WHITE farmers must shoulder the blame for the plight of Zimbabwe, according to one of the world's best-selling authors.
Henning Mankell, creator of the Wallander detective series, has lived in Africa for the past 25 years.
The Swedish writer is known for his strident political views and told an audience at Hay that Robert Mugabe should not be painted as the sole villain of the piece.
In a provocative talk, Mankell said: "In the early 1980s, every year Mugabe went and talked to white farmers and said, 'It's necessary for us to sit down and talk about the farms here'.
“And the reaction he got from white farmers was absolutely none. He tried year after year after year, and the only thing he was met by was arrogance. In the end, it became a very bad situation.
"I think when history is written, the white farmers at the beginning of the 1980s also have to take responsibility and blame for what really happened. Otherwise, when history is written people will believe that Mugabe was always crazy. He was not.
"Of course, today I hope that someone takes him out of the position he's in because he is destroying the country. But if white farmers had listened to him at the start of the 1980s, I think the situation for Zimbabwe would have been much better."
Since 2000, Mugabe has systematically seized land from white farmers parcelling it out to the country’s black majority
Critics say the programme precipitated the country's economic collapse.