In the Land of Hatred

A matter of life and death: a dangerous undercover investigation in a country in the grip of chaos and terror.

In mortal danger, he met white farmers in Zimbabwe, who, under the regime of the autocratic president Robert Mugabe, are exposed to racist oppression. They are stripped of their ownership rights and hounded out of their farms. The fertile agricultural land is overgrown with scrub, for the „Land Reform” is solely about possession and power. Zimbabwe is threatened by famine, caused by mismanagement. Masquerading as a backpacker, Hans-Joachim Löwer researched the background to these events. A riveting account of the land that was once known as Africa’s breadbasket, which is now sinking into poverty, political turmoil and dictatorship.


Hans-Joachim Löwer, born in 1948, spent 19 years working as a foreign correspondent for the weekly news magazine „Stern”, and was the editor of the German edition of „National Geographic” from 1999–2000. In the 1990’s he ran self-help projects in Latin America, South Africa and Namibia. He lives in Hamburg. „He manages to highlight issues in a way which often reveals more than clever analyses and television news items”, the dpa (leading German press agency) writes about his book „Sacred Soil, Unholy Country” on his high-wire journey across Israel and Palestine.