Whites Driven from Zimbabwe

epression, violence, murder, and the confiscation of property by the Afro-racist regime of Robert Mugabe has triggered a mass exodus of Zimbabwe's white population. Most are fleeing to Britain and Australia.

Britain's Sunday Independent reports that thousands of whites are leaving the country to start new lives, many of them destitute after being forced to surrender their property to government officials or roving gangs backed by Mugabe's ruling Zanu-PF party. The paper said most of the white refugees have with them only a suitcase or two of clothing and a few photographs.

Some of the whites said they "have hung on during the past four tumultuous years hoping President Robert Mugabe's hate campaign against them would ease, but it did not..."

Most of the whites say they will never return.

"It was a painful decision because this is the only home we know," said Jeremy Callow, 55, one of Zimbabwe's best-known attorneys. "I love Zimbabwe, love the people, but I can't take it anymore."

Callow said he was finally buckling under the constant frustration of trying to help white farmers legally recover their possessions in court. When he succeeded in getting court orders to return his clients' properties, Mugabe's government would not enforce them.

"I spent 80 percent of my time with farmers counseling them and I am not trained for that, nor can I cope any longer with seeing grown men cry. The courts do not have the capacity to process thousands of farms seized by the state," he said.

Some of the farms were seized by roving bands of armed blacks who beat or killed the elderly white owners while local police looked the other way.

The Independent reported that even the few white farmers who have never been threatened by the Mugabe regime are abandoning their homes, too.

"We have recently noticed quite a number who have been left alone the last four years are leaving," said Hendrik Olivier, director of the once 4,000-member Commercial Farmers' Union.

Recurring violence against whites unrelated to the farm seizures has been a problem for many white families.

"One of Zimbabwe's most successful younger industrialists, who asked not to be named, decided to go to Australia a few months after his family was attacked in December in their home about 20 kilometers south of Harare," the paper said.

"We have young kids, and schools are a problem," the industrialist told the Independent.

One farmer decided to leave after being locked up and then released by police. Pressured by Mugabe's Zanu-PF to get off his farm in 24 hours, John Winward, 57, went to the local police with court orders proving he was allowed to remain on his farm until September to harvest crops.

"The policeman didn't believe or understand the court order and locked me up for the night. I wish now we had quit when the heat was on a couple of years ago, but I couldn't walk away. I wasted time and money going to court to fight the inevitable," said Winward.

He plans to leave for Britain. "We won't take anything; we can't afford to," he said.

Chris Shepard, 38, is a father of four who was forced off his farm 21 months ago. He is now nearly penniless, living in Harare. He had earlier vowed never to leave, hoping the attacks on whites would wane.

"I am going to Australia at the end of the month to look for a job, perhaps as a laborer, and I do this with a heavy heart," he said.