Ben Freeth

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Ben Freeth
Born (1971-08-23) 23 August 1971 (age 52)
Sittingbourne, Kent, England
Occupation(s)Commercial farmer and Human Rights activist
SpouseLaura Campbell
Children3

Benjamin Freeth, MBE (born 23 August 1971) is a White Zimbabwean farmer and human rights activist from the district of Chegutu in Mashonaland West Province, Zimbabwe. Together with his father-in-law, Mike Campbell, he rose to international prominence after 2008 for suing the regime of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe for violating the rule of law and human rights in Zimbabwe. Freeth and Campbell's lawsuit against the Mugabe regime—the case of Mike Campbell (Pvt) Ltd and Others v Republic of Zimbabwe —was chronicled in the award-winning 2009 documentary film Mugabe and the White African .

Contents

Background

Freeth was born in Sittingbourne, England, United Kingdom, the son of a British military family. After the independence of the Republic of Zimbabwe in 1980, the family relocated to the country where Freeth's father had been hired by the Zimbabwean government to set up a new staff training college for the newly established national army. Freeth attended Aiglon College and went on to study at the Royal Agricultural College in Gloucestershire, England, UK. He then returned to Zimbabwe and married Laura Campbell, the daughter of Rhodesian farmer Mike Campbell and his wife Angela. The Freeths built a house on the Campbells' 30,000 acres (12,000 ha) Mount Carmel estate in Chegutu and Freeth eventually became an official with the Commercial Farmers' Union. The couple have three children. [1] [2]

During the early 1970s, Campbell, a South African Army captain, was involved in the Rhodesian Bush War that pitted Rhodesia's white minority government against Black nationalist guerrillas. He moved to Mount Carmel farm in 1974. He added a neighbouring plot of land in 1980, following Zimbabwean independence. As well as farming, Campbell set up an extensive nature reserve on the property, replete with giraffes, impala and other indigenous animals. He also created the Biri River Safari Lodge, which became a popular tourist attraction. [3]

Campbell purchased Mount Carmel from himself after independence (the full title was vested in 1999 when the Zimbabwean government declared no interest in the land). [4] Together, Freeth and Mike Campbell managed the farm's operations and employed a sizeable number of local farm labourers while Laura oversaw a linen factory on the estate which employed many of the farm workers' wives. [5]

The Mount Carmel estate was described as a model employer. By the late 1990s, it had become the largest mango producer in Zimbabwe. It also produced maize, tobacco and sunflowers and sustained the livelihoods of more than 500 local Zimbabwean people. In 1999, ownership of the farm was transferred to a family company by a "certificate of no interest" from the Mugabe government. Every farm bought after independence in 1980 had to be offered to the government first for possible land redistribution and then deeds were stamped "No Government Interest" if the government did not wish to purchase it. [3]

Lawsuit against Robert Mugabe

In 2001, however, the Freeths and Campbells were issued an eviction notice from the Government of Zimbabwe as part of Mugabe's controversial land reform programme. Under this programme, several thousand White-owned farms have been repossessed without compensation by the Zimbabwean government. While the stated intention of the programme is to redistribute land to disadvantaged Zimbabweans, many of the repossessed lands have been given to government officials and others loyal to the Mugabe regime. Subsequently, many of these farms have fallen into disrepair and are no longer active. [6]

Freeth and Campbell chose to dispute the eviction order in court. After having been defeated in the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, they took their case to the SADC Tribunal, a regional court of the Southern African Development Community. During the case, Freeth, together with Mike and Angela Campbell, was abducted and beaten by Mugabe supporters. [7] The tribunal eventually ruled in Freeth and Campbell's favour, finding that the Zimbabwean government's land repossessions were entirely racially based and, therefore, were in violation of the SADC's principles of human rights. The government of Zimbabwe was ordered to respect Freeth and Campbell's right to own and operate their farm. [3]

The Mugabe government ignored the ruling and later withdrew Zimbabwe from the SADC. In August 2009, the Mount Carmel estate was invaded by Mugabe supporters and Freeth and Campbell's homes were burned down, as were the homes of the farm's workers and their families. The Freeths and Campbells, as well as their workers, were driven from the property. As of 2011, the Mount Carmel estate has become derelict and overgrown. Mike Campbell died in April 2011, though Freeth has stated his intention to continue fighting to take back ownership of the property. [5]

