White Farmers

A judge sentenced the son of a baron to eight months in prison for killing a black poacher on his family estate. The sentence handed down to Thomas Cholmondeley was a fraction of the possible life term he faced. It provoked shouts of protest from Maasai tribesmen and sighs of relief from white landowners. Judge Muga Apondi had reduced the charge from murder to manslaughter, saying Cholmondeley's attempts to give Robert Njoya first aid proved that he shot him accidentally.

Militant war veterans allied with Zimbabwe's ruler threatened to evict white farmers Sunday, and about a dozen opposition activists were beaten and arrested by police over the weekend. The attacks raised fears that President Robert Mugabe's government was launching a violent campaign to assure his victory in an expected presidential runoff election. Eighteen farmers were threatened and several were forced to flee their properties as they were besieged by chanting, drum-beating mobs.

Zimbabwe withdrew charges against a group of white farmers who faced trial for resisting eviction from their land, a defense lawyer said. Thirteen farmers from northwestern Zimbabwe who appealed their eviction notices were being tried for failing to leave after a Sept. 30 deadline passed. President Robert Mugabe's government embarked on a drive in 2000 to take commercial farms from whites to resettle landless blacks. An estimated 600 of the previous 4,500 white farmers now remain on the land.

The copper telephone lines have been stolen. The giraffes, zebra and other game have been trapped, killed and eaten. The birds have been poisoned and the thatched safari lodge burned down. But Mike Campbell clings to the remains of Mount Carmel farm, his anger leavened only by the company of his wife, Angela, his three children and six grandchildren, his dither of excitable dogs and the ancient horse, Ginger, who lives on the veranda.

The foreigners who came from afar to the grasslands of western Nigeria seemed like a spectacular circus act to the area's subsistence farmers. Local people were amazed by the dozens of tractors, harrows and planters that materialized along with huge amounts of seed and fertilizer. But the residents were flabbergasted again when their new neighbors started planting crops, making, it seemed, some equally spectacular blunders.

Re "Staying On Amid Zimbabwe's Madness," Commentary, March 28: As someone who, like Douglas Rogers, was born and raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), I cannot fault his disgust over the tragedy that the Mugabe regime has wrought. However, there are a few crucial factors that Rogers ignores. First, white farmers like Rogers' family were the most fervent and militaristic supporters of Ian Smith's illegal, and internationally condemned, government before it collapsed in 1980. Second, though the white farmers certainly employed millions of laborers, they paid them barely subsistent wages while living high on the hog. More profoundly, however, Robert Mugabe has come to terms with the fact that a political power that leaves economic power in the hands of a minority -- as is the case in neighboring South Africa -- is no real power.

The dogs come in from the east: snarling, bone-thin mongrels the size of terriers, their howls echoing down the valley to the farmhouse. Following behind them, hacking their way through the bush with sticks and metal slashers, come their owners, six men usually, squatters from the neighboring farm who are ready to beat off the hounds after they have run down a zebra, bush buck or impala.

Riding through a Nigerian forest on motorbikes, four white Zimbabwean farmers are checking out the land they'll soon settle on, hoping to start a new life after being chased off their farms by government-backed thugs at home. Uprooted by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's land-redistribution program, scores of farmers have already been welcomed by the country's immediate neighbors for the jobs and economic growth they promise to create.

Police in Zimbabwe rounded up 12 white farmers for defying an eviction order and arrested a retired white judge who had previously clashed with President Robert Mugabe's government. The farmers were the first to be arrested since Mugabe warned Sept. 4 that white opponents of his controversial land reforms faced jail if they did not cooperate. Recently retired High Court Judge Fergus Blackie was also detained. He had tried to sentence the justice minister to prison.