Watch Mugabe and the White African For Free

That was an excellent one.

n my opinion it was a great movie with some interesting elements, even though having some plot holes and the ending probably was just too messy and crammed together, but still fun to watch and not your casual movie that is similar to all other ones.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

Writing this as a White African born and raised in Africa I found the movie extremely distasteful and manipulative. How such a one-sided white-washing (literally) documentary received such accolades is beyond me. Especially amongst critics who normally like more balanced perspectives.Best critique on the subject is by Eric Ritskes of the Wanderings blog who offer an honest balanced perspective on the movie and its misgivings. Best quote: "The movie fails to highlight the great irony in hearing White European lawyers argue that democracy is not merely about majority rule but about protecting basic human rights, basic human rights that White Europeans ignored in Zimbabwe for hundreds of years. I guess these basic human rights only need to be protected when White human rights are at stake." Other recommended reading is the 'other side of the story' of forced redistribution, as presented in the article "In Zimbabwe Land Takeover, a Golden Lining" in the New York Times (by Lydia Polgren, June 20th 2012).Mugabe is a gibberish tyrant and his cronies are corrupt to the bare bone. But the key essence to the story is this: Land redistribution is just and necessary, whilst those responsible for stealing from the indigenous populations fail to own up and compensate the white farmers (aka the British government). Both the wickedness of Mugabe government and the failings of inevitable land redistribution need to be mentioned to offer true unbiased perspective.

The Big Lie of this documentary, is that Whites are a minority in Zimbabwe; that they own a minority of the land (2%), and that they are therefore 'singled out by Mugabe' because of their race. That 'Mugabe' wants to create a country free of all Whites. This is the Big Lie at the center of this propaganda piece.The Truth: Ben Freeth and Mike Campbell are die hard Rhodesians. That is what they mean with 'White African' - Rhodesians. And these two Rhodesians are trying to resist the redistribution of their 12,000 hectare estate called Mount Carmel.This estate, with it's 500 'workers' is repeatedly referred to as a 'farm'. The average EU farm is 90 hectares. The average white commercial farm was 2,500 hectares. Before land reform, which saw the 1% of the population who were classified white under colonialism and UDI, own 47% of the country. That is what land redistribution addressed.The Campbell and Freeth estate is much bigger than that - 12,000 hectares. Under the Fast Track land reform program, land is redistributed in 50 hectare (A1) and 250 hectare (A2) farms. Many whites have acted like Zimbabweans, not Rhodesians, and have taken a 250 or so (more in low rainfall areas) farm.This documentary is about the preservation of privilege, not 'human rights'.

I can't believe the high level of insincerity in this documentary. whole documentaries was from the view point of the white community.view point of black peoples were never concerned or given any space in this documentary of 90 minutes.There was never mentioned the whole situation before the independence of Zimbabwe. The suppression of black people under colonial rule .And the facts like white peoples just make 1% of population but controlled 75% of land. black people were shown as angry for no reason and are being just racist.In many parts of documentary author gives the reason that we have been targeted cause we are white(implying that black people just angry cause they are racist). At about 33 minutes , there was a dialog between black person and white person:black person: ....we don't want to have anything with white people.....white person: is that cause we are white?. (implying that black person is just racist and there is no valid for him to be angry)the correct question should have been "is that because we exploited you for years and own most of your land because of long history of colonial rule?".whole documentary was filled with animated emotions by various white characters showing how sad they are. while black people were shown as racist and violent.

