Hitler Hunzvi's 're-education' camps
As Robert Mugabe's 'war veterans' continue their violent occupation of
white-owned farms, and another farmer dies, black workers face a
terrifying
fate: incarceration inside Hitler Hunzvi's 're-education' camps, where
their
political allegiances are put to the test
By Mary Braid
9 May 2000
Even Chairman Mao, controller of the masses, master of revolution and
counter revolution, would be impressed with the cunning that has
emptied the farms near the small rural town of Concession, an hour's
drive north of Harare. Here, at five neighbouring farms, the scene is
the same. Behind the arboreal borders, vivid with pink and orange
petals in late autumn bloom, fertile fields, which a day before were
filled with workers and tractors, stand eerily silent.
In the compounds set aside by white farmers for their black workers,
the shacks and prefab houses are deserted except for old women
and tiny children who toddle around wondering where their parents
have gone. The little ones have already spent one night alone. The day
before, supporters of President Robert Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party
carted off their parents, along with hundreds of their fellow workers,
in stolen tractors and lorries to the nearby Gem Farm - where they
would undergo a process euphemistically referred to as "re-education".
Gem Farm's young white owner, a supporter of the new opposition
Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), has fled north to Mvurwi.
Meanwhile Mugabe's foot soldiers have transformed his farm into the
fourth "re-education" camp to be established in the area to the north
and north-east of Harare in the past few days. Mugabe's "correction"
of the rural poor has now begun.
The immediate cause of this mass disappearing act can be traced to
events at the end of last month. Then, Chenjerai "Hitler" Hunzvi (the
nickname is his own invention), the infamous leader of Zanu's "war
veterans", reached a so-called deal with white farmers, which
promised an end to months of violence if his followers could remain
squatting on their farms until a solution to Zimbabwe's land crisis was
found. But Hunzvi was lying. The violence, the beatings and
intimidations - aimed mainly at black farmworkers, despite the death at
the
weekend of a third white farmer - has continued and, if anything,
intensified.
The deal simply gave the "war veterans" - in reality, a mix of old
soldiers from Mugabe's liberation war, Zanu supporters and paid
young thugs - control over the farms, farmers and hundreds of
thousands of workers who had turned to the opposition, rejecting
Mugabe and his corrupt one-party state.
At Gem, 500 men, women and children are already assembled. The
set-up appears to be part boot-camp, complete with military-style drill.
I
visited one of the five nearby farms, where I met Peter, a white farm
manager, and his wife Elaine (not their real names). They were packing
up
their things behind an eight-foot spiked fence, the entrance gate
chained
and padlocked, while a voice on the farmers' radio network announced
that
yet another farm had been emptied of
workers. "Some of our labourers escaped from Gem during the night
and returned asking for money so they could run away," said Peter.
Money was given and the workers had gone, but Zanu thugs were
expected to return in the night to punish anyone who failed to attend
classes. Peter and Elaine have already met Zanu's "teachers". They
came to the farm demanding cows, beer and money; though they
were polite, their rubber truncheons suggested that their civility might
have its limits.
Elaine, a feisty woman of 33, rails first against the economic damage
being done to an already crippled Zimbabwe. Pointing to the farm's
long rows of roses, she exclaims: "They should be being cut and
packaged for export." She then turns to Mugabe's targeting of
Zimbabwe's white population: "I was born in Zimbabwe and I have as
much right here as any black," she says defiantly. But the quiver in her
voice betrays her. It is hard, says her husband, to be brave when 40
chanting Zanu supporters come running at you across your
compound. The couple have a gun but would have to be desperate
before they would use it. They say Mugabe, who is using the land
issue to obscure his wider persecution of the opposition, is just
waiting for a white farmer to shoot a black.
"We told our workers not to be heroes, but to do exactly what Zanu
says," says Peter. "They can vote with their conscience in the election
[promised by Mugabe though no date has been set]." His line is echoed by
other farmers, who have retreated from public support of the MDC, either
for
selfish or pragmatic reasons.
And it's the same line espoused by two labourers I meet walking
towards Peter's farm. Samuel, 26, has been sent home from Gem to
change after helping slaughter one of the cows taken from
surrounding farms. Joseph, 21, is walking with him. They confirm there
are at least 500 men, women and children at Gem. And more are
arriving all the time. Lorries heavy with people can be seen turning off
the
main road, led by young men clenching their fists in the Zanu
salute.
Only a few workers, the two men say, have been beaten "this time".
