Mugabe and the White African
Mugabe and the White African
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Sunday, 03, Jan 2010 01:10
Directed by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson, out January 8th in cinemas, running time 90 mins.
What's it all about?
In Zimbabwe there are very few happy endings, although the elevation of Morgan Tsvangirai to prime minister hinted at one.
Mugabe and the White African is set firmly during both before and after the power-sharing process the country's ageing president relented to, showing just how little has changed.
What the others say
"This is one of those documentaries that stays with you for years. The injustice infuriates and the story, simply and deftly told, breaks your heart." - Ian Freer, Empire
"Offering a rare opportunity to peer inside today's Zimbabwe - international media outlets are banned from the country - Mugabe and The White African was evidently filmed illicitly but betrays none of those signs in a handsome, HD-shot production which seems set for theatrical consumption and possible awards recognition." - Fionnula Halligan, ScreenDaily
So is it any good?
A rare example of a documentary (albeit UK-produced) originating from Zimbabwe, a country labouring under a near-complete press ban, the mostly covertly-filmed Mugabe and the White African is a controversial look at the 'real Zimbabwe'.
Controversial because, as the title suggests, it is seen through white eyes, telling of the struggle of 74-year-old farmer Mike Campbell, as well his son-in-law Ben Freeth and their wives, to remain in the farm he bought from the post-independence government in 1980 and recently acquired the title deed to.
But title deeds to farms became effectively meaningless during Robert Mugabe's land reform programme begun in 2000, a disastrous policy that led to the breadbasket of Africa being reduced to an impoverished dust bowl as white commercial farmers were evicted in favour of Mugabe's cronies.
Many people walked out of the screening I attended at the BFI last year, presumably finding the colonial overtones of the film overbearing and the obviously re-filmed acted-out scenes of the 'documentary' difficult to stomach.
But they should have stuck around, because a dark picture of a country in terminal decline emerges as Mike takes the unprecedented step, and bears the scars of beatings as a result, of going to the South African Development Community's international court to defend his farm from Mugabe's militia and accuse the long-time ruler of racial discrimination and human rights violations.
It's an irony that Mike would become the first African to win a case in an international court if he was to prove successful, as in Mugabe's eyes he isn't African at all.
The story of post-colonial Zimbabwe is impossible to relate in the 90-minute story of one family; Mugabe's breakdown is complex and not a simple case of black good, white bad, but Mugabe and the White African is a powerful and rare study of white woe in a country hanging on for regime change.
But the 98 per cent of Zimbabweans who are black deserve their story to be told as well.
6/10
Matthew Champion