still happening

They've been given 2 days to get off the farm, Mrs G says. "Drunken mobs" are at the gate. Someone caught and killed a buck and pinned it to the farmhouse fence. The warning: If they speak to the media, things will be worse for them. How can this still be happening, 10 years later? The embassy official says he can't help: in theory the family is protected by a BIPPA - an investment protection agreement -- but "there is no law and order." So...you're on your own. I sit here and type less than an hour away from where all this is taking place and a family is pulling out its suitcases and scrabbling for the photo albums and think: the story has not changed. Only now, no-one is interested, outraged, bothered. Not even those supposed to protect you. And I too feel weary with it all.

kariba (well, sort of)

"Things are not good," he says.

The white bakkie shot past our gate, then reversed. The passenger window opened. I recognise MDC MP P. M. and his driver (or is he a policeman? He has a fluorescent green vest). The MP is smartly dressed these days: pin-stripe suit (despite the heat), stiff white-collared shirt, tiny brass flags pinned to his lapel.

But he isn't optimistic. The just-started constitutional outreach programme is mired in controversy. Educators from civic groups -- including a sizeable contingent of war vets (leader Joseph Chinotimba was pictured getting his accreditation in the state-owned Herald last week) -- are supposed to be holding meetings with mainly rural folk to tell them about the importance of putting their own input into a new constitution. The rural folk are getting intimidated, a Nyazura farmer told me last week. And the educators are making a pretty penny from their donor-funded allowances ($70 per day when teachers get $150 per month: not surprisingly, civil servants have given a general strike notice). MPs meantime are hiring out their government vehicles for the exercise at up to $250 per day. If the exercise lasts 100 days, that'll be more than $20,000 profit.

"There are more farm invasions, the war vets are telling the people they can only have the Kariba Draft," says the MP as we stand under the fig tree. The Kariba Draft is a draft constitution hastily agreed to by all three parties to the power-sharing deal. The document -- which retains Mugabe's sweeping powers -- wasn't supposed to be set in stone. But ZANU-PF now insists it is.

The MP looks at us and sighs.

ongoing

"The war veterans tried to smoke them out," she says.

Eleven more white farmers are under siege in southern Matabeleland provinces, officials from the Commercial Farmers' Union (CFU) say. In the eastern Rusape area, the purge continues. This isn't about land reform, an MDC spokesman says: it's about ZANU-PF "looting and stealing," 11 months after a power-sharing deal that was supposed to bring stability -- and desperately-needed foreign investors -- back to Zimbabwe.

My son's new teacher tells me of the trauma one white family lived through last weekend.

"They were neighbours. We used to play with the Smit boys when we were little."

"They've got this a huge Italian-style mansion, three storeys high. It's stunning. The slaves (she means Italian POWs) built it during the war. It's got this system of underground passages.

"We used to tie rope round us and fix one end to the entrance so we could find our way back. Then we'd spend hours exploring. It was like Famous Five. That's until the day the floor caved in in one room."

The war veterans found the entrance to the underground passageways under the Nyazura farmhouse last Sunday. They got inside and tried to set the wooden floors alight to smoke out the family.

"The boys were roughed up," the teacher says. "Slapped around a bit."

chivhu

The public swimming bath is on the edge of Chivhu, encircled by a crumbling white wall. It looks like a cemetery, especially with the pavement gravestone sellers who've set up shop outside the ornate gate. But if you crane your neck, you can just catch the flash of the blue walls inside. My mother-in-law remembers this place as Enkeldoorn, once an Afrikaaner farming stronghold. If you look in the 'phone book now -- the 2002 phone book, that is, no-one seems to have a newer one -- there are still lots of Afrikaans names in Chivhu. Few, if any, will be left. Max, a black mechanic, stops to chat through the passenger window. "Where are you from?" he wants to know. "What do you do?" "I used to be a farmer," my 70-something father-in-law says. "But then the government took my farm." "Look," says Max. He has, no doubt, looked at my mother-in-law's Pajero, the boxes of sandwiches and the bulging bags in the back. "Count your blessings. I was in UK with some of those white farmers. They were working in factories, working in Tescos." My father-in-law is silent. His own future looks uncertain: the rented house they were staying in has been sold from under their feet but he cannot leave his office job for another town or country: who else would employ a pensioner? "You will get all those things back," says Max. "If not your farm, then a business, something even more profitable." "You're right," says my father-in-law firmly. As we drive off and the border-bound trucks swish past us, there's a fresh breath of hope in the car. "Well, he was positive, wasn't he?" says my mother-in-law.

