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Sept. 4, 2024 - Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy
54:15
Mugabe's Thugs Took His Farm & Fractured His Skull - When Identity Politics Run Amok | Ben Freeth
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Coming out of the recent RNC convention, one of the top questions on my mind is the question of identity.
American identity, but national identity more deeply.
On one vision of national identity, and I think most nations have been built this way, it's built around an ethnicity or a monarch or a religion or even a tie of how long your lineage or your ancestral lineage has been tied to a particular plot or area of land.
I think American identity is different.
Yes, the United States of America, no doubt, like every other nation, is a place circumscribed with national boundaries around it that we must protect.
But the United States of America, more than any nation in modern human history, certainly, is a country also bound together by a set of ideals that set this country into motion in 1776.
There's a deep philosophical question of whether people are willing to fight for a nation grounded in ideals, fight for abstract ideals.
And I think they are.
That's what the American Revolution was fought for.
That's actually part of what makes America great.
It's what certainly made America great the first time around.
That's part of the reason why I'm so bothered by the rise of identity politics in America.
What is identity politics?
Identity politics is a vision of our relationships grounded in our genetically inherited attributes, our race, our gender, maybe sexual orientation, certainly the visual and immutable characteristics that ground you in who you are.
And the essence of America is that we reject identity politics.
Have we been perfect for most of our national history on that?
No, we haven't.
But that's still the essence and the ideal that we strive for.
And I think we do face a bit of a fork in the road in the conservative movement of how we address the historical rise of left-wing identity politics that says that if you're black, you're oppressed, or if you're white, you're an oppressor.
How do we deal with that type of group identity politics?
Is it through more identity politics of a different kind and have them battle each other out in a way that decides that we're going to replace one form of identity politics with a different one?
Or is it by rejecting identity politics altogether?
The same thing can be said with respect to what is our response to the left-wing patronage model of how to govern.
Do we believe in patronizing certain special interest groups, partly based on identity politics or any other factor?
Do we believe in the government subsidizing or patronizing certain segments of the economy, certain segments of the population?
Do we want to deal with that by proposing a new patronage economy where we patronize other parts of the economy or other parts of the culture or other parts of the citizenry?
Or do we want to reject patronage politics altogether?
I do think this is going to be a key question, and I believe it's an unanswered question, in the future direction of the conservative movement, even the national conservative movement.
Do we believe in patronage or do we believe in liberty?
Do we believe in redirecting the regulatory state to accomplish our desired ends, or is the right answer to dismantle that regulatory state altogether?
Do we deal with these thorny questions around identity and the rise of left-wing identity politics with an alternative vision of identity politics?
Or do we reject identity politics altogether?
You could probably tell where I land on some of these questions.
I believe the right answer is not to reshape the regulatory state.
It's to shut it down.
I believe the right answer to the rise of a patronage economy where the government picks favorites across its citizenry and across its economic actors isn't to pick a different set of favorites.
It's to reject that patronage economy altogether.
I believe the right answer to left-wing identity politics is not to compete with the different vision of saying, hey, we're going to wrap our own vision of identity politics around a different set of identities and compete with you.
No, that's not the right answer.
The right answer is to reject identity politics.
The right answer to left-wing victimhood is not the adoption of right-wing victimhood.
It is the rejection of victimhood culture altogether.
And this is the fork in the road.
Do we want a left-wing nanny state to replace it with a right-wing nanny state?
I say hell no to that.
The right answer is we don't want the nanny state altogether.
These are deep questions for the future of the United States of America, and particularly the future of the nascent new conservative movement as well.
Where I think we're going to have to have these healthy debates if we're going to end up being the strongest version of ourselves.
One of the things I've learned, certainly about our country, I believe relatively young in our history, believe it or not.
I believe the United States of America, relative to our potential in life, has much further ahead of it than we do behind us.
And I hope our best days in that, too, being ahead of us.
One of the things I've learned, though, is that we are at our best when we learn lessons from other countries.
One of the ways that I understand what America is is you see America through the lens of people in other countries.
What do they see here that's different from the places where they might have grown up or where they may be coming from today?
