Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - Mugabe's Thugs Took His Farm & Fractured His Skull - When Identity Politics Run Amok | Ben Freeth

00:00:00.000 Coming out of the recent RNC convention, one of the top questions on my mind is the question of identity.

00:00:05.000 American identity, but national identity more deeply.

00:00:09.000 On one vision of national identity, and I think most nations have been built this way, it's built around an ethnicity or a monarch or a religion or even a tie of how long your lineage or your ancestral lineage has been tied to a particular plot or area of land.

00:00:26.000 I think American identity is different.

00:00:28.000 Yes, the United States of America, no doubt, like every other nation, is a place circumscribed with national boundaries around it that we must protect.

00:00:35.000 But the United States of America, more than any nation in modern human history, certainly, is a country also bound together by a set of ideals that set this country into motion in 1776.

00:00:48.000 There's a deep philosophical question of whether people are willing to fight for a nation grounded in ideals, fight for abstract ideals.

00:00:58.000 And I think they are.

00:00:59.000 That's what the American Revolution was fought for.

00:01:02.000 That's actually part of what makes America great.

00:01:04.000 It's what certainly made America great the first time around.

00:01:07.000 That's part of the reason why I'm so bothered by the rise of identity politics in America.

00:01:13.000 What is identity politics?

00:01:15.000 Identity politics is a vision of our relationships grounded in our genetically inherited attributes, our race, our gender, maybe sexual orientation, certainly the visual and immutable characteristics that ground you in who you are.

00:01:31.000 And the essence of America is that we reject identity politics.

00:01:35.000 Have we been perfect for most of our national history on that?

00:01:38.000 No, we haven't.

00:01:38.000 But that's still the essence and the ideal that we strive for.

00:01:42.000 And I think we do face a bit of a fork in the road in the conservative movement of how we address the historical rise of left-wing identity politics that says that if you're black, you're oppressed, or if you're white, you're an oppressor.

00:01:56.000 How do we deal with that type of group identity politics?

00:02:00.000 Is it through more identity politics of a different kind and have them battle each other out in a way that decides that we're going to replace one form of identity politics with a different one?

00:02:09.000 Or is it by rejecting identity politics altogether?

00:02:13.000 The same thing can be said with respect to what is our response to the left-wing patronage model of how to govern.

00:02:19.000 Do we believe in patronizing certain special interest groups, partly based on identity politics or any other factor?

00:02:24.000 Do we believe in the government subsidizing or patronizing certain segments of the economy, certain segments of the population?

00:02:31.000 Do we want to deal with that by proposing a new patronage economy where we patronize other parts of the economy or other parts of the culture or other parts of the citizenry?

00:02:40.000 Or do we want to reject patronage politics altogether?

00:02:44.000 I do think this is going to be a key question, and I believe it's an unanswered question, in the future direction of the conservative movement, even the national conservative movement.

00:02:53.000 Do we believe in patronage or do we believe in liberty?

00:02:57.000 Do we believe in redirecting the regulatory state to accomplish our desired ends, or is the right answer to dismantle that regulatory state altogether?

00:03:06.000 Do we deal with these thorny questions around identity and the rise of left-wing identity politics with an alternative vision of identity politics?

00:03:14.000 Or do we reject identity politics altogether?

00:03:17.000 You could probably tell where I land on some of these questions.

00:03:20.000 I believe the right answer is not to reshape the regulatory state.

00:03:23.000 It's to shut it down.

00:03:24.000 I believe the right answer to the rise of a patronage economy where the government picks favorites across its citizenry and across its economic actors isn't to pick a different set of favorites.

00:03:34.000 It's to reject that patronage economy altogether.

00:03:37.000 I believe the right answer to left-wing identity politics is not to compete with the different vision of saying, hey, we're going to wrap our own vision of identity politics around a different set of identities and compete with you.

00:03:47.000 No, that's not the right answer.

00:03:49.000 The right answer is to reject identity politics.

00:03:52.000 The right answer to left-wing victimhood is not the adoption of right-wing victimhood.

00:03:56.000 It is the rejection of victimhood culture altogether.

00:04:00.000 And this is the fork in the road.

00:04:02.000 Do we want a left-wing nanny state to replace it with a right-wing nanny state? 1.00

00:04:05.000 I say hell no to that.

00:04:06.000 The right answer is we don't want the nanny state altogether. 0.59

00:04:09.000 These are deep questions for the future of the United States of America, and particularly the future of the nascent new conservative movement as well.

00:04:17.000 Where I think we're going to have to have these healthy debates if we're going to end up being the strongest version of ourselves.

00:04:23.000 One of the things I've learned, certainly about our country, I believe relatively young in our history, believe it or not.

00:04:29.000 I believe the United States of America, relative to our potential in life, has much further ahead of it than we do behind us.

00:04:36.000 And I hope our best days in that, too, being ahead of us.

00:04:39.000 One of the things I've learned, though, is that we are at our best when we learn lessons from other countries.

00:04:44.000 One of the ways that I understand what America is is you see America through the lens of people in other countries.

00:04:49.000 What do they see here that's different from the places where they might have grown up or where they may be coming from today?

00:04:56.000 And for us, for our part, learning about some of the travails of other countries that have grappled with some of these same questions of government intervention in the economy against the backdrop of divisive identity politics and where that road leads.

