Mugabe and the White African

Objective: study the land reform program in Zimbabwe and share ideas about whether or not white people today should be required to make amends for historical race-based injustices for which they were not personally responsible.

Discuss the effects of colonialism in Zimbabwe.

How did this country attempt to gain their independence from colonial rule, and were they successful?

Gain Ideas for project

Mugabe and the White African

Key Scenes

20 -25 “Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Program”

33-38 Opposing Viewpoints

41-44“It Is Distinctly Racially Discriminatory”

50 Violence

56- 58 Campbells leaving for Libya,

104 -108 True courage,

119 – Court

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What is African

Colonization?

Note Assignment: take notes In the following categories.

Who:

What happened:

When:

Where:

Why:

How: Click Image for Video

Mugabe and the White African

• Zimbabwe was a British Colony until 1980!

• during colonial times, it was common for the country’s small population of white people to take the best land for farming, leaving smaller areas of less desirable land for a large population of black peasant farmers.

• By the time Zimbabwe achieved its independence from Great Britain in 1980, 6,000 white farmers owned 47 percent of the country’s agricultural land, while more than 700,000 black farmers owned, leased or occupied the rest.

Class DiscussionWhat is the relationship between owning land and power?

• Imagine that it is 1980 and Zimbabwe has just achieved independence. What should the new government do, if anything, to address the legacy of inequityin land ownership that resulted from white discrimination against black Africans?

Robert Mugabe

When President Robert Mugabe took power in 1980, his government began addressing the inequity in land ownership by buying up white-owned farms and redistributing them to black peasant farmers.

By 2000, however, Mugabe’s popularity was waning.

In an effort to attract more supporters, he began an aggressive land redistribution policy, under which his government declared immediate ownership of all farms without providing compensation, and then began driving out white farmers through violence and intimidation.

Mugabe and the White African

Watch Mins 20 -25

Be prepared to answer the following questions:

• Why do the Campbells think President Mugabe is seizing white-owned farms?

• Why do you think President Mugabe would want white farmers out of Zimbabwe?

• Do you believe the government of Zimbabwe should be able to take away the property rights of white farmers as part of what they say is an effort to make up for policies in the past that discriminated against poor black farmers? Putting it more generally, do you think white people today should be required to make amends for historical race-based injustices for which they were not personally responsible? Explain.

• Should the land reform process take into account that the Campbells purchased their farm after Zimbabwean independence, rather than inheriting it from British colonizers? Why or why not?

• In your view, is it acceptable for people of different races to be treated unequally in certain circumstances? Explain.

Mugabe and the White African

Click Image for Video

Mugabe and the White African

Review:

How did Colonialism lead to where we find the Campbells in the video?

Why do the Campbells think President Mugabe is seizing white-owned farms?

Important Facts:

Colonialism in general took place in the late 1800s. This is a little over 120 years later.

Zimbabwe was colonized by the British in 1890 unlike Nigeria (Things Fall Apart) 10 years before.

At the time of colonization the British took complete control of the land. What we are witnessing now is an inversion of power which is no less bloody, or corrupt than when Zimbabwe was originally colonized.

Mugabe and the White African

Watch Mins 20 -25“Zimbabwe’s land Reform Program”

This section explains in part how the land redistribution process in Zimbabwe affected theMount Carmel farm owned by a white man named Mike Campbell and his family.

Be prepared to discuss:

Click Image for Video

1 Do you believe the government of Zimbabwe should be able to take away the property rights of white farmers as part of what they say is an effort to make up for policies in the past that discriminated against poor black farmers?

2 Should the land reform process take into account that the Campbells purchased their farm after Zimbabwean independence, rather than inheriting it from British colonizers? Why or why not?

3 In your view, is it acceptable for people of different races to be treated unequally in certain circumstances? Explain.

Mugabe and the White African

Watch Mins 33-38, 41-44“It Is Distinctly Racially Discriminatory”

Watch for who is receiving the farms seized by the Zimbabwean government.

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1 What is your reaction to finding out that the farms seized involuntarily from white farmers are being given to President Mugabe’s family and supporters, rather than to poor black farmers?

2 How might such gifts benefit Mugabe?3 Does knowing that Zimbabwe’s land reform

process is corrupt change your views about the justice or injustice of seizing white-owned farms? Explain.

Mugabe and the White African

Exit Notes: Essay Test Prep:Compare effects of colonialism in Nigeria to effects in Zimbabwe.

Commit to having at least two examples per box. As a class we will discuss Nigeria. You will be responsible for finding your own examples from the video!

+ Positive Effects of

Colonialism in Nigeria

- Negative Effects of

Colonialism in Nigeria

+ Positive Effects of

Colonialism in Zimbabwe

- Negative Effects of

Colonialism in Zimbabwe

     

       

Chapter 18 Recognizing Nigeria’s Notion of

DualityPositive Ways Africa is Influenced

Negative Ways Africa is Influenced

Three converts had gone into the village and boasted openly that all the gods were dead and impotent and that they were prepared to defy them by burning all their shrines.

Government

efulefu decided to live in the Evil Forest it was their own affair.

If they became more troublesome than they already were they would simply be driven out of the clan.

It all began over the question of admitting outcasts. These outcasts, or osu, seeing that the new religion welcomed twins and such abominations, thought that it was possible that they would also be received

An adherent accidentally kills the sacred python, the group becomes ostracized from the clan.

Mugabe and the White African

What are connections you can make with the novel, poem and video.

THE SECOND COMING Turning and turning in the widening gyre     The falcon cannot hear the falconer;     Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;     Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,     The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere     The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst     Are full of passionate intensity.     Surely some revelation is at hand;     Surely the Second Coming is at hand.     The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out     When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi     Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;     A shape with lion body and the head of a man,     A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

1 2

3

4

Mugabe and the White African

Key Scenes

20 -25 “Zimbabwe’s Land Reform Program”

33-38 Opposing Viewpoints

41-44“It Is Distinctly Racially Discriminatory”

50 Violence

56- 58 Campbells leaving for Libya,

104 -108 True courage,

119 – Court

Click Image for Video