Honours

In June 2010, Freeth was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in recognition of his human rights activism in Zimbabwe. [8]

Related Research Articles

Until roughly 2,000 years ago, what would become Zimbabwe was populated by ancestors of the San people. Bantu inhabitants of the region arrived and developed ceramic production in the area. A series of trading empires emerged, including the Kingdom of Mapungubwe and Kingdom of Zimbabwe. In the 1880s, the British South Africa Company began its activities in the region, leading to the colonial era in Southern Rhodesia.

Land reform in Zimbabwe officially began in 1980 with the signing of the Lancaster House Agreement, as a program to redistribute farmland from white Zimbabweans to black Zimbabweans as an effort by the ZANU-PF government to give more control over the country's extensive farmlands to the black African majority. Before the implementation of these policies, the distribution of land in what was then known as Rhodesia saw a population of 4,400 white Rhodesians owning 51% of the country's land while 4.3 million black Rhodesians owned 42%, with the remainder being non-agricultural land. The discrepancy of this distribution, as well as the overall dominance of the white population in the newly-independent but largely unrecognized Rhodesian state was challenged by the black nationalist organizations ZANU and ZAPU in the Rhodesian Bush War. At the establishment of the modern Zimbabwean state in 1980 after the bush war, the Lancaster House Agreement held a clause that prohibited forced transfer of land, this resulted in changes in land distribution from the willing sale or transfer by owners being minor until 2000, when the government of Robert Mugabe began a more aggressive policy.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matabeleland</span> Region of southwestern Zimbabwe

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Chegutu, originally known as Hartley, is a town in Mashonaland West Province, Zimbabwe.

White Zimbabweans are Zimbabwean people of European descent. In linguistic, cultural, and historical terms, these Zimbabweans of European ethnic origin are mostly English-speaking descendants of British settlers. A small minority are either Afrikaans-speaking descendants of Afrikaners from South Africa or those descended from Greek, Portuguese, Italian, and Jewish immigrants.

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Robert Gabriel Mugabe was a Zimbabwean revolutionary and politician who served as Prime Minister of Zimbabwe from 1980 to 1987 and then as President from 1987 to 2017. He served as Leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) from 1975 to 1980 and led its successor political party, the ZANU – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF), from 1980 to 2017. Ideologically an African nationalist, during the 1970s and 1980s he identified as a Marxist–Leninist, and as a socialist after the 1990s.

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Mike Campbell (Pvt) Ltd et al. v. Republic of Zimbabwe is a case decided by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) Tribunal. The Tribunal held that the Zimbabwean government violated the organisation's treaty by denying access to the courts and engaging in racial discrimination against white farmers whose lands had been confiscated under the land reform program in Zimbabwe.

<i>Mugabe and the White African</i> 2009 British film

Mugabe and the White African is a 2009 documentary film by Lucy Bailey & Andrew Thompson and produced by David Pearson & Elizabeth Morgan Hemlock. It has won many awards including the Grierson 2010 and been BAFTA and Emmy Nominated. The film documents the lives of a white Zimbabwean family who run a farm in Chegutu, as they challenge the Fast Track land redistribution programme that redistributed white-owned estates, a legacy of colonialism and UDI, beginning in 2000. The film follows Mike Campbell, his son-in-law Ben Freeth, and their family as they challenge Robert Mugabe and the Zimbabwean government before the Southern African Development Community tribunal for racial discrimination and human rights violations. The film premiered in the UK on 21 October 2009 at the London Film Festival.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SADC Tribunal</span>

The SADC Tribunal was a court and the highest policy institution of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). It was housed in the Turnhalle building in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia. Although established on paper since 1992, members of the Tribunal were only appointed during the SADC Summit in 2005. On 18 November 2005 the Tribunal was inaugurated and the members were sworn in by Peter Shivute, chief justice of Namibia of the Namibian Supreme Court.