00:05:09.000 It's fascinating to somehow get outside of the American environment for a little bit because then you can let go of your presuppositions or political commitments here and just for a second take a tour somewhere else altogether, detached, Liberated, unshackled from what our pre-existing biases or pre-existing political commitments might be here.

00:05:29.000 To just learn about a different country that may have grappled with very similar questions but at a different time and under different circumstances.

00:05:36.000 to learn about it without any preconceived notions or attachments, and then to come back and put that American prism back on.

00:05:42.000 We often see our country a little bit differently and often for the better when we do.

00:05:47.000 That's what we're going to do on today's podcast.

00:05:50.000 We're going to talk to a farmer from Zimbabwe, not a normal kind of guest that I have on this podcast, but one who I've been looking forward to talking to.

00:05:59.000 His name is Ben Freeth.

00:06:01.000 His story, I think, is a cautionary tale, not just for those who may live in Zimbabwe in the future, not those who are in the UK or in Europe, He talks to me today from the UK where we're having this conversation today, but a cautionary tale to those of us who live right here at home in the United States of America.

00:06:20.000 So I'm fascinated by what he has to say.

00:06:22.000 His story has gained some notoriety in recent years.

00:06:25.000 It's a riveting story, even though it doesn't relate to the contemporary politics of our moment on this side of the pond in America.

00:06:33.000 I'm pleased to welcome Ben Freeth.

00:06:35.000 Thank you for inviting me on.

00:06:37.000 So Ben, tell me a bit about your background.

00:06:40.000 I have some familiarity I've read about you.

00:06:42.000 This is the first time we're actually speaking.

00:06:44.000 But for our audience, it's a fascinating story.

00:06:47.000 For those who are able to see you, you are a Zimbabwean farmer.

00:06:50.000 It might surprise some people to see you that you're white-skinned.

00:06:53.000 But that's actually part of the history that we're going to talk about here.

00:06:57.000 Give us your background, and I'd love to hear a little bit more about The backdrop for the tragedy that you encountered.

00:07:05.000 Well, we were farming in kind of the middle of Zimbabwe.

00:07:12.000 It was a very productive farm.

00:07:15.000 Mangoes, citrus, cattle, wildlife, row crops.

00:07:22.000 We had a very good farming operation with up to 200 employees at any one time.

00:07:31.000 And we would export all over the world to the Middle East, to the Far East, to Europe, particularly with the mangoes and the citrus.

00:07:42.000 And so it was a great operation.

00:07:45.000 It was employing lots of people.

00:07:47.000 It was creating foreign currency for the country.

00:07:50.000 We were paying taxes.

00:07:52.000 We had a mobile clinic.

00:07:54.000 We had...

00:07:56.000 Education.

00:07:57.000 It was a thriving place in a thriving community.

00:08:03.000 And Zimbabwe was a place that was known as a breadbasket of Africa.

00:08:09.000 We would export to our neighboring countries as well.

00:08:13.000 When there were food shortages and this kind of thing.

00:08:17.000 So it was a family farm and we were amongst many other family farms in the area.

00:08:24.000 So it was a good situation all around for everyone.

00:08:30.000 And then the year 2000 came along.

00:08:34.000 In fact, just a little bit before that in 1997, there was a threat to our president's power and he realized that he had to go out and make sure that on all the farms there was fear,

00:08:52.000 you know, essentially terrible fear brought into the hearts of both farm workers and the farmers on all those farms and So that no opposition And Ben, let me just pause you because this is really the thick of the story, but the backdrop I think is so valuable.

00:09:15.000 So this is Mugabe, President Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

00:09:19.000 Talk to us a little bit to rewind the clock of how he came to power in Zimbabwe in the first place, that it was even the backdrop of what happened with the founding and a little bit of the identity politics.

00:09:34.000 The racial identity politics, frankly, that was the backdrop surrounding some of the historical détente that led up to his rise.

00:09:43.000 I just think that history is immensely important here.

00:09:48.000 Well, Rhodesia, as Zimbabwe used to be known, was a colony of the United Kingdom.

00:09:58.000 In 1965, Rhodesia did what America did in 1776 and was actually the only other colony in the whole of the British Empire and the history of the British Empire that declared unilaterally independence.

00:10:15.000 At that time, the Cold War was running strong.

00:10:19.000 There was a lot of things going on with The Marxist countries coming in and essentially Bringing a premature independence to many of the African countries where Marxism was brought in and people started to suffer.

00:10:40.000 And so what happened in 1965 was Ian Smith declared independence unilaterally.

00:10:47.000 That, of course, unfortunately led to war.

00:10:51.000 The Chinese, particularly, and the Russians along with the North Koreans and Eastern European countries came in.

00:10:59.000 Armed Robert Mugabe and others with tens of thousands of AK-47s.

00:11:05.000 And there was full-on war, which eventually led to independence in 1980. And in 1980, Robert Mugabe said, yesterday you are our enemies, today you are our friends.

00:11:19.000 And he said, we're not going to kick you guys out as has happened in Mozambique and other countries around us where white people are basically being given 24 hours to take 20 kilograms, 40 pounds of their possessions with them. 0.77

00:11:38.000 And so Robert Mugabe said, no, you guys can stay.

00:11:42.000 We want to try and create a A state where everyone can thrive.

00:11:50.000 Many people didn't trust him.

00:11:52.000 Many people did leave.

00:11:54.000 Our family, they decided to stay.

00:11:57.000 Why?

00:11:58.000 Why was that?

