Film gives glimpse into Mugabe's Zimbabwe

A Norwich cinema is set to screen a special showing of Mugabe and the White African - a challenging feature-length covertly filmed documentary, charting one Christian family’s extraordinary courage to bring a court case to establish the illegality and injustice of a relentless campaign of state-sanctioned terror.

 

Mike Campbell is one of a handful of white farmers still left in Zimbabwe since Robert Mugabe began enforcing his controversial land seizure programme, an initiative intended to reclaim white-owned land for supposed “redistribution” to poor black Zimbabweans. The reality is that these stolen farms have been given as patronage to Mugabe’s cronies. 

 

Since 2000, formerly thriving farms that employed thousands now sit derelict while poverty and hunger are rife among the majority of the country's citizens; but Mike Campbell, 76, refuses to back down. Mike’s son in law, Ben Freeth, has been in the forefront of bringing the case to the SADC Tribunal. The film charts the family's unprecedented attempt to take Mugabe to this international court on charges of racial discrimination and violation of their human rights.

 

The screening, which last 90 minutes, will be followed by a Q&A session led by Lt Col. Zach Freeth, whose son, Ben, is Mike Campbell’s son-in-law and continues to live in Zimbabwe with his wife, Laura, and their young children.

 

Tickets, priced £8.00 (with concessions available), can be obtained directly from the Box Office, Cinema City, St. Andrews Street, Norwich NR2 4AD, 0871 704 2053; www.picturehouses.co.uk