And for us, for our part, learning about some of the travails of other countries that have grappled with some of these same questions of government intervention in the economy against the backdrop of divisive identity politics and where that road leads.
It's fascinating to somehow get outside of the American environment for a little bit because then you can let go of your presuppositions or political commitments here and just for a second take a tour somewhere else altogether, detached, Liberated, unshackled from what our pre-existing biases or pre-existing political commitments might be here.
To just learn about a different country that may have grappled with very similar questions but at a different time and under different circumstances.
to learn about it without any preconceived notions or attachments, and then to come back and put that American prism back on.
We often see our country a little bit differently and often for the better when we do.
That's what we're going to do on today's podcast.
We're going to talk to a farmer from Zimbabwe, not a normal kind of guest that I have on this podcast, but one who I've been looking forward to talking to.
His name is Ben Freeth.
His story, I think, is a cautionary tale, not just for those who may live in Zimbabwe in the future, not those who are in the UK or in Europe, He talks to me today from the UK where we're having this conversation today, but a cautionary tale to those of us who live right here at home in the United States of America.
So I'm fascinated by what he has to say.
His story has gained some notoriety in recent years.
It's a riveting story, even though it doesn't relate to the contemporary politics of our moment on this side of the pond in America.
I'm pleased to welcome Ben Freeth.
Thank you for inviting me on.
So Ben, tell me a bit about your background.
I have some familiarity I've read about you.
This is the first time we're actually speaking.
But for our audience, it's a fascinating story.
For those who are able to see you, you are a Zimbabwean farmer.
It might surprise some people to see you that you're white-skinned.
But that's actually part of the history that we're going to talk about here.
Give us your background, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about The backdrop for the tragedy that you encountered.
Well, we were farming in kind of the middle of Zimbabwe.
It was a very productive farm.
Mangoes, citrus, cattle, wildlife, row crops.
We had a very good farming operation with up to 200 employees at any one time.
And we would export all over the world to the Middle East, to the Far East, to Europe, particularly with the mangoes and the citrus.
And so it was a great operation.
It was employing lots of people.
It was creating foreign currency for the country.
We were paying taxes.
We had a mobile clinic.
We had...
Education.
It was a thriving place in a thriving community.
And Zimbabwe was a place that was known as a breadbasket of Africa.
We would export to our neighboring countries as well.
When there were food shortages and this kind of thing.
So it was a family farm and we were amongst many other family farms in the area.
So it was a good situation all around for everyone.
And then the year 2000 came along.
In fact, just a little bit before that in 1997, there was a threat to our president's power and he realized that he had to go out and make sure that on all the farms there was fear,
you know, essentially terrible fear brought into the hearts of both farm workers and the farmers on all those farms and So that no opposition And Ben, let me just pause you because this is really the thick of the story, but the backdrop I think is so valuable.
So this is Mugabe, President Mugabe in Zimbabwe.
Talk to us a little bit to rewind the clock of how he came to power in Zimbabwe in the first place, that it was even the backdrop of what happened with the founding and a little bit of the identity politics.
The racial identity politics, frankly, that was the backdrop surrounding some of the historical détente that led up to his rise.
I just think that history is immensely important here.
Well, Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe used to be known, was a colony of the United Kingdom.
In 1965, Rhodesia did what America did in 1776 and was actually the only other colony in the whole of the British Empire and the history of the British Empire that declared unilaterally independence.
At that time, the Cold War was running strong.
There was a lot of things going on with The Marxist countries coming in and essentially Bringing a premature independence to many of the African countries where Marxism was brought in and people started to suffer.
And so what happened in 1965 was Ian Smith declared independence unilaterally.
That, of course, unfortunately led to war.
The Chinese, particularly, and the Russians along with the North Koreans and Eastern European countries came in.
Armed Robert Mugabe and others with tens of thousands of AK-47s.
And there was full-on war, which eventually led to independence in 1980. And in 1980, Robert Mugabe said, yesterday you are our enemies, today you are our friends.
And he said, we're not going to kick you guys out as has happened in Mozambique and other countries around us where white people are basically being given 24 hours to take 20 kilograms, 40 pounds of their possessions with them.
And so Robert Mugabe said, no, you guys can stay.
We want to try and create a A state where everyone can thrive.
