For Mike and Angela Campbell, Ben and Laura Freeth's story is not simply about the plight of a white landowning family in Africa. It depicts more vividly than words can say the devastating decline of an entire country and its people at the hands of a megalomaniac and his lynch mobs. And it shows that even today, more than a year after a power-sharing agreement between President Mugabe and his former political rival Morgan Tsvangirai was meant to end the troubles, those lynch mobs are still going about their evil work.
The black workers at Mount Carmel were threatened with guns by the mobs, and told never to mix with white bosses again. Shaking with fear, they were dragged off to brutal, all-night political indoctrination classes to 'persuade' them of Mugabe's way of thinking.
A successful case brought by this brave family against the Zimbabwean government at an international human rights' court counted for nothing. The judges of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community in Namibia condemned Mugabe for racism, ruled he was in contempt of court, and said the land grabs from white farmers must halt.
Yet the words fell on deaf ears, and the dictator simply reiterated his view: 'The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans.' A document distributed soon afterwards by his cabinet promised that the evictions would continue. 'No foreigner should be allowed to own rural agricultural land in Zimbabwe,' it declared defiantly.
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