CHAPTER ONE

1.1 Introduction

The study is a critical evaluation of the depiction of the Fast Track Land Reform (FTLR) in

electronic media. The dissertation concentrates however on two documentaries, Ed Godsell’s

Zimbabwe White Farmers(2008) and Nzwamba’s Zimbabwe Land Reform

_Myth and Realities Voices from the Field (2010). Ed Godsell gives a depiction of the FTLR from

a generally white standpoint, showing how white people suffered during the FTLRP launched in

the year 2000. It focuses mainly on the white commercial farmers in Zimbabwe at the time of the

launching of the program. On the other hand Nzwamba’s documentary is conducted after ten years

of study of the program and the production of a book by Ian Scoones named Zimbabwe Land

Reform_Myth and Realities (2008). It bases its focus on the resettled farmers or the main

recipients of the land during the program. It therefore primarily gives a black stance showing how

it improved the livelihoods of a lot of black people. This paper seeks to explore the similarities

and differences (if any) in Godsell and Nzwamba’s representations of the Zimbabwean Land

Reform Program and the reasons for the representations

1.2 Background To Study

According to Samantha Green (2004), land has always been a belligerent subject matter. She

traces it as far back as 1888 when the British South Africa Company (BSAC), led by Cecil Rhodes,

confiscated the most fertile agricultural land and began colonial rule in what was then named

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Rhodesia and is now known as Zimbabwe. The Land issues were coordinated by a series of laws

that were meant to keep the divide between African and European races which was marked by a

colour bar of blacks (Africans) and whites (Europeans). The laws included the Lippert Concession

(1889) which paved the way for the actual land occupation and allowed the white would-be settlers

to acquire land rights from the indigenous people. “The act resulted in the BSAC buying

concessions from the British Monarch which was then used as a basis of land expropriation. The

revenue accrued was repatriated to the United Kingdom and the indigenous peoples, the owners of

t h e l a n d , g o t n o t h i n g ” (Land Issue- Fact sheet) . B y 1 9 7 9 , w h i t e R h o d e s i a n s e t t l e r s m a d e u p l e s s t h a n

one percent (1%) of the population and had possession of seventy percent (70%) of the land. In

translation six thousand (6000) large scale white farmers controlled roughly forty percent (40%)

of the country’s region while approximately seven million black (7 000 000) Zimbabweans

inhabited communal areas, (Group:2009)

In Zimbabwe the Land issue is a recurring one in history. It did not begin in the year 2000 with

the FTLRP nor did it begin at Lancaster House in 1980. One is forced to concur with the

conclusive assessment that “It was about land in the beginning; it was about land during the

struggle; it has remained about land today. The land issue in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe is not ancient

history. It is modern history.” Sir Shridath ‘Sonny’ Ramphal Secretary-General of the

Commonwealth 1975 – 1990 (Group 2009:3)

During the Liberation war efforts, one of the main promises that drummed up support from the

masses was the prospect of Land. The idea was that if the black population won the war and

simultaneously won their independence then they would also win back the land of their

forefathers. Thus, the importance of land can be understood from a cultural standpoint where as in

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the words of Nyenyedzi in Vera’s without a name “we belong to land” in as much as the land

belongs to us.

Mupfuvi (2003:31) gives three main reasons why land is such an important issue, “Land is viewed

as an asset of production because of its links with wealth in a state and wellbeing of the

citizens’’. According to Chavhunduka and Bromley (2012), the idea of land as an asset has its

philosophical origin in Locke’s labour theory of property acquisition in which he argues that

one’s labour is one’s property. They [Chavhunduka and Bromley] elaborate that when one mixes

one’s labour with capital [land] to make it productive, he imagines that he is now the owner of

the land then may wish to exclude others from a claim on that asset.”(Mupfuvi:31-34)

In the Rhodesian/Zimbabwean context, manual labour is provided for, like in most capitalist

settings, by the black poor people. This is illustrated in Chenjerai Hove’s Bones (1988). A case

whereby the land is worked by the black people yet on paper it is owned by the white farmer. The

dilemma comes when the white farmer also claims to have put in work and monetary investment in

the land that he has acquired.

Other that being an asset to production, in the African context, particularly the Zimbabwean

context Land serves a more cultural and spiritual purpose. In fact, as Kipuri states “The

importance of land and territories to indigenous cultural identity cannot be stressed enough”

(Kipuri:53). Land is a way of life. Africans have a deeper connection to the land. It isn’t just an

asset but intertwined with people’s way of life, religion and culture.

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The expression ‘mwana wevhu’, “as a central pillar of Shona cosmology also informed the

ideological and political principle of the Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front

(ZANU-PF)’s liberation discourse” (Chavhunduka and Bromley:2012). The term ‘children’

encompasses all people in opposition to colonialism and it meant the black people whose skin

resembled the soil they were on. The connection of the children to the soil also meant that the

children were a part of the soil and so when they were born the umbilical cord was returned to its

‘origins’ which is the soil and this process would be repeated after death as well through a burial

when the body of the deceased is put into the ground to the ground just the bible says ‘dust to

dust’ in the book of Ecclesiastes. The fact that umbilical cords are buried in the land means the

descendants have duties and obligations to protect and defend that land. These obligations are

rarely understood by non-African experts. The fact that the graves of ancestors remain in

particular land means land is thus the ancestors home and is seen as a national heritage, a birth

right, as patrimony whose ownership and usage stands out as a symbol of political and economic

freedom. (Mupfuvi:2014)

This goes to show that land in Africa, in this case Zimbabwe isa cultural matter. It holds history,

experience and the natives’ very being. It is where his umbilical cord is and is therefore, the

network connecting him[the native] to his history and his ancestors. This also brings out the

spiritual dimension of the land issue. It is therefore, not only culture but it is identity. Land in

Africa is a part of whom one is. The basic logic is that one is only as good as their history and

their ancestry. The land is where the ‘child’s’ ancestors are buried. Tomaselli and Mhlanga (2012)

in (Mupfuvi:2014:33) believe that land forms a connection with one’s nativity and history.

Mhlanga detected that the San, for example, believe that their lives will be inadequate if they are

4
disconnected from nature. They view every grain of sand as a blessing as they believe there are

spirits in sand which conjures healing power. Similarly, among the Shona, their attachment to

land carries the important psycho-spiritual significance (Mupfuvi:2014:33).

Land as the habitat of the ancestors and the spirits is God’s gift to man, just like water and air.

The fact that land is presented as a place of belonging, as the home of the ancestors, as a symbol

of political and economic freedom is proof enough of the multiple meanings of land among the

Shona.

Land as an asset of production can be used as a political instrument. This is because land in

Zimbabwe means human dignity as people depend on it for survival. A text that paints a clear

picture of this idea is “Devil on the Cross” Ngugi wa Thiongo. In the text, there is constant

reference of the characters in the cave using land to manipulate people either by selling it at

exorbitant prices or by using the money from land dealings to pay thugs to control political

outcomes. Another angle is one that history has taught very well, which is, he who controls

territory has control or political power over that territory. The story goes back since time

immemorial, as far back as the biblical Israeli-Palestinian wars over land occupation. Especially

in Africa where the land is the main source of income in one way or another one must understand

that he who owns the land controls the economy and by virtue can influence and manipulate the

people in that land or territory. By way of the political-economic theory he can control the

politics.

This paper is looking at the land reform from the perspectives of the two documentaries:

Zimbabwe White Farmers and Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field .

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Through a comparative analysis, the dissertation aims to give an objective understanding of the

land reform having given an explanation as to why the electronic media gives such varied views.

From the point of view of left nationalists (see Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2009, 2012, 2013), the land

question is the centre of African liberation, sovereignty and belongingness. In fact Mamdani

(2008) resists that contrary to Western perspectives; the repossession of land in Zimbabwe is a

giant step towards democracy. It is in itself decolonisation which is an intellectual and socio-

political liberating process that was deployed by Zimbabwean nationalists at the height of the

land reform program. Decolonisation is based on a radical critique of coloniality which is “... an

invisible power structure that sustains Euro-American domination...” (Ndlovu-Gatsheni 2012:1).

Hence, at Lancaster House in 1980 the Land issue was the stumbling block that led to the

negotiations taking three months before the willing buyer willing seller policy was put in place as

part of the Land reform program to run from 1980 to 1990. The Lancaster House discussion “ended

in 1979 after the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement between the major Rhodesian warring

parties—the Rhodesia Front, representing the settler regime, and the major African-led nationalist

parties, Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) and Zimbabwe African

People’s Union (ZAPU).” (Nyamende A 2015:237-248) The Lancaster House Agreement did not

settle the agenda of regaining land. Therefore, as it turned out political independence did not

mean justice for the many black people who had been dispossessed of their ancestral right to

Land. At first, land was distributed at a ‘willing seller– willing buyer’ policy from 1980 to 1990.

Most of the land that was sold was not fertile, so that meant very little was done in terms of

distribution of fertile land. “After 1990, the government of Zimbabwe started to make some

changes that would enable it to compulsorily acquire land. In protest against the government’s

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slow redistribution process after enacting the 1991 Land Acquisition Act, war veterans mobilized

together with other land-starved peasants and unemployed urban dwellers and started occupying

white-owned commercial farms” (Nyamende A 2015:237-248). This exercise is what has now been

termed the Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP).

Mamdani (2008) Moyo and Yeros (2004) agree that the Zimbabwean fast track land redistribution

was a radical step of decolonisation in that Zimbabwe was addressing colonial injustices

perpetrated by British imperialist who “stole” the land in the 19th century. (Doricah Mhako, et al

2015).

It is interesting however that these aspects of land and the land reform idea is rarely seen in

international and ‘independent local media while they overwhelm state controlled media such as

Zim papers and Zimbabwe Broadcasting Commission.88888

1.3 Statement of the problem

The impetus for this dissertation is the presupposition that the driving force behind Nzwamba and

Godsell’s documentaries and the ideologies that they carry are racially and politically motivated

The Fast Track Land Reform Program conjures up images from many media forms such as news

channels, the internet and social media. People think of the humanitarian violations surrounding

the exercise of reallocation of land during the FTLRP in 2000 or the seizing of land from the

white farmers by the Zimbabwean ruling party to give to the black people. This is because of the

ideologically and politically motivated representations of the FTLRP. Thus, this dissertation

comparatively analyses representations of the programme in two documentaries from a black

Zimbabwean perspective (Nzwamba) and from a white Zimbabwean perspective (Ed Godsell) in

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order to establish a more rounded, ideological and political outlook of the program. Furthermore,

the dissertation seeks to establish an understanding of why these representations may differ

and/or may be similar in some ways.

1.1 Objectives

This dissertation seeks to:

 Critically analyse of the depiction the Fast Track Land Reform Program

(FTLRP) in the case Nzwamba’s series of documentaries, Zimbabwe’s Land

Reform: Voices from the field (2011) and Ed Godsell’s Zimbabwe white farmers

(2008).

 Comparatively analyse the depiction of the two documentaries

 Evaluate the ideological discourses surrounding the depictions of the

Zimbabwean land reform program.

 Examine the success and failure of the FTLRP as portrayed by the two

documentaries.

1.3 Justification of the Study

The major reason why this study concerns itself with the FTLRP from an electronic media

perspective is because while the program has been studied by many an author, it has never been

looked at from an electronic media perspective. Magosvongwe (2013) suggests that the ideological

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complexities of the land can be understood through a close analysis of socialising agents such as

music, literature and theatre and this paper proposes to add film to the list.