Many people didn't trust him.
Many people did leave.
Our family, they decided to stay.
Why?
Why was that?
Because I know that when Mugabe took over, a lot of people just got the heck out because they saw the risk.
Your family clearly sees yourself as Rhodesian, as Zimbabweans.
And so talk about that struggle a little bit.
And that's an important input into the story that follows.
I think, you know, for our family, so this was actually my father-in-law, particularly, whose farm that my wife and I were on subsequently.
I was obviously only a young boy at the time.
My father-in-law and his family decided that they would stay because it was home and they believed, well, you know, there is a chance that things may be different this time.
And they decided that they were going to try and make the very best of it, do their very best for the country, invest and try to Create the food security that the country obviously needed.
We, at Rhodesia at that time, had the best educated population in Africa.
It had the best healthcare in Africa.
It was a success story.
And so, there was people that just invested everything in that country and decided that there was a possibility that things could be different.
So you bought into the vision?
We did, and it was pretty rough to begin with.
The 5th Brigade down in the south of the country was commanded by a guy called Perin Shiri, and he had been trained by the North Koreans And they massacred the Matabili people down in the south of the country.
There were about 20,000 innocent civilians that were killed at that time.
So it wasn't an easy start to independence.
But the hope was that Robert Mugabe would be a leader that would be different to many of the other countries where complete nationalization of land and property and businesses and even homes had taken place to the North.
Times were starting to change in the world and of course by the time 1989 came along and the Berlin Wall came down You know, most people felt, okay, well, you know, we're on a trajectory of growth.
Property rights are going to fail.
Business is going to be able to operate in this country.
And we became actually the fastest growing economy in the world in the 90s.
And so it did look like the decision to stay had been vindicated.
For some time.
For some time, yeah.
And so that's through the 90s.
And then what changed in the 90s, right?
Mugabe supported a sort of a fast-growing economy, even despite having nationalized much of it, right?
Is that a fair statement?
He didn't nationalize land.
He didn't nationalize private farming ventures.
He kind of allowed those things to be able to carry on.
He neutralized the opposition, or what he perceived to be the opposition, the Matabidi tribe in the South by killing them.
But there was not a wholesale nationalization process that took place at that time.
In fact, the constitution that was negotiated didn't allow nationalization.
of private property.
And he stuck to that.
He stuck to that for those first 10 years after independence in 1980, so from 1980 to 1990. And then a new act came into being in 1992, the Land Acquisition Act, which did allow him to take land without compensating for it.
But he didn't use that a lot.
He had bought a lot of land.
He bought 3.6 million hectares with the help of the British and the international community from farmers.
That land went to resettlement, but those people in resettlement were not given title deeds.
They were not given that kind of independence of being able to be masters of their own piece of land.
But it was only when an opposition was formed.
So he made sure that there was no opposition.
It was basically a one-party state all the way from 1980 to 1999. So for the first 19 years, it was a one-party state.
And then, of course, the Eastern Bloc countries came down.
The communist countries were no longer able to exert their influence, and there was a A mood towards democracy in Africa and other places because there was not support from those communist countries any longer.
And so an opposition party was formed for the first time from the trade union movement in 1999. Yeah, and that's when the gloves came off.
Robert Mugabe had to neutralize that opposition, and that's when the fear had to be generated, and that's when we as farmers, our farm workers who were the swing vote, had to be essentially terrorized.
It was going back to his Maoist kind of training, To terrorize the population and make sure that everyone was brought into intense fear.
And that's essentially what happened in the year 2000, four months before an election where he knew that he would be out of power if he did not take the gloves off.
You know, it's interesting.
How ideological do you believe he was, actually?
Do you believe that a lot of this reflected sort of a Maoist intellectual commitment?
Or do you think that this was all, the whole time, just a balancing act for whatever allowed Mugabe as a leader to preserve power?
Pragmatism versus ideology, what do you think guided him?
It was all about power.
You know, he had to remain in power.
He was a megalomaniac.
He had to remain in power.
He was prepared to sacrifice the economy.
He was prepared to sacrifice his reputation internationally for power, so long as he could stay in power.
And, of course, it worked.
