Documentary on Chegutu land fight wins international award
By Alex Bell
25 June 2009

A film documentary depicting the struggle of a Chegutu farming family against the continued invasion of their land, has won a prestigious film award in the United States.

‘Mugabe and the White African’ was shot covertly on the Campbell family’s Mount Carmel farm last year and follows Mike Campbell’s historic fight against Robert Mugabe’s ‘land-reform’ programme. The film, described as ‘intimate’ and ‘moving’ was unanimously judged the winner of the Sterling World Award at the ‘Silverdocs’ International Documentary Film Festival in Washington. The judges commented that the film “displays a moral conviction which grew from the vision behind it, became an integral part of the trusting relationship between the contributors and the filmmakers, and that powerfully elevates a resonant story to a global stage.”

Mike, his family and their 500 workers have suffered years of invasions and violence on the farm, that to date is still being forcibly occupied by thugs. The Campbells last year took the unprecedented step of challenging the government in the Southern African Development Community’s human rights court - the SADC Tribunal. Campbell and 74 other farmers who joined the case, charged Mugabe and his government with racial discrimination and human rights violations. They emerged victorious, with the court ruling that Mugabe’s land resettlement scheme was inherently racist and that the farmers had a legal right to remain on their land. The government was ordered to protect the farmers against future invasions, an order that has been wholly ignored and even nullified by Mugabe himself.

Mike and his wife Angela have since left the farm because of the stress of the ongoing harassment and intimidation by land invaders, who have almost completely taken over the once prosperous farm. They are also both still recovering from savage attacks and beatings that they endured last year. The couple’s son-in-law Ben Freeth (who was also badly beaten in 2008) has kept fighting to have last year’s SADC order respected, but to no avail. The family even returned to the regional court this year seeking an implementation order to try and force the government to respect the earlier ruling. The court ruled that the Zimbabwe government was in contempt of court as a result of the ongoing land invasions, but there has still been no action taken to protect the farmers and their land against the ongoing onslaught of attacks.
In April, Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara visited the Campbells farm, on a mission assigned to him by Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai. He told the invaders that they had to leave and said to the leader of the group that they were giving Shamuyarira a bad name (the farm has been given to ZANU PF’s secretary for information, Nathan Shamuyarira).

But an hour after Mutambara left the invaders were back.
After the trip Mutambara said he would take no action on the issue, saying that it was sufficient that he could say, ‘I saw it for myself’.