00:11:59.000 Because I know that when Mugabe took over, a lot of people just got the heck out because they saw the risk.

00:12:06.000 Your family clearly sees yourself as Rhodesian, as Zimbabweans.

00:12:09.000 And so talk about that struggle a little bit.

00:12:13.000 And that's an important input into the story that follows.

00:12:16.000 I think, you know, for our family, so this was actually my father-in-law, particularly, whose farm that my wife and I were on subsequently.

00:12:31.000 I was obviously only a young boy at the time.

00:12:34.000 My father-in-law and his family decided that they would stay because it was home and they believed, well, you know, there is a chance that things may be different this time.

00:12:49.000 And they decided that they were going to try and make the very best of it, do their very best for the country, invest and try to Create the food security that the country obviously needed.

00:13:05.000 We, at Rhodesia at that time, had the best educated population in Africa.

00:13:10.000 It had the best healthcare in Africa.

00:13:13.000 It was a success story.

00:13:15.000 And so, there was people that just invested everything in that country and decided that there was a possibility that things could be different.

00:13:30.000 So you bought into the vision?

00:13:32.000 We did, and it was pretty rough to begin with.

00:13:40.000 The 5th Brigade down in the south of the country was commanded by a guy called Perin Shiri, and he had been trained by the North Koreans And they massacred the Matabili people down in the south of the country.

00:13:58.000 There were about 20,000 innocent civilians that were killed at that time.

00:14:02.000 So it wasn't an easy start to independence.

00:14:06.000 But the hope was that Robert Mugabe would be a leader that would be different to many of the other countries where complete nationalization of land and property and businesses and even homes had taken place to the North.

00:14:31.000 Times were starting to change in the world and of course by the time 1989 came along and the Berlin Wall came down You know, most people felt, okay, well, you know, we're on a trajectory of growth.

00:14:46.000 Property rights are going to fail.

00:14:48.000 Business is going to be able to operate in this country.

00:14:52.000 And we became actually the fastest growing economy in the world in the 90s.

00:14:57.000 And so it did look like the decision to stay had been vindicated.

00:15:05.000 For some time.

00:15:07.000 For some time, yeah.

00:15:09.000 And so that's through the 90s.

00:15:10.000 And then what changed in the 90s, right?

00:15:13.000 Mugabe supported a sort of a fast-growing economy, even despite having nationalized much of it, right?

00:15:21.000 Is that a fair statement?

00:15:23.000 He didn't nationalize land.

00:15:27.000 He didn't nationalize private farming ventures.

00:15:31.000 He kind of allowed those things to be able to carry on. 0.89

00:15:35.000 He neutralized the opposition, or what he perceived to be the opposition, the Matabidi tribe in the South by killing them. 0.55

00:15:43.000 But there was not a wholesale nationalization process that took place at that time.

00:15:51.000 In fact, the constitution that was negotiated didn't allow nationalization.

00:16:00.000 of private property.

00:16:02.000 And he stuck to that.

00:16:05.000 He stuck to that for those first 10 years after independence in 1980, so from 1980 to 1990. And then a new act came into being in 1992, the Land Acquisition Act, which did allow him to take land without compensating for it.

00:16:25.000 But he didn't use that a lot.

00:16:30.000 He had bought a lot of land.

00:16:31.000 He bought 3.6 million hectares with the help of the British and the international community from farmers.

00:16:40.000 That land went to resettlement, but those people in resettlement were not given title deeds.

00:16:46.000 They were not given that kind of independence of being able to be masters of their own piece of land.

00:16:53.000 But it was only when an opposition was formed.

00:16:58.000 So he made sure that there was no opposition.

00:17:01.000 It was basically a one-party state all the way from 1980 to 1999. So for the first 19 years, it was a one-party state.

00:17:10.000 And then, of course, the Eastern Bloc countries came down. 0.97

00:17:15.000 The communist countries were no longer able to exert their influence, and there was a A mood towards democracy in Africa and other places because there was not support from those communist countries any longer.

00:17:31.000 And so an opposition party was formed for the first time from the trade union movement in 1999. Yeah, and that's when the gloves came off.

00:17:46.000 Robert Mugabe had to neutralize that opposition, and that's when the fear had to be generated, and that's when we as farmers, our farm workers who were the swing vote, had to be essentially terrorized.

00:18:03.000 It was going back to his Maoist kind of training, To terrorize the population and make sure that everyone was brought into intense fear.

00:18:16.000 And that's essentially what happened in the year 2000, four months before an election where he knew that he would be out of power if he did not take the gloves off.

00:18:29.000 You know, it's interesting.

00:18:31.000 How ideological do you believe he was, actually?

00:18:34.000 Do you believe that a lot of this reflected sort of a Maoist intellectual commitment?

00:18:40.000 Or do you think that this was all, the whole time, just a balancing act for whatever allowed Mugabe as a leader to preserve power?

00:18:51.000 Pragmatism versus ideology, what do you think guided him?

00:18:56.000 It was all about power.

00:18:59.000 You know, he had to remain in power.

00:19:02.000 He was a megalomaniac.

00:19:03.000 He had to remain in power.

00:19:04.000 He was prepared to sacrifice the economy.

00:19:08.000 He was prepared to sacrifice his reputation internationally for power, so long as he could stay in power.

00:19:16.000 And, of course, it worked.

00:19:17.000 He was able to stay in power from 2000 right up until the coup that was not called a coup back in 2017. He bought himself another 17 years after those first 20 years in power.

