I agree that we should agree to disagree. I remain extremely critical of labeling white Zimbabweans a culpable group and disagree passionately with your pride in and willingness to build on the Labour party’s human rights and international development record. We seem to be too far apart to meet somewhere in the middle on these issues.

I must add that if I sounded patronising, aggressive or putting you down, this was not my intention. The crux of the matter is that I am Zimbabwean. Zimbabwe is my home. My entire family lives there and have lived through the country’s crisis. To you this may simply be a debate, a review of the Mugabe and the White African documentary, etc, but to me this is close to my heart. Too close. For this reason I cannot help but come out charging like a young Mike Tyson when I come across something about Zimbabwe I fundamentally disagree with.

Jonathan, what makes Mugabe and the White African a dangerous documentary is not so much its content, but Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson’s belief that they are actually “helping” the people of Zimbabwe by having made the documentary.

Goodbye and all the very best,
Blessing-Miles Tendi.

Let us define the group at issue as ‘white farmers in Zimbabwe’. Was there any cause other than their membership of this group for the violence which the film (Mugabe and the White African) saw inflicted upon the Campbells? Obviously not, it would seem. In the absence of any other cause, does the mob ‘justice’ visited upon the Campbells not reduce them to members of a culpable group? Culpability means guilt and the mob declared the Campbells guilty by virtue of the group of which they are members.

This is the only claim I’ve made and it appears to me incontrovertible. While I note with gratitude your offer of reading suggestions, I don’t need to know any more than I already know to know this much and nor should you or anyone else. Yet to you it isn’t incontrovertible. I find this perplexing and so genuinely troubling.

You can patronise me as much as you like and you can hector me until you are blue in the face and you can harangue past Labour leaders – leaders whose records on international development and human rights, while beside the point here, I’m proud to defend and am keen to build upon – but none of this changes one iota what is at the core of this: Your refusal to see the treatment of the Campbells for what it is.

I don’t think we can say anything else to each other that we’ve not already said. So, I’d prefer to leave this exchange here. I suspect that we’ll have to agree to disagree.

Best wishes, Jonathan

I do not think that associating you with Tony Blair and Clare Short is an insult. You are part of Labour and whether or not you saw or see eye to eye with figures such as Blair on policy issues, you cannot escape the fact that by virtue of being a Labour member you have to engage with the negative legacies of their policies because they were made under Labour and you are part of Labour. You cannot simply cut and run from this legacy. That is like trying to run away from your own shadow, which is impossible. You and the future of Labour have to engage with Blair and Brown’s record on Zimbabwe. You have to engage because the criticism I and many others will legitimately throw at you is the party’s past record. It is not an insult but a legitimate criticism that you ought to address. You have to engage.

Engagement will show that Labour’s mistake was and is the same one you are making: that white Zimbabweans have been reduced to a “culpable” group and it should end there. You cannot see that there is more to this saga than the human rights violations of a “culpable” group. Zimbabwean history and problematic race relations matter a great deal here and if you disregard these issues, as Blair, Short and Brown did, you will run up against a brick wall with your human rights agenda.

I agree that human rights violations are real by the way, and if you have really read my work for the Guardian you will know that I am not an apologist for or defender of these violations.

Something to think about for you is this: you quote that “reducing individuals to culpable groups, and seeing the solutions to the problems of mankind in their extermination, is the ultimate crime, whether perpetrated by Mao, Pol Pot, Stalin or Hitler. End of discussion”. From this you go on to characterise white Zimbabweans as a “culpable” group. And yet anyone who knows the history, context and race relations pertaining to the treatment of white Zimbabweans post 2000 will tell you that white Zimbabweans do not qualify as a culpable group akin to Jews under Hitler for instance. Nor is Mugabe a Hitler or Pol Pot in his machinations.

White Zimbabweans were never and are not targets for extermination. Your application of the concept of culpable group to white Zimbabweans does not work. They are not a “culpable” group and for you to appreciate that you must turn to the country’s history. I stand ready to direct you to a host of literature about white Zimbabweans that would help you appreciate this point, if you are interested. Please let me know.

Sincerely,
Blessing-Miles Tendi

Thank you for your comment.

Rather than insulting me by (very distant) association to Tony Blair and Clare Short, perhaps you might reflect on why I did take your piece to be a defence of the indefensible. Of course, context matters but there is such a thing as protesting a little too much.

The film clearly depicted the Campbell family being reduced from individuals to members of a culpable group, with the solution to the problems of Zimbabwe being seen in their persecution. Like George Walden, I’d have thought that this should be the end of discussion. But you don’t seem to want it to be.

I believe in human rights and I was profoundly moved to see the human rights of the Campbells so violated. If you prefer to see this as the shallow and the insubstantial, I fear that all your learning on Zimbabwe – which I’m sure is very considerable and utterly dwarfs mine – will have led you to mistake the wood for the trees.

I do sincerely hope that your Zimbabwean knowledge and studies can help towards a brighter future for all Zimbabweans but please let’s not quibble about context in the face of such persecution.

Best wishes, Jonathan

I think you wholly misunderstood my article in the Guardian. In no way is it a defence of the persecution and violence against white farmers in Zimbabwe. My piece sought to give a nuanced perspective, to illustrate the simplicity with which the documentary Mugabe and the White African depicts the Zimbabwe problem. Context and history matter. Dismissing these factors as you do is to grasp at the shadow and miss the substance – something Tony Blair, Clare Short and your Labour party in general simply never appreciated. From your vacuous comments about the documentary and my review of it, it seems that the Labour party has learnt little from the disastrous manner in which it handled the Zimbabwe problem.

Blessing-Miles Tendi