True Stories - Season 2010 Episode 19 Mugabe and the White African

Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey's film in the True Stories strand tells of how one white farmer took on the Zimbabwe government and took Robert Mugabe himself to court. Mike Campbell ran a mango farm in Zimbabwe which was reallocated to a poor black family (in reality, the son of one of Mugabe's former ministers) under Mugabe's Land Reform Programme. But Campbell and his son-in-law Ben Freeth took their case to a tribunal of the Southern African Development Community, an international court in Namibia, arguing the eviction was based on racial discrimination, which is illegal in Zimbabwe. The case dragged on for over a year, during which Campbell and his family were intimidated by armed gangs, kidnapped and tortured to within an inch of their lives. This film is an intimate account of one family's bravery in the face of state brutality and whose fight for justice has implications for ordinary Zimbabweans who continue to suffer at the hands of Mugabe and his regime.