We torched your farm - and we'll come back to eat your children...

They turned up that dark evening, as they would for many more to come, when supper was over. Screaming 'out, out, out' and thumping drums, Mugabe's mob lit a noose of 50 fires around the farmhouse.

In the flickering circle of flames, it was easy to see the AK-47 automatic rifles they waved above their angry faces.

Inside, the terrified white family repeated the words of Psalm 118: 'The Lord is with me, I will not be afraid.'



Beaten: Mike, left, and Ben whose farmland in Zimbabwe was torched



There was no sleep for them. At any minute the mob outside might break in and beat and torture them, just as they had done to other Africans, black and white.

It was only hours later, when dawn broke over Mount Carmel farm in Chegutu, 70 miles south-west of Zimbabwe's capital, Harare, that Ben Freeth and his wife, Laura, finally dared to unlock their doors.

That night of terror was just one chilling episode in their battle against the dictator Robert Mugabe, 85, and his henchmen.



Yet because Ben was running one of the biggest mango farms in Zimbabwe, with a crop that sold on the shelves of Marks & Spencer in Britain, he thought he could fight Mugabe's determination to seize the land of the country's white farmers.

How wrong he was. Today, just 400 of those 5,000 white farmers remain in their homesteads and the Freeths have been hounded from Mount Carmel, which they shared with Laura's father, Mike Campbell, and his wife, Angela.

The couple are now living at a friend's house ten miles away and the Campbells, aged 76 and 68, have decamped, penniless, to the relative safety of Harare.

The family threw in the towel after their homes were burned down in an arson attack last year.

It followed a threat from Mugabe's men that they would eat Ben and Laura's children - Joshua, ten, Stephen, eight, and Anna, four - and an horrific beating lasting nine hours in which the mobsters fractured 40-year-old Ben's skull and he, Mike and Angela were left with 13 broken bones between them.

Now the beleaguered family's horrific story has been turned into an award-winning film, Mugabe And The White African, made and directed by the British duo Andrew Thompson and Lucy Bailey.



Destroyed: Mount Carmel was wrecked and hundreds of animals slaughtered



Already nominated for an Oscar, the documentary includes extraordinary and harrowing footage of the family's life under seige, including the night-time attacks which were bravely filmed undercover by Ben and Mike.

Last month, Mugabe And The White African received the prize for best documentary at the British Independent Film Awards; it comes hot on the heels of other stunningly successul small-budget documentaries such as Super Size Me, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Touching The Void.

Perhaps more importantly, the film will once again focus a much-needed spotlight on Zimbabwe, a country which was once the breadbasket of Africa, but where starvation now reigns, the rule of law has all but disappeared, and one in three has fled abroad to make a living.

For Ben's and Laura's story is not simply about the plight of a white landowning family in Africa. It depicts more vividly than words can say the devastating decline of an entire country and its people at the hands of a megalomaniac and his lynch mobs.

And it shows that even today, more than a year after a power-sharing agreement between President Mugabe and his former political rival Morgan Tsvangirai was meant to end the troubles, those lynch mobs are still going about their evil work.

The black workers at Mount Carmel were threatened with guns by the mobs, and told never to mix with white bosses again. Shaking with fear, they were dragged off to brutal, all-night political indoctrination classes to 'persuade' them of Mugabe's way of thinking.



Dictator: Robert Mugabe was determined to seize land from white farmers



Every mango in the store house was stolen and the farm's wildlife of 45 giraffes, 300 impala, 150 wildebeest and 50 elands, waterbuck, warthogs and zebra were slaughtered.

Today, the farm is derelict, its 40,000 fruit trees untended, and the land turning back to wild African bush. It has been appropriated by Nathan Shamiyurara, an octogenarian former cabinet minister, close chum of President Mugabe and his official biographer.

The family's account of Mount Carmel's downfall exposes the brutal reality of living in a country in the grip of a despot happy to abduct, beat, torture and kill those who oppose his views, whatever their skin colour.

Above all, it shames the western world - and particularly Britain as the country's former colonial power - for its failure to intervene while African leaders did nothing for fear of criticising 'one of their own'.

A successful case brought by this brave family against the Zimbabwean government at an international human rights' court counted for nothing.

The judges of the 15-nation Southern African Development Community in Namibia condemned Mugabe for racism, ruled he was in contempt of court, and said the land grabs from white farmers must halt.

Yet the words fell on deaf ears, and the dictator simply reiterated his view: 'The white man is not indigenous to Africa. Africa is for Africans. Zimbabwe for Zimbabweans.'

A document distributed soon afterwards by his cabinet promised that the evictions would continue. 'No foreigner should be allowed to own rural agricultural land in Zimbabwe,' it declared defiantly.

Yesterday, Ben said he always knew there would be consequences taking on Mugabe. 'He's a dictator - he doesn't brook any opposition. As a family, we felt it was very important to let the world know what was going on in this country, so something might be done at last to end the suffering of so many people here.

'This is a country in chaos and without a rule book. Lots of black people and whites are getting hurt, many are starving, yet no one has blown the whistle.' Until now.



