Future unclear for white farmers in Zimbabwe

Tony Jones spoke to the Zimbabwean farmer Marshall Roper, who is now staying in the Queensland city of Mackay.

Australian Broadcasting Corporation  Reporter: Tony Jones

19 August 2002

Just a short time ago, I spoke to the Zimbabwean farmer Marshall Roper, who we just saw at the end of that report. He is now staying in the Queensland city of Mackay.

Marshall Roper, what's likely to happen to the 147 white farmers who were arrested at the weekend?

MARSHALL ROPER, ZIMBABWEAN FARMER: I presume a number of them will be taken to court and given bail and allowed to go home. It probably won't be allowed to go back to their farms.

They'll have to move into Harare and stay with family. Some, who I presume the Government will see as a threat or too politically involved with the Opposition, will probably be held for some time.

So I presume some of them will be held for a long time. The others will go to court and be issued bail and those cases will be remanded on and on and on.

TONY JONES: Do you know how they're being chosen for arrest because in the end, they're only a fraction of the 1,800 white farmers who have defied Mugabe's eviction orders?

MARSHALL ROPER: Yah, that's right. I believe, I spoke to a friend back home and I believe that police are being issued with a quota and they're busy running around trying to get that quota into the jails at the moment.

And if they don't find the farmer there, they are arresting his wife. A very good friend of mine's wife has been arrested and thrown into jail.

TONY JONES: The farmers have relied pretty much on, on decisions of the courts in the past to save them in a way. Is it now moving beyond that? Is it moving beyond even the control of the courts?

MARSHALL ROPER: Yes, it is. I took the Government to court when I was issued the first Section 8 back last year in October.

I took them to court previously and won a landmark case against them to have the squatters that were on the farm at that time evicted.

They punished me by giving me one of those Section 8's that gave you 90 days to get off the farm. Thirty days later I took the Government to court and had that overruled by the High Court.

When I went back to the police and district administrator and said I had it overturned in the High Court and I must be allowed back on to my farm, they laughed at me and said they don't listen to the courts anymore, this is politics.

TONY JONES: Is that the same farm where you were attacked near the end of 2000 and attacked with a machete?

MARSHALL ROPER: Yes, that's the same farm that I was on and I was attacked in September 2000 and slashed across the face.

Marshall Roper in hospital after the machete attack

TONY JONES: What happened to you then? I believe you were lucky to have survived that?

MARSHALL ROPER: Yes, I was. I lost a hell of a lot of blood and I was rushed into Harare in an ambulance and stitched up and as you can see, they've done a very good job of stitching me up. I've got a very, a faint scar left.

TONY JONES: Now, how many farms do you own and is it only farmers with a number of farms that are being attacked in this way because a Mugabe's spokesman is saying it's only people with multiple farms who are affected?

MARSHALL ROPER: Now that's a lie. I can personally say, I only own one farm and that farm I bought in 1991 and when I bought that farm we had to get a letter of no interest from the Government.

I must just say since about 1980, since the Government came into power, Mugabe's Government came into power, 60 per cent of all farms in Zimbabwe have changed hands.

And every one of those farms have had to be offered to the Government first for purchase and they have not taken that purchase up.

TONY JONES: Tell me, looking at this from a distance, you've had a little time to reflect, I imagine. Do you see any real future for white farmers in Zimbabwe?

MARSHALL ROPER: No, I don't. I don't see any future for white farmers in Zimbabwe.

Of course, there will be a few that are allowed to remain, that are politically correct.

They will be allowed to remain and continue farming, but the whole economy is totally trashed at the moment.

You know, I don't know how it's functioning. When the Government needs money, it just prints money.

TONY JONES: How dangerous is it going to get, do you believe?

I mean, you told us what happened to you, but how dangerous will it be for the ones who continue to defy the Mugabe regime?

MARSHALL ROPER: That's a difficult question. It will get dangerous in the aspect that people are starting to starve and there is going to be a lot of criminals running around, a lot of theft.

If you get in the way of those people you could get, you could get hurt.

If you're politically correct and the Government is happy with you, they would leave you alone, but that's not to say the moment they're not happy with you or somebody desires your farm because it's lovely, that they can take it at any moment.

So it would be a high-risk factor from that point to continue farming.

TONY JONES: If the Australian Government offered you a way out of all this, a visa to come and live and work here, would you accept it?

MARSHALL ROPER: I'd be here in a flash.

TONY JONES: Let's put it this way. Do you think the Australian Government has behaved the right way?

I mean, should they enact special laws to enable Zimbabwe farmers to come here?

MARSHALL ROPER: Well, I think if they just followed what the New Zealand Government is doing at the moment and giving us a chance to get over here, work and prove ourselves and then if we still don't fit the criteria, send us back, but if they relax the law a little bit, let us get over here, find a job or come here and start a new life, I think they'll find that we will, we will excel here.

TONY JONES: You're on a visitor's visa, I think at the moment, have you considered applying for political asylum?

MARSHALL ROPER: I have considered for political asylum. I have a wife and three small children. I'm trying to apply through the proper channels.

I wouldn't want to be thrown into a refugee camp and that's what concerns me at the moment. You know, my children have been through a lot.

They've seen my face cut open. My one son was very badly affected by it. So as far as possible I would like to try and make this move as easy for them as possible.

TONY JONES: So you're actually worried you'd be put in detention if you applied for asylum?

MARSHALL ROPER: That's correct.

TONY JONES: The Prime Minister hinted in the past he might be sympathetic to the cause of the white Zimbabwe farmers.

I mean, do you think it has now reached a point of emergency where he should be more than sympathetic?

MARSHALL ROPER: Yes, I do. I think there are a lot of farmers, hundreds of farmers that are desperate to get over here. That have got nothing.

You must understand a lot of the farmers that have decided to stay have not only lost their farms, they cannot move any of their personal belongings, personal equipment, even though the Government has passed a law saying you're allowed to take your equipment off the farms, this is not happening.

Another channel is being passed down where they tell the settlers or the war vets, you make sure nothing leaves this farm because you're going to need it once we give you the farm.

And so a lot of farmers have had to walk off their farms with nothing.

TONY JONES: Marshall Roper, I know this is a very, a difficult question for you to answer and probably an emotional one as well, but is it really right in the end for 4,500-odd white farmers to have owned what the BBC says is 70 per cent of the arable land in Zimbabwe?

MARSHALL ROPER: Yeah, that's a figure that is always commented and I'm glad you asked the question, because I know Australian farmers will understand that that land, and if you take my farm for example, I border the communal area.

All that splits me from the communal area is a barb wire fence and I took that farm over 10 years ago, it was abandoned.

I put in a 300 million gallon dam. I developed that planted coffee, built barns, built labourers quarters and developed that farm to what it is today so that I could in a bad drought year irrigate and we don't own 70 per cent of the best land.

We own nowhere near that and what land we do own we have developed it, to the potential that it can achieve and it has cost the farmers in Zimbabwe billions of dollars and we're not being compensated for that.

And the other factor is that there are farmers the length and breadth of Zimbabwe. They go from the Limpopo river right up to Kariba from east to west, as well.

So they farm in the harshest conditions. It's just the experience they've gained, the knowledge of going to universities and the fact that they are prepared to put so much effort into their farming.

That has brought them to what they are capable of producing today and even with this drought, we could have produced enough maze and wheat to feed the nation.

TONY JONES: Marshall Roper, we'll have to leave it there. Thank you very much for joining us on Lateline tonight.

http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/stories/s653298.htm