‘You talk to Africans about these things?’
‘Oh, sure. I tell them I was fighting for my side,’ he said. ‘I ask them where they were fighting. I tease them a little. They can take it. As ex-soldiers, we have a lot in common. That war is history. It’s over. It was foolish for us to think that a small number of whites could govern millions of Africans.’
‘Do you get into the specifics of the war?’
‘Yeah. I often say, “Oh, you were in that sector? I was in that sector, too. I was probably shooting at you.” ’
‘What kind of a reaction do you get?’
‘A good one,’ Drummond said. ‘We often talk about the people who didn’t fight — the informers. I say, “Oh you had information from whites? What did you think of that?” They say, “We just used them.”. No fondness for them, see. I say, “Well, we had African informers. We just used them, too.” ’ Drummond looked at me to make his point. ‘The informers weren’t fighting. I can’t talk to an informer, but a fighter — that’s another story.’
Back in the car, driving through his estate he must have been ruminating on this and wanting me to understand, because out of the blue he said with emphasis, ‘A certain bond exists between ex-fighters — the soldiers. We each had our own side, but we shared a common experience.’
That night in his farmhouse, poring over a map of his estate he told me of various plans he had to make the place viable. One was to subdivide a portion of the land and sell off parcels to Zimbabweans who would become smallholders, growers of flowers or vegetables, making the place a sort of cooperative. The idea was not to hand the parcels out to invaders and squatters but to sell each one with a legal title.
‘Or maybe time-share cottages,’ Drummond said, sketching a corner with his finger. ‘And this whole area could be retirement homes.’ He indicated some waterholes and said, ‘Perfect for camp grounds. Already this area attracts eland, kudu, and impala. We could put up a huge fence and manage some of the estate as a game reserve.’
I looked at the map and imagined the cottages, the bungalows, the tents, the long-horned animals.
‘Or maybe I’ll go to Australia,’ Drummond said. ‘But I really want to stay here. The trouble is I have this debt. Inflation is sixty-five percent, I get my chicks from the US and have to pay in US dollars, and the Zim dollar is falling.’
The night was cold and clear, the bright moon reflected on the lake. Except for the barking dogs — a big Labrador retriever and a frisky Jack Russell terrier — there was silence. But when the dogs yapped I thought we were being invaded and imagined war vets, thieves, opportunists, predators.
‘I’ll just check those dogs,’ Drummond said. Perhaps he was anxious too?
But I preferred this farm to Harare, to being in a hotel, a town, or a city. I kept thinking how much like Old Russia this was, Old America, too. And how the stories I liked best had seldom been tales of the city but nearly always the Gothic fictions and tragicomedies of rural life, Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm and Doris Lessing’s The Grass is Singing (set near Drummond’s farm), Chekhov’s provincial dramas, the work of writers of the American South — Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor, the best work of Mark Twain, all of their comic gloom and isolation summed up in Gogol’s evocative title, Evenings on a Farm Near Dikanka.
Morning at Drummond’s farm was clear and bright, the cold dew sparkling on the long grass. I had been woken by the dogs and by Drummond’s comings and goings. At breakfast he said he was off with two of his men, to Karoi, about 120 miles north, to build a classroom as payment in kind for his daughter Misty’s school fees.
His parting words were, ‘My son Troy will be over to take you around. Talk to anyone you like.’
Troy was twenty-six, an Olympic windsurfer who had recently represented Zimbabwe in an international tournament in New Caledonia in the western Pacific, earning a respectable place. He was modest, soft-spoken, and easy-going, knowledgeable about modern farm methods. He and his brother Shane supervised the seed maize, the pigs, the horses and the vehicles. He had farmed the tobacco but ‘My father doesn’t smoke, tobacco’s against his philosophy, so we phased it out.’
He said, ‘My father said to show you anything you wanted to see.’
‘I’d like to talk to the invaders.’
‘We can do that.’
‘But don’t tell me anything in advance. I want to get acquainted myself.’
Laughing, Troy said, ‘They’re friendly blokes anyway.’
We drove across the estate, and again I was reminded of the size and complexity of the place, which seemed bigger than a town now and more like a whole county.
The first invader was not at home. Stakes had been pounded into the ground to mark his fields — quite an irony, too, since the stakes were also a warning to possible intruders on the land he had seized. I saw no crops. The hut was a shanty, the improvements derisory.
‘Not much action here,’ I said.
We took another road and after fifteen minutes or so turned off on to a narrow track. At the margin of the track was a field planted with maize that looked just sprouted — though this was nearly the harvest season. Nothing was pickable.
‘That’s not a crop,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing to eat here.’
Obeying my request not to tell me anything, Troy shrugged.
In the distance, in front of four round well-made huts with conical roofs was a skinny tortoise-faced man in a dirty T-shirt waving his arms.
‘That’s another one,’ Troy said.
Attempting to ingratiate myself, I greeted the African in Chichewa. I wasn’t surprised that he answered me, since Chichewa was widely spoken outside Malawi. But he said that he had learned it in Zambia, where he had lived for twenty-one years. His mother was a Zambian. His name was Reywa, he had a large family, all of them living with him on the land he had seized from the Drummond family.
‘What were you doing in Zambia?’ I asked him in English.
‘I was a driver.’
‘Are you a war vet?’
‘No. No fighting. I am landless.’
‘I thought only war vets could invade the land.’
‘A war vet said I could come here,’ Reywa said.
I said to Troy, ‘He’s just a guy who wants land.’
Troy said, ‘Right.’
‘Reywa, your garden isn’t doing too well.’
He started to scream at me, his tightened face even more tortoise-like. ‘Garden is nothing! Because I planted too late! The government promised seed, fertilizer, use of a tractor. But they didn’t give me! I just waited for them until it was too late. They didn’t help me!’ He was whining and moaning. ‘I did this all myself by hand — yes, myself!’
‘But there’s nothing to eat here.’
‘Near the anthill, some maize is bigger.’ He indicated a mound about forty yards off with tall plants on its dome. ‘I have some pumpkin blossoms to eat, some small tomatoes.’ He turned to Troy and said, ‘I need a fence. The animals will come here and eat my plants. Tell your father he must put up a fence, or else.’
‘Or else, what?’ I asked.
His beaky face became agitated and he said, ‘Or else there will be war! Because I must have a fence.’ He kicked at the edge of his garden in frustration. He said, ‘Next year will be better. The government will help me.’
‘What if they don’t help you?’
‘Then Mr Drummond will help me.’
‘Why should Mr Drummond help you? After all, you invaded his land.’
‘Because I was landless.’
‘Now you have land.’
‘What good is land if I don’t have a tractor? Mr Drummond has a tractor. He must help me. He will plow for me.’