The most ‘pedestrian’ and far reaching form of media is the electronic and in a global world with

resources such as the internet, anyone can post anything online; for instance, videos or

documentaries can be found on YouTube. These are watched by more than a thousand people from

across the world. The principal concern of this enquiry is to point out electronic media as one of

the most influential forms of media and to question how this media portrays the FTLRP.

Electronic media is unlike reading which is considered highbrow-culture and is done by a few

people for enjoyment or by scholars. Watching a movie, film or documentary can be done in one

sitting of less than three hours, in most cases ranging between forty-five minutes and an hour. It

is also considered more entertaining than reading perhaps because of the moving picture.

Considering that in most homes there is at least one television set and sometimes both a

television set and a computer with internet access, one would feel it is important to understand

the portrayal of the FTLRP in what one might consider one of the most popular media sources. In

other words, the popularity of the electronic media makes it imperative to study the FTLRP in its

light.

For a long time now, the international media has generally portrayed the FTLRP in a negative

light using terminology such as ‘state sponsored racist terrorism’ (Dzimiri, Runhare and

Dzim:2014). This paper interrogates two documentaries by different authors both talking about the

same story and both claiming objectivity by virtue of using the documentary form which is

9
considered objective and yet they tell the same story from a different light. The paper assumes

that although the two stories might not necessarily be lies, the selection of information to tell

depends with the producers’ ideological, political and/or in this case racial inclinations. It also

assumes that despite the documentary’s insistence on objectivity, no art form is objective because

no art is free from its maker or its maker and his/her ideologies.

The main reason why one might expect a documentary to be objective or truthful is because of its

background nature as investigative journalism. Thus, in that regard, it is expected to be the so

called “third estate”. The problem with this idea is that, while the third estate is often seen as

the people’s eye or watch dog, the media, like all art forms, takes a certain perspective in

viewing issues. Like any film, its central purpose is to make profits and persuade the viewers into

thinking in the same way as the film maker.

1.2 Research Methodology

This paper will make use of primary sources which will be the documentaries in question. This

will entail a detailed analysis of the primary documentaries, that is, Zimbabwe White Farmers and

Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities . It will also make use of an in-depth textual

analysis which is going to be the lifeblood of the research.

Secondary sources will be used such as recorded interviews and speeches, texts like Ranca

Primorac and Muponde’s Versions of Zimbabwe; Dr Magosvongwe’s publications on land including

one with Zifikile Makwavarara and Obert B Mlambo named Dialoguing Land and Indigenisation in

Zimbabwe and other Developing Countries: Emerging Perspectives . These will include internet

10
sources, dissertation and newspapers which will be used to inform research and comment on

observations made.

1.3 Theoretical Framework

Afrocentricity is a theory that aims at putting Africa at the centre of African issues and hence,

takes a primarily African approach to all matters African. This paper will take a primarily

Afrocentric approach given that as a theory, it gives a clearer picture of how land is viewed in

Africa and the same applies in Zimbabwe. This is because Afrocentricity as a theory sets out to,

“account for the understanding of an African sense of totality and wholeness…”

(http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/63032.pdf) . Therefore, the theory caters for the holistic approach to land

issues in Africa. The approach, ought to give the problem its due attention considering the

geographical and cultural background of the matter. I come to an agreement with Asante’s

(2007:109) definition of Afrocentricity which suggests that, Afrocenticity is, “A conscious

quality of thought, mode of analysis and an actionable perspective where Africans must seek from

agency to assert subject place within context of African history”.

The quotation above, challenges the idea that Africa is an object rather than a subject of her

history. The Fast Track Land Reform Program is based on the idea that, native Zimbabweans are

taking history in their own hands. It ran on the notion that, the program is a correction of past

evils and finally the children of the motherland do their own bidding as suggested by a popular

song of the time by Chinx. The song declares, “Amasimu sesiwathethe mabhunu beselijayele”

meaning we have taken our land; white people had become too comfortable.

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The media has been viewed by some scholars as the vehicle of ideological persuasion and

promoting. Although the magic bullet theory has been disputed as a theory of media that suggests

that the audience are helpless recipients of information one tends to feel however, that the agenda

setting theory of media tries to give an adequate understanding of the way media works. Agenda

setting, a theory that helps one understand mass media, works under the assumption that the

creators of media have their own ideologies and thus, has opinions about all the issues that they

air, screen or produce as mass media. It believes that in communicating these messages via

whatever media these ideologies will manifest themselves.

This study therefore concurs with Tendai Chari that the media framed the representations of the

Land Reform. He comments about the local media that, “The Daily News grew rapidly to threaten

the dominance of the state-controlled daily, The Herald….Much of the private press initially

offered unqualified support to the MDC and the government came to label The Daily News ‘an

opposition mouthpiece’ (Chikowore 2000)” (Chari 2013:298). In a bid to be objective and fair,

both media sources resorted to unethical means of news coverage. This dissertation thus sets out

to analyse the two main schools of thought framed by both media sources.

The power of the media, to set a nation’s agenda, to focus public attention on a few key public

issues, is an immense and well-documented influence (M. McCombs:2). The extract explains how

the electronic media has the power to influence what people think about and this explains why

even documentaries chose to concentrate on particular topics and to take specific perspectives of

the issues they concentrate on. This is the same idea as that of Afrocentricity that emphasizes on

the perspective of the “story teller” as a means of understanding the story. If we understand from

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what standpoint a story is told we can understand from authorship’s break ground why the story is

told in the way it is told.

In order to objectively understand the in light of the documentaries, the paper will also use the

Greed versus Grievances theory. The theory tries to explain the root causes of civil wars and

conflicts. While one might not go as far as calling the FTLRP a civil war, one cannot ignore the

fact that there was unrest and conflict. The causes could be either greed or genuine grievances in

which case Murshed and Tadjoeddin (2007) say, greed refers to and reflects elite competition over

valuable natural resources which is in this case land. On the other hand Grievance argues that

relative deprivation and the hurt it produces fuels conflict and has also been described as a

j u s t i c e s e e k i n g m o t i v a t i o n . (Sibanda). I n t e r m s o f g r i e v a n c e , t h e r e f o r e , t h e F T L R P w i l l b e e x p l a i n e d

as being caused by the dissatisfaction of the masses that were aggrieved because they were still

denied the same opportunities as the elite and the white people in society which was only allowed

to them in theory. This was because a majority of the black people in Rhodesia were only kept in

the lower to middle classes being given minimum wages and being kept under white administration

for colonial purposes and as a way of illustrating social Darwinism and white superiority.

1.4 Scope:

The main thrust of the study is the FTLRP launched in the year 2000. It focuses on the manner in

which the Land Reform is depicted in the electronic media particularly in Zimbabwean White

Farmers (2008) and Land reform Myths and Realities (2010) by Ed Godsell and Nzwamba

respectively. The study aims at comparatively analyzing both documentaries. Both primary sources

are electronic sources found on the internet YouTube server with a large viewership: Nzwamba’s

13
documentary for instance had a total of 24 060 viewers (Nzwamba, Zimbabwe's Land Reform: Myths and

Realities) .

The Land issue in Zimbabwe has affected two main races as suggested by Takunda Muworera

(2013). He points out that it becomes an issue of Black and white races, more or less making

reference to the fact that from 1888 land was taken from the black people and given to the white

people who believed themselves superior and this went on through a series of acts and laws. In

2000 this was completely reversed as the black people then take took land from the whites in what

is now referred to as the Fast Track Land Reform Program (FTLRP). This also makes it necessary

in my view to look at the program from these two sides as attempted by this paper.

Zimbabwe White Farmers by Ed Godsell is a documentary made up of a series of interviews of

white Zimbabwean farmers and of the problems they faced as a result of the FTLRP. They narrate

what they went through and go on to explain how unfair that is and point out how important they

are in the Zimbabwean and African continent. The white farmers go on to point out how bad the

program is for Zimbabwe economically. The documentary narrows the program down to a campaign

strategy and as simply racist terrorism. This documentary was posted in 2008.

Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities Voices from the Field (2011) by Nzwamba attempts

to show that even though images of collapse and violence dominated the coverage, the reform had

successes. It is also a series of interviews in Masvingo province of black resettled farmers. They

give us a peak into how this program benefited them and made them financially independent. They

also point out the short comings of the reform program such as having little or no assistance from

the government. They talk about their achievements thanks to the program. The documentary is

14
better understood when accompanied by the text Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities by

Ian Scoones (2008).

1.5 Literature Review

A lot has been said and written on land reforms in general and on the Zimbabwean FTLRP. Franz

Fanon(1967) says that decolonisation is a process of undoing what the colonial master has done.

Therefore, if colonisation was a process brought about by violence, the colonised should use a lot

more violence to free themselves. He goes on to point out that colonisation was an economic

enterprise, it would not have been a necessary endeavour if it did not benefit the colonial master

economically and this is also the case with slavery. In the Wretched of the Earth, Fanon (1967)

theorises that, “For a colonised people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is

first and foremost land, the land which will give them bread and above all dignity”. In this case,

Fanon justifies the reform as not only an important economic move but sees the whole process of

taking the land as a valid dignifying and decolonising program.

Magosvongwe and Nyamende(2015:237-248), in a journal article comparing literature between

white and black authors in relation to land issues pointed out that “The authors’ depictions, as

shown through their respective fictional narratives, generally resonate with the goals of the armed

liberation struggle that galvanised the marginalised majority in the fight for land, freedom from

settler domination, and social justice in order to uphold human dignity and human worth across

Zimbabwean society.” (Nyamende A:2015:237-248)

According to Magosvongwe R (2015) “White-authored narratives generally view land as an

economic resource to wield economic/political power, and psycho-socio-intellectual control. The

15
latter in turn influences perceptions of human worth.” The above extracts show that land means

different things to the two different races and as such the land reform means to different things

hence one cannot expect their depictions of the program to be the same.

Rory Pilossof (2009), employs the “Cain Prize aesthetic” in analysing the material written by

white Zimbabweans post 2000. Basically the idea is that writers will write what sells, what

attracts which in turn is what wins prizes. Pilossof’s paper points out that post 2000, no single

people in Zimbabwe have had as much attention as the white people, “Not only has this resulted in

the construction of an enormous archive of media coverage on white farmers and their fate, but it

has created the space and market for farmers and white Zimbabweans to write (and sell) their

stories. The response to this opportunity has been impressive: farmers with tales of immediate

loss and suffering — like Catherine Buckle, Richard Wiles and Eric Harrison — have tried to tap

into this market and relate their stories to a global audience, with limited results. Other, more

accomplished writers, like Peter Godwin, Alexander Fuller and Lauren St John, have ridden the

wave of sympathy for white Zimbabweans with much more success, becoming internationality

r e c o g n i z e d n a m e s ” (Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Land, Race and Belonging in the Memoirs of White

Zimbabweans).

Doricah Mhako suggests that the land reform question in protest theatre was down played and

understated. In fact Mhako (2015:3) notes “protest theatre reflected upon the land question in

Zimbabwe and these are (i) omissions (ii) ambiguities and (iii) excesses. Broadly, the above

themes reflect that protest theatre undermined or understated the land question” (Doricah Mhako,

Muwonwa Ngonidzashe and Nehemiah Chivandikwa) As stated in the justification, it is necessary to

16
understand the land issue from a social perspective mainly because it is also a social matter.

