There is something profoundly disturbing about white Zimbabwean farmers appealing to a foreign power to intervene in Zimbabwe’s internal affairs. Whatever one’s views on land reform, governance or compensation, inviting an external government to pressure or interfere in a sovereign state is not advocacy. It is treasonous.
That this appeal is being directed at Donald Trump makes it even more grotesque.
Let me be clear. I despise ZANU PF. I believe it has ruined Zimbabwe economically, institutionally and morally. But our problems are ours to confront and resolve. Outsourcing domestic disputes to foreign governments is not resistance; it is regression.
The white farming lobby’s behaviour exposes something deeper than a concern for land or compensation. It reveals a lingering colonial mindset that still views Zimbabwe as a territory to be negotiated over by white power brokers, rather than a country governed by its own people, however flawed that governance may be.
These are not neutral actors seeking justice. They are individuals still trapped in a Rhodesian fantasy of entitlement, appealing to a fellow white supremacist figure in the hope that racial solidarity will succeed where democratic legitimacy failed.
If this were truly about land, alternatives exist. The United States has vast tracts of agricultural land, with entire farms abandoned or underutilised. No one is stopping them from farming there. Yet that option holds no appeal. Why?
Because what they mourn is not soil. It is power.
Zimbabwe, under ZANU PF, offers something the US does not: cheap, exploitable black labour, weak employment protections, minimal enforcement of workers’ rights and an informal economy that benefits those with capital and connections. That is the real loss being grieved, not hectares.
The hypocrisy is staggering. These same voices often lecture Zimbabweans about sovereignty, investment confidence and rule of law, yet have no issue begging a foreign politician to strong-arm a post-colonial state on their behalf. One cannot claim patriotism while lobbying for external coercion.
Trump, of course, is a fitting choice. A disgraced president with a track record of racial grievance politics, nostalgia for empire and contempt for African agency. The alignment is not accidental. It is ideological.
Zimbabwe’s land question is complex, painful and unresolved. Compensation, where legitimate, should be handled transparently and lawfully. But it must be resolved by Zimbabweans, through Zimbabwean institutions, under Zimbabwean authority. Anything else reopens colonial wounds rather than healing them.
If these actors truly cared about Zimbabwe, they would engage locally, honestly and without racial entitlement. Instead, they have chosen to internationalise grievance and invite interference, confirming what many have long suspected.
This was never just about land.
It was about losing a country they once believed belonged to them.