He was able to stay in power from 2000 right up until the coup that was not called a coup back in 2017. He bought himself another 17 years after those first 20 years in power.
So that was what it was all about.
And we all felt at the time, we all felt, well, you know, In the end, pragmatism will come back.
The pragmatism of making sure an economy can function, that there is food security, that people have got education, people have got health, and these kinds of things.
But power was more important than all those kinds of things.
And do you think there was a version of the world where, when there was the rise of this opposition party, That was still against a backdrop of at least a decade plus where the country had seen real economic growth, where there had been improvements in prosperity, where they had respected land rights and private property rights.
Was there an alternative path available to him to defeat the opposition party on the record of prosperity by actually bringing along the swing voters based on a positive vision of growth, right?
Rather than using terror and fear, which we'll get to in a second, which is where the story ended.
Was that alternative open to him or had that door already been shut by that point in time?
I think, you know, it's very difficult for any politician anywhere in the world after 20 years in power to, however well he might have done or she had done, it's very difficult for them to retain that popularity after 20 years.
And certainly I think it would have been very difficult for him and his party to have won Without taking the gloves off.
You know, he could have done a Nelson Mandela.
He could have bowed out as an elder statesman.
He was already, by then, he was an octogenarian.
It would have been the right thing to have done.
But for him, I think he felt partly it was because he had so much blood on his hands, but partly because In his psyche, he just had to stay in power, whatever it cost.
And do you think he was facing or feared facing prosecution or any types of retribution from that new party, or was literally just coming out of power?
I think it was more just coming out of power.
But obviously, as soon as you are not in power, you're not in control.
You're not in control of the judiciary.
You're not in control of what might happen to you if things changed.
And having so much blood on his hands, tens of thousands of people, innocent civilians, I think he felt that it was better to stay in power than to Then to relinquish power and bow out as an elder statesman.
And do you believe that his behavior could have been any different if the opposition party coming to power had, say, pledged immunity to him from prosecution?
Do you think that it would have taken him out of the box that he was in and opened up that elder statesman bowing out type of path that otherwise was closed to him?
I think over the years, there was a lot of discussion about that immunity, and that immunity was certainly offered to him.
So it was?
That did happen?
It did happen, but he did not trust that immunity.
You know, he felt that he was the father in the nation.
He had that megalomaniac kind of streak in him where he wanted to remain in power till the end of his days.
So what happened then?
The election ended up happening or not in 1999 to 2000?
So in 2000, we had a referendum in February of that year.
And that referendum...
The referendum was on a new constitution.
The new constitution would allow the people to be able to take land for free, but at the same time to entrench Robert Mugabe's power.
So there were clauses that would entrench his power.
Was voted on, Robert Mugabe lost that referendum, you know, so that was in February and he realized that the election that was coming back up in June, four months later, he would lose that as well.
And so that was within two weeks of that referendum result.
We had all hell let loose on the farms and we really experienced what it was like to live under Tense fear for those four months up until the June election.
And we all thought, well, you know, it will just last up until the election.
And if we can survive those four months, you know, we'll be okay.
Start to calm things down after June.
But of course, that didn't happen.
And it became a system of oppression and cronyism.
So we would have farms invaded, people murdered, people beaten up, people really have terrible things happen to them and to the farm and to all the workers.
And And then those farms would be given out to members of the ruling party.
So every single Supreme Court judge, every High Court judge, every magistrate, every member of parliament, Every senior policeman, senior army guy, the secret police people, the reserve bank people, all the civil servants, all the chief main civil servants, they were all handed out farms as part of a patronage system.
To be able to buy their loyalty and at the same time ensure that they kind of kept the workers in check.
They made sure the workers didn't have any opposition rallies on their farms.
There was no independent radio station or anything like that.
So the only way the opposition could campaign was door to door, going from farm to farm, but they could not go to a single farm.
And so it was really only in town that the opposition was able to operate and of course the opposition always won the towns but they couldn't win the rural areas where there was so much fear and everyone knew that their vote was not free that if they voted for the opposition they would be found out.
They would have all hell to pay for having made a vote for someone who was not Robert Mugabe.
So it was a It was a time of, for us all, it was a time of absolute terror.
