Will Boris Johnson stand up for the white farmers in Zimbabwe?

Laikipia

  After a year of peace and plentiful rain, my farm in Kenya is fantastic. Peace, rain — leave a farmer alone and he can just get on with growing food for Africa. So my thoughts are with my fellow farmers Gary and Jo Hensman, both in their seventies, who last month were chased off their property by thugs in Zimbabwe. Two decades after Mugabe began his disastrous farm invasions this story has gone entirely unnoticed by the world — but November was a busy month for Zim. Police attacked civilians in Harare. Colonial streets were rechristened after heroes such as Leonid Brezhnev, Mao Zedong, Castro — and President Emmerson Mnangagwa himself (ten of them). Hyperinflation zoomed above 350 per cent and more than half of the population were starving. Just as the government allocated the budget for the launch of a space rocket programme, British diplomats arrived to top up the £550 million in aid taxpayers have already splurged on Zimbabwe over the past five years. ‘No money is given directly to the government,’ said the UK bumph, but the Zanu-PF comrades were licking their lips. ‘Boris Johnson is in a hurry to usher in a more positive and exciting chapter in London–Harare links,’ said one, predicting ‘bountiful prospects’. As the British were hobnobbing with Mnangagwa, in Mashonaland West the Hensmans were being surrounded by riot police armed with assault rifles, plus a dozen goons who looted their home of booze, money and valuables. Led by a court sheriff, the men threw the rest of the Hensmans’ belongings out of the home where they have lived for 55 years. Cattle, sheep and horses were pushed out of the farm into the bush and when the pigs wouldn’t go they had rocks chucked at them. After dusk the farm locks were all changed and the elderly couple were homeless with all their dogs (13 of them).