Finally, the people are free to
Zimbabweans are directing much of their anger at the former first lady, whose hunger for wealth and power stopped at nothing
Today the sky seems to be tearing at itself as the rumbles and barks threaten rain above Mazowe, 40km north of
Harare.
Here at Manzou Farm at an elevation of nearly 1500m the earth is rich and red, and freshly upturned clods break underfoot where a slight woman is tilling her field.
It has taken her nearly two years to plough this hectare of land, years in which police have come repeatedly to destroy her mud-and-thatch home, grab her chickens, trample her crops and manhandle her to the ground.
But Florence Gurure is a fighter. She fought for this land, first as a 14-year-old, when she was known as Mabhunu Muchatiza — the whites will run away.
“Welcome to Gracelands,” says Colen Zengeni.
Manzou Farm, which stretches for 20km in one direction, is only one part of the personal empire of “Amai” Grace Mugabe.
Gracelands, in this lush, idyllic stretch of countryside, includes the Mazowe Citrus Estate, Mapfeni Farm, the state-of-the-art Alpha and Omega Dairy Farm and the 7 720m2 Grace Mugabe Junior School and orphanage, where the 24-pupils-perclass is a far cry from the packed and chronically under-resourced government schools throughout Zimbabwe.
Gurure was at a war veterans’ meeting this week. They have been meeting more regularly these past two weeks, leaning in close to radios and discussing the rapidly unfolding events in their country. Then came the news that Robert Gabriel Mugabe had resigned as president.
“I was so happy. Happy because he promised us many things, but this is not our life,” she says. Like so many others in and around the capital, she believes the former president had invested much of his power in his wife. “But I do not blame Grace. It was his decision.”
A few kilometres along the road from Manzou Farm, Gurure’s neighbours are celebrating along the tarred Mazowe road — “otherwise people don’t see us”, they explain.
They have banners declaring November 18, the day the army took control of the country, as Independence Day.
A group of villagers from the Mount Darwin area had heeded the call by Mugabe and the war veterans to occupy white-owned farms in 2000 and converged on Manzou Farm.
“What brought us together is that we were poor and had no future. We were landless in our own country,” Violet Mazvarira (57) says.
“In 2000, we had hope because we had the land. We thought our problems had come to an end. But they never kept their promises,” Mazvarira says. Mugabe had promised to support the new farmers with seeds, equipment and other agricultural support. In the ensuing years, people survived on subsistence farming and fishing in the adjoining Mazowe Dam.
And then Grace announced the land was hers. The occupants of Manzou Farm were rounded up and herded on to trucks and dumped on a different farm a few kilometres down the road.
Earlier this year, as the small-scale farmers were preparing to reap their harvests, the police arrived. They drove herds of cattle that trampled everything underfoot and their mudand-thatch homes were destroyed with rifle butts and boot heels, with the mounds of rubble still dotted around Manzou.
“She didn’t visit the farm. Not once,” says headman Enoch Kanakembizi.
As they had done time and again, they returned to their demolished homes and endured the jackboots of the police, determined to claim their land. And, as had become practice with so many other Mugabe properties, the feared police support unit was deployed to control access to the farm.
In June, Grace expanded her empire and took control of the Mazowe Dam, a national resource not allowed by law to be privately owned, unless authorised by the president. Signs along the paths to the dam warn locals that fishing is not allowed. On an embankment