I was surprised to see Andrew Hartnack's article criticizing (he would doubtless say "critiquing") my Zimbabwe piece. This was not just because of my warm relationship with his father, Michael - always my first port of call on every Zimbabwe visit - but because it was, well, so jejune and post-graduate. 

The central point, on which surely he and I can both agree, is that we exist in something of a vacuum as far as reliable statistical data on Zimbabwe is concerned. The whole country has been turned upside down, there has been no reliable census for ages and I found even professional survey firms guessing whether the total population of Zimbabwe was anywhere between 8 million and 11 million. Similarly, we know that millions of Zimbabweans have emigrated and that many have died in emigration - but we have absolutely no precise data as to numbers.

This is just the nature of the situation, which is what makes it absurd for him to accuse me of "hearsay, guesswork and speculation" for, unfortunately, that is all either he or I or anyone else can currently offer - as well as, in my case, quite a long history of carrying out survey work in Zimbabwe and a large number of journalistic visits and enquiries. I am not aware that Andrew has any similar record of quantitative empirical or survey research.

It is absurd to pretend that there is any way of remedying this via the academic literature, for academics have no magic wand in this regard. Indeed, the best that Andrew can come up with was a guesstimate by "all informed sources". I did at least give references for all I wrote; his sources are anonymous.

As I pointed out in my piece, we are all waiting for the new Zimbabwean census to shed a modicum of light on the situation. Meanwhile, if you live in the real world and want to have some idea as to what is going on, you simply have to rely on what there is, unsatisfactory though that may be. I make no apology for that.

Contrary to what Andrew suggests, I did not wish to imply that the land reform proposals of the CFU were a full answer to the problem - but they were a way of starting a conversation, had Mugabe been interested. But he wasn't: farmer after farmer who offered land to the Zimbabwean state was given an official certificate of "no interest", which sums it up rather well. 

However, Andrew writes that his "greatest source of discomfort" is with what I wrote about farm life pre-2000. It is, of course, inevitably true, that there was great variation in the situation - with 4,000 farmers that must, inevitably, have been true. And of course, some farmers were more liberal and humane than others; also inevitable. But what really seems to upset Andrew is that I said the workers were under a "protective umbrella", because, well, what he is uncomfortable about is summed up by the word "paternalistic". (Contrasted later with some farmers being what he calls "progressive". These are just PC codewords.)

I realise it is very non-PC to say that there are worse things than paternalism, but in the Hobbesian world of Southern Africa that is just true. What I mean by a "protective umbrella" was that peasants outside the farms did not eat, get seeds or implements during droughts, if they incurred the displeasure of Zanu-PF, whereas I know of no instance where farmers ever allowed their workers to starve.I would be curious to know whether Andrew can controvert that?

And, of course, while farm life was not idyllic, it did also mean that workers were allowed free political choice - the farmers employed them when they all voted Zanu-PF in 1980 and when they all voted the opposite way in 2000. And both farmers and workers felt comfortable enough with one another to live in close proximity in  a way which South African farmers would find it hard to imagine. 

Two final points. Andrew says I said that farmworkers were "wiped out". Not my words. I guessed that their total casualties might be as high as one million out of 2.4 million. Second, most absurdly of all, he suggests that any attempt to generalise about the plight of farmworkers is insulting to them and somehow an affront to their dignity.

Andrew doesn't like my description of what they had to endure at the hands of Zanu-PF because it makes them sound "passive and hopeless", but can he instance any case of farmworkers fighting back against their torturers? Sadly, I can't. It was a horrible, Hobbesian situation which simply didn't allow of that. One could easily write a similar description of the real Holocaust - but would Andrew then claim it was wrong to generalise about the fate of the Jews or that it was insulting to them to describe their suffrering? I do hope he wouldn't be as silly as that.

RW Johnson

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