We did not have the law to protect us.
We did not have the police to protect us in any way at all.
So you just had your land basically seized, bottom line.
Yes, and that's what happened.
The land was seized.
Farm after farm was seized with no compensation whatsoever.
And that land then became the property of the state, but it had all these various powerful people on it, but not one of them was given title deeds.
All of them were kept guessing.
All of them were kept in the patronage system knowing that if they said the wrong thing, Then they would be thrown off the land.
And that, of course, has happened in certain instances.
So it's a system of control, of being able to control people for political ends, for power, essentially.
And it doesn't promote production, it doesn't promote employment, it doesn't promote Any meaningful economic activity whatsoever.
So it's been a disaster.
Just on a personal note, what approximately in today's terms, you may not have a very good sense for this, but what approximately in today's terms would be the value of the land that was seized from your family?
Well, I mean, our property was a pretty extensive property.
We had about, just to kind of give you an idea of what the production was, we had a thousand head of cattle, we had several thousand head of wildlife with a safari lodge,
we had mangoes That would be exported probably 30-ton rigs of mangoes, similar kind of amounts of citrus each year.
And then, you know, a lot of row crops, a lot of corn, as you call it, maize we call it, which would be there for food security both on the farm and within the surrounding area.
So it was You know, I mean, by American standards, probably not a huge...
It could mean the millions of dollars, yeah, of value.
Yeah, yeah.
And that was just basically erased from your family's possession?
Yeah, we decided that we needed to fight it.
We ended up...
So what happened was that they tried to legalize, they tried to legitimize what they were doing and they created a new law which said that if you were listed, if your farm was listed in a government gazette, in a government newspaper, you would then have everything taken from you and if you were still in your home, Three months after this listing had taken place, you would be a criminal.
So you'd be a criminal not only for living in your home, but you would be a criminal for committing the crime of farming your own land and producing crops and land that was starving by then.
And you would be able to spend up to two years in jail for that criminal activity of living in your own home and committing the crime of farming.
When that law came into being, we as a family decided, no, we have to challenge this.
We have to do something to challenge this constitutionally, knowing that all the judges had received farms, knowing that we'd probably lose in our Supreme Court, but knowing also that we had to stand for righteousness and justice in our nation because it was being destroyed.
And so as a family, we decided that's what we had to do.
We embarked on a very long and difficult and expensive legal process, where we eventually ended up in the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe in 2006, knowing, as I said, that we would lose, but knowing also that this is what we had to do.
This is what we were called to do as Christians, that we had to stand in the gap.
You know, we knew that we'd pay for it as well.
Anyone who went to the law, went to a court, was immediately singled out, immediately became a target.
And amazingly, two weeks after our hearing in the Supreme Court, we heard about a new court that had been set up in the region under the Southern African Development Community Treaty And this court was for all 400 million people of Southern Africa.
And we were able to approach that court, knowing that we would lose in the Supreme Court, but knowing that we had exhausted all our domestic remedies.
And approached that court, which we did, and two weeks before our main hearing in that court.
So we were given interim relief as soon as we approached the court.
They said they can't arrest you.
You are allowed to carry on farming.
You're not committing a crime under the SEDEC Treaty by farming and living in your own home.
And so we...
Two weeks before that main hearing, we were abducted, we were tortured very, very severely, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law and myself.
14 broken bones between us.
We were taken off to a dark torture camp where many people had been tortured over the previous few months in another very, very bloody election period.
What was their objective in torturing you physically?
What did they think they were going to get out of this?
To stop the fight in court?
They got my mother-in-law to sign a bit of paper that we would not continue in The Sadek Tribunal.
We would not continue in this regional court.
But of course, my father-in-law was unconscious most of the time at that point.
I also had a fractured skull by that stage.
They'd been beating me over the head with rifle butts.
And so they got my mother-in-law who had a badly broken arm and was beaten all over her head.
And they'd taken a fire and put it in her mouth.
They got her to sign a bit of paper to say that we would not carry on in the court.
But of course, they never produced that.
And two weeks later, in a wheelchair, I was able to be in the court in Namibia, in the SEDEC tribunal.
My parents-in-law were not.