00:19:34.000 So that was what it was all about.

00:19:37.000 And we all felt at the time, we all felt, well, you know, In the end, pragmatism will come back.

00:19:45.000 The pragmatism of making sure an economy can function, that there is food security, that people have got education, people have got health, and these kinds of things.

00:19:56.000 But power was more important than all those kinds of things.

00:20:02.000 And do you think there was a version of the world where, when there was the rise of this opposition party, That was still against a backdrop of at least a decade plus where the country had seen real economic growth, where there had been improvements in prosperity, where they had respected land rights and private property rights.

00:20:25.000 Was there an alternative path available to him to defeat the opposition party on the record of prosperity by actually bringing along the swing voters based on a positive vision of growth, right?

00:20:37.000 Rather than using terror and fear, which we'll get to in a second, which is where the story ended.

00:20:42.000 Was that alternative open to him or had that door already been shut by that point in time?

00:20:50.000 I think, you know, it's very difficult for any politician anywhere in the world after 20 years in power to, however well he might have done or she had done, it's very difficult for them to retain that popularity after 20 years.

00:21:09.000 And certainly I think it would have been very difficult for him and his party to have won Without taking the gloves off.

00:21:17.000 You know, he could have done a Nelson Mandela.

00:21:19.000 He could have bowed out as an elder statesman.

00:21:23.000 He was already, by then, he was an octogenarian.

00:21:29.000 It would have been the right thing to have done.

00:21:32.000 But for him, I think he felt partly it was because he had so much blood on his hands, but partly because In his psyche, he just had to stay in power, whatever it cost.

00:21:47.000 And do you think he was facing or feared facing prosecution or any types of retribution from that new party, or was literally just coming out of power?

00:21:58.000 I think it was more just coming out of power.

00:22:01.000 But obviously, as soon as you are not in power, you're not in control.

00:22:06.000 You're not in control of the judiciary.

00:22:07.000 You're not in control of what might happen to you if things changed.

00:22:13.000 And having so much blood on his hands, tens of thousands of people, innocent civilians, I think he felt that it was better to stay in power than to Then to relinquish power and bow out as an elder statesman.

00:22:30.000 And do you believe that his behavior could have been any different if the opposition party coming to power had, say, pledged immunity to him from prosecution?

00:22:41.000 Do you think that it would have taken him out of the box that he was in and opened up that elder statesman bowing out type of path that otherwise was closed to him?

00:22:51.000 I think over the years, there was a lot of discussion about that immunity, and that immunity was certainly offered to him.

00:23:01.000 So it was?

00:23:02.000 That did happen?

00:23:03.000 It did happen, but he did not trust that immunity.

00:23:11.000 You know, he felt that he was the father in the nation.

00:23:15.000 He had that megalomaniac kind of streak in him where he wanted to remain in power till the end of his days.

00:23:24.000 So what happened then?

00:23:26.000 The election ended up happening or not in 1999 to 2000?

00:23:30.000 So in 2000, we had a referendum in February of that year.

00:23:36.000 And that referendum...

00:23:39.000 The referendum was on a new constitution.

00:23:42.000 The new constitution would allow the people to be able to take land for free, but at the same time to entrench Robert Mugabe's power.

00:23:52.000 So there were clauses that would entrench his power.

00:23:59.000 Was voted on, Robert Mugabe lost that referendum, you know, so that was in February and he realized that the election that was coming back up in June, four months later, he would lose that as well.

00:24:12.000 And so that was within two weeks of that referendum result.

00:24:16.000 We had all hell let loose on the farms and we really experienced what it was like to live under Tense fear for those four months up until the June election.

00:24:34.000 And we all thought, well, you know, it will just last up until the election.

00:24:38.000 And if we can survive those four months, you know, we'll be okay.

00:24:46.000 Start to calm things down after June.

00:24:49.000 But of course, that didn't happen.

00:24:51.000 And it became a system of oppression and cronyism.

00:24:58.000 So we would have farms invaded, people murdered, people beaten up, people really have terrible things happen to them and to the farm and to all the workers.

00:25:13.000 And And then those farms would be given out to members of the ruling party.

00:25:20.000 So every single Supreme Court judge, every High Court judge, every magistrate, every member of parliament, Every senior policeman, senior army guy, the secret police people, the reserve bank people, all the civil servants, all the chief main civil servants, they were all handed out farms as part of a patronage system.

00:25:47.000 To be able to buy their loyalty and at the same time ensure that they kind of kept the workers in check.

00:25:56.000 They made sure the workers didn't have any opposition rallies on their farms.

00:26:00.000 There was no independent radio station or anything like that.

00:26:04.000 So the only way the opposition could campaign was door to door, going from farm to farm, but they could not go to a single farm.

00:26:12.000 And so it was really only in town that the opposition was able to operate and of course the opposition always won the towns but they couldn't win the rural areas where there was so much fear and everyone knew that their vote was not free that if they voted for the opposition they would be found out.

00:26:32.000 They would have all hell to pay for having made a vote for someone who was not Robert Mugabe.

00:26:40.000 So it was a It was a time of, for us all, it was a time of absolute terror.

00:26:45.000 We did not have the law to protect us.

00:26:47.000 We did not have the police to protect us in any way at all.

00:26:51.000 So you just had your land basically seized, bottom line.

00:26:56.000 Yes, and that's what happened.

00:26:58.000 The land was seized.

