Norman Madawo

White Farmer, Black Warrior: a Friendship out of Tune in Zimbabwe Norman Madawo

WHITE FARMER, BLACK WARRIOR: A friendship out of tune in Zimbabwe. The ownership of land, everywhere in the world is an identity and heritage that no human being, regardless of color, should be denied. Thus the war of liberation in Zimbabwe was fought not only to gain independence from the white colonialists but to gain economic independence through the ownership of land. Twenty years after independence, the land was still in the hands of the minority white farmers; while the black majority lived like squatters in a country they called their own. Both black and white agreed on the need for the redistribution of the land, how to do so was always going to be a contentious issue, until the black warriors of the war of independence took it upon themselves to confront the issue, inevitably opening up the old wounds of the old war, and in some way, forcing the nation to tackle the land issue that had eluded the government for over twenty years. However noble the idea of land redistribution was, the criminal elements, in the War Veterans Association, the government, and Service Chiefs, who hijacked the exercise, totally discredited it as they went on a violent, murderous campaign that destroyed a long established, viable economic mainstay of the country and the evidence is there for all to see today as the nation that was once the breadbasket of the region has become a begging basket case. For Zuze, a feared War Veteran of the old war, and Mike, a white farmer, their friendship was now out of tune as they both had to fight against each other for their interest, THE LAND. This is a story of their since childhood friendship, now being torn apart in the wake of the land war in Zimbabwe.