They were still in the hospital.
But I was able to be there and able to eventually, on the 28th of November that year, 2008, get...
Be part of hearing the judgment, which was a very favorable judgment, which said that we were allowed to stay on our farm, that what the Zimbabwe government was doing was against international law, against the SEDEC treaty, that they could not carry on.
And so that was a tremendous judgment on the 28th of November 2008. And we went ahead at that time and we planted a full crop And then in 2009, early 2009, Robert Mugabe made a speech.
We're not listening to the courts.
We're not going to listen to the SEDAC tribunal.
And then not only did he...
I mean, we then had six months of absolute hell on the farm where They would come around our house and beat drums all night, put up plows on the trees around and beat them with iron bars, break down the doors on one night, break down the doors of the house and bring burning tires through the house.
I mean, it was very terrifying for me and for my wife and our three young children at the time.
And it was only by God's grace that actually we got through that period.
Eventually, in August 2009, they burnt down, first of all, my parents-in-law's house.
Sorry, our house.
And then three days later, they burnt down my parents-in-law's house.
Literally burned it down.
Just fire.
Burned it down.
Is that out of vindictiveness?
The objective is to send a signal to everybody else?
It was partly to send a signal to anyone else.
You do not...
You don't come against the president.
You don't take him to court.
If you do take him to court, bad things will happen to you.
And that's the politics of fear.
It's a terrible thing to live under such intense fear.
We only really understood the importance of property rights, the importance of the rule of law.
When those things were taken away from us, you know, most people in America and Europe and other places where you enjoy property rights, you enjoy the rule of law, you don't understand how foundational that is to making your country thrive.
Bringing food security, making sure that people are able to live well.
As soon as fear is brought into the equation through the taking away of the rule of law, it's a terrible place to be.
Can you say a word about the backdrop of racial identity politics in all of this?
You haven't really touched on that.
I think that history is the unspoken backdrop here.
Inform our audience about that, because I just think from a U.S. perspective, it's fascinating.
Yeah, I think it is.
It's a very interesting subject.
And, you know, it's something that the ruling party, Zana Pierre, Robert Mugabe, tried to fuel, you know, the state media.
There was no independent media, no independent radio station, no independent television station.
The state media, and there was no independent newspaper either.
I mean, he had total control of the media.
And he pushed it.
He pushed it very hard, the fact that the white people were the enemy, the white people were the exploiters, we were the oppressors.
Do you think the population was buying it?
We needed to be taught a lesson.
What I found very heartening was that the population did not buy it.
They did not buy it at all.
There were a few people that were used, the criminal element that is always in society to invade the farms and things like that.
But the vast majority of the population did not buy into it at all.
And certainly whenever I walk down a street as a white person, and obviously we're a very small minority in Zimbabwe, much less than 1% of the population, I have never had a feeling that because of the color of my skin I am unwelcome.
And in fact, it's quite the opposite.
Many people come up to me, people that I don't even know, black people And they come up to me and they know me because there was a documentary film made about our fight against Robert Mugabe in the courts.
And they know me because they've seen that and I've been on media and stuff.
And they come to me and they say, you're Ben Freeth, aren't you?
And I say, yeah.
And they said...
Thank you for staying.
Thank you for not leaving the country.
We need you.
And you will be able to farm in the future.
And I get a tremendous kick out of the fact that that racial tension is not something that's real.
It's something that's manufactured through the state media.
And through the powers that be that want to create hatred within society.
I recently did a 1400-mile ride with my horse all the way from the gates of our farm, because we obviously are not able to be on the farm at the moment, all the way from the gates of the farm to the SEDEC tribunal, to this court that I was telling you about just now.
And I rode Through areas I was totally unsupported.
I was sleeping rough in the bush.
The hospitality of the people for this unknown kind of white person wandering through the land was just unbelievable.
It was so humbling to me to be invited into people's homes, to be given food, to be given water, amongst people that were incredibly poor and hungry themselves, willing to share what they had with me.
So I found that A most humbling and wonderful thing.
It's interesting you say that.
that it's an interesting tale of hope of the population pitted against the cynical agenda of the ruling party.
A lot of that lands with me when I look at modern America.
