The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers� Voices from Zimbabwe

3. Discourses of Apoliticism in The Farmer

67 Any attempt to detach personal experience from critical practices risks leaving memories in the possession of specific groups – Frederick Cooper1 Introduction This chapter and those that follow focus on the experiences and discourses of white farmers as expressed in written and oral form. The core findings are based on a detailed reading of memoirs and autobiographies (Chapter Five), and on extensive interviews with white farmers still residing in Zimbabwe (Chapter Six). Both of these sources are located in very immediate and specific contexts. Having emerged after 2000 as a direct result of the land reforms and invasions, these texts and interviews are very much artefacts of the events that so fundamentally affected the white farming community. Though the delivery and focus of the farming voice may have changed after 2000 (as Chapters Four, Five and Six all illustrate ), it built upon discourses, ways of expression, myths and beliefs held within, and promoted by, the farming community that already existed. This chapter will explore the evolution of farming voices from 1970 to 2000 and reveal how much of the language, discourse and ways of talking so evident in the farming community after 2000 were present before then, and how they have evolved since. The Farmer magazine, which served the farming community for over 70 years until it was discontinued in 2002, at the height of the land invasions , has hitherto received remarkably little attention in discussions of white farmers in Zimbabwe and their history.2 It is a wonderfully rich source that offers a range of insights into many important aspects of the community’s history, including detailed accounts of the issues and dilemmas that have affected the farming community (such as the comDiscourses of Apoliticism in The Farmer 3 68 The Unbearable Whiteness of Being: Farmers’ Voices from Zimbabwe ing of independence and the post-2000 land reforms). The principal and express purpose of the magazine was to speak to and for the white farming community. This was a purpose that was well established under white minority rule, but one that had to adapt to the ambiguities of independence and conform to the new political paradigm. Having to renegotiate and re-imagine their place in a newly independent , black-ruled Zimbabwe was a complicated process for a wholly white group (commercial or otherwise). The CFU and The Farmer had the difficult task of ensuring they still spoke to and for their white rural constituencies, while, at the same time, showing themselves willing and active participants in the new national project of ‘Zimbabwe’. There are obvious parallels with the Afrikaans mainstream media in post-apartheid South Africa. Of these, Wasserman has written: the repositioning of Afrikaans media in the post-apartheid era has been more complicated than a crude shift from ideological nationalism to consumerism. While on one hand there was marked attempt to turn Afrikaans into a mere commodity to be sold to a niche market, this consumerist turn was precariously balanced with an attempt to position Afrikaans within a new identity politics.3 In a sense, The Farmer was doing just this. It was a direct participant in protecting and fashioning the identity of ‘Zimbabwean’ white farmers, but at the same time it sought to show the new black government that they, as a group, were comfortable with the new nation and would not do anything to undermine or jeopardise it. Even more pertinent to this chapter, Wasserman and Botma have commented: while media in post-apartheid South Africa are central participants in the continued power struggles for control of public discourse and political agendas, explicit support for political parties (as was the case under apartheid) has disappeared . Instead the media’s political positioning now only becomes evident through a critical reading of their structures, routines and discourses. Such a reading brings to light the fragmentation and disproportionate distribution of symbolic capital indicative of the fractures and contestations in broader society, as well as continuing political power struggles.4 This type of reading is provided here, to illustrate the divisions and power struggles evident within both the white farming community and the country at large, and how the discourses The Farmer employed refracted and shaped such divisions. 69 Discourses of Apoliticism in The Farmer This chapter will give a general overview of the magazine and its history . It will look at how it was run and managed and the politics of its publication...