00:27:00.000 Farm after farm was seized with no compensation whatsoever.

00:27:06.000 And that land then became the property of the state, but it had all these various powerful people on it, but not one of them was given title deeds.

00:27:17.000 All of them were kept guessing.

00:27:19.000 All of them were kept in the patronage system knowing that if they said the wrong thing, Then they would be thrown off the land.

00:27:26.000 And that, of course, has happened in certain instances.

00:27:30.000 So it's a system of control, of being able to control people for political ends, for power, essentially.

00:27:39.000 And it doesn't promote production, it doesn't promote employment, it doesn't promote Any meaningful economic activity whatsoever.

00:27:48.000 So it's been a disaster.

00:27:50.000 Just on a personal note, what approximately in today's terms, you may not have a very good sense for this, but what approximately in today's terms would be the value of the land that was seized from your family?

00:28:06.000 Well, I mean, our property was a pretty extensive property.

00:28:11.000 We had about, just to kind of give you an idea of what the production was, we had a thousand head of cattle, we had several thousand head of wildlife with a safari lodge,

00:28:31.000 we had mangoes That would be exported probably 30-ton rigs of mangoes, similar kind of amounts of citrus each year.

00:28:48.000 And then, you know, a lot of row crops, a lot of corn, as you call it, maize we call it, which would be there for food security both on the farm and within the surrounding area.

00:29:01.000 So it was You know, I mean, by American standards, probably not a huge...

00:29:08.000 It could mean the millions of dollars, yeah, of value.

00:29:12.000 Yeah, yeah.

00:29:13.000 And that was just basically erased from your family's possession?

00:29:19.000 Yeah, we decided that we needed to fight it.

00:29:24.000 We ended up...

00:29:27.000 So what happened was that they tried to legalize, they tried to legitimize what they were doing and they created a new law which said that if you were listed, if your farm was listed in a government gazette, in a government newspaper, you would then have everything taken from you and if you were still in your home, Three months after this listing had taken place, you would be a criminal.

00:29:57.000 So you'd be a criminal not only for living in your home, but you would be a criminal for committing the crime of farming your own land and producing crops and land that was starving by then.

00:30:12.000 And you would be able to spend up to two years in jail for that criminal activity of living in your own home and committing the crime of farming.

00:30:22.000 When that law came into being, we as a family decided, no, we have to challenge this.

00:30:28.000 We have to do something to challenge this constitutionally, knowing that all the judges had received farms, knowing that we'd probably lose in our Supreme Court, but knowing also that we had to stand for righteousness and justice in our nation because it was being destroyed.

00:30:46.000 And so as a family, we decided that's what we had to do.

00:30:51.000 We embarked on a very long and difficult and expensive legal process, where we eventually ended up in the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe in 2006, knowing, as I said, that we would lose, but knowing also that this is what we had to do.

00:31:08.000 This is what we were called to do as Christians, that we had to stand in the gap.

00:31:14.000 You know, we knew that we'd pay for it as well.

00:31:16.000 Anyone who went to the law, went to a court, was immediately singled out, immediately became a target.

00:31:23.000 And amazingly, two weeks after our hearing in the Supreme Court, we heard about a new court that had been set up in the region under the Southern African Development Community Treaty And this court was for all 400 million people of Southern Africa.

00:31:45.000 And we were able to approach that court, knowing that we would lose in the Supreme Court, but knowing that we had exhausted all our domestic remedies.

00:31:55.000 And approached that court, which we did, and two weeks before our main hearing in that court.

00:32:04.000 So we were given interim relief as soon as we approached the court.

00:32:08.000 They said they can't arrest you.

00:32:10.000 You are allowed to carry on farming.

00:32:12.000 You're not committing a crime under the SEDEC Treaty by farming and living in your own home.

00:32:17.000 And so we...

00:32:22.000 Two weeks before that main hearing, we were abducted, we were tortured very, very severely, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law and myself.

00:32:35.000 14 broken bones between us.

00:32:38.000 We were taken off to a dark torture camp where many people had been tortured over the previous few months in another very, very bloody election period.

00:32:50.000 What was their objective in torturing you physically?

00:32:52.000 What did they think they were going to get out of this?

00:32:54.000 To stop the fight in court?

00:32:56.000 They got my mother-in-law to sign a bit of paper that we would not continue in The Sadek Tribunal.

00:33:03.000 We would not continue in this regional court.

00:33:06.000 But of course, my father-in-law was unconscious most of the time at that point.

00:33:12.000 I also had a fractured skull by that stage.

00:33:15.000 They'd been beating me over the head with rifle butts.

00:33:18.000 And so they got my mother-in-law who had a badly broken arm and was beaten all over her head.

00:33:25.000 And they'd taken a fire and put it in her mouth. 0.97

00:33:30.000 They got her to sign a bit of paper to say that we would not carry on in the court.

00:33:34.000 But of course, they never produced that.

00:33:37.000 And two weeks later, in a wheelchair, I was able to be in the court in Namibia, in the SEDEC tribunal.

00:33:44.000 My parents-in-law were not.

00:33:46.000 They were still in the hospital.

00:33:48.000 But I was able to be there and able to eventually, on the 28th of November that year, 2008, get...

00:33:58.000 Be part of hearing the judgment, which was a very favorable judgment, which said that we were allowed to stay on our farm, that what the Zimbabwe government was doing was against international law, against the SEDEC treaty, that they could not carry on.