I mean, part of what we see in the United States of America today is I think a lot of the division in the US, certainly not of a scale that you saw boiling over in Zimbabwe, but of a scale nonetheless that's historic in the United States, is, I think, manufactured by the people who are in charge because it's in their best interest to have a population that's divided.
I think the difference is in an era of modern social media and an era of perpetuation of information is I worry a little bit more about the population's willingness to buy it.
I do think it starts from cynical forces, but I worry more than in the grounding of Zimbabwe's moment that you described 20 years ago that the population was mostly not buying it, actually.
Even if you think about the lead-up to that election you described, it sounds like initially they said, hey, we're going to give land away, free land to the people.
Sounds like a perfectly populist agenda.
And yet the people still weren't going to vote for it, which is why they had to take that more heavy iron fist.
And I'd like to think the same thing would be true in modern America, but I wonder.
And I wonder if times have changed even in modern Zimbabwe relative to what they were back then, too.
What do you think?
Well, I think in Zimbabwe, all everyone really wants to see is an end to fear, an end to the divisions that continue to be manufactured and plague the nation.
People just want to be able to get on.
In this period, we've had a quarter of the population of Zimbabwe actually leave the country.
That's obviously mostly black people.
90% of the white people have left, but in terms of numbers, that's millions of our black Zimbabweans have left the country and gone to other countries around and then far away to the UK, to America, to all sorts of countries around the world.
And those people want to come home.
They want to see their country thrive.
They want to be able to see it go forward.
And everyone knows that that needs the rule of law.
It needs property rights.
It needs people to be able to be able...
In the book of Micah, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, it talks about...
Being able to sit under your own fig tree and not be afraid.
That's what people want all over the world.
That's what people want is to be able to sit under our own fig tree and not be afraid.
And that's what we don't have in Zimbabwe.
So that paints a picture of harmony.
It paints a picture of people not being afraid of each other.
It paints a picture of prosperity.
It paints a picture of countries thriving because there is peace.
In the section immediately before that, it's the section about beating swords into plowshares.
You know, it's a wonderful picture, and it's a picture that I think that we all want to see.
And in America, we look at you and we see the toxic politics that has been taking place of division.
Which has just not got a place.
It's really so sad to see that in modern-day America, where people kind of are at each other's throats.
And rather than promoting what they can do for the country, they're kind of downing the opposition.
That's not, you know, what we need is good policies where people are going to be free, where people, their individual freedoms are going to be protected.
Where property rights are going to be assured.
Where people can thrive.
And that's what America was built on.
And that's why we look up to America.
But when we see this toxic politics taking place, it's very sad to see in America.
What would be your advice to America from the vantage point of what you've seen in Zimbabwe, somebody who has had his land seized, somebody whose family, including yourself, been through physical torture, literally skull-crushing torture, on the back of a slow, steady rise literally skull-crushing torture, on the back of a slow, steady rise to power of a guy who really became a dictator, but who you trusted first in an era with prosperity and economic growth before he turned against the backdrop of racial identity
dictator, but who you trusted first in an era with prosperity and economic growth before he turned against the backdrop of racial identity politics, where you, in this case, as a white person, were in a minority there, where most of your fellow citizens would have never seen you that way, but the person in power used it to exercise control where most of your fellow citizens would have never seen you that
From that entire story, right, what would be your advice to the modern American of what we're to learn from that story and how we may use that to make our country better for knowing of it?
Thank you.
I forget who it was who said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
But I think that that is something very key.
And it's very easy to kind of switch off and say, well, this is all too toxic for me.
This is all too difficult.
This is something that I don't want to get involved with.
But the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.
And I think what you have got in America is that you've got A lot of people and a lot of institutions that are looking at your situation and saying, we need to be involved.
We need to make sure that America is great again.
America has always been a great country from its very formation.
It's been through some bad patches, but it's come out on top.
But it's in great danger if it is not vigilant, if its people are not vigilant, if they forget God, they forget what righteousness is, they forget what justice is, they forget how important it is to uphold those things, America will not be great.
So that vigilance, I believe, is absolutely key in your nation.
