During the first week of August I will be participating in a blog tour for Mugabe and the White African by Ben Freeth. My review will be posted then, and I am anxiously awaiting the book’s arrival in the mail. So anxiously in fact that I’m tempted to watch the PBS premiere of the documentary. I’ve decided to record it and watch it after I’ve reviewed the book, but I did watch the trailer.
This is a short section of the film description from the PBS website:
“The Campbell family of Zimbabwe — Mike Campbell, his wife, Angela, their daughter, Laura, and their son-in-law, Ben Freeth — may have been white people determined to hold on to their farm, but they were not in the mold of colonialists hanging on to land extorted from blacks. They were among the native-born whites who did not flee in 1980 when Zimbabwe, the former Rhodesia, achieved full independence and black majority rule. Embracing the new country, Mike and Angela expanded their small farm that same year, buying additional land to create a game preserve, with the full approval of the newly elected government led by independence fighter Robert Mugabe and his Zimbabwe African National Union–Patriotic Front (ZANU-PF) party.
Twenty years later, the Campbells found themselves in the crosshairs of a brutal land redistribution program enacted by the same Robert Mugabe. Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson’s Mugabe and the White African is an inspiring and chilling account of the Campbells’ efforts to fight the government.”
The documentary airs on PBS on Tuesday, July 26 at 10:00 PM. You can see online from July 27, 2011 to October 25, 2011. And be sure to check back here to read my review.
Jess Boudreaux 