One of the last families left fighting eviction from their farm speaks of the brutal siege being staged by Mugabe thugs
Christina Lamb
THE drums and chanting started soon after dark. Fires had been lit all around the farmhouse - nearly 50 of them. In their flickering light it was easy to see the militia leaders waving guns and the terrified faces of the hundreds of farm workers they had been rounding up all day and bringing in on tractors, trailers and buses.
Inside the terracotta-walled house that Ben and Laura Freeth had built for themselves and their children in the once peaceful farmlands of Chegutu, 70 miles southwest of Harare, the couple held each other and prayed.
As they paced around their bedroom they tried not to think of the stories they had heard of people having hands, lips and ears hacked off. To block out the sound of the pro-Mugabe slogans they repeated over and over the words of Psalm 118: The Lord is with me. I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?
There was no way we could sleep, said Ben Freeth. The chanting and sloganeering was military style - all in unison for hour after hour after hour all the way through the night.
Their sons Joshua, 8, and Stephen, 5, had been sent to stay with friends for safety. Somehow Anna, their two-year-old daughter, slept in her wooden truckle bed, looking like an angel with her white-blonde hair. Their four dogs prowled restlessly.
The Freeths are among the last white farmers still on their land in Zimbabwe, where only one in 10 of the original 5,000 remain. They live on Mount Carmel, an estate owned by Lauras father, Mike Campbell.
Earlier that day they had refused to supply food to a rally for President Robert Mugabe and there were sure to be reprisals. At any moment the crowds outside could be turned on them and they could be dragged out to join the pungwe, the local Shona name for the allnight indoctrination sessions.
Wed had letters as well as verbal warnings from people all over the district, Freeth said. The election campaign is being fought on 100% empowerment, that is, taking everything that belongs to people who are not black and giving it to the ruling party faithful.
People were told that Mount Carmel cattle and potatoes would be dished out to them. The party has got nothing else to offer the people . . . We assumed we would be evicted that night.
With his neat moustache and military bearing, Freeth, 37, is is not easily intimidated. Born in Sittingbourne, Kent, he comes from a line of military officers his father, grandfather and great-grandfather all served in the Royal Artillery. He fell in love with Zimbabwe, where his family had moved after independence in 1980 when his father was hired to set up a staff training college for the national army.
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