William Michael Campbell was a white African farmer from the district of Chegutu in Zimbabwe. Together with his son-in-law Ben Freeth, he rose to international prominence for suing the regime of Robert Mugabe of violating rule of law and human rights in Zimbabwe, in the case of Mike Campbell (Pvt) Ltd and Others v Republic of Zimbabwe. His struggle was the subject of an award-winning documentary, Mugabe and the White African.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Turnhalle (Windhoek)</span>

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Kingdom–Zimbabwe relations</span> Bilateral relations

Relations between the UK and Zimbabwe have been complex since the latter's independence in 1980. The territory of modern Zimbabwe had been colonised by the British South Africa Company in 1890, with the Pioneer Column raising the Union Jack over Fort Salisbury and formally establishing company, and by extension, British, rule over the territory. In 1920 Rhodesia, as the land had been called by the company in honour of their founder, Cecil Rhodes, was brought under jurisdiction of the Crown as the colony of Southern Rhodesia. Southern Rhodesia over the decades following its establishment would slowly be populated by large numbers of Europeans emigrants who came to form a considerable diaspora, largely consisting of Britons but also smaller groups of Italians, Greeks and Afrikaners. A settler culture that had already existed since the time of company would come to cement fully and the white population began to identify as Rhodesians, often in conjunction with British/Afrikaner/Southern European identities of their ancestors. Southern Rhodesia would go on to participate heavily in both the First and Second wars, providing soldiers and military equipment to the British war effort. During the years after the war, the relationship between Britain and Southern Rhodesia became increasingly strained. The UK had opted to decolonise Africa and had adopted a firm policy of no independence before majority rule, which deeply upset the white establishment of the colony, in particular the radical Rhodesian Front party led by Winston Field and later, Ian Smith. Relations between the British Government and the colonial Southern Rhodesian government deteriorated for much of the early 1960s and negotiations between the two dragged on with little to no success. Eventually, relations broke down entirely and Southern Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain. The move was met with zero recognition from the international community and the UK government and the illegitimate state was still formally considered under British sovereignty for its roughly 15-year span of existence. For the first 5 years of its proclaimed independence, Rhodesia still declared loyalty to the Queen Elizabeth II as a would-be Commonwealth realm, but this was never recognised by the British monarch who continued to encourage Smith's illegal government to resign. Given her refusal to appoint a Governor-general, from 1965 to 1970 an "Officer Administering the Government" served as the de facto head of state. Rhodesia eventually moved to sever all links with Britain and became a republic with a president in 1970. Throughout the subsequent Rhodesian Bush War between white Rhodesians and black paramilitaries such as ZANU and ZAPU, the UK continued to remain staunchly opposed to the rogue state and extensively sanctioned it, even enforcing blockades using the Royal Navy to cut off Rhodesian oil imports via Portuguese Mozambique. When Rhodesia failed to hold out after 15 years of fighting and came to the negotiating table with the black resistance groups and moderate African nationalist parties, the UK again became directly involved in Rhodesia's affairs. After a brief stint as the nation of Zimbabwe Rhodesia following an Internal Settlement that was denounced by the international community for not being satisfactory enough, the nation transiently reverted to its status as a self-governing British colony before being granted full independence and majority rule as Zimbabwe in 1980 under the landmark Lancaster House Agreement.

References

  1. ↑ Whites huddle and pray as mob closes in – The Times Online
  2. ↑ Zimbabwe – White farms being torched – Meat Trade News Daily Archived 12 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine "They built a house at Mount Carmel, the 12,000-hectare estate bought by her father, Mike, for a commercial farming and safari enterprise."
  3. 1 2 3 Mike Campbell Obituary – The Telegraph
  4. ↑ "Mike Campbell". The Economist . London: Economist Group. 20 April 2011. Retrieved 25 January 2012.
  5. 1 2 Mike Campbell Obituary – The Guardian
  6. ↑ Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson, directors. Mugabe and the White African, (documentary film) 2009.
  7. ↑ Freeth Abducted in Zimbabwe – The Telegraph
  8. ↑ Zimbabwean Farmer Awarded MBE – The Zimbabwean
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