Given the terror of the past three months, it's something for which they
seem pathetically grateful. But no one can leave Gem without
permission and no one knows how long the re-education will last.
Hundreds of Zanu supporters are patrolling the camp, armed with
sticks and knives.
"We were ordered to sing yesterday from 2pm until deep into the
night," says Samuel. "Then we started again and sang until 6am this
morning." He describes the sleep- and rest deprivation and the
boot-camp routine. Everyone was kept awake overnight. "We must jog
for hours, then we eat the food stolen from farms just to get the
energy to jog again."
Joseph says that no one spoke to them of land. There were simply
orders not to vote MDC. In rural villages all over the country Zanu is
warning people that it will know from numbers printed on ballot papers
who voted MDC and that those people will be punished later. But
despite everything, Joseph will vote for the opposition. When the MDC
comes to the farm, Samuel says, he dons its T-shirt, but when Zanu
turns up, he changes into their colours. "But you know in your heart
what you will do," he says. "As the British saying goes, 'you can lead
a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink'."
Samuel and Joseph seem to have retained their independence, but the
question is: if the re-education camps spread to other parts of the
country in the run-up to elections - which, given the continuing
violence, can never now be fair and free - how many workers will "turn"?
Forty minutes drive north at Mvurwi, labourers were re-educated two
days before the concession camps were opened. Here, more than
1,000 workers were trucked into the huge Forrester tobacco estate in
vehicles commandeered from surrounding farms. The were made to
sing revolutionary songs, shout slogans and march for hours at a time.
The farm entrance was guarded by thuggish young men with whips.
Zanu supporters now call Mvurwi a "liberated" zone. No outsiders
were permitted, but one of Forrester's black assistant managers, who
was too scared to give his name says: "The message was that the
British want to rule Zimbabwe again and that to vote MDC is to vote for
white power." At the camp, workers were encouraged to turn on
each other. "We were told we must beat anyone wearing an MDC
T-shirt," said the assistant manager. Forced recruitment to the mob is
something he knows all about. The weekend before, Forrester's
general manager Duncan Hamilton, his girlfriend and another women
were trapped in their house by hundreds singing Zanu songs. The
black assistant farm manager was among them. Twenty people were
beaten with electric cables and rubber truncheons that night. Their
fellow workers watched in silence, "scared they would be next". Lists
were produced of alleged MDC members and workers were forced to
hand in party T-shirts. But the manager says he will still vote MDC
because Mugabe always promises land and never delivers. Besides,
he adds, Zimbabwe needs change.
But gardener Johnphane Chisare, 29, is one who believes what he
was taught in camp. He stands in ragged green overalls, on the lawn
he manicures for his white bosses. Warren, the white senior manager
in this section of Forrester, has picked him to talk about the marching
and
singing at camp. But Johnphane says Zanu also told him that it would
"sort
out" any white who gave him trouble.
He stuns Warren by saying Zanu has his vote. He has been promised
30 acres of his own by Zanu. "Yes, I believe it," he says, nodding
vigorously. Had not Mugabe himself promised that land grabs without
compensation will soon begin? Johnphane is not alone in his
conviction. At Forrester the poor have been invading fields and
marking plots that they are sure will soon be theirs.
The truth is that Johnphane could not farm 30 acres without training
and education. That he stands no chance of getting any is the
government's fault. In 20 years, Mugabe has produced only a handful
of black commercial farmers. But it is also true that to be forever in
the
white farmer's employ can mean a life-time of humiliation.
When Warren barks Johnphane's name, he replies "Sir" like a timid
army recruit and comes running. When they go out in the truck, Warren
sits in the front, while Johnphane jumps in the back with the dogs.
There are white farmers whose sense of superiority is so strong that
they routinely refer to their workers as "My Afs (Africans)". So
Johnphane clings to a land promise, betrayed in four previous
elections. "I want to be independent," he says. "I need to be free."
Just how many Johnphanes will Zanu seduce, particularly now that
the MDC's rural political network has been shattered by terror and new
laws limiting its campaigning?
Back in Concession, Ian King, a liberal employer still willing to stick
his
neck out for the MDC, despite death threats, says he believes that the
opposition, solid in urban areas, can still win the promised election.
Farm
workers, he believes, will still vote for it. But the thugs "teaching"
the
workers, he warns, may prove hard to rein in, whatever the result. That
warning came before the latest murder of a white farmer. "You wonder how
much control Mugabe or Hunzvi have over this now," he says. "When you
start
off a chain of events like this, you cannot possibly know where it will
end."