I was born in Africa. So was my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, and his great grandfather. But being white, I am considered an "invader", a "foreigner" and am not allowed to feel as if I belong.
I've heard stories of "Americans", people whose parents got off a boat and gave birth to someone who can demand every right available. I've met people who travel on British Passports, who came to London at the age of five and became citizens, and dare anyone attempt to treat them as second class citizens, there's a trainload of laws that will be implemented. But this is Africa, and our rights, if any, are at the whim of whatever megalomaniac is in power.
When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, a lot of people my parents knew sold and left. Prices were good. Those who stayed added to their holdings and produced. We fed Africa. We, the whites in Zimbabwe, we fed Africa.
Our farms were well organised, well managed, well funded, and we paid a good wage and looked after our workers. Some of my parent's friends who had stayed began to see thedark clouds, sold off and migrated. Most of my age group stayed, save those who had gone abroad to learn professions and became lawyers or doctors or got jobs with multi-nationals and were not interested in farming.
Those, like myself, were born here, we belonged here, but here didn't want us. And quietly, many of those who had been pro-Mugabe, without saying a word against him, got rid of their plantations.
The intelligent would take an enormous mortgage and use the money to "escape", so the banks would foreclose. The dumber tried to sell, but sell to whom?
There weren't any blacks who wanted to be farmers, and no white with the brains of a gazelle would buy any more land which might very well become part of some "redistribution".
I gave away a section to my workers and concentrated on quick cash crops, but the storm clouds came closer. With less plantations producing, the prices were higher and of course it became a talking point.
When the gangs came to my neighbor, I thought of giving my land to Mugabe to spare my life, but who could trust him?
Over the years he had become more and more maniacal, and I began to realize, trying to grow food was becoming a non- insurable risk. I tried to mortgage my home, the Bank wouldn't give me a cent. I tried to use it as collateral for a loan, and all I could get was slightly more than pocket change.
Yet, it was enough. I packed up and left in the middle of the night and got into South Africa with everything I could take. I was lucky. When the gangs came to my land all they could do to satisfy their blood lust is kill an old dog that didn't even belong to me.
Belong.
What a funny word.
How could I not belong to a land where I could trace my ancestry back to 1849? How could I not belong, where my crops fed Africa? But I was white.
And one thing you learn about being white in this world, you have no rights. Especially not in Africa. You'll never see us protesting, you'll never hear human rights groups speaking out, we're white. We are responsible for every single thing that has ever gone wrong in the world.
We are white, and whether we can't afford to turn on a light, or don't have a change of underwear, we're rich. And we got rich off the backs of Blacks.
They'd showed images on the news last night of what had been my land. A bunch of shanties on the most fertile portions, the house burnt to cinders, and the corpse of the dog, rotting in the sun.