Thus, in that regard it is important to understand it from a theatrical perspective.

1.6 Chapter Delineation

Chapter One is the introduction of the paper. It is opened up by a brief background of the study

which will give an understanding of the paper. The background will then be followed by the

statement of the problem, after which follows objectives of the study, justification of the study,

methodology, theoretical framework, scope and the literature review, all of which not only

introduce the topic question but show the perspective and means of the study. Last on the list is

the chapter delineation which aims at giving the paper structure, organization and order.

The second chapter centres on the portrayal of the FTLRP in Zimbabwe White Farmers by Ed

Godsell. This will be part of foundation of the paper as it will not only give a white perspective

of the reform but gives a widely sold international view of the program. This chapter will

critically examine the experiences of the white farmers in Zimbabwe at a time when what had

been their livelihoods was being transferred to other people (black people).

Assessment of the representation of the FTLRP in Zimbabwe’s Land

Reform Myths and Realities Voices From the field by Nzwamba will be done in chapter three. This

chapter will examine the depiction of the FTLRP from the point of view of Nzwamba (black

perspective).

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Chapter Four will be based on the two previous chapters; it will compare and contrast what is

presented in both documentaries. The nature of this chapter will be to compare and contrast

chapter three and four in a thematic system. This section of the paper will analyse what ideology

the producers of these documentaries wish to propagate.

The last and fifth chapter is going to conclude the dissertation. It will finally give a more

holistic overview of the FTLRP with the aid of both documentaries.

Chapter Two

2.1 Introduction

According to a definition from Mark Freeman, a “documentary is work, which derives its contents

from actual (rather than imagined) events, persons and places. The subjects of documentary

practice are social actors…human beings and human society…and historical events.

Documentarians shape their raw materials into an organized, coherent artistic structure. This

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structure is a balance among information, argument, human interest (entertainment value), and

formal filmic elements like composition, lighting, sound and rhythm among other elements”.

Chapter Two analyses the documentary as a work of art, looking at the grammar of a documentary

such as the lighting, music, characters amongst other devices to give a better understanding of the

documentary as a whole. It will go on to critically explore the issue of the FTLRP in the

documentary paying particular attention to what the program meant to the white Zimbabweans and

how they depicted it.

Ed Godsell has three of his short documentaries winning awards at film festivals in Ireland and

the US. He has shot in many countries around the world from Algeria to Zimbabwe and has filmed

in difficult terrain such as the Amazon rainforest, India, and aboard fishing trawlers in rough

seas.

2.2 Summary

White Zimbabweans Farmers by Ed Godsell is work from the experiences of the white Zimbabwean

farmers during the fast track land reform. The documentary is made up of a series of interviews of

white farmers sharing what they went through. The documentary setting is in Chegutu in white

owned land. There is however no actual footage of the events or incidents described by the

character. The characters or interviewee’s narrate stories of their fight for land and how they

tried to defend themselves and what they perceive as their home. For these people the FTLRP is a

series of unlawful and unwarranted land invasions that is supported by the government in order to

stay in power when they become more and more unpopular with their people.

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The documentary takes the form of a tour with Ben Freeth as the main tour guide. Freeth begins by

“correcting” certain inaccuracies. According to him, propaganda figures are thrown around

claiming white farmers owned about seventy percent of the land in the year 2000. He says,

however, that white farmers only owned about twenty percent of the land. He also claims that

about ninety percent of the white population has left Zimbabwe, meaning from a population of two

million white people in 2000, Zimbabwe has a population of about two thousand white people.

Research has shown however that while this may be true the white farmers owned 70% of arable

land which was eleven million of the best agricultural land owned by only four thousand five

hundred of the white farmers (Green 2004). This inconsistency in information from Ben Freeth

proves that they is framing of information in order to push a certain agenda and shows that

documentaries are not as trustworthy as they set out to be.

Most of the interviewees start with a narration of their humble beginnings in Africa after only

briefly mentioning their country of origin. For instance, Pace starts by narrating her origins in

Scotland where her great grandfather was a miner and their move to Africa, first to South Africa

and then to Zimbabwe. This is followed by a narration of traumas and how each of the characters

handles it.

2.3 Analysis of the documentary

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The documentary is addressing the international audience proven by the repeated reference to the

government of Zimbabwe and the black citizens as “they”. An impression that the “they” is the

enemy is a pervading idea as it seems, in the eyes of the white farmers “they” do es not want any

white people owning farms, let alone being in Zimbabwe. There could be several reasons for this.

One could be the idea that fellow countrymen are enemies although it could be argued that perhaps

the film makers should have tried to “preach” peace at home. The primary audience, however,

appears to be South Africans whom the farmers seem to feel are at risk of falling on to the

Zimbabwean situation of poverty and unproductivity because of a land reform which is as an

attempt by the president to stay in power.

Another reason could be that the FTLRP gave a lot of attention to white people at the time to

document anything on the program and what was more beneficial was the writing of or

documenting the evils of the black people against white Zimbabweans. The audience for these is

primarily foreign. One would suspect that the intention of the documentary is to attract foreign

intervention perhaps, especially British sympathies. This involvement could be government-wise

which could be in the form of negotiations or even positive reinforcement like sanctions which

have since been put in place against Zimbabwe. It is highly likely that the intention was to cause

a worldwide outcry if possible forcing Zimbabwe to alter its land policies which was for a time

what happened. One of these was an appeal to the Southern African courts which was placed by

Mike Campbell and other farmers resulting in a win for them.

Through the documentary, Ed Godsell presents the white man in Africa, Zimbabwe as a true

African and therefore, Zimbabwean because of generations’ long commitment and investment in

Africa. As presented by the documentary, white people have been assets in Zimbabwe through

21
constructing roads, infrastructure and developing technology. Campbell, an interviewee, says, “we

have got cities, we’ve got bridges all built by the white man by the way. Even wheels which were

also brought in by the white man, there were no wheels”.

Most of the information used in the documentaries is based on first-hand experience of the white

farmers and information passed from generation to generation through oral history. Some of the

white farmers interviewed in the film are a part of one family and family friends. In fact, ii

seems as if it is one main family that is being interviewed and a few of their friends, who are the

Campbell family. It seems that the interviewees are picked by Ben Freeth instead of Ed Godsell.

One gets the feeling that Ben Freeth will only pick people that he gets along with and has the

same ideology with. This feeling becomes stronger when one notes that in most of these

interviews, the interviewee’s express similar sentiments. Since Ben Freeth is one of the Caucasian

individuals intimately affected by the FTLRP and has spoken loudly against the program, one

wonders how objective he can be and how complete the picture he has presented is. The

characters present the following issues mainly;

 The economy has been destroyed by the FTLRP

 The law has betrayed them as it cannot protect them

 Racism caused the program

 The reform is just a political gimmick to get support and maintain political influence and

power

 White people deserve their land because they bought it and have become naturalised as

Africans

22
  Black people harass the white Zimbabweans in an unlawful way in order to take away their

Land.

The repetition of these sentiments could be that the interviewees share a similar ideology or that

they are true and characteristic of all the experiences of the white Zimbabweans. It could also be

that Ben Freeth targeted the white people with experiences that brought out these factors.

The documentary, although referring to white farmers in Zimbabwe seems to boarder around Mike

Campbell. This could be for the sake of publicity because soon after the making of the

documentary Campbell takes the Zimbabwean government to court over the ‘controversial land

seizure’ program. After a protracted and dispiriting slog through Zimbabwe’s partisan court

system, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal, the only international

human rights court in the region, was finally asked to pronounce judgment on the case and ruled

resolutely in Mike’s favour, ordering the Zimbabwe government to protect those farmers and farm

workers against whom violent atrocities had previously been committed. This was interestingly

followed by yet another documentary Mugabe and the White Man which was an award winner. The

documentary was about the plight of the white man under the racial dictatorship of Mugabe paying

particular attention to the FTLRP. The documentary featured the same the likes of Ben Freeth and

Mike Campbell.

While the fact that these are real life experiences of a people, the inclusion of dates makes their

narrations more accurate. However, one wonders to what extent one ought to trust the word of

disgruntled family members who are clearly emotional about their losses with one interview

ending in tears. One tends to question why no interviews are granted to the other parties

23
representing a different school of thought in terms of the FTLRP. Although Ed Godsell

characterises the documentary as a low budget film, one may feel that interviews from experts or

persons of authority would have come in handy, especially one of a different colour to make the

argument even more credible.

One cannot help but notice the influence of the Eurocentric view of history which presents Africa

before the arrival of the white man as undeveloped and backward while Afrocentric history would

have otherwise acknowledged the systems that were put in place before the arrival of the white

man. In some instances, the ideology might even go further to say the arrival of the white man

caused a disruption in the way of life just as presented in the text Things Fall Apart by Chinua

Achebe as the centre cannot hold the system together with the intrusions.

The documentary focuses its attention on vulnerable, old white people. This is to create the idea

that the old white and retired people have put in their life investment only to get nothing out of

it after having lost everything during these occupations. One gets the impression that it is not

just the displacement of white people that the documentary critics but it is who was put in their

place instead. The white people are replaced by black subsistence farmers and according to the

documentary; they cannot feed the population because of the population growth and their

ignorance on matters of farming. However one is also forced to consider the 5% growth in maize

production in ten years from the year 2000 after a 8% drop from 1998-2000.

There is little interruption from the interviewer, thus, creating a heightened sense of realism as

one feels that the interviews are free flowing narrations of personal experiences and the

producers are not directing or steering the interviews to go in a certain direction. Interviewees

24
mostly seem to speak directly to the camera and consequently the audience. This creates the

impression that, the distance between the audience and interviewee’s is very little as they

communicate directly to the audience. This means that there are multiple narrators. The removal

of the third person who is the interviewer, Ed Godsell, makes one feel that they are listening to

personal accounts and having personal conversation. This increases emotional appeal to the

audience and compels the audience empathise with the White people.

The audience hears the voice of the investigator and one feels that the questions direct the

interview. Therefore, the interviewer has enough control to push his preconceived ideologies that

he/she wants to perpetuate. The feeling that one gets is that of ideology interfering with

creativity or the art of a documentary. In the presence of an interviewer and considering that

documentaries themselves originate from journalism, one would have expected more questions to

do with how the white farmers feel about their antagonist school of thought and ideology and

possibly what they might feel should be the way forward.

The style of dressing and the setting of most of the interviews give an impression that the whites

have given everything to the land in question and ‘haves’ nothing else to offer elsewhere. The

image is of retired old white people, too old to have a sense of style and spending their days in

homes for old people and most likely sitting in the sun at the veranda, drinking tea. An example

would be John Hornsby who is wearing a seemingly worn out blue jersey. For a man who owns a

sports club one would expect him to be better dressed than his oversized jersey, and perhaps a

house better kempt than the narrow space where the interview is conducted. One gets the

impression that the white man is very poor and cannot even afford to buy clothes which contradict

25
with the popular narrative of the rich white man who is exploiting the poor black people. In this

case, the white people are presented as victims of exploitation and victimisation.