00:34:17.000 And so that was a tremendous judgment on the 28th of November 2008. And we went ahead at that time and we planted a full crop And then in 2009, early 2009, Robert Mugabe made a speech.

00:34:34.000 We're not listening to the courts.

00:34:36.000 We're not going to listen to the SEDAC tribunal.

00:34:40.000 And then not only did he...

00:34:42.000 I mean, we then had six months of absolute hell on the farm where They would come around our house and beat drums all night, put up plows on the trees around and beat them with iron bars, break down the doors on one night, break down the doors of the house and bring burning tires through the house.

00:35:09.000 I mean, it was very terrifying for me and for my wife and our three young children at the time.

00:35:15.000 And it was only by God's grace that actually we got through that period.

00:35:21.000 Eventually, in August 2009, they burnt down, first of all, my parents-in-law's house.

00:35:27.000 Sorry, our house.

00:35:29.000 And then three days later, they burnt down my parents-in-law's house.

00:35:32.000 Literally burned it down.

00:35:33.000 Just fire.

00:35:34.000 Burned it down.

00:35:35.000 Is that out of vindictiveness?

00:35:36.000 The objective is to send a signal to everybody else?

00:35:39.000 It was partly to send a signal to anyone else.

00:35:42.000 You do not...

00:35:43.000 You don't come against the president.

00:35:45.000 You don't take him to court.

00:35:47.000 If you do take him to court, bad things will happen to you.

00:35:52.000 And that's the politics of fear.

00:35:55.000 It's a terrible thing to live under such intense fear.

00:36:01.000 We only really understood the importance of property rights, the importance of the rule of law.

00:36:09.000 When those things were taken away from us, you know, most people in America and Europe and other places where you enjoy property rights, you enjoy the rule of law, you don't understand how foundational that is to making your country thrive.

00:36:24.000 Bringing food security, making sure that people are able to live well.

00:36:30.000 As soon as fear is brought into the equation through the taking away of the rule of law, it's a terrible place to be.

00:36:40.000 Can you say a word about the backdrop of racial identity politics in all of this?

00:36:46.000 You haven't really touched on that.

00:36:47.000 I think that history is the unspoken backdrop here.

00:36:52.000 Inform our audience about that, because I just think from a U.S. perspective, it's fascinating.

00:36:58.000 Yeah, I think it is.

00:36:59.000 It's a very interesting subject.

00:37:00.000 And, you know, it's something that the ruling party, Zana Pierre, Robert Mugabe, tried to fuel, you know, the state media.

00:37:14.000 There was no independent media, no independent radio station, no independent television station.

00:37:20.000 The state media, and there was no independent newspaper either.

00:37:24.000 I mean, he had total control of the media.

00:37:27.000 And he pushed it. 0.93

00:37:28.000 He pushed it very hard, the fact that the white people were the enemy, the white people were the exploiters, we were the oppressors.

00:37:37.000 Do you think the population was buying it? 0.97

00:37:39.000 We needed to be taught a lesson.

00:37:41.000 What I found very heartening was that the population did not buy it.

00:37:47.000 They did not buy it at all.

00:37:48.000 There were a few people that were used, the criminal element that is always in society to invade the farms and things like that.

00:37:58.000 But the vast majority of the population did not buy into it at all.

00:38:02.000 And certainly whenever I walk down a street as a white person, and obviously we're a very small minority in Zimbabwe, much less than 1% of the population, I have never had a feeling that because of the color of my skin I am unwelcome.

00:38:19.000 And in fact, it's quite the opposite.

00:38:20.000 Many people come up to me, people that I don't even know, black people And they come up to me and they know me because there was a documentary film made about our fight against Robert Mugabe in the courts.

00:38:36.000 And they know me because they've seen that and I've been on media and stuff.

00:38:40.000 And they come to me and they say, you're Ben Freeth, aren't you?

00:38:44.000 And I say, yeah.

00:38:45.000 And they said...

00:38:47.000 Thank you for staying.

00:38:48.000 Thank you for not leaving the country.

00:38:50.000 We need you.

00:38:51.000 And you will be able to farm in the future.

00:38:54.000 And I get a tremendous kick out of the fact that that racial tension is not something that's real.

00:39:03.000 It's something that's manufactured through the state media.

00:39:07.000 And through the powers that be that want to create hatred within society.

00:39:14.000 I recently did a 1400-mile ride with my horse all the way from the gates of our farm, because we obviously are not able to be on the farm at the moment, all the way from the gates of the farm to the SEDEC tribunal, to this court that I was telling you about just now.

00:39:34.000 And I rode Through areas I was totally unsupported.

00:39:39.000 I was sleeping rough in the bush.

00:39:41.000 The hospitality of the people for this unknown kind of white person wandering through the land was just unbelievable. 0.99

00:39:52.000 It was so humbling to me to be invited into people's homes, to be given food, to be given water, amongst people that were incredibly poor and hungry themselves, willing to share what they had with me.

00:40:08.000 So I found that A most humbling and wonderful thing.

00:40:14.000 It's interesting you say that.

00:40:16.000 that it's an interesting tale of hope of the population pitted against the cynical agenda of the ruling party.

00:40:29.000 A lot of that lands with me when I look at modern America.

00:40:34.000 I mean, part of what we see in the United States of America today is I think a lot of the division in the US, certainly not of a scale that you saw boiling over in Zimbabwe, but of a scale nonetheless that's historic in the United States, is, I think, manufactured by the people who are in charge because it's in their best interest to have a population that's divided.

