New White Pioneers
Mugabe's lost whites find jungle refuge

13^th August 2002

THEY are living in a leaky tent 30 minutes' drive down a dirt road in the Mozambique bush - and loving it. Dave and Carol O'Neill-Williams have no electricity, no running water, no telephone, no television and their toilet is a hole in the ground. Snakes and malarial mosquitoes abound and when they bathe in the nearby Nhadzunya River they keep an eye open for crocodiles. Yet as she brewed tea over a camp fire last week before blowing out the candles and turning in for the night, Carol O'Neill-Williams said: "This is home sweet home." Her husband nodded in agreement.

The couple, both 40, are part of an intrepid new generation of pioneering white settlers fleeing the devastation of President Robert Mugabe's disastrous land seizure programme in Zimbabwe to build a new life in neighbouring Mozambique.

Much like their British ancestors who trekked into Zimbabwe just over 100 years ago, the O'Neill-Williamses are determined to transform virgin African bush into prosperous farmland. Behind them they have left a nation in chaos and despair, beset by a collapsing economy, rising unemployment and a crumbling currency.

Nobody knows what the future holds when a 45-day deadline set by Mugabe for almost 3,000 white farmers to abandon their land expires this week. Many are expected to defy eviction orders and risk the wrath of the war veterans and youth militia who are thought to be preparing for trouble.

"The crunch has come and it is better that we are out of Zimbabwe, primitive though our life in the bush is," said Dave O'Neill-Williams. "At least we have made our decision rather than hanging on in the hope that things will get better, as many other farmers have been doing.

"Mozambique is a fantastic opportunity and we are glad we grasped it when we did. In Zimbabwe white farmers are being discriminated against but here we are being made welcome."

During their drive across Zimbabwe to Mozambique last week, the O'Neill-Williamses passed farm after farm that had been occupied by squatters. The once green fields were largely abandoned. Many of the whites had already moved out of Chinoyi, a sizeable town north of the capital, Harare, some emigrating as far afield as New Zealand. At Marondera, several firms connected with agriculture had closed down.

The couple are among a score of white farming families from Zimbabwe who have resettled in the central Mozambican province of Manica. For the Mozambique government, eager to revive an agriculture industry ruined by years of fighting (first for independence from Portugal, then in a savage 16-year civil war), the influx is a boon.

The paradox is that on independence in 1975 Mozambique drove out the entire Portuguese population. The late President Samora Machel, who saw the country reduced to poverty as a consequence, told Mugabe on Zimbabwe's independence in 1980: "Whatever you do, don't lose the whites." Mugabe has not heeded his advice and the exodus of whites is accelerating. Mozambique is considering dozens of applications to settle from white Zimbabweans who have been driven off their farms.

The O'Neill-Williamses own a milling company at Banket, northwest of Harare. Since the violent land invasions began in early 2000 they have seen their farming friends beaten up, humiliated and sometimes jailed. Hardly a farm is now operating in their area.

With the collapse of agriculture, production at their mill dropped by two-thirds this year but they struggled on, hoping for change. Mugabe's controversial presidential election victory last March, guaranteeing him six more years in power, was the final straw.

Two months ago Dave O'Neill-Williams travelled to Mozambique to explore the possibilities. He was drawn immediately to Manica by the cheapness of the land and its tax-free status. The authorities offered him various sites but he opted for 2,000 hectares (nearly 5,000 acres) of uncleared bush south of Catandica on an annual $2,000 lease. He liked the soil, the proximity of rivers for irrigation and the low number of villagers in the area.

Within a month the provincial authorities had given their approval with the proviso that the local villagers had the final say on whether they wanted a white-run farm nearby. Shadrek, the tribal chief, summoned everyone to a meeting. A few older villagers objected, perhaps because of their memories of exploitative Portuguese colonial rule and the role Rhodesia and South Africa played in their long civil war. They suggested that the O'Neill-Williamses should lease land in a dense and inaccessible forest on the other side of the Nhadzunya River.

The vote went in the couple's favour, however, when the younger generation of villagers opposed the elders, saying the presence of whites was good news because it would provide them with work. O'Neill-Williams undertook to relocate at his own expense any villagers who wished to move. Few have taken up the offer.

The deal was sealed with a gift to Shadrek of two pairs of brown and white shoes. Last week the O'Neill-Williamses paid a courtesy call on Shadrek and his family of 10 children in his mud-hut village. The old chief was so delighted with his new footwear that he was wearing a brown shoe on his right foot especially for the occasion. Small children jumped up and down in excitement at their first sight of white people.

Several young men ran up to the couple asking for work. It was the sort of friendliness they had been used to in Zimbabwe before Mugabe presented the land reform issue in racial terms and encouraged squatters to seize millions of acres of white-owned farmland.

Clearing of the bush has already started. Where the O'Neill-Williamses plan to have their farmhouse and workshops, villagers with shovels were labouring in the noonday sun last week. A septic tank was being dug and thousands of newly prepared bricks were lying out to dry. Even a villager who was hobbling on a withered foot, the result of a puff adder bite, was working away, glad of a job after years without employment.

O'Neill-Williams's intention is to cultivate maize on a quarter of his new land and to rear beef cattle on the remainder. With a mill and an abattoir they believe that their farm, which they have named Catandica Ranch, will turn in a handsome profit in a year or two. They also plan to introduce game to the farm and to run safaris.

Meanwhile, they are content to be in the immense Mozambican bush, where the only sounds are of birds and insects. "The good thing is that there is no way Mozambicans want to get rid of the whites again," said O'Neill-Williams. "They say they have been through that and are delighted that white farmers are abandoning Zimbabwe for their much poorer country." The only people who need convincing are their two teenage sons, who still do not want to leave Zimbabwe.

Jon Swain, Mozambique - The Sunday Times - World