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In the midst of a
wave of post-election political violence in Zimbabwe in 2008, Brian
James, a white farmer who had been evicted from his property years
earlier during President Robert Mugabe’s seizure of white-owned lands,
found himself surrounded by a throng of black Zimbabweans in downtown
Mutare, my hometown. The 50-strong crowd danced, sang and chanted
political slogans for more than 20 minutes before James was finally
able to raise his hand, thank them for their support and announce that
he was honored to have been elected mayor of the country’s
third-largest city.

Today is the 30th
anniversary of Zimbabwe’s independence from white rule and Mugabe’s
rise to power. Back then, Mugabe was hailed as a liberator and
conciliator. “If yesterday I fought you as an enemy, today you have
become a friend,” he told nervous whites at the time. For a long while
he was true to his word. By the mid-1990s, Zimbabwe had become one of
the most stable and prosperous countries in Africa.

But in 2000, within
weeks of losing a constitutional referendum to entrench his power,
Mugabe began the catastrophic land invasions that resulted in the
eviction of almost all the country’s 4,500 white farmers and the ruin
of what was once a model post-colonial African country. Ever since, the
narrative of Zimbabwe has been one of race. Rare is the speech in which
Mugabe does not rail against whites, colonialists, imperialists or the
West. Members of his ZANU-PF party have spoken of a “Rwandan solution”
for Zimbabwe’s whites.

Westerners have
simply accepted this narrative of blacks and whites pitted against one
another. But, in doing so, they have missed the inspiring story of what
has actually been happening in Zimbabwe over the past decade. After
years of mass unemployment, mutant inflation, chronic shortages and
state violence, Zimbabweans simply don’t care about skin color. In
fact, Mugabe has managed to achieve the exact opposite of what he set
out to do in 2000: the forging of a post racial state.

Brian James’ story,
taken in full, stands as proof of Mugabe’s unwitting accomplishment.
James was barely interested in politics before losing his land in 2003
– “I just wanted to farm and play cricket on weekends” – but afterward
he joined the main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic
Change, quickly rose through the ranks and was elected mayor by a
virtually all-black constituency. And James is not a singular example.
One of the most popular politicians in the country is Roy Bennett,
another former farmer, known to his legion of black supporters as
Pachedu, “one of us.” When Bennett was arrested on trumped-up treason
charges last year, hundreds of black Zimbabweans surrounded the prison
so that intelligence agents would not be able to smuggle him out to a
more remote location where it was feared he might be tortured.

Then there is the
inspiring sight of white farmers, who have been contesting the legality
of the land expropriations in a regional human rights tribunal,
marching into court arm in arm with their black lawyers, often dynamic
women who know the laws and Constitution of the land better than those
sitting in judgment. This belies Mugabe’s image of a country divided by
race.

My parents, owners
of a backpacker resort, are part of this new Zimbabwe. Like most
whites, they once steered clear of politics. But in 2002, when their
home came under siege, my father joined the M.D.C. By 2005, their lodge
had become a meeting place for black political dissidents who would
disguise themselves as priests to avoid detection by Mugabe’s militia.

In 2008, the lodge
became a safe house for three black activists, Pishai Muchauraya,
Prosper Mutseyami and Misheck Kagurabadza, who had won seats in Mugabe
strongholds and were now on the run from government death squads. My
mother, as tough-as-nails a white African as any, still gets emotional
when she talks of the courage of her three “fugitives,” all of whom are
now friends and in Parliament, part of the fractious national unity
government set up between Mugabe and the M.D.C. in 2009.

Mugabe knows
exactly what he is doing in constantly invoking race-based rhetoric. By
framing the crisis in Zimbabwe as a struggle against the West – against
the white world – he escapes censure from other postcolonial African
leaders who understand their own countries’ histories in the same way.
And when the West allows Mugabe’s narrative to go unchallenged, it
plays right into his hands.

Overlooked in the
racial invective are some basic and important facts. Mugabe has accused
white farmers of being colonial-era “settlers,” but about 70 percent of
them actually purchased their land after independence, with signed
permission from Mugabe himself. And far from owning 70 percent of the
land in the country, as was widely believed, those white farmers owned
only half of our commercial land – just 14 percent of Zimbabwe’s total
land. With that land, however, they used to produce more than 60
percent of all agricultural crops, and 50 percent of all foreign
earnings. One only has to look at the decline in food production and
collapse of the economy since 2000 to appreciate how vital white
farmers were to the well being of the nation.

All but ignored was
the other major target of the land grabs: black farm workers. Some
300,000 blacks were employed on white farms up until 2000 – 2 million
people, if one counts their dependents – and they overwhelmingly
supported the M.D.C. By destroying white farms, Mugabe wiped out a
major base of black opposition. It is hardly surprising, then, that
black workers often stood with white employers to resist Mugabe’s
violent invaders. When has that ever happened in post-colonial Africa?

Friends in the
United States often ask me if there is any hope for Zimbabwe, and I
always answer yes. Then I tell them a story about a funeral.

Not long before he
was elected mayor, Brian James lost his wife, Sheelagh, in a car crash
in Mutare. Her funeral was held on the lawns of the local golf club and
300 mourners turned up, among them white farmers, black friends and an
M.D.C. choir. The day before the funeral, my father was with Pishai
Muchauraya, the former M.D.C. fugitive and soon-to-be member of
Parliament, when he received a phone call from the leader of the choir.
They had a problem, they told Muchauraya: They had never been to the
funeral of a white woman before and did not know what to sing.

“What’s that got to
do with it?” Muchauraya snapped. “Mrs. James was an African just like
you. Sing what you normally sing.” When he turned to apologise for the
interruption, he saw my father had tears in his eyes.

Douglas Rogers is the author of “The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe.”

© 2010 The New York Time