00:40:54.000 I think the difference is in an era of modern social media and an era of perpetuation of information is I worry a little bit more about the population's willingness to buy it.

00:41:09.000 I do think it starts from cynical forces, but I worry more than in the grounding of Zimbabwe's moment that you described 20 years ago that the population was mostly not buying it, actually.

00:41:21.000 Even if you think about the lead-up to that election you described, it sounds like initially they said, hey, we're going to give land away, free land to the people.

00:41:29.000 Sounds like a perfectly populist agenda.

00:41:33.000 And yet the people still weren't going to vote for it, which is why they had to take that more heavy iron fist.

00:41:38.000 And I'd like to think the same thing would be true in modern America, but I wonder.

00:41:43.000 And I wonder if times have changed even in modern Zimbabwe relative to what they were back then, too.

00:41:48.000 What do you think?

00:41:50.000 Well, I think in Zimbabwe, all everyone really wants to see is an end to fear, an end to the divisions that continue to be manufactured and plague the nation.

00:42:08.000 People just want to be able to get on.

00:42:11.000 In this period, we've had a quarter of the population of Zimbabwe actually leave the country.

00:42:19.000 That's obviously mostly black people.

00:42:22.000 90% of the white people have left, but in terms of numbers, that's millions of our black Zimbabweans have left the country and gone to other countries around and then far away to the UK, to America, to all sorts of countries around the world.

00:42:45.000 And those people want to come home.

00:42:47.000 They want to see their country thrive.

00:42:49.000 They want to be able to see it go forward.

00:42:51.000 And everyone knows that that needs the rule of law.

00:42:55.000 It needs property rights.

00:42:57.000 It needs people to be able to be able...

00:42:59.000 In the book of Micah, in the Bible, in the Old Testament, it talks about...

00:43:07.000 Being able to sit under your own fig tree and not be afraid.

00:43:12.000 That's what people want all over the world.

00:43:14.000 That's what people want is to be able to sit under our own fig tree and not be afraid.

00:43:21.000 And that's what we don't have in Zimbabwe.

00:43:24.000 So that paints a picture of harmony.

00:43:27.000 It paints a picture of people not being afraid of each other.

00:43:30.000 It paints a picture of prosperity.

00:43:32.000 It paints a picture of countries thriving because there is peace.

00:43:40.000 In the section immediately before that, it's the section about beating swords into plowshares.

00:43:50.000 You know, it's a wonderful picture, and it's a picture that I think that we all want to see.

00:43:55.000 And in America, we look at you and we see the toxic politics that has been taking place of division.

00:44:04.000 Which has just not got a place.

00:44:06.000 It's really so sad to see that in modern-day America, where people kind of are at each other's throats.

00:44:14.000 And rather than promoting what they can do for the country, they're kind of downing the opposition.

00:44:21.000 That's not, you know, what we need is good policies where people are going to be free, where people, their individual freedoms are going to be protected.

00:44:34.000 Where property rights are going to be assured.

00:44:38.000 Where people can thrive.

00:44:40.000 And that's what America was built on.

00:44:41.000 And that's why we look up to America.

00:44:44.000 But when we see this toxic politics taking place, it's very sad to see in America.

00:44:51.000 What would be your advice to America from the vantage point of what you've seen in Zimbabwe, somebody who has had his land seized, somebody whose family, including yourself, been through physical torture, literally skull-crushing torture, on the back of a slow, steady rise literally skull-crushing torture, on the back of a slow, steady rise to power of a guy who really became a dictator, but who you trusted first in an era with prosperity and economic growth before he turned against the backdrop of racial identity 0.53

00:45:12.000 dictator, but who you trusted first in an era with prosperity and economic growth before he turned against the backdrop of racial identity politics, where you, in this case, as a white person, were in a minority there, where most of your fellow citizens would have never seen you that way, but the person in power used it to exercise control where most of your fellow citizens would have never seen you that

00:45:31.000 From that entire story, right, what would be your advice to the modern American of what we're to learn from that story and how we may use that to make our country better for knowing of it?

00:45:46.000 Thank you.

00:45:49.000 I forget who it was who said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

00:45:55.000 But I think that that is something very key.

00:45:59.000 And it's very easy to kind of switch off and say, well, this is all too toxic for me.

00:46:05.000 This is all too difficult.

00:46:06.000 This is something that I don't want to get involved with.

00:46:10.000 But the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

00:46:12.000 And I think what you have got in America is that you've got A lot of people and a lot of institutions that are looking at your situation and saying, we need to be involved.

00:46:24.000 We need to make sure that America is great again.

00:46:31.000 America has always been a great country from its very formation.

00:46:39.000 It's been through some bad patches, but it's come out on top.

00:46:43.000 But it's in great danger if it is not vigilant, if its people are not vigilant, if they forget God, they forget what righteousness is, they forget what justice is, they forget how important it is to uphold those things, America will not be great.

00:47:05.000 So that vigilance, I believe, is absolutely key in your nation.

00:47:10.000 And I think we as Zimbabweans were guilty of becoming complacent up to a point in not being part of standing in the gap, of making sure that we stood up when things were wrong, in trying to bring reconciliation where things were toxic.

00:47:35.000 You know, we were guilty of not doing enough.

00:47:40.000 But I think in America, you've got some great people.

00:47:44.000 I think you're one of them.