After the narrations of their lives, one is compelled to feel sorry for the victims. One feels like

they are looking at white versions of Richard Wright’s Bigger Thomas. Like him, the white people

are alienated because of their race or skin colour. They cannot do anything for themselves as the

black man exploits them and pulls them down by taking their property from them, meaning that

they have a glass ceiling that allows them to do and go as far as certain points and nowhere

beyond. One sees a certain element of reverse domination manifesting itself in the FTLRP.

The story of the land reform is one that involves two races or two groups of people since the

1890s. When one watches the documentary one cannot help but notice the absence of the second

party which is made up of the black Zimbabwean people. It is only spoken of, thereby risking

misrepresentation by the representatives of the present group. In fact, the only individual

mentioned by name from this group is President Robert Mugabe and when making reference to one

p o l i t i c i a n w h o m C a m p b e l l g o e s a s f a r a s t o q u o t e , h e o n l y r e f e r s t o h i m a s “ t h a t m a n ” (Godsell).

The failure of the black people to feature black Zimbabweans in the documentary is a Eurocentric

concept used by writers like Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness where one finds that black people

are nothing but shadows and are without a face of their own. They are referred to as collectively

the same in a way one may use to categorise animals, an example would be the statement “lions

are predators”. Like in Heart of Darkness one wonders how Ed Godsell goes through an entire

documentary in Africa, Zimbabwe without a black character for or against his notion. One wonders

26
if there are no black Zimbabweans in support or against his cause, if so, why? Or if is trying to

create an image where all black people are too idiotic to have their own opinions of the matter or

is it a mere perpetration of the idea that all black people are savages highly prone to violence.

The major reference made to black people is in figures mainly for instance in terms of

percentages.

As informed by the Afrocentric theory, analysis must occur within its context of African history.

The documentary in question justifies the presence of the white commercial farmers through his

usefulness in producing land and the length of time that they have been in Africa and/or in

Zimbabwe then called Rhodesia. It fails to recognise that land was there before the white man’s

occupation and there were people occupying that land. One wonders if how many generations one

has been in Africa and Zimbabwe should matter. The four generations of the Pace family should be

no match against the generations of black people who have been in Africa for ages.

2.4 Fast Track Land Reform Program in Zimbabwean White Farmers

The FTLRP meant different things to different people. It was a program concerning two main

parties; the white farmers and the black Zimbabweans. This, in other terms, could have been put

as two groups of the possessors of land and those dispossessed of it respectively.

In Zimbabwean White Farmers, the white people give a view of what they feel the land reform was

in reality. It seems that, to most of these individuals, the reform was a political stunt of a soon

to be unpopular government to gain political support from its people. In fact, Ben Freeth

comments that he hopes politicians in South Africa do not learn from Zimbabwe that a land reform

27
can be seen as “a way to stay in power when they start to become unpopular”. This sentiment is

one that is repeated a number of times during the documentary. According to a speech made by

Roy Bennett, (a member of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party and former Mayor),

“the fundamental reason was political—Zanu’s grip on power had been threatened. The party had

become deeply unpopular after trashing the economy and it was under immense pressure from a

new opposition, the Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC. The land invasions were a way of

hitting back and the thinking here was twofold. First, it was an electoral gimmick.” (Bennett at

Rhodes House:2012)

For the white farmers, the FTLRP was more an issue of greed than it was about correcting the

grievances of the people. The impression that one gets after watching is that the black government

upon realising that they were losing power, let greed or power hunger inform their policies on

land and went on “grabbing” white people’s land. For these white people, the “landing grabbing”

is a racist system designed to take from productive commercial white farmers without putting in

an ounce of thought as to how the economy or the people will be sustained and fed.

This claim has, however, been refuted by many who claim the land reform program is something

that was agreed upon at the Lancaster House negotiations and was therefore, just a correcting of a

wrong committed in colonial times. In fact, Manjengwa (2015) support this claim by tracing the

Land reform as far back as the 1890s when Cecil John Rhodes first seized much of what became

Rhodesia and is now called Zimbabwe, dislodging the occupants at the time. These disposed

occupants where the black people, mainly the Matebele and the Shona people.

28
For many people the FTLRP was seen as a purely racist deed. One of which was Eddison Zvobgo

(founder of the Zimbabwe ruling party) who comments on the land reform remarks that, “We have

tainted what was a glorious revolution, reducing it to some agrarian racist enterprise."

(Zamchiya:2007:78-81) These sentiments make it clear that, for some, the land reform had become

nothing but a “racist enterprise”, a matter of racism at play. In Zimbabwe White Farmers, Ben

Freeth, while talking about the FTLRP remarks that “this situation, where because of the colour of

your skin you are targeted, is just not acceptable around the world”. (Godsell:2008) In light of

that comment it is clear that in the eyes of the white farmers, it is a matter of race. Campbell

even goes on to say that there is a group of black people that do not want any white people in

Zimbabwe. He gives an example of a man in his district who he claims said that he does not want

to see a white face from Mutare to Plumtree, which is from east to west of the country

(Godsell:2008).

The documentary opens with a prologue. A prologue is meant to give background to a story. It is

like a history of what leads to the story or a brief understanding of the matter before one either

reads the work of literature or watches the movie. In the case of Zimbabwean White Farmers, Ed

Godsell informs us, “Mugabe decided to solve his political problems by expelling the white

farmers from the country, the economy collapsed, leaving millions hungry. The white people of

Zimbabwe have been virtually, entirely and ethnically cleansed from the lands. Only a few

remain”. The prologue in this case gives off the impression that an endangered species, in this

case a race, are at risk as they are being hunted or hounded out by Robert Mugabe who is the

president of Zimbabwe. One cannot help but compare the described treatment of the white people

to that of the Jews in German under the leadership of Adolf Hitler. The statement seems to

29
describe some kind of ritualistic healing of the president’s political career as Ed Godsell uses

such terms like “expelling” and “cleansed”.

In fact, according to a review by Sam Moyo (2014:2), “since 1997 shifts in Zimbabwe’s land

reform, agricultural and economic policies, and its relations with the international community,

including external financial institutions, have accompanied dramatic economic decline.” The

Zimbabwean economy was faced with a predicament characterized by hyper-inflation, foreign

currency and basic commodities deficiencies and hoarding, the depletion of incomes and income

value, increased food and social services, insecurity, the halving of production in the real

economic sector, and reduced employment (Moyo 2014:1). All these characteristics could also

result in withdrawals of foreign investment feeling that their reserves are not safe in a country

whose economy is unstable and which seems to have constant violent outbreaks and a country

capable of stripping one off his or her property.

The prologue actually makes a paradox of two characteristics of Mugabe. In the phrase, “ever

since the hero and liberator Robert Mugabe”, the president is described as a hero and liberator

and on the other hand in the same breath the same man is said to be leaving millions hungry for

the sake of political power. He is also described by overwhelming language as a ruthless ruler

capable of cleansing a whole country of a certain ethnical group. The paradox comes out when one

considers that a hero or liberator is someone that stands for the people and frees them from

bondage. He saves them and yet he would go on a power trip that would leave a lot of people

starving. The paradox of a “hero” turned villain is well presented in the text Animal Farm by

George Orwell. In Animal Farm, the pigs who seem to be the primary saviours or the leading

30
liberators, primarily Napoleon, becomes the dictator who proves to be worse than their former

master. The type of leadership that Mugabe seems to have fallen under according to the

documentary is the petty bourgeoisie class of leadership that rises to power after the liberation of

formally colonised countries. This is the same kind described in Ngugi wa Thiongo’s Devil on the

Cross which are allegorised as “modern thieves and robbers”, a class of individuals who sold out

the struggle or in the case of Animal Farm where corrupted by power and have become selfish and

diabolic in nature. An example of such a character is Gitutu who is described as having a belly so

big it protruded so far that it would have touched the ground and “absorbed all his limbs and

other organs of his body”. This is a description of an overweight man who is that way because of

greed and selfishness.

The epilogue at the end of the documentary serves to improve authenticity of the film as real life

accounts giving references to the fate that awaited the white people. Freeth, his wife and his in-

laws, and the Campbells were later taken from their farm to a pungwe and beaten for hours and yet

they survived. The epilogue also serves to conclude the matter. The conclusion is in the form of a

brief account of the trial bought to the Southern Africa Development Community which “asserted

that the disastrous Land Reform Program was inherently racist”.

The FTLRP is notoriously popular for the violent episodes that accompanied the exercise. In one

of the first interviews of the documentary, Freeth actually claims that he believes the aims of the

government is to “cleanse” the land of any White people implying that the government intends to

wipe out any white people. Actually on the Mike Campbell Foundation website, there is a quote by

R. Mugabe which reads, “Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man,

31
they must tremble . . . . The white man is not indigenous to Africans. . . . The white man is part

of “an evil alliance”(President Mugabe, speaking at the ZANU PF Congress in December 2000)

The website gives evidence of one Commercial white farmer, Iain Kay who was attacked and

severely injured on his Marondera farm in April 2000. In the documentary, Olive and Dave Roech

whose farm was appropriated in 2001 relate to violent crimes against them which they feel were

most certainly on purpose, such as their houses been burnt down. Pace narrates traumatic

instances of her old mother’s arrest and what she views as being harassed by the people

demanding land from her. She talks about violations when her grandfather’s grave is exhumed

three times explaining the emotional scars that were caused by that. For these people their basic

human rights have been violated and they have been harassed by this land reform and that is what

it means to them.

The president of Zimbabwe said “It is perfectly justifiable to use necessary force to overcome

resistance for the transformation of the economy in favour of the black majority to achieve

e c o n o m i c j u s t i c e ” (FORUM). Franz Fanon (1968) postulates that violence can be used to decolonise

one as the colonial master used violence to colonise him. As a response to the settler colonising

violence, it is meant to reverse the colonial processes including the alienation of the native

through segregation for instance. One could consider that perhaps if the same process used to

segregate where to be used in reverse then perhaps it could be a kind of cleanser for the colonised

to achieve a kind of independence. The reform was not only decolonising them but they seem to

have been purging themselves of any white influence along with the land. This is made evident by

the desecration of Ruth’s grandfather’s grave incident. This is a similar exercise to that of the

32
South African students taking down Rhodes statue at Rhodes University. It is a purging ritual of

washing the land off any “whiteness” or the white claim to the land. By desecrating the grave it is

as though the land is spitting the dead white man out and refusing to house him meaning he does

not belong to the land, meaning that he does not belong to Africa and he does not belong to

Zimbabwe.

When watching the documentary one cannot help but think of the text Beyond Tears by Catherine

Buckle in which, in Buckle’s own words, “is a sequel [to African Tears] and an eye-witness

account of Zimbabwe’s descent into total collapse and famine ... and outlines the systematic

destruction of Zimbabwe by a government determined to retain power, revealing some of the

horrors other farmers have endured and their desperate struggle to keep growing food for the

country.” (Pilossof, The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Land, Race and Belonging in the Memoirs

of White Zimbabweans 2009)

Mike Campbell notes that, the country, because of the Land reform is going back to subsistence

farming where the black farmer is only trying to produce enough for his family and on a bad year

he cannot even do that. This is in turn economically destabilising and means that the people in

the towns are not being fed, so there is the idea that the people are hungry. For the white man,

business wise, the land reform was their undoing. Olive and Dave, after having their house burnt

down, end up in a home at Greenway. They have lost everything including their pension and what

they thought would be their children’s inheritance.

