Mugabe and the White African

A frontline report on racial injustice in southern Africa is hardly new territory for political documentaries, but here the victims are white instead of black. The setting is the nation of Zimbabwe, a thug-ocracy under leader Robert Mugabe, who uses Hitler as a yardstick of his own power. Denying that any Caucasian can be an African, he vows to take all remaining white-owned farms and redistribute them to deserving black native “peasants,” but in reality properties are doled out to the regime's wealthy bureaucrats, cronies, and judges—even girlfriends. The embattled holdout here is Mount Carmel, the Campbell family homestead, lawfully purchased from the previous government in 1980 and employing 500 laborers with no complaints of inequity. Frighteningly isolated, threatened with seizure, and bloodily assaulted by gangs, the Campbells mount a legal challenge to Mugabe in an international court. Filmmakers Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson had to film surreptitiously (risking imprisonment), which also meant that sympathetic black Zimbabweans could not be interviewed out of safety concerns. DVD extras include a Q&A with the directors, biographies, and a photo gallery. While Mugabe and the White African lamentably lacks any recap of Zimbabwe's (formerly Rhodesia) history or European-colonial imperialism—which might have provided broader context—this is still well worth watching. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)