00:47:46.000 And I think that it will be great to see America come through this difficult time and come out the other side and lead the world forward once more.

00:48:00.000 How do people in Zimbabwe look at America?

00:48:02.000 I'm curious for that perspective.

00:48:05.000 Well, of course, a lot of people want to get to America and they know that they can thrive in America.

00:48:13.000 It's still a land of opportunities compared to many countries or most countries around the world.

00:48:21.000 Is there another country where they would hold a similar...

00:48:27.000 A similar set of idealism that they would sort of see in that country as you see in the United States?

00:48:33.000 I'm just curious, like if you put yourself in the shoes of a Zimbabwean farmer, you say America is among the countries in the world.

00:48:40.000 Is there another country where you still think from somebody in that vantage point that he had the United States on this list?

00:48:46.000 Or are we still in a world where the United States is separate and apart from the rest of the countries on the globe from that perspective?

00:48:54.000 Well, I think a lot of Zimbabweans want to get to places in Europe as well.

00:49:00.000 They see that traditionally there's been freedom and there's been economic prosperity and opportunity in those countries.

00:49:12.000 I think what we do have in Zimbabwe is a very strong Reaction by the ruling party against America.

00:49:24.000 America has been very forthright and very principled in putting together the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, which is part of your law in America, which basically, as far as I can see, is a martial plan to rebuild Zimbabwe if we come back to democracy and if we come back to the rule of law and we do things correctly.

00:49:50.000 So, of course, those people that have been part of injustice do not like that act and they do not like America or they purport to not like America because of it.

00:50:01.000 But, you know, they would be there in America like a shot. 0.93

00:50:05.000 Yeah, no doubt.

00:50:08.000 Well, look, I think one of the things I love about your story is that for everything you've been through, from land seizure to torture, It doesn't strike me that you describe yourself or even view yourself as a victim, really.

00:50:24.000 And I do think that this is one of these deep fissures, even in the future of the conservative movement in the US, is has there been similar injustice to groups that have otherwise been, in some ways, victimized?

00:50:39.000 There's different groups that have been victimized at different points in American history.

00:50:42.000 But is the right response now to see yourself as a victim with a competing claim on that hierarchy of victimhood, or is it to really move past that altogether?

00:50:52.000 It's certainly the latter approach that I'm rooting for in the United States of America, and I think the conversation with you has been fascinating because you demonstrate that example of having gone through even far worse than what many in the United States have gone through, rural industrial communities that have been left behind.

00:51:07.000 Yes, it's been wrong in the United States of America.

00:51:10.000 But the right answer is not to see ourselves or oneself as a victim, but instead to ask how we restore that country where every person, regardless of their background, is given that opportunity to realize the maximum of their God-given potential.

00:51:25.000 That's true liberty.

00:51:27.000 And to sit under your fig tree without fear of violence or seizure.

00:51:32.000 And you know what?

00:51:33.000 I think that it will require eternal vigilance for us to get there here as in Zimbabwe. 0.95

00:51:40.000 Absolutely, and I think victimhood is a very dangerous state of mind.

00:51:46.000 I've seen it, obviously, in certain instances amongst people.

00:51:52.000 And the only person that suffers as a result of that mindset of victimhood, at the end of the day, is the person who thinks that they are a victim.

00:52:02.000 Each of us has got God-given gifts.

00:52:06.000 Each of us has got God-given potential.

00:52:09.000 We need to be able to unlock those gifts and unlock that potential in order that everyone can be able to serve their country, to serve their family, to serve their community, to be there as forces for good.

00:52:24.000 As soon as you go into this victimhood state of mind, You kind of go into a beggar mentality and that doesn't help anyone at all. 0.92

00:52:34.000 It's a very dangerous place to be for a community, for a person, for a family to be out there with a begging bowl because you're never able to realize the potential.

00:52:48.000 You're never able to get to have the dignity really of being able to thrive by your own I think you embody that better than anybody.

00:53:05.000 Hardship is inevitable.

00:53:07.000 Victimhood is a choice. 0.64

00:53:09.000 And I think that that is something that we would do as well to remember today as ever I could remember in my life.

00:53:15.000 So thank you.

00:53:17.000 Thank you.

00:53:18.000 And obviously we've been through some hardship.

00:53:23.000 But, you know, Jesus said, in this world, you will have trouble.

00:53:27.000 Whether it's modern-day America, whether it's Zimbabwe, there will be trouble wherever we are. 1.00

00:53:33.000 And it's a question of knowing that he has overcome the world and we can overcome the world if we do the right thing.

00:53:39.000 And that's not going to a state of victimhood.

00:53:43.000 Yeah.

00:53:44.000 Beautiful.

00:53:45.000 Well, Ben, it's been an honor to have you.

00:53:47.000 I've been looking forward to this conversation for some time.

00:53:51.000 I know there are a lot of cautionary notes, but also hopeful notes that we will take away from this from an American perspective.

00:53:58.000 So thank you.

00:53:58.000 I appreciate it.

00:54:00.000 Thank you very much, and it's been so great to speak to you, and all the best in the months ahead in America, and may you be soft and light.

00:54:09.000 Thank you.

00:54:10.000 We will receive that blessing as you intend it.

00:54:13.000 Thank you.

00:54:14.000 All right.

Truth Podcast - Vivek Ramaswamy - September 04, 2024

Mugabe's Thugs Took His Farm & Fractured His Skull - When Identity Politics Run Amok | Ben Freeth

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