They beat him, but not into submission

Mike Campbell is an irritant to the Mugabe regime. He has challenged the government's efforts to seize his farm in the region's highest court, the Southern African Development Community Tribunal, which hears legal appeals from its 14 member countries. Seventy-seven other white farmers have joined him in fighting a 2005 constitutional amendment that denied them the right to appeal eviction orders.

Zimbabwe's land conflict is complex. Britain had funded the redistribution of land from white farmers to blacks in its former colony, but stopped in 1997, concerned that Mugabe's cronies were mainly the ones benefiting from the reform. Mugabe, angry that many white farmers supported the political opposition, ordered war veterans to take over their farms in 2000, triggering the collapse of agriculture, the country's main export business.

Once a regional powerhouse, the country no longer could feed its population. Related industries slumped. The government, starved of foreign currency, printed more and more money to pay its workers, triggering rampant hyperinflation.

In the last year, the highway running 60 miles southwest from Harare to Chegutu has crumbled into a honeycomb of potholes. The town looks tired and threadbare.

The roadsides are speckled with hitchhikers. But the poorest just walk. Some men wear shirts reduced to a lace of holes or plod along in shoes that flap open. People of all ages cart firewood from the bush, some balancing entire branches on their heads, others pushing handcarts. Even the rubber scattered on the roads from tire blowouts is reverently saved.

Days after the attack at Mount Carmel, people are selling tomatoes, sweet potatoes or oranges along the road. Bruce Campbell nods darkly at a gaggle of orange vendors.

"All those oranges are stolen," he says. "They're coming off my friend's place over there."

--

On the day of the attack, Bruce rushed to his parents' farm as soon as the radio died. He crept up on the house. He could hear shouting and thudding inside and people running around in the bedroom and living room. He heard his parents' car started up and driven off.

He sprinted into the house, but his parents were gone. He gave chase and the militants peppered his car with bullets; he fired back with a pistol.