33
In support of Mike Campbell, Zamchiya notes that “Land reform in Zimbabwe has failed to reduce

rural poverty. Ownership is no longer dominated by white farmers but by an elite group of ZANU-

PF loyalist, reflecting the "Zanuisation" of land ownership. Under Fast Track reforms, 178 well-

connected blacks received farms larger than 150,000 hectares and 50 black land owners secured

more than one farm.' The liberation-war slogan of ‘one man, one farm’ is a distant memory”

(Zamchiya 2007:78-81). It is suggested that although land has changed hands from white to black

people, the peasants have not had their livelohood improved by their acquiring of land as they are

unable to produce. Also the reform although potrayed as a national reform, it is proving to be

justs a politically beneficial program whereby Zanu PF ‘cronies’ as noted by Mavedzenge

(Nzwamba:2010) are the main beneficiaries, although he denies that they are the main

beneficiaries he does deny their existance. Definining ‘cronies’ as ‘t h o s e with access to elite

connections and benefiting from political patronage’ (Scoones 2010), one cannot help but note

how difficult it may be to see who the political cronies are. However there are certain groups

that easily fall under this category although some individuals might not be a part of this group

such as war veterans whose history and part in the liberation could possible make them

inffluential as the ‘fathers’ of the nation and businessman whose money can make them influencial

in the party. Ian Scones(2010) points out that Business People for instance occupies 4.8% of Land

in total while war veterans occupied they were recorded as occupying 8.8% of all households

across Masvingo. While accuracy on this issue might be difficult to achieve one is inclined to

believe that the evidence given in this argument make the very low number of proposed ‘cronies’

inconsiquential and insignificant.

In support of Mike Campbell’s assessment, is an article from Reliefweb (2005), in which the

President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe admitted that the land reform was to blame for food

34
shortages, he “told a conference of his ruling ZANU PF party that lack of proper planning in the

land reform exercise, corruption, lawlessness on farms and vandalism of irrigation equipment and

infrastructure, coupled with shortages of fertilizer and seed had exacerbated the effects of poor

w e a t h e r ” (Web). Although Campbell does not assess the other problems faced at the time of the

FTLRP one cannot deny, at the face of such overwhelming evidence, that the problems faced by

Zimbabwe: of food shortages where exacerbated by the FTLRP.

For the white farmers the concerns and grievances of the black people which they sought to

address with the Land Reform was somewhat not justification enough to have the FTLRP. For them,

the idea that the black people are more African than the white people is invalid. The documentary

traces the history of the white commercial farmers through generations. They trace their existence

in Africa as far back as the 1890s and validate their “Africanness” through their contribution to

Zimbabwean and African development since that time. When interviewing Jake and Hardy, the

reference made to the protest made by the black invaders is misconstrued and presented in a

negative light as a kind of gibberish and thus swept aside as unimportant and mere cruelty by the

black people. The rest of the case of fertile land being primarily owned by white people is

dismissed as propaganda by the ruling party and a lie. They claim the white people by 2000 owned

only about twenty percent of land.

Pace traces her origins in Africa through four generations and even gets to a point of being in

tears during her interview while she repeatedly asserts that she is African and that it is her home

which is why she has not left Africa. The idea of a white man in Zimbabwe points one to the title

of the documentary film, “Zimbabwe White farmers”. What Pace is therefore, insinuating is that

35
one can be African despite his or her skin colour. In this case the white characters engage in what

Nathaniel Manheru (2012) a Herald reporter, called preposterous behaviour. The interviewee’s

dares, as Manheru sees it, to assert his or her rootedness against the roots of a black African and

Zimbabwean, who has no other roots but those in Africa, who has no other continent to come from

while the white man on the hand comes from another continent altogether and if he chooses, can

go back. In my view to do so is to challenge the very notion of a boarder, it is to declare that one

can belong where they want to at any point and time. This in turn challenges the very notions of

nationalism which are ideas that build a nation, give identity (no matter how fluid) and give a

sense of belonging and connectedness to the nation calling one to even fight and die for that

nation. After all, he goes on to ask, does a pig proclaim its pig-ness or “does it just wallow the

m u d ” (Manheru).

One tends to feel, however, that the documentary, for a better understanding of land issues,

should have considered the history of land issues in the now Zimbabwe seeing as though the

problem is nothing new. This, together with the absence of documentation of other party’s

grievances on the matter like the black farm workers is a matter of concern. It does not

acknowledge the importance of land to the black original occupants of what is now called

Zimbabwe. The mention of the former black farm workers is a very brief one that talks about how

they cannot take care of themselves anymore. Yet there were options presented by the government

to relocate them and compensate farm workers. Mugabe (R. G. Mugabe:2008) says “farm workers

by the way, were to be given three choices; they could remain on the farm under the new owner

and continue working on the a farm, (ii) if they were alien as most of them were from Mozambique

and Zambia, they could chose to go home in which case we would discuss the package that they

36
deserved, (iii) they could decide to leave the farm and go elsewhere and if they wanted they could

be resettled.” In fact in an article Matema comments that “Resettlement of former farm workers

was done by the Government of Zimbabwe in order to promote sustainable local economic

development and livelihoods. Prior to resettlement these former farm workers were living in

p o v e r t y c h a r a c t e r i z e d b y p o o r w a g e s p a i d b y w h i t e f a r m e r s ” (Matema)

Rutherford (2003), however, alludes to the fact that, “The farms were home to foreigners from

other neighbouring countries who had sought employment in colonial Southern Rhodesia. In other

words, the farm represents a place of support and care for farm workers; a place which is taken

away by war vets and the haphazard ‘fast-track’ resettlement e x e r c i s e ” (Sunday news ) . None of

these factors about farm workers were discussed, despite the close living proximity of the two

classes and the fact that they depended on each other for survival.

2.5 Conclusion

To sum it all up, the FTLRP from white Zimbabweans’ point of view was politically motivated

racism instigated by political leaders who sought gain popular political support. The process was

one characterised by violence, dispossession and was the very undoing of the white man. It was a

program that ran the economy to the ground and caused its eventual collapse in 2008. For the

Caucasian race in Zimbabwe, it meant that they were unfairly stripped off all their hard work that

they had put in since their move to Africa. The FTLRP was a bid to reverse the colonial effect and

yet for the white people like Ruth Pace, it meant being erased from history, “Identities

obliterated” or rubbed off.

37
 Chapter Three

3.1. Introduction

Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field (2010) is an attempt by

Nzwamba to try and tell the other side of the tale. Taking advice from Achebe that, “until the

lions have their own historians, the history of the hunt will always glorify the hunter”, Nzwamba

tries to give a voice to the Zimbabwean to tell his own tale. This is the same notion that African

cinema has been trying to propel. “The cinema of sub-Saharan Africa began to emerge in the early

1960s, at the height of the process of decolonisation. During the colonial era, cinematic images of

Africa had been dominated by countless jungle epics, from the Tarzan series to The African Queen

(1951) and the various adaptations of H. Rider Haggard's deeply racist 1885 novel, King

Solomon's Mine, “it came as no surprise that African filmmaker set out to counter such demeaning

a n d c a r i c a t u r e r e p r e s e n t a t i o n s o f A f r i c a ” (Murphy).

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Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Myths and Realities Voices from the Field by Nzwamba is an example of

African filmmakers trying to set the record straight about a widely and negatively reported issue

in media. The research and original text were however, written by Ian Scoones, a non-African

researcher who is a fellow professor at the University of Sussex with the help of Nelson

Marongwe, Blasio Mavedzenge, Jacob Mahenehene, Felix Murimbarimba and Chrispen Sukume.

The main purpose of the documentary is to shed light on the land reform “truths”. It is a response

to all the negative publicity that Zimbabwe and its FTLRP have received since its genesis in 2000.

The very title of the documentary presupposes that the documentary is free from bias giving off

the idea that the producer is aware of the “myths and realities” surrounding the land reform. The

documenters set themselves up as an authentic voice. One wonders to what extent they will be able

to uphold the audience’s expectations.

The documentary concentrates on the Masvingo province. What is most interesting about the

location of the documentary is that Masvingo province is considered a stronghold of ZANU-PF, the

ruling party. In the parliamentary elections of 2005, ZANU-PF won all but one district of the

fourteen seats. For the March 2008 elections, the seven districts were redistributed into twenty-

six constituencies. This makes one think that perhaps most of the residents of Masvingo province

believe in similar ideologies especially since it seems the party that perpetuates this ideology is

the one that was behind the FTLRP in 2000. One tends to question the objectivity of people from

this province.

39
Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field (2010) focuses on how the

FTLRP affected the lives of those who acquired land. The main research question is “what

h a p p e n e d t o p e o p l e ’ s l i v e l i h o o d s o n c e t h e y g o t l a n d t h r o u g h t h e F T L R P ? ” (Nzwamba, Zimbabwe’s Land

Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field) .

Chapter three will give a brief summary of the documentary and aims mainly to examine

Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field it will analyse the depiction

of the Land Reform in the documentary.

3.2. Summary

The documentary is basically a series of interviews of the new farmers mainly featuring the

narrator Blasio Mavedzenge(an investigator for the Zimbabwe Department of Agriculture and was also

working with Scoones for this documentary), and the farmers including Mrs Dauramanzi, Mr and Mrs

Chidhangure, Mr Kodongwe, Mr R. Mazando, Mrs J Musiiwa, Mr Nago and Mr Rwafa. Each of these

farmers gives an account of their experiences as new farmers that benefited from the FTLRP. They

relate how they have managed and developed as the new farmers since the time that they acquired

land.

3.3. Analysis of Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field :

The title of the documentary sets the purpose of the documentary, that is, to reveal the myths and

realities of the nature of the land reform. Nzwamba’s documentary film uses film-devices to

40
create the intended message. These devices alongside the context are the message. While we might

argue that theories of film that presuppose that media is all powerful and can control the way

people act and behave as in the magic bullet theory of mass media, we however, cannot deny that

what one views in the media has an effect or impact on the agenda for that period.

To open his paper on agenda setting, McCombs (2005) comments:

The power of the news media to set a nation’s agenda, to focus public attention on a few key

public issues, is an immense and well-documented influence. Not only do people acquire factual

information about public affairs from the news media, readers and viewers also learn how much

i m p o r t a n c e t o a t t a c h t o a t o p i c o n t h e b a s i s o f t h e e m p h a s i s p l a c e d o n i t i n t h e n e w s (M. McCombs).

Documentaries work on the idea that they present reality. The term “ actuality” is used to refer to

raw film footage of real life events, places and people contrasting the popular fictional films

which use actors, scripted stories and artificial sets. Documentaries are however, not completely

actuality films; rather they combine actuality with explanation, commentary, and perhaps even

some dramatization. In this case, the documentary is made up of a series of interviews. Therefore,

the interviewee’s opinion of what is reality. The reality of an interview being someone’s opinion

brings to light the possibility of a faltered or altered interview because of the ones ideology.

Voice-overs are used in non-fiction films to give an impression that the information is exact and

faithful. Luyken (1991: 80) described a voice-over as:

41
 The faithful translation of original speech, approximately synchronous delivery, used only in the

context of monologs such as an interview response or a series of responses from a single

interviewee. The original sound is either reduced entirely or to a low level of audibility. A

common practice is to allow the subsequently reduced . . . so that the translated speech takes over

. . . alternatively, if the translation is recorded as part of the original production, it may follow

the original speech exactly (Lukyen in Orero:2006:2).

