White farmers have been victimised by Robert Mugabe. To some extent, however, they are the authors of their own misfortune, suggests Declan Walsh
The plight of Zimbabwe's white farmers has attracted intense international attention, and with good reason. Under the guise of land redistribution, a sovereign government has turned to theft. It seizes farms without paying for them and, when the law objects, employs violent thugs to do the job. Eleven farmers have been killed, and hundreds more scared away.
The process has ensured the demonisation of President Robert Mugabe. The West has deafened him with condemnation and slapped sanctions on 70 of his cronies. The US is openly supporting regime change. He responds defiantly, with hate-filled rants against colonialists, imperialists and "gay gangsters" in the pocket of Britain's Tony Blair.
In Africa, however, criticism has been muted. African leaders have either maintained a sullen silence, like South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, or openly supported the land grab.
The sharp focus on Mugabe is disproportionate and unfair, they say. It fails to recognise historical injustices and is driven by a Western media obsession with whites in Africa.
Many others agree. It is an argument I have heard in Kenyan bars, through African expatriates in London, from Irish aid workers. They have a point.
Certainly, interest in whites attracted Western attention, although by now coverage has moved far beyond that narrow frame. And while Zimbabwe's white farmers may be persecuted, they are not an entirely blameless group. Today many are enthusiastic advocates of "orderly" land reform, but it has not always been so.
For most of the 22 years since independence, white farmers have been an elitist force in Zimbabwe; economically powerful, because their tobacco crops were the engine of the economy, but socially and politically isolated.
White farming families live in large houses and drive expensive vehicles. They enjoy weekends in houseboats at Lake Kariba or playing golf, cricket or polo. At home, they are waited on by "servants", black cooks and cleaners for whom the minimum wage is about €7 a month and perhaps a bag of maize meal.
In many ways these comforts are the legacy of times past. What is objectionable is that, until recently, many whites have acted niggardly in sharing that wealth.
The Rev Tim Neill, a white Anglican minister and prominent Mugabe critic, says that white farmers were "the hardest community to reach with the gospel" until the land invasions started three years ago. He recalls going to see one rich farmer in 1991, when tobacco prices were high. The man lived in a fine house, kept polo ponies and piloted his own aircraft.
In contrast, his farm workers earned rock-bottom wages and lived in a "disgusting" compound below his house. Mr Neill asked him to improve their conditions. He refused.
Recently the same farmer phoned Mr Neill. "Now he wants to know what I" - the churchman's voice rose angrily - "am going to do about his rights. Maybe he should have thought about that then."
Not all Zimbabwean farmers, or whites, are like this. Some of the top human rights figures, journalists and lawyers are whites. Many farmers built private schools and health clinics on their land and have continued to pay their workers, even when their farms are producing nothing.
And it is equally true that Mr Mugabe has shown little interest in racial harmony. At independence in 1980, Zimbabwe did not benefit from a Truth and Reconciliation Commission as South Africa did. Instead, just three years later Mugabe ordered a brutal army attack on the rival Ndebele tribe that left an estimated 20,000 civilians dead.
Neither did Mr Mugabe grab the nettle of land reform. A British-funded scheme, costing £44 million, was abandoned in 1994 after revelations that the principal beneficiaries were government ministers and officials.
Wherever the fault lies, Zimbabwe remains a racially troubled society. White and black children attend the same schools but drive home in separate cars. Their parents may eat in the same restaurants, but hardly ever at the same table. And intermarriage is a rare thing.
A black lawyer I know, a dignified and thoughtful woman, finds Mugabe's racist rhetoric ugly and repugnant. Nonetheless it touches on something, perhaps an unspoken, unresolved sore between the races, she said. "We smile at each other," she summarised, "but the smile does not reach the eyes."
But none of this means Zimbabweans approve of the current seizures. If they are not too scared to speak, they will say that the land grab is hurting - sometime killing - blacks much more than whites.
The looming famine, which could affect six million people, was caused by drought but made infinitely worse by the land seizures, which have crippled both domestic food production and the government's ability to import extra supplies.
As with the previous resettlement schemes, the best land is going to Mugabe's cronies, ministers, police chiefs, army generals and journalists with the state media. In the process, half-a-million working-class blacks are being put out of a job and, in many cases, a home.
Squatter camps full of internally displaced farm workers are springing up on the edges of Harare and the main towns. Many come with horrific stories. In one such camp run by Mr Neill, four-fifths say they have been tortured and one-third have witnessed an execution.
Those applauding Mugabe from abroad must be careful. Certainly, white farmers must reckon for their place in society. The unfinished business of the liberation war must be settled, perhaps with a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And the question of land distribution, an issue as emotive in Africa now as it was in Ireland during Parnell's time, must also be addressed.
But none of these issues will be solved like this. Mugabe's land programme is no righting of historical wrongs.
Instead it is the last throw of an autocrat who has watched power slip through his fingers and turned in desperation to hatred and violence.
As international isolation mounts, the economy crumbles and famine threatens, both Mugabe and Zimbabwe are heading towards a terrible fall.
The question now is no longer if this will happen, but which one will fall first.