‘The future is bright’ versus ‘the future is bleak’ : a comparison of recent documentaries on land reform in Zimbabwe

Abstract

In 2011 Blasio Mavedzenge, Felix Murimbarimba and Ian Scoones produced a series of eight short documentaries entitled Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Voices From the Field to accompany the book Zimbabwe’s Land Reform: Myths and Realities.1 The findings and conclusions of this book have generated a great deal of controversy for their positive assessments of the fast track land reform programme (FTLRP) and this documentary series does nothing to dampen the enthusiasm with which they portray the benefits of land reform. The series follows closely on the heels of two other documentaries about the land reform process and the effect it has had on peoples’ lives: Mugabe and the White African and House of Justice. Mugabe focuses on the SADC Tribunal case of Mike Campbell and Others versus the Government of Zimbabwe (GoZ) and what Campbell and his son-in-law, Ben Freeth, endured in taking the case to the Tribunal. House looks at continued abuses in the rural countryside after the SADC Tribunal’s rulings against the GoZ, which ordered the government to protect the rights of the white farmers and allow them to continue to occupy their land. These documentaries cover the three main groups at the centre of the land reform process: the white farmers, the farm workers and the resettled farmers. Taken together, these documentaries reveal not only the vast differences in experience in Zimbabwe’s countryside, but also how polarised interpretations and representations of the FTLRP are.