The film uses a voice over for the film maker to speak to the audience. The voice over is similar

to the more textual omnipresent third person narrator. The voiceover gives necessary information

to the audience, offering information and or explanations. Although this allows for an acceptable

amount of intrusion by the filmmaker as narrator, we run a risk of a biased narrator keen on

perpetuating his ideas and interfering with the art. In this case, it is clear that the narrator seems

to be trying to give an account that depicts the negative media on the FTLRP as being biased,

unbalanced and without adequate research. Mavedzenge, in this case seems to be more pro-land

reform and pro-African owned farms. The narrator claims his objectivity through using the

narrator who claims to have conducted extensive research. He details his account with the use of

statistics to give his audience confidence in his objectivity. In the case of the documentary, the

voice over narrates and gives direction in the documentary. Like a narrator of a story, it takes us

through the film. The voice, together with the constant use of an overhead camera angle, for

instance, the scene with Mr. Nago, the camera gets an overview of the scene. Looking at the field

that is ever green gives one the impression of an omnipresent overseer narrating the film. This

style claims objectivity of a narrator who sees and knows it all. The camera angle also in turn

makes the audience trust the documentary although one might ask oneself how objective a single

42
narrator can be and perhaps even question why the narrator only seems to be reporting successful

farmers. The question becomes, ‘are all farmers in the Masvingo province who benefited from the

FTLRP successful and better than their predecessors?’

Sound in film is like form in a literary text. It is meant to assist the words and actions in telling

the story of a narrative, documentary, or commercial film or television program. Sound can

adequately tell the story directly, without assistance, or it can indirectly boost the film. The

sound in film is mostly meant to assimilate various elements together and carefully and subtle

make sure it does not draw attention to itself

Glover (2009:1) goes even deeper to connecting sound track to the history of literature as orature

in folk takes. She hypothesises that music plus storytelling, old methods of communication and

teaching, generally employed tempo to structure their dispatch and arrest the focus of their

spectators so as to easily and effectively send a message which could otherwise be a lesson. Film

serves a similar purpose of traditional fairy tales, folk songs, or other oral storytelling

traditions, but with the ability “to combine multiple stimuli into a single and powerful entity”.

She says music, is often a misunderstood element in documentary films, yet it can play a vital

role in a film’s overall success.

Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Myths and Realities has a complex progressive use of music. It begins

with a traditional music instrumented by the drum and the clapping of hands by women. This music

gives off the impression that the documentary is the people’s project and they are standing behind

it. One also gets the idea that even the FTLRP was a people’s endeavour that they not only

supported but were starving for. This gives the idea that the land reform was being led by the

people. It is interesting that in an article the vice president of Zimbabwe Dr Mnangagwa is

43
reported to have said that the ruling party and the government supported the program. “Those with

multiple farms, we will take them, the few whites on farms, we will look into that and those with

b i g f a r m s , w e w i l l c u t t o s i z e , ” (MATENGA and Charumbira).

Music goes on to alternate to a more contemporary Zimbabwean sound. One gets the feeling that

the music is not necessarily alternating but is be progressive. The first sound track is traditional

in relation to the subject matter. One gets the feeling that land is being traced through the music

from the pre-colonial epoch via the music at the time. One cannot help but juxtapose the story

told by the music with the history of land in the now Zimbabwe. The land is taken in the pre-

colonial and is promised to the masses after independence. The real independence comes in 2000

in the FTLRP as the real fight for freedom is redefined by Land Hunger who says the real fight

was for Land. The last sound track is one that concludes the documentary. “angeke basiqamule”

(meaning they will not break us apart) are the lyrics of the last sound track (Nzwamba:2010). The

song declares that they shall not break us. It is no doubt a response to the discourse that has been

spread on the Land reform.

This also makes one consider who Nzwamba’s audience is. Who is this “they” that will not break

whoever “us” maybe. The documentary is a response to the allegation of violence and plunders as

presented in the media. The documentary is meant to respond to such press as those that were

presented in the video when the documentary began like the one in The Independent in 2001. The

paper is headlined Fresh Zimbabwe Farm Invasion Despite Land deal by Basildon Peta in Harare

(Nzwamba, Zimbawe's Land Reform Myths and Realities Voices From the Field) . T h e a r t i c l e d e s c r i b e s a m i l i t a n t

invasion of land that seems to be characterised by violence and barbarism by the invaders

44
themselves. The article points to the burning down of workers homes amongst other violent

activities. The audience is not only local Zimbabweans but it is also international which is why

the interviewee’s respond in their ethnic Shona mother tongue and yet the film maker still goes

through the pains to translate and have subtitles in English. The traditional music also has the

same effect. It indigenises the documentary.

The sound track also brings out a sense of identity in the documentary. The documentary is a

representation of the black people that benefited from the Land Reform by gaining land and

therefore their livelihoods. Identity as defined in a thesis by Magosongwe (2013), is a “noun that

means who or what somebody or something is”. It suggests that identity is being sure of one’s

place in society. It further describes identity as the features, dogmas that differentiate people: “a

sense of national/cultural/personal/group identity; the state or feeling of being very similar to

and able to understand somebody or something” (Magosvongwe:2013). This idea is further

perpetuated by the act of refusing to migrate to a first world country by Mr. Rwafa and an

inability to live in the UK by Mr. Nago.

In both cases their identity as farmers seems to stop them from relocation or migration. One

questions whether as in the case of Mr. Nago, the U.K has no farms. The question is adequately

answered by the text Harare North by Brian Chikwavha (2009), were in the case of the narrator,

space does not allow him and his fellow Zimbabweans in London to live as they would like. As a

matter of fact, space is a problem as the narrator cohabits at first with Sekai and his cousin Paul

who cannot accommodate him for long because the cost of living is very high and this breaks

family bonds and structures. In the Shona set up, there is no such thing as “extended family”. For

45
instance, one’s mother’s brother is ones mother and ones father’s sister is ones father instead of

the British aunt and because of such family structures, it is not unheard of for one to find a large

family consisting of what could be characterised as an extended family living in the same

homestead.

When the narrator of Harare North leaves Sekai’s home, he ends up squatting with Shingi. Overall,

one notes that Harare North, which is a representation of the diaspora, has no room for

foreigners, let alone for them to farm. They are only good for menial, low paying jobs. One

therefore, feels that the identity of the characters in not just in their names or ethnicity, but it is

in the land, that is, geography which in the Shona culture is viewed as the “hallmark of African

existence” (Magosongwe 2013). It is the only sure thing that has kept African families linked

trans-generationally.

The documentary has been accused of being a project for the ruling party in Zimbabwe with

accusations stating that Ian Scoones was just the face of a project otherwise done by Zanu P.F and

the rest of the researchers were a part of the Zanu PF party and so their research findings were

compromised as they might have simply been perpetuating their party political discourse. This is

because they do not seem to critic the FTLRP at all and for some it seems obvious that program

was not without faults.

3.4. FTLRP in Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field:

The FTLRP seems to be defined by the documentary as a continuation of the liberation struggle.

According to an interview of a character named Land Hunger, the liberation struggle was about

46
land which was not won along with the independence in 1980 and was only won upon the

continuation of the struggle in the year 2000. The land redistribution schemes have been called

the ‘Third Chimurenga’ or ‘Jambanja’ by some scholars like Magosongwe, R.

Another term for the land reform in 2000 was “Jambanja” which means violence or fighting. The

documentary briefly mentions at the beginning that the land reform was characterised by violence.

The issue is only mentioned briefly but seems to be an aside. It is only brought up in the abstract

through the voice over and a couple of headlines in the newspaper. It seems far off and not a part

of a reality because it has, unlike other issues, no illustration or video. The idea of violence

remains a myth in this documentary as there is no proof but for newspapers which have been said

to be unbalanced.

FTLRP has, according to Nzwamba, led to an agrarian structure where people move from different

professions like cobbler or engineer to being farmers. The idea that is created is that in

Zimbabwe, people wanted to be farmers yet they had no opportunity to do so. The agrarian

structure that one finds as result creates the impression that the land reform restructured the

structure of the country and corrected the wrongs done by the coming of the white man as

suggested by Mr. Rwafa also known as Land Hunger. One gets the feeling that being agrarian is

part of who these people are, as they all yearn for the opportunity and when they get chance they

become successful farmers.

Development seems to be a direct result of the Land reform, for instance, in Mrs. Mazando’s case.

She makes reference to her progress as she acquires more cattle and develops her farm, repairing

47
the broken and dilapidated infrastructure like the fences and the building of houses amongst other

things. In an analysis the narrator alludes to an average of $2000 (U.S) being invested into each

homestead.

Alongside development comes the empowerment of the individual’s growth or empowerment. Mrs.

Musiiwa relates on her vegetable garden and she manages to take care of her family; pay school

fees for the children, buy groceries and maintain the pigs they keep. Mr. Kondongwe is another

farmer who claims to have developed and opened some kind of workshop. The farmers talk about

how they acquire tractors, livestock, and cars amongst other things.

The FTLRP is presented as an organized program with structure. Mr. Kadongwe speaks of one Cde

Mudzingwa who seemed to be a coordinator of the reform and resettlement in their area. The

impression he gives is of a certain structure of how the reform took course. Mrs. Musiiwa presents

a FTLRP that had an organization that pushed and ensured its undertaking, being led by former

war veterans like cde Machawira and cde Simbi.

The presentation of the FTLRP is that of a non-political issue. The program, although formally

accused of being dominated by political cronies is shown to be dominated by ordinary people most

of whom are civil servants or people from a lower class of society. The problem with this

assessment is that while conducting the research, the interviewer did not ask the interviewee’s

political affiliation. It seems to have been a program fuelled by the grievances of the black

people’s thirst for land instead of any greed on the part of the leaders or the beneficiaries of the

land reform in 2000.

48
A deficiency in support of the land reform in spite of the dedication of the new farmers is a

recurring theme in the film. The government or the banks do not support the new farmers. The

government fails to support by not giving money, grants or even better roads for the farmers to

operate better, for instance, Mr. Nago asserts that the banks’ will not loan money to black

farmers because they still feel that they are a high risk people. Thus, its failures seem to be in

that case race related. In some cases, it even goes as far as trying to resist and acknowledge

certain settlements as a part of the FTLRP as in the case of Mr. Chidhagure of Uswaushava a

former illegal resettlement that the government was refusing to acknowledge as part of the FTLRP.

The FTLRP according to the documentary seems to have been a non-gendered program with both

men and women taking charge of the farming and contributing in the development of the

homestead. However, it is curious to note that before independence in 1980, most farm workers

were either foreign men or the Zimbabwean women. This was mainly because Zimbabwean men

preferred to work in jobs such as mining while the foreigners such as Zambians and Malawians

amongst other groups of men came into Zimbabwe to provide much needed manual farm labour.

Even when the men went into towns to work in factories their women would remain behind to work

on the farm. The reason for this was the socialisation of the colonial period where women’s labour

was worth less than that of a man. As a matter of fact the towns were not built to accommodate

the native woman, which is the reason why in Without a Name by Yvonne Vera (1994), Mazvita

cannot live in the towns. In fact, she cannot survive unless she is a prostitute, which is what Joe

makes her, despite her denial and her pride. The moment she threatens to be something more thing

to satisfy him sexually he throws her out. These social dynamics are what informed Babamkuru

49
and Tambu’s father in Dangarembga’s Nervous Conditions that Nhamo should get an education

instead of Tambudzai hence; her father will ask her if she can cook books and feed them to her

husband.

