The Zimbabwean government’s takeover of white-owned farms was brutal and lawless. Now one family driven from their home by the President’s men is urging victims to speak out

Dying mango trees, burnt black by the sun, stand in hopeless lines. The broken pipes of an abandoned irrigation system lie alongside them. We drive further down a rough track; there are hundreds of barren orange trees, wilting in the sun. An enormous barn, once used to house lorry-loads of harvested fruit, stands empty. Two ragged goats pick through the dirt at its entrance. Spirals of dust uncurl into the silent air.

This is Mount Carmel. Once it was a successful 1,200-hectare farm in Chegutu, 130 km south-west of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. The mangoes from its 4,500 trees were flown to Europe and sold at Marks & Spencer. Its orange trees yielded 40 tonnes of fruit per hectare each year. Vast fields of tobacco, maize and sunflowers flourished. During the 1990s, it sustained the livelihoods of 500 black farm workers and their families.

Mount Carmel belonged to Mike Campbell, who farmed alongside his son-in-law, Ben Freeth. Like some 4,000 other white farmers whose land was forcibly taken as part of President Robert Mugabe’s land redistribution programme, the Campbell-Freeths’ story is one of loss. It is also a story of the pursuit of justice.