent being shown around the farm I had once known so well that hope began to grow. This man, the man who showed me to the grave, was also interested in a different future. He asked me about my personal and my family’s interests in returning. He had heard about the crops we used to grow, and asked whether we would be interested in getting the farm up and running again and training them.

The irony of the situation did not escape me: I was returning to the childhood home from which my family was forced to flee and being asked to re-invest in it.

However, it was not the particulars of the conversations I had on the farm that struck me. What struck me was that the conversations represented a shift from a subversive political landscape, one of fear and forced evictions, to a recognition of the need to work together in order to achieve better outcomes for Zimbabwe as whole.

I don’t know what the future holds but now at least I have hope.