The documentary Mugabe and the White African, directed by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson, is an account of Michael Campbell, one of the few white farmers left in Zimbabwe after Robert Mugabe and Zanu-PF began a violent land seizure programme in 2000. It portrays the 75-year-old Campbell's struggle to resist the unlawful seizure of his Mt Carmel Farm by Nathan Shamuyarira, a senior Zanu-PF politician.In 2008 Campbell, assisted by his son-in-law Ben Freeth, successfully challenged Mugabe before the South African Development Community international court, charging his government with human rights violations and racial discrimination. The documentary is an emotionally charged depiction of the court case, and does not spare the viewer bloody footage and violence. "It resonates internationally because it is about big issues of human rights. It is about humanity and you do not have to understand Africa to get it", Bailey has explained.But it is precisely Bailey's belief that "you do not have to understand Africa", from which the documentary's main shortcomings emanate. Zimbabwe is not Africa, and Africa is not Zimbabwe. The documentary lacks historical and political context. Land and race are important themes, but not once is the Lancaster House independence agreement of 1979, which perpetuated racially biased land distribution in independent Zimbabwe, mentioned. We are exposed to the emotional anguish of Ben's British parents in Kent as they agonise over their son's safety – but Britain's role in Zimbabwe's land problem is never mentioned. The documentary shows us that Mugabe implemented a racist land reform programme in 2000, but we are not told why, and how he gradually became racist. The documentary should have at least mentioned the challenging nature of racial reconciliation since independence – because it is the unravelling of reconciliation that informs the anti-white behaviour it depicts.Bailey and Thompson go out of their way to demonise Mugabe. When the documentary's title first appears on screen it is all in white. Then the word Mugabe begins to drip with what appears to be blood and slowly turns red, in the style of a horror movie. Mugabe's statement that if redistributing land from whites to blacks makes him a Hitler in western eyes then let it be – often quoted out of context – follows soon afterwards. We are even shown a newspaper headline that reads "we are like Jews in Nazi Germany" – words presumably uttered by a besieged white farmer. Mugabe and Zanu-PF are guilty of horrendous human rights violations, but they are not Hitlers, and nor is Zimbabwe remotely like Nazi Germany.The voice of someone spewing anti-white rhetoric reverberates in the background at opportune moments. The voice is unmistakably Mugabe's. In contrast, the Campbell and Freeth families are presented as God-fearing, forgiving and compassionate. Mugabe is a failed leader, guilty of misgovernance; but crude juxtapositions with the "good" white farmer inhibit nuanced popular debate.Black farm workers are constantly in the background. When they do come to the fore they are mute. "If I lose (the farm) we all suffer. We are in this together", Ben remarks to a black farm worker who mostly nods his head and smiles. "Pray for me. I will bring you blankets", Ben tells a group of black farm workers before he leaves for the SADC court in Namibia. Again the black farm workers do not speak. They smile, nod their heads and walk away under the rising Zimbabwean sun. Whenever black farm workers and white landowners are filmed together in moments of compassion there is a palpable unease between them, a contrived empathy, and the fact that power relations are skewed in favour of whites is apparent.Mugabe and the White African Male would be a more appropriate title for this documentary, because the voices of women are secondary. They have no agency. This is a documentary about white male courage in the face of Zanu-PF's violent black males. For instance, there is little on the contributions of Angela, wife to Michael, and her daughter Laura, wife to Ben, to the resistance. And yet women are heroines too because when the brave men are away in Namibia fighting court battles with Mugabe's lawyers, Laura and Angela courageously hold the fort against Shamuyarira's pugnacious and ever-lurking farm invaders. As for black female farm workers, these do not even nod their heads and smile – they are simply invisible.In the documentary Ben asks why, if you can be white and American or white and Australian, you cannot be white and African? Part of establishing white American and white Australian identities in America and Australia involved nearly exterminating the non-white Native Americans and Aborigines respectively; it meant claiming indigenous peoples' land and forging white identity over many generations by subjugating and writing non-whites out of the history of those countries. America and Australia are the worst examples Ben could have cited.In a separate documentary by Hopewell Chinono called A Violent Response, which is about violence in Zimbabwe's 2008 elections, Michael Campbell comments on the Mt Carmel Farm violence: "My faith in the African as a ruler in Africa has been shaken. I do not believe that any of them are capable of ruling themselves. Democracy is a joke". Angela nods her head as he opines. Did Bailey and Thompson fall for Michael's "I am a white African" pretensions, or did they choose to omit the unpalatable reality that colonial attitudes endured in independent Zimbabwe? What makes Mugabe and the White African dangerous is not so much its content, but Bailey and Thompson's belief that they are actually "helping" the people of Zimbabwe by having made the documentary.