A story of hope in Mbezingwe, Zimbabwe

In 1982 a handful of Zimbabwean and South African couples sold their suburban homes, pooled their resources and purchased an under developed 6,500 acre farm on the outskirts of the Tribal Trust Lands, near Bulawayo, in Zimbabwe. They named it ‘The New Adams Farm’. The Tribal Trust Lands was where many of the indigenous Africans lived, and it was these very people that they wanted to reach out to. They formed what was to be named ‘the Community of Reconciliation’, their dream was to see white and black Zimbabweans living together in perfect harmony, ending racial tension, ending violence, ending hurt. The community grew , with many from the communities around benefitting from their love and generosity. God also connected the hearts of some local black families to the vision of the ‘Community of Reconciliation’ and they moved onto the farm as equals. In 1984 the community had enough money to buy the farm next door, and named it ‘Olive Tree Farm’.  The community lived and worked together in peace, black and white, side by side.

In 1986, dissidents from the local village of Mbezingwe came to the farm one night. They saw themselves as liberators, coming to liberate the blacks on the farm from the white oppressors. They led off the 16 whites, men, women and children, to be killed and forced some of the blacks from the community to watch. While Glynis, the fourteen year old daughter of one of the founding members of the community was being led off to be killed, she turned to her father and asked him, “How should I pray?” He responded, “Pray for these men as they are now the ones that need our prayers”. One by one they were killed with an axe, but each of them remained silent, and could be seen uttering prayers under their breaths for their murderers. The blacks from the farm that had been ‘liberated’ wept, these were their friends, their family. The Community of Reconciliation had begun to shine a bright light of hope in an area and country of much darkness, but in one night the community was ripped apart and was never re-established. The people that committed the massacre were never brought to justice.

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Pierre de Jager is a South African who is closely connected with Foundations for Farming, until recently he was working and living on a farm in the Matopo Hills area near Bulawayo. Many people told him that he was crazy to live and farm there as the farming conditions are not good. A few years ago, Pierre spoke to Brian Oldreive (the founder of Foundations for Farming) and asked him, “am I crazy for wanting to farm here, can it be done?”. Brian answered him “if you want to ask the question ‘should we farm there or not’ then look at nature, if God is farming there then we can farm there”.

So Pier set up home and started to teach Foundations for Farming to the communities around him.  The first group of 150 people that Pier taught had been getting 3-5 tonnes of maize harvest between them. Pier could only afford to empower 50 farmers with inputs to farm a 50m x 50m plot of land each using Foundations for Farming methods, but at the end of the season, their collective harvests off these plots was 75 tonnes!

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Following the success of the first community that Pierre taught into, Pierre received an invitation from a community down in the valley. They had seen the success of using the Foundations for Farming methods and they themselves wanted to learn.  Five people from the village had formed a farming group and they wanted Pierre to come and teach them. They were from the village of Mbezingwe, the community that some of the dissidents that committed the murders at Adams Farm and Olive Tree Farm were from. Many people warned Pierre against going to Mbezingwe and other charities had avoided working in the community because of what had happened in 1986. Pierre prayed about it, and in 2009, a year after the invitation, he felt God saying that it was now time to go to the community.

With this group, Pierre felt God say he must lead with a message of repentance and challenge them to change the way they had been living.  For the last 25 years after committing the murders they’ve been isolated, they’ve been unfaithful with the land and resources God had given them, and they had been putting more faith in witchcraft than God.  As a result they had not seen the blessing of God in their community, but God still loved them and had grace for them. Pierre shared that the fact God sent him, a man brought up as a racist Afrikaner, to help them is a sign of God’s grace and power to help people change their ways. He shared how God had changed his heart towards black Africans and now had given his life to helping those in poverty. So Pierre told them God wants them to change their ways, and they can start by changing the way they steward the land and farm. Pierre was very nervous about sharing such a challenging message as a white man, given what they had done to the white people 25 years earlier. But the Holy Spirit gave him courage to share and the people quietly listened. Afterwards Pierre continued with the normal Foundations for Farming training, unsure how the message had been received.

On the last day of the training, during lunch, when the ladies were serving the food, an old man came to Pierre, and took the plate from the lady who was serving him and served him lunch. One of the people who invited Pierre came over later and asked if he realised the significance of what had happened. They explained that this man was one of the people who had committed the atrocities at New Adams Farm and Olive Tree Farm and he was telling the community that he accepted Pierre and the message and teaching he had brought. It meant a lot to the others although no one said a word.

At the end of the training, Pierre asked them to think of what it is that they would need to implement Foundations for Farming well. Often when he asked a community this question they would ask him to provide them with seed and fertiliser. However, this community said that they needed rain gauges so that they could see when there had been enough rain for them to plant. Expecting them to ask him to provide them, Pierre asked how they would go about getting them.They decided that if everyone in the community gave Pierre a dollar, then could he buy the rain gauges for them. Pierre was very surprised by this sign of self-reliance.

Pierre also taught them about giving and challenged them to give 10% of their harvest at the end of the season to orphans or needy families. He said if they had no one to give to then he could give it to an orphanage that he worked closely with.

At the end of the season when Pierre visited Mbezingwe again, he could see that a dry spell had meant the crops had struggled, but they had at least harvested something, unlike many other communities in the area. He walked into a little hut, and there was a few bags of maize to one side. The lady who lived there was so proud and came to Pierre saying ‘Pierre that is yours, that’s 10% of our harvest for you to take to the orphanage’. Pierre knew that in the area, especially in their community, there was extremely poor people and people that had great need, and yet as a community they selflessly gave from what they had.

Pierre went where other’s had been afraid to go in the past. He spoke truth and gave them knowledge. He introduced them to the grace from God, and encouraged them that there is hope. Hope grows into faith,  and faith leads to actions.The actions of the people in Mbezingwe are now causing progress and we are seeing a community, that has been feared and hated for so long, moving out of poverty. The hope is that Mbezingwe will become a ‘light on a hill’ to the surrounding communities. God is in the process of redeeming the community and using what is low and despised in this world to bring about transformation.

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And now, the prayers of those murdered on Adams Farm have been answered, How amazing it was that at that time they should know that those killing them were in need of more prayer than themselves. Praise be to God that he redeems people like Pierre from their old lives, to help redeem whole communities, through repentance and forgiveness that leads to action.