Escape: Zimbabwe became a country of tragic stories as many tried to flee



Ben nowadays has a clipped dark moustache and military bearing. He was born in Kent and settled in Zimbabwe as a child, taken there with his family after the country's independence in 1980.

His father, a retired Royal Artillery officer, was hired by Mugabe to set up a staff training college for the national army and Ben was sent back to study at the Royal Agricultural College in Gloucestershire. On his return, he married blonde-haired Laura, 39, whose family has farmed in Africa since 1713.

They built a house at Mount Carmel, the 12,000-hectare estate bought by her father, Mike, for a commercial farming and safari enterprise.

Mike had taken out a huge loan to buy the farm, by savannah grassland with a river running through it. He introduced nine species of antelope and other wildlife. More than 500 local people lived and worked at a thriving Mount Carmel until the land attacks took their eventual toll.

Ben remembers the day the mobs first arrived with clarity. 'Early in 2000, we were driving to visit another farm with our son Joshua, at four months old, in a carrycot in the back seat.

'Some invaders had erected a road block on the driveway. They stopped us and smashed our car windows with axes and rocks. We had to drive for our lives to get away.' Such attacks would become commonplace.

And, if, anything, things became even worse in April 2008, when Mugabe lost the presidential election to his rival, the Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai.

The old dictator clung to power as political rioting engulfed the country in the months before a run- off contest. Murders, beatings, rapes and mutilations were orchestrated across Zimbabwe by militia groups from Mugabe's Zanu-PF to stop black MDC supporters voting.

Ben was told by a black foreman from a nearby farm that hands of MDC supporters were being cut off, so the could not sign their names on the ballot papers. 'Some of them were asked if they wore long sleeves or short sleeves.

Shared: Mugabe has now been forced to set up a power-sharing government with Morgan Tsvangurai



If a man replied short sleeves, they cut his right arm off at the top with an axe. If he said long sleeves, they cut his right hand off at the wrist,' he explains.

Little wonder that Tsvangirai suddenly pulled out of the run-off contest two months later, saying that his MDC party could not ask people to cast a vote if it was to cost them their lives.



It was around this time that 15 mobsters appeared at Ben's and Laura's window, singing, chanting and crashing metal bars together. They broke into his farmhouse, dragged burning tyres through the front door and carried them up into the loft to set fire to the thatched roof. By a miracle, they failed to catch light.

'I called the police, but then the invaders took the phone away,' Ben says. 'Their leader, who called himself Landmine, was armed with a rifle. They pushed us around, raised sticks and said we must leave. One of them went up to the children and made hyena noises.'

When the police arrived, Landmine and his men left the house shouting the chilling words: 'We will eat your children.'

Worse was to come at the end of June 2008, when a militia of young turks from Mugabe's Zanu-PF party came calling at Mount Carmel. They cornered Laura's parents Mike and Angela on a Sunday afternoon as they tended an orphan calf in their farmyard. They beat the elderly couple with guns, put a burning stick in Angela's mouth, broke her arm and tied the couple up.

When Ben drove over from his house to try to help, rocks were thrown at his head and he was rifle-whipped so severely it broke his skull. The three blood-soaked figures were dragged off to Mike's station wagon and driven away by the mobsters as they waved rifles out of the windows.



At a militia camp 12 miles away, the beatings continued as Mike slipped in and out of consciousness. The old man was an hour from death, doctors said later.

Angela was forced to sign a piece of paper promising the family would not continue their court battle over land reforms. Then they were driven off again and dumped on the roadside. One of their attacker's final words was: 'I am sorry for what we did to you.'

Ben, still concussed, walked to a nearby cottage to get help and the three were taken to hospital. At the Southern African Development Community hearing a fortnight later, Mike was too weak to attend and his memory is still damaged.

Ben, who has lost his sense of smell because of the beatings, attended with black eyes, a bruised face and white bandage around his head.

Yet still the family stuck it out at Mount Carmel. They hoped that when Mugabe was finally forced to set up a powersharing government with Tsvangirai in September 2008, after intense pressure from South Africa and the rest of the world, things would improve. How wrong they were.

The harrassment by the mobs continued until, eventually, both their homes and those of their black workers were burned down over four days at the end of August last year. Ben and Laura were at church with the family when the blazes started. Even a linen factory set up and run by Laura for the local community was torched to destruction.

'There was just enough time for me to get my family's passports and our computer, but that was all,' said Ben. 'We were left with the clothes on our backs. We felt so helpless, our family history has been destroyed, the photos, the children's baby books, records of holidays, the kids' toys.

'While we fought the fire, some of the thugs were driving around on our own tractor with our water pumps and dowsers, but they didn't come near us. They were probably laughing at us.'

It was the final indignity. At first the family were determined to return and rebuild Mount Carmel. Now, reluctantly, they have given up that idea because it is in the hands of Mr Shamiyurara and his relatives and associates.

Today, Ben and his family survive on the proceeds from a new linen factory employing their old black workers, which they have set up in a nearby town. But they will never quit Zimbabwe.

As he said yesterday: 'I believe you can be white and African. Why not? You can be white and American, or black and American. My father-inlaw's family came to Africa to live and work nearly 300 years ago. He has nowhere else to go because Zimbabwe is his country.'