And I think we as Zimbabweans were guilty of becoming complacent up to a point in not being part of standing in the gap, of making sure that we stood up when things were wrong, in trying to bring reconciliation where things were toxic.
You know, we were guilty of not doing enough.
But I think in America, you've got some great people.
I think you're one of them.
And I think that it will be great to see America come through this difficult time and come out the other side and lead the world forward once more.
How do people in Zimbabwe look at America?
I'm curious for that perspective.
Well, of course, a lot of people want to get to America and they know that they can thrive in America.
It's still a land of opportunities compared to many countries or most countries around the world.
Is there another country where they would hold a similar...
A similar set of idealism that they would sort of see in that country as you see in the United States?
I'm just curious, like if you put yourself in the shoes of a Zimbabwean farmer, you say America is among the countries in the world.
Is there another country where you still think from somebody in that vantage point that he had the United States on this list?
Or are we still in a world where the United States is separate and apart from the rest of the countries on the globe from that perspective?
Well, I think a lot of Zimbabweans want to get to places in Europe as well.
They see that traditionally there's been freedom and there's been economic prosperity and opportunity in those countries.
I think what we do have in Zimbabwe is a very strong Reaction by the ruling party against America.
America has been very forthright and very principled in putting together the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which is part of your law in America, which basically, as far as I can see, is a martial plan to rebuild Zimbabwe if we come back to democracy and if we come back to the rule of law and we do things correctly.
So, of course, those people that have been part of injustice do not like that act and they do not like America or they purport to not like America because of it.
But, you know, they would be there in America like a shot.
Yeah, no doubt.
Well, look, I think one of the things I love about your story is that for everything you've been through, from land seizure to torture, It doesn't strike me that you describe yourself or even view yourself as a victim, really.
And I do think that this is one of these deep fissures, even in the future of the conservative movement in the US, is has there been similar injustice to groups that have otherwise been, in some ways, victimized?
There's different groups that have been victimized at different points in American history.
But is the right response now to see yourself as a victim with a competing claim on that hierarchy of victimhood, or is it to really move past that altogether?
It's certainly the latter approach that I'm rooting for in the United States of America, and I think the conversation with you has been fascinating because you demonstrate that example of having gone through even far worse than what many in the United States have gone through, rural industrial communities that have been left behind.
Yes, it's been wrong in the United States of America.
But the right answer is not to see ourselves or oneself as a victim, but instead to ask how we restore that country where every person, regardless of their background, is given that opportunity to realize the maximum of their God-given potential.
That's true liberty.
And to sit under your fig tree without fear of violence or seizure.
And you know what?
I think that it will require eternal vigilance for us to get there here as in Zimbabwe.
Absolutely, and I think victimhood is a very dangerous state of mind.
I've seen it, obviously, in certain instances amongst people.
And the only person that suffers as a result of that mindset of victimhood, at the end of the day, is the person who thinks that they are a victim.
Each of us has got God-given gifts.
Each of us has got God-given potential.
We need to be able to unlock those gifts and unlock that potential in order that everyone can be able to serve their country, to serve their family, to serve their community, to be there as forces for good.
As soon as you go into this victimhood state of mind, You kind of go into a beggar mentality and that doesn't help anyone at all.
It's a very dangerous place to be for a community, for a person, for a family to be out there with a begging bowl because you're never able to realize the potential.
You're never able to get to have the dignity really of being able to thrive by your own I think you embody that better than anybody.
Hardship is inevitable.
Victimhood is a choice.
And I think that that is something that we would do as well to remember today as ever I could remember in my life.
So thank you.
Thank you.
And obviously we've been through some hardship.
But, you know, Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble.
Whether it's modern-day America, whether it's Zimbabwe, there will be trouble wherever we are.
And it's a question of knowing that he has overcome the world and we can overcome the world if we do the right thing.
And that's not going to a state of victimhood.
Yeah.
Beautiful.
Well, Ben, it's been an honor to have you.
I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time.
I know there are a lot of cautionary notes, but also hopeful notes that we will take away from this from an American perspective.
So thank you.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much, and it's been so great to speak to you, and all the best in the months ahead in America, and may you be soft and light.
Thank you.
We will receive that blessing as you intend it.
Thank you.
All right.
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