ZIMBABWE: This will be a long and anxious weekend for the white farmers of Zimbabwe, as they await eviction from their properties, writes Declan Walsh from Harare
Nine hours before Robert Mugabe's ultimatum to Zimbabwe's white farmers expired on Thursday, Colin Shand weaved his way anxiously through the Harare traffic. The mobile buzzed with calls: friends, family, journalists, his lawyer.
Mr Shand, a ruddy-faced, 58-year-old farmer with a shock of thick hair and tough skin, was in a rush. Tonight he wanted to make it back to his farm, 75 kilometres to the north, before dark. Already, some white farmers were loading their life belongings on to trucks and making emotional farewells with their land.
But many others said they were staying put. Mr Shand, armed with a sheaf of legal papers, a mobile phone, three shotguns and a revolver, was one of them. Juggling phone conversations and swerving round pedestrians, he gunned his truck's accelerator and hurried towards home.
Colin Shand is a third-generation white Zimbabwean. His mother's family came from England, his father's from South Africa. His wife, Lyn, who has buried nine relatives in their front garden, goes back even further.
However, this weekend Mr Shand is home alone. Fearing violence, his wife recently left for England to stay with their daughter.
For the past 18 months a group of settlers has slowly taken possession of his entire farm. They have taken over the entire farm, except for his house.
He communicates with them only through typed letters. Sometimes they communicate through violence.
Last Tuesday night Mr Shand was returning home just after nine o'clock when he found around 70 men blocking the front gate. Sensing the mood was ugly, he threw the truck into reverse. The men became angry and rained stones and blows on the vehicle. At least two axes were thrown.
One went straight through the back window. The other bounced off the driver's door, just a couple of feet from his head. He escaped and called for the police. Two hours later they came. As in many such attacks - considered in Zimbabwe to be "political" matters - nobody has yet been arrested.
Mr Shand met his lawyer on Thursday to discuss, among other things, what to do if he is attacked in his home this weekend. . The lawyer told him he was within his rights to use his automatic shotgun. "But the way things are now, she says I'll definitely go to jail, no matter what," he announced calmly, as we left Harare.
Heading north, we pass through the Mazoe Valley. At this time of year the fields should be groaning with winter wheat. Instead they are brown and stubbled with weeds. After a few miles there is a dam that should be sucked dry by irrigation schemes. It is full.
"All you see there, it's normally completely green," he says, pointing a finger out the window. "Now there's nothing." We stop briefly on the way to see his daughter, her husband and their family. Until the beginning of the week they were Mr Shand's next-door neighbours. Then on Tuesday they cleared out to a rented house about 40 kilometres away. The views are spectacular in the new place, but the mood is sombre.
"Today I took out the last plants," said his daughter, sorting crockery and glasses on the kitchen table. "Everything's gone, except for the swimming pool." "This is just atrocious," said the husband, who asked not to be named. "It's our children that are taking the battering. We have to pretend that this is all a big game."
After turning off the tarmac and speeding down a rutted dirt road, we pull in to the farm. The house is lived in, but more for the sake of occupancy than comfort. The water in the swimming pool has turned olive green; the braai (barbecue) area is empty.
Inside, his wife has stripped the walls of photos and paintings - "in case we get ransacked" - so the hall is lined with redundant picture hooks. Only a faded map that still identifies the capital as Salisbury remains on the wall. The word "Rhodesia" has been covered over with "Zimbabwe".
After independence in 1980, many white Rhodesians headed "down south" to South Africa. Mr Shand's two brothers were among them. But he stayed because he believed Robert Mugabe's promises of reconciliation. "He seemed like such a gentleman. Now we realise we were hoodwinked," he said, with soft bitterness.
Some of the whites left because they couldn't stand being ruled by the blacks. Not Mr Shand. Over fish and chips he explains that he never agreed with Ian Smith's UDI (Universal Declaration of Independence) in 1965, nor with South Africa's apartheid. "I'm not that way inclined," he said.
These days wealthy black men drink with him at the golf club (he is vice-president of the Zimbabwe Golf Federation). Sometimes he invites them to the house. But it would be unthinkable for one to marry his daughter.
"The black man and the white man, it's different cultures. We're not the same," he said, then added only half-seriously: "Especially now. I've become more racist since all this started."
With just three hours before the eviction deadline, Mr Shand's mobile phone, which is connected to a signal-boosting antenna, starts ringing again. There is talk of a compromise deal with lawyers from Mugabe's ZANU-PF party.
Mr Shand is unsure what to do.
"Look, Archie, this is bad. When I was attacked on Tuesday night, it got me real bad," he tells a neighbour. "We've lost, Archie, we've lost. We've got to give them something."
An hour later, he has changed his mind. Mr Shand is a prominent member of Justice for Agriculture (JAG), a newly formed group that includes farmers and civil society activists. It takes a more confrontational approach than the mainstream Commercial Farmers' Union.
After speaking to the JAG spokeswoman, Jenni Williams, Mr Shand has steeled his will. He will not sign any deal. "As far as I'm concerned, my position is legal and the government is illegal," he announces.
Midnight passes; there are no knocks on the door or noises outside. Mr Shand stays on the computer, sending e-mails to his lawyers, his family in England and other farmers.
In the morning he shows me around his tobacco-curing sheds, large redbrick buildings 50 metres from his house that are rapidly falling into disrepair.
A black woman, passing by the perimeter fence, sees us but keeps walking. It makes him nervous.
"You see, she has seen me now," he said. "Now she will tell the others that I'm here." If the white farmers are to be evicted, it is due to start this weekend.
This is a long weekend in Zimbabwe, and in the past the government has taken advantage of the holiday periods to lock its enemies up for several days.
Mr Shand will probably be on his own, sleeping with his Colt .45 revolver by his bed. Sometimes he will be watching the South African version of Big Brother, one of his favourite shows, on satellite television. Other times he will be listening anxiously for the sound of footsteps and swinging iron bars.