poundnote farm

The policemen flag us down not far from Penhalonga. There are three of them

"Tell them to go in the back," I hiss. Because while I'm not averse to giving lifts -- and policemen can be a very good source of quotes -- this is a quiet Sunday afternoon, the men are very obviously armed and my child is in the back seat.

He ushers them into the back of the truck. Two women jump in too. Both elderly, doeks on, struggling with suitcases. They want to go to Muchena communal lands. Fine.

On our right is what was Pound Note farm. It was where the tallest tree in Rhodesia stood, a eucalyptus. The tree was depicted on a pound note, hence the name of the farm. I think about farms as we drive along and about the gently-spoken woman with the quavery voice I spoke to this week. She and her husband have already given away 92 percent of their farm. The last 8 percent is threatened by a US citizen somehow linked to the prime minister. The "niece's" sister came to the farm in April, a handbag over one arm, a badza (hoe) in the other. She started digging daintily through the already-planted tomatoes. "Did your husband really call that woman a cold, stupid kaffir?" I have to ask the farmer's wife. Later she sends me a text message. "Thank you. These days justice seems so elusive."

There's a voice from the back seat. Someone's reading my thoughts. "Mum, how do you get a farm?" "Why?""I want one."

"You have to work very hard and then you can buy one," I say. "But best not to buy one in Zimbabwe."

"Why?" Careful now. "Because you can't always keep it."

My five-year old never saw his grandfather's farm. We were married on it, but the farm was taken over eight months later. My father-in-law went back there once. There was human excrement in some of the rooms. Someone had scooped out my sister-in-law's face cream from the bathroom cabinet, which made her very indignant.

"Why can't you keep it?" "Because sometimes the government wants it," I say. "But how has Z's papa still got his farm?" Some questions don't have answers.

We're in Muchena communal lands. The women want to get out. The policemen don't. We turn off the main road. There's not another car in sight, nor a pedestrian. I start to get edgy. There are too many stories of fake - or corrupted -- policemen in the Herald and on our daily email. Two policemen are currently on trial for bank robbery. In court last week, they complained they were being victimised for being in possession of 120,000 US. They were merely "enterprising," the cops maintained. Their monthly salary is 100 US. It wasn't clear from the Herald report if the magistrate had actually got round to asking them how they got the 120,000 if they didn't get it from Kingdom Bank. (He may not have done. Last month the Herald carried an obit for a 35-year-old Harare magistrate who was still studying for his law degree at the University of Zimbabwe)

"Just turn the car round," I say. "Let's get back onto the main road."

There's a tap on the back window. They want us to stop. "I'll get into the driving seat, shall I?" I say, boots at the ready. In the event, the police get out, grasping their guns. They back away. I slide, relieved, over to the passenger seat. Later, on our way back from the dam we see them, lolling in the long grass near the Rhodesian ginger.

"Mum, does the government take houses as well?"

said the colonel to the farmer

S, a farmer's wife, delivers 20 litres of milk to our house on Friday mornings: 10 for us and 5 each for two friends (which is why power cuts are fine on Thursday nights when our milk has nearly run out. Cuts are most definitely not fine on Fridays, when a whole week's supply of milk will go sour). Strictly speaking, "side-marketing" is illegal: all milk has to be sold to the state Dairibord milk company. But Dairibord is collecting tankfuls of milk every other day and not paying for it.

Last Friday, S looked worried. An army colonel turned up at the farm earlier in the week. "I know you're busy," he said. "And I don't want to disturb you.

"We just need to fix a meeting to discuss me taking over the farm."

He had an offer letter (they all do). He showed it to S's husband. The date the letter was signed -- the letter giving the beneficiary authorisation to take over the white farm -- is Feb 12. That was the day before Zimbabwe's new unity government was sworn in.

The colonel's residential address was at the top of the letter. He lives on our road, three doors down.