Mugabe And The White African (out 08 January 10, Cert. 15) Documentary directed by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson, 2009, cert. 15
Monkey Score: 88%
What It's About:
Mugabe And The White African tells the story of Mike and his family
in their struggle to keep their farm. Mike is white but first and
foremost African - his love for Zimbabwe fuels his legal fight against
the Mugabe regime. When Mike and his wife bought their farm over 20
years ago, Mugabe had already started his notorious land reform
programme, seizing land in the hands of private white farmers to
redistribute to poor black farmers. Or so goes the theory. Filmmakers
Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson managed to film - mostly covertly - a
harrowing account of what really goes on in Zimbabwe under Mugabe's
rule: intimidation tactics, violent beatings, blatant racism and
constant threats are the norm. In Mike's region white farmers are
evicted manu military while black farmers remain unchallenged in their
ownership. A ledger of new ownership records shows just who the land
has been redistributed to: High Court Judges, government officials,
high-ranking military personnel and even a minister's girlfriend! Mike
was granted permission to buy the farm by Mugabe's government, who
waived rights to the piece of land. In Zimbabwe, however, this is worth
about as much as the country's currency, or courts rulings for that
matter - as Mike and his family find out.
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What MovieMonkeys Thought: Mugabe And The White African
is a very powerful account of the daily struggle faced by white farmers
in Zimbabwe. Mugabe's electoral promises of the 1980s may have appealed
to the
masses who elected him, but 30 years after he came into power his track
record leaves a bloody trail. The Robin Hood 'take from the rich to
give to the poor' policy is exposed in the film as a cover for nepotism
of the
most sinister kind. Mugabe And The White African
makes no apologies for imperial rule, and certainly one may wonder if
all farmland in white hands was acquired on the up and up, but the film
does a stellar job at showing just how Mugabe's regime treats its
citizens. The government's own legal rulings are not enforced - watching Mike and his son-in-law
attempts to fight the dictator through the courts is quite painful.
They fly to neighbouring Namibia on several occasions to get heard in
court and you can't help to wonder why they bother such is the contempt
with which they are treated by the country they call home. Mugabe
And The White African is an important piece of film that makes for
uncomfortable yet necessary viewing. One hopes that is does for
Mugabe's regime what Farhenheit 911 did for the Bush administration.
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