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Mugabe & The White African
Sunday July 24 at 10 pm ET/PT on CBC News Network
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Mugabe and the White Africa
Watch the film online. Please note: this film is only available online for 30 days after the last broadcast date.
68:16 min 
Michael Campbell is one of the few hundred white farmers still left in Zimbabwe since President Robert Mugabe began enforcing his controversial land reform program. Initially, a policy meant to reclaim white-owned land and redistribute it to poor black Zimbabweans, it has instead been used to 'gift' farms to his loyal supporters. It has left the country in chaos.
Since 2000, formerly thriving farms that employed thousands, now sit derelict whilst poverty and hunger thrive amongst the majority of the country's citizens.
Mike, like hundreds of farmers before him, have suffered years of multiple land invasions and violence at his farm, but this genial 75 year old, with a dry sense of humour, has refused to back down. In 2008, Mike took the unprecedented step of challenging President Robert Mugabe and his 'Land Reform' program in an International Court. He accuses Robert Mugabe's regime of illegal racial discrimination and violations of basic human rights.
Set against the tumultuous 2008 presidential elections, Mugabe and the White African, follows Mike and son-in-law Ben Freeth’s harrowing attempt to save their farm and the lives and livelihoods of the 500 black workers that live and work on the farm. It is an unprecedented case, on whose outcome rests not only Mike and the families’ future, but also the future of millions of ordinary Zimbabweans who continue to suffer at the hands of one of the world’s most infamous tyrants. On the brink of losing everything, Mike and his family (wife Angela, daughter Laura who runs her own linen business, and her husband Ben Freeth) stand united by their courage, their faith and their hope.
In an intimate and often terrifying film, this is the only documentary feature film to have come out of Zimbabwe in recent years, where a total press ban existed.
Much of the footage was shot covertly. To have been caught filming would have lead to imprisonment.
UPDATE: Michael Campbell died peacefully, at home, surrounded by his family on April 6, 2011. Ben Freeth and his family still live in Harare, Zimbabwe as does Mike's widow, Angela. The family is still pursuing justice.
Freeth, now an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for his services to farming in Zimbabwe, has written a book also titled Mugabe and the White African. It will be published in the UK, USA and Canada - with a foreward by Desmond Tutu - and should be available in Canada by the end of July 2011.
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