In the case of the documentary, it seems that without the colonial element women and men become

equal. Nevertheless, one tends to wonder how true that is, if the process is that simple. Upon

close scrutiny, one finds that in some instances the women seem to be the ones who perform the

manual labour; an example is the case of Mrs. J Musiiwa, who, although initially introduced with

her husband tells the audience that she does the farming, “Here I farm sweet potatoes”. This

account ignores the husband and only shows the wife as being active. Therefore, one cannot deny

the strides that have been made towards gender equality. For instance, some women actually seem

to own their farms and businesses without having husbands. An example of such a woman in the

documentary is Mrs. Mazando, a cattle rancher and an entrepreneur, owning a shop and butchery.

While the documentary claims to be aiming for a balanced approach to the land reform program

and of both its myths and realities, it seems that all the atrocities committed in the name of the

Land Reform remain just but a myth. While the narrator in a voice over claims that the FTLRP was

endowed with success and failure, the successes are brought to light while the failures remain a

myth. In that light, one would have expected a more critical appraisal of what this new agrarian

structure means to the development of the country’s economy going forward.

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 3.5. Conclusion:

Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Myths and Realities Voices from the Field is a more positive outlook of

the FTLRP. It is painted as a people’s program, initiated, led and even enjoyed by the general

population instead of politicians and the government. All the negatives associated with the

program are peripheral issues while the success of the reform is a factor not to be ignored and

makes up the big picture.

Chapter four

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 4.1. Introduction

The previous two chapters have made separate analysis of Godsell and Nzwamba’s documentaries

and concluded that each documentary represented a politically and ideologically motivated agenda

against and for the Zimbabwean ruling establishment, respectively. This chapter is a comparative

analysis of the two documentaries. It focuses on the examination of important themes in the

documentary films and contrasts each theme as brought out by the two documentaries.

4.2. Themes

Politics

The FTLRP was carried out on the year of elections in 2000, making it a year when political

parties had to impress upon the people that they were the best candidates to lead and that they

had the best policies to lead. The intensity of the program makes it important to discuss the

political implications of the reform. The reform has been presented in both documentaries under a

different light when it comes to the political nature of the problem. Zimbabwe White Farmers

shows the FTLRP as being a part of a political scheme to hold on to power while the second

documentary Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Myths and Realities voices from the Field does not discuss

this background, as a matter of fact, no reference is made to the power politics dynamics of the

program.

There are two main schools of thought in regards to the FTLRP being a political tool to gain

power for the ruling party in Zimbabwe. One school of thought which believes this to be true is

presented in a report by Research and Advocacy Unit (RAU) showing that from the 1990’s Zanu PF

52
was losing its power with discontent from workers and general population over failed policies and

mismanagement. However, regardless of the economic and social deficiencies and weaknesses, “the

election results of 2000, 2002, 2005 and council elections show that “land reform” in Zimbabwe

was highly successful as an instrument for the mobilization of electoral support in favour of

Z A N U P F , a n d s u p p r e s s i o n o f s u p p o r t f o r t h e o p p o s i t i o n ” (Research and Advocacy Unit ) . T h i s s c h o o l o f

thought is presented by Ben Freeth in Zimbabwe White Farmers.

On the other hand, others argue that the FTLRP was not a stunt to hold on to power but it was

what was agreed upon at Lancaster house, it was what the liberation struggle was about despite

the slow rate that the reform took between 1980 and 2000. It had to be done as a part of the

decolonisation p r o c e s s (Institute Zimbabwe) . Chitsike (2003) goes on to say the issue of access to

land was therefore, a major rallying point that led to the war of liberation.

The differences in “reality” boil down to a matter of ideology as it has been proven beyond

reasonable doubt that in Zimbabwe land is a political matter, as those who have it and control it

have held the power since the 1890’s. The idea of giving land back to its people was initially

presented as giving back power to its rightful owners. “The colonial city starkly inaugurated the

spatial politics of dispossession, displacement and exclusion that has (within the changed

dynamics of state power) maintained the same logic and come to shape the postcolonial city”

(Muchemwa 2013).

The politics at play in the FTLRP are the politics of belonging. The politics has used the

aesthetics of identity which have been defined by the ideas of nationalism whose guidelines seem

53
to have sanctioned that if one is not as nationalist, as the ruling party deems nationalist or

African enough, then they should be frowned upon or excluded if necessary because they are seen

as a sell-out. Sell-out politics is explained by Timothy Scarnecchia (2012) as the politics of

belonging and the idea of belonging itself being one that is flaccid in nature. What and who

belongs today as portrayed by Ranger might not belong tomorrow, hence, the white Zimbabwean

with whom the ruling party reconciled with as per the independence speech by Mugabe(1980) has

in 2000, a debt to pay historically (Mugabe 2010). In Marechera‘s writing, those who cannot

imagine the city differently from its official imagining live in someone else‘s description of it.

Race

The land question in what is now Zimbabwe has always been a conflict between two dominant

races, black and white. The genesis of the problem was European settler occupation of Zimbabwe

in September 1890 when blacks were taken off their land. Bearing this in mind, it is interesting

that the documentaries do not seem to recognise the other race involved in the FTLRP. Nzwamba

does not mention the race issue; in fact, there are no representatives of the white race in the

whole documentary. Perhaps for Nzwamba’s documentary, racism might not be an issue in the Land

reform program and this could explain why they do not talk about that aspect of the reform.

Another possible reason for this could be that the land reform is racial, having been so since the

coming of Rhodes. One (in this case the researchers Mavedzenge among others) is inclined to

defend his or her people on the land issue well explained by the racial nature of the land reform.

In Zimbabwean White Farmers, although there is mention of the other race, it is worrying that

they are viewed only as workers, driving tractors or in the field. They have no voice. One would

54
have hoped that they comment on the situation and the audience hears from them what they think

of the reform and the effect it might have on them as farm workers, working for white people. The

rest of the black people are referred to only as “they” and thus, remaining intangible and without

a face. One would have thought that even a picture of the “they” talked of would suffice as the

whole story might as well be made up without proof of interviews or the daring picture.

In Nzwamba’s documentary, the FTLRP is not particularly a reform characterised by black and

white. Yet for Ed Godsell, racism is the primary root and is one of the main themes of the FTLRP

and consequently the main theme of the documentary. This is why Campbell believes there is a

faction that says, “They don’t want to see a white face between Plumtree and Mutare”.

It is said that “the current redistribution of land has had a significant impact on general equity in

t e r m s o f a c c e s s t o l a n d ; e s p e c i a l l y a l o n g . . . r a c e , ” (Institute Zimbabwe) . O n e i s i n c l i n e d t o a g r e e

with Nelson Morongwe who suggests that subjugation and a sequence of overbearing law making is

affected by a racially discriminatory settlement pattern (Murongwe 2003:156). In fact at a speech

at Rhodes House Bannet concurs with Murongwe’s line of thought and comments that “The rhetoric

of land reform and the constant harping about race and inequality was another smokescreen”

(Bannet 2012:7-8). For Zimbabwe’s Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the Field, race

is not the cause of the reform but it is the reason why it could fail as monetary institutions will

not help the new farmers based on their race (Nzwamba 2010).

Violence

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In Zimbabwe violence can be traced to the pre-colonial epoch as something that accompanied a

slight change in administration, for instance, the arrival of the Ndebele from the south followed a

couple of violent incidents with the Shona. The colonial era was branded with violence in the

1890’s that allowed colonial domination of the British administrators’. Roy Bannet (2012) traces

the violence of land Reform from the beginning of the colonial times. He states that, “there can

be no denying the arrogance, exploitation, violence and humiliations that accompanied much of

white rule in Rhodesia. Land was stolen, people were brutalized, basic human rights were denied

a n d t h e s y s t e m w a s r i g g e d t o p r o m o t e t h e i n t e r e s t s o f a m i n o r i t y ” (Bannet) .

Conceivably, another exemplary instance would be the second Imfazwe/Chimurenga which led to

the Lancaster House negotiations and the liberation of Zimbabwe in 1980. Post-colonial Zimbabwe

also had similar circumstances. With violence in the Matebeleland and midlands areas leading to

t h e u n i t y a c c o r d o r v i o l e n c e i n t h e 2 0 0 0 ’ s b e i n g c h a r a c t e r i s t i c o f t h e F T L R P i n 2 0 0 0 ( Understanding

Fast Track Land Reforms in Zimbabwe) .

As a matter of fact, it is interesting how Dambudzo Marechera in Mindblast illustrates Harare and

by extension, Zimbabwe. He represents Harare as nothing but a reincarnation of its colonial self

with nothing changed but its name. “The white settlers had created it as a frontier town for gold

and lust, lurid adventures and ruthless rule. The black inheritors had not changed that . . . just

the name. From sin-city Salisbury to hotbed melting pot Harare” [as quoted in (Muchemwa)] .

Muchemwa examines colonial Rhodesia and notes that “The political imagination that mapped the

colonial city was undergirded by violence, as is shown especially in literary texts that deal with

the colonial urban experience in a racially divided city (ibid). Interestingly enough, one feels

56
that the post-colonial Zimbabwe as pointed out by Marechera carries on the legacy and tradition

of its colonial overseers and thus continues to imagine the political city through violence. This

aspect of the post-colonial Zimbabwe is seen in the text Harare North in those instances where

the setting is in Harare and the state unleashes violence on its own citizens of which the narrator

is a part of before his departure as a member of the green bombers.

Nzwamba opens his film with newspaper articles and a comment by Blasio that a negative image of

violence, chaos and destruction has been dominant in press coverage. Violence in this text is an

intangible theme that has been mentioned by others and is wittily enough not worth mentioning in

a documentary that claims to bring to light the myths and realities of the FTLRP. It seems like

ingenuity on the part of the producers of the documentary film as they have seemingly ignored an

aspect of the Land reform.

The other documentary film, Zimbabwe White Farmers, however, narrates examples of physical,

mental and emotional abuse. Rice gives account of the desecration of her grandfather’s grave, the

arrest of her seventy year old mother and as a part of the prologue, Ed Godsell gives account of

Campbell and Ben being abducted and taken to a pungwe where they were assaulted. This is an

important aspect of the reform. For these characters, the reform was a series of emotional,

mental and physical violations. Lauretta Ngcobo’s And They Didn’t Die (1999) stages the violence

of African land dispossession and disarticulations in some parts of South Africa to defend white

c o m f o r t s a n d s a f e t i e s (Magosongwe).

57
In this regard, one would have to say that violence is a recurrent motif of the documentary and of

the reform as well as any other reform.

Development

Development can be defined easily as a positive growth. Considering that different entities,

groups or organizations have different goals to reach, one would also suspect that development

could thus mean different things, meaning development can be defined as a growth directed toward

a c h i e v i n g t h e g o a l s o f a n e n t i t y (What Is Development).

Both narratives present the same program, FTLRP, yet in one narrative ( Zimbabwe White Farmers)

it is completely destructive and in another (Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Myths and Realities voices

from the Field) it is empowering and developmental. The most puzzling of all things is that both

narratives claim to be documentaries and they are filming realities. One cannot doubt that the

economy is turning more towards agriculture for the nation and for individuals. In Zimbabwe

White Farmers, Campbell who is also a successful white farmer in Zimbabwe says the farming in

the country has become increasingly subsistence farming, therefore, making it a problem to feed

the cities.

It is important to assess the development or growth of the reform on a goal based scale. For

instance, the FTLRP was meant to give land back to the black people as the “native" owners of the

land as a way of liberating and giving them identity as well as to boost their livelihoods from an

economic standpoint. By the year 2009, 10.8 million hectares (ha) of land for the resettlement

58
program out of a total of 12.3 million ha of commercial land had been reallocated by way of the

program ( Understanding Fast Track Land Reforms in Zimbabwe 2012).

Significantly, accompanied by this change in ownership, Zimbabwe has lost its claim to its title

and position as the “bread basket” to being what was referred to as the “basket case” with

agricultural output dropping while imports increase (Dabale , Prof Jagero and Chiringa ) . However,

agriculture explains about 30 percent of Africa’s GDP (gross domestic product) and 75 percent of

total employment according the World Bank statistics in 2007. Accordingly, agricultural

performance regulates Africa’s economic performance, meaning that, the lowering of agricultural

produce inadvertently affected the economy of Zimbabwe. Interestingly, ‘The Chronicle’ points

o u t t h a t a g r i c u l t u r a l p r o d u c t i o n h a d b e e n d e c l i n i n g f i v e y e a r s p r i o r t o t h e F T L R P (Bwoni) a n d i n

fact goes on to point out that although productivity dropped by over eight percent, it has since

increased by over five percent.

In Zimbabwe White Farmers, Ed Godsell portrays the land reform as a failure to society, exposing

the government of Zimbabwe and its government of committing humanitarian crimes against

Caucasian people living in Zimbabwe. The presentation of the violence is a racist based violence.

In that regard, the FTLRP is not development. Instead, one feels that a fight against racist based

colonisation should not in turn enforce racism as a tool of progress as this basically means that

the colonised is no better than the coloniser as he proves to be a protégé of his former colonial

master. In the text, reports are made of harassment of white people that sometimes end in the

farmer giving up in one way or another.

Justice

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 For Rawls (1999:9), justice is “a complete conception defining principles for all the virtues of

the basic structure, together with their respective weights when they conflict”. Justice has also

been described by the Cambridge online dictionary as a noun meaning fairness. In Zimbabwe White

Farmers, Ed Godsell portrays white people as the victims of history. He presents characters such

as Ms. Price who see the reform as an unfair exercise and an infringement on their human rights.

Campbell actually gives an account to the audience, which informs the audience that he actually

bought his farm and for that reason he should not be harassed or have his farm taken from him.

All the characters give varied reasons why they feel it is unfair to have land taken from them,

these vary from; “they have become naturalised and African in their own right” to “they were

given lea way to purchase their farms by the government who declared their lack of interest as per

requirement. Basically, the white Zimbabwean farmer feels that since he bought the land or has

lived on it for so long, he has created a space for himself in Zimbabwe like he did in Rhodesia.

Although this could be considered fairness one feels that perhaps the white interviewee’s in the

film have had little consideration of the fact that the base creation of their space in Africa or

Zimbabwe was based on colonisation and the oppression of the African race.

Interestingly, in the Shona indigenous culture ideas of justice are slightly different. The Shona

culture bases ideas of justice on a form that concentrates more on the offended than on the

offender. This is different from the western style justice that is perpetrator oriented and

basically serves to punish the wrong doer. Restorative justice is a concept of justice that puts

emphases first, on the need to fix damages, repair any losses or harm stimulated by 'criminal'

behaviour, “of which politically motivated violence is a part. restorative justice requires

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cooperative and participatory efforts that involve both the offenders and the aggrieved with a

v i e w t o c o m p e n s a t e t h e v i c t i m . ” (Mawati, Gambaya and Mangena)

The FTLRP is without a doubt the transferring of land ownership from the white people also seen

as former settlers and former colonisers to the hands of the black people. In an interview with

CNN the president, Robert Mugabe, when asked if white people are not Zimbabweans, he responds

by saying that those born and naturalised in Zimbabwe are for that reason Zimbabweans. He,

h o w e v e r , g o e s o n t o s a y t h a t h i s t o r i c a l l y , t h e y h a v e a d e b t t o p a y . (R. G. Mugabe) T h i s i s t h e i d e a o f

restorative justice. The phenomenon that the black people will be repaid for the atrocities of the

colonial period or at least get back what they lost in this case land or what Mugabe would call a

historical debt to pay.

Both documentaries seem to bring out the importance of support from the government in terms of

teaching the new farmers a need brought out by Freeth who speaks on the importance of the kind

of knowledge that white people have to feed people and perhaps to teach them how to feed

themselves. Programs have since been placed to try and carter for this need such as a television

show for farmers Talking farming. Nzwamba’s documentary brings to one’s attention to the need

for financial support in order for the new farmers to be more effective. Mr Nago is one such

character who clearly brings this point out. He points out that banks will not financially assist

the resettled farmers as they are said to be a high risk.

4.3. Conclusion

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In 1948 the World Union of Documentaries revealed that documentaries are all ways and means of

“recording on celluloid” aspects of reality understood by genuine, honest and reasonable

reconstruction, in order to appeal to reason or, and passion, for the resolve of encouraging the

l o n g i n g f o r , a n d t h e b r o a d e n i n g o f t h e a u d i e n c e k n o w l e d g e a n d u n d e r s t a n d i n g . ( THE DOCUMENTARY

GENRE. APPROACH AND TYPES )

This definition brings into light the different motives of the two documentaries. They could be

made for any a number of reasons and this could explain why they take the form and structure that

they take. As discussed earlier, an illustration could be brought out from the documentary

Zimbabwe White Farmers. There is an indirect petition to the emotions and sentiments of the

audience to view the white people in Rhodesia as victims of history and racism in Zimbabwe. Ed

Godsell calls to the international community through Freeth (a character in the documentary) to

interfere and aid them or protect the whites from “harassment”.

On the other hand, Zimbabwe Land Reform Voices from the field calls mostly to reason as it

utilises a representation of selected “actualities”. Nzwamba seeks to rectify a long prevailing

idea or acceptable understanding of the FTLRP in Zimbabwe and globally. The main tool that is

used in fact seems to be a comparison of the newspaper versus the interviews and visual images

shown throughout the documentary. While there is no denial of the stories written in the papers,

the main thrust appears to be that there is more to this program, than has been said in the public

spheres.

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Documentaries rely on reality and actual events. This causes as problem and brings up the

question of truth in every documentary. One wonders, to what extent does one expect truth from

documentaries made by ideological beings, from different races when the issue in question is one

of race and ideology. In other words how trustworthy are documentaries? After a consideration of

both documentaries, it becomes apparent that certain things have been omitted and

underrepresented, therefore, making it clear that as a way of representing the realities of the

FTLRP in Zimbabwe the documentary genre is still strides away from doing justice.

However, one cannot deny that if a documentary is a representation of realities and Ranger, a

Zimbabwean historian makes reference to the different types of history, perhaps this could be the

different interpretations of the same reality as experienced by the same peoples. Although it is

possible that this could be projects meant to appeal to the audience to set the agenda and perhaps

influence the thinking of the audience who might even trust, as the magic bullet theory suggest,

the film to be completely truthful and objective.

Chapter Five

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 5.1. Introduction of the Chapter

This is the final chapter of the study. As a concluding chapter, it will make final observations

and the last evaluation of the study bearing in mind the main objectives as highlighted in the first

chapter and putting into account the topic of the study: A Comparative Analysis of the Depiction

of the “Fast Track Land Reform Program” in electronic media in the case of Ed Godsell and

Nzwamba.

5.2. Conclusion of the study

Firstly, we can safely conclude that there is no absolute artistic truth in any of the two

documentaries as they both ---- two different sides of the same FTLRP. One gives an account of

the experiences of the white people which no doubt affects the way that the FTLRP is viewed

completely (Zimbabwe White Farmers), while the other represents the views of black people who

received land during the FTLRP(Zimbabwe Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices from the

Field). For both parties the FTLRP meant different things, therefore, when analysing both

documentaries one feels that Nzwamba takes an African centred perspective in understanding the

FTLRP as the documentary borders around the experience of the black man before the FTLRP. Ed

Godsell on the other hand, takes a Eurocentric perspective seeing as though he takes the view of

the former colonial settler which is why his documentary is actually called Zimbabwe White

farmers, meaning that it concentrates on the white people in Zimbabwe who are, as stated earlier,

colonial descendants.

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Therefore, the filmmakers use the documentary as a vehicle to carry their ideology in order to get

the audience thinking about the FTLRP from a certain perspective. While the audience might not

completely agree with the filmmaker, the filmmaker aims to give the audience something to ponder

on. This is the basic idea explained by the Agenda Setting Theory.

This dissertation set out to analyse the portrayal of the FTLRP in both documentaries. The main

themes that became apparent included the racist nature of the reform. Although this might not

have been on paper, the dissertation has provided abundant evidence that the FTLRP was racist by

virtue of the history of the land conflict in Zimbabwe being racist. Land ownership was

determined by which race one belongs to, for example, in the colonial era fertile land belonged to

the white man and post 2000 the FTLRP ensued that this process was reversed. Thus, fertile land

was given to the black people. This is the central theme brought out in Zimbabwe White Farmers

by Ed Godsell.

Although racism is not a theme in Nzwamba’s Zimbabwe Land Reform_Myths and Realities Voices

from the Field, a clear manipulation of the depiction of the land reform in order to depict it in a

positive light, it shows that it was developmental for individuals who benefited from the reform

by getting land as Ed Godsell shows that most of them started farming and providing food for

themselves and their families. What is disputed on, however, is the effect this reform had on the

rest of Zimbabwe a nation. Ed Godsell (2008) argues that Zimbabwe went from “bread basket to

being a basket case” while Nzwamba (2010) shows the FTLRP assisting not only the farmers but

shows the new farmer as doing better than the white commercial farmer, such as the case of Mr

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Nago, who claims to have cleared vast unused land and used it to farm sugar cane. He tells the

audience that the only thing he found on the farm was a watering system.

The FTLRP was characterised by violence and dispossession of the white man while it empowered

the black people. However, when it comes to the growth of the agricultural industry in Zimbabwe

one can safely say that since the reform in 2000 the agricultural production has increased

significantly despite the fact that it has not grown to its full capacity.

One feels that the FTLRP could have been carried out in a more organized and peaceful fashion as

this undermined the nobility of the process of transferring ownership of land from the white

commercial farmer to the black farmer.

The documentaries also bring out important issues of belonging and the naturalisation of the white

colonial settler. Belonging is an uncertain, unfixed idea; therefore the FTLRP did not take

account of the issues of identity which are fixed but cannot be taken into account when imagining

the nation. This conclusively means that the business of nation building is determined by the

nation imagined by the nation builder, which determines who belongs and who does not belong

while ignoring the stable definition of identity which can easily be determined by an identity card

and fortified by how many generations one has been in a place.

The FTLRP was consequently a necessary evil for the building of the nation and the

decolonisation of its people. Although characterised by violation and intimidation of the farm

owners as is typical of any land reform as far back as the Gracchi brothers’ land reform in the

second century BC in Rome.

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